Joe Lieberman: “the intention here is to give the national intelligence director budgetary authority over the national intelligence…”

“the intention here is to give the national intelligence director budgetary authority over the national intelligence programs. That would not include TIARA. It might include, as has been illuminated in a colloquy between the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Maine, some programs that are currently in JMIP, the Joint Military Intelligence Program. For the sake of reasonable organization, we wanted to take the full budgets of those national intelligence agencies--NSA, National Geospatial, and NRO. But what I want to say is that there is some indication that, for instance, a substantial percentage of one of those agency budgets is currently in JMIP. We expect that they will continue to work for the military and its joint programs. But for the sake of decent organization and clear lines of authority, the judgment made by our committee was to say that all of the budgets of those three national intelligence agencies within the national intelligence program will go on budget under the national intelligence director and to leave it. There is going to be some overlap on what is now JMIP. The bill encourages the Secretary of Defense and the national intelligence director to work out those areas of overlap.”