‘Black’ earmarks may remain obscured under legislation in House and Senate

Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s (R-Calif.) abuse of classified earmarks as part of an elaborate bribery scheme provided plenty of fodder for the Democrats’ “culture of corruption” campaign theme last year.

But nearly eight months into the Democrats’ majority, these so-called black earmarks remain murky. And unlike the Senate version of the lobbying reform bill, the House measure does not include language specifically focused on illuminating the secretive classified earmark process.

{mosads}House Democratic leaders say they don’t need additional legislation on this topic because they started providing information about earmarks in classified legislation after changing their internal rules governing all earmarks earlier this year. As long as national security concerns are not breached, members now must claim ownership and provide a general description of the earmark; how much money will be set aside; and which companies would benefit. Lawmakers also must certify that they or their spouses do not have a financial interest in the projects.

The change sounds good in theory, but in practice can provide little if any useful information about the underlying projects.
Committee chairmen are left to determine whether national security reasons should prevent the information from being disclosed, and whether the information that members do provide is sufficient.

For instance, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an avid anti-earmark crusader, said he had a difficult time comprehending the language in two certification letters of Rep. John Murtha’s (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. The letters addressed $5.5 million worth of earmarks, attached to the fiscal 2008 intelligence reauthorization bill, benefiting Concurrent Technology Corporation (CTC), a nonprofit technology innovation center that
Murtha created years ago with tens of millions of dollars worth of earmarks.

Most of the intelligence budget is channeled through the defense spending bill because most of the intelligence agencies are in the Defense Department.

 Murtha’s certification letters described the programs as “Joint Intelligence Training & Education with Advanced Distributed Learning Technologies Phase II” and “Mobile Missile Monitoring and Detection Program.”

When the House considered the intelligence authorization bill on the floor in May, Flake called for a closed session to discuss the classified nature of the earmarks, as well as which programs they would benefit and why they were included in the classified section. But like so many of Flake’s earmark challenges, that effort failed.

When asked for a better description of the programs, Murtha spokesman Matthew Mazonkey e-mailed The Hill paragraphs on each earmark.

Regarding the mobile missile detection program, Mazonkey wrote: “CTC is working with [the Defense Intelligence Agency] to provide a timely and cost effective initiative to identify and track foreign mobile missile forces that could threaten the U.S. and allies using innovative technology solutions.”

As for the intelligence-training program, Mazonkey described it as a continuation of “efforts to enhance the training capabilities of the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA). With the massive hiring over the past few years within U.S. intelligence agencies, this program will provide advanced training for military and civilian personnel on human intelligence practices (in effect getting years of experience in a year of training).”

 Flake has called such disclosures too little, too late, coming after the bill has long since passed the House.       

 Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) also has aggressively pushed earmark reform. He has refused to cave to pressure from Senate Democrats and his own party leader to lift his objections and allow conference negotiations on the lobbying and disclosure bill to move forward.

In fact, he challenged Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to support his effort to take up the bill’s earmark disclosure language separately. That way, he argued, conferees won’t water it down before the final bill reaches the House and Senate floors for approval.

 “If you support these reforms, the only way to guarantee them is to act on them immediately instead of allowing them to be gutted in conference,” said DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton.

Rules Committee staff director Howard Gantman countered that DeMint should stand down and allow conference talks to begin if he truly wants to see the earmark disclosure provisions passed this year.

 Gantman also said he is confident that the Senate’s classified earmark provision, which Feinstein cosponsored with Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), would survive House and Senate negotiations. He pointed out that, as a Senate rules change, it would not apply to internal House policy. But senators could challenge earmarks in House-passed bills if they turned up in conference reports.

Like the House rules change, Feinstein’s language would also mandate that senators attach their names to their request and disclose “to the greatest extent practicable, consistent with the need to protect national security” a general description of classified earmarks and their funding levels.

Meredith McGehee, a policy adviser at the Campaign Legal Center, said she is disappointed that the House did not specifically address classified earmarks in its version of the lobbying reform bill. She said House Republicans don’t want to bring it up because it reminds the public of Cunningham, while House Democrats don’t want to raise the issue because it limits appropriators’ ability to keep spending for certain senior members’ districts from public view.

It’s just one of many key provisions in the Senate lobbying reform bill, she said, “but in some ways it could be the most important because it’s such an easy way to hide things. That’s the reason you had people like Duke Cunningham taking advantage of this.”

  Even with the Senate rules change in place, it’s unclear how much sunlight these classified areas of spending bills receive. As Feinstein spokesman Scott Gerber noted, Senate committee chairmen, like their House counterparts, determine how much to disclose in an earmark’s general description and whether such disclosure is “practicable” when considering national security concerns.