Relatives of 9/11 Victims Spar Over Intelligence Bill

Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks publicly clashed Wednesday over the sort of bill Congress should produce to restructure the intelligence community.

At a Capitol Hill news conference, one group of family members said legislation must include provisions to tighten border security and hunt down and quickly deport foreigners here illegally.

Moments later, another family group, speaking with equal passion at the same lectern, urged House and Senate negotiators to drop those provisions because they were bogging down efforts to finish a bill before Tuesday’s election.

The confrontation between the relatives reflects the tense atmosphere of House-Senate negotiations to reconcile the intelligence bills passed earlier this month.

Both chambers say they are responding to the recommendations made in July by the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks. But the bills differ over how much budgetary and personnel authority a national intelligence director should have, and whether the immigration and law enforcement provisions now in the House bill -- but not the Senate’s -- should be included.

“People are ready to kill each other up here,” said one House Democratic staffer who has participated in debates that have gone on far into the night for more than two weeks.

Negotiators said Wednesday that they had abandoned hope of completing a bill before Tuesday. Instead, they are struggling to reach an agreement in principle that will make it possible for the legislation to move forward in a lame-duck session expected to be called in mid-November.

Both Democrats and Republicans have said they fear the electoral consequences of failing to produce a bill. Some proponents of intelligence reform, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), an author of the Senate bill, have warned that a lame-duck Congress may not have the political will to complete an overhaul of the intelligence agencies.

But some family members said that Tuesday was a “false deadline” and that negotiators should keep working for the best bill. Others urged the House to drop the immigration and law enforcement measures and embrace the Senate bill, and criticized President Bush for staying on the campaign trail instead of returning to Washington to push for the bill’s completion.

“We are asking that they pass the right bill,” said Colette Lafuente, who lost her husband, Juan, in the World Trade Center. Lafuente praised House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and the House Republican leadership for what she said was “an act of courage on their part” in including immigration provisions in the House version of intelligence reform. She said her group, 9/11 Families for a Secure America, represents hundreds of relatives of Sept. 11 victims.

“I owe it to my son’s children to keep them safe,” said Joan Molinaro, whose son, a New York City firefighter, was killed in the World Trade Center. “We cannot keep them safe if we cannot keep our borders safe. If we cannot track people coming into this country, how do I know that the person I’m sitting next to on a train, in a plane, is not the next Mohamed Atta?”

But those provisions “are bogging down this important legislation,” said Mary Fetchet, a member of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee whose son was killed in the World Trade Center.

Her group pushed for the appointment of the Sept. 11 commission and attended every commission and congressional hearing, while Lafuente’s group was formed after the House bill was introduced and acknowledged Wednesday that it was unfamiliar with the Senate bill’s provisions on the role of the national intelligence director.

“There’s one group of families that have been there from the get-go,” said one Democratic staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I would not exactly put these family members on equal footing.”

The bitter public dispute underscored the interests at play behind closed doors.

Under pressure from the White House to close a deal before the election, Hastert took the unusual step Monday of flying to Maine with his chief of staff, Scott Palmer, to meet with Collins in an attempt to cut a deal.

Later in the week, Palmer, who participants said had helped move both sides closer, reportedly pounded the table in frustration during one exchange over the immigration and law enforcement measures.

House and Senate negotiators said they had made progress on the question of budget authority for the national intelligence director, with the House insisting that it had gone a long way toward the Senate and the Senate saying it had made important concessions to the House.

But a letter from Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, supporting the House’s more limited authority for a national intelligence director, and a memo from Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, praising the House for making concessions to the Senate on the powers of a national intelligence director, outraged Senate negotiators. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), pointed to the document as proof of the Senate’s intransigence.

“When is the Senate going to take ‘yes’ for an answer?” he said in an interview.

The Senate bill is preferable, Zelikow said Wednesday, but the House has moved far enough that the two sides should be able to reach agreement. “We’re desperately trying to hold it together right now,” he said.

But members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee issued a despairing statement Wednesday afternoon.

“We are angry and saddened that the opportunity for significant reform of our country’s intelligence structure has been squandered,” they said.

President Bush, the statement said, “has allowed members of his own party to derail the legislative process. America deserves better from its leaders.... We will hold them accountable.”