[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 140 (Friday, September 30, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        WE CANNOT ESCAPE HISTORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.


           tribute to officer floyd hensley on his retirement

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, first of all, some important business about 
one of our excellent staffers around here on the uniformed side. One of 
our great Capitol Hill police officers, Floyd Hensley, is retiring 
after 25 years of service. He always seemed to pull the tougher shift 
in my memory, always at the majority or Speaker's side door, coming in 
here early in the morning, very early in the morning he was often heard 
to say, ``Is it 3 o'clock yet?'' That was his break time. And some of 
the good folks around here would say, ``Floyd, it is 3 o'clock.'' Now 
he can go play golf during his well-deserved retirement.
  After 25\1/2\ loyal and hard-working years I hope Floyd finds a 
second career, if that is what he wants. If not, may he break his own 
golf score every time until he hits that magical score of 18 eagles, 18 
on the score card. Nobody has ever done that.
  Mr. Speaker, yesterday three of us shared three 5-minute special 
orders on Haiti. If I had to pick a title for my remarks this 
afternoon, and this is the end of our next-to-last week, next week is 
the last. I believe if we are in on Saturday it will be a 50-50 chance 
that we probably will be out about the time the roosters are crowing on 
the 8th. I think there is a good chance we will be out on the 7th, 
particularly if we do not debate the GATT bill, which I do not think we 
should, because now it appears to be on too fast a track. The Senate is 
definitely not going to take it up, so they are going to come back in a 
lame duck session when there may be many defeated Members from that 
chamber, and there is state of high dudgeon, and a state of what the 
Germans call angst, the Republicans will be picking their leadership 
for the new session in the Senate for, if there is mercy, a new 
rotating leadership. It is all up to the voters on November 8. But I 
believe that that lame duck session for the Senate has about as much 
chance of conducting any business as a snowball in hell. Therefore, 
what is the point of our taking hours and hours of contentious debate 
on a very important trade treaty, series of treaties, very complicated, 
when the Senate is not going to do anything, and it is going to have to 
be done all over again with a Congress composed of a totally different 
makeup, men and women from all of our 50 States.

                              {time}  1630

  So I would hope we would not do GATT. If we do not, we are out of 
here on Friday, 1 week from today, or this evening.
  If I had to put a title on my remarks this evening, Mr. Speaker, I 
would quote Abe Lincoln and simple say, ``We cannot escape history,'' 
and the current events of every day of our lives are creating history 
to be studied by young men and women in the future, and not just the 
young men and women of this country, but educated people all over the 
world.
  This day, September 30, has brought about terrible rioting and 
looting in Haiti. It was supposed to be a day of parades and 
celebration, because it was 3 years ago today that a self-
excommunicated and prior to that suspended by the Salesians of Don 
Bosco, priest was deposed, and only days before in a very ugly speech 
given in French, describing burning people to death in the slow manner 
as chic that is both the same obviously in French or in English, chic, 
and then French words for pretty, wonderful, he admired the smell of 
burning flesh.
  Within minutes, within the hour, one of the presidential candidates 
from a prior election that John-Bertrand Aristide had defeated, Mr. 
Silvio, or in Haiti they say Monsieur Silvio Claude; he was captured by 
a crowd as Aristide had suggested be done to Aristide's enemies. He was 
almost beaten to death, then lynched, and then when they found the 
gasoline they were looking for, they attempted to burn him alive. 
Instead they burned his corpse. Every human rights group worthy of the 
name in Haiti or in the Caribbean says that Aristide was responsible 
for that death.
  In my Catholic training there were three things required for a mortal 
sin capable of destroying your soul for eternity unless you were sorry. 
It was a grievous matter to bring about the death, let alone the 
torture death, of a fellow citizen, a fellow human being, a fellow 
politician, a candidate you defeated is certainly a grievous matter, 
and the other two theologians talk about for centuries, sufficient 
reflection and full consent of the will.
  An ordained Catholic priest under the order of Melchizedek, certainly 
in every case that I know of, at least in this country and this 
hemisphere, is a college graduate, and Mr. Aristide is a man of many 
letters, and that would indicate sufficient reflection and full consent 
of the will of this ordained Catholic priest. That is just one among 
many, I use the word ``sins,'' of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, such as 
inciting a mob to burn down the papal nuncio's house, the Pope's 
representative in the majority catholic nation of Haiti.

