WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (AFP) - The powerful chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee promised Monday to introduce this week a new intelligence reorganization bill likely to set Congress on a collision course with the White House, which favors an intelligence "czar" with vaguely defined powers.
Republican Pat Roberts said the draft, which is expected to be submitted to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, provides for a national intelligence director that will be empowered to "really lead" all 15 agencies making up the US intelligence community as suggested by a national commission that investigated the September 11 attacks.
"Those authorities include the ability to hire and fire as well as the ability to exercise control over the budgets of those agencies," Roberts said.
His Democratic counterpart, Jay Rockefeller, said the senators were prepared, if necessary, "to break some china around here" to make the proposed reforms a reality.
As outlined, the proposal runs counter to a vision espoused by the White House, which has so far resisted a commitment to reform that would shrink the powers wielded by the defense secretary and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Although President George W. Bush has endorsed the idea of appointing a national intelligence director, his top aides have distanced themselves from proposals to place his office at the White House as well as grant him full budgetary and hiring authority.
Presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card told reporters earlier this month the White House believed the intelligence "czar" "should have an awful lot of input into the development" of the intelligence community's budget, but stopped short of saying he would control the purse strings.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the director would be able to "strongly influence" decisions on budget.
The carefully-nuanced posture reflects an incipient turf battle between some of the key Washington power brokers that control the intelligence community and its budget that, according to independent experts, has now reached about 40 billion dollars.
Contrary to popular perceptions, the lion's share of that money is being spent not by the CIA, but the National Security Agency which eavesdrops on electronic communications, the National Reconnaissance Office, the manager of spy satellites, and the Defense Intelligence Agency and its sister services in each of the branches of the armed forces.
All these organizations are controlled by the secretary of defense, who stands to lose significant political and budgetary clout, if an all-powerful intelligence "czar" is enthroned.
Long before the "czar" was proposed in the 9/11 commission report and Bush endorsed the idea, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress that consolidation of the intelligence agencies under a single head "would be doing the country a great disservice."
He has since come around and is now formally supporting the idea.