GOP Adds New Police Powers to Intel Bill

House Republicans introduced a bill today grafting broad new powers for law enforcement onto what they said was the most comprehensive response yet to the Sept. 11 Commission’s call for reform of the nation’s intelligence community.

Both Democrats and some Republicans said that the addition of anti-terrorism measures to the House version of an intelligence reform bill dimmed prospects that a bill would be signed into law before the Nov. 2 elections.

Critics accused Republicans of using the back door of intelligence reform to push through elements of a Justice Department memo that leaked last year, dubbed “Patriot Act II,” that would have expanded anti-terrorism measures enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously sent to the Senate floor a narrower bill on Wednesday, creating a national intelligence director and a national center for counter-terrorism.

The bill, which House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said would go through a half-dozen committees on its way to the House floor the following week, would create a national intelligence director and a national center for counter-terrorism, as recommended by the Sept. 11 Commission.

But the bill would give both the director and the center less power than the version the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee adopted unanimously on Wednesday, and less than the Sept. 11 commission recommended.

The commission saw the director as the president’s chief advisor on terrorism and a powerful supervisor of all the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies, controlling budgets and weighing in on key personnel decisions.

It is the sections of the 300-plus-page House bill that deal with aspects of government outside intelligence reform, however, that quickly proved the most controversial.

The bill would make it easier to deport aliens who help or join terrorist groups; give the government more power to track “lone wolf” terrorists not connected to a particular terrorist organization, and set minimal federal standards for state-issued drivers’ licenses and identity cards.

“Our bill is the most comprehensive effort yet introduced that deals with the problems uncovered by the 9/11 Commission,” Hastert told reporters.

Democrats and some Republicans said the bill needlessly politicized what had been a bipartisan effort in the Senate to produce fundamental reform of the nation’s intelligence apparatus.

“It has complicated the process,” said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Harman objected to what she said was the bill’s effort to curb the authority of the national intelligence director and the counter-terrorism center. Beyond its proposals for intelligence reform, she added, the bill “has a lot of problems.”

Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said he was unhappy with a draft he saw of the House bill Thursday.

“The bill that I saw...I don’t intend to support,” LaHood said. “What will end up happening is we’ll pass something in the House that will be totally different than the Senate, then have the huge train wreck that we always have here in trying to reconcile the two,” LaHood said.

Hastert insisted that the legislation would “reform the government, to make it more effective in battling terrorists.” And he said the House leadership intended to have a bill ready for Bush to sign before the elections.

Lawmakers said today that the White House would be a key player in the political maneuvering that will kick into high gear next week, when the Senate plans to take up its Governmental Affairs Committee’s reform bill and the House committees will complete work on the House version.