Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank my good friend, the Senator from Maine, a committed member of the Committee on Intelligence, and one who has been vitally involved in the oversight of section 215. I think what has been left out of the debate is that 15 Members of the U.S. Senate have actively carried out oversight. This is probably one of the most looked at programs that exists within the jurisdiction of the Intelligence Committee. There are a couple more that probably get more constant attention, but this is not a program that is used that frequently. I think that is the key point. I wish to reiterate some of the issues Senator King brought up. We are not listening to people's phone calls. There is no content collected. This program expired last night at midnight. That means the database cannot be queried, regardless of if we find a terrorist telephone number. I think it is important to remind my colleagues and the American people that this is all triggered by a nonterrorist number outside of the United States. Now, in the case of the Tsarnaev brothers, we had the telephone number outside the country, and we wanted to see whether the connection had been made, so there was direction in that case. But this is triggered by not just going through the database and looking at who Americans are calling and trying to figure something out, it is triggered by a known foreign terrorist's telephone number, and we searched to see whom they may have contacted in the United States.…”