Jane Harman

Mr. Speaker, as the lead conferee on the intelligence reform bill, I oppose the rule on H.R. 418 and the underlying bill because they will not make us safer. What H.R. 418 will do is undermine several key provisions of the Bipartisan…

As we vote today to recognize the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is worth noting that the number of Holocaust survivors who bore witness to the atrocities at the German camps is dwindling. One, respected lawyer, Samuel…

I am pleased that the rules package includes a provision that will make the Homeland Security Committee a permanent committee. More importantly, we will be giving the committee real oversight and legislative jurisdiction. But I am…

I rise in tribute to a gentleman and a gentle man, Bob Matsui. I will sorely miss my good friend and colleague Bob Matsui. California and America have lost a champion for justice, Social Security, fair trade and opportunity for all. Bob's…

I can assure Members that 10 weeks and thousands of hours by Members and staff went into the language of this conference report. There were fights about almost every issue. We worked it out as best we could. We worked it out on a…

Mr. Speaker, I rise to thank the new chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), for his nice comments and for his enormous efforts at restoring bipartisanship to our…

I rise to make clear that I will not object to this rule waiving any points of order which might lie against the conference report, a report that I strongly support. I would point out to our colleagues that the conference report, which was…

The direction set by this highly partisan, inexperienced management team, which Porter Goss brought over with him to the CIA, may cause the wrong people to resign in protest, and may hurt our efforts to win the war on terror.

instead of passing one strong bill to make our country safer, the House bill has two divergent parts: the first part is the core bill, which includes a watered-down version of the intelligence reform provisions in the 9/11 Commission…

Mr. Chairman, the amendment's sponsor knows a lot about intelligence, having served as staff director for the Intelligence Committee in the other body under the late great Senator Goldwater, author of Goldwater-Nichols, the law that…

Mr. Chairman, a number of speakers have commented on the courage and sacrifice of intelligence community personnel who work in the shadows in austere lands. As we debate this bill, their lives are at risk and we owe them and their families…

the defense communications budget and the defense information security budget are not part of the National Foreign Intelligence program. Only the NFIB will be managed by the NID, as it is today by the DCI. So those budgets will not be…

Mr. Chairman, I hail from California, the land of earthquakes. Yesterday, Washington experienced two near simultaneous earthquakes. In California, we would call that 'the big one.' The first was the Duelfer report, which conclusively…

September 13 was an important date for Congress. It marked the expiration of the decade-old Assault Weapons Ban. Police Chiefs across the country strongly encouraged the extension of this ban. President Bush even announced he would sign an…

have we become unhinged in this House? The business that most of us are engaged in all day today and the business that we will be engaged in all next week is trying to pass responsible reforms to implement the recommendations of the 9/11…

in July of 1996, I stood on the House Floor and spoke in opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act. Eight years later, here I am again, standing in opposition to another attempt to divide this nation in an election year and ostracize some…

although I have expressed serious concerns about our government's ability to search library and book store records, I do not believe that the Sanders amendment is the proper vehicle for addressing this concern. I will reluctantly oppose…

I do not oppose the amendment, but I will control the time on this side; and I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to commend the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) not only for the amendment but for, as he said, engaging…

I would point out to our last speaker that the DOD appropriations bill is a $400 billion bill, a small fraction of which is for intelligence. In my view, that is not the place for this debate about fully funding counterterrorism…

I understand that we may not fully know what we need. That is why we have supplementals. But in this case we do fully know what we need. We know what the agencies in the intelligence community need for counterterrorism because they have…

strong intelligence is our first line of defense in the war on terrorism. And make no mistake, we are at war. The gruesome beheadings of Danny Pearl, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, and yesterday's murder of 33-year-old Kim Sun Il of South Korea…

I commend his service to the Congress and to the other body when we were both staffers. And I share his heat. I was standing on this floor just half an hour ago or so saying we all got it wrong. Mentioning the fact that starting in the…

I support his amendment. For years the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has extolled the virtues of open-source reporting, as he calls it, OSINT. Often they are the most reliable form of intelligence available, as his charts…

I believe that having the CIA Inspector General conduct an impartial independent audit of the intelligence reporting on this matter is a good idea, and I support his amendment. Let me just mention something that I do not believe has come…

I do not think we have any further speakers on this amendment, but I would like to enter into a dialogue with the amendment's sponsor to suggest to him that we might agree by unanimous consent that the sense of Congress in his resolution…