Mark Kirk: “I rise in support of the Simmons amendment. Unlike some other amendments in this bill that are offered for partisan…”

“I rise in support of the Simmons amendment. Unlike some other amendments in this bill that are offered for partisan advantage, this amendment is offered by a former CIA officer with detailed knowledge of how the U.S. intelligence community works. To my knowledge, there are only three current Members of Congress who work with the CIA: our chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), the author of this amendment; the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons); and me, who is detailed to the CIA from navy intelligence. This amendment seeks to change our intelligence culture to become more effective in the age of the Internet. Today, every two-bit terror organization in the world has a Web site broadcasting information on its activities. Internet news, political parties, and foreign government sites all offer new material to our intelligence community. For years in the cold war, our enemies collected open-source data on us, but we were forced to collect secret data on them. That is now changing. There is a wealth of open-source data on our adversaries. Every analyst in the community should be encouraged to use as much current and accurate open-source data as possible; and I applaud the gentleman, who knows the CIA so well, for offering this amendment to keep our culture up to date with the current technology.”