Dutch Ruppersberger: “I support all these amendments. I agree with Chairman Rogers that it is very troubling when senior U.S. officials who…”

“I support all these amendments. I agree with Chairman Rogers that it is very troubling when senior U.S. officials who know our most sensitive secrets leave the Federal Government and immediately go to work for a company that is owned by a foreign country that poses a significant counterintelligence threat to us. I do have some concerns that this restriction might be seen as singling out our intelligence professionals, since it does not apply to every senior official in the government with a top secret clearance. I would be in favor of a waiver procedure for when the risks are low. For example, for someone who wants to teach English at a State-funded university in his or her retirement. But on the whole, I agree with Mr. Rogers and support this provision. I also agree with Mr. Connolly and Mr. Kilmer that we need to find efficiencies in the intelligence community's use of software. In fact, we just don't need to find them, we need to fix them. Finding and fixing inefficiencies translates into saving taxpayer dollars, which is something we must always strive to do. I agree with Ms. Robin Kelly that we need to increase the diversity of our intelligence workforce by adding predominantly black institutions to ongoing intelligence community programs currently designed for Historically Black Colleges. Diversity is a good thing in its own right, and it will create even greater opportunities for intelligence collection.…”