As the Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, I have been briefed since 2003 on a highly classified NSA foreign collection program that targeted Al Qaeda. I believe the program is essential to US national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.

We can no longer expect an Intelligence Community that is mostly male and mostly white to be able to monitor and infiltrate suspicious organizations or terrorist groups.

I think I am aggressive, I think I am critical when it's necessary.

There's no deep bench there, Mahmoud Abbas is, I think, the best leader of the Palestinians we could field.

The point is to solve problems, not point fingers.

We need spies that look like their targets, CIA officers who speak the dialects terrorists use, and FBI agents who can speak to Muslim women who might be intimidated by men.

A lot of the things that we've been able to do in the last several years were Democratic ideas, including the structure for this new director of national intelligence.