House draws line on budget authority for intelligence director

House Republicans are refusing to concede any more ground on legislation to overhaul the intelligence community, with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, declaring House conferees had held their ground "for the right reasons."

Scott Palmer, chief of staff for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., informed Senate negotiators Wednesday afternoon the House "had to back" its proposal sent last Friday to the Senate, according to aides involved in the talks. Hastert's spokesman complained Thursday that "the Senate hasn't budged from its original bill and we were negotiating with ourselves." The spokesman explained that House Republicans went back to pushing last Friday's offer because "we weren't making progress otherwise."

The two sides disagree on how much budgetary authority to give a national intelligence director. The House's Friday proposal changed its original bill to give the NID more authority over the Pentagon's intelligence agencies but without cutting the Pentagon out of the process. The Senate believes the NID should funnel the money directly to all of the intelligence agencies.

A defiant DeLay said in a speech in Houston Wednesday that "the Senate just wants to create this national intelligence director . . . and then forget everything else," the Associated Press reported. "That is not where the House is. We are standing firm for these issues that are important to fighting the war on terror here on our home soil."

Senate aides have countered that they have the support of the 9/11 Commission, which recommended full budget authority for an NID. The commission also suggested that if House provisions on immigration and law enforcement not included in the Senate bill stalled negotiations, House Republicans should drop them. A DeLay spokesman argued Wednesday that a lame duck session would bode well for reaching a deal because "there will be less politics" after Tuesday.

Another congressional aide said House aides complained of mixed signals from the Bush administration, especially a letter sent last week by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers that contradicted Bush's public position and landed like a "nuclear bomb" at the conference. Other sources speculated that an e-mail from 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow appearing to support the House position -- but stopping short of an unqualified endorsement -- was the straw that broke the camel's back. Advocates of the House position sought to portray the e-mail as a ringing endorsement from the commission's top staffer.

Questioned at a public appearance Thursday, Zelikow said while he had indicated in his e-mail that the House had finally narrowed the distance between the two sides, "Let me stress the House offer did not get there." He said both sides have to compromise further to break through the impasse. Zelikow said House Republicans and some Pentagon leaders who support the House language "have used a lot of overheated rhetoric," and their stance has been "intransigent."

Top conferees and their staff planned to continue discussions through Friday. House Intelligence Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and ranking member Jane Harman, D-Calif., and Senate Governmental Affairs Chairwoman SUsan Collins, R-Maine, and ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., plan to hold a conference call with all conferees Friday to update them on the status of their negotiations.