111th Congress
"We need to be more proactive and not reactive. The fact that the State Department issued a cable stating Abdulmutallab had been in contact with extremists in Yemen and did not act upon it by revoking his visa was an absolute failure. I am encouraged to see that the President has now directed the State Department to review its processes for issuing and revoking visas.
"We are dealing with a lack of information sharing on two fronts: within our intelligence community, and between the administration and Congress. It is unacceptable that our intelligence community had information that would have allowed us to disrupt the Christmas Day attack before it materialized, but failed to act on it. If this resulted from a procedural flaw we must correct it.
I commend the President's selection of Howard Schmidt as Cybersecurity Coordinator. Schmidt's experience protecting high profile private sector networks combined with his extensive government and defense background is the right combination to ensure the nation's critical infrastructure is secure.