[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 75 (Monday, May 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6263-S6274]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Summary of committee inquiry
As you know, the former DCI, James Woolsey, resigned last December.
In February, the administration announced that it planned to nominate
retired Air Force General Michael C.P. Carns to replace Woolsey as DCI.
One month later, General Carns withdrew his name, citing immigration
issues. The administration then turned to Deputy Secretary of Defense
Deutch. In announcing on March 11, 1995, the decision to nominate Mr.
Deutch as DCI, the White House also announced that the post would be
elevated to Cabinet-level status. Mr. Deutch's name was formally
submitted to the committee on March 29, 1995.
The committee required Mr. Deutch to submit sworn answers to its
standard questionnaire for Presidential appointees, setting forth his
background and financial situations. These were submitted to the
committee on March 30, 1995.
On April 5, 1995, the committee received a letter from the Director
of the Office of Government Ethics transmitting a copy of the financial
disclosure statement submitted by Mr. Deutch. The Director advised the
committee that is disclosed no real or potential conflict-of-interest.
The chairman and vice chairman also reviewed the FBI investigation
done for the White House on Mr. Deutch.
The committee held a confirmation hearing on Mr. Deutch on April 26,
1995, at which time the nominee was questioned on a variety of topics.
Subsequently, written questions were submitted to the nominee for
additional responses.
Based upon this examination, the committee reported the nomination to
the Senate on May 3, 1995, by a unanimous vote, with a recommendation
that Mr. Deutch be confirmed.
highlights of testimony
views on the role of the dci--cabinet status
In his opening remarks to the committee, Mr. Deutch described as the
primary duty of the DCI ``to provide objective, unvarnished assessments
about issues involving foreign events to the President and other senior
policymakers.''
He emphasized that ``with the exception of policy that bears on
[[Page S6265]] the Intelligence Community, the Director of Central
Intelligence should have no foreign policy making role.'' Speaking
directly to the issue of making the DCI a member of the Cabinet, the
nominee explained his belief that the President intended this to signal
the importance he places on intelligence and the confidence the
President has in Mr. Deutch. The nominee went on to present his view
that this status is important to ensure that the DCI will be present
when policy issues are deliberated so that he can present objective
assessments of alternative courses of action and take away from those
meetings a better understanding of policymaker needs.
I questioned Mr. Deutch on this issue in meetings prior to the
confirmation hearing and again, for the record, in open session. I
noted my own view that if you are in the Cabinet, you are much more
likely to get involved in making policy than if you are not in the
Cabinet. I referred to the congressional report on Iran-Contra and
Secretary Shultz's assertion, as reported therein, that the President
was getting faulty intelligence about terrorism because there was a
problem in keeping intelligence separated from policy. The committee
concluded in that report that ``the gathering, analysis, and recording
of intelligence should be done in a way that there can be no question
that the conclusions are driven by the actual facts rather than by what
a policy advocate hopes these facts will be.''
This need to separate policymaking from intelligence gathering and
analysis is reflected in the statute defining the National Security
Council. The National Security Act of 1947 sets forth the members of
the NSC and then designates others, including the DCI and the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as officials who are not members but may
attend and participate as the President directs. It is my strong sense
that this is the appropriate status for the DCI with respect to the
Cabinet as well.
Mr. Deutch has assured the committee that he will hold to the proper
standard of conduct and that he would ``not allow policy to influence
intelligence judgements and, not allow intelligence to interfere in the
policy process.''
I believe that Mr. Deutch has the best of intentions in this regard
and that he is certainly capable of recognizing the line between
intelligence and policy. The committee will be sensitive to any
indication that this standard is not being met. Ultimately, however,
the makeup of the Cabinet is a Presidential prerogative and is not
statutorily defined.
Given the delay already experienced in naming Mr. Deutch, and given
his strong qualifications in every other regard, I do not think this
issue should stand in the way of his confirmation by the Senate.
With respect to DCI authorities, the nominee noted in response to
questions at the hearing and those submitted later for the record, that
in his view, the DCI could more effectively manage the intelligence
community if he or she had budget execution authority over key segments
of the community.
In further response to questions, Mr. Deutch agreed that this was a
propitious time to consider establishing a Director of National
Intelligence--who would serve at the pleasure of the President and
manage the entire intelligence community--and a separate head of the
CIA who would have a 10-year tenure.
views on the mission of the intelligence community
Mr. Deutch's prepared statement outlined some of the significant
dangers to our national security today: Regional conflicts; the spread
of weapons of mass destruction; international terrorism, international
crime, international drug trafficking, and their interconnection;
instability in the former Soviet Union; and China--as a threat to its
neighbors and supplier of missiles.
He then described four principal purposes to which the intelligence
community [IC] should direct its efforts: First, assuring that the
President and other
policymakers have the best information available before making
decision; second, support to military operations; third, addressing
international terrorism, crime, and drugs, particularly improving
interagency coordination and support to law enforcement; and fourth,
counterintelligence [CI] that rigorously adheres to high security
standards, accords priority to defensive CI and counterespionage, and
includes full and early cooperation within the CI community.
He emphasized that the national priorities for intelligence
collection established by the recent Presidential Decision Directive
need to be implemented.
views on management
I applaud Mr. Deutch for his unusually candid and forthright opening
statement. In it, he outlined for the committee the significant actions
he would take immediately upon confirmation to begin the process of
change that is so long overdue in the intelligence community, or
``IC.'' First, he indicated he would bring in several new people to
fill upper management positions. In doing so, he will emphasize joint
operations of the IC agencies because ``we can no longer afford
redundant capabilities in several different agencies.'' Second, he
plans to review and encourage changes in the culture and operation of
the Directorate of Operations. Third, he will move to consolidate the
management of all imagery collection, analysis, and distribution in a
manner similar to the NSA's for signals intelligence. Fourth, he wants
to manage military and intelligence satellite acquisition in a more
integrated way. Fifth, he will put in place a planning process for
meeting the priorities and goals established by the Presidential
Decision Directive. Sixth, what he described as his most important
challenge is to ``improve the management--and thereby the morale--of
the dedicated men and women who make up the IC.''
response to ames
The issue of management is particularly critical in the wake of Ames.
I questioned Mr. Deutch on how he would ensure that he knew what was
going on within the CIA so that he could exert the proper management. I
cited former Director Gates' admission that by 1987, he had only been
advised of about 4 or 5 compromises of U.S. agents, at a time when
there were in fact 40 or more compromised operations. Director Gates
complained that ``nobody bothered to share that information with Judge
Webster, my predecessor, or with me,'' when Gates was his Deputy.
I wanted to know what action Mr. Deutch would take if he identified a
person that had a pretty good idea that Aldrich Ames was a mole but
failed to pass that information on up the chain of command to the
Director. Mr. Deutch said he would terminate that individual. Moreover,
when asked about reports that the supervisor of Ames, who knew that
Ames had an alcohol dependency and had observed the negative
consequences of this dependency, had not only failed to fire Ames, but
had, instead, written a highly complimentary review of his performance,
Mr. Deutch indicated that supervisor should be fired. When questioned
further, he conceded that if the supervisor's supervisor should have
known about this improper conduct, that supervisor should also be
fired.
The key in this exchange, as emphasized by the nominee, is the notion
of accountability. It is a sense of accountability that was absent
under the last DCI and that is an essential ingredient of any plan to
revitalize our foreign intelligence apparatus.
Mr. Deutch has told the committee that if confirmed, he will review
the Ames case and will consider the committee's report on Ames in
connection with any personnel action affecting the individuals
involved.
views on congressional oversight
On the issue of congressional oversight, Mr. Deutch emphasized in his
opening statement that he could not accomplish the significant change
that is needed in the intelligence community without the strong support
of Congress. ``I consider you my board of directors'', he said. ``I
realize this means I must keep you fully and currently informed about
the activities for which I would be responsible--both the good news and
the bad news. I understand that I am accountable to you, and I expect
you to hold me to a high standard of performance.''
