Bond renews push for new Intelligence subcommittee

A turf battle is brewing over who should control the purse strings of the U.S. intelligence community.
 
Sen. Kit Bond (Mo.), ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is offering a resolution to establish a new Appropriations subcommittee on intelligence, which would control about 9 percent of the $488 billion defense budget.
 
Bond has the support of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who co-authored a March letter with him for a new panel.
 
The proposal would give the panel sole authority over appropriating all money for the national intelligence program, which the Appropriations Defense subcommittee currently has a large portion overseeing. Bond envisions the Intelligence Committee staff working in tandem with a new subcommittee.
 
"We've wasted literally billions of dollars" by not having the panel, Bond said Friday, pointing to overhead imagery programs that have had "no results observable." Bond's frustrations came to a head this week when the Bush administration sided with defense appropriators in rebuffing his efforts to create a new technology demonstration program, he said.
 
"It's not possible for them to be up to speed" with the complexities of the intelligence programs, Bond said of defense appropriators.
 
Bond expected "significant" support for his resolution, which would only need Senate approval in order to create the panel for the 111th Congress.
 
But he will have to overcome the resistance of powerful appropriators.
 
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has fought previous efforts to create such a panel.
 
"Sen. Byrd believes that the current system provides checks and balances," a committee aide said. "Sen. Bond's proposal would place too much power in the hands of a few senators."
 
Under Bond's proposal, Appropriations Committee members who also sit on the Intelligence Committee would get automatic membership to the new panel. Bond and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) sit on both committees and would choose the chairman and ranking member of the new panel. Rockefeller, who is not an appropriator, would have a role as an "ex officio" member of the panel.