[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 20 (Tuesday, March 1, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1300
 
  THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PUERTO RICAN TERRORIST ATTACK UPON THE 
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Klein). Pursuant to the Speaker's 
announced policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. 
Emerson] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EMERSON. Mr. Speaker, I ask the gentleman to stay and join me in 
the 5 minutes that I have available here.
  You know there is something that I want to recount. The gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kanjorski] and I have recounted this story many 
times in our reminiscences, the older we get, and I thought the story 
was over and done with many, many years ago and had not thought about 
it in a long, long time.
  But when I was traveling in Sudan in 1989 with the late Mickey 
Leland, who was chairman of the Hunger Committee, he and I were there 
together about the famine in Sudan on the occasion immediately prior to 
the trip in which he tragically lost his life. He asked me to tell him 
the story about the day they shot up the House of Representatives, 
which I did much as, you know, the little 3- to-5-minute version of it.
  I concluded by telling him that I had later read back in the late 
1970's, after telling him the story of the event, that I had later read 
sometime in the late 1970's that President Carter had pardoned the 
people who had perpetrated that event, and I had never known why. I had 
not taken the time or the trouble to call the Justice Department and 
find out.
  He told me that he knew the answer to that, that he had been 
instrumental in helping to secure the release of some Americans who had 
been languishing in Cuban prisons. Mickey Leland told me there had been 
some Americans languishing in Cuban prisons since the Bay of Pigs, and 
the price of the release of those prisoners was that the perpetrators 
of the event here in the House of Representatives be pardoned, which 
seemed to me to be an equitable arrangement.
  Mr. KANJORSKI. If the gentleman will yield, I just thought maybe it 
became in vogue in 1989 to fire on Members of Congress.
  Mr. EMERSON. I do not know. I leave that to the gentleman's 
characterization.
  I thought then that I had heard the ultimate chapter in that story, 
that the people who had perpetrated the event here were traded for 
Americans who were in Cuban prisons from the time of the Bay of Pigs, 
but a little bit later, I believe it was in 1990, the deputy United 
States marshal, Clarence Comer, who holds forth in the Federal Building 
in Cape Girardeau, MO, my hometown where I have one of my district 
offices, came to Washington to receive an award of the Marshal's 
Service. It is the highest medal that one in the Marshals Service can 
receive, the highest honor one can receive. It is the Marshals 
equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Clarence performed a 
very heroic act in our community that resulted in his receiving this 
award, and he came here with his wife and family and was in my office 
and saw this photograph on my office wall. It connotes some action that 
may relate to an event that a law enforcement officer would be 
interested in, and he said, ``Bill, what is this picture on your 
wall?''
  I told him the story, and then I told him what Congressman Leland had 
told me about the trade, and he said, ``I cannot believe you are 
telling me this story.'' And I said, ``Why is that? Do you think I am 
misleading you?'' He said, ``No.'' He said, ``I was the U.S. marshal 
who accompanied Lolita Lebron and her accomplices to San Juan where the 
folks coming out of Cuba we met in San Juan and traded the Americans 
for the Puerto Rican terrorists.''
  I hope that is now the end of the story, but it has sort of been a 
lifelong ``There is yet another chapter in it for me,'' and I hope that 
is now the end of it.
  Mr. KANJORSKI. Well, I say to the gentleman, as you know, 40 years 
have passed since that day, and you and I have had the pleasure of 
living through those 40 years and living that historic moment and now 
serving, again, in the Congress.
  I was thinking on my way in this morning of the feelings that existed 
in the United States in 1954 as best as I can recollect them as a young 
man, and the feelings that exist in the United States in 1994. And 
although it is a larger country by almost 100 million more people, it 
is, indeed, a safer country because, as you recall in 1954, we were in 
the throes of the beginning of the nuclear era and all the threats and 
the insurmountable ability to suppress communism in the world and its 
march around the world. Korea had just ended, and we were not at all 
certain at that time what our future lives would lead.
  And now in 1994, I thought to myself we still have some of the 
doubts, but over that 40-year period you and I, from the beginning of 
the fight to engage the American system as supreme in the world as 
opposed to the Soviet system, have lived long enough to see this Nation 
conquer its enemy not having engaged in any war at all, and that we 
should take this moment to reassure the young pages that are here on 
the floor and the American people that America is, indeed, as good or 
better a nation today as it was in 1954, that although we have our 
troubles today, we had our troubles in 1954, and that the challenges we 
seem to be meeting today are much more attractive challenges than that 
of death and nuclear war as they existed in 1954.
  Mr. EMERSON. I thank the gentleman for his observations.
  I concur in his remarks. As I tell my constituents with some 
frequency, this is the most exciting time in which to be alive, the 
next century that we are soon to enter, and even after serving 14 years 
in the House of Representatives, I remain an optimist about our system 
of government and about our prospects for the future. I thank the 
gentleman for yielding to me, and I am glad to have yielded to him. I 
think the Speaker is telling us our time is expired.
  I thank the gentleman.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Klein). Pursuant to the Speaker's 
announced policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Bonior] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority 
leader.

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