National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004

This bill, introduced in 2004, proposed a major reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community to improve national security and prevent future terrorist attacks. It sought to create a National Intelligence Director to oversee all intelligence agencies and established a National Counterterrorism Center to unify the country’s strategy and information sharing.

For everyday citizens, the bill aimed to increase safety by ensuring that different government agencies—from the FBI to local law enforcement—could more easily share critical threat information. It also included protections for the public by establishing an oversight board to ensure that new anti-terrorism measures did not violate individual privacy or civil liberties. While this specific bill was referred to a committee and did not become law on its own, many of its core ideas were incorporated into the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which was signed into law later that year.