Steven Holt: “I want to thank the distinguished chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Mr. Reyes, for bringing…”

“I want to thank the distinguished chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Mr. Reyes, for bringing this bill to the floor today. It has required a lot of effort, some compromise and hard work. The bill advances a number of my priorities, including a sustained emphasis on improving our foreign language capabilities, expanding the Government Accountability Office's ability to conduct investigations of intelligence community activities, and a long overdue declassification review requirement of the gulf war illness-related records at the CIA. I think we can still do more to provide strong congressional oversight of our intelligence activities. And I am also disappointed that the other body blocked the inclusion of language that I developed that would mandate the video recording of detainee interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. A similar version of this language has been law since last year and governs video recording of detainees in custody of the Defense Department. And multiple studies have documented the benefits of video recording, electronic recording of interrogations, and law enforcement organizations across the United States routinely use the practice to protect both the person being interrogated and the officer conducting the interrogations. Clearly, in the intelligence community, this would be a valuable tool as well.”