Political Quotes

“What the Department has agreed to undertake is to bring together the best information from the private sector, our experience in the defense area for military defense against anti-aircraft missiles, and to come up with a rational approach to making such antimissile devices available to the commercial airline industry. We have provided in the committee report $72 million for critical infrastructure protection to utilize information and scientific advances that have been made to deal with evolving threats to protect infrastructure security. Of this amount, $60 million is allocated for systems development of antimissile devices for commercial aircraft. This is provided and printed on page 62 of our committee report. These funds will be available to carry out the work contemplated in the amendment of the distinguished Senator from California. In her amendment, she asks for another report to be submitted to the Congress by the Secretary of Homeland Security not later than March 1, 2004, to report on the progress made in developing these countermeasures for commercial aircraft. We have no objection to including this provision in the bill. We expect that we are going to have reports made periodically. We have hearings to review the activities of the Department, and this is certainly going to be a subject that we are going to follow closely.”