Gwen Graham: “during this week, I have spoken--and this will be the third statement--about the need to reform our Nation's…”

“during this week, I have spoken--and this will be the third statement--about the need to reform our Nation's intelligence agencies. I have suggested that the horrific acts of September 11, 2001--acts which killed nearly 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania--could have been avoided if our intelligence agencies had been more organized and more focused in dealing with the threat of international terrorism. These conclusions were largely the result of the work of the House-Senate joint inquiry on September 11, 2001. This bicameral, bipartisan committee finished its investigation on December 20, 2002, and filed its report. In that report, it concluded there were a number of problems with our existing intelligence networks and it made 19 recommendations of how to fix those problems. Repairing the flaws in our intelligence community is a matter of national security, a matter of the highest importance and urgency. As we are now learning in the context of the war with Iraq and Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, policymakers cannot make wise decisions affecting the security of American people without timely, accurate, credible information, and tough-minded, independent analysis, and will use that information to shape the judgments of the President and other decisionmakers, not to validate previously held opinions. If we fail to accurately perceive future threats, we will be poorly prepared to respond to them.”