DISCUSSION OF COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS RELATING TO PROHIBITION OF FUND TRANSFERS (CONTINUED), DCI AS CABINET RANK, AND FULL GAO AUDIT AUTHORITY WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1976 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m., in room 2216, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Otis G. Pike (chairman), presiding. Present: Representatives Pike, Giaimo, Dellums, Aspin, Milford, Hayes, Lehman, McClory, Treen, Johnson, and Kasten. Also present: A Searle Field, staff director; Aaron B. Donner, general counsel; and Jack Boos, counsel. Chairman PIKE. The committee will come to order. As most of the members are aware, despite the unanimous agreement of this committee as to our procedures henceforth, when I asked unanimous consent on the floor that the committee have until midnight Friday night to file its report-which consent, you will recall, is necessary only because the House will not be in session on Fridayand until midnight, February 11, to file our recommendations, objection was made by Mr. Bauman. Accordingly, I am going to the Rules Committee this afternoon to ask for a resolution, to be approved by the House, stating exactly the same thing. That is where we are on that. The matter before the committee, as I recall, when we recessed yesterday, was a motion pending from Mr. Johnson which, it had been decided, would be better broken into two parts and redrafted. Do we have the redraft before us at the present time? Mr. DONNER. I think they are in your book. Mr. Chairman. Mr. JOHNSON. They are on the page just prior to the page that has the section "F" called Prohibition of Fund Transfers. In my book it was inserted in the page before. It is broken down into three paragraphs. Chairman PIKE. "Prohibition of Fund Transfers." Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, sir; it is on the page before that, I believe. Mr. JOHNSON. Yes; and there are three separate paragraphs on the page before that in my book. [The redraft of section "F" follows:] F. PROHIBITION OF FUND TRANSFERS 1. The select committee recommends there be appropriate legislation to prohibit any significant transfer of funds between agencies or departments in connection with intelligence activities. 2. The select committee recommends there be appropriate legislation to prohibit any significant reprograming of funds within agencies or departments in connection with intelligence activities without the specific approval of the intelligence committee and/or appropriate committees of Congress. 3. The select committee recommends there be appropriate legislation to prohibit any significant expenditures of reserve or contingency funds in connection with intelligence activities without specific approval of the intelligence committee and/or appropriate committees of Congress. Chairman PIKE. I see. That is right. Mr. Johnson, do you want to be recognized now? Mr. JOHNSON. I spoke about that yesterday, and I believe that the language speaks for itself. It is quite clear. Chairman PIKE. Mr. McClory, you will recall you had originally moved to adopt this entire section, and if you now have any reservations as to any of these three separate paragraphs Mr. McCLORY. I don't have the page you are talking about. Chairman PIKE. Mr. Giaimo. Mr. GIAIMO. I question in Nos. 2 and 3 the "and/or"-"without the approval of the intelligence committee and/or appropriate committees of Congress." Either the intelligence committee has sole jurisdiction over these things or is going to continue the jurisdiction which presently exists, certainly in the Appropriations Committee and probably in the Armed Services Committee. Now what do you mean by "and/or"? That is sort of loose phrasing. Mr. JOHNSON. I suppose we should remove the "or." Mr. GIAIMO. I think you should. Is there a reason why you put in the "and/or" ? Mr. DONNER. We weren't sure how it was going to come out. We know there are concurrent jurisdictions of some of these items, and we were not sure what the committee would finally recommend as far as the future intelligence committee is concerned-whether it would have exclusive jurisdiction or concurrent. Mr. GIAIMO. Mr. Chairman, if I may be recognized further. Mr. GIAIMO. Wouldn't it be sufficient for us to make the recommendation that we leave any further rearrangement of House jurisdiction up to the legislative committee that will actually implement this recommendation? Mr. DONNER. Yes, sir. Mr. GIAIMO. That also eliminates the problem of having a struggle on the House floor. Chairman PIKE. So you are moving to leave out the "or," with which Mr. Johnson concurs. Mr. McCLORY. Mr. Chairman. Chairman PIKE. Mr. McClory. Mr. McCLORY. I don't know that I necessarily want to move this, but I think we should give consideration to eliminating the other "appropriate committees," if possible. It would certainly be preferable for the intelligence oversight committee to have authority to pass upon this, without requiring that we involve many other committees. In the first place, we are going to involve at