Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate is going to vote on the nomination of John Ratcliffe to be Director of National Intelligence. I have come to the floor to discuss this important nomination.

Senators often come to this floor to talk about the importance of speaking truth to power. John Ratcliffe, in his statement before the Intelligence Committee and in his written responses, revealed he would not speak truth to power; he would surrender to it. He demonstrated that he is so eager to serve power, he will twist the truth, and he showed this again and again.

For example, in the name of helping power, we saw him dance around direct questions about whether he would respect or even understood the law. John Ratcliffe made a number of extremely disturbing statements that make it clear that he has and will misrepresent and politicize intelligence without a moment's hesitation.

I asked the Congressman at his hearing about a law that requires a public, unclassified report on who was responsible for the murder of the Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident, Jamal Khashoggi. This was a law passed by the Congress and signed by the President of the United States. This law required the Director of National Intelligence to produce that unclassified report on who killed Jamal Khashoggi and what the circumstances were in February. That has never happened.

At his nomination hearing, I simply asked the Congressman whether the government was bound by the law. In his response, the Congressman called the law a request for unclassified information. That is how he referred to this law. Then the Congressman promised to take a look at it. In his own words, John Ratcliffe wouldn't commit to following that important law without knowing the circumstances of who killed Jamal Khashoggi. I believe it is open season on journalists.

How John Ratcliffe danced around that question of whether he would comply with the law is a disqualification by itself to be the head of national intelligence.

This was a pattern throughout the hearing. John Ratcliffe had his talking points down, but the moment he was asked anything specific, he danced away. I am just going to take a few minutes to give some examples. Obviously, it is critically important to know a nominee's views for this position on the question of spying on Americans.

I asked John Ratcliffe three times in prehearing questions, at the hearing, and again after the hearing, whether the statute that prohibits warrantless wiretapping on Americans was binding. Each time, John Ratcliffe left himself lots of wiggle room to suggest that whatever this law said, the President might have ways to go around it. He also said he would work with the Attorney General, who we know has explicitly said that he doesn't believe the foreign intelligence surveillance law is binding on the President.

This is really where John Ratcliffe could be dangerous. With Donald Trump as President and William Barr as Attorney General, the leadership of the intelligence community is one of democracy's last lines of defense. That is why the American people need a Director of National Intelligence who understands how the law protects their rights and won't start conducting warrantless wiretapping on Americans just because the Attorney General wrongly claims that it is legal.

Nothing that John Ratcliffe has said during his confirmation process or throughout his career provides a glimmer of hope that he is a person who would speak truth to power and stand up for the rights of Americans.

There are plenty more reasons to oppose this nomination, but in the interest of time, I am going to focus on just one more, and that is John Ratcliffe's blatant misrepresentation and politicizing of intelligence. This was obvious in how he talked about the intelligence community's assessment that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. This is a view undisputed within the intelligence community. The Senate Intelligence Committee looked at it up and down, and it was the unanimous judgment of the Intelligence Committee that it was true.

Yet for John Ratcliffe, the intelligence really doesn't matter. All that matters is that he makes Donald Trump happy. If Donald Trump doesn't want to acknowledge that the Russians helped him, then those are John Ratcliffe's marching orders.

It is the exact opposite of speaking truth to power and that is why, at the beginning of my remarks, I described his views with respect to power as not speaking truth but totally surrendering to power.

He is also perfectly happy to misrepresent the intelligence even when it is public and we can read it with our own eyes. Three times during his hearing, he said that the Russians did not succeed in changing the outcome of the 2016 election. This position of John Ratcliffe directly contradicts what the Intelligence community had written in plain English. It said: ``We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.'' So I asked John Ratcliffe where he got his information. He referred back to the Intelligence community's assessment and the committee's report, neither of which supported John Ratcliffe's statements.

You have to ask yourself, Why would John Ratcliffe say something that is obviously not true? That is because Donald Trump wants us to believe that he didn't benefit from Russian interference, and that, first and foremost, is what matters to John Ratcliffe. If John Ratcliffe is willing to misrepresent intelligence assessments that are already public that anybody can read for themselves, my take is there is no telling how he would misrepresent intelligence that is still classified.

There is every reason to believe his public statements would be designed for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to make sure that Donald Trump is pleased. Neither the Congress nor the American people have any reason to trust that John Ratcliffe's testimony or his other public statements are accurate.

My view is this kind of approach taken by the Director of National Intelligence is a real threat to democracy. When the Director of National Intelligence demonstrates that he is willing to bury the actual intelligence and say whatever makes Donald Trump happy at any particular moment, the American people are going to lose confidence and lose confidence quickly.

It is not just about foreign interference in our democracy. That is plenty serious as it is. It is about other threats from countries like Iran, North Korea, and China. It is about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. It is about whether the government is secretly spying on Americans without a warrant or committing torture. Ultimately, it is about the issue of war and peace and whether Americans will be asked to die for our country.

The American people look to intelligence leaders for the facts--the facts, the unvarnished truth on these and other issues, which is why it is so important this position must have a foundation of credibility.

Time and again, John Ratcliffe has demonstrated that he does not clear that lowest bar; that bar that means you have to have credibility in this position, and I urge my colleagues, when we vote in a few minutes, to reject John Ratcliffe's nomination to be Director of National Intelligence.

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