  Last month I said, and I have said this on the floor twice, he 
fingered for mob vengeance every bishop in Haiti because every bishop 
in Haiti signed a letter, intellectually written, responding to the 
U.N. mandate to invade Haiti, the only mandate that Clinton looked for. 
He did not care about the elected Representatives of this Chamber or 
the United States Senate. But when the United Nations said, ``Go for 
it, Bill Clinton,'' the bishops in Haiti said, ``Do not invade our 
country. Violence is not the answer to resolve the violence that is 
before us,'' and Aristide said, ``These men, the bishops, are as 
equally criminal as the men who overthrew me in the illegal coup,'' 
September 30, 1991, 3 years ago this very day. So the rioting goes on 
now.
  I do not want to lose any of my electronic audience on C-SPAN, Mr. 
Speaker, but I just came from a television set looking at a film scene 
of rioting and looting in Port-au-Prince with no American troops in 
sight. I think that may be merciful, because the vengeance could have 
gone either way.
  The cameramen reached the zenith of reportorial courage. One camerman 
was filming another cameraman being beaten, because a man about to be 
beaten to death was hiding behind him, and they were clubbing him over 
and around the cameraman, and a cameraman is the easiest target to 
blindside in the world in any situation, because that big, heavy camera 
is on his shoulder, looking through that lens, concentrating on a 
narrow vision, and all of a sudden blood splatters on the lens of the 
CNN camera shooting. I have never seen that in my life. Then the blood 
begins to drool down the left side of your television screen. It is a 
dimensional problem like when you see water on a lens, it is right in 
your face up close, and you are seeing the action through the draining 
blood, and you see a man being dragged with a knife held right at his 
throat. He is obviously very submissive with the dagger at his throat, 
then you see more beating and pounding, and then it says what you see 
being looted is a cash and carry store, no cash, plenty of carrying, 
and it was a sad sight, and I will leave this Chamber, go right to the 
CNN news and see again, as I do every day, have any American men or 
women been asked by President Clinton to trade their young lives for 
this worse than flawed excuse for a deposed president.
  Because I believe he brought it on himself. And I make no case for 
the thugs that overthrew him or the Tons-Tons Macoutes, so-called 
attache style of torture and abuse that the God-loved dirt-poor people 
of Haiti have suffered.
  Today is a tough day in history. Lincoln was right, we cannot escape 
it. Today in 1938, and I did an hour special order on the 50th 
anniversary back in 1988, smart, smart politicians in Britain, France, 
and evil politicians in Italy and Germany, ended their Munich 
conference, disgraceful conference. Yesterday was when Chamberlain, 
Neville Chamberlain, said, ``Peace in our time.'' Today he took off in 
a Lockheed aircraft for Heston Airfield outside of London, now just a 
housing project. I looked for the site once, tried to find just a maker 
that said, ``Here is where Chamberlain landed September 30 and said, 
`Peace in our time.'''
  What a terrible conference that was in Munich. It approved of the 
Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia, Sudetenland. What was the result, 
Mr. Speaker? Fifty-five million people dead, more women and children 
and elderly people than men and women in uniform. What a tragedy.
  And then communism prevails on one side of that world conflict and 
continues to kill and torture for almost three-quarters of a century, 
ending finally when the Berlin Wall came down on my son's birthday, 
November 9, 1989.
  Today, this very day, 1777, this Congress was fleeing. We then met up 
in Philadelphia. British offensive military pressure caused the 
Congress to withdraw. We do not even think about things like that in 
this Chamber today, everybody running for their horse, trying to reach 
their wives and families, and communication no different than it had 
been for tens of thousands of years, and the Congress was withdrawn to 
York, PA.
  First atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus, was commissioned at 
Groton, CT; Babe Ruth hit his 60th homer, breaking his own record 
today; Jimmy Dean dead in a sports car only at age 24 in Cholame, CA; a 
young black, African-American student James Meredith succeeded on his 
fourth try getting into the University of Mississippi.
  And then World War II. Mr. Speaker, I have said many times on this 
floor that I am stunned that we have gone through all of 1942, 1943, 
1944, the 50th anniversaries; of all of those years, not a word by 
anybody, not a word by anybody except the gentleman from Mississippi 
[Mr. Montgomery], a reserve National Guard general, not a word about 
the cataclysmic battles in the Pacific.
  Today, 1944, September 30, the military in the Pacific declared the 
Battle of the Palau Islands, particularly the battle of the island of 
Peleliu, at an end. It was not so. The military was not trying to 
deceive, but they meant the issue was not longer in doubt. We 
controlled the island. But for 58 days our young Marines and one of our 
Army infantry divisions continued fighting in among all of these jagged 
volcanic rocks of Mount Umurgrobol, as many deaths as Iwo Jima, but a 
name lost in the pages of history.

