I would say that, in many cases, you have vindicated many of the assertions that I made, both as the author of the PATRIOT Act in 2001 as well as the author of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, which was signed by the President in March of…

I have long believed that civil liberties and national security need not be in conflict, and I hope to work with my colleagues to strike that balance in a responsible and effective manner.

Congress must reauthorize the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act before December 31st of this year, and the clock is ticking.

Now, if it isn't unconstitutional, and it's working, then really, I don't think that we should break something that doesn't need fixing.

I do take a little bit of a pride of authorship in the fact that with the Sensenbrenner PATRIOT Act, 15 of the 17 expanded law enforcement provisions either went unchallenged as to their constitutionality in almost 8 years.

In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act was passed with wide bipartisan support.

I'm very curious at the fact that most of the discussion of the questions and answers has been on national security letters.

Responses of Christine Anne Varney to questions submitted by Senator Feingold

no one thinks we should abandon Afghanistan.

I'm concerned that our massive military presence may be contributing to instability in the region.

In these tough economic times, we are all cautious about spending our money wisely and stretching each dollar as far as we can.

I am asking you today for your commitment to advocate for finding a way to allow some limited information to become public so we can have a real debate about this.

My primary concern with our current strategy is that our massive military footprint may be breeding militancy in the region and could push militants into nuclear-armed Pakistan.

I feel as strongly as anybody in this body and in this country about keeping things secret that have to be kept secret.

I appreciate that the Justice Department letter this week made public for the first time that the lone-wolf authority has never been used.

I never objected to granting this authority to the FBI. My concern as with a lot of the PATRIOT Act provisions, was that adequate safeguards were not included.

This obviously leaves me very concerned about how seriously the FBI takes First Amendment issues in the course of its investigations.

I urge you to continue to work closely with State and local law enforcement on these issues.