Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chair, I rise in strong support of the Keating-McCaul amendment in the Intelligence Authorization Act. If adopted, our amendment would require the Director of National Intelligence to report to Congress on the state of intelligence information sharing with overseas partners to help us identify security gaps so that we can improve international monitoring of foreign fighter travel both in and out of Syria and Iraq.

Islamist fanatics from more than 100 countries have traveled overseas to fight with groups like ISIS and al Qaeda. Thousands of the jihadists carry Western passports and can exploit security gaps in places like Europe to return to the West, where they can plot attacks against America and our allies.

Last month, I led a congressional delegation to the Middle East to investigate the flow of these foreign fighters. And while progress is being made, I am still troubled by intelligence and screening gaps, especially with our foreign partners. We need to make sure our allies not only share the identities of terrorists and foreign fighters with us but also with each other so that these extremists can be stopped before they cross our borders into the United States.

This amendment will provide Congress critical information needed to close these security gaps and improve intelligence information sharing to defend our homeland.

I applaud the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Keating) for his hard work on the amendment and for his strong participation in our delegation overseas, where we learned quite a bit. It is not very often you can pass something you think can save American lives, and I think this is one of them. I thank the gentleman again.

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