Political Quotes

“No. 1, the courts are not precluded. The underlying bill, the bipartisan bill, permits lawsuits to go forward against the Government and the Government employees. No. 2, there was notification of the Big Eight--the ranking members and chairmen of the Intelligence Committees and the leaders--when this program was started. No. 3, article 2 does give the President the power to exercise foreign intelligence collections. I would say to my colleague who has been on the Intelligence Committee, if he doesn't think Congress has been effective in overseeing programs, he has not seen the committee that is chaired by Senator Rockefeller and on which I ride shotgun with him. The Judiciary Committee--if it was not advised, the Judiciary Committee's primary responsibility is not intelligence. That is the Intelligence Committee. We get the sensitive information. We spend a great deal of time. We have reviewed it. We believe it is a disaster for our intelligence collection to have substitution because we would see our most sensitive means of collection exposed. The private parties that might have participated would be put through tremendous economic and commercial harm and subjected potentially to harassment, and perhaps even terrorist attacks, for having worked with us.”