At a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) spoke about the effects of cutting USAID.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I yield to the Distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Himes,
00:02for his opening statement.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning
00:08and welcome to our witnesses.
00:10As the chairman said, this hearing is an important
00:12opportunity for our committee and the American people
00:15to hear directly from the senior leadership
00:17of the intelligence community about the threats
00:19that our nation faces.
00:21I read the unclassified report, and I found a lot of
00:24continuity in the IC's assessment about critical threats
00:27to our national security compared to last year's assessment.
00:31The IC continues to see threats from our principal
00:33adversaries, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
00:40I must say, though, that after these last two months,
00:42I'm worried that the call may be coming
00:45from inside the House.
00:47This report calls Russia, and I quote,
00:50an enduring potential threat to US power,
00:53presence, and global interests.
00:56But as far as I can tell, we're now on Team Kremlin.
00:59We vote with them and against our allies
01:01in the United Nations.
01:04We humiliate President Zelensky in the Oval Office.
01:08The President's chief Russian negotiator, Steve Whitkoff,
01:11is repeating Russian talking points and participating
01:16on a madcap signal chat about an attack on Yemen
01:19while inside Russia.
01:22USAID is gone, and with it, all American soft power.
01:28If I had time, I would ask the generals at this table
01:30about what it means to our national security
01:31to give up our soft power.
01:35We're no longer helping struggling nations in Africa.
01:38China, or worse, terrorists, are filling the vacuum.
01:43I wonder how many of those African countries
01:44will be named in next year's threat assessment.
01:47Thanks to Doge, the men we paid to guard
01:51the most vicious ISIS terrorists in the world in Syria
01:54walked off the job.
01:58Do you think we'll see their names
01:59in this document next year?
02:02Elon Musk fired the people who maintain our nuclear weapons.
02:07Does that feel like a threat to you?
02:11Apparently, all of this mayhem is cheered
02:13by the President of the United States
02:14and by 20-somethings with laptops
02:16and nicknames like Big Balls.
02:19But I've been doing this for a long time,
02:21and I know that Moscow and Beijing and Tehran and Pyongyang
02:26cannot believe their luck.
02:29Now we come to learn that people in the most dangerous
02:32and sensitive jobs on the planet
02:34put extremely specific pre-decisional discussions
02:38about a military attack on Signal,
02:40which could be intercepted by the Russians and the Chinese.
02:43Everyone here knows that the Russians or the Chinese
02:46could have gotten all of that information,
02:49and they could have passed it on to the Houthis,
02:51who easily could have repositioned weapons
02:54and altered their plans to knock down planes or sink ships.
03:00I think that it's by the awesome grace of God
03:03that we are not mourning dead pilots right now.
03:08The two general officers sitting at the table
03:10and the people who work for all of you
03:12know that if they had set up and participated
03:14in the Signal chat, they would be gone.
03:17And they know that there's only one response
03:20to a mistake of this magnitude.
03:23You apologize, you own it, and you stop everything
03:26until you can figure out what went wrong
03:29and how it might not ever happen again.
03:33But that's not what happened.
03:35The Secretary of Defense responded with a brutal attack
03:39on the reporter who did not ask to be on the Signal chain.
03:43Yesterday, our former colleague, Mike Waltz,
03:45did the same in the White House,
03:47and then went on Fox to call Jeff Goldberg a loser.
03:53What do you think the people who work for you
03:55are seeing and learning from that?
04:01Now, except for that last part,
04:03almost all of the mayhem slowly eroding our safety,
04:06our standing, and our security in the world
04:09has largely happened outside the IC.
04:13If you had a part in that, and I suspect you did,
04:17I thank you.
04:19I'll say it now and I'll say it again
04:20every time we see each other over the next couple of years.
04:23You must protect the thousands of patriots
04:26who go to work every day under you to keep us safe.
04:31You need to go to work every day
04:32thinking about their morale,
04:34their well-being, and their protection.
04:37I've done intelligence oversight for more than a decade.
04:40It's my job to ask you the tough questions
04:42that maybe even make you uncomfortable.
04:46But John, I don't ever walk through your lobby
04:49and look at those 140 stars on the wall
04:52without choking up over the fact
04:55that men and women far better than I
04:58will give their lives to keep us safe.
05:01There's about a dozen people in this room
05:03who know all their stories,
05:05and you know and I know that many of the men and women
05:08who have stars on that wall died because of bad decisions
05:13or poor judgment by their leaders.
05:17We've all worked together before,
05:19and in recent events notwithstanding,
05:21we need you to succeed.
05:24Your people and our safety requires you to succeed.
05:28I really hope you do.
05:31But let me say now that if some over-caffeinated
05:3420-year-old succeeds in firing your linguists
05:38or your mathematicians or your paramilitary officers,
05:41if you shut down some unit
05:43because Steve Bannon or Seb Gorka doesn't like it,
05:46America will be less safe and people will get hurt.
05:50And I and this committee and history will be very unkind.