Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., has said that the success of U.S. intelligence efforts can be measured by terrorists' failure to mount an attack on American soil since 9/11. Let's lay some of that credit at the outgoing representative's feet.

Wilson has been awarded the CIA's Agency Seal Medal "in recognition of her exceptional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence." A former National Security Council staffer, Wilson has served on that committee for six of her 10 years in the House. She's the one who took the Bush administration to task in 2005 for not informing Congress about its warrantless wiretapping, and she led the charge to update FISA, the nation's outdated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Civil libertarians and some Democrats have characterized the update as a dangerous assault on privacy — but it is hard to discount her results. FISA '08 still requires a warrant to monitor domestic communications, but it fast-tracks monitoring the electronic communications of suspected terrorists contacting people in the United States. Wilson calls it "the first line of defense in a very dangerous world."

Wilson was integral not only to seeing that need, but in rationally and reasonably persevering over three years to get a solution signed into law. She says it "will give our intelligence agencies the tools they need to prevent the deaths of thousands of Americans."

And that's definitely worthy of a medal.