Carolyn Maloney: “I thank the ranking member for his leadership in so many ways before this Congress, and Chairman Rogers for his lifetime…”

“I thank the ranking member for his leadership in so many ways before this Congress, and Chairman Rogers for his lifetime commitment to protecting Americans even as a former FBI agent. I want to underscore what the ranking member said. The best defense against terrorism is intelligence, and we need to support this bill in every single way. We were reminded of the need for intelligence yesterday when Mayor Bloomberg announced there was a credible threat against New York and Washington. And where did this information come from? It came from the intelligence community. After 9/11, the 9/11 Commission report said the biggest failure in preventing 9/11 was a failure in our intelligence system. This Congress came together, and I was proud to have worked with and helped author a bill that was the first major reorganization and the most fundamental since 1948, where it brought all 17 agencies together under Homeland Security and one director to gather information to make us safer. This bill very critically supports the task forces, the joint terrorism task forces that are sharing information and protecting our citizens, and this bill approaches and focuses on cyber attacks, which are one of the most serious attacks that we have in our country now on the Pentagon and on financial institutions. Foreign countries are hacking into our information systems. This bill addresses that and focuses resources and oversight in that area. I congratulate this bipartisan effort.…”