Debate on Amendments to the Intelligence Authorization Bill

May 10, 2007

On April 16, a group of 11 retired three-star and four-star generals and admirals issued a report entitled, "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change." This report concluded that global warming "presents significant national security challenges to the United States." It focuses on how climate change "can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world." The Intelligence Authorization bill follows the recommendations of these 11 retired generals and admirals by requesting the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to produce a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the national security impact of climate change. The NIC is already producing a community assessment on this topic, and this provision simply requires that the assessment be elevated to a formal NIE. Ranking Member Hoekstra (R-MI) offered an amendment to strike section 407, which requires that a National Intelligence Estimate on global climate change be submitted to Congress.

Chairman of the Select Committee on Global Warming, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), on Rep. Hoekstra's attempt to remove the request for an NIE on climate change:

Chairman Markey:

"Here's what General Sullivan testified to - testified to. He said he was the Army Chief of Staff when we lost 19 men in Mogadishu. He testified that we will see more disasters such as Black Hawk Down. Drought caused famine, famine caused food relief to fight and the war lords and 19 US fighting men were killed. And he added, and I quote, "that the same thing is what is driving Darfur." There has to be some recognition that these issues are at the heart and environmentally related."

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) offered an amendment to ensure legal protections for covert agents. The amendment would amend the reporting requirement in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (codified in Sec. 603 of the National Security Act) to include a requirement that the President, based on information from the Director of National Intelligence, provide Congress with an assessment of the need for any modification to existing law to improve legal protection for covert agents.

Rep. Rush Holt:

"We owe them everything we can do to ensure that their identities are protected from exposure both from hostile intelligence services or even from exposure within our own government by those who would seek to retaliate against them for speaking truth to power. This grew out of my consideration trying to draw lessons from what has become a well publicized example of the outing of the former CIA officer."

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Flake (R-AZ) offered an amendment responding to the President's unilateral assertion of power with regard to the electronic surveillance of Americans on US soil. Specifically, it states that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) shall be the exclusive means by which domestic electronic surveillance for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence information may be conducted, and makes clear that this applies until specific statutory authorization for electronic surveillance, other than as an amendment to FISA, is enacted.

Rep. Adam Sciff:

"The President has argued that the authorization for the use of military force provided him with the authority to engage in warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans. It is hard to believe that any of us contemplated that when we voted authorize the use of force to root out the terrorists that attacked us on September 11, that we voted to nullify FISA. Our amendment makes clear in the absence of explicit statutory authority, FISA is the exclusive authority for the conduct of domestic electronic surveillance of Americans."