For GOP dad, defying party is personal

By Charles Babington
The Washington Post

AP, FILE PHOTO, 2003 U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who has a son serving in Iraq, is the chief opponent of the intelligence-reform bill in Congress.

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WASHINGTON — Congress' chief opponent of legislation to revamp the intelligence community says he remains unmoved, leaving the White House scrambling over the weekend for a solution to the impasse that has frustrated the bill's backers and raised questions about President Bush's clout among Republican lawmakers.

For Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the House Armed Services Committee chairman at the center of the logjam, the role is a familiar one. During 24 years in Congress, he has bucked Democratic and Republican presidents when he thought they provided too little money, equipment and weaponry for U.S. troops.

When it comes to safeguarding satellite intelligence for troops in Iraq — the issue that prompted him to waylay the White House-backed bill last month — he has an unusually personal interest.

Hunter's son, a Marine lieutenant who has served two tours in Iraq, phoned him from embattled Fallujah and "told me to hang in there on the intel thing," the congressman said in an interview late last week.

"A lot of military people have told me that," he added, but his accounts of his son, Duncan Duane Hunter, have proved especially moving to his House colleagues, several said.

Hunter has raised two main objections to the legislation that emerged from House-Senate negotiations: It would give the Pentagon insufficient budgetary control over intelligence operations, and it would make it possible for a director of national intelligence to override Pentagon efforts to deliver information from spy satellites immediately to troops at war. Hunter said in the interview that the budget issue had been resolved, but not the other.

"The military folks are very concerned about the chain-of-command issue," he said. "The Senate has got to move across the finish line on this." Senate leaders have said they will make no further compromises.

Hunter, a decorated Army Ranger in Vietnam, has long had a reputation as a champion of troops in the field. With the added emotional impact of his son's role in Iraq, his influence among rank-and-file House Republicans has reached a new level, one that caught the administration and Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., by surprise last month.

On Nov. 20, Hastert urged GOP members to embrace the negotiated intelligence bill, which Bush had endorsed. But after Hunter and another committee chairman addressed their colleagues in a closed meeting, so many Republicans voiced opposition that Hastert kept the measure from reaching a floor vote, even though there apparently were enough Democratic votes to pass it.
 
House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., also criticized the bill, saying it lacked important curbs on illegal immigration. But White House efforts to resuscitate the legislation have focused mainly on Hunter's complaints.

The House will convene today for a short session to decide whether lawmakers should vote on a House-Senate compromise to create a national-intelligence-director position to coordinate the nation's spy agencies and enact other anti-terrorism measures. If the House passes the bill, the Senate will return to do the same.

A top Republican scolded opponents who worry the Pentagon would lose some of its authority, saying national security is far more important than turf battles.

"There was a global intelligence failure. We can't have a status quo. We've got to change that," said Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I hope we can change their minds," said Roberts, R-Kan. "If it came to a vote, it would pass the House."

In the interview, Hunter said there was nothing improper about a Republican committee chairman opposing a Republican commander in chief on a matter of Pentagon authority.

"I think the system is working well," Hunter said, "because my obligation ... is to the troops. We are a check and balance on the executive branch. I have a lot more time to spend on this issue than a lot of the folks in the White House, and we've done our homework on it."

Hunter's longtime associates describe him as an unpretentious lawmaker who almost surely will base his decision on what he thinks is best for those, like his son, battling insurgents in Iraq. They were not surprised last month when Hunter spoke forcefully against the bill even after Bush had phoned him to urge its passage.

Praise and criticism, flattery and warnings roll easily off Hunter's shoulders, the associates said. He is slow to anger, they said, and slow to change his mind unless someone presents a compelling case — even if he is opposing the president.

"He is consistently pleasant, but firm," said Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., a colleague of Hunter's for 20 years. "If you haven't convinced him that you're right and he's wrong, he'll dig in his heels."

As for White House aides' efforts to overcome House resistance to the bill, Coble said, "If they don't make some kind of case that something has improved, I don't believe Duncan Hunter or Jim Sensenbrenner will cave."

Since 1981, Hunter, 56, has represented the San Diego area, a major naval base. From the outset, looking out for the military was synonymous with looking out for his constituents, colleagues said. Hunter sometimes annoyed the Pentagon by pushing it to build and deploy more ships and submarines, said Chris Warden, his press secretary in the early 1980s.

"He was willing to go to the mat for his district," said Warden, who teaches journalism at Troy State University in Alabama. "He wasn't really concerned about the niceties of Washington." Warden said Hunter stunned staff by nonchalantly taking his young son — now the Marine — to a White House meeting with President Reagan. The child delighted a surprised Reagan, Warden said.

Over the years, Hunter rarely met a weapons system he did not like. He championed the satellite-based Strategic Defense Initiative and called for building more B-2 bombers without reducing B-1 bombers. In March 2000, he and others persuaded Hastert to boost military spending by $4 billion by threatening to vote against a key budget resolution.

Two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hunter criticized Bush's spending priorities, saying the president wanted to "conduct an aggressive Ronald Reagan foreign policy with a Jimmy Carter defense budget."

"He's a classic sort of pro-defense conservative," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military scholar at the Brookings Institution.

At least for now, in the struggle between the Pentagon and the intelligence community, Hunter seems to have plenty of admirers in the House.

Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus and The Associated Press contributed to this report.