[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withdrawn; that the time until 1:45 p.m. be equally divided in the 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.