                              {time}  1640

  The French units were having some success, small French units; 117 
days after Normandy. And the beautiful French port city of Calais 
finally surrendered to Canadian divisions 117 days after Normandy. That 
battle was still continuing all along the French coast. And deep 
within, for the first time American and German tanks met in even 
numbers, and we prevailed with the inferior but reliable Sherman tank.
  In a beautiful French forest that I visited once, if you went there 
today you would have no idea that 50 years ago today a terrible tank 
battle with great loss of life on both sides was fought to recapture 
the land, after we had been expelled from capturing it once from the 
German tank forces in the Gremlecey forest.
  If anybody wonders, Mr. Speaker, why I sometimes spell these tough 
words, it saves the reporters from chasing me down afterward because 
they like to get it right too.
  So this is one of these days in history. As we stand here, sit here, 
record here, listen here on September 30, to the rioting going on in 
Port-au-Prince, putting our men and women in danger from all sides and 
recall what we brought out on this floor last night, that there are 
only 24 people in the so-called multinational force and they are all 
safely in one of the headquarters buildings in Port-au-Prince.
  Here is what the Washington Times writes as an editorial on the No. 2 
man at the State Department, Strobe Talbott, the man who let Clinton 
sleep on the floor of his digs in Oxford, England. Mr. Talbott, writing 
in Time magazine, April 6, 1992, which is in today's Record that I put 
in last night, he himself was not proud of having chanted, ``Hey, hey, 
LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?'' Our No. 2 man at the State 
Department said he chanted that on the streets of a foreign country and 
in this country, and he is not proud of it.
  But now he is the man who is the principal architect of this ``tar 
pit'' disaster that we are in in Haiti. Mr. Talbott is now in an 
absolute nose-to-nose shootout with Dante Caputo, who quit as one of 
our highest American representatives at the United Nations because of 
the dialog that went on in the spring and summer between him and 
representatives of the Clinton White House, particularly Mr. Talbott. I 
will tell you, the hottest desired item on talk shows right now is--the 
most sought-after guest, is Mr. Dante Caputo. And he is going to be the 
most sought-after person on this Hill for a rush to have some hearings 
next week to see who is the foul liar, to find out the truth, whether 
it is Strobe Talbott or Dante Caputo who is twisting the conversations 
that went on with Mr. Talbott and Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
  Here is what the editorial in the Washington Times says:

       Say what, Mr. Talbott?

  And it goes on,

       As Senate and House committees debate and vote on Haiti 
     doing after the fact what the Democratic leadership made sure 
     they could not do before United States troops landed on 
     Haitian shores, the question of how we got there in the first 
     place remains of enduring interest.
       Particularly intriguing is the question of the extent to 
     which the invasion or the occupation, as it has turned out, 
     of Haiti has been based on domestic political considerations. 
     The official administration line has been that the President 
     expects no boost in popularity.

  He will not get one.

       Was that always the case? Or maybe rather is that really 
     the case? That was the subject of the line of questions posed 
     to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott by Representative 
     Chris Smith, New Jersey, during House Foreign Affairs 
     Committee hearings Tuesday.

  The next day, because of the toughness of Chris Smith's questioning, 
Mr. Talbott stiffed those of us on the Committee on Armed Services who 
had every bit as much interest in Haiti, because the Foreign Affairs 
Committee has jurisdiction over the general foreign policy of this 
country and they also have concern for our fighting men and women. But 
the Armed Services Committee has additional committee responsibility in 
addition to our constitutional oath that a whole new Congress will take 
in this Chamber on the first Monday of January, and that is the welfare 
of our young people in a hot combat, riots, or civil war situation. And 
he stiffed us.
  I stared at the sign ``Strobe Talbott'' all morning long yesterday. 
He did not show up and sent no underling or representative. Just nobody 
from the State Department.
  John Deutch, No. 2 at Defense, doing a good job, and General Sheehan, 
the military planner for Haiti, also doing a good job, were both there 
although General Sheehan, 3-star Marine general, shocked my socks 
off when he told me that he had never heard that the father of a Medal 
of Honor winner killed in Mogadishu 1 year ago this coming Monday, the 
father of Randall Shugart, had never heard that the father of Sergeant 
Shugart refused to shake Clinton's hand in the White House posthumous 
Medal of Honor awarding ceremony. I cannot believe that anybody in the 
military had not heard that story after the national radio coverage it 
received and at least was printed in newsletters and the Washington 
Times, thanks to columnist, Reicard Grennier, who had seen it on the 
front page of a British paper, which is where I saw it when I went over 
for the 50th anniversary of the D-day invasion.

  The editorial continues:

       Chris Smith, boring in: Mr. Smith's questions were based on 
     a series of memos and minutes of May meetings at the United 
     Nations involving U.N. Haiti representative Dante Caputo, 
     Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Canadian 
     officials. The existence of the memos was first reported in 
     the Washington Times in June, and their substance relates to 
     conversations between Caputo, who withdrew from his post in 
     protest as American troops landed in Haiti.

  So he has only been out there in the private sector for a few days, 
``and Mr. Talbott himself.''
  That is who the conversation was between.

       What about these memos, Mr. Smith asked. On May 13 foreign 
     minister of Canada commented at a meeting with U.N. 
     Representatives in Ottawa concerning the United States's 
     position such as laid out by Strobe Talbott, Dante Caputo, 
     since the time is short and the situation today cannot last 
     beyond July.

  The building political pressure domestically.

       Dante Caputo emphasized that Haiti represents a test case 
     for which the United States has to find a solution before 
     November. Mr. Caputo had at that time spent over 2 weeks with 
     American and Canadian officials, sounding out their views. 
     According to Mr. Talbott, he never mentioned the word 
     November to Mr. Caputo or anyone else.

