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Under Dr. Fauci NIAID Gave Wuhan Lab $826k for Bat Coronavirus Research Judicial Watch Sues Intelligence Director and State Department over Wuhan Lab Judicial Watch Sues for Information on New York COVID-19 Deaths Under Dr. Fauci NIAID Gave Wuhan Lab $826k for Bat Coronavirus Research We’re now learning that U.S officials, using your tax dollars, were more deeply involved with the notorious Wuhan Lab in China than anyone knew. The agency headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci is reluctantly revealing the details only because we sued them. Here is a progress report. We obtained 280 pages of documents from the...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's nominee to be the nation's first intelligence director promised fundamental changes at the 15 agencies he'll oversee and said he would give policy-makers the "unvarnished truth" about threats. "Our intelligence effort has to generate better results. That's my mandate, plain and simple," John Negroponte, a veteran diplomat and former Iraq ambassador, told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing Tuesday. Democrats, still chafed by the botched intelligence on Iraq, said they were skeptical he could be the independent arbiter of intelligence the nation needs and questioned whether he adequately reported human-rights abuses as ambassador to...

President Bush (news - web sites) is searching not only for a new director of national intelligence to become his chief adviser on intelligence but also for three other senior officials who will work atop the new organization created by the intelligence reform act he is scheduled to sign into law tomorrow. Along with the job of the intelligence director, or DNI, there is to be a principal deputy DNI, a director of a new national counterterrorism center, and a general counsel to the DNI, all of whom must be presidential appointees subject to Senate confirmation. In addition, the new...

It's not words on paper which will better protect this nation from a terrorist attack. We're not at all convinced that a culture of collaboration can be legislated. Or that a new counterterrorism center solves the bottom line lesson of the missing WMD in Iraq - threat assessments are only as reliable as the intelligence being analyzed. Indeed, we will be no safer if the first appointee to the new post of National Intelligence director simply has access to the same junk intel which led former CIA Director George Tenet to declare the case for war in Iraq a ``slam...

The Rove SenateIf your state has a Democratic United States Senator and a Republican governor, stay alert.It's just those situations the White House political whiz Karl Rove is looking for as President Bush searches to fill key jobs while fattening the GOP Senate majority. (towards 60 seats )Here's the plan: Tap a Democrat to run an agency, then have the Republican governor pick a GOP replacement.One in focus right now: Connecticut US Senator Joe Liberman as the new intelligence czar.

Can it possibly be true? Is Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., really under consideration by the White House as the first director of national intelligence? That's one of the ideas being floated by the administration right now. This would be the most powerful intelligence position ever created in the United States – more powerful that the director of the National Security Agency, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And who is Jane Harman? She votes with the American Civil Liberties Union 73 percent of the time. She is in favor of federal...

The following is posted on Drudge right now: Names of people being vetted by the White House for the new position of Director of National Intelligence: DCI Porter Goss Gov Tom Kean General Michael Hayden John Lehman Sen. Joe Lieberman Rep Pete Hoekstra Rep Jane Harman...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 - For nearly 50 years, a director of central intelligence has stood at the pinnacle of American intelligence agencies. Now that role is to be played by a new, even more powerful figure, a national intelligence director, created by Congress as part of its response to a series of catastrophic intelligence failures. The question is whether the changes will make much of a difference in combating terrorism and weapons proliferation, two of the major national security challenges facing the intelligence services. On that question, even some supporters of the legislation to overhaul intelligence acknowledge their own agnosticism....

The scattered agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community are about to get a new leader. The question is: Will that person have enough authority to make them follow?... Several officials voiced concern that having the president referee such disputes is likely to favor powerful players in the administration, particularly Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whom Bush asked last week to serve a second term. Many of the provisions in the bill amount to "throwing the ball back in the president's camp," Turner said. "And I'm very worried because it appears this president won't buck Rumsfeld."...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush, in an apparent reversal, has decided that the new national intelligence director recommended by the Sept. 11 Commission should have the budgetary and hire-fire authority that the commission wanted, one of the ten commissioners told United Press International. "I have very good reason to believe that is what the president intends," John Lehman, the Reagan-era Navy secretary said Sunday, confirming reports from a handful of journalists briefed Friday by a senior White House official. Lehman declined to elaborate on his reasons. The question of what powers the new director should have...

