[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 21155]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1715

                    THE THREAT FROM RADICAL JIHADISM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I rise today to express my 
disappointment that we're going to go into another weekend not having 
addressed the threat from radical jihadism.
  Just moments ago, this House passed a 9/11 bill supposedly to 
increase the security and the safety of the United States of America. 
But since April 12, our national Director of Intelligence, the position 
that was created in the Intelligence Reform Act earlier in 2004 to 
specifically provide us with information about the threats to the 
United States, this organization that was put together to make our 
intelligence community more effective, the Director of National 
Intelligence has reported to this Congress now for almost 4 months that 
there are significant intelligence gaps at the same time while we are a 
Nation at greater threat than perhaps any time since 9/11.
  In a letter that Director McConnell recently sent to the Intelligence 
Committee in an unclassified version, he highlights a situation in 
which our intelligence community every day is missing a significant 
portion of what we should be getting in order to protect the American 
people. He goes on and says this is about foreign intelligence, about 
foreign targets overseas, and that to collect this kind of an 
intelligence, what he needs to do is he needs to get a court order. 
Now, think about this; we need to get a court order to listen to an 
alleged terrorist, who may be in Pakistan, may be in Afghanistan, but 
we know that they're outside of the U.S. borders, so it's foreign 
intelligence about a foreign terrorist outside of the United States, 
and we need to go get a court order to listen to that conversation at a 
time when we know that we are at heightened risk.
  Isn't it ironic that as we pass a 9/11 bill, in the 9/11 bill that we 
passed this afternoon, the 9/11 bill gives al Qaeda and radical jihadis 
more information about the United States and about our intelligence 
community than what they had before. The 9/11 bill says we are going to 
reveal our top-line spending on intelligence. If we believe that 
revealing our spending at a macro level on intelligence makes us safer, 
maybe we should just give radical jihadis a breakdown of how we spend 
all of our money.
  So on a 9/11 bill we're going to say, you know, because of leaks in 
the intelligence community, leaks to the press, we've already told you 
about our Terrorist Surveillance Program, we've already talked with you 
and given you details about how we do financial tracking, we've talked 
to you about interrogations, we've talked to you about prisons and all 
these types of things, and now we're also going to tell you how much 
money we spend on intelligence on an annual basis. And remember, just 
about everybody agrees that the tip of the spear in keeping America 
safe is how effective our intelligence community is. And now we're 
going to give them more information about our intelligence community, 
and at the same time, while our Director of National Intelligence for 4 
months has been telling us that there are gaps in our intelligence, 
significant gaps in our ability to get information about what foreign 
terrorists may be planning against the United States, at a time when we 
know that one of their highest priorities is to attack the homeland 
again.
  And this is not only about their intentions to attack the United 
States, but remember, if there is a foreign terrorist in Afghanistan 
talking to a foreign jihadist or radical terrorist in Iraq and that 
communications may in some way come through the United States, that 
information will not even be available for our combat troops in Iraq or 
in Afghanistan. Not only are we blind for homeland security, we are 
also handicapping our troops who are on the front lines each and every 
day. We're not even getting them the information that they could use on 
a tactical basis to protect themselves, but also to identify where the 
radical jihadists are, where al Qaeda might be in Iraq, and what they 
may be up to in Iraq or in Afghanistan or in the United States or in 
Western Europe, wherever. And the most concerning thing is that we may 
not even deal with this before we go on recess next week. This needs to 
be fixed before we go on recess.

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