Senate beefs up tech efforts at intelligence agencies
The Senate on Thursday voted to upgrade the surveillance equipment and technology of federal intelligence agencies, authorizing the funding for those initiatives as part of the broader fiscal 2002 intelligence budget.
"What Americans want most [are] capabilities to prevent acts of terror," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla. He added many of the provisions in the bill, S. 1428, would authorize resources to fulfill the aims of the anti-terrorism law enacted late last month.
S. 1428 was rolled into a corresponding House bill, H.R. 2883, which the House passed unanimously Thursday.
One provision in the bill seeks to revitalize the resources of the National Security Agency and establish a three-year plan to improve eavesdropping technology. The measure also calls for a "new generation" of human intelligence, with the technical expertise to use and analyze data culled from surveillance.
The measure also would call on the U.S. government to recruit more spies globally, to better coordinate their activities with the NSA, and to ensure their access to new communications technologies.
A third priority of the bill is to address the "growing imbalance" between the collection and analysis of sensitive intelligence data, Graham said. He said the worst-case scenario would be if information received via wiretap from a potential terrorist was never heard or scrutinized, then that terrorist participated in an attack similar to the ones on Sept. 11.
"That nightmare underscores the importance of having the adequate capability to analyze and convert information to intelligence," Graham said.
The measure also would authorize funds for culling and analyzing information from the Internet and other sources. And Graham said the legislation would authorize a "robust research and development initiative."
"One of the hallmarks of American intelligence has been its leadership in world technology," Graham said, adding that "we have sacrificed the modernization and innovation of technology" in using intelligence funds for other activities.
Democrat Harry Reid voiced support for the measure and proposed that a "national center for combating terrorism" be established in his home state of Nevada. The center's mission would be to train personnel who are first on the scene of disasters and who are fighting terrorism.
Graham also voiced support for pending recommendations from a high-level presidential panel. Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft heads the panel that President Bush created in May to recommend ways to meet the challenges of new threats and technologies.
The commission is expected to recommend that the Pentagon's three largest intelligence-collection agencies--which manage satellite imagery and mapping systems, and electronic intercepts--be transferred to the CIA director's supervision.