Border War

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush's new executive order revising rules for intelligence agencies expands the national intelligence director's powers and may further erode the CIA's traditional autonomy. The order, revised in secret and signed Wednesday, is drawing criticism from civil liberties groups and even lawmakers from the president's own party. House Republicans on the intelligence committee walked out of a Thursday morning briefing by the national intelligence director, Mike McConnell, on the order to protest what they consider the White House's pattern of disrespect for congressional oversight. The committee believes it has not been consulted or informed about critical intelligence matters. These include the executive order; Israel's bombing of an alleged Syrian nuclear facility last summer; changes in U.S. intelligence on Iran; the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; and the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes. The revisions to an executive order first issued by President Reagan in 1981 reflect organizational changes in the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush's order lays out the relationships among 16 intelligence agencies.

Border Security

After two years spent supporting the Border Patrol, performing jobs that have included surveillance, air transportation, building and fixing border fence and repairing roads, the National Guard begins pulling out Sunday, with the last of the personnel leaving in July. Their work was part of a Bush administration project dubbed Operation Jump Start, begun with the idea that the National Guard's assistance with nonenforcement jobs would allow the Border Patrol to use more of its agents for patrol while it went about boosting its staff to 18,000. As many as 6,000 guardsmen, some just back home from overseas deployment, volunteered along the southern border the first year, with about 1,200 of those in California. Their numbers were halved last year as the operation wound down.

• JJ Commentary: Just what we need – reduced border security. The bad gets even worse.

Border Insanity

A former Border Patrol agent who was convicted of shooting a drug smuggling suspect and then lying about it has been beaten by fellow inmates in prison. Prison officials on Tuesday confirmed assertions by a congressman and relatives of Ignacio Ramos. He was attacked Saturday night after his case was described on the TV show "America's Most Wanted," the officials said. The convictions of Ramos and fellow former agent Jose Alonso Compean sparked outcry from critics who argued that the men were merely doing their job defending the border against criminals. U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a vocal supporter of the agents and opponent of illegal immigration, criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for failing to protect Ramos and demanded a full presidential pardon for the two men. "Not only did the administration choose the side of a foreign dope runner over the agents who stopped him from smuggling a load of drugs into the county — now they've failed to protect that agent while his case is on appeal," he said in a statement.

A Department of Homeland Security official admitted today the agency misled Congress when it contended it possessed investigative reports proving Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean confessed guilt and declared they "wanted to shoot some Mexicans" prior to the incident that led to their imprisonment. The admission came during the testimony of DHS Inspector General Richard L. Skinner before the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, according to Michael Green, press secretary for Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas. Rep. John Culberson of Texas is calling for the resignation of Department of Homeland Security officials who he says lied about the case of two Border Patrol agents imprisoned for their actions in the shooting of a drug smuggler. Culberson said he believes false information was given to congressmen to "throw us off the scent and cover up what appears to be an unjust criminal prosecution of two U.S. law enforcement officers whose job was protecting our country's borders from criminals and terrorists."

Three Border Patrol agents, who were given immunity to testify against fellow agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean in the Feb. 17, 2005, shooting of a drug-smuggling suspect as he fled across the U.S.-Mexico border, are no longer with the agency because they changed their accounts of the incident several times. These agents were at the location of the shooting incident, assisted in destroying evidence of the shooting.

• JJ Commentary: The New World (Dis)Order wants to keep the borders open as the move ahead to form the North American Union.