Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCAUL. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Recently, I participated in a congressional delegation down in Guantanamo, the first congressional delegation since the President ordered that Guantanamo will be closed. We saw the detainees down there. We saw the top 16 al Qaeda operatives. We saw Khalid Sheikh Mohammed praying, bowing to Mecca. To look at the man who was responsible for the death of 3,000 Americans was perhaps the most chilling experience of my congressional career.

As a former Federal prosecutor, to extend constitutional protections to these detainees as criminal defendants is, in my view, setting a very dangerous precedent. They were captured on the battlefield, and they're enemies of war.

The Souder amendment--while I do support the overall bill--the denial of the Souder amendment raises big concerns, in my view. The idea that detainees held in Guantanamo cannot be placed on the No Fly List begs the question who is qualified to be put on the No Fly List. And since that time, we've released 500 detainees from Guantanamo, 60 of whom have been captured on the battlefield trying to kill our soldiers in Afghanistan.

So I would like to pose a question to the distinguished chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and I would be happy to yield time to him.

And the question is simply this: We have debated whether the detainees currently being held should be on the No Fly List. In my view it's a no-brainer that we should reach agreement on in a bipartisan way. But as to the 530 who have been released from Guantanamo, does the chairman know whether or not they have been placed on the Terrorist Watch List or the No Fly List?

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