Saxby Chambliss: “I rise to urge my colleagues to oppose the Udall amendment, which would eliminate the bipartisan detainee provision that…”

“I rise to urge my colleagues to oppose the Udall amendment, which would eliminate the bipartisan detainee provision that the chairman, the ranking member, and committee members worked so hard to craft. These provisions are necessary to provide some certainty for our intelligence professionals in how our government will handle terrorist detainees and how long detainees can be questioned for intelligence-gathering purposes. We have heard quite a lot over the past few days from administration officials about how our intelligence and law enforcement professionals need flexibility. In fact, Director of National Intelligence Clapper wrote to the Intelligence Committee arguing for flexibility and stressing the need for a process that, as he said, ``encourages intelligence collection through the preservation of all lawful avenues of detention and interrogation.'' With that, I agree wholeheartedly. The problem with the status quo, however, is that the administration refuses to use all of its lawful avenues of detention and interrogation available to it, choosing instead only to use one, and that is article III courts. For nearly 3 years, Members of Congress have pressed the administration to establish an effective and unambiguous long-term detention policy, but they have refused.…”