Joe Lieberman: “There are three parts of the amendment offered by the Senator from West Virginia and others. Two have to do with…”

“There are three parts of the amendment offered by the Senator from West Virginia and others. Two have to do with transfers of personnel and money and whether they can be limited in any way. We believe it is not right for Congress to limit the authority--here I mean amounts of money or personnel of the nature of how long the national intelligence director, whom I have been calling the general we do not have now of our intelligence forces, can transfer personnel or money to fight the war on terrorism, to plug a gap that he sees existing in his ranks, to respond to a crisis that occurs somewhere in the world. That is the kind of flexibility we want to give him. That is subject to oversight, but that is a limitation on the power the national intelligence director has in our bill, recommended by the 9/11 Commission, supported by the families of those who died on 9/11. That is one part. We can argue about that. But it is definitely a cut in the authority of the national intelligence director to help us wage war on terrorism.”