Senators Bob Graham and Dianne Feinstein Introduce
Package of Legislation to Bolster Counter-Terrorism Efforts
September 21, 2001

Washington, DC - In the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, Senators Bob Graham (D-FL) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation today to establish a national office for combating terrorism to coordinate all federal, state and local efforts to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.

The director of this new White House office would be responsible for developing a national strategy to combat terrorism and would have budgetary authority to coordinate an integrated response by the 45 federal agencies charged with anti-terrorism duties.

"We currently spend more than $12 billion a year across 45 agencies to combat terrorism," Senator Feinstein said. "But as the General Accounting Office has pointed out, there is no single person with the ability to prioritize how counter-terrorism funds are spent. Additionally, there are major problems in the prompt and accurate communication of intelligence information between law enforcement and the intelligence community."

"In order to address these issues, the President announced last night that he was creating a White House Office, with a Cabinet-level director, to oversee the nation's counter-terrorism efforts. This person would have the ability to ensure that our counter-terrorism funds are being used in a coordinated and valuable way."

"The legislation we are introducing today aims to complement what the president has proposed, by giving the director of this office the precise authority that is necessary to cut across all of the departments to see that the job gets done 24 hours a day."

In separate action, Graham and Feinstein introduced legislation that would give the CIA a more direct role in managing foreign intelligence information and provide law enforcement with new tools for electronic surveillance.

The first bill introduced by Senators Graham and Feinstein provides for a director who would:

• Formulate a national strategy to combat terrorism;
  
  
• Have government-wide budget authority to set priorities and see the money goes where the priorities are; and
  
  
• Coordinate the efforts of the federal and local agencies currently responsible for some aspect of preventing and responding to terrorist attacks.




The second bill would improve our intelligence collection and the dissemination of information about terrorists by:


• Closing the loophole in the law that allows spies and terrorists to escape wiretaps simply by switching phones. After this bill passes, the wiretap will follow the person, not the phone number.
  
  
• Eliminating the need for unnecessary and burdensome renewals of wiretap and search orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
  
  
• Making it easier to wiretap suspected terrorists who are directing computers to carry out their acts of terrorism. An example of this would be a terrorist ordering a computer at Hoover Dam to open the floodgates.
  
  
• Giving laws enforcement new tools to catch terrorists by following the trail of their money.
  
  
• Requiring law enforcement officers who discover information about international terrorism to share that information with the intelligence community.
  
  
• Expanding the Director of Central Intelligence's role in managing and disseminating foreign intelligence collected by law enforcement wiretaps.
  
  
• Establishing a "National Virtual Translation Center," allowing foreign-language translators to more easily assist investigations of terrorists from anywhere in the country.
  
  
• Building new bridges between federal law enforcement and local officials in the fight against terrorism.
  

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