Political Quotes

“Senator Metzenbaum has just illustrated why it is going to be a great loss not to have him in the U.S. Senate. I happened, back many years ago, to have served in military intelligence when I was in the Army. I think the bill he offers makes a great deal of sense. I have never been on the Intelligence Committee. I will be pleased to cosponsor it. But I rise primarily because there is a kind of an unreality to some of the conversations about what is going on with spies. Let us face it, Russia spies, we spy--we should. It tomorrow we hear a rumor that Great Britain, our good friend, is developing some special kind of weapon, we are not going to sit back and wait until we read it in the London Times. We are going to have espionage operations. That applies to our friends; it applies to our potential foes. That is the way the intelligence community operates. For us not to look at the big picture and not to do what we can to see that Russia has a viable democracy and a stable situation, and to get all wrought up over this one instance of their spying is not in our national interest. What we have to do on the floor of this body is to serve the national interest, not the national passion. We are responding to the national passion. Is this a tragedy? Yes. Is this going to be repeated in the future? I hate to say it, but even with the Metzenbaum legislation, it is going to happen again in the future.”