Intelligence panel chairmen announce oversight moves
The chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees on Thursday outlined efforts to address congressional oversight of the U.S. intelligence community, including upcoming hearings, reports and legislation aimed at reforming U.S. intelligence capabilities and practices.
Well before the surprise announcement that George Tenet was resigning as CIA director, House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla., said during a breakfast discussion that his committee will hold hearings beginning next Friday to examine U.S. interrogation capabilities employed by intelligence officials. He said the committee had already received several briefings on the subject in the wake of the recent abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Goss said interrogation capabilities are crucial to U.S. force protection and fighting terrorism.
"If we can't use it, we've denied ourselves a critical tool," he said.
Goss said the committee is preparing to take action on the intelligence authorization bill "in the next 30 days or so," and he expects to complete the bill before fall. Goss said the committee would also introduce language -- either to the intelligence bill or as stand-alone legislation -- that would emphasize better management of foreign language capabilities in the intelligence community.
Both Goss and Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan.,who completed work on the Senate intelligence bill last month, will release separate reports on how the intelligence community determined Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.
Roberts said he hopes to release his report soon, though Goss said the House committee's report will, by design, be released later this summer, and will focus less on how key decision-makers use intelligence products and more on intelligence capabilities themselves. However, he added that the report could be slowed by an effort to consider to what extent the U.S. intelligence community is susceptible to disinformation and misleading intelligence.