Mike Levin: “the release of the 9/11 Commission Report in July of 2004 fueled a debate about how our intelligence community should be…”

“the release of the 9/11 Commission Report in July of 2004 fueled a debate about how our intelligence community should be restructured to better respond to the post-9/11 threat. In response to problems identified by the 9/11 Commission, Congress passed and the President signed into law the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Most notably, that bill created the Director of National Intelligence, empowering the DNI with budget power and control over personnel in the intelligence community. The bill also created the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, with the authority to conduct strategic counterterrorism planning and to assign roles and responsibilities for counterterrorism activities. Passage of intelligence reform was a watershed moment in the drive to better organize our Government to deal with the threat of terrorism. On December 8, 2004, the same day the Senate passed the Intelligence reform bill, it passed the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2005. It is troubling that that day, December 8, 2004, was the last day this body passed an Intelligence authorization bill, and it underscores the importance of the Senate passing the bill before us. Since passage of the Intelligence reform bill in 2004, we learned a good deal about what additional changes to law might be needed to improve our intelligence community functions.”