WASHINGTON, D.C.— Today, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford (AR-01) delivered the following unclassified opening statement during a full Committee markup of the fiscal year 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA).
Chairman Crawford’s opening statement as prepared for delivery:
Welcome everyone. The annual Intelligence Authorization Act provides the legal authorities and funding authorizations for the Intelligence programs and activities of the United States Government. The bill before us, along with the classified schedules of authorizations and annex, detail the Committee’s actions for the Fiscal Year 2027 Presidential budget requests for the National Intelligence Program and the Military Intelligence Program.
As we seek to authorize these programs for the last time in the 119th Congress, I want to offer some thoughts.
We live in dangerous times—this is true. That said, so often in intelligence and national security circles it sounds cliché to say so.
The Chinese Communist Party, the Russian Federation, Iran, North Korea, and Islamic terrorist groups are actively working – often together – to undermine the American people and our freedoms. As I have often said, some of these adversaries are already inside the wire, taking advantage of our ineffective counterintelligence posture.
Even so, most Americans live in relative safety, not having to worry about these things on a daily basis. To many, those of us who speak about these threats can often sound like alarmist broken records.
Truth is, the freedoms we enjoy are protected by brave Americans who often put their lives on hold to serve, collecting intelligence to provide elected leaders with information needed to make hard decisions that often come with widespread implications.
This is what we are here to authorize.
But we face a significant challenge because, as I have observed in recent years, many Americans no longer trust the institutions we are tasked with authorizing to collect and report this intelligence in an unbiased way that informs elected leaders.
Some of these concerns are legitimate. In many cases, I share them.
Over recent years, this committee’s oversight and investigations have uncovered instance after instance of individuals—or groups of individuals—in positions of trust betraying their responsibility to not allow their personal, political, or other agendas to guide their work.
Rather than providing elected leadership “what we know, and what we don’t know,” some in positions of trust have manipulated the intelligence process.
Many will run to their political corners when I say this and seek to discredit one case, while defending another. But I want to be very clear, this is not a partisan issue.
This committee has documented manipulation of intelligence provided to President Donald Trump, and we have also documented the manipulation of the intelligence process informing President Joe Biden. Regardless of political party, this should infuriate not only every member of this Committee but every American, no matter who you go into the voting booth to elect.
Whether you agree or not with the ultimate foreign policy or national security decisions made using that intelligence does not matter. What matters is that we all have confidence our elected leaders—from Congress to the President of the United States—are being given the unaltered, unfiltered information to make the decisions Americans elected us to make.
When Americans lose faith in the institutions we created to protect and keep them safe, we risk the Republic our Founding Fathers warned must be deliberately and willfully maintained.
I am pleased that in the 119th Congress we have seen the release of intelligence records and reports from this Committee to help illuminate some of these cases of improper processes, such as in the investigation of the assassination attempt against members of Congress in 2017, and false Trump/Russia allegations.
Further, we have seen the rescinding of the Intelligence Community Assessments on anomalous health incidents or “AHIs,” an action that addressed intelligence products which misled both the Biden and Trump administrations.
This is the very reason this Committee exists. We must never lose sight of the fact we are the American people’s eyes and ears into government activities which are restricted from public view. I would argue this places an even greater onus on us as a committee than many others. We must conduct vigorous oversight and constantly question the status quo. We cannot be a proverbial rubber stamp.
So, where does this leave us?
Some public conversations have sought to focus only on the abuses by intelligence personnel and downplay the external threats – that discourse is mistaken. Dangerously mistaken.
Still others seek to discredit any calls at all for accountability in the intelligence community, arguing it poses a risk to national security. That is also a mistake. And the danger of this mistake is no less real.
We can, and must, do both.
We must ensure our nation has the most aggressive and effective intelligence operations possible against foreign threats.
We also must demonstrate real correction of abuses within the intelligence system, including but not limited to accountability for those who abuse the trust of the American people by misusing the intelligence process.
That is the job of oversight, and I am pleased today’s bill includes bipartisan provisions increasing oversight, including budgetary transparency for the Intelligence Community writ large, and a much-needed strengthening of the Intelligence Community Inspector General to engage in rigorous ongoing investigations into potential misconduct in the intelligence community.
It does this while authorizing the resources needed by those in the field to do their jobs for the American people.
I look forward to passing today’s bill, in what I hope will be a bipartisan manner, to continue our effort to enhance the necessary structures of the agencies we oversee to execute their vital national security missions. And hopefully rebuild trust with the American people.
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