Mr. Deutch conceded, when questioned, that, while he could not
imagine it happening, if the President ever told him not to inform the
committee he, Mr. Deutch, would ``go happily back to
Massachusetts.'' [[Page S6266]]
Moreover, the nominee assured the committee that he interprets the
requirement for timely notification of a covert action finding, in the
absence of prior notification, to mean within 48 hours. Specifically,
Mr. Deutch said, ``I think that in all situations there should be prior
notification. There may be remote instances where that is not possible,
in a very, very tiny percentages of the cases. Then 48-hours is what I
see as the measure of timely notification.''
commitments for prompt action
At the conclusion of the hearing, I asked for, and received, a
commitment from Mr. Deutch to report back to the committee as promptly
as possible if confirmed--preferably within 30 days of confirmation--
regarding several issues of particular importance;
First, report on any needed changes to DCI authorities;
Second, improving the intelligence community's fulfillment of its
obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed;
Third, the need for reorganization within the intelligence community;
Fourth, changes in personnel;
Fifth, proposal for how to achieve downsizing in a way which creates
headroom, weeds out poor performers, and leaves the intelligence
community with the mix of skills required to accomplish its mission;
Sixth, intelligence reassessment of the possibility that U.S. forces
were exposed to chemical or biological agents during Desert Storm;
Seventh, actions taken in response to events in Guatemala; and
Eighth, improving coordination with law enforcement.
conclusion
The foregoing summarizes only the highlights of the record before the
committee, which is, of course, available to all Members in its
entirety at the Intelligence Committee.
Based upon the nominee's statements to the committee, however, his
record of distinguished service and the absence of any disqualifying
information concerning him, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
voted to report his nomination to the Senate with a recommendation that
he be confirmed by the full Senate as Director of Central Intelligence.
Mr. President, before yielding the floor, I want to commend my
distinguished vice chairman, Senator Kerrey, for his outstanding work
generally with the committee and on this nomination.
The only other speaker who is to come to the floor on our side is
Senator Hutchison, who has an allotment of 10 minutes, but I think
there will be more time within the unanimous-consent agreement if
Senator Hutchison wants more time. Or if any other Republican Senators
wish to partake in the discussion, they can take time on our side.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I rise in enthusiastic support of the
nomination of John M. Deutch to be Director of Central Intelligence.
While I cannot predict a length in time that he will be in service to
his country in this capacity, I can predict with confidence, should he
be confirmed, he will turn out to be one of the most effective and
influential DCI's in the history of this Agency.
The President of the United States, with John Deutch, is making a
statement that he intends to send a man to take charge of Langley
during what is obviously one of the most tumultuous periods ever
experienced by Central Intelligence. The Aldrich Ames case and recent
Guatemala revelations portray a troubled corporate culture at CIA.
In addition, many question whether the intelligence community has
come to grips with the post-cold-war world and whether new collection
methods and technologies are required to target the new threats that
have emerged.
The twin threats of international and domestic terrorism lead many to
question the intelligence community's proper role in supporting law
enforcement. The very structure of the community is in question, as a
joint Presidential-congressional commission and several private study
groups ask whether intelligence is necessary at all.
Mr. President, we have been watching, once again, another 50-year
celebration in the last couple of days. This time the celebration is
the 50th anniversary of the day that victory in Europe was declared
over Nazi forces. That victory is being celebrated in part because we
are also celebrating the fact that over the last 47 or so years, we
have avoided, with significant efforts, a third world war. For a 75-
year period, roughly from 1914, when the guns of August started World
War I, until the fall of 1989 when the Berlin Wall itself collapsed and
Eastern Europe began to liberate itself, during that 75-year period, it
is, I believe, accurate to say we experienced the bloodiest 75 years in
the history of mankind.
During that 75-year period, Mr. President, many things occurred,
including the institution of a policy that had the United States of
America leading an effort against a clearly identified enemy, and the
celebration that takes place this year is not just a celebration of a
victory over that enemy, but a sense that we have survived, as a human
people, the forecast that we may annihilate ourselves through the use
of nuclear weapons. It is a remarkable victory, and I dare not on this
floor take a great deal of time describing it, but it is a profound
change that the new Director of Central Intelligence must factor in as
that individual, hopefully John Deutch, begins to shape the agencies
under his control to meet the new challenges that this country faces.
You might expect that only somebody who was a glutton for punishment
would willingly volunteer and walk into the set of problems that John
Deutch will face. But I can assure my colleagues, as the distinguished
chairman of the Committee has already said, that John Deutch knows
better than this. He knows, as many of us on the Intelligence Committee
know, we have a superb intelligence instrument in this country staffed
by brave and intelligent people who take risks every single day and
make sacrifices for their country. They provide the President, the
military, the Cabinet, our diplomats and intelligence analysts a
capability no other country can rival: the capability to know most
about threats to our country's freedom and independence, and threats to
the lives and livelihoods of Americans.
Unlike the domestic agencies, our intelligence professionals cannot
brag about their competence. To brag would lose the all-important
source of information. So they are generally silent, but they are of
immense value. They need guidance, they need leadership, they need a
visionary who can help focus their talent on the Nation's pressing
needs, and John Deutch is the person to do it.
Adm. Bill Studeman has rendered a vital service as Acting Director. He
has kept a complex enterprise on track during a difficult period, and
the Nation owes him its thanks. He would be the first to agree that the
intelligence community needs a Presidentially appointed, senatorially
confirmed director.
Even if John Deutch's service in the Defense Department were his own
accomplishment, he would be a strong candidate to be DCI. Most
intelligence funding is in defense, the military continues to be the
leading customer for intelligence, and his knowledge of defense
intelligence is matched by few in and out of our Government.
But another part of John Deutch's resume appeals to me. John Deutch
is a scientist of national renown and a distinguished science
professor. Technical intelligence collection is mainly a science
problem. The scientific decision of which system to buy or develop to
best collect against a certain threat is typically made by lawyers
advised by scientists. In this administration, however, the scientists
have come to the fore. I, for one, feel very comfortable knowing that
the scientific judgment of Bill Perry is making the ultimate
acquisition decisions in defense, and I will feel equal comfort with
John Deutch's scientific judgment on intelligence acquisitions. The
fact that he is a teacher and can explain these complex systems to
those of us nonscientists, who are charged with intelligence oversight,
is that much better for the American people.
We will get the benefit of Dr. Deutch's scientific expertise not a
moment too soon. New threats, new collection priorities, and a rapidly
changing collection environment mean that [[Page S6267]] we cannot
stand pat on our collection technologies. Just to maintain the edge we
have now, we must fund research and development on new technologies and
make hard decisions about which road we will go down.
We also have to maintain the health of our intelligence industrial
base, the private companies that produce these remarkable systems.
There are uniquely talented people working for these companies,
engineers and technicians who turn the requirements statement into
reality. If we do not keep these people at work in profitable
undertakings, the Government will never be able to afford new systems.
That is why Senator Warner and I, last year, urged the administration
to permit U.S. companies to sell 1-meter space imagery and imaging
equipment. We did not want to see remote sensing, a technology in which
we lead the world, go the way of the space launch. We also wanted
America to dominate this growing industry. The administration saw it
the same way, and John Deutch is a firm supporter of the administration
policy. He knows that our industrial base is our true national
treasure, and he will continue to watch over its health.
Intelligence technology routinely saves American lives, but we should
be alert to opportunities to make it useful to Americans in other ways.
For example, the National Information Display Laboratory in Princeton,
NJ, noticed that the technology that helped imagery analysts understand
images better could also be helpful to radiologists scanning a
mammogram for early signs of breast cancer. NIDL teamed with
Massachusetts General Hospital to adapt the technology, and the outcome
could be as many as 15,000 American lives saved each year.
Other opportunities abound for the dual-use intelligence technology.
We have just begun to make public use of space images and other
intelligence collected during the cold war. The declassification
process has begun and we must push the process until we can fairly say
that intelligence technology serves not just a handful of
decisionmakers in Washington but the 250 million decisionmakers across
our country.
Mr. President, when I was a young man operating in the U.S. Navy Seal
team, we had a piece of advice we tried to follow all of the time,
which was that unless you had a need to know something, you did not
press the bet and try to acquire it. We did not disseminate
intelligence to people who did not have a need to know. Mr. President,
there are 250 million citizens of the United States of America who need
to know increasingly a set of complex facts in order to make decisions
about our foreign policy, in order to make decisions about our domestic
policy, in order to make decisions about all sorts of things that are
increasingly confusing our citizens.
