Intelligence Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANGEVIN. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on the Intelligence Committee.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2701.

This bill before us today funds critical intelligence activities that are vital to our national security. Of particular interest to me, it provides the resources for the foundational capabilities of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.

As the recent cyberattacks against Google and U.S. networks have demonstrated, our information infrastructure is far more vulnerable than many realize. It is absolutely imperative that the United States strengthen its cyberdefenses to ensure government and commercial functions are protected and to improve our ability to attribute attacks and hold aggressors accountable. The intelligence community has begun this work, and the President has committed to developing a broad strategy to secure U.S. information networks. I applaud those efforts.

In order to further foster cyberreadiness of our intelligence agencies, I offered an amendment requiring the administration to submit to Congress a plan for securing intelligence networks and determining whether we have the workforce we need to secure this vital part of cyberspace as well as the ability to recruit and retain the best and brightest in this field. I'm truly grateful this provision has been included in the manager's amendment that we're debating today.

Another issue of great importance is congressional oversight of our intelligence community. I'm pleased that this bill modifies the Gang of Eight notification process currently used to brief Congress on intelligence activities. During the last administration, we saw the danger of giving the executive branch too much leeway to engage in activities outside of congressional review. Reforming the mechanism governing congressional notification will restore Congress's ability to conduct oversight on our intelligence activities.

So with that I just want to thank Chairman Reyes for his leadership in crafting this bill as well as his general leadership of the Intelligence Committee itself and particularly the attention he's paid to the issue of cybersecurity. I support the bill and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

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