New law aims to tighten US security measures

President George Bush is signing into law the largest overhaul of US intelligence gathering in 50 years, hoping to improve the spy network that failed to prevent the September 11 attacks.

The 563-page bill also aims to tighten borders and aviation security. It creates a federal counterterrorism centre and a new intelligence director, but Bush was not expected to fill that post at today’s bill signing.

The new structure was designed to help the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies work together to protect the country from attacks like the ones that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

The Sept 11 Commission, in its July report, said disharmony among the intelligence agencies contributed to the inability of government officials to prevent the attacks. The government failed to recognise the danger posed by al-Qaida and was ill-prepared to respond to the terrorist threat, the report concluded.

Commission members and families of attack victims lobbied persistently for the legislation through the summer political conventions and the election. The bill was threatened over disagreements between the White House and key House Republicans about immigration issues and how the new national intelligence director would work with the nation’s military.

Bush was criticised for not engaging aggressively enough with members of his own party to break the impasse. Pundits questioned what that meant for the president’s ability to gain approval from a Republican-controlled Congress for his ambitious second-term agenda. But in the final days, he and Vice President Dick Cheney pushed hard for the legislation, and both the House and Senate passed it overwhelmingly.

Just as Bush changed his mind on supporting the creation of a Homeland Security Department and creation of the independent Sept 11 Commission, it took him a while to endorse the commission’s strong recommendation that any new director of national intelligence have full budget-making control, necessary to wield true power in Washington. Bush at first rejected that idea but later supported it.

The new director position was one of the bill’s most controversial aspects. Although the legislation gives the new director strong budget authority, its language is complex enough that there could be continued debate over the exact extent of the director’s power.

The new law includes a host of anti-terrorism provisions, such as letting officials wiretap “lone wolf” terrorists and improving airline baggage screening procedures. It increases the number of full-time border patrol agents by 2,000 per year for five years and imposes new federal standards on information that driver’s licenses must contain.

The measure is the biggest change to US intelligence gathering and analysis since the creation of the CIA after World War Two to deal with the newly emerging Cold War.