Burnt Orange Report

"Intelligence" overhaul: UPDATED

By Nathan Nance

Guest post by Nate Nance

A deal was struck and the House passed the intelligence reorganization bill. The Senate should vote on the measure soon and then send it to Bush for signing.

I've got my share of problems with putting all our intelligence agencies under one umbrella; a centralized intelligence apparatus under the control of a political appointee, especially in the Bush administration, only exacerbates the problems we've seen when we need good intelligence to decide whether or not young Americans have to fight in a war.

I am glad for some of the other reforms in the bill, however. Some of them are:

creates a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to ensure regulations and policies do not threaten privacy rights or civil liberties.

* requires the secretary of homeland security to develop and implement a national strategy for transportation security, including steps to improve aviation, air cargo and maritime security.

* calls for greater coordination and communication between all levels of government and emergency response providers.

* requires the Department of Homeland Security to increase the numbers of border patrol agents by at least 2,000 per year and customs and immigration agents by at least 800 per year for five years.

* tightens visa application requirements; requires a face-to-face consular interview of most applicants for non-immigrant visas between the ages of 14 and 79.

* increases criminal penalties for alien smuggling and allows deportation of any alien who received military training from a group designated as a terrorist organization.

* provides new authority to pursue "lone wolf" terror suspects who are not affiliated with foreign terror groups.

* authorizes funding for better technology and other federal support to improve efforts to fight money laundering and terrorist financing; requires better coordination and building on international coalitions to combat terrorist financing.

Those are some long overdue policies that need to be adopted. If what I'm hearing about Bush using his "political capital" to get this through, then maybe he's not the son of Satan.

UPDATE: The Senate has also passed the intelligence reorganization bill. Their reworded version does not have immigration legislation that will apparently be worked out next year.

This is a guest post by Nate Nance. Nate is a sports/news clerk at the Waco Tribune-Herald and writer/editor of Common Sense a Texas-based Democratic Web log. He can be reached at nate_nance@yahoo.com