Joe Lieberman

I hope that some of you on the Committee and the Committee itself will think about taking whatever parts of this report seem sensible and necessary to you and become leaders in the Senate and Congress and seeing it through to…

It was a small step for mankind but a large step for Congress.

And we were talking about the problem that there were not medical--pharmaceutical countermeasures and how do we create a market incentive where there is no natural market incentive for pharmaceutical companies to devote research to this.

Mr. Chairman, I do want to mention--it is not directly responsive, but it is related--that it happens that Senator Ayotte and Senator Booker have introduced a bill for the Department of Homeland Security to reach into its stockpile of…

Terrorist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are devastating the Middle East, setting new horrific standards for inhumanity and brutality, and have specifically endorsed--ISIL has specifically endorsed--the use of…

This was really a center of bipartisan activity when it was not happening in a lot of other places.

We are asking the Vice President to direct the National Security Council to review all strategic biodefense documents.

So what happened was that this brilliant idea of ours did not seem so brilliant to the generic drug industry which did not want the patent life extended.

So I am going to give a legislator's response and then yield to the former Cabinet member.

The bottom-line conclusion of this report is that we are better defended than we were in 2001 after the anthrax attacks, but really the State of our biodefense is inadequate, and we are unprepared for the very real biological threats we…

I am really grateful that this Senate Committee is the first to hold a hearing on our report.

That is a great question.

The heart of this government is so contrary to the values of the United States.

But, as I understand it, the residents of Camp Liberty want a--want to leave together.

Thanks, Senator Sessions. Great to be here.

This requirement of renouncing membership in an organization that is no longer considered a threat or a terrorist organization by any means... seems to me to be very un-American.

Incidentally, broadly bipartisan.

Well, I'll start at the beginning. First, thank you for the fact that the defense authorization bill has some components to it that really move in a direction that we would want.

There's--to me, there's not, Senator, an acceptable answer to that question.

I don't see a real plan, and certainly not one that's financed.

As I understand it--and right now, of course, most of the folks who have left have gone to Albania.

We made a commitment to these people. We didn't live up to it. It's time to finish it.

I think we would be derelict and disloyal to our own national values if we did not find better ways, overt and covert, to support democratic opposition to the dictatorial regime in Tehran.

I hope that my skepticism about it is proven to be an overreaction and not well founded.

I've then learned that the group is sometimes hard to deal with, and they have very firm views.