Jun 28, 2002 4 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – The CIA and FBI directors assured Congress on Thursday their agencies would share vast amounts of intelligence data with the proposed Homeland Security Department but not raw materials or sensitive sources and methods. The testimony by CIA chief George Tenet and Robert Mueller of the FBI appeared aimed to defuse efforts in Congress to bring the two agencies, or parts of them, under the new department or to force them to provide greater disclosure of highly classified information.

President Bush’s proposal for the Cabinet-level agency, which Congress is racing to create this year, leaves out the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies. It also requires presidential approval for the new department to get most raw intelligence data. The Homeland Security agency would have its own counterterrorism analysts but would not collect intelligence itself.

Tenet told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that the new agency would become part of “an automatic flow” of the CIA’s finished reports and analyses about potential terrorist threats gathered worldwide. This also includes information from the eavesdropping National Security Agency, defense intelligence agencies and other sources.

“There is a very rich body of information that flows already today,” Tenet said.

But if the Homeland Security secretary wanted to know the identity of a human source or precisely how a piece of communication was intercepted, Tenet said, “That’s an instance where I would want to talk to the president.”

Mueller told the panel the Homeland Security secretary would get “99.9 percent” of the FBI’s domestic intelligence through the FBI’s reports. What would not be immediately available, he said, are such things as wiretap transcripts, bank records, names of people in an ongoing investigation or grand jury proceedings.

“All of that I consider to be raw data,” Mueller said.

Sen. Richard Shelby, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the committee later Thursday the new agency should have access to most raw data or it won’t be guaranteed a full picture of potential threats.

“To agree to such limitations would, in my view, be a grave mistake,” said Shelby, R-Ala.

Tenet said the Homeland Security Department would bridge a major gap in safeguarding Americans at home by taking intelligence information, comparing it with domestic vulnerabilities and taking preventive action. The CIA, he said, often has a general warning that terrorists are planning an attack but doesn’t know when, where or how.

“The objective is to increase the costs and risks to terrorists operating in the United States,” Tenet said.

Both Tenet and Mueller said it was important for their agencies to remain where they are in the U.S. government. The CIA reports directly to the president about events worldwide; the FBI catches criminals and is inextricably linked with the Justice Department, its legal authority and prosecutors.

Much of the FBI’s anti-terror effort will involve targeting criminal activity, Mueller said.

They also both assured the committee that, as Mueller put it, “old rivalries” between the CIA and FBI are evaporating in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

They brief Bush together every morning at the White House about terrorist threats and have more agents working together around the world than ever before.

Some senators were skeptical that the intelligence-sharing would work as advertised. Others said the FBI, in particular, might be stretched too thin as it shifts focus to terrorism prevention while maintaining law enforcement duties ranging from investigating bank robberies to forensic lab work.

“I don’t see how the bureau can do all of this and do it well,” said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

Also Thursday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved a bill creating a four-year, $13.7 billion program to better prepare local police, firefighters and others to cope with terror acts, including those involving weapons of mass destruction.

The bill co-sponsored by the committee’s chairman, Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., and its senior Republican, Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, would establish within the Federal Emergency Management Agency a new Office of National Preparedness, directed by a presidential appointee.

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