[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 50 (Thursday, April 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3625-H3632]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MILLER EXPRESSES CONCERN REGARDING TONGASS AND REPUBLICAN MASQUERADING
ON EARTH DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Petri). Under a previous order of the
House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the Tongass National Forest in
southeast Alaska is one of the jewels of the American forest system. It
is America's only temperate rain forest that is intact, that can be
protected and that can be preserved. It is also the subject of a rider
on the appropriations bill to do great damage to the Tongass, contrary
to the law that was passed a couple of years ago to reform the forest
practices on this forest.
The gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston], the chairman of the
Committee on Appropriations, has asserted that the provision that is
now in that legislation in fact is a decrease in the number of board
feet eligible for cutting from 450 million board feet to 418 million
board feet. The fact of the matter is that that is not accurate. The
Tongass Reform Act of 1990 eliminated the 450 million board feet
mandate for these lands and protected over 1 million acres from the
forests for logging, reducing the amount of old growth timber that is
eligible for harvesting by 51 million feet annually.
The number of board feet eligible for cutting is currently 399
million board feet. The rider would increase that by 19 million, to
418, which is over 100 million board feet above the average cut in the
last decade.
The fact of the matter is that the rider is very detrimental to the
future of the Tongass forest. It asks for cutting that is not
sustainable, that will ruin this forest, that will put it into history,
and far exceeds what the Forest Service just came out with today in
terms of its preferred plan.
In fact, what it is, the Forest Service preferred plan, after going
through the planning documents and how to sustain this forest for
future generations and continue to be able to timber it, is 172 million
board feet less than the 418 that the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr.
Livingston] is talking about. That is because the rider is proposed to
circumvent the public planning process, the public input into this
process, and have the legislation dictate that cutting no matter
whether it ruins the forest or not.
They say they are green, they say they honor the environment, they
say they want to protect it, but do not look at what they say, look at
what they do. This is another example. The law does not do what they
say. In fact, it is very detrimental in this case to one of our prized
national forests.
That is why today earlier Minority Leader Gephardt and many of my
colleagues issued a warning, warning the American people to beware of
Republican candidates coming to your hometown between now and election
day saying that they support environmental protection, but who in fact
have voted repeatedly in this Congress against environmental
protection. These are Republicans practicing ecofraud. The only thing
green about these Republican candidates is the camouflage they are
using to mask their antienvironmental record and the money they take
from special interests to gut environmental measures of this Nation.
To the Republican leadership and to those who follow them in this
Congress, today we issue the following challenge: Stop your assault you
are leading on the environment, stop the masquerade you are playing out
on Earth Day to appear environmentally friendly, and work with us to
protect those environmental laws that protect this Nation and to
improve those that do not.
But do not pretend that because you bring to the House floor two
minor bills that everybody supports, when you have voted in the past to
destroy the basic environmental laws of this country, that somehow you
are now pro-environment. You are not. Do not pretend that planting
trees or cosponsoring a trails bill or a 1-day cleanup of the beach, as
your campaign advisers have told you to do, makes you an
environmentalist. It does not.
You cannot vote day in and day out, as you have in the Congress of
the United States, to gut the Clean Water Act, to gut the Clean Air
Act, to bankrupt the Environmental Protection Agency, to destroy the
national parks and the public lands, and the forests of this Nation,
and to give away those resources that belong to the taxpayers and the
people of this Nation to the special interests. You cannot do that and
then for 1 day dress up and pose as an environmentalist.
The fact is you will not get away with it. You will not do well on
Earth Day. and you certainly cannot come to the well using the
Republican Environmental Task Force to provide you cover, when the
average environmental vote of the members of that task force is only 18
percent. That is the average vote. Think of how low you had to start at
the top to get down to there.
The people will judge you by what you do and not what you say, and
what you have done so far to lead the most comprehensive assault on
environmental protection. The American people hold these values dear.
They hold the protection of our air and our water to be very important.
They will not give it away to a 1-day masquerade on Earth Day by the
same forces who have gutted the essential environmental protection laws
of this Nation.
[[Page H3626]]
CONGRESS ATTEMPTS TO COMBAT SCOURGE OF ILLICIT DRUGS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May
12, 1995, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert] is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, first I yield to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger], the distinguished chairman of the Committee
on Government Reform and Oversight.
Mr. CLINGER. I thank the gentleman very much for yielding to me, and
I would just, No. 1, commend him for holding this special order, and
the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Zeliff] and the gentleman from
Indiana [Mr. Souder]. You are three of the four Members who
participated in what I consider to be perhaps the most significant and
important congressional delegation of this year, certainly in terms of
the work of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. This was
an enormously important and very, very revealing, I think I might say,
congressional delegation.
