Political Quotes

“reclaiming my time, I am pointing out why it is, from my perspective, inappropriate under the Defense Authorization Bill to instruct the Intelligence Committee what we need to be doing. As I was indicating, it was last year at roughly this time, when my colleagues and I on the Defense Committee and the Intelligence Committee were shaping the new director of National Intelligence, responding to the concerns of the 9/11 Commission. And as we acknowledged through that process, we had a tremendous amount to learn from our colleagues on the House Armed Services Committee about how they used intelligence. They had, I think, a shared view that they had much to learn from the Intelligence Committee about how others in the intelligence community and policymakers might use intelligence. {time} 2200 But one of the things that we really focused on was that we could learn from each other, that we would each stay in our lanes of the road. They are the experts on defense, we attempt to be the experts on intelligence, and we respect these roles. One of the other things that came out of the 9/11 Commission report, besides giving us some guidance in terms of how to restructure the intelligence community, was the emphasis that the 9/11 Commission said there has been inadequate oversight by the Intelligence Committees of what is going on in the intelligence communities, and it is important for the Congress to respond to that. The Intelligence Committee has responded to that.…”