Jay Rockefeller: “I began to think, I don't know of any committee in the Congress which is more specifically and more logically set up…”

“I began to think, I don't know of any committee in the Congress which is more specifically and more logically set up with respect to representation from other committees. We have the Foreign Relations Committee. We have the Judiciary Committee. We have the Appropriations Committee. We have the Armed Services Committee. We have general members. We are actually going to grow somewhat smaller probably as a result of this intelligence reform. So everybody is represented. One of the things I have also noticed is that there are a number of Senators--unfortunately not the majority of them, but a number of them--who will come in early in the morning, and they will get with my staff or Senator Roberts' staff and they will say: I want to read stuff that I can only read inside these closed facilities. It may be a National Intelligence Estimate. It may be parts of a report. But we operate openly within a very discreet and necessarily secreted space. It does not occur to me that Foreign Relations is denied access. Everybody, by definition of being a Senator, belongs to the Intelligence Committee by way of information.”