You visited five countries, and each one of them for a very specific
purpose. In Mexico, because 70 to 80 percent of the drugs that enter
this country come across that border, I think it is something that we
need to be focused on. How can we do a better job? What are the
problems that we are facing there, and how must we deal with them?
You visited Panama, which has major money laundering problems, and
shares an uncontrolled jungle border with Columbia. And of course
Colombia, which is the world capital, if you will, in terms of the
supply of cocaine worldwide; Bolivia, which is the second largest
producer of cocaine after Columbia; and Peru, which produces two-thirds
of the world's supply of coca leaf. I know, because the gentleman from
Illinois has briefed me very thoroughly, as has the gentleman from New
Hampshire, on this trip.
I must tell you I have been dismayed and really disappointed at some
of the media coverage of this trip. If we indeed are going to assume
that no congressional travel has any merit, and that is what seems to
me that the press is deeming in this case, this was an incredibly
active, vigorous CODEL. You did not engage in, quote, junketeering. I
think it is fair to say you were all exhausted by the time this trip
was over, because it was very intense, very focused and extraordinarily
productive.
I look forward to the report that will come out of this matter, and I
look forward to perusing the results of this special order. I again
commend the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert] as a leader of the
delegation for the very excellent work that was done on behalf of the
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.
Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
One of the things that we wanted to look at is what are the
contributing causes to something that would kill 10,000 people in this
country, many, many of them our youth, our college students, our high
school students and yes, even some of our junior high students. One
hundred thousand deaths because of some unseen, unknown culprit, $300
billion in the 1990's alone, the cost and the deaths that have resulted
by this phenomenon.
What is the phenomenon? It is drugs, it is speed, it is crack, it is
cocaine, it is heroin. Where does it come from? Why is it here? Those
questions are pretty relevant, especially if you are a family across
this country that has had a child involved in drugs or a death in your
family because of drugs, or you have had your home burglarized or your
person held up because some drug addict had to get money to get a fix.
Then you are drawn into this whole idea of where drugs come from and
why they exist and what is the whole issue and mechanics that move
drugs from South American countries and southeast Asian countries into
our borders.
If you live in a neighborhood that you are imperiled to go out at
night because you are afraid you might be mugged, held up, or somebody
is on crack cocaine or on heroin and you feel that you or your family
may be accosted, the reason is that we have drugs in this country. We
are the demand source for literally billions and billions and billions
of dollars of drug trade.
In our emergency rooms every year, in our hospitals, and we have just
moved a health care bill through here, but clearly 500,000 emergency
room incidents in this country alone come from drug abuse. There are
250,000 Americans serving time in our prisons, both in our Federal
prisons and in our State prisons, because of drug law violations.
Unfortunately, drug use is involved in at least one-third of all our
homicides and assaults and property crimes.
{time} 1600
Now, something that would cause, and we do not have the exact numbers
because it is pretty fluctuating, but something that would cost between
$70 and $90 billion to the people in this country every year, the net,
and that cost piles up day in and day out, that is pretty important.
I think it is pretty important for this Congress, who initiated a
pretty strong drug policy in the 1980's and has gone from a Just Say No
policy to ``just say nothing'' government over the last few years, I
think we need to examine ourselves. We need to examine where the cause
of this problem is, examine our problems in trying to stop the demand
in this country, but, most of all, we need to find out where this comes
from and stop the growth of coca leaf, the growth of heroin poppies,
the manufacture of speed or methamphetamines. That is what this
endeavor was about. Where does this come from? What do we do? How do we
find out about it?
This chart right here shows the toll of drug abuse's estimated cost
in the United States. The cost of illness is over $8 billion. The cost
of death is over $3.4 billion, if you can put a price on death. The
cost of AIDS, $6.3 billion, AIDS that people get through use of
intravenous needles and passing those needles around from drug addict
to drug addict. And the direct medical costs in this country are $3.2
billion. But the big cost is crimes and misdemeanors to the American
people because of drug use is over $46 billion.
Now, if you want to count all the victims of crime and people who
have been assaulted and people who have been beaten up, then you can
move this cost of nearly $66.7 billion probably up to $97 billion. It
depends on the accounting method you use.
But if we are going to do something and impact upon the value and
quality of this life this country is going to have, then we are going
to have to start doing something about one of the main reasons that
this problem exists.