Democracy cannot function unless citizens make the effort to
understand those complexities and come to the table at election time
and come to the table when it is time to influence their Senator or
Representative or President with all of the facts and information.
The Director of Central Intelligence is the President's national
intelligence officer. John Deutch's Government background is in
defense, and his testimony before the Committee made clear that he
understands the priority of intelligence support to the military. But
he also understands the role of national intelligence, and he
understands that not every problem facing the country is a military
problem. He is aware, for example, of the intelligence community's
contributions against international terrorism, against drug
trafficking, against illegal trade practices. He knows how important
intelligence is to this administration's international economic
decisionmaking, and he knows that warning the President about the
economic crisis in Mexico last year was at least as important as
warning about a military crisis in some less important region of the
world. It is ironic that, with the end of the cold war, the Director of
Central Intelligence has a broader national charter than ever. It is an
irony which John Deutch understands.
The intelligence community includes much more than the CIA. The
National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, FBI, and the
State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research all play their
largely unique roles. But no question, CIA, unfortunately, lately has
been at the center of controversy and likely will continue to be. At
least initially, the heart of John Deutch's task will be to make the
CIA more efficient and accountable to the American people. I am greatly
encouraged, as the chairman indicated earlier, by his testimony on the
sense of accountability and responsibility that he intends to bring to
CIA's Directorate of Operations. I have visited CIA officers in the
field, and I know the high quality of the people John Deutch will lead.
These are clear-headed, positive, enthusiastic Americans. The current
senior managers should get credit for recruiting and training and
motivating a fine crop of younger officers. Now it is time, as Mr.
Deutch put it in his own testimony, for the seniors to let the younger
officers take the reins.
As they take over, they must recruit and retain more women and
minorities, and they must be alert to gender discrimination in
assignments and promotions. The Directorate of Operations has never
been an easy place for women to get a fair opportunity to make their
mark. Not only is gender discrimination illegal, it is also stupid
because it denies the American people the brain power of more than 50
percent of our people. It also creates resentments which can
dangerously weaken the agency. I have heard all the excuses for
discrimination, and none of them wash. I am confident that John Deutch
will not permit it.
CIA's human intelligence activities, which consist mainly in getting
foreigners to secretly provide information, will always take place in
the shadows. Human sources will have to be protected, so the activities
will not be able to be publicly discussed. But CIA, no less than any
other agency of Government, must operate in accordance with American
law and American values. One purpose of congressional oversight of
intelligence is to ensure that this is so. Oversight cannot work if CIA
does not inform Congress, or answer Congress' questions. Failure to
promptly inform is one of the most troubling aspects of both the Ames
case and the Guatemala case. Bad news does not improve with age. The
withholding of bad news--withholding information on an intelligence
failure--jeopardizes the oversight system without which the United
States cannot conduct foreign intelligence operations. John Deutch
clearly understands his reporting responsibilities, and I believe
Directors Gates and Woolsey and Studeman also understood. The challenge
for John Deutch is to know what is happening inside his organization,
so the bad news gets to him first.
That is the mark of a tight, confident, organization. John Deutch has
some great material to work with, but it is up to him to forge that
kind of organization.
If anybody in this great country of ours is up to that job, John
Deutch is the person to get the job done.
I yield the floor.
Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York [Mr. Moynihan] is
recognized.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank my gallant friend from Nebraska.
I rise very much in support of the position he has taken and that of
the distinguished chairman of the committee, the Senator from
Pennsylvania.
I would say by way of introduction that in the 103d Congress and then
on the first day of the 104th Congress, I offered legislation that
would basically break up the existing Central Intelligence Agency and
return its component parts to the Department of Defense and the
Department of State in the manner that the OSS, the Office of Strategic
Services, was divided and parceled out with the onset of peace in 1945
and 1946, to be followed, of course, by a cold war which has persisted
almost until this moment.
I had hoped to encourage a debate on the role of intelligence and of
secrecy in the American society. That debate has taken place. Some of
the results, I think, can be seen in the nomination of this
distinguished scientist and public servant to this position.
It could not have been more clear than in his testimony in which he
made a point, self-evident we would [[Page S6268]] suppose, but not
frequently to be encountered in the pronouncements of potential DCI's.
He said:
Espionage does not rest comfortably in a democracy.
Secrecy, which is essential to protect sources and methods,
is not welcome in an open society. If our democracy is to
support intelligence activities, the people must be confident
that our law and rules will be respected.
It may have come as a surprise--although it ought not to have--in
recent months and weeks, to find how many persons there are in this
country who do not have confidence that our laws and rules will be
respected; who see the government in conspiratorial modes, directed
against the people in ways that could be of huge consequence to
Americans.
I am not talking about what Richard Hofstadter referred to when he
spoke of ``the paranoid style in American politics.'' I am talking
about the widespread belief that the CIA was somehow involved in the
assassination of President Kennedy, if we can imagine. But there it is.
It is important to understand how deep this is in our society. In
1956, even before Hofstadter spoke of it; Edward A. Shils of the
University of Chicago--who just passed away--that great, great, social
scientist, published his book, ``The Torment of Secrecy,'' in which he
wrote ``The exfoliation and intertwinement of the various patterns of
belief that the world is dominated by unseen circles of conspirators,
operating behind our backs, is one of the characteristic features of
modern society.''
Such a belief was very much a feature of the Bolshevik society that
took shape in 1917 and 1918. The conspiratorial decision to help found
and fund in the United States, a Communist party, half of which would
be class destiny, the discovery from the archives in Moscow that John
Reed received a payment of $1.5 million in 1920. Even as soft money,
that would be a very considerable sum today.
In the pattern that societies go through, it is said that
organizations become like one other. To an extraordinary degree we
emulate the Soviet model in our own intelligence service.
Unintentionally, naturally, it happens that way, but a very powerful
analyses of this has just been written by Jefferson Morley in the
Washington Post under the headline ``Understanding Oklahoma'' in an
article entitled ``Department of Secrecy: The Invisible Bureaucracy
That Unites Alienated America in Suspicion.''
Or by Douglas Turner, in an article this weekend in the Buffalo News.
I spoke of these concerns in an earlier statement on the Senate floor
entitled ``The Paranoid Style in American Politics,'' which I ask
unanimous consent be printed in the Record along with the articles by
Douglas Turner and Jefferson Morley.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, what we have is so much at variance with
what was thought we would get.
Allen Dulles was very much part of the foundation of postwar
intelligence, having been in the OSS, served with great distinction in
Switzerland during World War II.
Peter Grose, in his new biography, ``Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen
Dulles,'' recounts the testimony Dulles gave before the Senate Armed
Services Committee on April 25, 1947, as we are about to establish,
passed the National Security Act of 1947 and created this small
coordinating body, the Central Intelligence Agency.
Personnel for a central intelligence agency, he argued, ``need not be
very numerous * * *. The operation of the service must be neither
flamboyant nor overshrouded with the mystery and abracadabra which the
amateur detective likes to assume.'' In a lecturing tone, he tried to
tell the Senators how intelligence is actually assembled.
Because of its glamour and mystery, overemphasis is
generally placed on what is called secret intelligence,
namely the intelligence that is obtained by secret means and
by secret agents. . . . In time of peace the bulk of
intelligence can be obtained through overt channels, through
our diplomatic and consular missions, and our military, naval
and air attahces in the normal and proper course of their
work. It can also be obtained through the world press, the
radio, and through the many thousands of Americans, business
and professional men and American residents of foreign
countries, who are naturally and normally brought in touch
with what is going on in those countries.
A proper analysis of the intelligence obtainable by these
overt, normal, and aboveboard means would supply us with over
80 percent, I should estimate, of the information required
for the guidance of our national policy.
Mr. President, that could not happen, did not happen. We entered upon
a five-decade mode of secret analysis, analysis withheld from the
scrutiny, which is the only way we can verify the truth of a hypothesis
in natural science or the social sciences.
