Lee H. Hamilton
Lee H. Hamilton
Lee Herbert Hamiltonis a former member of the United States House of Representatives and currently a member of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council. A member of the Democratic Party, Hamilton represented the 9th congressional district of Indiana from 1965 to 1999. Following his departure from Congress he has served on a number of governmental advisory boards, most notably as the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth20 April 1931
CountryUnited States of America
I am impressed by the number of intelligence warnings, the spiking of the threats that occurred during, particularly the summer of the year 2001.
We don't really have an ethics process any more in the Congress, so that these things are not exposed or considered until this becomes a criminal law case.
The defense of America should rise above partisan political concerns,
What struck me after Katrina was we were not as safe as I thought we were,
Now the difficulty with those warnings is that they were not specific.
But despite this breathtaking pace, I believe in the capacity of our democracy to meet these challenges.
You'll remember Dr. Rice said that several times: It was not a warning about the place and the method and the time - it was a general warning. And that points out the imperfection, if you would, of our intelligence.
Look, we want a bill on the desk of the president as soon as possible.
She's told us she's happy to have us come back, so we're going to get the information that we want in the commission,
Some 18 months after that terrifying day, we still have no comprehensive analysis of 9/11, no authoritative record of the many forces that led to the attacks, no definitive narrative of the events of the day.
Is it countries that harbor or develop weapons of mass destruction? Is it only countries that harbor terrorists? What really are the targets that we're aiming at in this war on terrorism?
The status quo failed us. Reform is an urgent matter, and reform must not wait until the next attack.
The structure of the intelligence community has not changed since 9/11. The commission believes the status quo is unacceptable, ... This legislation is necessary to make the American people safer and more secure. We believe it must be enacted before the 108th Congress adjourns.
Our sense is that the commission supports reform of the intelligence community, but we have come to no judgment about the nature of reform that we will recommend.