Chris Smith: “I want to thank, first of all, Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Eliot Engel for drafting this extraordinarily timely…”

“I want to thank, first of all, Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Eliot Engel for drafting this extraordinarily timely and important legislation. This is an essential bill, and it must be passed and signed into law. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday of this week, my subcommittee staff director, Greg Simpkins, and I returned from a 4-day trip to Nigeria, including the city of Jos, the scene of recent fire bombings of Christian churches by Boko Haram, a terrorist organization that has killed thousands of Nigerian Christians and some Muslims as well. Boko Haram-- like al-Shabaab, the cowards who slaughtered Kenyans in a shopping center in Nairobi last week--poses serious and escalating threats to indigenous Africans and American personnel overseas. The Embassy Security Act, like the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999, a law that I authored, is designed to significantly enhance protection at our missions abroad. Significantly, more than a dozen years ago that law came to the floor on the heels of al Qaeda bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam at our embassies in 1998. I chaired the hearings following that tragic loss of life. Admiral Crowe, who led the Accountability Review Boards at that time, testified. But it is clear that the promised action following those earlier attacks has not been fully implemented. There are serious, significant security gaps that must be remedied more than a decade later. The Royce bill does that.…”