US Senate and House committees will hold an unusual round of August hearings on intelligence reform after leaders of the Sept. 11 commission warned that the US remained vulnerable to another deadly terror strike.
"The American people expect us to act," Senator Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said on Friday.
"We don't have the luxury of waiting for months," she said.
PHOTO: AP
Collins, a Republican, and the committee's top Democrat, Senator Joseph Lieberman, said they would invite the commission's leaders, Republican Thomas Kean and Democratic vice chairman Lee Hamilton, to testify.
The hearings will focus on two of the commission's key recommendations: creating a national counterterrorism center and a new director of intelligence to be confirmed by the Senate and with Cabinet-level authority over budgets and intelligence policies. Congress began a recess on Friday that was to last until after Labor Day.
"This is a crisis. People died, and more people will unless we get it together," Lieberman said.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat, also urged the committee to introduce legislation by Oct. 1 addressing the intelligence proposals, and the committee said it would do so.
Late Friday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican, who has expressed doubt that lawmakers would have time to consider a sweeping intelligence overhaul this year, said he and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay would also direct House committees to hold hearings next month and make recommendations for legislation in September.
Earlier in the day, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi urged Hastert in a letter to reconvene the House next month, and Hastert responded that he would seek hearings "over the next several months." He later announced the hearings for next month.
"The House plans to immediately assess everything we have done ... since Sept. 11 and everything more we need to do," Hastert.
Kean, a former New Jersey governor, and Hamilton, a former congressman, said on Friday that swift action was critical. They said Congress should get to work after the summer recess while the next president -- either President George W. Bush or Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry -- must push for the overhaul soon after taking office in January.
"We're in danger of just letting things slide," Kean said.
"Time is not on our side," Kean said.
In its blistering report on Thursday, the panel cited multiple intelligence failures that contributed to the deadliest terror attack in US history. The unanimously endorsed report could spell trouble for Bush.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing