On the recordFebruary 25, 2010
I am pleased that this legislation supports critical U.S. intelligence capabilities at a level higher than we ever have in past years. This bill improves the intelligence community's ability to understand hard targets, those countries that pose the greatest strategic threat to U.S. interests. But it also increases funds for intelligence collections that will support U.S. policy decisions in other important regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia. We must continue to focus our resources on our priority targets, but we can't neglect emerging threats. This bill does both. The bill also includes an amendment that I introduced in committee in conjunction with our colleague, David Price of North Carolina, to improve the effectiveness of interrogations and prevent a return to past abuses. It calls on the Director of National Intelligence to evaluate scientific research on interrogations and assess how to improve our U.S. interrogators' training. It also requires the DNI to assess the ethics training provided to interrogators so they understand the boundaries within which they can operate. Finally, the bill contains a provision that I sponsored that requires the newly created Inspector General of the intelligence community to study the intelligence community's electronic waste disposal procedures.