least two, if there are two— one in the Senate and one in the House. We will have two committees, and if we get additional committees involved, it seems to me it is going to be a very cumbersome procedure. So I would suggest for your consideration, at least-with the idea that maybe amendments will be offered on the floor if this gets that far-that we recommend limiting it to the intelligence oversight committee. That is the one that we want to vest authority in, with respect to information and knowledge and approval with respect to transfer of funds-with respect to authorizing perhaps specific activities that may not have been known at the time the authorization or appropriation legislation was enacted. Chairman PIKE. Well, I would say to the gentleman that essentially I agree with him. I am not going to be in favor of simply adding one more layer of committee oversight. I think that if we don't get some of the present committees to relinquish some of their jurisdiction, we are wasting our time. I think that nothing useful is going to come out of it. By the same token, I don't think we are going to get all of the committees to give up all of their jurisdiction. I don't think you will get jurisdiction from the Appropriations Committee, for example, nor, as far as the transfer of funds is concerned, do I think you should. I think the Intelligence Committee probably should have to authorize it, and the Appropriations Committee should probably have to appropriate funds also; and my feeling would be it ought to be without the specific approval of the Intelligence Committee and the Appropriations Committee. Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, it would seem to me that the "appropriate committees of Congress" would be the proper language, because we don't know whether or not the Congress will say that the CIA, or whoever, still has to come back to report to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate and the International Relations Committee of the House. So it seems to me that whoever is going to have continuing jurisdiction over the intelligence programs should be involved in these kinds of decisions. If it only turns out that there is one committee, a standing committee, and then the Appropriations Committee, why that would be all. But if we have continuous reporting requirements to the other committees, they should be involved with these kinds of decisions. I think that should be recognized. Chairman PIKE. Does anybody have any objection to paragraph 1 of that draft? Without objection, it is tentatively approved. Does anybody have any objection to paragraph 2 of that draft modified or amended by striking out the slant sign and the word "or"? Without objection, it is tentatively approved. Does anybody have any objection to paragraph 3 of that draft, as amended by striking out the slant sign and the word "or"? Without objection, it is tentatively approved. We will go on, then, to recommendation "G," "DCI as Cabinet Rank." [The staff draft of recommendation "G" follows:] G. DCI AS CABINET RANK 1. The select committee recommends that the office of the Director of Central Intelligence be accorded Cabinet rank, to be nominated by the President and subject to confirmation by the Senate. This office shall have the following powers and duties: a. The DCI shall be the chief foreign intelligence officer of the United States, and shall be responsible for the supervision and control of all agencies of the United States engaged in foreign intelligence. b. The DCI shall be a member of the National Security Council. c. The DCI may not hold a position or title with respect to any other agencies of Government. d. The DCI shall, along with such other duties, constitute an Office of Inspector General for all of the foreign intelligence agencies, including other agencies of Government or branches of the military which have foreign intelligence functions. Such agencies shall have the obligation to report all instances of misconduct or allegations of misconduct to the DCI. This shall not constitute a limitation upon the respective agencies reporting to the DCI from maintaining their own Inspector General staff or similar body. e. The DCI shall have an adequate staff for the purposes expressed herein and be responsible for the national intelligence estimates and daily briefings of the President. f. The DCI shall be responsible for the preparation of the national intelligence estimates and such reports shall be immediately supplied to the appropriate committees of Congress. g. All budget requests shall be prepared by the agencies under the jurisdiction of the DCI. As to those parts of budget of the military services or components of Department of Defense, they shall be submitted as an independent part of such budgets to the DCI. h. The DCI shall be charged with the functions of coordinating foreign intelligence agencies under its jurisdiction, the elimination of duplication, the periodic evaluation of the performance and efficiency of the agencies in question, and shall report to Congress on the foregoing at least