Iraq-Shifting Rationale

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Sept. 30, 2004

IRAQ-SHIFTING RATIONALE

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, before initiating my remarks, let me express the admiration and respect I have for the chairman of this committee, Senator Collins of Maine, as well as the ranking Democrat, Senator Lieberman of Connecticut. What they have presented to the Senate is an extraordinary work product, if one considers the fact that we first received the 9/11 Commission report on July 22, and a mere 8 or 9 weeks later we are on the floor of the Senate considering landmark legislation. The first reaction of anyone who listens to those dates would be that they must be acting in haste.

The fact is that no sooner did Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman receive this report than they announced they would take it extremely seriously and they would do some things unprecedented around this institution to try to move the legislation on a timely basis. It meant asking Senators to return in the month of August, a month when we are usually either back in our States or vacationing with our families, to come back and to have a series of hearings, starting with Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, Chair and Vice Chair of the Commission, and then a long series of many scores of witnesses who came and talked to us about aspects of this report.

They followed those hearings in August and early September with a markup last week which I attended as a member of the committee, a markup which considered 33 different amendments. Those were serious amendments, complicated amendments. Each one of them tested us to think long and hard about the 9/11 Commission report as well as the bill that is before us.

The interesting thing about the amendments that were considered is that when all was said and done-some had been adopted, some had been defeated-not a single amendment passed or was defeated on a partisan rollcall.

It wasn't Republicans versus Democrats. That is a good sign. It shows we took to this task in a bipartisan fashion and made concessions to try to find solutions.

I, frankly, do not disparage debate on the Senate floor. It is an important part of what we do. Even heated debate I find informative and sometimes entertaining. But this morning at the town meeting which I had with Senator Fitzgerald, a constituent from Illinois came up and said: Why do you argue so much? Why don't you just get together, the two political parties, and solve the problems?

I understand that sentiment. And though our arguments and debate may sound adolescent or a waste of time, they are, in fact, the noise of democracy. The debate in our committee, the Governmental Affairs Committee, which led to the adoption of some amendments and rejection of some amendments, led to a good bipartisan work product which we bring to the Senate floor today. I am proud to support it and proud to be a cosponsor.

There are two parts of it in which I take particular pride. One relates to the civil liberties board. The civil liberties board was an idea of the 9/11 Commission. They understood, as I think all of us do, that historically when the United States was concerned about security issues and safety issues, those were the moments when our Government asked for more power to protect America, usually at the expense of individual rights and liberties. It is a delicate balance and delicate negotiation between security and liberty.

Again, after 9/11, the first invasion in the continental United States since the British stormed this building in the War of 1812, after that our Government came and asked for more authority to go after the terrorists and to protect our Nation. On a bipartisan basis we gave that authority to the Government.

We understood that it was a risky decision. We were enacting the PATRIOT Act at a time of high emotion, when we were still very mindful of the tragedy of 9/11 and the thousands of innocent Americans killed, as well as their families who were grieving. We gave that authority to our Government and said we will put a time limit on some of these new powers and we will revisit them in the future to see if we have gone too far.

At every step of the way, we want to balance the security of this country and the liberty of Americans, and not to go too far in giving powers to Government at the expense of the rights and freedoms that we enjoy and which make us America. This civil liberties board, proposed by the 9/11 Commission, was consistent with that value. On a bipartisan basis, the Commission came and said, create within the executive branch a civil liberties board; this civil liberties board will be a guardian, if you will, of the basic rights of Americans. It will measure the policies and activities of our intelligence community and report regularly, on a public basis, as to whether there has been a Government effort that has gone too far.

I am not sure there is another board like this in any other part of our Government, but I applaud the 9/11 Commission for suggesting it. I certainly applaud Chairman Collins and Senator Lieberman for incorporating the original civil liberties board in this legislation and accepting several amendments that I offered, which I think make the board even more independent and worthy of the duties that are entrusted to it.

Senator Kyl of Arizona came to the floor this morning and suggested amendment No. 3801. It is an amendment to the civil liberties board section. In my estimation, it would really undermine the effectiveness of this civil liberties board.

The Senator from Arizona said Chairman Collins and Senator Lieberman failed to make tough choices, in his words, because they were trying to win unanimous approval of the bill. It is true the bill was reported unanimously from the committee; despite reservations of some members, we all came together to report it out. I disagree with the Senator's premise that this unanimous vote was at the expense of making hard choices. Trust me, hard choices were made on almost every page of this lengthy legislation. There is nothing wrong with trying to work together in a bipartisan fashion. I think Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman did just that. They made some of the toughest choices.

