By a unanimous voice vote, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last week sent the FY2018 Intelligence Authorization Act to the U.S. House of Representatives for consideration.
While funding for the bill was slightly lower than in the Trump Administration’s FY2018 budget request, it does fully fund a number of provisions for counterterrorism and preventing and mitigating cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure.
One facet of the bill specifically aims to re-focus the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on its core missions by either completely eliminating several components and functions or realigning them to other intelligence community (IC) elements.
Building off of a number of reported issues seen during the 2016 presidential election cycle, the legislation requires the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to publish an unclassified advisory report on foreign counterintelligence and cybersecurity threats to election campaigns for federal offices.
Additional provisions of the bill include strengthening intelligence oversight by ensuring that IC contractors can freely meet with Congress and improving IC accountability by requiring IC officials to provide reports on investigations of leaked classified information, security clearance processing timelines, and reviewing information of computer vulnerabilities.
“At a time when our nation faces major national security challenges from terrorist groups as well as nation states, it’s crucial that the Intelligence Community receive all the resources it needs to do its job while Congress has the necessary tools to carry out rigorous oversight of its work,” Select Committee Chair U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said.