“We have a lot to do, and there’s not any issue upon which we need to be divided.”
WASHINGTON, DC – As the international threats of China and Russia continue to advance, The Ripon Society held a breakfast discussion yesterday morning with U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (OH-10), the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) to discuss Committee plans to tackle the emerging threats made to the United States from our adversaries.
Turner has served on the HPSCI since 2015 and was appointed Chairman in 2023, making him Dayton’s first elected official to serve in a leadership role on a national security committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. In his opening remarks, the Chairman reflected on the committee’s status in the 117th Congress and the fact that many intelligence and national security professionals off Capitol Hill viewed the House Intelligence Committee “as a tumultuous, partisan, fighting group of individuals, that really weren’t able to deliver both for intelligence community or for issues of national security.”
“We were all hijacked by the impeachment process,” the Ohio lawmaker stated. “Nancy Pelosi decided that she wanted to undertake impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. She went to her buddy, Adam Schiff, and sent it to the Intelligence Committee, for which we have no jurisdiction, for which we have no overlap whatsoever in the issues of impeachment, causing our committee to really digress into a squabbling, fighting group of individuals.”
In addition to the new workload that was tacked on by then-Speaker Pelosi, the HPSCI is charged with oversight of the United States Intelligence Community which is made up of 17 unique agencies.
“We are a group that normally does our work behind closed doors and SCIFs, and suddenly we were on the main national stage. That did significant damage to the relationships in the committee, the work of the committee, its relationships with the intelligence community, and on the issues of national security.”
Now looking forward, the Chairman shared his three-point plan to ensure the Committee’s success in the 118th Congress.
“First, return the Committee to National Security. We needed to reestablish our credibility. We need to reestablish relationships and an agenda. Second, return the committee to a bipartisan focus. The committee has had a long legacy of being one of the bastions of bipartisanship, and it should because we’re talking about our adversaries.
“Third, we wanted to open up the committee. We didn’t just want to be people who learned cool things in the basement of the Capitol. We wanted to be a resource for Congress and for the intelligence community. We wanted to be those who tried to marry intelligence information to policy-making — to ask, ‘What jurisdiction does each committee have? What information do we have? How do we plug into their needs to make certain that they’re as educated as possible?’”
After a toxic 117th Congress, Turner sought to bring bipartisanship back to the Committee and began to pave the way to do so before he had the gavel in his hand.
“I had one benefit in that Adam Schiff last year became very engaged in the January 6th committee. It was almost as if he kind of left the intelligence community early. We were kind of like what you would expect of the kids when the parents aren’t home on the weekend. We just pretended that already the committee was making a transition, that the Republicans were going to be in charge, and we had an entire year then to do our strategic plan. Those months that we had last year ensured that when we got the gavel this year, we were all ready to work together as a team.”
Turner shared that Speaker McCarthy and Minority Leader Jeffries both strongly endorsed the renewed bipartisanship in the HPSCI.
“Now imagine from where we were to [where] we’re starting. We haven’t even gaveled in yet, and we have the Speaker and the Minority Leader in front of us saying, ‘We expect you to work on a bipartisan basis.’ We then had myself and Jim Himes stand before the committee and make our pledge to each other that we were going to work on a bipartisan basis, a professional basis. Then we turned to everybody on the committee. We said, ‘It’s time for us all to work on a bipartisan basis. We have a lot to do, and there’s not any issue upon which we need to be divided.’”
In addition to strengthening relationships within the committee, Turner has sought to improve the relationship between the HPSCI and other House Committees as the third step in his plan.
“On the issue of opening up the committee, it had been a long time since other people who were in Congress had even been in the intelligence committee space. We get information that relates to Financial Services, that relates to Energy and Commerce, that relates to Agriculture. This information is important and should be in the hands of the leadership of Congress. So, we changed our rules by authority. Working in conjunction with my ranking member, I have the ability to take intelligence and share it now with the Chairman and Ranking Member of the various committees.
“It’s been amazing to see their interest and response. They come down, they’re eager to learn. The intelligence community has embraced this. They see this as an opportunity to inform Congress, to take this information and put it in the hands of those who can work with it really enhances the whole success of Congress, not just the success of our committee.”
Another aspect of his three-point plan to revitalize the committee has been to reach out to the think tank community, academics, and industry professionals.
“We started last year with a process called Beyond the SCIF, where we went to think tanks and we had panels and not for us to present, but for them to present to us where we picked topics and we listened, and we got to hear from them what they thought was important.”
Additionally, the Chairman shared the benefits of the unique structure of the 25-Member committee.
“Everyone on the committee has their own portfolio. We went to each and every member in the committee and we said, ‘Look, there’s only so much that we can do as a whole committee, but there’s a lot we can do as individuals.’ My committee is unique in that it’s almost like every person is a subcommittee chair. Each of them have the ability to order up their own briefings, and each of them have their own ability to travel and to do fact finding and to engage on issues. That gives us a great intake, a great ability for our members to both work independently and to be able to get the entire committee engaged on issues that they find are important.”
In his closing remarks, Turner shared one final note on the work of the Intelligence Committee.
“We know the world is not getting to be a safer place. It’s more important than ever that our committee functions so that our intelligence community can have our full support and that we can function and make certain that we do our best to try to keep America safe.”
To view the remarks of Chairman Turner at yesterday’s breakfast discussion, please click the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.