Congress Moves to Block Budget Disclosure

One day after President Bush signed into law a bill that requires
public disclosure of the national intelligence budget, the House of
Representatives adopted an amendment to prevent that requirement from
taking effect.

The budget disclosure provision appeared in legislation enacting the
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which was passed by Congress
last month and signed by President Bush on August 3.

If implemented, it would mark the first time that Congress successfully
asserted its authority to compel disclosure of currently classified
information over the objections of the executive branch.  Since 1998,
the intelligence bureaucracy has consistently refused to divulge the
intelligence budget total.  The White House stated on February 28 that
budget disclosure "could cause damage to the national security
interests of the United States."

The opposing view, adopted by the 9/11 Commission and endorsed by
Congress last month, is that budget disclosure is an indispensable
precondition to broader accountability and that it is essential to
restoring the credibility of a defective classification system.

But despite the fact that the requirement to disclose the intelligence
budget has finally passed into law, it may not happen after all.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) offered an amendment to the Defense
Appropriations Act on August 4 that would prohibit budget disclosure.
Without any debate, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) announced that the
amendment was accepted.

    http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/issa.html

The Issa amendment will have to be addressed in a House-Senate
conference before it effectively repeals the new disclosure
requirement.