LC Number: HV6432 .U7523 2002 OCLC Number: (OCoLC)49870544 Subject: National security -- United States. Excerpt: ...put our money into airport, rail, and port security, border patrols, beefed-up police, fire departments, medical response teams? Do we invest more money and invest more creativity in intelligence assets and language training for these specialists?Each and every day, our electronic monitors gather a vast wealth of raw material. They literally suck the ether out of the air, and that remains, much of it remains, essentially useless because we lack the specialists able to interpret it or even able to read the language that we intercept.Do we invest more money in foreign aid, cultural exchanges, or other programs which help drain the swamp of terrorism? And do they in fact drain the swamp of terrorism? Do we invest in narcotic crop substitution, equip friendly governments to help to battle our common enemy, and hire more financial watchdogs to hunt down terrorists' finances and choke off the money that keeps these groups alive?How much of our limited resources do we devote to missile defense, a project outside the scope of today's hearing, but directly related when we consider the issue of allocation of time, money, assets, and intelligence, that is the raw brain power that this country and this government possesses? Do we spend $60 billion, $100 billion, $200 billion?Are we going to produce a boost phase, mid-phase, end phase system? Or do we think, as some have suggested and was mentioned yesterday, a pre-boost phase system, which is preemptively go in and take these out? It costs less, raises more costs in other ways maybe.I will say parenthetically that in my view one of the best investments we could make in the security of the United States would be to fund fully ongoing programs to corral, safeguard, and destroy stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union...