[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Page 25775]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      THE INTELLIGENCE REFORM BILL

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, today is a signature day in what has been a 
Congress of milestone achievements. Our last vote this year will be on 
one of the most consequential legislative initiatives of this session, 
intelligence reform. The road to this moment has been filled, as we 
have all witnessed and participated in, twists and turns. Our hearts 
still run with the emotions of the attacks on our Nation on 9/11. Our 
sorrow became our resolve to protect our homeland with all of the tools 
that could possibly be at our disposal.
  Under the President's leadership, al-Qaida was chased from 
Afghanistan, and that country was freed. To head off an imminent 
threat, our country toppled Saddam Hussein from his dictatorship in 3 
short weeks.
  To begin the process of making our country safer here at home, we 
created the Department of Homeland Security. And now we take another 
large step forward--not the last, but another large step forward--by 
recognizing that our intelligence community needed reorganization, 
responding to that reorganization, and doing that reorganization for 
the first time in 50 years. Change is never easy--the summer and fall 
have been proof of that maxim--but big change is on the way for our 
intelligence community, change that will serve our country to make it 
safer and more secure.
  I can't credit enough the careful and thorough work of the chairman 
of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. At my request she 
cancelled all summer plans and, with her counterpart on the Senate 
Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Lieberman, began work 
immediately on this critical project, literally hours after the
9/11 Commission issued its report. From beginning to end she has 
brought her talents and skill to an extremely difficult issue. Chairman 
Susan Collins demonstrated tremendous leadership. The Senate and the 
Nation are in her debt.
  This day cannot go by without also thanking many other Members: 
Senator Lieberman, the ranking member; members of the Governmental 
Affairs Committee, and the Senate conferees; Senator Warner, who 
stepped in to lend an able hand in this last week; Senator Jon Kyl, 
whose patience has been remarkable; Senator Ted Stevens, our very 
experienced hand who has dealt with all of the programs under review in 
this bill for decades and whose continued interest and leadership and 
focus on implementation of this bill will be absolutely critical; 
Senator Tom Daschle, who joined hands with me and said right after the 
report was released that we would work together in a bipartisan way to 
generate a complex bill in a responsive, expeditious way that would 
respond to the recommendations put forth by the 9/11 Commission.
  That product has been developed and will be delivered to this body 
shortly and will be voted on this afternoon. The legislation is not 
perfect. It does not solve every problem. But the legislation was not 
designed to solve every problem. Specific problems were identified by 
the work of the Commission and Congress in reviewing operations in the 
intelligence community in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks. To 
the best of our ability, we have produced legislation that, with the 
visionary leadership from the President and his Cabinet, will serve to 
make America safer.
  I can't emphasize that last point enough. Today we are safer than we 
were before 9/11, but we are not yet safe. Active and engaged Americans 
around the world and here at home are our first and our best line of 
defense against a philosophy that seeks and is committed to doing us 
harm. This legislation is an important tool in a war against terrorism, 
but it is not one-stop shopping for our country's needs. It should help 
in making sure that our intelligence assets are deployed wisely, that 
information developed is shared broadly, that our strategy to fight 
this war evolves effectively, and it will accomplish those things.
  The families who lost their parents, their children, their relatives, 
their close friends on that tragic day in New York and Pennsylvania and 
Washington, all deserve our constant dedication in the Congress to 
buttress the war on terror. This conference report is our latest 
contribution, not our final contribution, to that conflict. No one 
should have to suffer the horror and anguish of the 9/11 events again.
  I will close by saying that when we act later today, we will have 
acted on that hope. We will have kept our charge as Members to stand on 
behalf of America in her defense. And we will have stood and made a 
lasting difference that is a fitting capstone to the 108th Congress.
  I thank all Members for their patience. I appreciate them for their 
diligence and dedication since the end of July, working nonstop to 
bring this bill to the floor and ultimately see it through to passage 
today and later signature by the President of the United States.

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