Congressional Record, Volume 163 Issue 45 (Wednesday, March 15, 2017)

[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 45 (Wednesday, March 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1814-S1818]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

Order of Procedure

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for yielding for a
brief UC request, as I think this would be in the best interests of the
entire Senate.
I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture
motion on Executive Calendar No. 19, the McMaster nomination, be
withdrawn; that the time until 1:45 p.m. be equally divided in the
usual form on the Coats and McMaster nominations concurrently; and that
at 1:45 p.m. the Senate vote on the Coats nomination, followed by a
vote on the McMaster nomination; and that, if confirmed, the President
be immediately notified of the Senate's actions, with no intervening
action or debate. I further ask that 1 hour of minority debate time be
reserved for Senator Wyden.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that
following morning business on Tuesday, March 21, the Senate proceed to
executive session for the en bloc consideration of the following
nominations: Executive Calendar Nos. 21 and 22. I ask unanimous consent
that the time until 12 noon be equally divided and that following the
use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the nominations, en
bloc, with no intervening action or debate; that, if confirmed, the
motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, en
bloc, and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action;
that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating
to the nominations be printed in the Record.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague for
yielding for those unanimous consent requests.
Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague.
Now, as we consider the nomination of Senator Coats, and recognize
that his top priority, by his admission, would be the reauthorization
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--particularly section
702--I want to begin this discussion by saying that it is because the
intelligence community has stonewalled Democrats and Republicans in
both this body and in the other body for 6 years on the information
that we need to do good oversight that I have come to the floor to
outline what I think the central issue is all about.
I am going to begin my remarks by way of saying that, at a time when
Americans are demanding policies that give them more security and more
liberty, increasingly, we are seeing policies come from both this body
and the other body that provide less of both.
A good example would be weakening strong encryption. Weakening strong
encryption is bad from a security standpoint, and it is bad from a
liberty standpoint. When government creates policies that give the
American people less of both--less security and less liberty--
obviously, the American people are not going to react well.
My view is that when the government--particularly intelligence
agencies--don't level with the American people about large-scale
surveillance of law-abiding Americans, our people are justifiably
angry. When the government tries to keep this information secret--as I
have pointed out on this floor before--in America, the truth always
comes out. Leveling with the American people is the only way for
agencies to have the credibility and the legitimacy to effectively do
their jobs. They have critically important jobs in keeping our people
safe from threats.
Now, with respect to Senator Coats, at his confirmation hearing,
since he said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would be his
top priority, I asked our former colleague how many Americans--
innocent, law-abiding Americans--have actually been swept up in the
surveillance program known as section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. Under section 702, the government conducts
warrantless surveillance of foreigners who are reasonably believed to
be overseas. It does this work by compelling telecommunications
companies and internet service providers to provide the content, phone
calls, and emails, and other individual communications.
Now, there are several different ways this happens, and I will get to
that in the course of these remarks. What we are talking about--what I
want people to understand--is that this goes to the content of
communications. This is not about metadata collection. Congress, as the
Senate knows, reformed that in the USA FREEDOM Act. This is
surveillance without any warrants, and once the FISA Court signs off on
the overall program, the details are up to the government.
Now, this was not always the case. For decades, individual warrants
were required when the government needed the assistance of the
country's telecommunications firms. Then the Bush administration
created a secret, but legal, warrantless wiretapping program.
After the program was revealed, the government then went to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court to get approval. But when
the government ran into some trouble with the court, the Bush
administration argued that the Congress should create the current
program. It was first passed in 2007 under the name Protect America
Act. That became the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments
Act of 2008.
Now, fortunately, the Congress included a sunset provision, which is
why it was up for reauthorization in 2012, and that is why it is up for
reauthorization this year. This year it is Senator Coats' top priority,
if confirmed. Whoever is the head of the intelligence community will be
the point person for this legislation.
I want it understood that the reason that I am going through this
background is that I believe the American people deserve a fully
informed debate about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
reauthorization. You cannot have that debate--you cannot ensure that
the American people have security and liberty--unless you know the
impact of section 702 of that bill on the constitutional rights of law-
abiding Americans.

