Congressional plans to improve oversight of intelligence have hit another roadblock, with the Senate having second thoughts about its decision in October to create an Appropriations subcommittee on intelligence.
The subcommittee, approved as part of a Senate resolution containing other oversight changes, was designed to handle 80 percent of the $40 billion-plus budget of the 15 agencies that make up the intelligence community. Those agencies will come under the jurisdiction of the new national director of intelligence, a position the administration has not yet filled.
 
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The decision to create the subcommittee was made when the Senate had included in its version of the intelligence reorganization bill a provision that would have made public the amount of money the U.S. budgets for intelligence. However, the final version of the bill signed into law in December kept the intelligence budget secret. As a result, the Senate Appropriations Committee may not create the subcommittee, said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who was in line to chair the subcommittee.
The problem, a senior Appropriations staff member said yesterday, is that the Appropriations subcommittees all disclose their budget figures. If an intelligence subcommittee were created to oversee a classified budget, it would be simple to determine the secret number by subtracting the other subcommittees' figures from the Appropriations Committee's total budget number.
"Since it would be difficult to create an intelligence subcommittee with a classified budget, it may not be possible to do so at this time," Specter said in a statement released Tuesday. A spokesman for Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), chairman of the Appropriations panel, said yesterday no decision had been made.
Improving how Congress monitors the performance of the intelligence community was a key recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission. Former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), the commission's vice chairman, said yesterday that members of Congress had described intelligence oversight to him as "dysfunctional," largely because neither the House nor Senate intelligence committees had authority over appropriations.
The secret intelligence community budgets have until now been overseen by the Senate and House Appropriations subcommittees on defense. Some members of the Appropriations defense subcommittees, Hamilton said, told him they spend minimal time on intelligence spending because it is less than 10 percent of the defense budget.
Another congressional staff aide noted that senior members of both defense Appropriations subcommittees have opposed any transfer of oversight responsibility.
In the Senate debate that led to approval of an intelligence Appropriations subcommittee in October, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) noted that judgments made by the intelligence committee on projects costing enormous amounts of money were "overridden in the appropriations process . . . time after time."
Hamilton said he recognized that the commission's recommendation that one committee in each body be given both authorizing and appropriations oversight was not acceptable. "I know the Senate and House have wrestled with this, and I hope the process is not at an end," he said. "Robust congressional oversight is essential for effective counterterrorist policy . . . and that means control of the budget."
On the House side, the only reorganization has been establishment of an oversight subcommittee within the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. That was described yesterday as "a ray of light" by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat of the House committee, who noted that there was no change in the House appropriations process. The Senate, meanwhile, reduced the membership of its Senate Select Committee on Intelligence but gave each member his or her own staff member -- a move made when the plan was to give the panel both authorizing and appropriations responsibilities.
