Bush Administration Threatens Veto of Secret Prison Measure

By Jeff Bliss

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Administration officials will advise President George W. Bush to veto legislation requiring him to provide lawmakers with details of the CIA's secret prisons for terrorism suspects, a White House statement said.

The disclosure provisions are included in proposed Senate legislation that would set new requirements for giving lawmakers access to intelligence reports and set intelligence program funding for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.

The Bush administration objected to the disclosure requirements, saying, ``Such matters are appropriately left to sensitive handling in the normal course between the intelligence committee and the executive branch.''

Democrats and Republicans have put increasing pressure on Bush to give them information on intelligence matters after media reports that inmates were being tortured in the secret prisons and that the National Security Agency had a program that conducts surveillance without court warrants.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Senator Christopher Bond, the panel's senior Republican, earlier today said Bush needed to be more forthcoming to Congress about intelligence operations.

``There may be some officials of the executive branch that prefer a lack of oversight,'' Bond, a Missouri lawmaker, said in a speech today in the Senate chamber. ``That's not how the system works.''

The administration also opposed a proposal to reveal annual U.S. spending on intelligence programs, a figure that's now classified, saying it imperils national security.

Sought

Rockefeller long has sought to get the administration to reveal the overall spending on spy programs. In 2005, newspapers reported that Mary Margaret Graham, deputy director of national intelligence for collection, let slip that the budget was $44 billion.

Under the legislation, the maximum prison sentence would increase to 15 years from 10 years for those who disclose the identity of a covert agent, a response to administration officials revealing the secret status of Central Intelligence Agency agent Valerie Plame.

The House last year passed an intelligence spending proposal without the disclosure requirements for funding and secret prisons. The House Intelligence Committee is working on a spending proposal measure for fiscal year 2008, said Kira Maas, a spokeswoman for the panel's chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Bliss in Washington jbliss@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: April 12, 2007 18:07 EDT

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