[[Page S1815]]

So for 6 years, in this body, Democrats and Republicans--and in the
other body, Democrats and Republicans--have been asking the same
question: How many law-abiding Americans are having their
communications swept up in all of this collection? Without even an
estimate of this number, I don't think it is possible to judge what
section 702 means for the core liberties of law-abiding Americans.
Without this information, the Congress can't make an informed decision
about whether to reauthorize section 702 or what kind of reforms might
be necessary to ensure the protection of the individual liberties of
innocent Americans.
At Senator Coats' nomination hearing before the Senate Intelligence
Committee, I asked Senator Coats whether he would commit to providing
Congress and the public with this information. I will say, because of
my respect for Senator Coats and our longtime cooperation on issues
like tax reform and a variety of others, I hoped that Senator Coats
would be the one--after 6 years of struggling to get this information--
to make a commitment to deliver it to the Senate Intelligence Committee
before work on the reauthorization began. Instead, Senator Coats said:
``I will do everything I can to work with Admiral Rogers at the NSA to
get you that number.''
If confirmed, I hope that happens. But after asking for the number of
law-abiding Americans who get swept up in these searches for years, and
getting stonewalled by the executive branch, hoping to get the
information we need to do real oversight is just not good enough.
The problem--the lack of information on the impact of this law on the
privacy of Americans--goes all the way back to the origins of the
authority. In December of 2007, the Bush administration, in its
statement of administration policy on the FISA Amendments Act, stated
that it would likely be impossible to count the number of people
located in the United States as communications were reviewed by the
government. In April of 2011, our former colleague Senator Mark Udall
and I then asked the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper,
for an estimate. In July of that year, the Director wrote back and
said: ``It is not reasonably possible to identify the number of people
located in the United States whose communications may have been
reviewed under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act.''
He suggested reviewing the classified number of disseminated
intelligence reports containing a reference to a U.S. person, but that
is very different than the number of Americans whose communications
have been collected in the first place. And that is what this is all
about: How many law-abiding Americans--innocent, law-abiding
Americans--are getting swept up in these searches? It will be an
increasingly important issue as the nature of telecommunications
companies continues to change, because it is now a field that is
globally interconnected. We don't have telecommunications systems just
stopping at national borders. So getting the number of Americans whose
communications have been collected in the first place is the
prerequisite to doing real oversight on this law and doing our job, at
a time when it is being reauthorized and the American people want both
security and liberty and understand that the two are not mutually
exclusive.
So Director Clapper then suggested reviewing the classified number of
targets that were later determined to be located in the United States.
But the question has never been about the targets of 702, although the
mistaken targeting of Americans and the people in our country is
another serious question. The question that Democrats and Republicans
have been asking is about how many Americans are being swept up by a
program that, according to the law, is supposed to only target
foreigners overseas.
So let me repeat that. That is what the law says. The Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act says that the targets are supposed to be
foreigners overseas, and Democrats and Republicans want to know how
many law-abiding Americans, who might reside in Alaska or Oregon or
anywhere else, are getting swept up in these searches.
(Mr. SULLIVAN assumed the Chair.)
So this bipartisan coalition has kept asking. In July of 2012,
anticipating the first reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, I and 11 other Senators from both
parties wrote to Director Clapper. This bipartisan group wrote:

We understand that it might not be possible for the
intelligence community to calculate this number with
precision, but it is difficult for us to accept the assertion
that it is not possible to come up with even a rough estimate
of this number. If generating a precise estimate would
require an inordinate amount of labor, we would be willing to
accept an imprecise one.

