The bill doesn't mean diddly squat. We already have laws on the book such as the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which aren't enforced. He11, if we'd enforce what we had there would never be a need for this!
Its going to take a while to digest this. But I would say now that I would be surprised if this bill 'doesn't mean diddly' to somebody.
FYI, over the recent years the intelligence community has come under more and more Pentagon influence. In many ways that made sense because the pentagon is one of the communities biggest customers, and pays for a lot of the expensive intelligence toys that are out there. The pentagon has really pushed for more control since Desert Storm because they found the old system did not provide timely data or recon imagery. The current systems are more oriented toward the sensor-to-shooter concept and have been getting better in this sense at a rapid pace. They are a big part of what makes our military so successful in battle today.
Some would argue that 9-11 occured because the Pentagon's priorities were not focused on the elements that hit us. I am not in that camp, but its all a big game of how to distribute the billions of dollars that go into national intelligence systems.
If this bill reduces Pentagon influence on budgeting, which I think is the idea of a national director above all the agencies and customers, I hope that it is very conservative in its approach. But as I said, I haven't read it all yet.