The result was massive miscalculation, Nicholas Eberstadt in his
wonderful new book, ``The Tyranny of Numbers,'' writes ``It is probably
safe to say that the U.S. Government's attempt to describe the Soviet
economy has been the largest single project in social science research
ever undertaken.'' He said that, sir, in 1990, in testimony before the
Committee on Foreign Relations. ``The largest single project in social
science research ever undertaken,'' and it was a calamity.
No one has been more forthright than Adm. Stansfield Turner in an
article in Foreign Affairs about this time. He said when it came to
predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, the corporate view of the
intelligence community was totally wrong.
I can remember the first years of the Kennedy administration. I
remember having a meeting with Walt Rostow, Chairman of the Policy
Planning Council in the Department of State, in which he said of the
Soviet Union, I am not one of those 6 percent forever people, but there
it was, locked into the analyses. That is what the President knew.
Mr. President, in Richard Reeves remarkable biography of John F.
Kennedy, he records that the agency told the President that by the year
2000 the GNP of the Soviet Union would be three times that of the
United States. And that is what the President knew. A person might come
to him with the most reasonable arguments, as did any number of
economists.
The great theorists, Friedman, Hayek, Stigler, said it could not
happen, it would be theoretically impossible. Important work done by
Frank Holzman, at Tufts, and the Russian Research Center at Harvard
said, ``No, no. That is all very well what you say professor. What I
know is different.''
The consequences have been an extraordinary failure to foresee the
central event of our time. A vast overdependence on military and
similar outlays, that leave us perilously close to economic difficulty
ourselves.
I would like to close with a letter written me in 1991 by Dale W.
Jorgenson, professor of economics at the Kennedy School of Government,
in which he said:
I believe that the importance of economic intelligence is
increasing greatly with the much-discussed globalization of
the U.S. economy. However the cloak-and-dagger model is even
more inappropriate to our new economic situation than it was
to the successful prosecution of the Cold War that has just
concluded. The lessons for the future seem to me to be rather
transparent. The U.S. government needs to invest a lot more
in international economic assessments. * * * (I)t should
reject the CIA monopoly model and try to create the kind of
intellectual competition that now prevails between CBO and
OMB on domestic policy, aided by Brookings, AEI [American
Enterprise Institute], the Urban Institute, the Kennedy
School, and many others.
I ask unanimous consent the entire letter be printed in the Record at
the conclusion of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 2.)
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Those are the remarks I would like to make, sir. I have
the confidence that John Deutch, as a scientist, will follow them. I
have the concern that the administration will not.
We do know some things in social science. Mancur Olson, in his great
book, ``The Rise and Decline of Nations,'' on this day, V-E Day--I was
a sailor on V-E Day, so I can remember that--I can remember the Boston
Common, actually-- Mancur Olson asked:
Why has it come about that the two nations whose
institutions were destroyed in World War II, Germany and
Japan, have had the most economic success since? Whereas
Britain--not really much success at all; the United States--
yes, but.'' And he came up with a simple answer. The defeat
wiped out all those choke points, all those rents, all
[[Page S6269]] those sharing agreements, all those veto
structures that enable institutions to prevent things from
happening. And we are seeing it in this Government today, 5
years after the wall came down.
Remember, 2 years before the wall came down the CIA stated that per
capita GDP was higher in East Germany than in West Germany. I hope I
take no liberty that I mentioned this once to Dr. Deutch and added
``Any taxi driver in Berlin could have told you that was not so.'' And
Dr. Deutch replied, ``Any taxi driver in Washington.'' But if we cannot
summon the capacity to change our institutions in our changed
circumstances, there will be consequences and let nobody say they were
not predictable.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for her graciousness
for allowing me to speak when in fact in alternation it would have been
her turn.
Exhibit 1
[From the Congressional Record, Apr. 25, 1995]
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
Mr. Moynihan. Mr. President, As we think and, indeed, pray
our way through the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing,
asking how such a horror might have come about, and how
others might be prevented, Senators could do well to step
outside the chamber and look down the mall at the Washington
Monument. It honors the Revolutionary general who once
victorious, turned his army over to the Continental Congress
and retired to his estates. Later, recalled to the highest
office in the land, he served dutifully one term, then a
second but then on principle not a day longer. Thus was
founded the first republic, the first democracy since the age
of Greece and Rome.
There is no a more serene, confident, untroubled symbol of
the nation in all the capital. Yet a brief glance will show
that the color of the marble blocks of which the monument is
constructed changes about a quarter of the way up. Thereby
hangs a tale of another troubled time; not our first, just
as, surely, this will not be our last.
As befitted a republic, the monument was started by a
private charitable group, as we would now say, the Washington
National Monument Society. Contributions came in cash, but
also in blocks of marble, many with interior inscriptions
which visitors willing to climb the steps can see to this
day. A quarter of the way up, that is. For in 1852, Pope Plus
IX donated a block of marble from the temple of Concord in
Rome. Instantly, the American Party, or the Know-Nothings
(``I know nothing,'' was their standard reply to queries
about their platform) divined a Papist Plot. An installation
of the Pope's block of marble would signal the Catholic
Uprising. A fevered agitation began. As recorded by Ray Allen
Billington in The Protest Crusade, 1800-1860:
``One pamphlet, The Pope's Strategem: ``Rome to America!''
An Address to the Protestants of the United States, against
placing the Pope's block of Marble in the Washington Monument
(1852), urged Protestants to hold indignation meetings and
contribute another block to be placed next to the Pope's
`bearing an inscription by which all men may see that we are
awake to the hypocrisy and schemes of that designing, crafty,
subtle, far seeing and far reaching Power, which is ever
grasping after the whole World, to sway its iron scepter,
with bloodstained hands, over the millions of its
inhabitants.'''
One night early in March, 1854, a group of Know-Nothings
broke into the storage sheds on the monument grounds and
dragged the Pope's marble off towards the Potomac. Save for
the occasional ``sighting'', as we have come to call such
phenomena, it has never to be located since.
Work on the monument stopped. Years later, in 1876,
Congress appropriated funds to complete the job, which the
Corps of Engineers, under the leadership of Lieutenant
Colonel Thomas I. Casey did with great flourish in time for
the centennial observances of 1888.
Dread of Catholicism ran its course, if slowly. (Edward M.
Stanton, then Secretary of War was convinced the
assassination of President Lincoln was the result of a
Catholic plot.) Other manias followed, all brilliantly
describe in Richard Hofstadter's revelatory lecture ``the
Paranoid Style in American Politics'' which he delivered as
the Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford University within days
of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Which to this day
remains a fertile source of conspiracy mongering. George Will
cited Hofstadter's essay this past weekend on the television
program ``This Week with David Brinkley.'' He deals with the
same subject matter in a superb column in this morning's
Washington Post which has this bracing conclusion.
``It is reassuring to remember that paranoiacs have always
been with us, but have never defined us.''
I hope, Mr. President, as we proceed to consider
legislation, if that is necessary, in response to the
bombing, we would be mindful of a history in which we have
often overreached, to our cost, and try to avoid such an
overreaction.
We have seen superb performance of the FBI. What more any
nation could ask of an internal security group I cannot
conceive. We have seen the effectiveness of our State
troopers, of our local police forces, fire departments,
instant nationwide cooperation which should reassure us
rather than frighten us.
I would note in closing, Mr. President, that Pope John Paul
II will be visiting the United States this coming October. I
ask unanimous consent that Mr. Will's column be printed in
the Record.
____
[From the Buffalo News, May 8, 1995]
Government Spooks, Beware--Moynihan Aims To Reveal Secrets
(By Douglas Turner)
Washington.--For generations, artists like Jules Verne,
Graham Greene, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Benchley in his
novel ``White Shark,'' have harnessed the public's flirtation
with fear for innocent profit, fame and fun.
There is something lurking out there, or down there created
by a force beyond our knowing.
Far down the creative scale are conspiracy freaks Oliver
Stone, Ian Fleming and the publishers of checkout-counter
tabloids.
In dank corners of our society is a separate category:
Those who subsist utterly in paranoia: Oliver North, Gordon
Liddy, David Duke, Tim McVeigh and those who put on war paint
and military fatigues, play with assault weapons, and preach
war against a popularly-elected constitutional government.