  This is Mr. Talbott at the foreign Affairs meeting Tuesday.

       I never discussed with Mr. Caputo or, for that matter, 
     anybody else I was dealing with during that period, November 
     in any context, notably, including in any context having to 
     do with our own domestic politics. But Mr. Caputo, in his own 
     confidential memo dated May 23 to Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 
     put it this way: ``The Americans see in this type of action a 
     chance to show strength after the strong media criticism of 
     the administration, the President's decision-making 
     capability and firmness of leadership in international 
     political matters; believed armed intervention to be 
     politically desirable. U.S. Officials think that `the current 
     position of public opinion to an armed invasion will change 
     radically once it has taken place.' What is more, the 
     Washington Times observes Mr. Caputo was concerned because he 
     perceived that Americans were quickly foreclosing diplomatic 
     options so that this politically desirable invasion could 
     take place.

  Footnote: This is why former President Jimmy Carter said our foreign 
policy was a disgrace, and he moved in without really being asked and 
inserted himself into this position with former chief of staff of all 
of our military, Colin Powell, and the distinguished Senator Sam Nunn, 
to save American lives. There were no foreign nationals involved in the 
invasion at night, as our 82d Airborne, our Rangers, and on Special 
Forces were prepared to bail out in the night sky over Haiti.

                              {time}  1650

  Now--whether or not anyone used the word ``November''--it is evident 
that Mr. Talbott and other State Department officials were concerned 
about Mr. Clinton's credibility and popularity and that somehow this 
was related to the November midterm elections. How could that have 
happened? Whether or not Mr. Talbott made the connection, his purely 
political concerns were perfectly clear to a number of people, and in 
any event it is hard to imagine that a conspiracy of Canadian and U.N. 
diplomats have made this story up. So, Mr. Speaker, there are going to 
be an awful lot of people trying to pin down Mr. Talbott. He is going 
to be avoiding Capitol Hill like the bubonic plague that is breaking 
out in India. He will make every effort to get this House adjourned. I 
bet he is telling everybody in the White House as a senior FOB, friend 
of Bill, ``Don't bring up GATT, get them out of town, and then the 
administration will rule the roost.''
  And this happens with all administrations. When this Chamber and the 
other Chamber of a hundred breaks up into 535 separate people going 
home to their States or their congressional districts to seek election, 
the executive branch, the White House rules, and they will have all of 
October while the rest of us are campaigning and Mr. Clinton is not, 
all of November, all of December, with or without a ridiculous Senate 
lame duck session, and generally, if there is a tidal sea change around 
here, they will have most of January and February, if the Democrat 
Party wins, to do whatever they want in Haiti, and I hope that every 
American is as concerned as I am about the death toll mounting and that 
we will, as I said, pray for a miracle, and I guess this happens 
occasionally in dangerous situations. The State of South Carolina 
pounded the Union fort on April 12, 1861, to begin the Civil War, 
pounded it from this big, beautiful, massive forth with hundreds of 
cannons in it, into a pile of rubble, all night and all morning, and 
not a single Union Soldier died. Miracles can happen in combat.

  I had a gentleman write me this week, just reach his letter at about 
2 a.m. last night. Charles B. O'Connor, June 19, finally made it to me. 
Sorry, Mr. O'Connor. He was one of the survivors of one of the greatest 
naval ships ever to sail, the U.S.S. Franklin, CV-13 in World War II, 
that during this time, in that Second World War crusade, this ship 
lovingly called Big Ben took massive damage, the worst damage any of 
our carriers took that did not sink, and sailed out of the combat zone 
to limp back into the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I remember it to this day, 
all those pictures, some of them taken through the televised wreckage 
of where the Japanese bombs and flaming airplanes had crashed on its 
deck. In one horrible incident of combat on that carrier, the U.S.S. 
Franklin, 913, as Charlie O'Connor puts it, very young men died. He 
belongs to a group called The 704 Club; the survivors, I guess they 
reduced that number each year as some of these heroes go to their 
eternal reward. He said:
  ``Please mention that we have had our 50th reunion in September. We 
have not forgotten.''
  And I do not want to embarrass Charlie, who had retired, had a great 
40-year career with Westinghouse. He send me the calendar of the 
reunion year, and I, in the back, noticed there were two Medal of Honor 
winners, and one of them was a hero of my family, and I remember 
meeting him, Father Joseph T. O'Callahan, a Jesuit who won the Medal of 
Honor on the deck of the Franklin with explosions all around him, 
moving from boy to boy, giving them last rites, most of them burnt to 
death or dying, and many Americans remember this famous picture where 
Father O'Callahan is in a combat helmet, a Navy all-weather jacket, and 
he puts his hands together reverently, like an altar boy, after he 
blessed each dying sailor and officer, and then raises his eyes to 
heaven; I remember that picture vividly from the closing months of the 
war. Lieutenant Donald A. Gary and Father O'Callahan saved dozens of 
men, and fortunately both of these Medal of Honor winner survived the 
war. I have no idea if they are alive now, but they have gone to 
heaven. Donald Gary, and Joseph O'Callahan,--tonight I will get out my 
Medal of Honor book and read every detail of how they won their Medals 
of Honor.
  Now Back to those two Medal of Honor winners in Mogadishu on October 
3 last year:
  In that 2-page essay, and I have never seen a 2-page essay in Time, 
except on the fall of Communism, glorifying Gorbachev; in that 2-page 
essay by Strobe Talbott, and it is in today's Record. Anybody can send 
for it through their Congressman. Give me a break! Write your own 
Congressman. It is in the Record of September 29. Strobe Talbott says 
that he got out of serving in Vietnam with a--how did he put it--a 
trick knee, and he said that it did not keep him off the squash courts 
or the playing fields of Oxford. That is his exact words, and, oh, how 
he, free from serving, listened to the anguish of Clinton and Frank 
Aller, who later committed suicide. He committed suicide after the 
Federal Government pardoned him, and let him go, and said, ``We don't 
need you anyway.'' Then he committed suicide because his family had 
never accepted that he let other young men go in his place.

