US Senate unanimously passed an intelligence bill on Thursday to strengthen the country's intelligence ability in its war against terrorism.
"Our legislation authorizes activities that will rebuild the foundation of our intelligence community so that we can meet the terrorism challenge," said Democratic Senator Bob Graham.
The annual intelligence spending in U.S., which is secret, is estimated at about 30 billion dollars. The CIA revealed that such spending totaled 26.6 billion dollars in 1997 and 26.7 billion dollars in 1998.
The House of Representatives passed a intelligence authorization bill by a voice vote with no dissent on October 5. It called for a 9 percent increase in intelligence spending, 2 percent above Bush's request. Congressional sources said the Senate bill called for a 7 percent increase and was close to Bush's request.
According to Graham, the classified Senate bill calls for revitalizing of the National Security Agency that gathers and analyzes information from broadcasts, computers and other
electronic means of communication, shifting the focus from intercepting broadcasts to tapping fiber-optic communication lines.
It also called for correcting deficiencies in human intelligence collection and correcting the imbalance between information collection and analysis that turns it into
intelligence.
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