We asked about imprecise estimates, just a ballpark: How many law-
abiding Americans are getting swept up in these searches that the law
says are designed to target foreigners?
We asked about orders of magnitude: Is the number closer to a hundred
or a hundred thousand or a hundred million?
We still got no answer, and section 702 was reauthorized without this
necessary information. So last year, looking at the prospect of the law
coming up, there was a renewed effort to find out how many law-abiding
Americans are getting swept up in these searches of foreigners.
In April 2016, a bipartisan letter from members of the House
Judiciary Committee asked the Director of National Intelligence for a
public estimate of the number of communications or transactions
involving U.S. persons collected under section 702 on an annual basis.
This letter, coming from the House--Democrats and Republicans--again
asked for a rough estimate. This bipartisan group suggested working
with Director Clapper to determine the methodology to get this
estimate. In December, there were hints in the news media that
something might be forthcoming. But now, here we are, with a new
administration, considering the nomination of the next head of the
intelligence community, who has said that reauthorizing section 702 is
his top legislative priority, and there is no answer in sight to the
question Democrats and Republicans have been asking for over 6 years:
How many innocent, law-abiding Americans are getting swept up in these
searches under a law that targets foreigners overseas?
Having described this history, I want to explain why this issue is so
important, starting with the many ways in which innocent Americans can
be swept up in section 702 surveillance.
The first are targeting mistakes in which, contrary to the law, the
target turns out to be an American or someone in the United States. The
full impact of these mistakes on law-abiding Americans is not readily
apparent. The most recent public report on section 702 noted that there
were compliance incidents involving surveillance of foreigners in the
United States and surveillance of Americans. This is in violation of
the law, and it happens.
The second way in which Americans can be swept up in section 702
collection is when they communicate with an overseas target. This is
usually called incidental collection and is often mischaracterized. I
have heard many times that the program is intended to find out when
Americans are communicating with ``bad guys''--and I want it
understood, I am not interested in some kind of ``bad guys caucus.'' I
know of no Senator who is not interested in protecting our country from
those kinds of threats. If a known terrorist overseas is communicating
with someone in the United States, we ought to know about it. But
section 702 is not just a counterterrorism program. The statute
requires the collection be conducted ``to acquire foreign intelligence
information.'' As implemented, the standard for targeting individuals
under the program is that the government has reason to believe those
persons possess, are expected to receive, or are likely to communicate
foreign intelligence information. Obviously, that is broad. It doesn't
even require that a target be suspected of wrongdoing. So if someone
tells you that your communications will be collected only if you are
talking to al-Qaida or ISIS, that is just factually wrong.
It is also important to note that the government is prohibited from
collecting communications only when the sender of an email and everyone
receiving that email are in the United States. So an American in the
United States could send an email to another American in the United
States, but if

[[Page S1816]]

the email also goes to an overseas target, it is going to be collected.
That then brings us to the different kinds of collection under
section 702 and how they affect the liberties of our people in
different ways. In one form of collection known as PRISM, the
government orders an internet service provider to provide the
government with messages to and from a specific email address. Then
there is something known as upstream collection, which is when the
communications are collected off the telecommunications and internet
backbones. In other words, phone calls and email messages are collected
in transit. This kind of collection raises a number of other reasons to
be concerned about how many law-abiding Americans are getting swept up.
For one, it is through upstream collection that the government can
collect emails that are neither to nor from a target. The email merely
has to be about a target, meaning, for example, it includes a target's
email address in the content. In other words, the government can
collect emails to and from Americans, none of whom are of any interest
to the government whatsoever, so long as the target's email address is
in the content of the email. The law requires only that one of the
parties to the communication, who, again, could be another American, is
overseas, and even that requirement is harder for the government to
meet in practice.
The implications here ought to be pretty obvious. You don't even have
to be communicating with one of the government's targets to be swept up
in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act collection. You don't even
have to be communicating with a foreigner. You or somebody emailing you
just needs to reference a target's email address.
I have now mentioned that this target is not necessarily a terrorist
because the law allows for surveillance ``to acquire foreign
intelligence information.'' That has been interpreted to allow the
targeting of individuals who the government has reason to believe
possess, are expected to receive, or are likely to communicate foreign
intelligence information. It is a broad standard, and the government
could then collect the communications of all kinds of foreigners around
the world. Think about how easy it would be for an American business
leader to be in contact with the broad set of potential targets of this
program. Consider how easy it would be for Americans, communicating
with other Americans, to forward the emails of these people. All of
this could be collected by the government.

