House panel cool to Senate plan on intelligence reform

WASHINGTON -- Senate negotiators on the intelligence reform bill offered yesterday to drop their requirement that the overall intelligence budget be made public if House Republicans accept the Senate plan for a new national intelligence director.

Under the Senate approach, the director would assume control of budget and spending authority, now said to total $40 billion, most of which is hidden in the Pentagon budget and is under the control of the defense secretary. Senate conferees say they are willing to keep the spending secret but insist that control of the funds be shifted from the Pentagon to the intelligence director.

But the House Armed Services Committee chairman, Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, has staunchly opposed the Senate approach, and yesterday a committee spokesman dismissed the new Senate proposal as a ''nonstarter."

Harald Stavenas, staff director of the House committee, said in a statement, ''Hunter wants funding to go through the Defense Department rather than directly to the intelligence agencies." He added that the Senate offer ''retains exclusive authority for the NID [national intelligence director] to 'execute' defense intelligence funds. That's a nonstarter for us."

Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and the chief Senate negotiator, said she was surprised at what appeared to be such a quick negative response.

''We have made a major concession," she said, contending that continuing to classify the overall intelligence budget figure was one of the items that ''mattered most to the White House as well as House Republicans."

Collins added that the language the House appears to be rejecting was drafted by the White House Office of Management and Budget. She said she believes the White House will now put more effort into getting a final agreement, noting that the Senate approach has been backed by House Democrats on the conference committee.

With Congress returning next week for a lame-duck session likely to last little more than a week, time for a compromise on the complex bill is quickly running out, Collins said.

Restructuring of the US intelligence community, primarily by creating an overall director for all 15 agencies covering foreign and domestic intelligence, was a primary goal of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and released a report and recommendations in July.