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Fiscal Year 2017 IAA Minority Views

The Intelligence Committee advanced the bipartisan Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) for
Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 by unanimous voice vote.
The annual IAA ensures that the programs and activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community
(IC), including Department of Defense (DoD) intelligence elements, are authorized in law and
optimally resourced to protect the nation from threats at home and abroad. Equally important,
this critical piece of legislation also ensures rigorous congressional oversight of the IC, including
over its most sensitive aspects.
This years IAA is comprehensive, detailed, and thoughtfully-considered. It authorizes
intelligence funding in the Base budget at a level nearly equal to the FY17 Presidents Budget
request, which is approximately the same as the FY16 enacted budget level. The Overseas
Contingency Operations authorization is roughly 1.5% above the request.
The bill provides substantial and appropriate oversight of the IC by trimming unnecessary
funding and reprioritizing resource allocation; adding money to underfunded programs; and
providing congressional direction to improve processes, gain efficiencies, and ensure greater
transparency and accountability within the IC. It also fences significant amounts of funding to
better ensure continuous IC accountability throughout the year.
Specifically, the FY17 IAA:
a. Emphasizes the need to focus on long-term threats, such as those from an increasingly
aggressive China, Russia, and North Korea, while maintaining focus on the immediate
threats posed by terrorism and the security challenges in the Middle East, North Africa,
and South Asia;
b. Protects our most vital capabilities, whether in space, cyberspace, on land or at sea, as
well as our most invaluable resourcesour IC professionalsagainst growing threats
across domains;
c. Leverages and promotes commercial capabilities, while investing in the most advanced
technologies that do not yet have commercial application;
d. Promotes greater capacity-building among key partners and allies to further leverage
shared resources and competencies, and advances more strategic approaches to these
efforts;
e. Emphasizes the importance of recruiting, developing, and retaining the most effective
and diverse workforce to answer the increasingly complex challenges facing the IC and
the defense intelligence enterprise;
f. Continues to support HUMINT, a critical intelligence mission;

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g. Promotes, through resources and direction, enhanced cyber security for our nations most
critical systems; and
h. Ensures thorough oversight of surveillance capabilities.
In light of whistleblower allegations that intelligence was inappropriately influenced or distorted
at CENTCOM, this years bill also includes provisions aimed at better ensuring the integrity of
DoD intelligence analysis. Additionally, this years IAA improves the procedure for IC
whistleblowers to report complaints to Congress.
The Minority remains committed to a strong counterterrorism posture, but also to a more
transparent one. Accordingly, the Minority reiterates the need for the release of substantial data
on the total number of combatants and noncombatant civilians who may have been killed or
injured as a result of counterterrorism action. Ranking Member Schiff continues to highlight this
issue within the Committee and to the Administration.
The Minority is pleased that the IAA fully funds and, for the first time, specifically authorizes
the activities of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an entity tasked with
ensuring that U.S. counterterrorism programs advance national security while appropriately
safeguarding civil liberties. However, the Minority will remain vigilant to ensure that the
Committee does not seek to constrain PCLOB authorities in the futureparticularly in light of
last years provision to curtail its jurisdiction over U.S. Covert Action programs, which this year
Representative Himes tried to reverse through an amendment. The Minority continues to
demonstrate its strong support for this important and independent body, and to oppose efforts to
limit is role in overseeing counterterrorism activities.
Unlike last years IAA, this years bill omits odious transfer restrictions from the detention
center at Guantanamo Bay. This years IAA, however, calls for a declassification review of
certain intelligence products regarding terrorist acts committed by transferred detainees before
their arrival at Guantanamo Bay. The only detainees covered by the declassification provision,
however, are those transferred since President Obama took office, disregarding the roughly 500
detainees transferred or released by the prior administrationdetainees whose recidivism rates
generally remain far higher than any transferred or released under President Obama.
Additionally, this years IAA unfortunately does not fund the Presidents request to enhance
intelligence analysis on the serious national security implications of climate change. Food and
water scarcity, and vast population displacement, are inevitable features of unchecked climate
change and therefore will prove to be tremendous drivers of global instability, which the IC
needs to better anticipate and understand.

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Despite these specific weaknesses, the House Intelligence Committee reached bipartisan
agreement on this years IAA, which includes several key provisions championed by Minority
Members, including:
a. Mr. Himess provision to improve the timeliness and fairness of the pre-publication
review process throughout the IC, by calling for uniform guidance to ensure that reviews
only block publication of appropriately classified material, and that employees at each IC
element receive impartial and expeditious reviews of their works;
b. Ms. Sewells language on investment in Centers of Academic Excellence programs,
helping to guarantee that a diverse array of students can take part in IC internships, and
her requirement to collect data to evaluate the ICs federally-funded academic programs;
c. Mr. Carsons provision requiring the IC to publish insignia commonly associated with
terrorist organizations to assist public and private entities in swiftly removing terrorist
content online; his provision on cooperation and de-confliction between the departments
of Homeland Security and State regarding countering violent extremism programs; and
his requirement to have the Committee receive information on the operational impacts of
foreign investment in the United States;
d. Ms. Speiers provisions to: (a) standardize declassification photocopying fees across the
IC to promote increased availability of information and enhance transparency; (b) expand
access to graduate education programs at the Defense Intelligence Agency; (c) obtain
information on the mental health resilience programs available to IC civilians returning
from tours in combat zones; and (d) study reprisals taken against IC contractors who
make disclosures that would be legally protected if made by IC employees;
e. Mr. Quigleys language to continue support to security services in Ukraine;
f. Mr. Swalwells provision to track foreign fighters, his requirement to analyze the status
of loan forgiveness and debt counseling programs in the IC, and his provision to better
understand how the departments of Homeland Security and Energy take advantage of the
expertise resident at our National Labs; and
g. Mr. Murphys provisions to: (a) provide a report detailing cybersecurity threats to, or
vulnerabilities in, systems employed by seaports and transshipment hubs, including
efforts to improve our preparedness and response to a cyber attack; (b) improve
intelligence reporting with respect to Irans compliance with the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action; and (c) requires a report on the security threats emanating from maritime
smuggling routes and ways to better cooperate with other nations to mitigate these
threats.
The Minority strongly supports this years Intelligence Authorization Act. It will further ensure
that the IC, including DoDs intelligence components, are appropriately resourced and
authorized to address an increasingly complex security environment, while safeguarding civil
liberties and privacy.
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