http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.nsa26jan26001517,0,4141472.story
"From the Baltimore Sun
Sun follow-up
NSA Electicity Crisis Gets Senate Scrutiny
By Siobhan Gorman
Sun reporter
January 26, 2007
Washington - The National Secutity Agency's impending electricity
shortfall is 'sort of a national catastrophe,' Sen.[ator] John D.
Rockefeller IV, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
said yesterday.
Rockefeller, who took over as head of the panel when Democrats
regained control of the Senate this month, called the power shortage a
symptom of a larger problem: the NSA's failure to manage long-range
issues.
'They haven't focused on the large picture,' the West Virginia
Democrat said in an interview.
The Sun reported last year that the NSA expects its power demands to
exceed its supply within the next two years - an issue it has been
aware of since the late 1990s. NSA director Lt. Gen. Keith B.
Alexander has acknowledged the problem and assured lawmakers that he
has assigned some of his top lieutenants to tackle it, according to a
committee aide.
The NSA has set up an 'issue management team' to work through the
problem, The Sun reported last week. Such groups are usually assembled
to focus on key spy targets, not infrastructure problems.
'It's true that the power, space and cooling needs of the agency
weren't adequately addressed, and we're fixing it,' said NSA spokesman
Ken White. He said the agency had been working on the problem with
lawmakers for nine months, updating them as recently as this week.
The NSA is 'effectively addressing this complex situation, and is
confident that we have a strategy that will receive the necessary
funding to ensure sufficient power capacity and reliability in the
future,' he said in a statement.
As part of a broader look at the nation's intelligence agencies,
Rockefeller said he plans to take up, at a hearing in March, the NSA's
coming electicity crisis and its inability to adapt to 21st-century
communications technology.
'We have been very weak on oversight since the beginning of the Bush
administration, and this had not been a good time to be weak on
oversight,' he said.
That is about to change, the senator promised.
'There's going to be a showdown,' he said, noting that the
administration has already rebuffed other senator's requests for
documents. If his committee does not get the information it needs,
'I'm not going to rule out the process of subpoena .'
The electricity shortfall appeared to be a chief concern as he
discussed his panel's priorities.
...."
END OF PART 1 of 3 PARTS
Reg Curtis/VE9RWC
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:28 CST