Liz Saville Roberts: “I thank you. Mr. President, as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I rise today in strong support…”

“I thank you. Mr. President, as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I rise today in strong support of the nomination of Ambassador John D. Negroponte to serve as our Nation's first Director of National Intelligence. The committee held Ambassador Negroponte's confirmation hearing on Tuesday, April 12, and voted favorably to report his nomination to the full Senate on Thursday, April 14. Now, the speed with which the committee acted upon this nomination and the nomination of LTG, soon to be four-star general, Michael Hayden, to be the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, really underscores the importance the committee, and I believe the Senate, places on continuing and ensuring reform of our Nation's intelligence community and, as a result, our national security. While our intelligence community has a great number of successes--let me emphasize that--of which intelligence professionals should be justifiably proud--and the problem here is that when we have successes in the intelligence community, many times either the community or those of us who serve on the committee or those who are familiar with those successes cannot say anything about them because it is classified--but the intelligence failures associated with the attacks of 9/11 and the intelligence community's flawed assessments of Iraq's WMD programs underscored the need for fundamental change across the intelligence community.…”