Thank you for having me this morning. The Center for American Progress and the noted privacy hawk John Podesta have long been pursuing thoughtful intelligence policy. Since opening your doors in 2003 you have been making the case that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive, and your work is wellknown in my office and throughout Washington.
When the Patriot Act was last reauthorized, I stood on the floor of the United States Senate and said “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon. When the American people find out how their government has interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry.” From my position on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I had seen government activities conducted under the umbrella of the Patriot Act that I knew would astonish most Americans. At the time, Senate rules about classified information barred me from giving any specifics of what I’d seen except to describe it as Secret Law a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, issu