This legislation would authorize the most significant reorganization of our intelligence community in 50 years. I believe this legislation will save lives.

In his remarks on the amendment, Senator Kyl of Arizona suggested those who were concerned about our fundamental constitutional rights need to balance our concerns with concerns about the lives of American citizens. If that is the premise of his position, I don't quarrel with it. It is always a balance. If you give the Government too much authority to make us safe and take away from individuals the basic rights of our country, then what do we have left? When it is all over, those unique American values have not been protected. Rather, they have been taken by the Government. So we always want to make sure we have enough authority in the Government to protect us, but not too much. That is what this legislation does.

One of the issues we weighed heavily was how to fight the war on terrorism, while protecting basic liberties. The American people expect no less.

Let me quote from the 9/11 Commission when they addressed this issue:

While protecting our homeland, Americans should be mindful of threats to vital personal and civil liberties. This balancing is no easy task, but we must constantly strive to keep it right.

The 9/11 Commission recommended this board and, following their recommendation, the legislation included it.

In fact, the Commission has already endorsed the board created by this bill. Commissioner Slade Gorton, a former Republican Senator from the State of Washington, and a member of the 9/11 Commission, and Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic appointee to the Commission, told the House Government Reform Committee:

A civil liberties board of the kind we recommend can be found in the Collins-Lieberman bill in the Senate.

Those were the words of two commissioners. If nothing else, it is a seal of approval of what we offer on the floor today.

I am not surprised that there is some opposition to the board, as there is some opposition to other provisions in the bill. The board is a new entity, and many of us are trying to understand exactly what it would do. But I urge my colleagues to read carefully what we have achieved with this board. It is an integral part of intelligence reform. It is independent. Those who serve on the board will be nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and have fixed terms.

In addition, there is a requirement for public reporting. So what the board discovers will not be kept deep in some file or on some computer in an intelligence agency, but will be reported to the public through Members of Congress and their committees.

The board will help to ensure that a powerful consolidated intelligence community does not violate privacy and civil liberties. I am afraid the Kyl amendment will upset this delicate balance. I want to speak about three problems associated with that amendment.

Number one, very wisely, Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman included in their bill a standard of review for the civil liberties board. I think you need to give the board guidelines as they review government actions. The board is to determine, under current language, whether Government power actually materially enhances security, whether there is adequate supervision of the use of the power to ensure protection of civil liberties, and whether there are adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use.

Where did we find this particular approach? We found it in the 9/11 Commission report.

Frankly, I cannot understand Senator Kyl's amendment on this issue. He wants to take out the 9/11 Commission's standard of review. Should Congress not give this guidance to the board? Shouldn't the members of the civil liberties board understand their charge and responsibility? Can it be stated more simply and clearly than in the language I just read from the 9/11 Commission report? Taking away the standard of review is to leave the board with no guidance from Congress. That is an abdication of responsibility.

Secondly, the bill gives the board the authority to obtain the information they need to determine whether the Government is violating civil liberties. If somebody outside the Government refuses to provide information, the board would have the power to issue a subpoena to obtain it.

That is common sense. An investigative body doesn't have much authority in this society if it cannot, in compelling circumstances, subpoena materials it needs.

It is not unusual to give this subpoena authority to a federal commission or board. Let me name a few of the Federal agencies with similar authority: National Labor Relations Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The Senator from Arizona, in speaking to his amendment this morning, suggested this subpoena authority would give the power to the board to "haul in any agent anywhere in the world and drill him." I am afraid that statement is not accurate. The subpoena authority in this bill is a narrow one. It only applies to people outside the Government. So for the Senator from Arizona to argue that we are going to call in an intelligence agent before the board and drill him is to overlook the obvious: The subpoena authority in the bill only applies outside of the Government.

The obvious question is, why do you need subpoena authority outside of the Government? Here are two specific examples: First, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Implicated in that scandal were private contractors hired by our Government to interrogate prisoners. Information they generated might be the domain and property of these private companies. If the civil liberties board wanted to look into prisoner abuse and the companies refused to provide that information voluntarily, they would need a subpoena. That is why this subpoena power is in the bill.

