Deal with White House clears way for intel authorization

Key lawmakers said on Wednesday they have resolved their differences over a massive fiscal 2010 intelligence authorization bill and, on the thorniest issue, reached a compromise with the White House over changes in the way members of Congress are informed about covert activities.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said they are now waiting for House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to seek the appointment of House conferees for the bill, which authorizes programs and spending for U.S. intelligence agencies. The Senate is expected to appoint conferees as soon as the House does.

"We've cleared everything up," Feinstein said. "We're ready to go to conference."

It may seem odd for Congress to try to advance an authorization bill for the current fiscal year, which already is more than halfway over. But an authorization bill for the U.S. intelligence community has not been enacted since fiscal 2005.

Several lawmakers explained they have put so much work into the fiscal 2010 bill and are so close to finishing it. It also contains many policy and spending directives that need to be implemented, they said.

One of the biggest obstacles to advancing the bill has been an effort to change the congressional notification process to allow more lawmakers to be informed about secret intelligence operations. Pelosi fueled controversy over the briefing process when she accused the CIA last year with regularly misleading Congress about covert activities and harsh interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding.

The House and Senate both passed versions of the bill that would change the notification process, but the Obama administration threatened to veto either bill over those provisions.

On Wednesday, Reyes said a compromise has been reached with the White House, but he declined to discuss the details.

"We didn't get everything we wanted. The administration still has some reservations. But we got to a point where we compromised," he said.

Reyes added that he has made a request to Pelosi to move forward with the appointment of conferees. A knowledgeable House Democratic aide said conferees have not been named, and had no further comment.

The authorization bill includes provisions intended to improve how intelligence agencies operate, but none as a direct result of recent attempted terrorist attacks within the United States, such as the failed efforts to bomb a passenger plane near Detroit on Christmas Day or the failed effort to blow up a car bomb in New York City's Times Square on May 1.

But lawmakers acknowledged in interviews that intelligence agencies, and especially the National Counterterrorism Center, are struggling to effectively analyze and integrate intelligence.

The Senate Intelligence Committee seized on this issue Tuesday, when it released the results of its investigation of the Christmas bombing attempt, saying that 14 human, technology and policy obstacles prevented the government from analyzing intelligence that could have stopped the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Although the report slammed the NCTC, Feinstein and Reyes, as well as Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Kit Bond, D-Mo., said on Wednesday they do not believe the center's director, Michael Leiter, should be fired.

"We didn't find anybody in our review that should lose their job," Bond said. "But there are a lot of people who didn't pass information along -- a lot of people who didn't pass information along," he said twice for emphasis.

Feinstein added: "We have to improve our data systems collection and the interaction of databases. You can't have databases that don't interact. This is complicated."

Billy House contributed to this report.