Jon Kyl: “I first compliment the distinguished chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senator from Kansas…”

“I first compliment the distinguished chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senator from Kansas, not only for the remarks he just made, but for the way he led this committee during very difficult times, as has been mentioned before. I regret he has been criticized for the very acts of comity which are required of a chairman in a position such as this for trying his best to accommodate the members of the minority, trying his best to be as open and as broad as he could possibly be in approaching the issues that have been brought to his attention by members of the minority, even criticized, I have seen, in his own hometown press, his own press in Kansas for being too soft in dealing with the members of the Democratic Party in this matter. It is his job to bend over backwards, to make the Intelligence Committee work in a nonpartisan fashion. I didn't say 'bipartisan,' I said 'nonpartisan' because that is the way this committee was set up 25 years ago: to be a place where politics could not intrude.”