Like Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, they nurse on paranoia and
propagate it.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., suggests this last
category either exploits, or is partly driven by the web of
government secrets that has grown like spores since World War
II.
He speaks of official Washinton's ``enormous secrecy system
. . . which just expands, if anything, which we're in on and
everyone out there is not, is out of, and easily it's a
culture that breeds paranoia.''
For years, Sen. Moynihan has been sounding a warning about
what he calls our culture of paranoia. In an article he
penned four years ago, Moynihan said Stone's film, ``JFK,''
could ``spoil a generation of American politics just when
sanity is returning.''
Realizing he couldn't do much about popular culture,
Moynihan set about stripping down government's role in
creating fear by going after the mountain of official secrets
generated annually.
To that end, on Jan. 22, 1993, Moynihan introduced a bill
creating a bipartisan commission on reducing and protecting
government secrecy. A Democratic Congress passed it and
President Clinton made it law.
The commission had its first meeting in January and elected
Moynihan chairman. Other members include Sen. Jesse Helms, R-
N.C., who was appointed by Sen. Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-
Kansas; Ellen Hume of Annenberg Washington Program, who was
named by the president; a Harvard professor, and Clinton's
nominee to head the CIA, John Deutch.
It has an office in an old Navy Building with view of the
Potomac, and a staff director, Eric Biel, formerly a senior
Senate staffer. It has had a couple of organizational
meetings, all public. And its first real working session will
be on May 17.
Moynihan in a television interview joked ``we've managed to
conceal our activities so far by holding public hearings.
Nobody goes to public hearings.''
On the 17th, the commission will hear about official
secrets from officials of the National Security Council, who
are cooperating as a result of an executive order issued by
President Clinton three weeks ago.
Government files harbor nearly a billion official secrets.
It generates about 7 million of them a year. But the
secret, Moynihan wrote, is that the government ``only counts
(secrets) up to the level of Top Secret.
``All the real secrets are higher than that with code names
I am not at liberty to reveal, having taken a kind of vow of
secrecy when I became vice chairman of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence,'' he said.
Three million government employees have security clearances
up to top secret. This is fairly common stuff as most field
grade military officers, beginning with lieutenants, are
entitled to top secret access.
The plethora of secrets, security levels and ``cleared''
employees has made a joke of the security system itself--with
``secret'' material spilled into defense and intelligence
trade publications every day.
``They'' can see it, but you can't.
Then there are the active classified files of the FBI, the
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the Secret Service,
the Customs, Immigration and Naturalization Service, the
Border Patrol, the Department of Energy, and even the
Department of Agriculture.
Official secrecy, endemic to big government, dies hard. As
in corporate life, and in the highest aeries of journalism,
secrets are not just the key to power. They are power.
Official infatuation with secrecy is reflected in the
forbearance in President Clinton's executive order. Existing
secrets must be declassified after 25 years, he said. Future
ones after 10 years.
This would matter in an age when breech-load rifles were on
the cutting edge of military science. The standard is
ridiculous in the light of today's expanding technology.
Thanks to the reports the CIA issued--based on ``evidence''
you and I could never [[Page S6270]] see or evaluate--on
Soviet weaponry and the economy, this country went on a
military spending binge beginning with the Vietnam war and
ending only three years ago.
But these CIA fabrications served to justify quantum leaps
in spending on the American defense establishment, and of
course covert CIA. We will be paying for that buildup for the
rest of our lives.
____
[From the Washington Post, Apr. 30, 1995]
Department of Secrecy
The Invisible Bureaucracy That Unites Alienated America in Suspicion
(By Jefferson Morley)
Scapegoating is a time-honored spring sport in Washington.
Professionals of the pastime are already in fine mid-summer
form on Topic A: Who is responsible for the Oklahoma City
bombing? Skillful soundbites indict various culprits: Right-
wing talk radio, the NRA, lone nuts and (the ever-reliable)
'60s counterculture.
But while the theories fly, the All-Stars of the Washington
blame game somehow overlook one of the leading suspects in
the minds of the American people: the Department of Secrecy.
There is no official department of secrecy, complete with
Cabinet officer and official seal. But there is the
functional equivalent: the federal bureaucracy that keeps the
government's secrets. It consists of the offices and archives
in the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, the FBI, the
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and other federal
agencies that classify and guard all sorts of information
considered too sensitive to be shared with the American
public. The connection between this empire of information and
the Oklahoma City bombing is not obvious but it is real.
First, the Department of Secrecy is a significant presence
in American society and politics. Viewed on an organizational
chart, the federal secrecy system is bigger than many Cabinet
agencies. According to a Washington Post report last year,
the secrecy system keeps an estimated 32,400 people employed
full-time--more than the Environmental Protection Agency and
the Department of Education combined. According to the Office
of Management and Budget, the bureaucracy of secrets may cost
as much as $16 billion a year to run.
Second, mistrust of the government and its many secrets is
now raging out of control. The assumption that the government
is not accountable for its actions is now the norm.
It is an article of faith among many on the religious and
paramilitary right (including, apparently, one of the bombing
suspects in custody) that the federal government has not been
held accountable for the 1993 raid in Waco which left 85
people dead.
Liberals and the left were angered but not surprised by the
recent revelations about the CIA in Guatemala. In the name of
protecting its ``sources and methods,'' the agency shielded
from justice the Guatemalan colonel who is the leading
suspect in the murder of an American innkeeper and the
husband of an American lawyer.
Robert McNamara's memoirs are an infuriating reminder to
moderates that the veil of secrecy allowed utterly
respectable mainstream Washington officials to send thousands
of American boys to slaughter in a disastrous and still-
divisive war.
In the movie theaters of America, the most treacherous,
evil Hollywood villains often work inside the Department of
Secrecy. Popular movies like ``Outbreak'' and ``Clear and
Present Danger'' routinely depict senior officials in
Washington as smooth-talking criminals who think nothing of
betraying the public trust and sending innocent Americans to
their death.
``The pathology of public attitudes toward government are
due in large part to excessive and unnecessary secrecy,''
says Steven Aftergood of the American Federation of
Scientists, a leading advocate of government openness in
Washington.
The State Department, for example, retains the right to
withhold information that would ``seriously and demonstrably
undermine ongoing diplomatic activities of the United
States.'' Under this standard the CIA-in-Guatemala story
would almost certainly still be secret and two American women
would still be wondering who murdered their husbands.
For now, the effect of Clinton's order is expected to be
modest.
``I don't think it's going to make much difference,'' said
retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, the former director of the
National Security Agency and a skeptic of openness efforts.
Odom recalled that a similar directive from President Carter
in 1978 had little effect on how he, Odom, actually
classified information for the government at the time.
Aftergood praised Clinton's directive as a distinct
improvement over the old secrecy
rules but added ``I just hope we are at the beginning of a
reform process, not the end.''
That will depend, in part, on what the public, the
president and Congress learn from Oklahoma City.
Is the bombing the work of isolated madmen with no
connection to the larger political culture? Or is it a
warning of the pathological possibilities opened up when the
federal government loses the faith of its people?
These questions are especially pertinent for people working
within the secrecy system. Most of them do not hide
wrongdoing from the American people. The information they
guard is often legitimately secret: military codes, the names
of law enforcement informants, the U.S. position in
international trade talks and the like.
But they shrug off the widespread mistrust of their work at
their own peril. With the government generating so many
secrets each year--an estimated 6.3 million in 1993--and
continuing revelations about governmental abuses of power,
the line between the paranoia of a few and legitimate fears
of the many gets harder to draw.
A few years ago, the notion that the U.S. government had,
over the course of several decades, routinely conducted
dangerous radiation experiments on thousands of unwitting
Americans would have been regarded by most reasonable people
as unfounded, if not ridiculous. Today, thanks to the
aggressive release of long-secret documents by Secretary of
Energy Hazel O'Leary, the radiation experiments are cold,
disturbing historical fact.
O'Leary's leadership shows that full disclosure of
embarrassing material is not political or institutional
suicide. In fact, the Department of Energy, by all accounts,
enjoys more credibility on Capitol Hill and with the public
for coming clean.