Now, when you start to look at what the costs are to the American
people and look at what the costs are to what this Congress is trying
to do, let us take a look. Some $13.2 billion expended. Where does it
go? State and local assistance, almost 10 percent. Other law
enforcement, the FBI, DEA, others, about 2.5 percent. The research and
development to find out what drugs do is another 4 percent. Drug abuse
prevention, which is a good program and certainly gets into our
neighborhoods and schools, it is almost 14 percent. Drug abuse and
treatment for those people who have been into drugs and need to be led
back and hopefully on a path that will rehabilitate them, although it
does not have very good results, 20 percent of our budget. Interdiction
of drugs, where we go out and try to catch the drugs moving through
other countries, coming into this country, and drugs moving in this
country, is roughly under 10 percent of our budget. Regulatory and
compliance 0.38 percent, investigations, 13 percent, international
involvement, 2.3 percent.
Now, remember, almost 90 percent of the drugs coming into the United
States of America come from other countries. Our international
involvement is 2.3 percent. Prosecution, it passes a lot of money, it
takes prosecutors and district attorneys and States attorneys to
prosecute drug thefts and drug crimes, 6.4 percent every year.
Corrections, the costs that we have in this country to keep people in
prisons, is 15.5 percent. Intelligence, to find out on the street where
the drugs are coming from, who is selling them, where it is being put
together, where drugs are manufactured, are 2.3 percent. And the State
and local assistance we give to cities and States is nearly 10 percent.
So that is almost $3.5 billion that every State and municipality has to
dole out to find the reason, to find the solutions.
[[Page H3627]]
Now, why did we take this trip? It is a good question. I think we
need to answer it. Because in this country, when we look at Mexico, and
if we would take Mexico as a V or triangle and look over here in
Mexico, we have four huge drug cartels. Coming up through the area of
the Gulf State area, it comes into southern Texas. We have the problem
of drugs coming up through the cartel zone in Sonora, which is along
our Arizona border. We have drugs coming up along the Tijuana cartel
that comes up into California. We have drugs coming up into the Juarez
area, it goes into El Paso, TX, and up through that area.
So we have four huge cartels. Where are they? Not United States
cartels, they are Mexican cartels. So nearly 70 percent of all drugs
that come in, that are grown in Peru and grown in Columbia and
manufactured in Colombia and grown in Bolivia, come up either through
Colombia or up through the airways and land in those cartel areas in
Mexico.
Well, we had a meeting with the Mexican Congress, and we stressed to
them that it was important that in Mexico, we better start doing
something, they better started doing something, on a cooperative basis.
What should be done? Well, we need to have good legislation, and the
Mexicans understand that, and they are stating to do that. So they have
money laundering legislation so that they can start to find the money
that comes in these cartels, and they can start to trace where it comes
from. And it does not just come from Mexico, folks. It comes from New
York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. So we can
start to stress where that money comes from, because if we can take
money out of the drug equation, that is the most important thing to the
drug traffickers and the drug pushers and the cartels and the Mafioso
and the street gangs that all make their money off drug trafficking. If
we can take that money away, find the way that they launder that money
we can begin to solve the problem. We can begin to deny those people
from the end results, from all the trouble they get in with drugs in
the first place.
We also need to have wiretap authority so those criminals who do the
drug deals, especially in Mexico, that Mexico has the ability to tap in
and find out who they are and what their deals are.
We need to have anticospiracy legislation and antiorganized crime and
asset forfeiture. If you find a drug cartel or pusher that is moving
drugs up into the United States, so that they can take their planes and
automobiles and haciendas and those things away, deny them the tools
that they use to move drugs into the United States. And we need to
aggressively pursue the naroctraffickers.
These are things we stressed to the Mexican Congress and things they
pledged to us they will begin to work on in the next year.
Mr. ZELIFF. I would just like to first, Mr. Hastert, thank you for
the leadership that you provided to this effort. Our overall leadership
asked us to put this thing together. We have worked on this effort now
for a year and a half on the drug issue, and started back in March 9,
1995.
Before I get into what we have done as a committee, I would just like
to mention one other thing in Mexico. As you know, the Clinton
administration just certified Mexico and decertified Colombia. So one
of the things we looked at down there and some of the things that were
brought out, the President of Mexico has made a major commitment that
drugs and crime are now their No. 1 issue, their No. 1 threat. I think
we are starting to make some progress. We are starting to see the
beginnings of a process. When the President of Mexico starts to send
that signal all the way through they are going to get serious on it,
then we are starting to turn the corner.
The other thing I would just like to mention in addition to
certification and the President, we talked about NAFTA has an impact
here, economic development has an impact. But there are many things we
looked at throughout all these countries.
If I can, can I just mention a few things that the committee has done
as we led up to this trip.
