Date: 2007-08-03
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker. I do not have the privilege to serve on the Intelligence Conmittee now. but in the 1980s I did. Then. following that. in the 1990s when I served in California as the attorney general. I recall getting security briefings from the intelligence community from Washington. DC. It was during the Clinton administration that Admiral McConnell was the head of the NSA. I do not recall any partisan or bipartisan dispute about his qualifications. his professionalism or his judgment. He is the man that the President has brought .out of retirement to be the Director of National Intelligence. He is the one that has presented to us in open and in closed testimony why we need this. I think it is -fair for us to ask. if we are getting a draft that he has rejected. why it is the draft that is going to be presented to us iUnder the suspeision calendar. Unless we have changed the rules of the House in the 16 years I was gone. the whole concept of a suspension bill is that you suspend all the rules for noncontroversial bills. Noncontroversial bills. If the head of our intelligence services believes that this is so controversial we ought to reject this. then why is it being brought up under this kind of a suspension? Now. I have tried to work and have worked with the -gentlewoman from California on many occasions getting bipartisan legislation through this floor. But. this is the single most important bill that I have seen brought up in the 3 years that I have been back. and maybe in the 10 years I was. here before. This goes to the question of whether we take our blinders off with respect to intelligence. with respect to what kind of chatter that is going on around the world. And. yes. they say we all agree that foreigntoforeign communications ought to be -not under the purview of the Court. because we understand that has never been protected under the Constitution. We have been informed that the draft that we are talking about would not allow us to do that in the- way it is necessary to protect this Nation. That is why it is so important. not that it is partisan. not that somebody came here under one rule or another. but because the head of intelligence for the. United States has said we cant accept this draft. If he says that. we -ought to listen to him. We ought to try and get something that will work. So lets forget about this nonsense of partisanship. Lets not get up here. shake something out here in the hand and say. well. you have had it long enough. I dont know how long it took the Constitution to be written from beginning to end. It wasnt how long it took. It is the words they put there. It is what they actually produced. That is what we are going to be judged by. not by how many hours we were here. but whether we got it right. The Director of National Intelligence has told us we have gotten it wrong now. All our people back home are in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy because it is wrong. because we are not doing it right. He has asked us -to fix it. It is the most solemn obligation we have under our oath of the Constitution to do it right. And to say that we are going to do it under some suspension and- dont worry about what it says violates that oath.