Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, 16 years ago, an unprecedented attack against the United States revealed immense gaps in how the United States approached domestic security and information sharing. As a result, the Department of Homeland Security was established to consolidate 22 existing Federal agencies and reshape the domestic intelligence and counterterrorism structure in the United States. Over the years, DHS has matured and refined its Intelligence Enterprise, or what we know as DHS IE. Even now, however, the Department has struggled to fully unify the various intelligence offices within the component agencies. This has limited the value DHS provides to the intelligence community and its State and local partners. Disparate guidance for the intelligence components within DHS undermines the Department's ability to fully utilize important data and conduct analysis. DHS needs to follow the model of many other members of the intelligence community and produce an intelligence doctrine that clearly articulates roles and priorities across the DHS Intelligence Enterprise. The lack of this internal structure reflects a painful legacy from the pre-9/11 era in which bureaucracies operated as silos and were poorly coordinated. H.R. 2468 empowers DHS to address this continued failure.…”