Tribute to Mark Udall

Floor Speech

Mr. WYDEN. I close with just a word about our friend and colleague Senator Mark Udall of Colorado. I have had the pleasure of serving with Senator Udall on the Intelligence Committee and have admired his commitment to American security and core American values. Many in the Senate would not know this because all of those intelligence meetings are behind closed doors, but Mark Udall is not a Senator who is afraid to stand alone. He is not afraid to fight for what he believes in. When the fight to declassify this report got bumpy--and let me tell you it did a lot of times. I think some of you heard this weekend we had an eleventh-hour objection to the report getting out. People asked me what I thought, and I said it was not particularly surprising because there were objections practically every hour on the hour for months and months. Yet when the fight to declassify the report got very difficult, some people said: This is going to get buried forever. That is what happens when you try to get accountability and transparency. Senator Mark Udall made it clear that wasn't going to be allowed to happen on Mark Udall's watch.

I am going to wrap up by saying to Senator Udall, I remember when we started this battle together and we got a handful of votes, sometimes like 13 to 2 or whatever. We thought it was going to be a long time before there was reform. We went from those days to eventually getting up to 15 or 20 votes. Colleagues, today, to a great extent because of Senator Udall, in the last vote for real surveillance reform, we were up to 58 votes--58 votes for real surveillance reform. That, to a great extent, is possible because of the extraordinary service of my good friend Senator Mark Udall from Colorado. We westerners always make sure we stay in touch, and you know that is going to be the case with this particular friend from the West, a wonderful Senator, Mr. Mark Udall.

With that, I yield the floor.

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