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Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Madam President, it is with a mixture of sorrow and pride that I rise today to pay tribute to my good friend the senior Senator from North Carolina.

I was thinking about the fact that Senator Blunt, who is sitting in front of you, we were here for his farewell speech the other day, and our good friend Rob Portman, who is behind you, we will be here for his--we are losing a lot of great Members this Congress, and the folks who are going to follow them will not replace them. They have got big shoes to fill.

I mean, we are celebrating Richard's 18 years in the Senate and 10 years in the House--28 years of doing this stuff. Senator Burr and I first got to know each other actually through a mutual friend early on in my Senate career in kind of a strange set of circumstances. I had become really good friends with Saxby Chambliss, and Saxby and Richard were running buddies. I would run along with them sometimes.

And John Thune, as you know, Richard is a pretty open-minded guy. But I got to acknowledge, and I shouldn't probably do this in front of everyone, but I am not sure he initially took to me that well. Now, my staff has occasionally called me slightly intense, and Richard has more than a few times asked whether I was getting my daily meds to stay on that equilibrium. So much for that.

But in contrast, Richard Burr is a low-key kind of guy. As Senator Thune has already mentioned, and every Senator has made mention or noticed or made fun of his lack of socks. We have seen the migration of his Thing from outside the Russell Building to maybe its permanent resting place now in the garage at Hart. I park next to it almost every day, and I hope that you will leave it there in perpetuity.

But despite where we started off, with us being a little bit of an odd couple, we have formed an enormously strong partnership, and for me it was, more importantly, a strong friendship.

For 5 years, Richard preceded me as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. He had been on the Intelligence Committee since he came to Congress. I have learned so, so much from him, not only on the substance, which is terribly important, but there are a whole series of issues and extraordinarily important work where I never really got up to speed because I trusted his judgment.

But really what he did is he set the tone for how the committee ought to operate--a committee that frankly doesn't get as much attention as most because so much of what we do is behind closed doors. The reason why the Senate Intelligence Committee has stayed bipartisan, the reason why it is so productive, the reason why we get year after year an intelligence authorization bill out virtually unanimously--never more than one or two votes against--has a lot to do with Richard Burr.

My friend whom he served with in the House, the dean of the Virginia delegation, Congressman Bobby Scott, has often referred to, around Virginia, that the Senate Intelligence Committee is an ``oasis of dignity.'' I think that is a pretty darn good description. And that dignity would not have come about without Richard Burr's leadership.

He has made mention of his staff. I want to echo that, particularly those folks I have had the opportunity to work with on the Intelligence Committee staff. This does not have to be the case. This is not always the model, and I won't make more than a passing reference to HIPSCI in that comparison. If you don't have--you have to have not only Members agreeing, you have to have staff agreeing, and sometimes staff come with their notion that we have got to start with conflict. That was never the way that Richard chaired the committee. He knew my staff as well as he knew his own. Nowhere was that more evident than when he took on one of the greatest challenges and one where we kind of got battle-hardened together on the Russia investigation. And one of the things I know he had pride in and I had pride in, there were an awful lot of folks who had to be interviewed. And without exception, folks who interviewed didn't know whether the interviewees were Republicans or Democrats. It was that kind of professionalism and the notion that we were going to follow the truth, and I think that work product will clearly stand the test of time.

The other thing that I think Richard taught me, and this was something that he has been just relentless about, is to recognize the courage and the patriotism of the men and women who work in the intelligence community. They are never going to get the recognition. Public officials get the recognition but not the men and women who serve in our military. But no matter where you travel with Senator Burr, there were generally two things that you could guarantee would take place. One is that at some moment during the trip he would find a way to get a couple hours at wherever the local bazaar was and go buy stuff until Brooke finally said: No more rugs ever again.

But what was equally important that he taught me, and he taught all of us on the committee who has come in after, is that when you are out in the field, you make sure you go see the station and not just the station chief but make sure you see all the members of the station and personally meet them and thank them. And in every hearing that we have had--and I have tried to continue this tradition--and we may not get along and we may not agree with the briefers--but at the end of that hearing, no matter how tough it may have been, he thanks the briefers, he thanks the folks who are in the back row, oftentimes not getting to the front table, and he makes sure to say: Go back and tell the men and women you work with back at headquarters, back at station, how much we respect you and will have your back. He has shared with me a little bit in these last few weeks the kind of outpouring of support that he has had from intelligence community members both here and around the world, and we are going to have him back in January with the leadership in the intelligence community to celebrate that again.

The other thing that is a little unusual about Senator Burr--and I will say this for a few of our friends in the press--is that most of us actually like to talk to the press--or at least do it. This has never been high on Senator Burr's list. I have never seen anybody manage with complete politeness to give more nonanswers to the questions in the hallway as the press pool follows after him on so many occasions, but it is because it is all about the work.

Others have mentioned and he has mentioned that he was and has been the leading voice on disease preparedness. If we had listened more to him earlier on on things like COVID, I think part of this tragedy could have been even further averted.

I mentioned already the Russia investigation. We both took incoming on that. Both of our sides wanted us to do it differently. He said: We are going after the truth. I can assure you, there is no one I would rather be in a foxhole with than Richard Burr because when the incoming kept coming in, he said: Let's buckle down, do the work. He empowered the staff to do that in a way that was remarkable, and, again, that product will stand the test of time.

I am sad to lose a colleague. I think his admonitions to us were great. I think his recognition--again, this is so Richard Burr in that he has got so many staff here, and he put the staff not in a passing reference but as one of the major themes of his speech. We all would not be here without the kind of men and women who have supported you and who support each of us who have the honor of standing on this floor.

I am going to be really sad to at least lose the daily back-and-forth as a friend. He is a little bit quirky. He is not shy about giving somebody grief.

I am not sure there will ever be another Senator with the same tastes in footwear or sockwear or lack thereof. He clearly has been one of the Senate's true characters in the best sense of the word.

I have had the occasion to get to know Brooke and his kids. I have seen lots and lots of pictures of the grandkids, and I am glad some of them live in Richmond. We will visit there and on the Outer Banks.

He has a great next chapter in front of him. I think he is going to continue to contribute to this Nation in the business world. I look to see where that path leads, and I look to making sure this friendship that we have built will be maintained long into the future, into our each increasing dotages in going forward.

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Mr. WARNER. Madam President, my apologies to the distinguished senior Senator from Maine.

Senator Burr knows the one thing he was also extraordinarily critical of was whenever members of the Intel Committee were late to an Intel meeting, and we have one at 2:30.

So, Senator Burr, I hope I have your ability, and Senator Collins will give me a rundown on her comments today.

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