Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record a statement by the Director of National Intelligence, Mr. Mike McConnell, of August 3. I look forward to working with my colleagues on crafting permanent legislation. Statement by the Director of National Intelligence, Mr. Mike McConnell I have reviewed the proposal that the House of Representatives is expected to vote on this afternoon to modify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The House proposal is unacceptable, and I strongly oppose it. The House proposal would not allow me to carry out my responsibility to provide warning and to protect the Nation, especially in our heightened threat environment. I urge Members of Congress to support the legislation I provided last evening to modify FISA and to equip our Intelligence Community with the tools we need to protect our Nation. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished minority leader, Mr. Boehner.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to my colleague from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Fossella). (Mr. FOSSELLA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to a valued member of the committee, Mr. Thornberry.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from New Mexico, who has been a champion on this issue and leading the effort to get us to where we are tonight, Mrs. Wilson.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is left for each of the three Members.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if it is in order, but I would like to ask unanimous consent, recognizing the generosity of the Chair to this side, that my colleague from the State of Michigan also be given an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to my colleague, Mr. Tiahrt.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. No, I did not yield an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to a valued member of the committee, Mr. Issa of California. (Mr. ISSA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman appreciates the generosity of the Chair.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the House recess until we get a response from the Director of National Intelligence as to their feedback on the FISA bill.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. As our previous colleague was talking, I think she laid it out pretty well. Are we going to involve the courts in reviewing our foreign intelligence activities? If you take a look at the bill that is out here, it appears that the court is going to be involved in reviewing our intelligence community activities overseas. This becomes the Terrorist Protection Act, not a surveillance program. Do we want a court reviewing our tactics and strategies for foreign intelligence or foreign individuals in foreign locations and lay it out the way that this bill wants? This is not about theory. This is about protecting the homeland, and it is about protecting our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Does it make sense that when a commander in the field gets the information or gets leads that may protect their soldiers that, rather than following the lead immediately, the first thing that they do is bring in the lawyers to make sure that they get that information in an appropriate and legal way on the battlefield? Is that giving our troops the tools that they need to keep themselves safe and secure and defeat the enemy? Does it make sense when our intelligence frontline folks, whether it's in northern Africa or in the Middle East, get a lead as to individuals who may be targeting the United States, that the first thing that they need to do is get the lawyers involved to make sure that foreign intelligence is collected in an appropriate way, rather than focusing on what needs to keep us safe? After 9/11, we spent a lot of time working together to put together an intelligence community that would, in the future, be able to connect the dots. With this bill that it looks like we're going to consider this afternoon, we won't have to worry about connecting the dots anymore because we will put the barriers in place that means that they will not even be able to collect the dots. But if you believe that this is a bumper sticker war and this is a bumper sticker threat that we face today, this bill is for you. Take a look at the statement by the Director of National Intelligence. The Director of National Intelligence today is the same individual that served many years under President Bill Clinton as the Director of the National Security Agency. Here's what he has to say about this bill: I have reviewed the proposal that the House of Representatives is expected to vote on this afternoon to modify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The House proposal is unacceptable. I strongly oppose it. The House proposal would not allow me to carry out my responsibility to provide warning and to protect the Nation, especially in our heightened threat environment. I urge Members of Congress to support the legislation I provided last evening to modify FISA to equip our intelligence community with the tools we need to protect our Nation. This is an individual who has a 30-year career in this business. He served President Clinton; he's serving President Bush, but most importantly, it is a career that is distinguished because he has served the country and has kept us safe. Let's respect his opinion. Let's give him the tools that will keep us safe, keep us safe in the homeland and keep our troops safe on the battlefield.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. The great track record about the FISA bill designed and passed in 1978 was that the intent was to protect American civil liberties, and it has done a very effective job of protecting American civil liberties. Nowhere in this debate over the last week, over the last number of months has about there been allegations that FISA did not work. There was a technical problem with FISA because technology has moved and evolved and the law did not. So the question becomes, take a look at the bill. If we're really intent on protecting Americans, read some sections of the bill. ``We require basket warrants for various targets, various countries.'' How many baskets are we going to put out there and are we going to require the DNI to prepare to bring to the court? And then take a look at what they require to put into the basket. Does this help protect Americans, where we say the DNI needs to go to a court and provide a description of the nature of the information sought for the various baskets, the China basket, the North Korea basket, the al Qaeda basket, the Syria basket? What happens if we outline the type of intelligence we want to gather and we're gathering it and we get something else? Do we need to minimize that? That is a ridiculous requirement. The bill goes on and it says, ``a statement of the means by which the electronic surveillance will be effected.'' This is going to the Court and saying, you need to identify all over the world how you are going to collect intelligence. There are certain intelligence collection methods that only two Members of this House may be aware of. Does that help keep America safe? This is a bad bill. It protects terrorists, not Americans.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I think we all know the context of the world that we live in today. America is under heightened threat. We also know that, if we go back to May 21, the Director of National Intelligence has said our intelligence agencies must obtain a court order to monitor the communications of foreigners suspected of terrorist activity who are physically located in foreign countries. Foreign intelligence, foreign terrorists in foreign countries, and we need to get a court order. The end result is we have significant gaps in gathering the information that we need to keep America safe. That is why we need to vote against this previous question, and why we need to do an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act today. But in light of these threats and this context, what has been the response? What's been the response of this Congress and the other side? Only a couple of weeks ago, we decided that we would give al Qaeda more information about our Intelligence Community. We decided that Congress would mandate that we declassify the top line. In the intelligence authorization bill that we did earlier this year, we said we want a national intelligence estimate, not on al Qaeda, not on Iran, not on Syria, not on North Korea, but we want it on global climate change. We gutted some of our key funding for intelligence operations, and we have done absolutely nothing on updating FISA, even though we are under heightened threat and we are talking about foreign targets, foreign intelligence from individuals who are located overseas. We need to update FISA, and we need to do it before we go home. Weakening our national security and weakening our intelligence effort in these times is the wrong thing to do. We used to talk about our inability to connect the dots. What we now have is a majority that is unwilling and unable to give our Intelligence Community even the capabilities to go out and connect the dots that keep us safe. Make no doubt about it. We are weakening our intelligence. We are making this country more vulnerable, and we need to act, and we need to act before we go on recess.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. No, I will not yield. And I know that this colleague has been very sympathetic to making us and fixing this problem, and I appreciate his efforts in this area. But if we go back to knowing that we have had this information for more than 6 months, we have not dealt with this information. Go back to the ``op ed'' that the Director of National Intelligence wrote in May. And this bill that we are dealing with today concerns children. But, as the DNI has said, this surveillance saves lives, the lives of our children and grandchildren. That is what we are talking about. What do we do to keep the homeland safe? What do we do to keep our troops safe? Because we are talking about gathering intelligence from foreign targets in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this previous question. Deal with the issue of FISA and deal with it now.