ASSOCIATED PRESS
House and Senate negotiators yesterday refused to give ground on a compromise on the September 11 commission’s terror-fighting recommendations. The White House and victims’ families appealed for a deal.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is in charge of the negotiations, acknowledged that three straight days of meetings among aides to key lawmakers have proved fruitless.
The public session yesterday, the first involving the negotiators since the House and Senate passed different versions, produced no movement.
The National Commission of Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States urged Congress to create a national intelligence director to oversee 15 military and nonmilitary intelligence agencies. The hope was that such a step would prevent terrorist attacks such as the 2001 hijackings that killed about 3,000 people in New York, Northern Virginia and Pennsylvania.
But the House and Senate voted to maintain the current wall between military and nonmilitary intelligence operations, even while building some bridges over them.
The commission also called for more safeguards, including national standards for driver’s licenses and other identification, improved “no-fly” and other terrorist watch lists, and greater use of biometric identifiers to screen travelers at ports and borders.
House Democrats have joined Senate negotiators in supporting the Senate version. The Senate bill omits measures included in the House version that would tighten border security and give law-enforcement agencies new authority to fight illegal immigration and identify theft.
Democrats say differences on those issues will bog down the debate and might kill the bill.
“If we try to do this on this conference committee, my friends, we are going to be here for months without producing a product,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said yesterday.
House Republicans defended their legislation, saying that without the measures they added, the work would be only half done.
“I strongly believe that we must not be deterred by the well-intentioned belief expressed by some that these ideas in the House bill are too controversial to be enacted,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican.
Mr. Hoekstra plans to meet with the top two supporters of the Senate bill, Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, and California Rep. Jane Harman, the top Democrat on his committee.
Mr. Hoekstra said House Republicans also are putting together an offer. That brought angry rebukes from House and Senate Democrats, who said any House offer should be bipartisan. Mr. Hoekstra said any offer would not come until after he meets with Mrs. Collins, Mr. Lieberman and Mrs. Harman.
On Tuesday, the White House asked negotiators to take pieces from each bill but not include in the final package the House’s language on speedy deportations and handling of immigrants seeking political asylum. The September 11 commission also called for those provisions to be removed.
“We believe that this bill is not the right occasion for tackling controversial immigration and law-enforcement issues that go well beyond the commission’s recommendations,” former New Jersey Republican Gov. Thomas H. Kean and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, Indiana Democrat, the panel’s chairman and vice chairman, wrote the negotiators.
Mr. Hoekstra would not commit to having legislation finished by the Nov. 2 election, but told lawmakers to prepare for the possibility of daily, weekend and round-the-clock meetings.
Some lawmakers said the Election Day target should be junked completely.
“Nine-eleven is the mission, not Nov. 2,” said Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat.
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