  But Strobe Talbott in that 2-page essay in April 1992 admitted he was 
a friend of Clinton's for 23 years and then wove a clever, devious 
story, hoping to put away, with absolute provable misstatements, tried 
to put away, the triple draft evasion, draft avoidance, of Bill 
Clinton. This is the man who is now accused of lying by a man who 
resigns in anger from his U.N. post, Dante Caputo. I am inviting Mr. 
Caputo--we have got calls out to him now--to come here to a luncheon 
meeting or Republican committee meeting next week to get to the truth 
of this.
  Now, remember Charlie O'Connor, one of the proud survivors of that 
day 50 years ago when over 900 young Americans died in an incident as 
the Franklin lifted out of the water with massive explosions; he said 
that he watches the proceedings of this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, talks 
about listening to Rush Limbaugh, says, ``What is the liberal bunch in 
Washington doing to our great country,'' and then he says three words 
that I had said to my staff last week when I saw the cover of Time or 
Newsweek magazine with a 14-year-old boy murdered execution style by 
the gang members who recruited them into their gang and ordered him to 
murder an 11-year-old girl. An 11-year-old child dead, her murderer 
executed at 14, and I turned to my staff, and I said, ``Are we 
doomed?''
  And then I read these words a week later in Charlie O'Connor's 
letter. Congressman, can we reverse the direction in which we are 
headed? I believe that we have a very poor President, a man unworthy of 
holding such high office, exactly what Medal of Honor winner, dead hero 
Randy Shughart's father said to Clinton's face in the East Ballroom May 
23. I believe he is a man unworthy of holding such high office. We have 
no foreign policy. Clinton detests the military, is morally bankrupt, 
and appears not to be able to tell the truth about anything. And then 
he said things so rough that I am not going to read them. He said that 
if we continue on his liberal left path of socialism, I foresee a very 
bleak future for the United States of America. Please keep up the good 
fight. You echo our sentiments at every turn. Very truly yours, Charles 
V. O'Connor, Retired United States Navy.
  Charlie, I would tell him, Mr. Speaker, chin up. Get all your friends 
to vote November 8. Pick the best man or woman that you think is going 
to keep our country from being doomed, and fight on with the same 
spirit of Big Ben, the U.S.S. Franklin.
  Mr. Speaker, I am assembling a lot of photographs from my past 
because this is my last race for the House. I am living up to my 12-
year term limit bill that I put in as a freshman with then Congressman 
Dan Quayle.

