| Washington, DC – Late last night, the House debated and passed H.R. 2082, the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY08. Congressman Bill Shuster released the following remarks after voting in opposition to the bill:
“Our intelligence services are crucial tools in combating jihadi terrorism and countering the ambitions of emerging powers like China,” Shuster said. “We must ensure our intelligence community has the authority, speed and flexibility needed to take on the challenge of terrorism and the unknown threats that will emerge in the 21st Century.”
“Unfortunately this bill doesn’t move us towards addressing these threats. By cutting funding for Human Intelligence, the Democrats’ plan reverts back to the misguided policies of the Clinton administration that devastated our intelligence capabilities just as we are only now beginning to recover.”
“Human Intelligence is the most crucial piece of the intelligence puzzle,” Shuster continued. “Expensive satellites and spy planes can never replace the human element that can infiltrate a terrorist cell, and provide the cultural perspectives and first hand information that result in actionable intelligence.”
In addition to reduced funding for Human Intelligence, one of the major objections Shuster had to the Democrats’ intelligence bill was a requirement that forces the Central Intelligence Agency and its counterparts to dedicate their resources to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on climate change at an undetermined cost to taxpayers. This directive comes at a time when the federal government is poised to spend more than $6.5 billion in FY07 to study climate change and the House has created a committee specifically to study the phenomenon.
“There’s great debate as to where Osama bin Laden may be hiding, but all of the experts agree that he’s not at the North Pole. So why are our scarce intelligence resources being directed there?” Shuster asked. “Our Intelligence services are designed to steal foreign secrets, spy on our enemies and track terrorists, not help research the sequel to ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”
“While this legislation does have some good language to train our intelligence agents to confront terrorism, it contains enough poorly drafted cuts to make me question its worth,” Shuster added. “Congress can do better to protect our nation.” |
