[Congressional Record: January 28, 2009 (Senate)]
[Page S1001-S1004]
EXECUTIVE SESSION
[...]
Nomination of Dennis C. Blair
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today as chairman of the Select
Committee on Intelligence to urge the Senate to confirm Admiral Dennis
C. Blair to be the next Director of National Intelligence.
Admiral Blair is well known to many of us from his years of service
as the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command. He has served
with distinction in the national security field all his adult life,
entering the Naval Academy in 1964 and serving for 34 years.
During his naval career, Admiral Blair was involved in the
intelligence field and in policymaking. He worked twice in the White
House, first as a fellow and then on the National Security Council
staff. He worked for 2 years at the CIA as the Associate Director for
Military Support. And he was named to be the Director of the Joint
Staff in 1996.
He has been a consumer and a manager of intelligence through his
career, and he has a strong understanding of the importance of
providing the President, the Congress, and other policymakers with
accurate, actionable, and timely intelligence.
Admiral Blair will be the Nation's third Director of National
Intelligence, a position that was left vacant by the resignation of ADM
Mike McConnell earlier this week. It is critical that Admiral Blair be
confirmed so that the intelligence community has the leadership it
needs.
I hope that the Senate will confirm Admiral Blair on a strong
bipartisan basis, sending the signal that we are united in our support
for the nominee and in our interest in strong leadership of the
intelligence community.
The position of the Director of National Intelligence was created so
that there would be a single leader of the 16 intelligence agencies who
could bring greater integration to the work of U.S. intelligence. The
job of the Director is to break down the stovepipes and put
intelligence agencies back on the right track when they go astray.
Progress has been made by the previous Directors, Ambassador
Negroponte and Admiral McConnell, but they would agree much work is
ahead. As Admiral Blair said to the committee, it will be his job as
the DNI to see that ``the whole of the national intelligence enterprise
is always more than the sum of its parts.''
Admiral Blair has pledged, however, to take forceful action when
there are disagreements or when he believes an agency is not performing
as it should.
He has a keen appreciation both for the many smart, dedicated and
brave professionals in the intelligence community workforce and for the
role of the DNI to give these professionals the right missions, and the
right tools, to collect the intelligence we need and conduct
professional and accurate analysis.
President-elect Obama announced his intention to nominate Admiral
Blair on January 9, 2009, and then President Obama submitted the
nomination to the Senate on his first afternoon in office. The
Intelligence Committee carefully reviewed Admiral Blair's record and
his views on the role of the Director of National Intelligence, the
threats facing the United States, and the appropriate way for the
intelligence community to handle its missions.
The committee held a public hearing with Admiral Blair on January 22,
at which he was introduced and supported by our distinguished colleague
and very first chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator
Inouye.
Before and after the hearing, Admiral Blair answered numerous
questions for the record. His answers can be found on the committee's
Web site, and I commend them to all Members and the public for a better
understanding of his views about the important office to which he has
been nominated, and the challenges he will face on behalf of the
American people.
I have been especially pleased with the commitment of Admiral Blair
to address the issue of congressional oversight. In our prehearing
questions, we asked Admiral Blair about his views on keeping the
intelligence committees fully and currently informed of intelligence
activities.
We asked him to address in particular the failure to brief the entire
membership of the intelligence committees on the CIA's interrogation,
detention, and rendition program, and the NSA's electronic surveillance
program. His direct answer recognized a fundamental truth: ``These
programs were less effective and did not have sufficient legal and
constitutional foundations because the intelligence committees were
prevented from carrying out their oversight responsibilities.''
Admiral Blair has pledged that he will work closely with the
committee and the Congress to build a relationship of trust and candor.
He has said that the leadership of the intelligence community must earn
the support and trust of the intelligence oversight committees if it is
to earn the trust and support of the American people. I wholeheartedly
agree.
I am confident that Admiral Blair will ensure that the membership of
the select committee is given access to the information it needs to
perform its oversight role, and U.S. intelligence programs will have a
stronger foundation because of it.
He has also agreed to come before the committee on a monthly basis to
have candid discussions with all members on the major issues he sees
and the challenges he faces. These sessions are enormously important
for the committee to truly understand the workings of the intelligence
community and to carry out our oversight responsibilities.
In addition, Admiral Blair will have a pivotal role in the
implementation of the recent presidential Executive orders to close the
detention center in Guantanamo and ensure there is a single standard
for the humane and lawful treatment of detainees by U.S. military and
intelligence services.
These executive orders represent an extraordinarily important turning
point for our Nation. Admiral Blair has made strong statements to the
committee that torture is not moral, legal, or effective, and that the
U.S. Government must have a single clear standard for the treatment and
interrogation of detainees. I am convinced he will help ensure we are
once more true to our ideals and protecting our national security.
Having been an early advocate of the creation of the position, it is
for me a distinct honor that my very first floor responsibility as the
new chairman of the Intelligence Committee is to report this
nomination.
I am pleased to relay to my colleagues that the Intelligence
Committee met today, on January 28, and voted to report favorably the
nomination of Admiral Blair to be the Director of National
Intelligence.
The Senate has moved quickly to act on this recommendation. It is a
testament to the importance of the position and the qualifications of
the nominee. I thank the vice chairman for working with me to move the
nomination quickly but with the due diligence appropriate for this
position.
