Top Intelligence Lawmaker to Retire

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers announced Thursday that he will retire at the end of his term for a new career in talk radio.

“As I close this chapter please know that I am not finished with the effort to bring back American ‘exceptionalism,’” Rogers said in a note to supporters. “Not in the sense of a great notion, but in the sense of impacting the hopes and dreams of a great nation and her people. You may have lost my vote in Congress but not my voice. I look forward to building on our successes and confronting America’s challenges together.”

Rogers, a Republican, has represented part of southwest Michigan since 2001, and has risen in prominence from a FBI special agent to a frequent Sunday talk show guest as a fierce defender of the National Security Agency. After the disclosure of mass NSA domestic surveillance programs by leaker and former contractor Edward Snowden, Rogers and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence committee, released a proposal earlier this week to scale back the NSA’s bulk collection of data on Americans’ phone calls, a significant measure compared to just a year ago.

Rogers will start as a radio talk show host for the company Cumulus in January of 2015.