Mike Rogers

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill, H.R. 754.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, while I do not oppose this amendment, I ask unanimous consent to claim time in opposition.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. All time yielded is for the purposes of debate only. Mr. Chairman, I wish to announce that subsequent to reporting the bill, the committee has modified the classified annex to the bill with respect to the authorized level of funding for certain programs, with bipartisan agreement between myself and the ranking member, Mr. Ruppersberger. The classified annex containing the modified schedule of authorizations is available for review by all Members of the House, subject to the rules of the House and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, under which procedures were described in my announcement to the House on May 3, 2011. The modified schedule of authorizations is and has been available for review by Members and the period of time required by the rules of the House. Mr. Chairman, the annual intelligence authorization bill, I do believe, is one of the most important bills that will pass in the House each year. I want to thank my ranking member, Mr. Ruppersberger. We sat down at the beginning of January and decided that matters of national security were too important for infectious partisan debate and rhetoric and we decided that we would work out through every cause, as congenially as possible, and agree where we could, on every matter that we had a difference on, moving forward on, again, matters of intelligence and matters of national security. I think the product we see on the floor today reflects that commitment and that working relationship, and I want to commend Mr. Ruppersberger and the entire House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for their work, their cooperation, and their commitment to our national security to the United States. We recently saw the successful mission against Osama bin Laden. Our intelligence professionals remain on the front lines in America's defense against our enemies. For the last 6 years, Congress has failed to pass a bona fide intelligence authorization bill with funding authority. Instead, yearly appropriation bills have simply deemed intelligence funding to be authorized. We must, and I think we agree in a bipartisan way, stop that trend and stop it this year. The continued success of our intelligence community requires effective and aggressive congressional oversight. Such oversight can only be achieved if we get back in the habit of meeting our responsibility of passing an intelligence authorization bill every year. Mr. Chairman, we have men and women scattered all across this globe who are engaged daily in sometimes often very dangerous work of collecting information to provide our policymakers and our warfighters the information they need to defeat our enemy. From trying to catch spies here in the United States by our FBI to recruiting people who want to cooperate and help the United States on tough issues like nuclear proliferation or terrorism efforts targeted against us or our allies, these folks log countless hours, risk their lives, spend time away from their families, and deserve our praise and our commitment that we will work with them to give them the tools that they need to be successful. I can't think of a more important time in our history where I have seen intelligence play such an important role in our world affairs. The world is changing before our eyes, and our intelligence community is providing us the information we need, not just to be safe, but to make good decisions on what that world looks like and what our national interests are country by country, region by region. I am particularly pleased that this bill has such strong bipartisan support. The legislative provisions are intentionally limited to focus our attention on providing necessary resources to the men and women of the intelligence community as provided in the classified annex. The secrecy that is a necessary part of our country's intelligence work requires that the congressional Intelligence Committees conduct strong and effective oversight on behalf of the American people, and that strong and effective oversight is possible. But without that annual intelligence authorization bill, the bill that we will pass today--we must get back in the habit of passing that bill every year. We make important commitments in this bill, Mr. Chairman, for the priorities of the intelligence community. Technology has fused in the intelligence collection like I have never seen it, and its increase is exponential over the past 10 years. We make important investment in the new technologies that allow our intelligence officials and professionals to do the work they need to do. It makes them more effective, and it also makes the investment in the people who oversee that technology even more important. We make that important investment in this FY 2011 intelligence authorization bill as well. Nothing brings that home like the broad scope of what we saw participate in the Osama bin Laden event of last Sunday. Every single intelligence agency, and I do mean every single one, played a part in that operation, from collecting small bits of information, from putting that piece together, signals intelligence, satellite intelligence, MASINT intelligence, all of those things came together over the course of 10 years. I credit George Bush and his administration for assembling this new intelligence community that really started after 9/11 and President Obama for making the authorization and the continued policies that allowed us to have that information to go after Osama bin Laden. It was really quite an impressive thing. Both administrations deserve credit for that, and I would hope that today the people of the House of Representatives would celebrate that victory and all the work of the unsung heroes who work in the shadows by passing this FY 2011 so they can get about the business of protecting the United States. I appreciate, again, this bipartisan consensus. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I yield 1 minute to the distinguished member of the Intelligence Committee, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. LoBiondo).

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas and a member of the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Conaway.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I yield 2 minutes to the appropriator member of the House Intelligence Committee, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen).

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. We plan to bring a bill for 2012, and I will work with you on the NDIC. I couldn't agree more: it's important that we continue to have the government effort focus on illicit drugs; however, the National Drug Intelligence Center has done very little to address this national priority, and I look forward to working with the Member.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to another distinguished gentleman from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Rooney).

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend Mr. Ruppersberger for the last remarks. Cybersecurity is a real and growing threat for the United States. We make serious commitments in this FY 11 bill, and we have pledged to work together on separate pieces of legislation to put the United States in a better position to defend itself against cybersecurity. Something that started out so long ago as somebody in their mother's basement hacking into the local school to change their grades has become whole nation-states using the Internet and all of cyberspace to not only steal intellectual property from private enterprise, attempt to hack and steal information from the United States, but also use it for offensive purposes where we have seen the Russians who when they went into Georgia use aggressively cyber to prep the battlefield for their invasion, something that we all need to worry about. I want to, again, pledge to work with the ranking member on this very, very important issue so that we can get on better footing as we move forward. Also, on the space, it is one of the things that has given the United States a technological advantage in the world, something that we need to continue to make those investments into the overhead architecture of the United States from communication satellites to all of the things that we do from space. And it is a serious investment on this country, but when you look at the success of something like the Osama bin Laden raid, you realize all of it, from space, to cyber, to signals intelligence, to human intelligence, is something that was invested in in this money; and I'm glad that the ranking member used this opportunity to talk about those very important issues and the commitment in this bill to start to put us on better footing for that. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes), a distinguished member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I now yield 2 minutes to a former Army captain, the great new Member from Kansas (Mr. Pompeo).