We don't know what other abuses of governmental power, if
any, the secrecy system is hiding. But we do know that a
citizenry without access to its own history has no guarantee
of democratic accountability. And as long as democratic
accountability is in doubt, the citizenry, not just
government office buildings, will remain vulnerable.
Exhibit 2
Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Cambridge, MA, March 18, 1991.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Pat: This is just a personal note of thanks for your
eloquent and stimulating contribution to the lunch discussion
with the new National Research Council Board on Science,
Technology, and Economic Policy last Friday. Needless to say,
I think you are absolutely right about the significance of
the long-standing intelligence failure in assessing the
Soviet economy and the Soviet military effort. While I do not
concur with your Galbraithian view of economics as a failed
profession, this has to be one of the great failures of
economics--right up there with the inability of economists
(along with everyone else) to find a remedy for the Great
Depression of the 1930's.
On your specific arguments: In 1985 Paul Samuelson was
relying on the CIA estimates, so that this is not an
independent piece of evidence. For every quotation you can
give from people like Lawrence Klein, you can find a counter-
argument in the writings of Friedman, Hayek, Stigler and many
others. All three have been amply rewarded for their efforts
with the Nobel Prize, the National Medal of Science, and the
esteem of their colleagues (with the conspicuous exception of
your former neighbor on Francis Avenue). They deserve a lot
of credit for the positions they took in the 1930's all the
way up to the 1980's and they are getting it.
It seems to me that it is better to address the issue of
international economic assessments within your framework of
post-Cold War recoversion that Galbaith's entertaining but
wrong-headed view of economics as a failed profession. Given
the importance of economic assessments of the Soviet Union,
it is almost incredible that the U.S. government established
an in-house monopoly on these assessments. The principal
academic centers for research in this area at Columbia and
Harvard were allowed to wither away. Over the past decade,
Frank Holzman of Tufts and the Russian Research Center at
Harvard has been a lonely voice in opposition to the CIA
view.
I believe that the importance of economic intelligence is
increasing greatly with the much-discussed globalization of
the U.S. economy. However, the cloak-and-dagger model is even
more inappropriate to our new economic situation than it was
to the successful prosecution of the Cold War that has just
concluded. The lessons for the future seem to me to be rather
transparent. The U.S. government needs to invest a lot more
in international economic assessments. Second, it should
reject the CIA monopoly model and try to create the kind of
intellectual competition that now prevails between CBO and
OMB on domestic policy, aided by Brookings, AEI, the Urban
Institute, the Kennedy School, and many others.
An important subsidiary lesson we can learn from the
failure of the CIA Soviet assessments is the importance of
``sunshine''. Although economic intelligence is always going
to be sensitive to somebody, it should be carried out in full
sight of the public, including the professional peers of the
intelligence analysts. I hope that the new National Research
Council Board can contribute to the post-Cold War re-
conversion of our economic intelligence establishment in a
positive way. As I see it, this is a daunting task. To use a
medical analogy, this will require something more like a
``life style'' change than a simple remedy for a chronic
disease.
I hope that you can find the time to present your
perspective on this issue to the
[[Page S6271]] policy community, say in the form of an
article for Public Interest. This would be an interesting
opportunity to bring your ideas about post-Cold War
conversion to a specific problem of great importance to the
national interest.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Dale W. Jorgenson.
Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I am always happy to yield to the
senior Senator from New York, because I always enjoy hearing what he
has to say.
Mr. President, the importance of intelligence gathering for our
Nation is at a critical juncture. Never has it been as important as it
is today that we have foreign intelligence gathering capabilities,
particularly because we are now facing a time when weapons of mass
destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological, are being made in
different parts of the world. Even worse, the weapons that transport
those weapons are also being developed in different parts of the world.
There is an urgent need for us to know where those weapons are and
where the capabilities are to transport those weapons, either within
their own theater or over to our country.
So, there is no question in my mind that we must have a strong
foreign intelligence gathering capability. We also have a problem. That
is we need a leader and we need a focus and we need a mission for the
people who are in our intelligence gathering operations right now. We
have had several mishaps. The Aldrich Ames case is one that has been
talked about on this floor and it is one that is very troubling to us,
even today. Many people feel this traitor was not dealt with in a way
that will show there is an accountability when a drastic mistake
happens.
The lack of management accountability did demonstrate, by recent
events in Guatemala, the lack of information that the oversight
committees had about the situation in Guatemala. The escalation of
terrorism all over the world is causing an ongoing need for us to have
intelligence-gathering capabilities.
So, we do need a person who can take control of our central
intelligence-gathering operation, lift the morale of the wonderful
people who work there, and put an accountability into the system. We
also need someone who can make it more efficient. As we are downsizing
our budget we need to make sure that we have a mission, that we are
using our assets in the most efficient way.
So we need someone to come in and show that leadership. I believe
John Deutch is that person. I think the President has made a good
decision.
There are some issues that must be dealt with. First, I must say I
disagree with the President giving Cabinet rank to the Director of
Central Intelligence. The National Security Act of 1947 sets forth the
members of the National Security Council and then designates others,
including the Director of Central Intelligence and the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, as officials who are not members but may attend
and participate as the President directs. I believe that is also the
appropriate role for the DCI with respect to the Cabinet.
Mr. Deutch was asked these questions in our Intelligence Committee
hearing on his nomination regarding the Cabinet status of the Director
of Central Intelligence. He assured the committee that he would hold to
the proper standard of conduct and that he would not allow policy to
influence intelligence judgments and not allow intelligence to
interfere in the policy process.
That is a very important distinction that the new Director has
adopted and which I think is very important for us to keep--the
separation between intelligence gathering and policymaking. The
committee is going to be sensitive to any indication that this standard
is not being met, but I believe the makeup of the Cabinet is the
responsibility of the President. That is not within our mission in
confirmation. And, therefore, I hope the standards that we have
discussed will be adhered to, both by the President and by the new
Director of Central Intelligence.
I brought up two major issues in committee that I thought were
important. First, a closer working relationship with the oversight
committees in Congress, the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, and
the one in the House. I think it is most important when you have a
covert operation which, of course, intelligence gathering is, to have
an even more strong relationship and communications network with the
oversight committees that can assess the judgments that are being made
in these covert operations.
It is good for Congress and it is good for the intelligence
gathering, as well. It is very important that we have an oversight and
we have the ability to make judgments by the duly elected officials in
the U.S. Congress when we are dealing with such sensitive intelligence
matters.
So I talked to the new Director-designate about that. And he agreed
totally that we needed to have that line of communication, and I think
it has been reiterated by every person who has spoken on the floor
today, and most certainly every member of the committee.
The second issue that was very important to me was complete financial
disclosure of every person who works at the CIA and every contractor
who is working on CIA projects. I felt this was important because one
of the obvious things that was missed in the Aldrich Ames case was a
high-living lifestyle by Aldrich Ames and his family, clearly one that
could not be shown to have been supported by a person on the salary of
Aldrich Ames.
If we had the vehicle in place to have total financial disclosure,
the CIA could immediately have begun to check on this lifestyle to see
if there was something that was not right. Clearly, it was not right
the way Aldrich Ames was living. And we found out later it was because
he was receiving millions of dollars from the Russian Government for
secrets that he was giving to them from our CIA. So we need the basic
information.
Mr. Deutch said, and promised, that he would make sure that every
person who works for the CIA, who willingly comes to work for the CIA,
will give basic financial disclosures. I think that is going to be a
very important tool for us to show that there is an accountability in
the CIA and that an Aldridge Ames case will not as easily be repeated
and, if it is repeated, that we will have the ability to go in
immediately and see what the assets are that have been disclosed and if
something seems to be amiss.
So these are two areas that I am satisfied that Mr. Deutch is going
to address, and he has already given me his word that there is going to
be financial disclosure among the CIA employees and people who are
working for the CIA under contract.
So in conclusion, Mr. President, I support Secretary Deutch for the
role of Director of Central Intelligence. This is one of the most
important nominations that we will have before us this year, because
this agency needs such direction. I believe Mr. Deutch can provide that
direction. I have worked with him as a member of the Armed Services
Committee in his capacity as Deputy Secretary of Defense. I find him to
be a person of integrity. I respect his judgment, and I think he did a
fine job as Deputy Secretary of Defense. I think he is the person to
fulfill this mission at this very important time in our intelligence
gathering reorganization.
