Political Quotes

“I rise in support of the nomination of John Brennan to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Brennan earned a bipartisan vote of 12-3 in the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which I serve. He is clearly qualified to lead the CIA and deserved that bipartisan vote in committee. And he deserves confirmation by the full Senate today. I say that in spite of the difficulties my colleagues and I encountered in extracting information and commitments throughout the confirmation process. Our concerns were less about John Brennan himself and more about the role that the next CIA director needs to play. And we believe that the information and commitments we finally secured from him and from the White House are extraordinarily relevant to the role of any CIA director. Alongside several of my colleagues, I fought to enhance transparency and preserve our system of checks and balances. The American people have the expectation that their government is upholding the principles of oversight and accountability. Consistent with our national security, the presumption of transparency should be the rule, not the exception. The government should make as much information available to the American public as possible, while protecting national security. We have seen during previous administrations the problems that can arise when even the intelligence committees are left out of the loop: warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary detention and torture.…”