Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
PENSACOLA - Former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum generally endorsed the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations, particularly a proposal to put all intelligence agencies under a single head, as he campaigned for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination Monday.
McCollum's comments came as President Bush also announced support for the commission's proposals to create such an intelligence czar and a counterterrorism center.
"I have long advocated a much stronger director of central intelligence, whatever name you give him," said McCollum, who once served on the House Intelligence Committee and founded the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.
McCollum didn't offer an opinion on whether the intelligence director should be in the White House. That is an idea opposed by Bush but supported by commission leaders and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
"The bottom line is that the 9/11 commission report is very good," McCollum said in an interview at the start of a two-day bus tour of the Panhandle. "I'm sure there are things I'd change in some manner, but basically the general thrust of it is correct."
McCollum also singled out support for the commission's recommendation to merge the House and Senate intelligence committees, something he said he proposed in the minority report of a congressional panel that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal during the 1980s.