Issue Position: National Security - Intelligence

Issue Position

The safety of individual Americans and the security of our nation depend on intelligence -- the gathering, distributing, analyzing, and acting on information.

Intelligence is the backbone of U.S. national security. No matter how many fighter jets, stealth bombers, combat ships, or infantry units the U.S. has, we will not be able to succeed if we don't have accurate, near real-time intelligence.

While America does have some unique assets and technological capabilities, the real heavy lifting is done by a workforce of intelligence professionals. But the Obama Administration has made it harder for these professionals to do his or her job and to collect direct evidence.

Some of my top intelligence concerns are:

* By automatically sending terrorists through the criminal justice system where they are given U.S. constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent, we are less likely to get information from them.

* By releasing the Justice Department memos that discuss in detail our interrogation techniques despite the appeal of five former CIA directors not to do so, the Administration has given Al Qaeda our playbook. Terrorists now know what we will and will not do and thus know they have little to fear in an interrogation.

* By appointing a special prosecutor to reinvestigate CIA personnel who were on the front lines of information gathering, the Administration discourages risk-taking and makes it clear that CIA personnel need their lawyers with them before sticking their necks out to acquire information.

We have to succeed at every stage of the intelligence process. But the better the information we collect at the beginning, the better the chances that we will make good use of it. This is one of my priorities as a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee.

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