Senate Committee Amends and Adopts HR 1589 – CBRN Intelligence

Yesterday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a business meeting where they considered HR 1589, the CBRN Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2019. The Committee adopted substitute language and ordered the bill reported favorably by a voice vote.

The Revisions

For the most part the substitute language adopted by the Committee was a technical re-wording of the House bill with little or no change in intent. For example, see the differences below in the wording of the proposed §210F(a):

HOUSE - ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.— The Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security shall—”

SENATE - ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary, acting through the Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis, and working with the intelligence components of the Department, shall—”

In this case (and in most of the bill) the two versions really mean the same thing; they just reflect a different editorial style. There are a couple of places that substantive changes have been made in the bill. For example, the House version of §210F(a)(5) reads:

‘‘(5) share information and provide tailored analytical support on such threats to State, local, Tribal, and territorial authorities, and other Federal agencies, as well as relevant national biosecurity and biodefense stakeholders, as appropriate; and”

The Senate version of the same paragraph deletes the phrase: “, as well as relevant national biosecurity and biodefense stakeholders”.

The other significant change is found in the complete re-write of §210F(b). The House version reads:

‘‘(b) COORDINATION.—Where appropriate, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis shall coordinate with other relevant Department components, including the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office and the National Biosurveillance Integration Center, agencies within the intelligence community, including the National Counter Proliferation Center, and other Federal, State, local, Tribal, and territorial authorities, including officials from high-threat urban areas, State and major urban area fusion centers, and local public health departments, as appropriate, and enable such entities to provide recommendations on optimal information sharing mechanisms, including expeditious sharing of classified information, and on how such entities can provide information to the Department.”

The Senate version changes this subsection to read:

‘‘(b) COORDINATION.—Where appropriate, the Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis shall—

‘‘(1) coordinate with—

‘‘(A) other Departmental components, including the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Science and Technology Directorate; and

‘‘(B) other Federal, State, local, and Tribal entities, including officials from high-threat urban areas, State and major urban area fusion centers, and local public health departments; and

‘‘(2) enable such components and entities to provide recommendations on—

‘‘(A) optimal information sharing mechanisms, including expeditious sharing of classified information; and

‘‘(B) how such components and entities can provide information to the Undersecretary and other components of the Department.”

Moving Forward

As soon as the Committee publishes their report on this bill, it could be considered by the full Senate. The bill was adopted as part of an en bloc consideration of a large number of bills. The voice vote heard for that en bloc vote in the video of the hearing did not include any ‘No’ votes. Given this bipartisan support I would suspect that the bill would be considered under the Senate’s unanimous consent process. I doubt that it could make it to the floor under regular order; there is just too much going on for the Senate to take up debate and procedural time on this bill.

I suspect that the House could accept the changes proposed by the Committee if the leadership allowed the language to come to an open vote.

Commentary

I think that the two substantive changes that I described above have made a major change in the focus of this bill. I have maintained that the House wording, with its specific references to biosecurity and biodefense, made this bill a biosecurity bill and not a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear security bill. The changes made by the Committee return this to a more balanced look at all four of these threats.