                              {time}  1700

  I am going to take a couple of special orders next week. Gosh, I hope 
I am not talking about Haiti and deaths. I pray that will not happen. 
Please, God, give us a miracle.
  In going through some of the old photograph files, I found pictures 
of a very young looking Bob Dornan, 23, the age when Strobe Talbot and 
Bill Clinton and Frank Aller were organizing demonstrations in foreign 
countries against their United States, denying them the opportunity to 
ever be commissioned even as a noncommissioned officer, ever in any of 
our services, security branches, CIA, FBI, most police departments, 
certainly not even the Coast Guard, nothing. While they were doing 
that, I found this picture of myself 23 years of age, that I have never 
used in a brochure, I am hanging off the side of a F-100 supersonic 
Saber. It says ``Lt. Bob Dornan'' on red wings shaped on the side of 
the cockpit. I could not believe they let me fly when I looked that 
young.
  And behind that picture, I found a yellow wing, well, it is yellow 
legal tablet, getting faded, of handwritten notes, not too many 
corrections, I am proud to say, of my original statement. It says in 
orange ink up in the corner, faded red, ``Written 25 January, 1976, 
typed at 4 a.m. the night of 25/26.'' My five young teenagers, all in 
their thirties now, had gone to bed. My wife was sleeping on the couch 
in front of me. I remember I had a severe cold.
  And I typed this statement, to be read 1 day later on the 27th at the 
L.A. Press Club. It is five pages. It opens up with the words thank you 
for coming to the press club in L.A. And I remember I had an expression 
for when all seven TV stations in L.A., VHS stations, turned out, I 
called it rolling a 7. I have only done that a few times. I did that 
the day I declared. I rolled a 7. Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 
were there. I had a short career at three of them.
  I read this to my staff. I said, let's read it cold. I don't have any 
idea what I said. I have not seen this document since I did it. And one 
of my staffers, Joe Eule, said Congressman, don't do Haiti tomorrow. 
Read this on the House floor. It is 19 years old this coming January, 
and what has changed?
  So I told him, Mr. Speaker, I would do it. I said I will have to do 
Haiti too. Pray for that miracle down there. And then I said I will 
read it.
  It starts, I repeat, thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen of 
the press. Today I am declaring--I was 42 years of age--today I am 
declaring my candidacy for the 27th Congressional District of the U.S. 
House of Representatives. The 27th District is comprised of 15 beach 
communities, and then I named them all, ending with Ronald Reagan's 
hometown of Pacific Palisades. I was his Congressman for 6 years.
  In our Nation of 215 million people--I am going to try to discipline 
myself not to interrupt 42-year-old Bob Dornan. But, Mr. Speaker, there 
are today 261,602,000 Americans, 41 million more American citizens, and 
about 10 million illegal people living in our country, and we take care 
of them pretty good, access to most of our services, 41 million more 
since I first declared for Congress a year before I was sworn in. In 
our Nation of 215 million people, very few citizens ever find 
themselves in the position to campaign with hope of victory for the 
honor of representing their fellow Americans. To find myself in the 
position of a front running candidate, I was running third, Mr. 
Speaker, I have to be honest. A front running candidate in an open 
primary election for a district as unique as the 27th is certainly a 
humbling experience. As with most candidates who have a recognition 
factor in their favor, I have that advantage because of the unselfish 
assistance of countless people in the causes we have championed 
together.
  My origination of the POW bracelet, proudly worn at its zenith by 5 
million Americans, and my worldwide travels, even to Communist 
countries with courageous wives and mothers of missing in action 
servicemen, these efforts were made possible by the patriotic 
generosity of others funding the trips. The opportunity to lecture and 
debate for over 16 years across our country, to host issue-oriented 
radio programs, and to produce my own television shows for over 6 years 
in Los Angeles, all this was made possible by others. But I have worked 
extremely hard over the years to justify the faith that people have put 
in me through their support.
  I must also acknowledge with loving gratitude the spiritual and 
patriotic inheritance entrusted to me by my recently deceased mother 
and father, two of the greatest Americans I will ever know.
  I will win the 27th Congressional District primary on June 8, and 
carry my lead on to victory in the general election on November 2d.
  There were 14 people in both those primaries.
  Because the voters of both parties in my district are hungry for a 
Congressman to represent them who is an outspoken fighter.
  Mr. Speaker, that word ``outspoken'' is twice in here, and it is used 
against me all the time. I guess I kept my promise over 19 years, 
didn't I?
  An outspoken fighter. A Congressman who will in a sense put them in 
Washington with a strong voice that can really make a difference, 
someone who is clear thinking and straightforward. When elected, I will 
articulate the concerns of those I represent with forcefulness and 
clarity.
  One deep concern that will anger and frustrate all citizens in 
America is the lack of morality in government, which naturally results 
in an absence of leadership. Voters have been betrayed for years by 
political corruption, waste, absenteeism, laziness, arrogant self-
indulgent pay raises.
  We were making $42,000 then. Now it is $133,600, augmented by 
constantly expanding fringe benefits. As an outspoken opponent of 
immorality in all facets of modern life, I will continue to hit hard 
and often at every attempt to abuse the taxpayers. I will call for a 
six-term limit for all U.S. Congressmen, and two terms for U.S. 
Senators. Three additional areas of concern stand out when talking with 
citizens in my 27th Congressional District. I have found during visits 
to 42 States in the last 2 years--I was traveling, speaking for a group 
against child pornography--in the last 2 years, that these same three 
issues are paramount with the voters nationwide. And then I split the 
three issues into four.

  Americans are devastated by the twin brothers of unemployment and 
inflation--that is the one thing we have cured in this letter, 
inflation--that works to destroy our fantastic free enterprise system. 
Reckless government spending a la New York City creates the vicious 
hidden tax of inflation, an economic cancer that eats away at the 
paychecks of all Americans. Government now absorbs 44 percent of our 
personal income.
  We left 50 behind a long time ago, Mr. Speaker.
  Next, most Americans insist upon a strong national defense shield.
  This is 7 years before SDI or strategic defense. We pray for lasting 
peace with our adversaries, but detente must be a two-way street. 
Detente must not become the epitaph scrawled across the coffin of 
liberty. Her torch of freedom now burns in only 2 dozen or so 
countries, and that threatened light will quickly be extinguished in 
each and every remaining democracy if the United States does not, to 
quote from our preamble, provide for the common defense, and maintain 
her military strength, both strategic and conventional.