I think we must take our responsibility in confirming him, to do this
in a swift and timely manner. We have had five DCI's in the last 10
years. This agency needs leadership. We need some reorganization. We
need a mission, and we need to make sure that we are using our assets
efficiently and well so that everyone in our country is secure so that
we have the information that we need to keep that freedom,
independence, and liberty that we have.
So I am supporting Mr. Deutch for this very purpose. I wish him well.
It is going to be a very tough job. I hope that he will work with
Members of Congress who want him to succeed, and we do. For all of our
country, we must succeed with this new Director.
Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues today to
urge confirmation of John Deutch as Director of Central Intelligence.
As a permanent resident of Belmont, MA, and having a lifelong
involvement in [[Page S6272]] the Massachusetts community, John Deutch
is a neighbor and a man who has built a national and international
reputation as a leader and as a forceful and effective professional. I
described him publicly, not long ago, as ``superb and first rate'', and
I reiterate that description today, without hesitation and with renewed
respect and continued confidence in his extraordinary ability.
Let me add a few words about the task he will face and the talent he
will bring to the position of Director of Central Intelligence. The
world is undoubtedly changing. It will continue to change more quickly,
perhaps, than at any other time in our history. We are seeing old
threats and new threats emerge in a shifting political and economic
atmosphere that will test our resolve and challenge our leadership.
Mr. President, John Deutch is undoubtedly up to the challenge, and he
is a leader for his time. There is no question about that. He
understands the critical task that he will face, and the importance of
facing it with resolve, strength, and a firm hand. He has proven that
he knows the need and has the expertise to address what we all
acknowledge are operational and administrative problems at the CIA. As
Director of Central Intelligence he will face two daunting managerial
tasks: First, he must try to restructure the U.S. intelligence
community at a time when many believe there is no longer a need--nor
the funds--for the level of intelligence activity to which we became
accustomed during the cold war. He will have to balance proper and
appropriate intelligence activity with increasing congressional and
public scrutiny of scarcer and scarcer tax dollars.
Second, in the wake of recent events at the CIA, he will have to look
critically at internal operations and move quickly to rebuild morale,
public trust, and confidence while maintaining the integrity of
America's intelligence capability. As far as restructuring the
intelligence community, I believe John Deutch has one very important
advantage over many who could have been chosen to serve. He is not an
architect of either the current intelligence system or the processes
that have been put into place. He is a fresh face, a new voice, a real
leader with the talent and the foresight to succeed.
Now, as far as what Secretary Deutch will face at the CIA,
operationally and administratively, there is a need to act
expeditiously to turn things around even if it means significant
personnel changes, and I am confident that John Deutch has the
necessary judgment and will to quickly act in the best interest of the
Agency and the Nation.
Mr. President, the American intelligence community will be well
served by the experience and leadership of John Deutch who rightfully
observed in his statement to the Intelligence Committee that ``changing
intelligence priorities, as well as intelligence failures, dictate that
we carefully re-examine the need for, and specific missions of,
intelligence.'' He added that he sees ``four significant dangers to our
national security and the social and economic well-being of our
citizens.'' He cites major regional conflicts; the spread of weapons of
mass destruction; international terrorism, crime, and drug trafficking;
and the present nuclear danger that still exists in Russia and the
Russian republics as they move toward democracy.
I also see the new Director of Central Intelligence moving, as he
said he would, to improve the support that the intelligence community
gives to law enforcement agencies in areas of narcotics trafficking,
international crime, and terrorism. I agree with his assessments and I
am confident he will move expeditiously to address the continuing
threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and
particularly the emerging threat of terrorist attacks with these
weapons. I see the new Director re-defining and establishing new
standards for the proper role for the intelligence community in the
areas of economic intelligence, and addressing the issue of making
information, when appropriate, more readily available by lowering
classifications or through declassification. And I see the new
Director, like every other director of a Federal agency, looking for
ways to economize and streamline the operations at CIA to give us more
for our tax dollars.
From all we've heard about John Deutch, I believe he has the
experience, the expertise, the professionalism, the reputation, the
perseverance, the qualifications and the integrity to do the job, and I
urge my colleagues to confirm his nomination.
Thank you, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.
the nomination of john deutch to be director of central intelligence
Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I would like to add my voice in support of
the nomination of Dr. John Deutch to be Director of Central
Intelligence. This nomination is extremely important, Mr. President,
because the Central Intelligence Agency is at a crossroads and I
believe John Deutch has what its going to take to redirect the Agency's
course during its next few crucial years.
There is no question that strong leadership is critical for the CIA
to be able to transform the Agency's mission into one that provides
policymakers with timely, useful, and target-specific intelligence. CNN
can cover the world; the CIA needs to bring greater attention and
resources to bear on countries and issues that represent a threat to
our national security interests.
Dr. Deutch was brutally frank in his assessment of CIA successes and
failures, and refreshingly candid about what he would like to
accomplish as DCI. His candor was unusual, since nominees normally go
out of their way to avoid categorical statements about agendas and work
plans. Dr. Deutch, in contrast, went out of his way to explain exactly
where he is headed and what he would like to do.
During his confirmation hearing, I heard Dr. Deutch speak of bringing
in a new generation of leaders at the CIA, streamlining imagery
operations, and getting to the root of problems inside the Operations
Directorate.
Mr. President, John Deutch brings with him a demonstrated track
record of achievement in both government and academia. He is widely
respected within the defense community for his performance as Secretary
Perry's deputy at the Pentagon and within the scientific community for
his tenure at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I believe he
is more than equal to the task of restoring luster to the CIA.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I have worked with John
Deutch, and I have seen firsthand the quality of his work and his
conscientious commitment to our national defense and to the men and
women who serve our country.
Finally, Mr. President, as a Senator from Virginia, I'm pleased that
Dr. Deutch understands the distress of talented Agency personnel and
alumni who have watched the CIA and other intelligence branches endure
a rough patch. He is, in my judgment, the right man at the right time
to restore dignity and respect to deserving and hardworking public
servants working in the Intelligence Community.
Mr. President, I have high hopes for Dr. Deutch's tenure at the CIA,
and I urge my colleagues to support his nomination.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
nomination of john m. deutch to be the director of central intelligence
Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I am pleased to support the nomination of
John M. Deutch to be the Director of Central Intelligence. The
nomination of Dr. Deutch, who presently serves as the Deputy Secretary
of Defense, has received the unanimous, bipartisan support of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. This strong support reflects
Dr. Deutch's outstanding qualifications, including his first-rate
performance as Deputy Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of
Defense for Acquisition.
I have had the opportunity to work closely with Secretary Deutch,
both in my prior capacity as chairman of the Armed Services Committee
and in my current role as ranking minority member. He has made an
outstanding contribution at the Department of Defense, and is well-
qualified to serve as the Director of Central Intelligence.
Secretary Deutch came to the Department of Defense following a long
and distinguished academic and government career. His positions in
academia included service as provost and institute professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His prior Government experience
included service on the staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense
during the early [[Page S6273]] 1960's, and as Under Secretary of
Energy during the late 1970's. In addition, he served on the Defense
Science Board and on many other advisory boards over the years.
In 1993, he was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the
Senate to serve as the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. When
Bill Perry became the Secretary of Defense in 1994, Dr. Deutch was
nominated and confirmed to his current position as Deputy Secretary of
Defense.
I have known Secretary Deutch personally for many years, including
the periods of his service in the Department of Energy and during his
tenure at MIT. His entire career--both in academia and in Government
service--has been devoted to developing creative and thoughtful
approaches to national defense and intelligence policy issues.
Secretary Deutch has compiled as solid record in the Department of
Defense as a strong manager. He has served the Nation well, not only in
the management of internal Department of Defense functions, but also as
the DOD official with primary responsibility for interface with the
intelligence community. He knows how to solve problems, make clear
decisions, and address pressing issues. On the Armed Services
Committee, we have appreciated his breadth of knowledge, his candor,
and his willingness to engage in dialog. He also has a good sense of
humor, which he uses to put difficult issues in perspective--a quality
that will be most useful in his new position.
