Mr. Speaker. he cites to a couple pieces of testimony that he received this past summer from various officials. Leaders from the FBI. the National Counterterrorism Center. and the Department of Homeland Security have all said to our Homeland Security Committee that they lack the ontheground intelligence necessary to thoroughly vet Syrian refugees who seek to resettle here. National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen testified on October 21 that you have to rely on a vet. When you are vetting an applicants information. his opinion is this: "It isnt what wed like it to be." FBI Director Comey explained during that same hearing: "If someone has not made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interests reflected in our database. we can query our database until the cows come home. but nothing will show up because we have no record of that person. You can only query what you have collected." I mentioned a piece of that statement a little earlier. That is the full statement. And it gets to the point that. as we are concerned about our security and we are trusting the administration to properly vet those who seek to come here. we have to rely on intelligence. and our intelligence leaders are offering something less than full confidence that their intelligence on those Syrian refugees is something that we need to look a lot further at. That is what I think we need to do. Finally.
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refugees