On the recordAugust 5, 2010
today the Senate passed a new version of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (S. 3611) with a manager's amendment to address key concerns of the Judiciary Committee. I appreciate the commitment of Senator Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to work with me to strengthen this important legislation. The bill the Senate has approved recognizes the shared jurisdiction of the committee on the Judiciary and the Select Committee on Intelligence in several legislative areas. Last fall, when an earlier version of this bill--S. 1494--was considered by the Senate, I recognized that several provisions in the bill fell under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. Senator Feinstein and I engaged in serious negotiations concerning these provisions. We negotiated agreements regarding exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, as well as numerous reporting requirements, such as a significant, new requirement for the Federal Bureau of Investigation--FBI--an agency clearly under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee, and an important new cybersecurity oversight provision. Negotiations I undertook with Senator Feinstein last fall on the earlier version of the bill narrowed the operational files FOIA exemption for information provided by intelligence agencies to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI, and struck a FOIA (b)(3) exemption for terrorist identity information.
