(Washington, DC) - "I want to welcome everyone to this morning’s briefing which is being done by MEMRI–the Middle East Media Research Institute–in cooperation with the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.

 My name is Gary Ackerman, I’m the Chairman of the Subcommittee, and I’m joined by my colleague and friend, the Ranking Republican Member of the Subcommittee, Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana. It is a pleasure for us to work with MEMRI to make this briefing possible.

 I’d like to say just a few words of introduction, then I’ll turn to Mr. Pence for any comments he’d like to make, and then I’ll introduce Mr. Yigal Carmon, MEMRI’s founder and President, and he’ll conduct the briefing.

 Terrorists come in a variety of flavors, all them bitter and poisonous, but nevertheless there is a great range in their causes and motives. What they have in common is technique and a willingness to go beyond any bounds of law, decency or morality to achieve their ends.

 Not surprisingly, terrorists seek to use the laws and the rights that decent societies uphold as tools with which to conduct their nefarious deeds. Freedom of speech, the foundation of democratic government, is thus converted by terrorists into a weapon with which to attack democracies.

 However, as President Lincoln reminded us, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

 And there is a considerable gap between political speech–even offensive, hateful and disgusting speech–and incitement to violence and conspiracy to commit acts of terror. You will not find two stronger advocates for the First Amendment than Mr. Pence and myself. He is a former broadcast journalist, I am a former newspaper publisher. We know what the First Amendment means to our nation, to our people and to our culture. America is not America without free speech.

 But we also know terror when we see it, and we know that the first job of government is to provide for the common defense. This task, of reconciling national defense with free-speech is not an impossible one.

 One has to delve into the details for sure, but there is more than enough legal space to distinguish between argument and incitement, between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact.

 Thanks to MEMRI, we can easily see what our enemies are saying, how they see the world, and how they see us. This open-source intelligence is invaluable. The challenge for us in government is to take this knowledge and to incorporate it into a broader strategic picture. The challenge facing us is a serious one, and to meet it we need to use all the tools we have: public diplomacy and covert operations, international intelligence and law-enforcement cooperation, and, sometimes, military force.

 We can prevail in this struggle, but only if our strategy is tuned correctly to the challenge. And MEMRI has played a great part in helping us tune in more precisely. I’d now like to ask Mr. Pence to make any remarks he’d like."

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