WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- President Bush Thursday sent a bill to Congress setting out his plan for reforming the way the nation's intelligence agencies are run.
The bill -- which joins more than a dozen other proposals currently knocking elbows in Congress -- establishes a national intelligence director to manage and oversee the 15 spy agencies that make up the so-called intelligence community, and gives him broad budgetary and personnel powers.
Under the bill, the new director would "develop and determine an annual consolidated ... budget" for all of the agencies in the National Foreign Intelligence Program, including those inside the Department of Defense which build, maintain and run the nation's spy satellites and other eavesdropping facilities.
Previously, the secretary of defense's was the last desk on which the budgets for those agencies rested before being sent to the White House.
The bill also would give the new director the right to be consulted about the appointment of the head of any intelligence agency and the power to block lower level appointments altogether.
