(As Prepared for Delivery)

Opening Statement

Of

Congressman Peter Hoekstra

Ranking Republican

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Hearing on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

September 20, 2007

Good morning. I want to welcome Director McConnell and Mr. Wainstein to
this morning's hearing.

Today's hearing highlights the critical need for speed and agility in
intelligence collection against America's adversaries, including
detecting and preventing potential terrorist attacks. The Protect
America Act recently was enacted to close significant and alarming
intelligence gaps that had arisen because of restrictions that were
causing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to be
applied to foreign persons in foreign countries who were never intended
to be covered by FISA. Our intelligence agencies were missing a
significant portion of what we should have been getting to detect
potential foreign terrorists in foreign countries and to prevent
potential attacks on Americans at a time of enhanced threat.

Since the President signed the bill, the Intelligence Community has
succeeded in closing the intelligence gap, while also carefully ensuring
appropriate protections for civil liberties and enhanced oversight.
There should be no significant disagreement that the Protect America Act
has improved our intelligence capabilities and made our country safer.
And -- regardless of the specific authorities used -- the recent
terrorism-related arrests in Germany and Denmark demonstrated why timely
intelligence collection is so critical, and why we must ensure that the
professionals at our intelligence agencies continue to have streamlined
and effective tools at their disposal.

America cannot afford to "go dark" and re-open the intelligence gap for
foreign targets under FISA. The authorities in the Protect America Act
must be made permanent, along with liability protection for third
parties who may assist the government and provisions to further
streamline the FISA process.

Earlier this week, the Committee reviewed testimony and information from
the Administration and from outside groups that I hope put to rest the
myth that the Protect America Act somehow reduces civil liberties
protection for Americans. As Director McConnell and Mr. Wainstein will
again reaffirm today, the law does not permit either "reverse targeting"
of Americans, or the searches of the homes and businesses of ordinary
citizens that some have breathlessly claimed is contained in the bill.
The Department of Justice has made clear that it believes it must seek a
court order to target the communications of Americans, and the Committee
will continue to carefully ensure that it does so.

We also learned this week that what activist special interest groups
seek is not to preserve the structure of FISA as we have known it, but
instead to impose substantial and crippling new restrictions on our
intelligence agencies. Those restrictions would hamper surveillance of
potential terrorists in order to extend Fourth Amendment constitutional
rights to foreigners that the Supreme Court has clearly said they are
not entitled to. In fact, those groups want to give greater protections
to terrorist suspects than American citizens who communicate with people
suspected in criminal investigations under court-approved warrants get.

We also learned that the outside activists want to require the
intelligence community to get federal judges to approve intelligence
collection for foreign targets in foreign countries, even though both
the Constitution and longstanding legal precedent make clear that courts
should give great deference to the Executive Branch in matters of
national security.

At a time of continued significant threat from radical jihadists and
other adversaries around the world, we cannot move backward. We must
continue to ensure that our intelligence professionals have the full
array of necessary tools at their disposal, consistent with longstanding
protections for civil liberties. I look forward to the testimony today.