On the recordFebruary 25, 2010
This amendment is a pretty simple, straightforward one. It's about good governance. It's about protecting the assets of the American taxpayer as utilized by the intelligence community. This bill came out of committee 8 months ago. We've now learned some things in the last 8 months that we didn't know then, and this amendment would simply substitute a new paragraph A for the old paragraph A. This paragraph would simply say it's an important initiative for the intelligence community to work to get audited financial statements across all of the entities. This takes a lot of work, a lot of effort to make that happen. I'd like to call the Chair's attention to the National Reconnaissance organization, who is the only entity within the intelligence community that has, in fact, achieved an unqualified audit opinion on their financial statements. Under Dr. Scott Large's leadership, that hard work was done. And then more directly, Karen Landry, the Chief Financial Officer for the NRO, and Sandra Van Booven, the Director of Financial Management, led an incredible team to do an awful lot of hard work to make that happen. I don't discount how hard that is. From my professional experience, I know it's hard. But they're to be commended as the agency that has achieved clean audited financial statements.
