Political Quotes

“I will see if I can beat the clock because I know colleagues are waiting. In fact, Senator Baldwin has been a great advocate for liberties and showing that liberty and security are compatible, both when she was a Member of the other body and here when she was part of our group, and I thank her for it. Intelligence officials can only point to two cases where this program--the bulk phone records collection program--actually provided useful information about an individual involved in terrorist activity. In both of these cases, the government had all the information it needed to go to the phone company and get an individual court order and emergency authorization for the phone records they needed. In both of these cases, the individuals who were identified using these phone records were arrested months or years after they were first identified, but if government agents believed that the situation was urgent, they could have used emergency authorizations to obtain their phone records more quickly. I am glad both of these cases resolved the way they did. I am proud that our intelligence agencies and law enforcement individuals were able to identify and arrest those who were involved in terrorist acts. In one case four men in California were arrested for sending money to a militant group in Somalia. In the other case they arrested a co- conspirator of Mr. Zazi a few months after Zazi's plot was disrupted. These men committed serious crimes.…”