Representative Heather Wilson

One of the things my colleague from New York said was, well, there are these minimization procedures, and that's true. There are minimization procedures under current law, which means that if you gather information that involves innocent…

I think it is being added into what is being called the RESTORE Act very late in the game before it was pulled from the House floor last week. It is a provision that is deadly dangerous to the security of this country. The Foreign…

Ten years ago, the Children's Health Insurance Program passed with a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. Now we are trying to reauthorize it with a Democratic Congress and a Republican President. We should be able to do this…

That is exactly right. The biggest problem is that the terrorists who are trying to attack us, and even foreign governments, are increasingly using commercial communications. So they don't have dedicated lines between a couple of…

There is historical precedent for this, one of a Pakistani who ran a criminal enterprise, an international network that was selling nuclear materials and the capability to build nuclear weapons to people and countries around the world…

You may not even know who the person is being called, other than it is an area code and number in the United States, which means you don't have any probable cause. You have to send the FBI out and find out whose number that is and whether…

That is exactly how this law works. If the target is an American, you need a warrant. If the target is a foreigner, you don't need a warrant; foreigner in a foreign country. I think one of the things that is important to remember here…

If you think about how the challenge has changed since the Cold War, in the Cold War, we had early warning systems. We had Cheyenne Mountain that was watching early warning systems to see if Soviet bombers were heading towards us or…

Let's just think of an example here. Let's say Osama bin Laden or one of his chief lieutenants did call into the United States to a completely innocent person, a completely innocent person under this law which the Democrats are going to…

Mr. Speaker, before the August break we fixed a problem. It was a problem that grew worse over the course of this year in that we were increasingly hampered in our ability to prevent another terrorist attack on this country because of the…

No, this bill that the Democrats are bringing to the floor this week will extend civil liberties protections to foreigners trying to kill Americans. It will make it harder for our soldiers and our law enforcement folks and our intelligence…

This legislation will tie our intelligence community in knots in order to protect the civil liberties of terrorists in foreign countries who are trying to kill Americans. There are some in this body who may believe we shouldn't have…

But to me it's even worse than that that my colleague from Connecticut mentions, because somebody who is a criminal in the United States has rights under our Constitution; a terrorist outside of the United States does not. They have no…

And one of the things that's so deeply troubling is they don't even need to get a nuclear weapon to sell terror across a whole region. It is just nuclear material or a suitcase-sized device that could cause tremendous damage and mass…

One of the things that is hard to understand is just how difficult prevention is when you're facing a terrorist threat compared to what we faced during the Cold War. I served in the military during the Cold War. I served overseas in Europe…

And probably one of the best ways that we have to get a handle, particularly on the terrorist threats, is what they call communications intelligence. We try to listen to people talking to each other. If you are trying to get people's plans…

One of the ironies here is that some of our colleagues on the Intelligence Committee who were worried about this new law said well, can you tell us how often you collect information that is to, from, or about Americans in the normal…

The first duty that we have as Federal officials is to make sure we protect this country. This weekend, I have been a merit badge adviser for citizenship in the Nation in Troop 166 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and had a group of boys that I…

That is exactly what we do. Other governments try to hide what they are doing and terrorist organizations try to hide what they are doing, and we try to steal those secrets. That is what good intelligence does. We steal those secrets so…

There is no common sense exception. And there is no start listening now and then do all the paperwork later. The paperwork has to be done before the Attorney General says, okay, go ahead; put the alligator clips on the wire. Then all…

My colleague from Michigan and I are talking tonight about something that is pretty important and something perhaps that gets not enough time or attention these days, and that is, how do we better prevent a successful attack on the United…

The intelligence problem with terrorism is much different. It is more like a Where's Waldo problem. They are hiding among us. They don't have set tables of equipment, they don't have their own dedicated radio systems. They don't live in…

And one of the ironies here is that because of this law, if we're trying to listen to a foreigner in a foreign country, and we take tremendous risks with our members of the intelligence community and collect that communication overseas…

In fact, they are much more explicit than they are in criminal law. Think about this. If the FBI thinks that somebody is running a drug cartel and they have got a wiretap on that person, that person may be calling some of his criminal…

And some of my colleagues have said, well, you know, there are some commonsense cases, I mean, where you should just, you know, we're all reasonable people here. There's some commonsense situations where if you've got insurgents who've…