Porter Goss: “I quite agree. The gentlewoman from California said one of the worst kept secrets in Washington is the intelligence…”

“I quite agree. The gentlewoman from California said one of the worst kept secrets in Washington is the intelligence budget. One of the worst kept secrets in Washington is, what is the intelligence part of the intelligence budget? What is the intelligence part of the defense budget? Some have said that we are hiding something from Americans. We are not trying to hide anything from Americans. We are trying to keep some secrets from our enemies. That is true. We are trying to do that. But I would point out to those who say we are trying to hide something from Americans, we have a representative form of government. This is democracy at its finest in the world. Those of us here represent those of us abroad in our land. Those of us on the committee are charged with the responsibility of oversight. It was not always such good oversight. It is very good oversight now, and we are accountable. I would say we are hiding nothing from the Americans because there is no American that I would look at right in the eye and say, we are spending the money as wisely and as well as we can and as appropriately as we can. Fifteen men and women, good and true, making that decision about what our intelligence needs are at this time, I have no problem with that. I think that is entirely reasonable. When I go beyond that and start talking about specifics, I start removing some of the confusion the enemy seize out there. I think confusion to our enemies is not a bad thing.”