Lawmakers squabble over CIA's look at global warming
 The Chairman and ranking Republican on a committee in the House of Representatives that oversees America's spy agencies have continued a war of words over whether or not the Central Intelligence Agency should complete an assessment of the threat to the United States from global warming. The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee accused his counterparts of wasting intelligence resources on 'bugs and bunnies.'
"House Democrats want to return to the days when the CIA wasted valuable resources on 'bugs and bunnies.' My objection is not about the validity of global climate change. I am concerned about whether it is an intelligence issue," wrote Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) in a Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed. "While Democrats call for U.S. intelligence agencies to study global climate change, they continue to grossly underestimate the terrorist threat."
Hoekstra, who chaired the committee in the Republican Congress, was referring to an order in the Intelligence Authorization bill, passed Thursday, which called on the CIA to complete a "national intelligence estimate" or NIE on the threat posed by global climate change. NIEs represent the highest level assessment of a particular security concern completed by America's intelligence community.
The ranking Republican pointed to the 1990s, during the Clinton administration, "when scarce resources were diverted to issues that clearly were not related to the businesses of intelligence. There was a mistaken belief then that serious threats to U.S. national security diminished or disappeared with the end of the Cold War."
Indeed, Hoekstra even accused former CIA head John Deutch of trying to "curry favor" with then-Vice President Al Gore by directing CIA spy satellites to photograph ecologically sensitive sites and therefore ignoring "the first World Trade Center bombing...in 1993 and in August of 1996 Osama bin Laden issued his fatwa, 'Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.'"
House Democrats challenged Hoekstra's assessment of the decision to conclude the NIE on global warming and the threats it could pose.
"Our request for a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the national security impact of climate change does not divert resources from higher-priority items," said Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), committee chairman, in a statement released yesterday. "We heeded the advice of eleven former three- and four-star admirals and generals who have studied this issue and recommended an NIE. They believe that significant changes in global climate may act as a 'threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world.'"
Reyes was referring to a report published by intelligence community contractor CNA Corporation on "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change." The retired military officers who signed off on the document warned of the geopolitical implications of climate change.
"In the national and international security environment, climate change threatens to add new hostile and stressing factors. On the simplest level, it has the potential to create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today. The consequences will likely foster political instability where societal demands exceed the capacity of governments to cope," they reasoned.
With the authorization bill concluded in the House of Representatives, it now must pass the Senate, where the idea of concluding an NIE on global climate change's threats could experience a warmer reception. In March, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) sponsored companion legislation that has picked up two Republican co-sponsors – Senators Richard Lugar (IN) and Chuck Hagel (NE).
Hagel offered his explanation for supporting the bill in a March statement.
"Risk assessment is essential to putting our national resources in the places where they will be most effective. This is even more important when assessing risk to national security," he argued. "This legislation will provide information we need to continue to help make our country secure in the years to come."
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