                              {time}  1710

  A fourth issue, of particular interest, is that Americans are 
outraged at the growth of all crime. Nineteen years ago, organized 
crime, street crime, white collar crime, and the mislabeled so-called 
victimless crimes, referring to prostitution, and narcotics. The 
preamble to our great Constitution speaks of establishing justice, 
ensuring domestic tranquility. We Americans had better start thinking 
of justice for the victims of crime.
  As for domestic tranquility, what a deepening disgrace to have 
foreign totalitarian regimes, hated by their own people, able to point 
with scorn at our soaring rates of murder, rape, assault, and drug 
addiction and then sneer about the decline of decadent western culture.
  Are we an example of freedom or gutless passivity? One year from now, 
when I take the oath of office as a U.S. Congressman, you have to enter 
these campaigns with a lot of confidence, the people of the 27th 
district will have a fighter representing them who has a sense of 
commitment and a determination second to none.
  Today we are defending in an increasingly dangerous world the most 
delicate and fragile of societies, a Republic. For all of its flaws, 
the Nation of which we are citizens, is a wonderful country with a 
truly remarkable history. What a magnificent challenge to defend her 
and to improve her. We should welcome that challenge with a renewed 
spirit of '76, now in 1976. Yes, we should ask for God's blessings on 
our beautiful land, but we should also roll up our sleeves and try to 
correct the manmade social problems that torment us.
  I will start by campaigning vigorously and positively and treating my 
opponents with respect for their desire to serve. I want to come back 
to that, Mr. Speaker.
  Together, let us lean on our apathetic fellow voters and ask that 
they inform themselves on the issues, participate in the process, and 
then use that enlightenment to exercise one of the greatest rights in a 
free society, the right to choose leaders through the ballot. See you 
out there in the precincts and at the polls on June 8 and November 2 of 
our bicentennial year, 1976.
  Mr. Speaker, my young opponent--I never laid eyes on him. Younger 
than all five of my kids who, as I said, were teenagers then, four of 
the five are now married and they have made me and Sally proud 
grandparents nine times.
  My opponent says that he is determined to make my character the issue 
in this campaign. He proceeded to tell the press that he was going to 
run the dirtiest campaign I had ever seen. If I said that, if any 
Republican said that, we would be properly crucified. I wish they 
applied the same standard to some challenges in your party.
  This young person, who I would not know if I fell over him, has taken 
money from pornographers. I forced him to give it back. He wants to cut 
off the home mortgage interest deduction on our IRS 1040 forms. He 
wants to put a 50 cent gasoline tax on every gallon of gas you and I 
buy, Mr. Speaker, for the rest of our lives, because we are still 
paying excise tax on our phones. That was put in to rebuild the USS 
Franklin in World War II, to fight the good fight against Nazism and 
fascism, and we still have excise tax on our phones. I have never seen 
a State gasoline tax rolled back. When you put 10 gallons in a tank or 
if you fill it up with 20, that is $10 on every tank of gas for the 
rest of your life.
  But what I resent is this boast that he is going to make it a dirty 
campaign. Let me come back to that with words I wrote in the margin 19 
years ago. Get something clear for the LA Times here. I will start by 
campaigning vigorously and positively and treating my opponents with 
respect for their desire to serve.
  One of the great mythologies built around Robert Kenneth Dornan by 
the liberal press, Mr. Speaker, is that I fight too tough in campaigns. 
I gave my young multimillionaire opponent 17 debates in that first, 
campaign. We were both challengers. It was an open seat. No big deal. 
He stayed clean until 3 weeks out. He got so dirty three weeks out, I 
sued him for millions of dollars. Millions is just for the lawyers. 
That is all show. But guess what, Mr. Speaker? I am the only Member of 
this chamber in all of history, 218 years, no U.S. Senator has ever 
done this, I refused to drop the suit after I won big. I said I would 
win with 54.5 percent. I won with 54.7. Pretty good campaigning. I 
wrote it on a blackboard, morning of the election.
  He gave me a $35,000 cashier's check, tax free, legal damages, of 
$35,000. Thomas Jefferson sued somebody, never got a nickel. Bill 
Buckley sued Gore Vidal, got a dollar and court costs.
  Nobody in history has ever sued an opponent and got money. He might 
have beat me in court. We know what we are supposed to be subjected to 
out there in the free marketplace. But his father was a good man, owned 
Familion Pipe and Supply, and he wanted this thing done because it was 
hurting his father's reputation because the son got dirty in the last 
few minutes. He was not a bad fellow at that. Had these two Dino 
Ferraris up on blocks to run for Congress.
  Then came Gregory Peck's son. LA Times to this day cheats and lies on 
my 1978 campaign. Young Peck, Gregory Peck's son, took 13 sequentially 
numbered money orders on children and dead people from the state of 
Alabama. I forced him to give them back. I filed against him 2 years 
later when I found out about it. He had to apologize to the press after 
a lot of weasling around and the Times to this day says my charges were 
false and it was the biggest FEC fine in the history of the FEC up to 
that point $30,000. And they never collected a nickel of it from 
anybody. Although the young man, 28, who gave him the money from 
Alabama went to prison for a year for stealing a million dollars from 
California.

