Some progress reported in intelligence overhaul negotiations

Negotiations continued behind closed doors Thursday on a compromise proposal offered by House Republicans to meld Senate and House versions of bills to overhaul intelligence-gathering programs.

The House plan included many of the provisions the White House endorsed in a letter Monday, and it more closely reflects the Senate's language on creating a national intelligence director with strong budgetary authority, according to a House GOP aide. House Republicans also offered scaled-back language on contentious immigration and border security provisions.

After Wednesday's public hearing, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-ich.,who chairs the conference committee, offered the compromise language and then met with Intelligence ranking member Jane Harman, D-Calif., Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, and ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., to discuss it.

While sources Thursday said the two sides made some progress, other aides indicated negotiations are not proceeding smoothly. One House GOP aide said Hoekstra Wednesday night entered negotiations with a "serious middle-ground proposal," but at that time Collins, Lieberman and Harman appeared unwilling to negotiate on the scaled-back version on the criminal and immigration provisions. But a source Thursday said some progress was being made on those provisions.

Lieberman's spokeswoman countered that Hoekstra presented an "incomplete oral outline of a proposal" to the group and that Collins, Lieberman and Harman were "equally unimpressed." A Senate aide added that Hoekstra's proposal offered "superficial changes" in the language creating a national intelligence director.

The two sides have agreed on terrorist financing and international cooperation language. "They feel like they can coalesce around that," said one House GOP aide. Collins Thursday said conferees probably would meet well into the evening and that she hoped to be able to make a call tonight or early Friday on whether a conference report will be ready for floor action next week.

In the White House letter to conferees, the administration said it supported House provisions that increase law enforcement's ability to prosecute individuals that provide material support and financial backing to terrorists as well as "lone wolf" terrorists who act without being affiliated with a known terrorist group.

The White House also supported the death penalty for convicted terrorists and "flexible" tools to remove or convict criminals and suspected terrorists.

However, the administration said it strongly opposed the "overbroad expansion" of the government's authority to expeditiously deport undocumented immigrants and new criteria for individuals claiming asylum. The administration did not explicitly support language to detain serious criminals and suspected terrorists rather than releasing them into society until the United States can deport them, but said it "looked forward to working with Congress" on the provision.