we leave today for the President's Day Recess. We leave at a time where we have our troops committed in Iraq, we have our troops committed in Afghanistan, where, in the last 48 hours there have been reports that radical Islamists have…

What is it that my friends on the other side don't understand about the threat that faces our country today? Have they not seen the reports coming from Iraq where al Qaeda in Iraq has now stated that their objective is to use Iraq to…

What we try to do in the Intelligence Committee is to define the threat that is out there. We know that radical jihadists, al Qaeda, that it is a real threat. We attempt to provide our intelligence community with the tools that are…

I think they are absolutely right, we need to take a look at this in the bigger context. We have to set the stage for how we got to this point. It's September 12, 2001. The President is meeting with his advisers. They're trying to identify…

while I will not oppose this bill, even though it has not gone through regular order in the committee process, I continue to have serious reservations about further putting off the critical issue of FISA modernization. I also have…

Like my colleague from Texas (Mr. Thornberry), I rise today in disappointment, and I congratulate the ranking member and the chairman. But in his opening comments, the chairman spoke about last week's NIE on Iran as the best of times; and…

The report fails to provide for long-term authorities to streamline the surveillance of foreign terrorist targets, foreign countries. We need this capability to detect and prevent potential attacks to the United States. It has been talked…

Mr. Speaker, it wasn't all that long ago that this House voted 249-160, a difference of 89 votes, to instruct House conferees to eliminate all earmarks from the fiscal year 2008 Intelligence authorization bill and to fully fund human…

Mr. Speaker, defeating the threat from radical jihadists is a difficult job. It requires input from the legislative branch. It requires leadership from the executive branch. After 9/11, the administration outlined a series of initiatives…

As we talk about this authorization bill, I think it is also important to talk about it in the larger context in terms of some of the other things that are going on that I believe are weakening our ability to effectively combat the threat…

It is important that we give our resources to the intelligence community for the activities they believe are most important, not perhaps what an individual Member of Congress may believe is important for them. It is why we are asking in…

the new manager's amendment that self- executed with a rule this morning included broad new language that would treat illegal immigrants differently than other threats to the homeland. This was a poorly conceived and ill-advised provision…

This morning as we did the rules debate, I asked some questions of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and they said we will cover that during general debate tonight. So the questions I have that I hope will be answered is in the…

A month after I originally came to the floor to oppose this bill, I now rise in opposition to this flawed legislation, which, disappointingly, has been made worse ever since we started the process. In August Congress finally acted, after…

So even before the attacks of 2001 and the implementation of the terrorist surveillance program, for 21 years the intelligence community had developed a strict regimen of here is what we do if our surveillance touches on an American to…

Let me reclaim my time for a second and answer a part of that. My colleague from New Mexico touched it. When in a legal proceeding we get a warrant against an individual, or a criminal proceeding here in the United States, we target that…

When we take a look at the threat that we face today, it is a fight against radical jihadists. As my colleague pointed out, this is a fight that is very different than what we fought in the cold war. But even in the cold war we had a very…

If you take a look at the information right almost immediately after 9/11, as the President convened the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate, along with the bipartisan leadership of the Intelligence Committees, they recognized…

Until we fixed it. But in the FISA, you know, there was not a commonsense exception. I'm sure that there are lots of people in America today who have paid a penalty or whatever, believing that what they were doing was, you know, it's just…

Just reclaiming my time, because, if we go back and we take a look at since this bill passed in 1978, 1979, FISA originally, I mean, at any time from 1978 to 2007 or before 2001, did we ever pick up American communications?

Reclaiming my time, and I think that's exactly right, that we take a look at the past but most importantly that we set the right objective, the right milestone looking forward; and I think as a Congress we ought to commit to the principle…

And this is not a partisan issue. The vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, talking about the objectives of al Qaeda: keep in mind there isn't any doubt here about the intentions of the terrorists. They've made it…

And did the intelligence community develop an elaborate system of protections which we call minimization to protect the civil liberties of Americans if and when that occurred?

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Baker, a former official at the Justice Department spent a considerable amount of time with the committee explaining to us exactly how the emergency process works. And so often people have focused on just the last…

Mr. Speaker, the Senate rejected transferring al Qaeda terrorists from Guantanamo to facilities in the United States by a vote of 94-3. Senator McConnell stated at that time, ``It is better for the safety and security of the American…