mr. brennan understand what's in the legislation? mr. graham: well, i thank the senator from arizona and all of my colleagues for working on what is a very difficult subject matter, but when 25-1 becomes the outcome, that's pretty good. and i don't know what the -- this is not -- quite frankly, i like senator reid. this goes back to the white house. this is president obama's team. this is not harry reid. this is not the senate holding up this bill. it's the white house holding up this bill because they have an irrational view of what we need to be doing with the detainees. they have lost the argument, and i tried to help, to close guantanamo bay. it's not going to close. we're not going to move those prisoners inside the united states. the congress has said no. the american people have said no. and the reason we have lost that argument is after working with the white house for about a year and a half to try to find a national security-centric detainee policy that would ensure the american people that we're not going to let these people r

mr. brennan understand what's in the legislation? mr. graham: well, i thank the senator from arizona and all of my colleagues for working on what is a very difficult subject matter, but when 25-1 becomes the outcome, that's pretty good. and i don't know what the -- this is not -- quite frankly, i like senator reid. this goes back to the white house. this is president obama's team. this is not harry reid. this is not the senate holding up this bill. it's the white house holding up this bill because they have an irrational view of what we need to be doing with the detainees. they have lost the argument, and i tried to help, to close guantanamo bay. it's not going to close. we're not going to move those prisoners inside the united states. the congress has said no. the american people have said no. and the reason we have lost that argument is after working with the white house for about a year and a half to try to find a national security-centric detainee policy that would ensure the american people that we're not going to let these people r

mr. brennan, has it wrong.'m not sure that he's read this legislation based on the objections that he's raised, because we are giving the president authority to detain, which is very important authority, which he can exercise based on the national security of this country, and in order to have military custody, you have to be a member of al qaeda or an affiliated force, and planning an attack against us or a coalition partner. that's where the mandatory -- where the military custody comes in place and i think that's very important because, of course, if you're a member of al qaeda and you're planning an attack against the united states of america or our coalition partners, it seems to me that's a very appropriate instance for military custody given that we remain at war with al qaeda and that the threats from al qaeda are still very grave to our country as demonstrated -- mr. had mr. mccain: i ask my colleague, so the statement mr. brennan made on his speech on september 16 at the harvard law school saying our

mr. brennan understand what's in the legislation? >> well, thank you, senator from arizona, and all my colleagues working on what is very difficult subject matter, but when 25 to 1 is the outcome, that's pretty good, and i don't know what the -- this is not harry reid quite frankly. i like him. this goes back to the white house. this is president obama's team. this is not harry reid, not the senate 408ing up this bill. it's the white house holding the bill because they are having an irrational bill of what we need to to to be doing with detainees. they lost the argument. we're not going to move prisoners inside the united states. the congress said no. the american people said no. the reason we lost that argument is because after working with the white house for about a year and a half to try to find a national security centric, detainee policy that would ensure the american people that were not going to let the people roam around the world and treat them as common criminals, they could never pull the trigger on the hard stuff. we're

mr. brennan or his deputy, which that makes as muchceps as anything else. okay.it makes sense, in other words. senator a caw caw, thank you for being here. >> thank you for for this, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today. i've long been concerned about bilogical attacks, especially against our food and agriculture service system. the difficulty in tracking this loss of recent e. coli outbreak in germany and france reenforces my concerns here. a bioterrorism attack committed anywhere in the world could easily spread to the united states. we must detect and attack early and limit its impact, which is why we need to continue to strengthen, strengthen domestic and overseas surveillance capabilities. last month, i held a area hearing on how the u.s. would respond to an attack on our food and agricultural systems, and an issue was raised at the hearing was the lack of indicators of emerging threats to food and agriculture within the intelligence community. my question is how are the bureaus' intelligence activities targeting bilogical threats and in parti

mr. brennan, who is one of the president's national security advisors in saying that we should be using article3 courts as an exclusive way to treat individuals who have actually come to our soil to attack our country. and to me, that doesn't make sense. so if you are a terrorist, a member of al qaeda who actually has planned an attack on our country and actually comes to our country to attack us, you are going to be given greater rights because you will be given your miranda rights, told you have the right to remain silent. you will be automatically treated in our civilian court system. and we will have to give you speedy presentment and many of the rights that rightly so are included in our article 3 court system. and so what are we saying to terrorists when we say yes, we will try you in our article 3 court system? we're actually going to give you greater rights if you come and attack us here. it's, in my view, it unfortunately sends the wrong message. i think it's welcoming people here to the united states of america when the message should be clearly we're at war with you, we are going to

brennan, said last month results of this approach are undeniable. al qaeda's been crippled. now i'll put most of my statement in the record, but, mr. president, i was not going to speak but as a former prosecutor, as one who prosecuted not terrorism cases, but i prosecuted murder cases and very serious criminal cases, i have absolute faith in those in our federal courts, prosecutors and law enforcement to bring terrorists to justice. but the last thing i want to see, mr. president, is this body that has no responsibility for prosecuting anybody. none of us are the ones going to court. none of us are the ones who bring cases before a jury. none of us are the ones who have to face down a terrorist. none of us are the ones who have to recommend somebody go to jail. for us to say we will decide in the future who can be prosecuted and who can't, that is a bad, bad, bad deal. the executive branch has those options, and they have been doing a pretty darned good job in their convictions. so, for us, for us to try to second-guess and tell our prosecutor what you might do and something that's going to happen in the future that we know nothin