WASHINGTON – Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California will find both spotlight and shadows if she becomes the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Feinstein stands to become the first woman and the first Californian to chair the 15-member panel since it was established in 1976. She's the front-runner for the job, due to a cascade of Senate leadership changes that are expected to become final this week.
The Intelligence Committee chairmanship brings real power, as the committee sets the classified intelligence budget, which now exceeds $47.5 billion a year. It also conveys national stature and inside-the-Beltway panache, which could weigh on Feinstein as she considers a potential 2010 California gubernatorial race.
But however alluring, the job also comes with political risks. With national security at stake, mistakes have serious consequences. Partisanship on the committee has been toxic. For the committee and the agencies it oversees, a cult of secrecy can complicate solving problems.
"There is a need-to-know culture, and it's like extraneous organisms are rejected," Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who served on the House of Representatives intelligence panel, said of the intelligence agencies.
Feinstein herself said in 2006 that "members of the committee are not provided with sufficient information on intelligence programs and activities to legislate or oversee the intelligence community."
That isn't unique to the Bush administration. A detailed history published this year by the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, titled "The Agency and the Hill," notes that the CIA initially voiced "widespread unease" about congressional oversight.
The committee, in turn, keeps secrets of its own.
The Senate intelligence panel has held 37 hearings and briefings this year, its Web site shows. Of these, only five have been public.
"Many of the legislative tools available to other committees are not available to the intelligence panel," noted Steven Aftergood, an intelligence policy specialist with the Federation of American Scientists. "They cannot hold highly publicized investigative hearings. They cannot interrogate witnesses live on C-SPAN … and this means they can have a hard time mobilizing public opinion."
The committee has three basic responsibilities:
• It writes the annual intelligence authorization bill, which sets spending levels.
• It declares policy, covering everything from wiretapping to interrogation techniques.
• It oversees the 16-agency intelligence community, ranging from CIA spooks to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency mapmakers.
"Strong oversight of the intelligence community is critical to ensuring our national security, and to restoring America's reputation in the world," Feinstein said earlier this month.
"The point of a functioning intelligence committee is to speak truth to power," Harman said, adding that "Congress had virtually no insight into this world" during the Bush administration.
Call Michael Doyle, Bee Washington Bureau, (202) 383-0006.
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