"Claims of secrecy have been used to conceal matters from Congress even though Members have the security clearance necessary to be briefed."
"This issue is perhaps the most important issue, in my judgment, this Committee will face."
"The legislation goes exactly in the wrong direction, so much so that even President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton are running away from it."
"the natural tendency on the part of the executive branch to overstate claims of secrecy and to avoid disclosure whenever possible"
"I think the purpose of this hearing is, regardless of the position of any Administration, to figure out what is right, not who is right."
"This bill certainly should be made part of it. I will do my best to ensure that this is the case on the House side."
"I want to thank my good friend Senator Dianne Feinstein, who introduced a private bill for Shirley."
"We clearly need to update our immigration policies to more efficiently promote family unification..."
"I didn't ask that. I said do we have the capacity to hold dangerous people in our maximum security prisons."
"I am going to keep talking about this issue until the relevant statutes get fixed--the privacy and constitutional rights of the American people are at stake."
"These requests are done in secret and without court approval--there is no one to check the FBI."
"It is difficult to say what benefits this has yielded, because outside of general statements and idiosyncratic data on their use, I have not seen any hard, empirical evidence that this explosion in re..."