GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE TO EXAMINE NEED FOR A NEW FEDERAL AGENCY TO ANALYZE TERRORISM-RELATED INTELLIGENCE

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-ME) and Ranking Member Joe Lieberman (D-CT) will examine President Bush's proposal to set up a new organization to merge and analyze terrorist-related intelligence at a 9:30 a.m. hearing on Friday in Room 324 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. According to the Administration, the new organization, called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), will assess, receive, and analyze law enforcement and intelligence information from federal, state, and local government agencies to assess the nature and scope of terrorist threats to the United States.

"The proposed new Center would include elements of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Defense," Collins said Thursday. "And we have many questions regarding its structure, the scope of its authority, how it will interact with other agencies in the intelligence community and where it should be located," she said.

"For some time now, many of us have been advocating for a central location in our government where all the intelligence collected by the various agencies that make up the intelligence community, as well as information collected by state and local law enforcement, can be brought together and analyzed." said Lieberman. "Now that the Administration has proposed a threat integration center similar to the one we have fought for all along, I hope we can get our questions answered and move urgently to make the center work as well as it must to protect the safety of all Americans."

Friday's hearing will explore the challenges involved in establishing the center and integrating it with the existing intelligence community. Witnesses will include Senator Warren B. Rudman, Co-Chairman of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century; Governor James S. Gilmore III, Chair, Congressional Advisory Commission on Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction; Jeffrey H. Smith, Former General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency; and James B. Steinberg, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings Institution.

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