The upstream collection also includes the collection of what are
called multicommunications transactions. This is when the NSA collects
an email that is to, from, or about a target, but that email is
embedded among multiple other communications that are not. These
communications may have nothing to do with the target, but the
government just kind of, sort of ends up with them--and some of them
are sent and received entirely within the United States.
These are the ways in which law abiding Americans--innocent, law-
abiding Americans who have done absolutely nothing wrong, both overseas
and in the United States--can have their communications collected under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. These are law-abiding
Americans, innocent Americans, not necessarily suspected of anything,
and it is their privacy and their constitutional rights that have
caused Democrats and Republicans in this body and in the other body to
seek the actual numbers of how many law-abiding Americans are getting
swept up in these searches that are supposed to target foreigners
overseas.
The reason this is important is that the program is getting bigger
and bigger. The exact numbers are classified, but the government's
public reporting confirms steady increases in collection. At some
point, the size of the program and the extent to which Americans'
communications are being collected raises obvious concerns about our
Fourth Amendment. The question is not if the program raises
constitutional concerns, but when. And that gets to the heart of what
our bipartisan coalition has been concerned about: If it is not
possible for the Senate to know as part of reauthorizing this law how
many Americans are being swept up by this program, we cannot determine
whether the government has crossed a constitutional line.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an agency the
Congress has tasked to look at these issues, has raised the very same
concerns I am outlining this morning. In the 2014 report by the Board--
the nonpartisan organization tasked by the Congress--concluded that the
lack of information about the collection of the communications of law-
abiding Americans' communications under section 702 ``hampers attempts
to gauge whether the program appropriately balances national security
interests with the privacy of U.S. persons.''
They went on to say:

The program [is] close to the line of constitutional
reasonableness. At the very least, too much expansion in the
collection of U.S. persons' communications or the uses to
which those communications are put may push the program over
the line.

They recommended exactly what our bipartisan coalition has been
calling for--that the government provide to the Congress and, to the
extent consistent with national security, that the public and the
Congress get data on the collection of these communications of law-
abiding Americans.
The most frequently heard argument against what our bipartisan group
of House and Senate Members has been calling for is that, whatever
number of communications are being collected on law-abiding Americans,
it is minimized, which implies that information about Americans is
hidden.
This is a particularly important issue. I have heard my colleagues on
the other side say frequently: Well, if law-abiding Americans are
having their communications swept up, we shouldn't get all concerned
about that because this array of Americans' communications is being
minimized. Somehow that means it is not getting out; it is being
hidden. That is not necessarily what happens. To begin with, all that
collection does not stay at the National Security Agency. All the
emails collected through the PRISM component of section 702 go to
several other agencies, including the CIA and the FBI. Then we have
those three agencies, in particular, authorized to conduct searches
through all the data for communications that are to, from, or about
Americans: Look for an American's name, telephone number, email
address, even a key word or phrase. They can do that without any
warrant. There doesn't have to be even a suspicion--even a suspicion--
that an American is engaged in any kind of wrongdoing. The FBI's
authorities are even broader. The FBI can conduct searches for
communications that are to, from, or about an American to seek evidence
of a crime. Unlike the National Security Agency and the Central
Intelligence Agency, the FBI doesn't even report how many searches for
Americans it is conducting. Moreover, neither the FBI nor the CIA
reports on the number of searches for Americans that it conducts using
metadata collected under section 702.

The authority to conduct searches for Americans' communications in
section 702 data is new. Before 2011, the FISA Court prohibited queries
for U.S. persons. I am going to repeat that. Under the Bush
administration and in the first 2 years of the Obama administration, it
was not possible to conduct these backdoor, warrantless searches of
law-abiding Americans. Then the Obama administration sought to change
the rules and obtained authority to conduct them.
In April 2014, the Director of National Intelligence's response to
questions from me and Senator Mark Udall publicly acknowledged these
warrantless searches. By June the House voted overwhelmingly to
prohibit them. That prohibition didn't become law, but I can tell you
that it is sure going to be considered in the context of this
reauthorization. The House voted overwhelmingly to prohibit these
warrantless searches.
So the question really is this: What exactly is the privacy impact of
these warrantless searches for Americans? In 2014, I managed to extract
from the intelligence community some, but not all, necessary
information about how many Americans had been subject of the searches.
That was a step forward, but what the data doesn't tell us is who the
subjects of these searches are. More to the point, it doesn't tell us
how many Americans are potentially the subject of these searches. If
the number

