On the recordMay 14, 2015
I want to start by thanking the chairman and the ranking member for supporting this amendment, and I want to thank my colleague from California for giving me the opportunity to work with him on this amendment. Mr. Chairman, the reason I care about the subject matter of this amendment is because one of my constituents, Warren Weinstein, was recently killed by a U.S. drone strike while he was being held in an al Qaeda compound along the border in Pakistan. Obviously, we weren't aware that he was held there. Warren was originally captured over 3 years ago while he was doing work in Pakistan on behalf of USAID. He was 73 years old. He spent his whole life in service to his country working for USAID on foreign aid matters. He was a wonderful man and has a wonderful family. Across the last several years, I worked very closely with his wife and his family in helping them try to influence our government to find Warren. The one thing I realized across the last several years working on these matters is that, even though we have incredibly dedicated men and women who work at the FBI, who work at the CIA, who work at the State Department, who work on hostage recovery matters, as my colleague from California has pointed out, these efforts are not nearly as well coordinated as they should be. We do not have someone on point who wakes up every day with the mission of finding American hostages that are held in the Middle East. This amendment does this.…