In addition, if our Government engages in a cooperative agreement to obtain data from a private company to protect America from a terrorist attack, materials possessed by that private company would not be reviewable, except on a voluntary basis, by the civil liberties board, unless they had subpoena power. Senator Kyl wants to take away that subpoena power. In doing that, he will tie the hands of this board when it comes to gathering the necessary information to meet its responsibility.

The other thing the Kyl amendment addresses is the section of the bill entitled "Informing the Public," which requires this civil liberties board to share information about its work with the public. This is a good thing, from my point of view. It is a healthy aspect of the bill. We make provisions so that if the Board is dealing with classified information, there is no requirement to disclose it. Otherwise, we say the civil liberties board should inform the public about their work.

So if the Government has gone too far, there is a public report that could be reviewed to understand how the civil liberties board reached its conclusion.

The Kyl amendment would delete this section from the bill so that the board would not be required to inform the public about its activities. This directly contradicts the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. As Commissioners Gordon and Ben-Veniste told the House Government Reform Committee:

Such a board should be transparent, making regular reports to Congress and the American public.

I think sunshine is a great disinfectant, and I think the fact that this information will be made public is a further incentive for those in our Government not to abuse their power. In the name of protecting America, they should not destroy America's values and America's freedoms in a way that jeopardizes what is truly the character of this Nation.

I think the Kyl amendment, in those three instances, not only violates the spirit of the 9/11 Commission Report but directly violates language in the 9/11 Commission Report that has guided this committee in the creation of this bill.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

In addition, Mr. President, I wish to speak for a moment to another provision in this bill that is near and dear to me. As I mentioned earlier, when we went through the lengthy hearings on this legislation, there were many things that motivated us-this great Commission report on a bipartisan basis, the need to protect America as effectively as possible and as quickly as possible-but there was another factor.

At many of our hearings, in fact, even appearing as witnesses, were the survivors in the 9/11 families, the men and women who lost a loved one in the tragedy of 9/11. I want to take a moment and salute them. They gave of their time and their lives. They made a commitment to make certain that those they love did not die in vain. They came to this committee and asked us to do our part, and we did. I think this committee was faithful to its charge: to follow the 9/11 Commission and to come up with a reasonable change in reforming our intelligence community.

Why is reform necessary? It almost goes without saying. We found in the 9/11 Commission Report ample evidence that our intelligence community failed us before September 11. In the Senate Intelligence Committee on which I serve, we took a review of the intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq. As hard as it is to believe, with the millions of dollars and thousands of conscientious people involved, the intelligence gathering before the invasion of Iraq was in many respects just plain wrong.

The American people, and many Members of Congress, were convinced that we needed to invade Iraq because of charges that there were weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons programs, linkage with al-Qaida-things that turned out to be patently wrong. The intelligence failed us.

In one celebrated book, an author wrote that the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, in response to the President's question, Are you sure there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? is reported to have said: It's a slam dunk. He said with some certainty the weapons of mass destruction were there. When we arrived, they could not be found.

We understand the gravity of the threat of terrorism. Those of us who remember 9/11 and understand the seriousness of this threat want to get it right, and intelligence is truly our first line of defense. But I have to tell my colleagues that the 9/11 Commission Report kept returning to one basic and recurring theme when it came to improving intelligence and making America safe.

Let me show my colleagues what they said because I think it demonstrates in a few words why this section of the bill is so important to me and why I am glad it is part of our work effort.

The 9/11 Commission Report said:

The biggest impediment to all-source analysis-to a greater likelihood of connecting the dots-is the human or systemic resistance to sharing information.

And that turned out to be a major obstacle.

We have a weak system for processing and using the information that we need to make America safe, and the Commission pointed that out. I have said this before on the Senate floor, and it bears repeating, that those who think our information technology was adequate to the task on 9/11 should consider the following.

The computer system at the FBI, the premier law enforcement agency in America on 9/11/2001, did not have e-mail within their system, had no access to the Internet, was unable to sort and trace by more than a one-word reference, and when they finally came up with the photographs of the 19 terrorists on September 11, the computer system of the FBI was incapable of sending a photograph over its computer system. They had to overnight the photographs to their regional offices.

That, to me, is as solid a condemnation of the computer system at the FBI as anything I read. That is a fact. And if you wonder why we failed to gather information, to process it, analyze it, and use it effectively, that is what it comes down to.

