Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) introduced a thought-provoking measure yesterday called the "End of the Cold War Act of 1991."
It would wipe out the Central Intelligence Agency and transfer its functions to the State Department so that, Moynihan said, the secretary of state can once again "be the nation's spokesman and the president's source of information on the state of the world."
The Senate bill would also eliminate the president's authority to exclude people from the United States on the basis of their opinions and require the purging from immigration "lookout lists" of the names of aliens listed because of lawful speech or associations.
It would require publication of a total budget figure for intelligence spending and it would make it a crime for any government official to solicit funds or make quid pro quo deals to carry out activities prohibited by law.
"The time has come to ask, with the Cold War over, can we purge the vestiges of this struggle from our laws, our bureaucracy, and most importantly from our way of thinking," Moynihan said. "Can we muster the will to redefine ourselves?"
He said the bill would "also reassert a most important principle which was also lost in the fog of the Cold War: That the executive branch may not resort to 'extralegal' devices to evade the laws in national security cases."