Timothy Roemer: “I join in the accolades and the compliments to our chairman and to our ranking member, who have brought the committee…”

“I join in the accolades and the compliments to our chairman and to our ranking member, who have brought the committee together in a bipartisan way. When we do have differences in the committee, they are settled in an inclusive way and in an intelligent manner that I think benefits the bipartisan nature of the final product. They both do this institution well by their working together. I also want to thank the staff. The staff has been through an exceedingly difficult year, working in an environment in the United States Capitol that has often been target or a suspected target, has been evacuated a number of times. It is a very difficult environment; and they do an excellent job creating an excellent product, and we are grateful for their hard work. The intelligence budget and the reforms that are needed are now confronted with three different challenges. Certainly, we have the September 11 challenge, the attack on our country. We have the challenge of changing the culture in the intelligence community over the last 10 years from one that is targeted in an old-fashioned way, guards, guns and gates, to now trying to go after transnational targets, tents, technology, terrorism; and that is a slow and sometimes difficult push into the future. We also have the difficult challenge of latching up the intelligence with the military capability as we are doing now in Afghanistan.”