Congressional Quarterly's Tim Starks:

The Bush administration “violated” a law requiring notification to congressional intelligence committees when it took eight months to fully inform the panels about an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor, according to the House Intelligence Committee report on its fiscal 2009 authorization bill.

The committee report on the intelligence measure (HR 5959), approved May 8, also states that the administration has routinely “ignored” the law, including when it resisted disclosing the administration’s warrantless surveillance program to the full intelligence panels.

Administration officials did brief Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and ranking Republican Peter Hoekstra of Michigan about the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor and its destruction, reportedly by Israel. But the administration refused entreaties from Hoekstra and Reyes to brief the full committee until last month.

“Just hours before a highly-orchestrated public roll-out of the previously classified intelligence, the president finally sent briefers to the committee,” the panel report states. “The delay was inexcusable and violated the National Security Act of 1947, which requires that the executive branch keep Congress ‘fully and currently informed’ of all intelligence activities.

“In recent years, the administration has, on several occasions, ignored the plain language of the act,” the panel wrote. “In one case, the administration refused, for an extended period of time, to brief the full committee membership on the president’s warrantless surveillance program, notwithstanding that it was not a covert action program.”

The panel included several provisions and adopted several amendments to the legislation designed to force the administration into giving more information to Congress.

One amendment, offered by John M. McHugh, R-N.Y., and adopted by a vote of 17-4, specifies that it is a violation of the 1947 law to provide intelligence information about China and North Korea to those two countries before they are shared with the House and Senate intelligence committees.

“We are extremely disappointed that this clarification is necessary,” a group of Republicans wrote in the minority views section of the report.

“These amendments are intended to clarify that the obligation to report to the committees is not negotiable,” the committee report states. “It is not an obligation that the president can ignore at his discretion. It is not an obligation that can be evaded by claiming that briefing the congressional intelligence committees will require other committees to be briefed. It is not an obligation that can be evaded by broad assertions of executive power.”

Behind closed doors, lawmakers were less unified on other aspects of the intelligence bill, which authorizes funding for spy agencies and allows Congress to make policy prescriptions for the intelligence community. The details were included in the committee report, filed Wednesday.

The panel was divided in particular on several amendments related to the administration’s interrogation practices.

Like the Senate panel’s version of the bill (S 2996), the House version was amended with language to ban the CIA from using contractors to conduct interrogations. But unlike the Senate bill, the House panel agreed to give the director of National Intelligence (DNI) the authority to waive that ban if for some reason only a contractor has the necessary skills for a given interrogation. The amendment, adopted by voice vote, was offered by Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.

With the aid of Democrats, including Reyes, C.A. Dutch Ruppersburger of Maryland and Robert E. “Bud” Cramer of Alabama, Republicans defeated another Schakowsky amendment that would have, like the Senate bill, confined the entire federal government to interrogation techniques permitted by a September 2006 Army field manual. The tally was 9-12.

Republicans, joined by Reyes and Cramer, defeated a third Schakowsky amendment described in the report as establishing “rules for rendition by elements of the Intelligence Community in order to prevent harsh treatment by third nations, and to encourage timely legal proceedings against the rendered party.” The amendment led the committee to enter into closed session to discuss classified matters. The tally was 10-11.

Reyes has supported the Army field manual language in principle, but he has emphasized the need to pass an intelligence authorization bill that President Bush can sign. Bush vetoed the fiscal 2008 measure (HR 2082) this year because it included the Army field manual language. It was the first time Congress had delivered an intelligence authorization bill to Bush in three years.
Actual funding for the intelligence community is appropriated primarily through the Defense spending bill, so funding for the spy agencies has continued without an authorization measure. The last declassified figure for the National Intelligence Program, in fiscal 2007, put its budget at $43.5 billion, but that figure does not include the military branches’ intelligence operations. [...]