Political Quotes

“First, I am not a big fan of sunsets. If the Intelligence Committee does its job--and with Chairman Rockefeller leading and my role in it, I can assure you that we are looking at all of these laws, all of these practices, and authorizing legislation of the intelligence community to see if it is working, to see if it is working within proper bonds. But I believe that. And I believe the Attorney General was correct when he said we should not sunset these laws because there are no sunsets on our enemies' fatwas. That came from our Attorney General. But we did agree to a 6-month sunset because Senate Democrats assured me that 6 months was long enough to take a systematic look at the law and come up with a strong, permanent solution. They believed we needed additional protections that had not existed in the original FISA law. It did not include one of the key elements that the DNI requested in his original April 2007 request. We had to pass a shortened version because of the timeline. But given that we had that sunset, our Intelligence Committee worked very hard, after the passage of the PAA, until we were able to pass on a bipartisan basis, by 13 to 2, a strong bill that adds significant new protections for Americans and which permits the DNI to conduct the program as he thinks it needs to be conducted to assure that our country is safe.”