Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008
Floor Speech
INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 -- (House of Representatives - May 10, 2007)
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Ms. ESHOO. Madam Chairman, I thank the distinguished chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for yielding.
I rise in support of H.R. 2082.
First, I want to make a comment about a requirement that is in the bill that has been made fun of, made fun of by our friends on the other side of the aisle, and that is that the bill requires a National Intelligence Estimate on the national security implications of global climate change. I take issue with their diminishment of this issue.
The American people are ahead of us on this and so are people in the intelligence community, including three and four star admirals and generals who recently issued a report on the national security impacts of global climate change. I will submit their names for the Record.
* General Gordon R. Sullivan, USA (Ret.)
* Admiral Frank ``Skip'' Bowman, USN (Ret.)
* Lieutenant General Lawrence P. Farrell Jr., USAF (Ret.)
* Vice Admiral Paul G. Gaffney II, USN (Ret.)
* General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)
* Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, USN (Ret.)
* Admiral Donald L. ``Don'' Pilling, USN (Ret.)
* Admiral Joseph W. Prueher, USN (Ret.)
* Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
* General Charles F. ``Chuck'' Wald, USAF (Ret.)
* General Anthony C. ``Tony'' Zinni, USMC (Ret.)
As they noted, the geopolitical effects of global warming are likely to intensify instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world as people fight over access to water and food, creating humanitarian disasters and failed states that facilitate the establishment of terrorist safe havens.
The intelligence community agrees, and they are already preparing an assessment on how our enemies could use global climate change to degrade our security interests. This NIE will not divert collection assets from other priorities. That's hogwash.
I would also like to note that we have a growing crisis in our overhead architecture. Over the past several years, the intelligence community has chosen to take more risk in its management structures that have failed. The consequences of these failures are extremely serious, threatening our overhead capability and wreaking havoc on the industrial base. Some of these risky decisions were made without the appropriate congressional notification, and now we have to clean up the mess.
Finally, last September the President acknowledged that the intelligence community had kept prisoners in undisclosed detention sites and reserved the right to do so in the future. I, as one Member of Congress, strongly object to any policy which does so. Generations of people, Americans, have come to this Nation to escape regimes that make people disappear. We have commitments under the Geneva Conventions, international laws and treaties. If we don't live up to these standards, we weaken protections for U.S. citizens abroad. I think our Nation stands for a higher standard of treatment, and I don't think we should ever engage in such practices.
I am proud to support this bill, Madam Chairman. This is the largest single intelligence authorization in the history of our country. And for anyone to say that we are shortchanging the people that are working so hard to protect our national security is simply and plainly wrong.
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Ms. ESHOO. Madam Chairman, as I said when I was speaking a little bit ago, and I am going to make some comments about this amendment, I want to set something else down which I think is really important, and that is, that it's not debatable that this is the largest single intelligence authorization in the history of our country.
Now, we are hearing a lot from the other side, hearing a lot from the other side, not enough money, not enough money, not enough money. When did you make any amendments to increase anything in this authorization, with the exception of an earmark with three States specified? That's what you offered, and that's the only thing that you offered.
So I think it's important for the people of our country to know what's going on.
Now, on this amendment that Mr. Hoekstra offers, this is not a study of climate change. This is a directive to the intelligence community to assess the impacts of climate change; and most frankly, I would go with the former Army chief of staff, Retired General Gordon Sullivan, who said the national security consequences of global climate change should be fully integrated into the national security and national defense strategies, including a National Intelligence Estimate. Climate change is a national security issue.
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Ms. ESHOO. Madam Chairwoman, let me just close out this very important debate, and it is important to have a debate. It's very important to have a debate.
In listening to it, I see two things: one, a rearview mirror, looking to the past, people that are sincere, but nonetheless I think are sticking their heads in the sand. When we see whole populations, massive movement of populations, moving across borders because of drought, moving across borders because of disruption, they cause national security issues. We know that.
This debate is about the future, and I understand why some have trouble seeing the future and even embracing it, much less harnessing it.
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