Posted on 10/19/2009 11:23:56 AM PDT by pissant
HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IS IMPORTANT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, it is important, obviously, to have what is called human intelligence. That is, when a group of terrorists are planning to bomb an embassy or do something else that takes life and property, it is good to know ahead of time what is going to happen, because this is not a big military operation where, by national technical means, that means by satellite overheads and other things, we can see large events developing, like tanks massing for an attack and other things that would indicate a large movement of a military force.
But in this case, an attack may be promulgated by a small group of people, meeting in a small room somewhere. It is important for us to have human intelligence, to have a person who sees that group or a person who sits in with that group or a person who knows what that group is doing to report to us so we can stop that terrorist act.
Having a large human intelligence capability requires a lot of funding. It requires money. It is expensive to have good intelligence. I think that one of the things that we are going to have to realize as we move from the Cold War into this new era, an era that I would call the era of terrorism and State-sponsored terrorism in many cases, is that we are going to have to meet this age of terrorism with a lot of investment in human intelligence along with national technical means.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague, who is really an expert in terrorism, for his views. I yield to my friend from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I also thank the gentleman for his great effort on behalf of our task force, overall effort to come to grips here in the House with these issues.
The gentleman is absolutely correct. The subject of human intelligence is one that we have discussed at great length and, I believe, recognize today that our ability to deal through human intelligence has been greatly limited in recent years.
I do not say this to be critical, but I think it is an objective fact, because the recent administration has put in place policies that have made it difficult, and more difficult as time has gone on, for us to collect data that we need.
We had a discussion just the other day about a related but slightly bigger issue, and that is whether or not we can detect the emergence in certain countries of nuclear capability, which relates to human intelligence as well or the lack thereof.
So certainly one of the things that we can do is to work with the CIA and other agencies to beef up our human intelligence effort, which is so necessary in being able to predict with some degree and certainty, at least in general, where these types of acts will occur.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his observations, and I think the recent nuclear tests in India and Pakistan reflect this to some degree also. We were surprised by this activity. It reminded us once again that there is no substitute for having a person in the plant or a person in the planning group or a person in a particular government agency. And especially to relate back to the tragic bombings that have just occurred, when there is a likelihood that this is State- sponsored terrorism, it is going to be more and more important for us to beef up our intelligence budget.
Finally, one last thing that has always occurred to me in the 18 years that I have been here in the House of Representatives is this: We admire and we respect our Armed Forces and the men and women who serve in them.
But in some corners in Congress, there has always been a resentment, if you will, of our intelligence agencies as if these men and women who put their lives on the line in remote places of the world where they do not come home to ticker tape parades like our military sometimes does, as if they are something less of American servants than the people in uniform.
Actually these people, our intelligence personnel, perform an enormous service for our country, and they do it, generally speaking, in a way in which they receive very little credit for what they have done.
In the end, at the end of their career, they know what they did. One or two other people, or maybe a handful of people, may know what they have done for their country. But, as I said, they do not come home to ticker tape parades.
I think we have to adjust our attitude about the value and the patriotism of the folks who work in the intelligence services for our country. I hope we get to the bottom of what happened in Africa. I hope that it serves a warning bell to us in this House that we need to put more resources into the intelligence and the counterterrorism area.
DH Archives PING
Yeppers we needed him...
Oh...and if you could somehow promise them that they won’t be prosecuted for their efforts, that would be nice...../sarc
Indeed. Now we have to get rid of the reason they ARE being prosecuted. We need to impeach the boy marxist.
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