House votes to create new office for medical intelligence to get earlier pandemic warnings

WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to create a new office — and new authorities — designed to push U.S. intelligence agencies to provide earlier warnings about disease outbreaks and pandemics.

A provision inserted by committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D.-Calif., into the bipartisan annual intelligence authorization bill — which was voted out of committee during a classified session late Thursday afternoon and is likely to become law — creates new authorities designed to counter foreign biological threats, a committee official tells NBC News.

The legislation, if signed by President Joe Biden, would change the name of the National Counterproliferation Center — a department of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that focuses on containing the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons — to the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, reflecting its new responsibility of focusing on disease threats.

The official added that the bill’s classified annex includes several provisions designed to boost pandemic preparedness and global health security.

The new provisions were drafted based on the results of a mostly classified so-called “deep dive” by the House Intelligence Committee into how the spies dealt with the Covid pandemic, and whether there is more the CIA and other agencies should be doing to collect medical intelligence, Congressional officials said. The review concluded that the spy agencies should play a more prominent role in gathering information that could help policy-makers have more visibility in the early days of a health crisis.