[[Page S1817]]

is small, the potential for abuse, obviously, would be smaller. If the
number is large, the potential for abuse is much greater. Without an
understanding of the size of the pool from which the government can
pull the communications of law-abiding Americans, there is just no way
of knowing how easy it would be for the government to use this law as a
means to read the emails of a political opponent, a business leader, a
journalist, or an activist.
I now want to turn to the ultimate form of abuse, and that is
something called reverse targeting. It is prohibited by law and defined
as collection ``if the purpose of the acquisition is to target a
particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United
States.'' This prohibition also applies to U.S. persons. The question,
though, is how this is defined and how the public can be assured it is
not happening.
If you look at the language, you can see why there has been
bipartisan concern. The collection is only prohibited if the purpose is
to get the communications of Americans. The question obviously has
risen: What if getting the Americans' communications is only one of the
purposes of collecting on an overseas target? What is actually
acceptable here?
This issue was concerning in 2008, when the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act Amendments Act passed with a prohibition on reverse
targeting. But that was before the country knew about the collection of
emails that are only about a foreign target and that could be to and
from Americans. That was before the Obama administration sought and
obtained authority to conduct warrantless searches for communications
to, from, and about Americans out of section 702 PRISM collection.
That makes an important point to me. This bipartisan coalition--of
which I have been a part--has fought back against executive branch
overreach, whether it is a Democratic administration or a Republican
administration. I cited the fact that President Obama brought back
something with the great potential for abuse and that President Bush
said he wanted no part of. As we look at these issues, it is important
to understand exactly what the scope of the problem is. Each of the
agencies authorized to conduct these warrantless searches--the NSA,
FBI, CIA--are also authorized to identify the overseas targets of
section 702. The agencies that have developed an interest in Americans'
communications, which are actually looking for these communications,
are the same agencies that are in a position to encourage ongoing
collection of those communications by targeting the overseas party.
I believe our bipartisan group believes that there is very
substantial potential for abuse. Because of these decisions taking
place in the executive branch without any judicial oversight, it is
possible that no one would ever know.
To quote the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board: ``Since the
enactment of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, the extent to which the
government acquires the communications of U.S. persons under Section
702 has been one of the biggest open questions about the program, and a
continuing source of public concern.'' The Board noted that the
executive branch has responded with any number of excuses for why it
couldn't provide the number of how many innocent law-abiding Americans
get swept up in these searches. One excuse has been the size of the
program. But as Members--Democrats and Republicans--have said
repeatedly, an estimate, perhaps based on a sample, is sufficient.
Nobody is dictating how this be done.
Another excuse has been that determining whether individuals whose
communications have been collected are American would itself be
invasive of privacy. Now this is something of a head-scratcher. I will
just say that, as to the value of knowing how many law-abiding
Americans get swept up in these searches, privacy advocates have stated
that this far-fetched theory, this far-fetched excuse for not
furnishing it, doesn't add up in terms of the benefit of finding how
many Americans are swept up in these warrantless searches.
The government is genuinely concerned about the privacy implications
of calculating the number. I and many of my colleagues, both Democrats
and Republicans, have been willing--and we renewed this in the last few
weeks--to have a discussion about the methodology under consideration.

In the months ahead, the Senate is going to be debating a number of
issues relating to this topic, such as U.S. person searches, reverse
targeting, and the collection of communications that are just about a
target. The Senate is going to discuss how to strengthen oversight by
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Congress, and the
privacy board. The Director of National Intelligence will be right in
the center of the debate.
There is more information that the American people need. There is
more information that this body needs in order to carry out its
responsibility to do real oversight here. The center of these
discussions about the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act involves one question: How many innocent, law-abiding
Americans have been swept up in this program that has been written and
developed to target foreigners overseas? Congress's judgment about the
impact of section 702 depends on getting this number. An assessment of
the program's constitutionality rests on the understanding of the
impact it has on Americans. A full grasp of the implications of the
warrantless searches of Americans requires knowing how many Americans'
communications are being searched through. Countless questions related
to the reauthorization of the program all require that the public have
this information.
I am just going to close by way of saying what those questions are
because if you want to do real oversight over a critically important
program, you have to have the information to respond to these
questions. The questions are these: Should there be safeguards against
reverse targeting? Should Congress legislate on ``upstream''
collections and the collection of communications about targets, which
raises unique concerns about the collection of the communications of
law-abiding Americans? Are the rules related to the dissemination, use,
and retention of these communications adequate? Should there be limits
on the use of these communications by the FBI for non-intelligence
purposes?
Just think about that one for a minute. What does it mean to people
in our part of the world where people feel that liberty and security
are not mutually exclusive, but they are going to insist on both? What
does it mean to them on the question of whether there ought to be
limits on the use of this information by the FBI for non-intelligence
purposes? That is exactly the kind of question that people are going to
ask.
I am heading home today for townhall meetings in rural areas, and
those are exactly the kind of questions that Oregonians ask. People
understand this is a dangerous time. That is not at issue.
I serve on the Intelligence Committee, along with Senator Feinstein,
and I have been one of the longer serving members. The fact that this
is a dangerous world is not a debatable proposition. There are a lot of
people out there who do not wish our country well. But what I say to
Oregonians and what I will say again this weekend is this: Any
politician who tells you that you have to give up your liberty to have
security is not somebody who is working in your interest because smart
policies give you both.
That is why I started talking about the benefits of strong
encryption--critically important for security. These questions are ones
that I don't think are particularly partisan. That is why a big group
of Democrats and Republicans here and in the other body have been
seeking the information about how many law-abiding Americans get caught
up in these efforts to target a foreigner overseas. We are now at a
critical moment. A government surveillance program, with very obvious
implications for privacy and constitutional rights, is up for
reauthorization by the end of the year. While more information may be
part of the answer, we have to have the best possible estimate to
answer those questions that I just outlined.
The American people want Congress to get to the bottom of questions
that go right to the heart of our having

