House intelligence bill subject of contention

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are using legislation implementing the Sept. 11 Commission's recommendations as a Christmas tree for unrelated partisan proposals, Democrats charged Wednesday as House committees began wading through the GOP bill.\nThe disputed proposals would increase police powers and implement new anti-immigration measures such as denying immigrants certain court appeals and allowing more people to be arrested on accusations of supporting a terrorist group.\n"This bill is a brew of extraneous anti-liberty proposals long sought by the attorney general, John Ashcroft," Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.\nHouse Republicans argue, however, that passing legislation that strictly deals with just reorganizing the intelligence community would be useless.\nThe GOP says it should include provisions creating new anti-terror and immigration enforcement powers, stronger identity theft and money-laundering preventive measures and other recommendations are linked to the report of the independent committee that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.\n"If all the 9-11 Commission recommendations that are enacted have to do with the restructuring of how intelligence is collected and disseminated, and we don't deal with law enforcement and immigration issues, we basically can peel off the back part of the 9-11 Commission recommendation and say that things are fine and we can do business as usual," said House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.\nBut Democrats called for the GOP to pull out of the bill anything that isn't directly related to the 9-11 Commission's recommendations.\n"There are many provisions in this bill that have no relation or tangential relation to the 9-11 Commission report," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. "We should consider them in a bill separate from this."\nThis comes as five House committees feverishly worked to get legislation to the House floor to meet House Speaker Dennis Hastert's deadline of Friday. Hastert wants a final bill on the House floor next week to be approved by the House before going home for elections.\nThe White House, and congressional Republicans and Democrats all agree that Congress should set up a national intelligence director and counterterrorism center before going home for the year, but can't agree on how it should be set up.\nThe Senate, now considering its own version, also wants to be done before the election, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., noted Wednesday that there were more than 300 potential amendments to the bill produced by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.\nSenators easily beat back an amendment sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., that would give a new national intelligence director control over the military's intelligence agencies, the first salvo in the fight between the intelligence community's supporters and the military's supporters.\n"As long as the secretary of defense directs the day-to-day activities of these agencies, the new national intelligence director will continue to struggle within a structure that undermines his ability to succeed as the leader of the intelligence community," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.\nBut Senate Governmental Affair chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said lawmakers had agreed to leave the military tactical intelligence agencies under control of the Pentagon. "We do not want to sever the link between these agencies and the secretary of defense," she said.\nThe amendment was voted down 78-19. The Senate also voted down attempts to set limits on how long the intelligence director could serve.