On July 10, 2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office sent a memo to FBI headquarters and to two agents on the international terrorism squads in the New York field office advising of the "possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden" to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools. The date of that memo is July 10, 2001. The agent based his theory on the "inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest" attending such schools in Arizona.

The agent made four recommendations to the FBI. The agent recommended that we compile a list of civil aviation schools, establish a liaison with those schools, discuss the theories about bin Laden with the intelligence community, and seek authority to obtain visa information on persons applying to flight schools. This was July 10, 2001. Those were the recommendations in the FBI memo.

The flare went off. The notice was there. Something needed to be done. His memo was forwarded to one field office. Managers of the bin Laden unit and the radical fundamentalist unit at FBI headquarters were addressees but did not even see the memo until after September 11. No managers at headquarters saw the memo before September 11. The New York field office took no action. It was not shared outside the FBI.

As its author told the 9/11 Commission, the Phoenix memo was not an alert about suicide pilots. His worry was more about a Pan Am 103 scenario in which explosives were placed on aircraft. Because it was not shared, because it was not processed, we find ourselves in situations more vulnerable.

Mr. President, let me give another illustration of why this information sharing is so important.

The 9/11 Commission Report tells us that on August 15, 2001, the Minneapolis FBI field office initiated an intelligence investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, a name well known to us now. This man entered the country on February 23, 2001, began flight lessons at a flight school in Oklahoma City, and began flight training at Pan American flight training school in Minneapolis on August 13. Mr. Moussaoui had none of the usual qualifications for flight training on Pan Am's Boeing 747 flight simulators.

Contrary to popular belief, he did not say he was not interested in learning how to take off or land. Instead, he stood out because, with little knowledge of flying, he wanted to learn how to take off and land a Boeing 747. The FBI agent who handled the case in conjunction with the INS representative on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force suspected Moussaoui of wanting to hijack airplanes. This is August 15, 2001.

If these respective agencies had the benefit of the Phoenix memo, brought it together with this information about Mr. Moussaoui, wheels would have started to turn and dots would have been connected. But, sadly, that information was not shared.

I can go through other illustrations about why we need to share information when it comes to ships coming into the United States using the Great Lakes, which are near and dear to me as a Senator representing the great State of Illinois, and the city of Chicago, and how we can use existing information technology to link up facts and draw good conclusions to protect America.

Sadly, what we have found, despite the passage of 3 years since 9/11, is we still have not figured out how to make critical information in our Government computers and other systems of records compatible and combat terrorism with that new information.

In a statement before the House Government Reform Committee last month, James Dempsey, executive director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit public interest group, validated my concern. He wrote:

To date, however, the government still does not have a dynamic, decentralized network for sharing and analysis of information.

He goes on with a much longer statement, but to think that 3 years after 9/11, after the omissions, errors, and shortcomings which I have pointed out, we still do not have a dynamic decentralized method for sharing and analyzing information, which is one of the key elements in the 9/11 Commission Report.

A case in point I frequently cite is the chronic delays in integrating FBI and Border Patrol fingerprint databases. This problem goes back at least 6 years, where the agencies have been unable to work out the transfer of information. In March of this year, the Justice Department's Inspector General reported it will take at least 4 more years to combine fingerprint systems. In other words, fingerprints collected at the border cannot be checked against fingerprints at the FBI in an integrated fashion so that a suspect at the border can be found to have been someone with a criminal record or a history which gives us caution and pause. How can we be any safer if that basic technology cannot be in place? Six years we failed to come up with it. The estimate is another 4 years is needed before it might happen.

The FBI fingerprint database contains about 43 million ten-finger sets of known criminals' prints; the Border Patrol's separate fingerprint system, about 6 million two-finger sets of prints. One has to ask, at some point in time, did anyone think that both agencies should collect the same number of fingerprints from each person? Today it is much different. They did not integrate their effort because they were not going to integrate their information. Not integrating that information does not make us any safer.

For well over 2 years I have urged that we do something significant and historic to address this failure of our information-sharing system. I refer back to GEN Leslie Groves, who was authorized and empowered by President Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor to start what was then known as the Manhattan Project.

General Groves understood the possibilities of an atom bomb. At that point, there had been a cursory and casual inquiry into how it might be weaponized. After Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt said: We need to get serious. We need to develop these atom bombs. He said to General Groves: Turn to the private sector, turn to Government, turn to academia, bring them all together, and do it in a hurry. We may need this atom bomb to end this war.

