All eyes are on the leaders of the Democratic revolution this week, but below decks there is no shortage of scrambling around the subcommittees that will directly impact one of the key issues in the campaign — the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The spotlight has been focused on the helm of the House Intelligence Committee. Will it be Jane Harman of California, who was reportedly scratched off the list by Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi? Or the next in line, Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., the candidate of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Hastings carries too much baggage from his prosecution for taking bribes as a federal judge two decades ago, most Hill Democrats say. Although he was acquitted, the African-American lawyer was impeached in 1992 and thrown off the bench by Congress.

A close observer of the impeachment proceedings back then said that Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., a fellow African-American who will chair the Judiciary Committee come January, and who voted for Hastings’ impeachment, will play a bellwether role in whether Pelosi will pick Hastings for the post.

Texas Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the next ranking member and an expert on border security issues, has been floated as an alternative to Hastings — and rejected by the Black Caucus, according to news reports — setting up a Capitol Hill high noon over the intelligence post.

But Reyes, in line to take over the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, may not be interested, sources say.

Others may well throw their hats in the ring, too, including Rush D. Holt of New Jersey, a sharp critic of the Bush administration’s intelligence programs, who is now in line to head the Intelligence Policy Subcommittee. Holt, a physicist, has a background in intelligence and nuclear proliferation, another of his passions.

Anna G. Eshoo of California, the ranking Democrat on the Technical and Tactical Intelligence Subcommittee, “would make a good chairman, too,” a source said.

Eshoo’s main credential could well be her close relationship with Nancy Pelosi, whom she’s been friends with for 30 years, according to CQ’s Politics in America.

But she, too, may not be interested, since she holds a coveted seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over technology issues that are key to her Silicon Valley district.

Loretta Sanchez, another Californian, apparently has an open road to take over the Intelligence Subcommittee on Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection and Cybersecurity — and she wants it, according to a close observer.

Over at the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, is sure to take the chairmanship, sources there say, but one of the panel’s feistier members, Zoe Lofgren of California, is coveting a leadership slot elsewhere, at the Judiciary Committee.

Thompson is also considering creating a Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, the source said.

On the Senate side, John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., who has sparred bitterly with Republicans over the handling of pre-war Iraq intelligence, can be counted on to take the gavel of the Intelligence Committee come January.

On Tuesday he was cautiously supportive of President Bush’s choice to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Defense Department with former CIA Director Robert Gates.

Other key Senate Democrats on the committee either demurred or failed to respond to questions about their future plans.

Only slightly less important than who will head the committees is how they will be staffed.

Over their relatively short history, the professional staffs of the intelligence — and now homeland security — committees have strived to leave their partisanship outside the doors of their Secure Compartmented Intelligence Facilities, or SCIFs, where they do most of their work.

That comity has frayed in recent years however, especially under the strain of revelations concerning such issues as the warrantless wiretap programs launched by the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“There were antecedents to such rancor,” says Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who briefly chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee in the early 1990s, “but it really has been a phenomenon of the second Bush administration.”

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, inflamed Democrats recently by issuing Republican staff reports on Iran intelligence and blaming a Democratic staffer for leaking the gloomy National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism and the Iraq war.

The Democrats and the staffer, Larry Hanauer, insisted he was innocent. Hanauer remains at work, but without clearance to the SCIF, said a committee source.

For their part, the Democrats rarely wasted an opportunity to hammer the Republicans on their handling of the war in Iraq or disinclination to force Bush administration officials to explain the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping programs.

Each member delegates a staffer to the respective committees beyond the professional corps.

“On [the House] Homeland Security [Committee], it will be two-thirds Democrat and one-third Republican, just the reverse of what it is now,” said Jim Turner, its former ranking member, who did not seek reelection in 2004. “Outside of any shared staff, the remaining staff would be a two-thirds/one-third split.”

“It’s very personality driven,” Graham said in a telephone interview on Nov. 6, the day before the elections.

“In some instances, the new chairman will make an effort to keep as much continuity as possible.”

In other cases, “the broom sweeps clean,” he said.

One veteran Democratic staffer who lost his House jobs twice due to election defeats, says winning is far preferable to losing.

“It feels very good,” said Lee Godown, chief of staff to Loretta Sanchez.

Godown said the Democratic staffs will have little difficulty taking back the reins of power because they’ve been out of power for a relatively short time.

“We can do in a month what it took the Republicans a year to do,” he joked.

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.