Legal Commentary

Bush Threatens Veto of Intelligence Budget: Too Much Oversight

By TChris

The House has passed another useful bill for Senate Republicans to filibuster.

The bill, which passed on a voice vote, would block two-thirds of the federal covert operations budget until each member of the congressional intelligence committees is briefed on all secret operations under way. Panel members also would be granted access to any other details necessary to assess the value of intelligence operations.

If this refreshing concept of congressional oversight were somehow to make it past Senate Republicans, the president will make sure crush it.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill because it says it would go too far and infringe upon the president's right to protect intelligence.

Protect intelligence? From our elected representatives in Congress? Is the president worried that they'll drop the intelligence and break it? Accidentally feed it into the paper shredder? Where in the Constitution does the president find a right to protect the entire executive branch from oversight? [more ...]

Other useful features of the House bill governing the next intelligence budget that the president opposes:

Other provisions in the House bill that provoked a veto threat include a prohibition on the use of contractors to interrogate detainees and a demand that the CIA inspector general audit all covert operations every three years.

The White House directed another veto threat at a perfectly sensible provision in the Senate version of the bill:

[U]nlike the House version, the Senate's legislation includes a provision by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that would limit the CIA and FBI to interrogation tactics listed in the publicly available Army Field Manual on Interrogation.

A similar limitation on interrogation techniques prompted a veto of an earlier intelligence bill.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 17, 2008 (boomark / email).