Washington, DC—Today, the House of Representatives voted to pass an important amendment by Rep. Tim Bishop (NY-1) to require the Director of National Intelligence, along with the Attorney General, to provide a report on how U.S. authorities will balance intelligence collection needs while at the same time prosecuting terrorist suspects. The amendment was included in the Intelligence Authorization Act, which will increase funding for human intelligence collection and counterterrorism activities.

“As recent events have demonstrated, the United States must articulate a cohesive policy on how the criminal justice system can build admissible evidence for prosecution while permitting the Intelligence Community to collect the actionable intelligence that it needs to prevent future attacks and take down other terrorists,” said Bishop. “Setting forth a policy that has the approval of both the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General will help depoliticize the debate over this important national security issue and ensure that we are appropriately balancing intelligence collection needs with law enforcement objectives.”

Articulating such a policy is attainable as U.S. courts, law enforcement professionals and intelligence professionals have a long track record of successes, best practices and lessons learned. According to the Department of Justice, currently “there are more than 200 inmates who have a history of or nexus to international terrorism, who have been convicted in federal courts.”

The Intelligence Authorization Act boosts funding for language programs that are crucial to gathering intelligence abroad and strengthens recruitment efforts to attract the best possible talent. It also contains critical provisions to enhance the nation’s cybersecurity efforts and to better fight the proliferation of WMD’s around the world. The bill increases funding for intelligence efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan andPakistan, and funds efforts to address emerging national security issues in places like Africa and Latin America.

The bill makes important reforms to the oversight of covert actions, creating an Inspector General for the intelligence community and requiring that IG to audit each covert action. It reforms the process for notifying the intelligence committee of covert actions so that Congress can more effectively perform its oversight role. It also prohibits private contractors from conducting interrogations of detainees in CIA custody and requires that all detainee interrogations be videotaped.

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