The intelligence community faces many difficult challenges in the
post-cold war era, particularly in the aftermath of the Ames espionage
matter. The Oklahoma City tragedy underscores the dangers of terrorism
in the modern world. The tensions in the Persian Gulf and North Asia,
as well as the problems faced by the States of the former Soviet Union,
are but a few of the difficult challenges facing the intelligence
community. John Deutch has the experience and background to take on
these challenges. I strongly urge the Senate to confirm his nomination
to be Director of Central Intelligence.
Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, there are, to my knowledge, no other
Senators who wish to speak on this nomination. I will offer a couple of
closing comments and then yield time, alerting colleagues who are
watching of the possibility that we may be yielding back, and they have
not told us they wanted to speak. They could rush over here and say a
few words.
In my statement, I indicated, and it is correct, that one of the
problems we have with our intelligence effort is that as a consequence
of needing to protect security, we are unable--the intelligence people
are unable--to brag about successes, and thus not only is it difficult
for us to give credit, but increasingly citizens are needing and asking
for information that will enable them to judge whether or not their tax
dollars are being well spent. I would argue that this condition of
being unable to disclose sometimes puts us in a position of not being
able to give citizens information or having them say, ``Now I
understand why we are doing this, and I believe we are in fact getting
our money's worth.''
I would like as a consequence to identify for citizens two recent
events that were publicly disclosed. And for the information of
citizens, it is the President of the United States who has the
controlling authority both to make a classification decision and to
make a declassification decision. That decision is spelled out in
statute. It is not a decision that can be made by either the Congress,
in the absence of changing the law, or an individual Member of
Congress. But two recent disclosures, probably, I suspect, disclosed by
a decision made by the President to make the disclosure, underscore the
importance of this intelligence effort.
The first was that the United States of America presented to the U.N.
Security Council clear and present evidence that North Koreans were
engaged in a policy, a strategy, an active effort to acquire nuclear
capacity. We could say that they were, and people did or did not
believe it. They mostly said, ``Well, maybe that is just the United
States just sort of hung up again.'' Because we had the intelligence
capacity, we presented information--in this case, images--to the
Security Council, and the Security Council sees clearly North Korea is
building nuclear capability and the Security Council takes actions
supportive of the United States' effort to make certain that North
Korea does not become a nuclear nation.
Again, with the use of images disclosed to the public, our Ambassador
to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, at the direction of the
President of the United States, at the time when the French and the
Russians were weakening in their resolve in regard to sanctions on
Iraq, buying into the Iraqis' assertions that, ``We are impoverished
now; we don't have very much money; and, no, we are not building any
chemical or biological chemical capability, and we are not really a
militaristic nation. You need not worry about us any longer.''
Our Ambassador presents, in a week-long trip to I think 10 or 12
nations, again, images that are our intelligence images to these world
leaders on the Security Council, information clearly indicating that
the Iraqi leader had built a $1.2 billion palace, hardly the sort of
action taken by a nation that was impoverished; second, that chemical
and biological capability continued to be a problem; and that the
acquisition of Kuwaiti military equipment during their occupation of
Kuwait was being integrated into the Iraqi forces, giving lie to all
three of the statements made by the Iraqi leader and giving the United
States the capacity, the President the capacity, through his United
Nations, our U.N. Ambassador, the ability to make the argument to keep
the sanctions still tightening around the nation of Iraq.
In both cases, the United States of America received benefit. Who
knows what the cost to the world would have been had North Korea been
permitted to continue building its nuclear capability or had the
sanctions been dropped from Iraq, a nation that continues to exhibit
dangerous tendencies, indeed dangerous actions.
I cite those two amongst the latest that have been disclosed publicly
because citizens deserve to get enough information upon which they can
make a decision about whether or not we are either sort of captive to
the intelligence community, as is very often suspected by many who are
not on this Intelligence Committee, and perhaps other citizens as well,
that we in fact are looking at these successes, insisting upon
accountability, trying to assess the threats in the world and organize
our intelligence efforts to meet those threats, to maintain the
capability to keep the United States of America as safe as is humanly
possible.
Let me, in addition, Mr. President, point out that there are two
things Mr. Deutch is going to be addressing which in some ways are a
consequence of both our successes and at times our failures of the
past.
The first is, many of the threats that we are now dealing with are
threats that are a consequence, sort of a residual, of the cold war.
The proliferation threat on the nuclear, biological, and chemical is a
threat that came as a consequence of our building capacity and the
Soviets' building capacity. This proliferation threat is a very real
threat, and we are having to now take the sort of residual problem of
the cold war and move it to the top of the list knowing that the
bombing in Oklahoma City would be magnified several thousand times over
were either chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons to be used in a
terrorist effort.
This is a very real and present problem. It requires the United
States of America to lead. No other nation is going to do it. We saw
recently, when the President put sanctions on Iran, our friends in
Europe said, ``Well, we think that's a bad idea. We want to continue to
engage with a country that's involved with terrorism.''
I do not know what they are going to do; I suspect wait until
something terrible were to happen. Only the United States of America
can lead on that issue, lead trying to get Russia not to sell nuclear
technology to Iran. Only the United States of America, I believe, is
willing to make the kind of diplomatic and financial effort necessary
to make this world safe in the area of nuclear, chemical, and
biological weapons and the terrorism that comes from that.
[[Page S6274]]
There is a second problem, Mr. President, that our new, hopefully new
Director of Central Intelligence is going to have to be dealing with.
The distinguished Senator from New York in his comments referenced
that, and that is not just a cynicism toward Government but a precise
suspicion that the CIA is involved in all sorts of things that are bad.
That the CIA is possibly responsible for the assassination of John
Kennedy is something that is actually honestly believed by some
Americans who see a conspiracy in which the Central Intelligence Agency
perhaps played some central role.
We are going to have to face an awful lot of that, Mr. President, and
we are going to have to face it very squarely and very honestly. As I
said earlier, I am very excited watching the accounts of the
celebration of the victory in Europe 50 years ago, watching old men
recall the stories of bravery and heroism and sacrifice. I say, with no
interest in disparaging that success--I thrilled in that success and am
unable to measure truly the sacrifice and heroic behavior that was
necessary, but it stands in stark contrast to an event that occurred,
oh, I guess about a month or so ago when former Secretary of Defense
McNamara published a mea culpa book saying that in 1966 the Secretary
of Defense of the United States of America, with all the intelligence
effort at its disposal, had actually concluded that the war in Vietnam
was unwinable.
Well, I was there in 1969. I do not remember McNamara saying anything
about it then. And that kind of a statement is the example of the sort
of thing, unfortunately, that feeds this cynicism and this conspiracy
theory and causes people to say that the Government really is against
rather than trying to be on their side in making their lives not only
safe but their lives secure as well. It means that we are going to have
to press the envelope a bit on secrecy. By that I mean we are going to
have to take great care that a secret is, indeed, necessary to protect
the American people rather than protecting those who are operating,
either the Director of Operations or other sorts of entities. It cannot
be that we keep a secret from the American people because we are afraid
of what they will do to us if we tell them the truth. It must be that a
secret is being maintained because we are concerned about our inability
to carry out an important security mission if full disclosure were to
occur.
As I indicated, there is a tremendous capacity in the intelligence
community to help citizens in a very difficult time acquire the
information needed to become informed. When you are born in the United
States of America, you are given enormous freedoms at birth and should
have been told at some point during your public education or upbringing
by your parents or upbringing by others, you should have been told that
freedom is not free; that a contribution has to be made back of some
kind. And our citizens are increasingly aware of the contribution of
time and effort that they have to make to become informed about what is
going on in Chechnya, what is going on in the former Yugoslavia, what
is going on in Mexico, what is going on in places where they have a
difficult time pronouncing the name let alone making decisions about
what our foreign policy ought to be. I believe the technologies that we
have at our disposal, if we press the envelope judiciously and not in a
reckless fashion, can, indeed, help our citizens make decisions and
make it more likely that government of, by, and for the people works
both in foreign as well as domestic policy.
Mr. President, no one has traipsed over to the floor to provide
additional testimony, and I am prepared to yield back what time is
remaining and yield the floor.
Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. We will also yield back our time, and I will go
forward and close.
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