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House demands more access to secrets
Democrats want more oversight over intelligence. Bush threatens veto.
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The House passed legislation Wednesday governing next year's intelligence budget that demands lawmakers be given greater access to the nation's most closely held secrets.
The bill, which passed on a voice vote, is the latest attempt by Democrats to step up their role in overseeing an intelligence program they say has gone astray. Lawmakers complain that the Bush administration left most of them out of the loop on highly classified -- and controversial -- matters, including Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
The bill would block two-thirds of the federal covert operations budget until each member of the congressional intelligence committees is briefed on all secret operations under way.
The White House has threatened to veto the bill because it says it would go too far and infringe upon the president's right to protect intelligence.
The Senate still has to take up its version of the bill.
ON A COLLISION COURSE OVER CIA LEAK
President Bush invoked executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration's leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003.
Bush's decision drew a sharp protest from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over the documents.
"This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person," Waxman said. "If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"
Waxman left little doubt he would soon move for a committee vote to hold Mukasey in contempt of Congress.
Bush's assertion of privilege prevented Mukasey from complying with the House subpoena for records bearing on the unmasking of Plame at a time that the administration was trying to rebut criticism from her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, of Bush's rationale for going to war in Iraq.
AIDS FUNDING TRIPLED
The Senate voted to triple spending for a program that has treated and protected millions in Africa and elsewhere from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
The 80-16 vote committed the United States to spending up to $48 billion over the next five years for the most ambitious foreign public health program ever launched by the United States.
The legislation would replace and expand the $15 billion act that President Bush championed and Congress passed in 2003.
In a statement, Bush said that when the program was launched, about 50,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa were receiving anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS. Today, the program supports lifesaving anti-retroviral treatment for more than 1.7 million people around the world, he said. It also has supported treatment and prevention programs that have helped HIV-positive women give birth to nearly 200,000 infants who are HIV-free.
NEWS SERVICES
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