[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 96 (Tuesday, June 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H5781]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       RESTRICT AID UNTIL RUSSIA ENDS WORK ON BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

  (Mr. DORNAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I guess all of the people who track our 
proceedings electronically before they pour over the written 
Congressional Record the next day, Mr. Speaker, are aware we have taken 
a break to pay homage to a beloved Member of this Chamber for 20 years, 
Les Aspin, the former Secretary of Defense, and who was heading up an 
important intelligence reform committee when God took him.
  He is now in heaven, because he was a good man, talking to all those 
Rangers and Delta Special Forces guys in the 160th Special Ops Aviation 
Regiment at Fort Campbell, the world's very, very best helicopter air 
crews, he is talking to all those guys and working out what went wrong, 
that our men did not have their gunships overhead, their Spectre 
Hercules AC-130 gunships and did not have tanks. I guess Les has found 
out by now what laws were violated that we had two Bradley fighting 
vehicles and two M-1 Abrams tanks at Waco, four armored vehicles, 
against U.S. law, posse comitatus, no military equipment to ever be 
used against civilians. Why did not they have a F-16 fighter roll in 
and strafe Waco, just outside, to scare them, and make them all run out 
choking with tear gas, which, of course, 22 children could not do.
  So there are a lot of things that went wrong under Les in the end. 
But you have to take a man's whole life, and Les's whole life was one 
of great activity and work and dedication to his country.
  I wish this defense bill was not so critical, I am glad I am a 
chairman, one of Floyd Spence's five subcommittee chairmen, but I have 
got to say here and prepare for the debate, and that is what I want to 
talk about.
  We will have an amendment coming up, Mr. Speaker, and all colleagues 
listening in their offices and all staffers listening and 1.5 million 
people watching on C-SPAN, on the Soviet continuing ongoing effort to 
develop weapons of mass destruction in the ugly area of biological 
warfare. So here is my ``Dear Colleague.'' It saves some of you who 
will miss reading it.
  Dear Colleague: I will be offering an amendment today, not this week, 
with the support of the leadership of the National Security Committee, 
that
 would restrict cooperative threat reduction aid, a good idea, to the 
former Soviet Union. Restrict it, unless and until President Clinton 
certifies to Congress that Russia has terminated all work on offensive 
biological weapons. No such thing as defensive biological warfare. 
Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar, both parties, their funding 
is designed to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction being 
used against our country or our allies by assisting our former enemy, 
the Russians, in dismantling their systems.

  Unfortunately, the record of Russian compliance with the intent of 
this aid is very poor indeed. In the area of biological weapons, that 
is hot zone stuff, weapons that can be cheaply, cheaply manufactured 
and easily proliferated to potential U.S. adversaries, their record is 
dreadful. Consider the following regarding continued Russian work under 
Yeltsin on offensive biological weapons, sometimes known as the poor 
man's atomic bomb.
  Russia continues to invest in biological weapons. In 1993, according 
to press reports, defecting Russian scientists, quoting from the 
Washington Post, Vladimir Pasechnik, revealed that the Soviet Union and 
Russia had violated the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, we are 
signatories, that outlaws the development or production of 
bacteriological weapons by continuing to produce such weapons. 
Pasechnik had recently served in an organization known as Biopreparat, 
with about 400 other scientists working on genetic engineering of germ 
weapons.
  This is sick in the sense of civilization, it is diabolically evil. 
Four hundred scientists working on it.
  This defector claims Russia has developed a super plague, this means 
beyond the Ebola virus, beyond the AIDS virus, a super plague, that 
could kill half of the population of a major city in 1 week. Former CIA 
Director Robert Gates testified in 1993 that the CIA believes the 
Russian military is continuing to work clandestinely on illegal 
biological weapons without the knowledge of Russian civilian leaders.
  End of Post story, not know as an organ of the dispensing of 
conservative information.
  I close, Mr. Speaker, by saying we are spending hundreds of millions 
of taxpayer dollars on a program to reduce the Russian nuclear threat, 
yet they continue to work on offensive biological weapons.
  This amendment of mine does not stop or reduce the aid, the Nunn-
Lugar aid. Now that we are in the majority, you can call it Lugar-Nunn. 
It only conditions it on certification that such work on biological 
weapons has been terminated. I urge a yes vote on the Dornan language 
on this biological weapons program.

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