Porter Goss: “this is one of the situations where there is a lot of misinformation, a lot of perception, a lot of misperception…”

“this is one of the situations where there is a lot of misinformation, a lot of perception, a lot of misperception frankly. There clearly is a slippery slope here, because the gentleman from Michigan's amendment talks about the annual statement of the total amount for intelligence expenditures. The problem with that is that if we give a number and we say these are intelligence expenditures, then we have to start defining what is intelligence. It is not exactly what other people think it is going to be. We will have to start paring out different programs and different functions to determine what we mean. Are you talking about the amount we spend on national security? That should surely be a big number. It is required in the Constitution. That is something the Federal Government does. Are we talking about the intelligence function in national security? And if so, what does that number mean and what specifically does it include and what does it leave out? What is intelligence? Is the State Department gathering of information or reading Le Figaro, is that part of intelligence? Is that open source intelligence or not? You have to start making further descriptions and definitions. That is the slippery slope.”