SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE ANNOUNCES PASSAGE OF INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence announced today that the Senate and House approved the conference report for the Intelligence Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2001. The bill addresses a number of significant issues within the Intelligence Community, including a provision that will criminalize the willful and knowing unauthorized disclosure by government officials of classified information to persons not authorized to receive it. The bill also contains provisions addressing NSA restructuring; State Department compliance with security standards; CIA reporting requirements for senior officials; counterintelligence investigations; the analytic capability of the Intelligence Community relating to POW/MIA issues; and declassification efforts including the designation of an interagency group to expedite declassification of records relating to the activities of the Japanese Imperial Government during World War II.
Senator Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), Chairman of the Committee, said, "I am pleased that this legislation received unanimous support in the Senate and passed easily in the House. There is no question we must place our ability to collect intelligence around the world at the very top of our national security priorities. Recent events in the Middle East and in Yemen demonstrate that we have more work to do. I believe that this legislation continues this Committee's commitment to improving our ability to detect and defeat threats to our people and interests at home and abroad. For example, the Committee has been increasingly troubled by the NSA's growing inability to meet technological challenges and to provide America's leaders with vital signals intelligence (SIGINT). Success in the NSA's mission is critical to our national security. Therefore, the conference report reflects the start of our investment in resources and support aimed at restoring the NSA's capabilities. This bipartisan bill also will bring important reforms to the State Department's handling of sensitive compartmented information (SCI) and to the Central Intelligence Agency's requirements to report wrongdoing by its most senior officials. Finally, this bill sends a strong message to leakers since it will, for the first time, ensure that leakers of all classified information may be held criminally accountable for their actions."
Senator Richard H. Bryan, Vice Chairman of the Committee, said, "this important legislation seeks to ensure that the U.S. intelligence community will continue to serve our national security interests into the 21st century. The community faces momentous challenges from both the proliferation of threats facing America and from the rapid pace of technological change occurring throughout society. We now face a world with growing transnational threats of terrorism, weapons proliferation, international crime and narcotics trafficking, and multiple regional conflicts which create instability and threaten U.S. interests. The tragic and cowardly attack today on the USS Cole demonstrates once again the very real dangers of the post-Cold War world. How we respond to these challenges today will affect our ability to protect American interests in the years ahead."
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