Bush chides Kerry on intelligence cuts

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DALLAS -- President Bush yesterday accused John Kerry of wanting to weaken the nation's security by repeatedly advocating "deeply irresponsible" cuts to the CIA during his 20 years in the Senate.

"One very important part of this war is intelligence-gathering, as Senator Kerry noted," Mr. Bush told a room full of campaign contributors.

"Yet in 1995, two years after the [1993] attack on the World Trade Center, my opponent introduced a bill to cut the overall intelligence budget by $1 billion. His bill was so deeply irresponsible that he didn't have a single co-sponsor in the United States Senate," he said.

Mr. Bush used the national security issue, and many others, to paint Mr. Kerry as a man with ever-changing positions who can't be trusted with the presidency in dangerous times.

"Once again, Mr. Kerry is trying to have it both ways," he said. "He's for good intelligence, yet was willing to gut the intelligence services, and that is no way to lead the nation in a time of war."

The Kerry campaign says that the bill offered by the junior senator from Massachusetts was about opposing "business as usual in our intelligence community" and that Mr. Kerry has supported $200 billion in intelligence funding over the past seven years -- a 50 percent increase since 1996.

"He voted against a proposed billion-dollar bloat in the intelligence budget because it was essentially a slush fund for defense contractors," Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said. "Unlike George Bush, John Kerry does not and will not support every special spending project supported by Halliburton and other defense contractors."

Mr. Bush's remarks reflect a more aggressive campaign to rebut the daily attacks by Mr. Kerry on the president's record in foreign policy.