National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. DELANEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to start by thanking the chairman and the ranking member for supporting this amendment, and I want to thank my colleague from California for giving me the opportunity to work with him on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the reason I care about the subject matter of this amendment is because one of my constituents, Warren Weinstein, was recently killed by a U.S. drone strike while he was being held in an al Qaeda compound along the border in Pakistan. Obviously, we weren't aware that he was held there.

Warren was originally captured over 3 years ago while he was doing work in Pakistan on behalf of USAID. He was 73 years old. He spent his whole life in service to his country working for USAID on foreign aid matters. He was a wonderful man and has a wonderful family.

Across the last several years, I worked very closely with his wife and his family in helping them try to influence our government to find Warren. The one thing I realized across the last several years working on these matters is that, even though we have incredibly dedicated men and women who work at the FBI, who work at the CIA, who work at the State Department, who work on hostage recovery matters, as my colleague from California has pointed out, these efforts are not nearly as well coordinated as they should be.

We do not have someone on point who wakes up every day with the mission of finding American hostages that are held in the Middle East.

This amendment does this. By appointing and creating a hostage recovery coordinator, we will have that single person on point who will be able to take all of the resources of the U.S. Government--our technological resources, our intelligence resources, our military resources, and the resources of this Congress--and do a better job in identifying Americans that are held hostage overseas by terrorists.

It is an incredibly important thing to do. Again, I saw firsthand in my experience working with Warren's family and working with very dedicated people in our government that the bureaucracy is getting in the way. The people are dedicated, but they don't have the ability to cut through the bureaucracy and grab whatever resources exist in the government.

What this bill does is empower a person, an individual, who can do that, who can grab whatever assets are needed in the U.S. Government to help find hostages who are held overseas, which is why I support the amendment.

As my colleague from California pointed out, they will also do a very important function, which is to communicate and coordinate with the families, the families who are suffering like Warren's family has for over 3 years with the uncertainty and a lack of information about where he is.

I strongly support the amendment, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Again, I want to thank my colleague from California for his leadership in this area and for giving me an opportunity to work with him on behalf of my constituent, Warren.

I want to thank, again, the ranking member and chairman for supporting this amendment.

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