Admiral Blair has my strong support to lead the intelligence
community and I look forward to working with him closely in the days to
come.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I rise to congratulate Admiral Denny
Blair on his unanimous confirmation as the Director of National
Intelligence, one of the most important and demanding jobs in our
government. This position requires a leader with tremendous management
skills--someone capable of bringing the 16 disparate agencies of the
intelligence community into a cohesive organization that provides
timely, accurate intelligence to our government.
This intelligence is necessary to keep our Nation and our people
safe, so Admiral Blair undertakes a sober, solemn responsibility today.
He will take on this task at a time when we are fighting two wars as
well as a global fight against terrorist networks, not to mention
enormous long-term strategic challenges--including those that have
arisen in recent months in the wake of the global financial and
economic crisis.
These are perilous times, but I am confident he is up to the task.
Admiral Blair brings a wealth of valuable experience to the job. As a
senior military commander he was a high level consumer of intelligence
and familiar with the systems used to collect and produce intelligence.
He also knows the Central Intelligence Agency having spent time as the
first Associate Director for Military Affairs.
[[Page S1004]]
Perhaps his greatest attribute, however, is his experience directing
a large, sprawling organization, made up of disparate agencies and
cultures, to achieve a common mission. That is what he accomplished
successfully as the commander of all U.S. military forces in the
Pacific, and that is exactly what his mission will be as the DNI.
I think this is a very promising time for our intelligence community
and our national security, and Admiral Blair's confirmation is a big
part of that. I want to underscore what he told us in his confirmation
hearing--that we are entering a ``new era in the relationship'' between
Congress and the executive branch on matters of intelligence.
Specifically, Admiral Blair said that he will place great importance
on keeping Congress informed--not just formally notified, but fully
informed--on intelligence activities. He said that he will work to
ensure that classification is not used as a way to, in his words,
``hide things'' from Members of Congress who need to know about them.
He stated clearly and I quote, ``We need to have processes which
don't just check a block on telling somebody but actually get the
information across to the right people.''
These are very important commitments, and they portend good things
for our intelligence community and for our national security. I have
had the opportunity to speak with Admiral in great depth over the past
several months, and these discussions have given me confidence in his
sincerity with these commitments.
And I expect that, likewise, he and the Obama administration have
confidence that Congress will hold them to it. In fact this cooperation
has already begun.
With this new era of cooperation in mind, I want to state for the
record that we have an opportunity to make a sharp turn toward new
intelligence policies that will bolster our counterterrorism efforts
and strengthen our national security in general.
To be accurate and valuable, intelligence must be politically neutral
information, not spin. And it must be collected with methods that enjoy
bipartisan support as both legal and effective.
To ensure this, secret intelligence activities must be subject to
rigorous congressional oversight. We are the only independent reviewers
of secret intelligence activities, and we are the only outside check on
activities that are not legal or not effective.
Oversight should not be adversarial--it is a necessary partnership
between the executive branch and the Congress.
I have fought to remove politics from intelligence and to restore
Congress's vital oversight role since I joined the committee in 2001,
and I will keep fighting for it now.
I don't want to get into who is at fault for the cycle we were caught
in over the past several years. Instead I want to look ahead to what is
possible now.
I think there is a real chance that in this new year, we can have a
new start.
We can and should debate how we go about collecting and analyzing
intelligence--for instance on interrogation policies--but we can do
that without the stain of political considerations.
Between the executive and legislative branches, we can and should
engage and debate these policies, but we can do that in partnership,
with the knowledge that more information exchanges and deliberations
give rise to better intelligence collection and analysis.
In short, we can recognize that we are all on the same team when it
comes to finding out the sensitive information we need to protect this
great Nation.
If we play on that same team, I know we can have accurate, reliable
intelligence that is collected in a way that makes this country proud,
and is analyzed without the taint of political influence.
I congratulate Admiral Denny Blair on his confirmation.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I wish to express my support for the
nomination of ADM Dennis Blair to be the next Director of National
Intelligence.
Over the past several weeks, Admiral Blair and I have spoken at
length about the role of the DNI and the expectations that we in
Congress will have of him.
First and foremost, we expect that the DNI will direct the
intelligence community and not be a coordinator or consensus-seeker or
govern by majority.
Second, the DNI must be a strong leader, standing on equal footing
with the Secretary of Defense and other Cabinet officials.
Third, the DNI must assert appropriate authority over the CIA--it is
the DNI, and the DNI alone, who should speak and act as the President's
intelligence adviser.
I am pleased that Admiral Blair has pledged that he will come back to
Congress to ask for any additional authorities if he determines that
such authorities are needed to direct the intelligence community.
The intelligence community needs a strong leader right now. As we
know, last week the President signed a number of Executive orders that
not only will have a lasting impact on how we fight this war on terror
but have created immediate and serious legal and practical problems in
handling terrorist detainees.
Admiral Blair will play a key role in the implementation of these
Executive orders.
I believe that the sooner he learns all the facts about the CIA's
interrogation and detention program and the ramifications of closing
Guantanamo Bay, the better he will be able to guide that process in a
manner that will not jeopardize American lives.
Admiral Blair has had a long and distinguished career in Government
service. He brings a lifetime of sound judgment and strong character to
this difficult job.
I believe Admiral Blair is up to the task of leading the intelligence
community and I would urge my colleagues to support his nomination.
____________________