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I will just take this opportunity to thank both the Democrat and Republican staff members who helped us prepare this bill. For the first time since I have served on the committee, we had both Democrat and Republican staff briefed in a bipartisan way at the same table, all Members in the room. And we think that that improved the value of this product tremendously, something we are hoping to continue. So my hat is off to all of the staff. We hire professionals from the community, from all walks of life as well to provide us the expertise that we need to provide the proper oversight for the intelligence community. And I do believe, in this great spirit of bipartisanship with Mr. Ruppersberger, that this will give the tools to those 17 agencies who work in secrecy on behalf of the United States the things that they need to accomplish their mission and to keep this great country safe. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, this is a manager's amendment to the bill that contains two provisions. The first provision would simply clarify that section 411 of the bill, which relates to certain Defense Intelligence Agency expenditures, applies only to the National Intelligence Program funds. This clarification was requested by the Committee on Armed Services and is largely technical in nature. The second provision would strike section 412 of the reported bill, which provides for the creation of certain accounts for intelligence funds. While this provision is an important one, intended to promote auditability of intelligence funds, some technical issues have arisen; and I believe it was prudent to hold this over until the FY12 bill. It is something that I support and hope to return to the bill in FY12. I do not believe that either of these changes are controversial and urge Members to support the amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I thank the ranking member. I look forward to working with him on this particular issue. As I think the ranking member understands, Mr. Chairman, we've brought in auditors on the committee. This is something we're very committed to in a bipartisan way, to actually have funds that can be audited. It's a bit shocking, I think, to both of us that they have had these funds for such a long time that have not been able to be audited, and we hope to do that on behalf of the taxpayers of the United States. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, while I do not oppose the amendment, I would ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I yield myself such time as I may consume. While I support the intent behind the amendment, I believe it is also important to note for the record--and I appreciate the gentleman's work on this--that the Intelligence Committee has already a number of existing programs and initiatives in this area. I think this will, in fact, enhance that effort. The proposed amendment has the goal of assisting Historically Black Colleges and Universities in creating and maintaining academic curricula that help the intelligence community meet its workforce diversity and critical language goals. I am happy to say that the community already understands well that a diverse workforce enhances its mission performance. For example, Director Panetta has launched his own initiative at CIA to enhance the diversity of that agency's workforce. Additionally, there are other initiatives under way to increase the employment and retention of the diverse candidates throughout the intelligence community. And I won't go on, other than to compliment the gentleman for his interest in exposing the number of people who would have the skills to apply and diversify our workforce at the CIA. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I support efforts to create a diverse workforce within the intelligence community. A diverse workforce is instrumental to effectively respond to the complex global threats faced by the United States. I do have so many concerns that this amendment is duplicative with many efforts which are already under way within the intelligence community to address this issue. For example, section 338 of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2010, passed after the fiscal year last year, requires the DNI to coordinate with each element of the IC to provide a report of plans to increase the employment and retention of diverse candidates. Moreover, the DNI has already created a strategic plan on equal employment opportunity and issued Community Directive 110, the Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Program. It is my hope that the inspector general will consider all of these existing initiatives in the report and use the substantial body of work that has already been done on these issues in completing it. Nonetheless, I will support the amendment and its laudable goals. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I must unfortunately oppose this amendment. I certainly can sympathize with the gentleman's intention to try to bring some closure for families in this particularly difficult issue in Argentina, and it may certainly result in some information to those who are conducting maybe historical research and analysis and certainly to mend the wounds that have been created in this particular situation. It would also do something, I think, equally damaging to today's effort in the war on terror. It would divert the intelligence community from its mission of protecting the United States and our interests from current threats. When you think about how difficult it was to take a small piece of information and stretch a nickname, an Arabic nickname applied to someone who is using an alias, who is likely associating with individuals who had Arabic nicknames associated to aliases, and from that little scrap of information, the entire intelligence apparatus spent years trying to develop the right lead to lead us to last Sunday's event to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. This year, the intelligence community came forward and said, We need more analysts. We need more human resources in order to accomplish this mission. There are too many threats in too many places for our people to handle it. And what this amendment does, although it is very well intended, it takes resources away to apply it to a problem that is 20 to 30 years old. I am sorry, we just don't have that luxury today. We are concerned, the intelligence community is concerned that the next few months, the next 6 months are crucial when al Qaeda is trying to get its act back together after losing its operational and inspirational leader and how they reach out or lash out in some kind of an attack. It is imperative that every minute of every day be spent targeting those who are seeking to kill Americans or our allies overseas now. I hope that we find some other alternative to what the gentleman proposes in maybe another way. But redirecting the valuable assets in the fight on terror today I just think is a misuse of our resources and may, in fact, be a dangerous one at that. This is not the time to be disrupting our counterterrorism analysts, our case officers, or anybody in the CIA or other intelligence agencies away from disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations for the activities of the Government of Argentina nearly 25 years ago. I reserve the balance of my time.