annually. i. The DCI shall conduct a comprehensive inquiry into the causes of intelligence failures, including: inadequate collection tasking; analytical bias ; duplication; unusable technical output; excessive compartmentation; and withholding of information by senior officials, and report to the committee on intelligence within one year. Chairman PIKE. Does the staff wish to be heard on that? Or any members? Mr. Aspin? Mr. ASPIN. Mr. Chairman, this one I think is probably one of the most important recommendations that we are going to have in all of the things that we are discussing. It is important because one of the problems that we uncovered in our hearings was the intelligence product-how good the intelligence product is, and what can you do about it? One of the things that you can do about it is to try and restructure the intelligence community in a few specific ways which would help to improve the intelligence product, and the splitting of the DCI from his job as the head of the CIA is, I think, a very, very important recommendation. Right now, the DCI is the head of the CIA. They are the same thing. Mr. Colby is both the DCI and the head of the CIA. It doesn't work very well for a number of reasons. No. 1. Mr. Colby is just too busy. He is the head of the CIA, so he has to be in charge of running that Agency. Because the CIA is in charge of covert operations, he is also involved very heavily in whatever is going on in covert operations with all of the flap potential that that can create. So he is spending a lot of time on covert operations. He is also the chief intelligence figure for the administration, which means he attends a lot of meetings within the executive branch and comes up and testifies before Congress as being the spokesman; and on top of that, he is also the DCI-which means that he is supposed to coordinate the budgets of all these other agencies and help to create a combined budget for the agencies. It is just too much for one person to do, and clearly the DCI's job is a job that ought to be separated from the head of the CIA. I think it is one of the most important recommendations that we could possibly be coming up with. I would like, Mr. Chairman, though, to focus on a couple parts of it, because I have a different version of it. If I could direct people's attention toward the back of the book where some of my alternative recommendations are, there is one on the DCI. It is a little bit different from the recommendation for the DCI which the staff has. Let me say I think there are three essential decisions that have to be made. Chairman PIKE. Just for the benefit of the members, is this your recommendation with a roman numeral X? Mr. ASPIN. That is the one, roman numeral X, just behind the reference. [Mr. Aspin's alternative recommendation "G" follows:] X. THE DCI A true Director of Central Intelligence shall be created separate from any of the operating or analytic intelligence agencies for the purpose of coordinating and overseeing the entire intelligence community with a view to eliminating duplication in collection and promoting competition in analysis. The DCI shall be nominated by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The DCI shall be a member of the National Security Council and shall chair the NSC's Foreign Intelligence Subcommittee. The DCI shall be the chief foreign intelligence officer of the United States. The office of the DCI shall comprise the current National Intelligence Officers, the intelligence community staff, the IRAC and such other existing agencies or committees as the President shall direct. The DCI shall prepare national intelligence estimates for use of the executive and such other reports and studies as shall be directed by committees of the Congress. The DCI shall present an annual intelligence budget to Congress. The budgets of the independent intelligence agencies shall be prepared under the direction of the Office of the DCI; the budgets of other agencies (service intelligence operations, INR, ERDA's intelligence arm) shall be presented as part of their parent agencies' budgets after being coordinated through the office of the DCI. The DCI shall fully inform the appropriate committees of Congress of the full details of those budget components as part of the committees' ongoing oversight functions. The DCI shall be analogous in many ways to the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in that he will, at one and the same time, be close to the President as a White House official and yet answerable to Congress by virtue of his confirmation by the Senate. Mr. ASPIN. There are three essential questions that I think we have to decide about this DCI and what kind of DCI we want to have. The first one is do you want to make the DCI a Cabinet rank? The recommendation that we have before us done by the staff does make the DCI a Cabinet rank. The recommendation that I had leaves it up to the discretion of the President as to whether he wants his DCI to be Cabinet rank or whether he wants him to be a sub-Cabinet figure. That is the first question. |