  My 1980 race, I gave Peck over 15 debates. I was a freshman. Cost me 
a 51 to 49 percent race. 1980, Peck came at me with all guns blazing. 
Filthiest campaign of my life. I never did a thing until I had to fight 
back and counterpunch. I do have Irish blood.
  And I ran a clean campaign against Pete Wilson and became one of his 
best speakers after he beat me fair and square. I ran against Tom 
Bradley. He said it was the cleanest campaign he had ever had. I have 
run against Sam Yorty in the primary. He made me his number one speaker 
after he beat me. Ran the college trustees board, predicted I would get 
44 percent and got it. I was just in training for the race I won, this 
1976 race. Today I am still friends with Gwen Moore, who is still in 
the California assembly, who beat me. That Familion and that Peck race 
were rotten, and they started it. I did not match them in kind. I just 
got tough with the facts. When somebody is dirty and they are being hit 
with facts, they always call it dirty campaigning. I am the only 
Congressman here, Mr. Speaker, who represents two totally different 
seats, the 27th, 38th, and now I am in the 46th.
  In my 1984 race, a newspaper did something I have never heard of 
before or since. They mistakenly, I think honestly, printed the 
incumbent Congressman's vote and my votes during the 6 years that I 
served here with him from the Santa Monica district. They printed our 
votes together and they gave me all of his votes and, worse than that, 
gave him all of my votes, on abortion, on busing, on all these key 
issues.

                              {time}  1720

  Mr. Speaker, I could not believe my eyes. They said, ``We will 
correct it.'' They buried the correction on B-12, the second section. I 
told him he would reprint it as a last-minute mailer. They said never 
would anybody do so outrageously a foul deed. The sitting 10-year 
Congressman did just that, created a mailer giving all of my votes to 
him and attributing all of his liberal votes to me. It nailed him. I 
won 53 to 42, and he had won 62 just a few years before, in 1982.
  Then my 1986 race, Tony Coelho comes out to my district. Years before 
he left here in disgrace. He questions my military record, when I had 
been on television in L.A. during the whole Vietnam war. He lied and 
said I tried to indicate I was a Vietnam vet.
  I was a Korean vet, and I was in pilot training when that war ended. 
I am proud I was a civilian Eisenhower warrior who never had to kill 
another mother's son. I have said that for years on TV.
  But Coelho tried this. The assemblyman he was trying to help, Willy 
Brown's lieutenant, the number three man in the California legislature, 
he was peculiarly quite at that press conference. He told everybody for 
12 years he was a Marine officer, a fighter pilot, and a helicopter 
gunship pilot. I said, ``Why would he sit there quiet and tell Coelho, 
`Don't do that to a fellow officer,' or why wouldn't he participate and 
be a sleaze along with Coehlo?'' So I checked his record. He was a 
Private, warehouseman, never flew an airplane, never flew a helicopter. 
He has been impersonating an officer for 12 years in the California 
Assembly. He will never run again. The L.A. Times refused to print it. 
His roommate called and said he was lying. He got a ride on an F-4 as 
an enlisted man in El Toro, and he used the photograph for 12 years. 
They would not print a word of it.

  Mr. Speaker, I did not have any race to speak of in 1988 and 1990, 
and in 1992 I had a primary where $700,000 of liberal Democrat abortion 
money came at me in a period of 3 weeks, used by a so-called Republican 
lady who had been appointed a judge for a couple of years by Jerry 
Brown; unbelievable.
  I responded with tough fighting. No, I passed all my character tests. 
I lived up to everything, and every promise I made in that five-page, 
handwritten, with very few corrections, statement for my declaration 19 
years ago this January.
  Mr. Speaker, I am trying to figure out what 1997 and 1998 holds for 
me. I am going to continue to be outspoken in this Chamber, Mr. 
Speaker, as you are outspoken. If I win this election in 38 days, and I 
think I will, I will be here in Clinton's last 2 years. I will be here 
to protect the military, to help democracies flourish, to help starving 
people where we can, but to not squander the lives of young men in 
dingy alleyways, as those who died in Mogadishu, and then not be able 
to explain to Gary Gordon's parents or his widow, or Carmen or Herb, 
Shugart's parents, or have Gordon's little children, Ian and Brittany, 
when they grow up, unable to understand why a person who three times 
sent high school people to serve in his place and got his education 
overseas without going to class and demonstrated against his country 
can put young men and women in harm's way in Haiti and Mogadishu, and 
talks about doing it in Bosnia and other places. This is going to be a 
tough, key election in the history of our country. It is going to be a 
painful 2 years until we get ourselves a new President.

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