A previous version of the bill had stalled two weeks earlier when key Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to give their support to a version of the legislation that had passed in the Senate. The bill was stopped in its tracks when Duncan Hunter, a Republican congressman who heads the House Armed Services Committee, and others opposed it “because they said it could reduce military control over battlefield intelligence,” as an article in the November 21 Washington Post put it.

Hunter and other conservative Republicans signed onto the bill when a provision was included to make clear that the new Director of National Intelligence would not be able to “abrogate the statutory responsibilities” of the Pentagon. At a December 6 press conference announcing his support for the bill, Hunter emphasized that under the new version “the chain of command” on the battlefield would stay as is.

Media reports indicated that U.S. president George Bush, who had given lukewarm support for the earlier version, had pressed to get the latest compromise passed in order to move on to his plans to “reform” Social Security and the tax code. Bush promised to sign the bill into law.

The bill approved December 8 was drafted largely as a result of the conclusions of the 9/11 bipartisan commission hearings that were held earlier this year. Democrats, in particular, used the hearings to paint themselves as the foremost champions of “homeland defense” and advance their charges that “intelligence failures” under the Bush administration were the reason the government was unable to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The Democratic Party widely used such charges to boost John Kerry’s unsuccessful presidential bid.

“There’s a lot in this bill that hasn’t been much talked about that I hope will receive attention in the days ahead,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, at a December 7 press conference kicked off by Sen. Susan Collins, Republican from Maine. The two are the main sponsors of the bill. “We do substantial work in improving our border security, our transportation security, information sharing [between spy agencies and police], standardized drivers’ licenses, which will help eliminate fraud from the identification process.”

H.R.10 creates a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and National Counterterrorism Center to centralize spying operations. The DNI will have the authority to set priorities for the CIA and 14 other spy agencies, including several at the Department of Defense.

Immigrants are a special target of Washington’s “war on terrorism.” The new law includes several measures aimed at workers emigrating to the United States. In each of the next five years there will be an increase of 2,000 border patrol cops and 800 customs agents. To accommodate the expected increase in working people arrested by the beefed-up border patrol, the bill provides for an additional 8,000 spots each year to incarcerate those picked up as “terrorists” or for alleged immigration law violations.

Under provisions of the bill, citizens may be stripped of their citizenship and deported from the United States if they are deemed to have received “military-type” training by a “terrorist” group. It also expands the definition of “material support” to make it easier to prosecute individuals charged with aiding “terrorists.”

The bill will also require sharing of information between federal, state, and local police forces, as well as private cops. In the December 7 Collins/Lieberman press conference, Sen. Robert Graham of Florida said that “secrecy is for losers” in explaining why he supported reclassification of materials to increase collaboration between spy and cop agencies.  
 
Fake ‘Civil Liberties Board’
To answer those who criticize the bill for its expansion of government wiretapping authority and other restrictions on democratic rights, the sponsors of the bill included a provision to establish a Privacy and Civil Liberties Board to review government policies and practices on these issues. The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that the board “risks becoming the proverbial fox guarding the hen house—the board would be appointed by the president, serve at his pleasure and have no subpoena power.”

Bush pressed for quick passage of H.R.10 in a December 6 letter to Congress, in order to “achieve the unity of purpose needed to win the global war on terrorism.” He aimed to win the backing of Republicans who opposed the earlier version by insisting that the bill “respects the chain of command within departments and agencies, including the Department of Defense, so as to ensure that all of the warfighters’ needs will be met.”

Lieberman made the same point at his press conference the following day. “This bill preserves total Defense Department control over tactical military intelligence, the kind that warfighters must depend on.”

Hunter, who opposed the earlier version of the bill, was convinced that the new wording included “statutory direction to the president to write regulations on an ongoing basis that respect the chain of command.”

The passage of this legislation complements the U.S. rulers’ efforts to reorganize the U.S. military posture worldwide toward smaller, more agile, and more lethal brigades that can move quickly around the globe using bases closer to the theaters of conflict. Washington has been shifting the focus of its spy operations to direct infiltration of adversaries and real-time battlefield intelligence—like what U.S. troops used in their recent assault on Fallujah, where they called in air strikes and artillery bombardment as they pinpointed the positions of Baathist forces during battle.

For the U.S. rulers this also requires a transferring of paramilitary operations from the CIA to the Pentagon.

“These days, the military is up to its eyeballs in covert operations, and the Green Berets, the SEALs, and Delta Force are very good indeed,” said Jack Kelly in a Pittsburgh Gazette column titled, “Spies should spy, fighters should fight.” In fact, he said, because of the step-up in Special Forces operations, Washington should consider giving the Defense Department more spying responsibilities. “The military is both a much larger producer and consumer of intelligence than ever before, and the war on terror has blurred what we once thought were bright lines separating war fighting, intelligence, and law enforcement.” The Pentagon currently controls roughly 80 percent of the $40 billion budget for U.S. government spying operations.

The sponsors of the bill dropped from the final version a number of measures that target immigrants. These included a ban on the use of matricula consular cards—such as those issued by the Mexican government—for use as identification, and a federal prohibition of issuing drivers’ licenses to undocumented workers, which is currently allowed in 11 states.

Senator Collins described these proposals as “poison pills” that had to be discarded to assure the bill’s passage.

“Border security and immigration reform are vital components to our homeland security efforts, so why are they not included in this legislation?” Rep. James Sensenbrenner asked December 6. The Republican from Wisconsin who heads the House Judiciary Committee opposed the original bill and the new version because of the removal of these provisions that would have further undermined the rights of immigrant workers.

At her press conference next day, Collins expressed her agreement with Sensenbrenner. She argued, however, that controversy over the measures he demanded might have killed the bill. “I think the president had it right,” she said, that Congress should return to this “and consider these issues in the context of an overhaul of our immigration laws. And I look forward to working with Mr. Sensenbrenner on such legislation next year.”  
 
 
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