FBI, CIA Heads to Appear at Congressional Probe
FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet are to appear before the intelligence committees of the Senate and House of Representatives, congressional aides said.
Aides said Michael Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, is also expected to appear on Tuesday before the two panels.
This will be the third week of closed-door hearings by the committees, which are scheduled to open their proceedings next week when Mueller and Tenet are both expected to return, aides said.
Also on Tuesday, the White House plans to present to Congress the legislative language President George W. Bush would like to see used to establish his proposed department of homeland security, an administration official said on Monday.
This will allow Congress to formally begin considering the president's sweeping proposal and offer possible changes.
On Thursday, Tom Ridge, head of the White House Office of Homeland Security, is to appear before House and Senate committees to testify about the proposal to create a cabinet-level department to coordinate the war on terrorism.
As first explained by the administration earlier this month, the plan would fold into one department all or parts of 22 existing federal agencies, including the Secret Service, Coast Guard and Border Patrol.
But the CIA and FBI would be left unchanged. Some lawmakers have voiced concern the new department would fail to correct a key problem exposed by the Sept. 11 attacks -- repeated failures by the two agencies to share information.
The administration has said the new department would address the problem by serving as a clearinghouse for information from the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies.
The intelligence committees, as part of the probe into events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, are taking a look at the breakdowns in communications between the FBI and CIA.