Christopher Shays: “the Cold War is over and the world is a more dangerous place. The strategy that we used to have of containment, react…”

“the Cold War is over and the world is a more dangerous place. The strategy that we used to have of containment, react and mutually assured destruction went out the window on 9/11. Lord, it probably went out earlier, we just did not get it. We need now to be able to detect in order to prevent, and our intelligence community needs the capability and the tools so they can detect and prevent. We are not going to be able to harden a subway site, a bus station, a train station. We can have more people, dogs, cameras, lights, we can do a lot of things to help, but we cannot stop it unless we have the tools. We do not want to use the criminal means to go after terrorists because you have to wait until the crime has been committed. We want to prevent not a crime from being committed; we want to prevent a terrorist attack from being committed. So give them the tools. The PATRIOT Act does it. We have seen it operate for 4 years. It has been amazing how well it has operated. When people talk about libraries, why in the world would we want to make a library a free terrorist zone? We allow our forces to go in for a crime in a library. Why should they not be allowed to go in for a terrorist issue?”