Joe Lieberman: “It is just such a strange circumstance with which I believe many members of our committee were surprised to find, that…”

“It is just such a strange circumstance with which I believe many members of our committee were surprised to find, that the intelligence budget, including the CIA budget, the Central Intelligence Agency right now, goes through the Department of Defense before it gets there. Obviously, the Defense Department is an important user of intelligence, perhaps the most important, so is the State Department, the President, and the Homeland Security Department. The current situation is a little bit--let me see if I can think of an analogy, and I know this is farfetched--where the budget of the Securities and Exchange Commission went through the Department of Health and Human Services. It may be a little farfetched. Maybe it went through one of the other Departments that is slightly more related. It makes no sense. Again, we are trying to create authority here, and authority in this town, as we kept hearing over and over, is built on money, budget authority, and this amendment would remove that authority from the national intelligence director and, therefore, weaken that position. I fear it would get us back to where we are now, where we do not have that authority with anyone in the intelligence community and no one is in charge.”