That is how the Manhattan Project was born. I have argued for quite some time now that if General Groves could accomplish that historic task in 1,000 days, we can in even less time see dramatic progress in developing the information technology we need as a Nation. I am sad to remind my colleagues in the Senate, it has been over 1,000 days since September 11, and reports from agencies across the board tell us we have not done that.

The Commission offers two key recommendations for achieving this unity of effort in sharing information. First, information procedures should provide incentives for sharing to restore a better balance between security and shared knowledge. Second, the President should lead the Governmentwide effort to bring the major national security institutions into the information revolution.

This is from the 9/11 Commission Report:

He should coordinate the resolution of the legal, policy and technical issues across the agencies to create a "trusted information network."

We understand that without this sharing of information we cannot be safer as a nation. No agency can do this alone. They have to cooperate with one another. Throughout the eight hearings of the Governmental Affairs Committee conducted over the past 9 weeks, I have urged that we make revolutionary change in information sharing an essential element.

I will tell my colleagues what section 206 of this bill, which comprises a large portion of the bill, does. We set forth precise and prudent directives for implementing a trusted information-sharing network. The President is directed to establish this network. The network is to be an environment consisting of policies and technology designed to facilitate and promote sharing. It is modeled on the comprehensive proposal by the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, which I would like to salute as another major factor in the development of this section of the bill, as well as the 9/11 Commission Report.

The network must have certain attributes. This network of information must be a decentralized, distributed, and coordinated environment; built upon existing systems' capabilities currently in use across the Government; utilize the industry's best practices, including minimizing the centralization of data and seeking to use common tools and capabilities whenever possible. I want to dwell on this for one moment.

Some of the critics have the wrong notion that we are trying to create a massive Government database. That is not what this bill sets out to do. What it sets out to do is to share the information to solve problems, to alert America to threats to our security. It is not a massive Government database.

Employ an information access management approach that controls access to data rather than just networks; facilitate sharing of information; provide directory services for locating information; and incorporate protections for privacy and civil liberties. This is another one that is absolutely essential. We want to have this information collected, processed, analyzed, and shared every step of the way.

Through the civil liberties board and express language in this legislation, we are mindful that we do not want to compromise the liberties and freedoms of Americans unless there is an absolute need to protect our lives and our security.

Guidelines must be issued. Requirements satisfying governing the collection, sharing, and use of information have to be made known so that this will be an item that is followed very closely.

Let me say what the network is not. Describing what the network is is only half of the issue. First and foremost, the network called for in this bill is not a centralized, consolidated system or database. Furthermore, it is not a mere network; it is a capability. It does not move data from current systems. It does not require all new systems. It is a means to make information in existing legacy systems sharable to authorized users. It is not based on any one architecture or platform. It does not require one encryption standard. It does not contemplate or require broad distribution of personally identifiable information. It does not remove authorization and access control from existing processes. It is not limited to supporting just the IC. It does not require next-generation technology to implement.

I see other Members have come to the floor of the Senate to address aspect of this bill, and I have spoken for a little over 30 minutes. I want to give them a chance to express their feelings. I will return to this issue next week.

I hope colleagues on both sides of the aisle will understand that this historic bill includes in it what I consider to be some of the most important weapons and important tools for protecting America against another terrorist attack. We have to be creative, which the 9/11 Commission Report admonishes us to do, but we also have to use information in sensible, thoughtful ways to make us safer.

A large section of this bill is directed towards that information sharing. I tried to engage the Senate in this debate when we created the Department of Homeland Security, but the time was not right. Everybody nodded in agreement, but I could not get anything done on the bill. Thank goodness this bill on the future of the intelligence community is different, and thank goodness on a bipartisan basis we have come to understand and believe that if we follow the 9/11 Commission Report, with trusted information sharing, America will be safer.

I thank Chairman Collins and Senator Lieberman for providing this section in the bill. I look forward to working with them on the passage of this important legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print in the RECORD an additional illustration on information sharing.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

ILLUSTRATION NO. 3 SHIP IN U.S. WATERS

Of course, representing Chicago and Lake Michigan, I understand the importance of port security. Take a ship entering the U.S. waters that comes down the St. Lawrence Seaway. It comes into the Great Lakes.

