Mike Levin: “I think the consumer must establish the requirements and not the NID. I think there is also an issue about analysis…”

“I think the consumer must establish the requirements and not the NID. I think there is also an issue about analysis, because I think we ought to be promoting greater numbers of analyses, and not getting into group-think. We should be promoting independent, objective analysis and I think this wording probably or unintentionally could concentrate or centralize that in a NID. I think that is an unintended result, but we can discuss that later. But on this one issue that is raised in this amendment, it seems to me this amendment goes exactly in the direction all of us want, which is we need somebody to make a tasking decision, to have that power, and to do it exactly as our friend from Ohio said. You can't at a critical moment have that confused or diffused or uncertain. If something has to be done quickly, someone has to make a decision, and the person who makes a decision in this bill is clearly the NID on the tasking of the intelligence.”