Political Quotes

“I thank my friend. And I want to thank both my friends, the chair and the ranking member, for the work that they do on intelligence. You make a commitment to this country, and I think the country is in good hands because of your work. I want to raise a question--and we've had some of these conversations between ourselves. I'm very concerned about the shift that's occurred in our national security policy where the Central Intelligence Agency has increasingly played a very powerful paramilitary role with the execution of drone strikes. Numerous studies have indicated that there are many innocent civilians being killed by drone strikes. There's a lack of accountability here. There have been studies that suggest, for example in Yemen, that drone strikes are stirring up anti-American sentiment to the point where al Qaeda is actually being empowered. We really have to ask of the CIA, but even more than that, of our entire national security infrastructure, What's the game plan here? We see there have been changes in military policy where certain functions have been ceded to the CIA. We see changes in foreign policy where the State Department has let go of some of its functions. We know that the military has made an attempt with the Defense Intelligence Agency to try to become more actively involved as a separate organization. They were seeking 1,600 new spies. We have this architecture of national security which is so powerful, but I'm not sure that it's actually that effective.…”