Intelligence Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Chair, I rise in support of this Intelligence Authorization bill, which authorizes the tools America needs to detect and combat its greatest threats, including what President Obama called ``a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.''

In the past weeks, we've seen a great deal of evidence that policies adopted by President Obama and Democrats are working to keep Americans safer. In Pakistan, the government is cooperating for the first time in the arrest of top Taliban leaders, including second-in-command Abdul Ghani Baradar and Abdul Kabir, a member of the senior leadership. At home, Najibullah Zazi has just pled guilty in federal court for attempting to bomb New York City's subway, and the Christmas Day bomber is giving us timely intelligence.

This bill continues the policies that are working and strengthens America's intelligence collection. It significantly increases funding for human intelligence, a resource that is irreplaceable in disrupting terrorist networks. To ensure the broad reach of our intelligence community, it makes important investments in language training and scholarships, so that our personnel will have the resources to infiltrate networks and intercept communications around the world. It also strengthens our defenses against the emerging threats of cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare, which, if unchecked, could have a crippling effect on our military and economy. And this legislation makes an important contribution to America's nuclear non-proliferation efforts by requiring reports on the nuclear intentions and capabilities of Iran, Syria, and North Korea, as well as on the worldwide black market in materials that could contribute to nuclear weapons.

At the same time as it strengthens our intelligence capabilities, this authorization bill also ensures that they receive reasonable and responsible oversight to protect Americans' rights. It creates an independent inspector general with responsibility for the entire intelligence community; protects the Intelligence Committees' access, through the Government Accountability Office, to the information it needs to conduct proper oversight of intelligence activities; and requires that the CIA Inspector General audit each covert action at least once every three years. To prevent the abuse of detainees that weakens our moral case to the world without making Americans safer, this bill also prohibits private contractors from interrogating detainees in CIA custody. Finally, this bill, like the recently-passed Defense Authorization bill, prevents the release or transfer of Guantanamo detainees until the president provides a plan for dealing with those detainees and mitigating any risk their release or transfer might cause.

Madam Chair, the Founders spoke of providing ``for the common defense'' not only because we face common threats, but because the work of overcoming them must be common to all of us. That work is far too important to be subjected to fear-mongering or the demands of the political cycle. That doesn't obligate all of my colleagues to vote for this bill, though I hope they will; but it does oblige us to conduct this debate, today and in the days to come, with the respect and responsibility that our common defense from common danger demands.

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