Congressman Jim Moran's News Commentary

Major intelligence reform is on its way, but whether the American public will be happy with the end product remains to be seen.

The recently completed work by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission should be commended for its excellent product, leadership, and service to our country. Policymakers owe it to the American people to use this report to focus efforts so we can ensure that this type of attack never happens again. The Commission has recommended sweeping changes in how our intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security operate. I support the Commission's calls for a reorganization of domestic-intelligence programs within the F.B.I., an office within the White House to coordinate the work of the 15 intelligence agencies, an interagency counterterrorism center to absorb the smaller anti-terrorism center that the C.I.A. operates, and changes in the way Congress oversees the intelligence community.

Both chambers of Congress are now poised to act, but in ways differing in both substance and style. In the House, the majority leadership has tasked six committee chairmen with drafting separate pieces of legislation to reform the various parts of the U.S. intelligence apparatus that fall in some way (in a number of cases very tangentially) under their committee's jurisdiction. These five different pieces have been assembled into one bill, H.R. 10, the so-called 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act. While it may have been named to indicate a reflection of the 9/11 Commission's work, this bill leaves out some of the most important recommendations that came out of their careful and indepth investigation.

The Senate, on the other hand, has gone about drafting their intelligence reform proposal using a much more thoughtful and coordinated approach. Instead of scattering the work among many committees and increasing the risk of troubling unrelated provisions being slipped into the bill, the Senate Government Affairs Committee has taken the lead in this effort. Led by Senators Collins, Lieberman and McCain, the committee has taken a bipartisan approach to this vital reform effort.

Whether a future terrorist attack is successfully carried out on American soil may hinge on whether Congress can pass a strong but delicately drafted piece of legislation. The House's approach is typical of the way things have been run the past couple years, with the minority party being excluded from the process and the resulting legislation being overly partisan and inadequate.

I am of the opinion that Congress should be listening carefully to what the 9/11 Commission had to say. The process of crafting this important reform of U.S. intelligence can only be successful if it is tackled in a deliberative, bipartisan, and open way. The Senate appears to be on that track, with the Collins-Lieberman bill. Unfortunately, the train is already off the rails on the House proposal and it is heading nowhere fast. The House leadership plans to hold a vote on their measure this week. One would have hoped that something as critical to our national security and future safety would be free from partisan wrangling. Sadly, given the modus operandi of the House majority leadership, that hope would be naïve. Still, I am encouraged by the Senate's response. There will be no time to hold a conference committee on these two wildly divergent bills, but with a lame duck session of Congress set for after the elections to decide whether we will pass a budget, these tough but important choices may be worked out before the 108th adjourns.