Political Quotes

“I rise today as a Senator from Virginia and, more importantly, as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, in support of the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, H.R. 7888, which passed the House earlier this week, with a 273-to-147 broad, bipartisan support. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, which a lot of this debate is focused on, is a critical source of foreign intelligence. It is indispensable to the work that the men and women of our intelligence community, and many others, do every day to protect our national security. Section 702 authorities have enabled the IC to thwart terrorist attacks, track foreign spies, uncover economic espionage, impede weapons proliferation, protect U.S. troops, expose human and drug trafficking, prevent sanctions evasion, and disrupt foreign cyber attacks--a whole litany of the responsibilities of the IC. Just to demonstrate how important these capabilities are to our national security: 60 percent--60 percent--of the items that appear in the President's daily intelligence brief actually are sourced to information obtained pursuant to section 702. In the public domain, there are many examples of the value of section 702.…”