President Bush is just wrong to back an "intelligence czar" to oversee all U.S. intelligence/terrorist-fighting operations but not give that person ultimate budget authority, Sen. Orrin Hatch told a teacher seminar Monday. It's not often that Hatch, R-Utah, a GOP senator for 28 years, disagrees with his party's president. But Hatch told the Huntsman Seminar for Teachers at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics that naming an overall intelligence boss without giving him or her the final "power of the purse" -- as Bush has suggested -- would result in the "czar" having as little power as the...

(CNSNews.com) - Despite the allegation by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, that President Bush was slow to establish the position of "intelligence czar" in the aftermath of the 9/11 Commission report, Kerry passed up an opportunity to co-sponsor Senate legislation last year that would have done just that. There were six co-sponsors of the Intelligence Community Leadership Act, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in January 2003. But neither Kerry nor his vice presidential running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who was a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time, added their names to...

Rumsfeld Discusses Intel Chief, Military Manning By Jim GaramoneAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Aug. 5, 2004 -- President Bush's idea of a national intelligence director outside the White House "is on the mark," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Aug. 3. Rumsfeld, speaking on WJR radio in Detroit, said there is value to having a national intelligence director, as the 9/11 Commission has suggested in its report. Bush had announced his support of the concept the previous day. The president had also announced the creation of the National Intelligence Center. Under his proposal, the center will be the spot...

The 9/11 Commissioners have performed a useful function by describing some of the policy failures that allowed the al Qaeda attacks of 2001. Now if they really want to do us all another favor, they'll remove themselves to an undisclosed location until, say, November 2. We jest, but only slightly. The Commissioners are not the people's elected representatives, after all. Nor were they ever intended to become a group of unaccountable policy ombudsmen following the publication of their report. - - - - - - - - - - For example, how much budget authority should such a director have...

“Leaders Pick Up Urgency of 9/11 Panel,” reads a front-page headline in the July 24 Washington Post. Good news. Or is it? It’s not that the 9/11 commission’s report is lacking. It’s been widely hailed, and rightly so, as generally on the mark. It offers fair suggestions for what should be the next steps in improving homeland security. Congress and the Bush administration should be commended for wanting to act on them, and soon. But haste isn’t necessarily a virtue here. It’s more important to get the next steps right than to get there fast. As much as we may...

SEATTLE – Two Sept. 11 commission members questioned President Bush's proposal for a national intelligence director, saying Tuesday that whoever holds the job should have the power to control spending and staff at all 15 U.S. spy agencies. Two others, meanwhile, declined to criticize the president and said they wanted to avoid being seen as overly political. Former Republican Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington and Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said the post would be weakened by anything less than full budget authority and the ability to hire and fire. "Providing a figurehead is not what we intended," Ben-Veniste...

Bush saps Democrats’ momentum By Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The war on terrorism is a dominant issue in the campaign for the White House and has been one of President Bush’s strongest issues. By acting quickly on a proposed intelligence overhaul, he signaled a determination to protect that advantage. Bush urged Congress on Monday to create the post of national intelligence director, a recommendation in last month’s Sept. 11 commission’s report. The report has gained political potency heading toward the November elections, and Bush and John Kerry have been maneuvering to gain advantage. Bush has a huge edge. While...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 - President Bush on Monday cast his support for a new post of national intelligence director as an historic overhaul of the nation's major spy agencies. But White House officials left vague the authority that the new director would wield over personnel and spending, raising doubts among some experts about the real power of the new position. Mr. Bush said the new director would "coordinate" the budgets for the nation's 15 major intelligence agencies, while Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, said the director would have a "coordinating role" in hiring. But neither...

The President held a press conference in the Rose Garden today. He requested that Congress act to create the position of a National Intelligence Director. That person -- the person in that office will be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, and will serve at the pleasure of the President. The National Intelligence Director will serve as the President's principal intelligence advisor and will oversee and coordinate the foreign and domestic activities of the intelligence committee. Under this reorganization, the CIA will be managed by a separate Director. The National Intelligence Director will assume...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush, declaring the nation was still not safe from terrorist attack, announced Monday the creation of a national director to oversee federal intelligence gathering and the creation of a National Intelligence Center to monitor and coordinate all government counter-terrorism plans and activities. "All the institutions of our government must be fully prepared for a struggle against terror that will last into the future," Bush said while speaking in the White House Rose Garden. "Our goal is an integrated, unified, national-intelligence effort." The announcement comes on the heels of a new al-Qaida threat...