[[Page S1818]]

policies that promote both their security and their liberty. I think
the public expects a full debate. You can't have a full and real debate
over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act unless you have some
sense of how many law-abiding Americans are getting swept up in these
searches of foreigners.
I believe the American people expect serious oversight over it. They
want assurances that their representatives in Congress have a sense of
what is actually being voted on. After years of secret surveillance
programs being revealed only in the news media, I think the public has
rightly insisted on more openness and more transparency.
So getting the information that I have described today, which will
deal with Senator Coats' top priority of reauthorizing the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, is a critical first step. Once the
Senate knows the impact of this program on Americans, then you can have
a full and real discussion--a real debate in Congress--with the public
and with the Director of National Intelligence.
I took the view in the committee, despite very much liking Dan Coats
and his being the bipartisan cosponsor of what is still the only
Federal income tax reform proposal we have had in the Senate since the
1986 law was authored, I said that I cannot support any nominee to be
the head of national intelligence if that nominee will not guarantee
that before this reauthorization is brought before the Senate and
brought before the Intelligence Committee, that we have the information
needed to do our job, to do real oversight, to show the American people
it is possible to come up with policies that promote security and
liberty. For that reason, despite my friendship with Senator Coats, I
cannot support the nomination.
I yield the floor.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, never before has a sitting President
so maligned our intelligence community. President Trump has repeatedly
belittled and ridiculed the work of intelligence officials, calling
their assessments of Russia's hack into U.S. elections ``fake news.''
Over Twitter, President Trump accused intelligence officers of
executing a Nazi-like smear campaign against him. President Trump has
sided with the likes of Julian Assange and Vladimir Putin over our own
intelligence community.
More disturbingly, President Trump seems to hold shallow views on
critical intelligence questions like torture. On the campaign trail,
Mr. Trump constantly vowed to reinstate torture, asserting that only
``stupid people'' would think otherwise. In an interview with the New
York Times, Mr. Trump admitted that he was ``surprised'' that Defense
Secretary Mattis opposed torture, while adding that he would be
``guided by'' mass sentiments on torture. Mr. Trump's pronouncements on
torture are dangerous, irresponsible, and rally our enemies.
Senator Dan Coats has an enormous challenge ahead of him. President
Trump removed the Director of National Intelligence from the National
Security Council, marginalizing the intelligence community's essential
role in informing national security decisions. President Trump
reportedly plans to hire a New York billionaire with close ties to
Steve Bannon to conduct a review of the intelligence agencies, a core
responsibility of the Director of National Intelligence, and Senator
Coats' hardline assessments of Russia may meet with skepticism in a
White House that views Putin so favorably.
I am encouraged by Senator Coats' willingness to work with the
Congress in a bipartisan manner, particularly on probes related to
Russia's hack into our election. I expect Senator Coats to maintain his
commitment to follow the law on enhanced interrogation techniques and
not to seek to change them. For these reasons, I support his nomination
to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.