[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 14255]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                           HON. RUSH D. HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 23, 2004

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 4548) to 
     authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2005 for 
     intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the 
     United States Government, the Community Management Account, 
     and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability 
     System, and for other purposes.

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Chairman, the list of recognized intelligence failures 
is depressingly long and still growing. Despite these documented 
missteps, the House Leadership has produced an Intelligence 
Authorization bill that says we'll keep doing more of the same. We'll 
conduct our intelligence the same way as we have in the past. We'll 
spend a little more money here, a little less money there, but we'll do 
the same things we've been doing and do them the same way. And Congress 
will continue to abdicate its oversight responsibility. That's 
unacceptable.
  Every member of this Congress supports the men and women of our 
intelligence community who put their lives on the line every day to 
keep our nation safe. I am a veteran of the intelligence community, 
having worked at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and 
Research, and I have the utmost respect for our intelligence 
professionals. However, we do a disservice to their hard work and 
personal sacrifice if we do not make sure that they have the tools and 
organizational structure they need to perform their duties 
successfully.
  We all know now that they work within a broken system plagued by 
miscommunication, lack of coordination, and poor organization. In my 
view, the worst thing we can do for them is to continue to prop up this 
broken system. When a ship is sinking, you can either hand out buckets 
or you can repair the holes. Congress should be in the job of repairing 
the intelligence community, not bailing it out.
  I want to be clear that our intelligence failures are not the fault 
of the men and women who work in the intelligence community. They are 
the result of complex, competitive and often redundant organizations 
that prevent the good work of our intelligence operatives from 
resulting in good, comprehensive products.
  Unfortunately, there is no indication in this bill that we have 
learned anything from our intelligence mistakes. Nearly 3 years ago, 
our intelligence services failed to prevent the attacks on the World 
Trade Center, which took the lives of more than a hundred of my 
constituents in central New Jersey. An anthrax attack, which originated 
in my district and which targeted Members of Congress and other 
innocent citizens, still remains unsolved by the FBI. Today, our 
soldiers are risking their lives in Iraq after fighting a war to 
bottle-up weapons of mass destruction that our intelligence services 
said were there, but were not. The list of failures goes on.
  And yet, with this bill, Congress continues to fail to make any 
reforms of the intelligence community. In fact, there is no indication 
in this bill that Congress plans to exert any more oversight over the 
intelligence community to hold it accountable for its performance than 
it has in years past. That is inexcusable.
  In Committee, many of my colleagues and I offered a series of 
commonsense reforms that would have strengthened intelligence and 
strengthened oversight. They were all rejected.
  For example, one of the reforms included a provision that would have 
established a special ``red-team'' that would have been charged with 
challenging assumptions and poking holes in the so-called ``judgments'' 
of the Intelligence Community. In other words, the ``red-team'' would 
be our in-house devil's advocate. It would make Intelligence analyses 
like the National Intelligence Estimate stronger and less subject to 
misinterpretation or selective editing by providing policy-makers with 
a new ``red team'' section where all doubts, concerns, and alternative 
views are clearly laid out. It would help us make sure that we actually 
know what we think we know. There was no reason for this reform to be 
rejected.
  Finally, I was horrified that the Majority decided not to allow 
debate on Mr. Peterson's amendment, which would have fixed a major flaw 
in this bill. The bill only funds one-third of the critical 
counterterrorism funds the intelligence agencies say they need. The 
Peterson amendment would fund 100 percent of the counterterrorism 
funding needed and would do so now.
  Instead, the Majority plans to wait to ask for more money in a 
supplemental appropriation later this year. However, by funding our 
intelligence community by supplemental we in Congress will be curbing 
our own ability to oversee how those funds are spent. We need to give 
the intelligence community the financial support it needs, but it would 
be irresponsible for us to give them a blank check and not ask any 
questions.
  As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 
it is my responsibility to make sure that this Congress both exerts the 
proper oversight over our intelligence community and that the community 
receives the proper directives and funding to be successful. I cannot 
in good conscience vote for this bill because it is structured in such 
a way that will only contribute to more intelligence failures in the 
future.

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