Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Thursday backed off complaints that a highly classified and expensive spy program is ''totally unjustified and very, very wasteful and dangerous to the national security.'' On Wednesday, Rockefeller had called the program, tucked inside Congress' new blueprint for U.S. intelligence spending, ''stunningly expensive.'' Rockefeller backed off his remarks that the program itself was dangerous to national security. ''He was referring to the fact that it was a misallocation of funds,'' his spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said. | That means the program isn't putting any money into his district |
Rockefeller and three other Democratic senators -- Richard Durbin of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon -- refused to sign the congressional compromise that provides for future U.S. intelligence activities. The compromise noted that the four senators believed the mystery program was unnecessary, its cost unjustified and that ''the funds for this item should be expended on other intelligence programs that will make a surer and greater contribution to national security.'' ''Independent cost estimates have shown that this program will exceed its proposed budgets by enormous amounts of money,'' said Wyden. | And this is different....how? |
The Senate voted Wednesday night to send the legislation to President Bush. The rare criticisms of a highly secretive project intrigued outside intelligence experts, who said the program was almost certainly a spy satellite system. | No hard data on what this is, rumor has it that it's over budget, behind schedule, and doesn't perform as promised. |
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