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House Panel OKs Patriot Act Provisions NewsMax.com WiresWASHINGTON -- The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee approved two Democratic provisions Wednesday placing new controls over how the FBI monitors suspected terrorists under the Patriot Act. In a move that committee aides said was unprecedented, House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., opened the session to the public in a limited way by allowing one news organization - The Associated Press - to attend. Story Continues Below Three other amendments that Democrats proposed failed, including one requiring Congress to reconsider 10 of the bill's provisions in four years. The bill, which expanded the government's intelligence gathering powers after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, would renew more than a dozen of the act's provisions and make other changes. Hoekstra said he opened the session because the public doesn't often get to see how intelligence legislation is written. The meeting was held in the committee's highly secure, and small, hearing room. "We are slowly inching our way forward" toward working more in the open, Hoekstra said after the two-hour session inside the cherry-walled room of the Capitol rarely seen by outsiders. Seventeen seals of intelligence community hang on one wall; an oversized world map on the other. The Patriot Act was approved 45 days after the Sept. 11 attacks, and now Congress must decide whether to renew 16 parts of it set to expire at year's end. Republicans and Democrats repeatedly invoked 9/11 and last week's bus and rail bombings in London as a reason to clarify what authority agencies have. California Rep. Jane Harman, the committee's top Democrat, said she supported the bill's renewal, but said it could be significantly improved. "Mend it. Don't end it," she said. © 2005 The Associated Press
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