Bush’s CIA nominee has alarmed civil libertarians with a plan

[Guest guest]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5675992/site/newsweek/

 

Goss’s Wish List

Bush’s CIA nominee has alarmed civil libertarians with

a plan that would authorize the agency to arrest U.S.

citizens.

 

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

Newsweek

Updated: 6:39 p.m. ET Aug. 11, 2004

 

Aug. 11 - Rep. Porter Goss, President Bush’s nominee

to head the CIA, recently introduced legislation that

would give the president new authority to direct CIA

agents to conduct law-enforcement operations inside

the United States—including arresting American

citizens.

 

The legislation, introduced by Goss on June 16 and

touted as an “intelligence reform” bill, would

substantially restructure the U.S. intelligence

community by giving the director of Central

Intelligence (DCI) broad new powers to oversee its

various components scattered throughout the

government.

 

But in language that until now has not gotten any

public attention, the Goss bill would also redefine

the authority of the DCI in such a way as to

substantially alter—if not overturn—a 57-year-old ban

on the CIA conducting operations inside the United

States.

 

The language contained in the Goss bill has alarmed

civil-liberties advocates. It also today prompted one

former top CIA official to describe it as a

potentially “dramatic” change in the guidelines that

have governed U.S. intelligence operations for more

than a half century.

 

“This language on its face would have allowed

President Nixon to authorize the CIA to bug the

Democratic National Committee headquarters,” Jeffrey

H. Smith, who served as general counsel of the CIA

between 1995 and 1996, told NEWSWEEK. “I can’t imagine

what Porter had in mind.”

 

Goss himself could not be reached for comment today.

But a congressional source familiar with the drafting

of Goss’s bill said the language reflects a concern

that he and others in the U.S. intelligence community

share—that the lines between foreign and domestic

intelligence have become increasingly blurred by the

war on terrorism.

 

At the time he introduced the bill, Goss thought the

9/11 commission might recommend the creation of a new

domestic intelligence agency patterned after Britain’s

M.I.5. The commission ended up rejecting such a

proposal on civil-liberties grounds. But in his bill

Goss wanted to give the DCI and a newly empowered CIA

the “flexibility”—if directed by the president—to

oversee and even conduct whatever domestic

intelligence and law-enforcement operations might be

needed to combat the terrorism threat, the

congressional official said.

 

“This is just a proposal,” said the congressional

official familiar with the drafting of Goss’s bill.

“It was designed as a point of discussion, a point of

debate. It’s not carved in stone.”

 

But other congressional staffers predicted that the

Goss bill, even if it has little chance of passage, is

likely to get substantial scrutiny at his upcoming

confirmation hearings—in part as an opportunity to

explore his own attitudes toward civil liberties.

 

Those hearings are already expected to be unusually

contentious—partly because of concerns among Democrats

that the Florida Republican, a former CIA officer

himself who has chaired the House Intelligence

Committee, has been too partisan and too close to the

Bush White House. But so far, most staffers expect

Goss to be confirmed eventually—if only because

Democrats are loath to appear overly obstructionist on

a matter that might be portrayed as central to

national security.

 

The Goss bill tracks current law by stating that the

DCI shall “collect, coordinate and direct” the

collection of intelligence by the U.S.

government—except that the CIA “may not exercise

police, subpoena, or law enforcement powers within the

United States.”

 

The bill then adds new language after that clause,

however, saying that the ban on domestic

law-enforcement operations applies “except as

otherwise permitted by law or as directed by the

president.”

 

In effect, one former top U.S. intelligence community

official told NEWSWEEK, the language in the Goss bill

would enable the president to issue secret findings

allowing the CIA to conduct covert operations inside

the United States—without even any notification to

Congress. The former official said the proposal

appeared to have been generated by Goss’s staff on the

House Intelligence Committee, adding that the language

raises the question: “If you can’t control a staff of

dozens, how are you going to control the tens of

thousands of people who work for the U.S. intelligence

community?”

 

A CIA spokeswoman said today that, while familiar

with the provision, she was not aware of any agency

official seeking such a modification to the

longstanding ban on the CIA from conducting domestic

law-enforcement operations. (Ever since the creation

of the CIA in 1947, the agency has been excluded from

federal law-enforcement within the United States. That

function was left to the FBI—which must operate in

conformity to domestic laws and, in more recent years,

under guidelines promulgated by the attorney general

designed to insure protection of the rights of

citizens.)

 

Sean McCormack, a White House spokesman, said the

president’s own proposal for the creation of a

national intelligence director—separate from the

director of the CIA—to oversee the entire U.S.

intelligence community does not envision any change

along the lines called for in the Goss bill. “I have

not heard any discussion of that,” said McCormack

about the idea of allowing the CIA to operate

domestically.

 

Some congressional staffers speculated today that Goss

most likely had reached an understanding with

President Bush that, if Congress does create the new

position of a national intelligence director, he would

move into that position rather than serve in the No. 2

position of CIA director. Asked if such a deal had

been reached, McCormack responded: “Nothing has been

ruled in or out.”

 

Goss introduced his legislation, H.R. 4584, on June

16—before the September 11 commission issued its own

recommendations for the creation of a national

intelligence director as well as a new National

Counterterrorism Center that would conduct “joint

operational planning” of counterterrorism operations

involving both the FBI inside the United States and

the CIA abroad. The congressional official familiar

with the Goss bill pointed to that proposal as a

recognition of the increasingly fuzzy lines between

foreign intelligence operations and domestic law

enforcement.

 

The proposal comes at a time when the Pentagon is also

seeking new powers to conduct intelligence operations

inside the United States. A proposal, adopted last

spring by the Senate Intelligence Committee at the

request of the Pentagon, would eliminate a legal

barrier that has sharply restricted the Defense

Intelligence Agency and other Pentagon intelligence

agencies from recruiting sources inside the United

States.

 

That restriction currently requires that Pentagon

agencies be covered by the Privacy Act, meaning that

they must notify any individual they contact as to who

they are talking to and what the agency is talking to

them about—and then keep records of any information

they collect about U.S. citizens. These are then

subject to disclosure to those citizens. Pentagon

officials say this has made it all but impossible for

them to recruit intelligence sources and conduct

covert operations inside the country—intelligence

gathering, they say, that is increasingly needed to

protect against any potential terror threats to U.S.

military bases and even contractors. But critics have

charged the new provision could open the door for the

Pentagon to spy on U.S. citizens—a concern that some

said today is only amplified by the language in the

Goss bill.