What happens? Four agencies of the Federal Government collect information on that ship. One agency determines whether the ship is carrying contraband. Another Federal agency checks whether the ship has paid its tariffs and fees. Another agency determines whether the ship and its crew comply with immigration law. And another agency checks for adherence to health and safety regulations. One ship, four different Federal agencies.

Much of this information will end up in separate data systems. One of those, a $1.3 billion Customs Services project known as the automated commercial environment, is an import processing system. Another, the student exchange and visitor information system, is being developed by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement within Homeland Security. Other border protection is held on databases held by the Coast Guard and by the Department of Agriculture.

The Transportation Security Administration also will collect and hold relevant information in its systems. Consider how many different agencies are concerned about the one ship that we might fear may be bringing the wrong people with the wrong cargo to threaten the United States.

None of these information systems are designed to communicate with one another. How in the world can we assure the American people of their safety when we are ignoring the most basic requirement-that these agencies-both people and technology-work together and share information? Don't we want to make certain that the FBI and the CIA had access to that information? In addition, the NSA, DoD, Department of Defense, State Department, State and local officials, all of them could benefit by having access to that information.

Observation: The information sharing environment of the Network would facilitate full and timely information access and exchange of the disparate information housed in each of the data systems. The Network would allow information to remain where it is created, but using standards, guidelines, and rules to be developed, make it share-able and accessible to authorized Network participants.

Mr. DURBIN. I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TEXT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in 1957, when America was caught off guard by the Soviet Union's launch of a satellite named Sputnik, Congress passed a massive education bill, the National Defense Education Act, which poured federal funds into the study of math, science and strategic languages like Russian. Thirty-two years later, the Soviet Union fell. Following the 9/11 attacks and the Commission's report, we need to rise to the challenge once again. We must intensify the study of strategic foreign languages, like Arabic, Pashto and Korean.

According to the Department of Education, only 22 of the 1.8 million American students who graduated from college last year earned degrees in Arabic. This figure has remained about the same over the last decade. And as the 9/11 Commission reported, and the Washington Post and the New York Times reiterated on Tuesday, the lack of qualified personnel has left hundreds of thousands of pages of intercepted terrorist communication untranslated.

On page 77 of the Commission's report, the Commission notes the FBI "lacked sufficient translators proficient in Arabic and other key languages, resulting in a significant backlog of untranslated intercepts." On page 92, the report adds, "Very few American colleges and universities offered programs in Middle Eastern languages or Islamic studies." The 9/11 report also calls for both the CIA and the FBI to strengthen their language programs and for the FBI to improve ability to attract candidates with technological skills.

At a hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee on September 14, 9/11 Commissioner Fred Fielding described the lack of language skills at intelligence agencies as: "embarrassing." FBI Assistant Director for Administrative Services Mark Bullock testified that while the agency is receiving thousands of applicants, the agency has found it "difficult hiring agents with language skills, skills in the right languages."

We can do better.

The bill we are considering today does address education, but not completely. This bill calls for better coordination of joint training among the intelligence agencies and authorizes, but does not direct, the National Intelligence Director to collaborate with the intelligence agencies to establish a scholarship program, in which students agree to work for an agency in exchange for financial assistance with their education. I commend the managers of the bill for including this innovative education subsidy-for-service approach. This is an important mechanism to put in place, although we need to do more to expand instruction in critical foreign language, particularly in the area of science and technology. If no one is teaching the classes we need, we can't improve the pool of qualified applicants from which the intelligence community can recruit.

The amendment my colleagues from Florida and Hawaii and I sponsored will expand targeted educational opportunities to promote integration of intelligence collection and analysis and to prepare intelligence personnel to work with other agencies.

We ask the National Intelligence Director to assess the current needs of the intelligence community with respect to language skills; determine whether the community's needs for critical foreign language skills and understanding science and technology terms in those languages are being met; and report to Congress recommendations for programs to help meet those needs.

In developing its report, the NID is directed to take into account existing education grant programs through the Departments of Education and Defense. The first report is due to Congress within one year of enactment, and then again each year after that.

I thank the Senators from Florida and Hawaii for their willingness to work together in developing language to strengthen the critical language education component of the reorganized intelligence community. And I thank my colleagues from Maine and Connecticut for their leadership in crafting and managing this important piece of legislation, which now includes this additional focus on strengthening necessary language skills in this country.