We started out with Nancy Reagan and her effort back in the Reagan
administration on ``Just say no.'' That, of course, affects the demand
side. We had Judge Robert C. Bonner, former Director of the Drug
Enforcement Administration, testify; Bill Bennett, Co-Director, Empower
America; Hon. Lee Brown, former Director, National Drug Control Policy,
testified; Thomas Hedrick, vice chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-
Free America; Mr. James Copple, national director of CADCA; Mr. Robert
Heard, director of program services, Texas War on Drugs; Adm. Paul
Yost, former Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard under the Reagan and Bush
administrations.
We have had several hearings with Dr. Brown. I traveled to Boston
with him. We went into Framingham Prison for Women. That certainly is a
scary effort, where we talked to several women who hit the bottom due
to drug abuse and alcohol abuse. We have learned a lot from that as
well.
We went into treatment centers, and we have done a trip with this
subcommittee with the Coast Guard in the interdiction zones. If you
want to use an example of a narco democracy where the country has lost
control, take a look at St. Kitts. That is what the problem here is.
Mexico is starting to realize if they do not get serious, they can lose
control of their country. The same thing with Peru and Bolivia and
other countries we visited.
I would like to also just, if I would, mention Bob Kramek, the
Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard. What a great job they have done.
One other thing is we are working very closely with Barry McCaffrey,
the new drug czar, former 4-star general in the Army, doing a great job
in putting this thing together.
We are just very encouraged that we are starting to get our arms
around this thing, but we cannot do it from Washington, DC. We have got
to get out on the front lines and see what is working and what is not
working.
Manchester, NH--Peter Favreau, the chief of police in Manchester, NH,
had Operation Street Sweeper. He recognized how serious this issue was.
He called in help from the Attorney General's office. We also got help
from Federal, State, and local police forces that all worked together
as a team. They are getting crack off the streets. They are closing
down crack houses. They are sending drug sellers to jail, getting them
off the streets. They are taking back their streets, taking back their
community. We are starting to see evidence of people starting to wake
up and realizing the significance of how important this thing is across
America, across all these countries and throughout the world.
Mr. HASTERT. Before you stood up, I wanted to congratulate the
gentleman and his subcommittee work on the intervention and looking at
the oversight. You have the oversight responsibility in the Committee
on Government Oversight. You have done a very good job. You have set up
the premise on this action and this joint teamwork we are going to do.
The first step is, of course, laying out what the problem is. The
second step is to take a look at it and try to find some solutions to
it. You also were instrumental in bringing the former ambassador of
Colombia with us, and he paid his own way to be a part of this, to try
to solve the problem; former ambassador Morris Busby, who did an
invaluable service trying to lay out what the predicate was and trying
to move through this whole process.
But I commend the gentleman, and you certainly have done a good job.
But we have a lot of work to do.
Mr. ZELIFF. We sure do. I would throw out one other thing you have
been a big help with. We started a congressional breakfast, where we
have 40 to 50 Members of Congress working with Charlie Rangel, both
sides of the aisle, from New York. He has been a big leader in this
effort as well. We have had meetings with Louis Freeh, Director of the
FBI; Tom Constantine, DEA Administrator. We have great respect for both
of those gentleman. Now, Barry McCaffrey most recently. We are going to
keep our Members updated. There was a lot of concern and a lot of
commitment. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. HASTERT. I would like to wrap up a little bit what we did and saw
in Mexico. We have done five countries. I would like to yield some time
to the gentleman from Indiana first.
[[Page H3628]]
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I briefly wanted to say here at the
beginning, too, I wanted to thank Mr. Zeliff, the chairman of the
subcommittee, for raising the issue of the drug war and the battle that
we need to do, because we had abandoned it for some time, and say what
a privilege it has been to work on his subcommittee, to do the hearings
over time, and to initiate this trip.
We really had a strong team. Mr. Mica, who had experience as a
staffer, as an international businessman, and on the plane we could
work together, and in your skill as a Representative of leadership and
for them to know that they had the subcommittee chairman of multiple
committees.
It was amazing as we went into some of these countries, they heard of
Mr. Zeliff. They said, ``Oh, yes, he is the person who has brought
drugs back in front.'' I heard several leaders of those countries take
them aside. Your smoothness when we went into Mexico, it was a
difficult situation. They had just had the immigration border incidents
that we were there on a narcotics mission, but in fact it turned into a
very touchy diplomatic mission as well in a lot of these countries.
I want to commend the gentleman as to how he smoothly handled that as
we met with the Members of Congress there for dinners and President
Zedillo and the foreign minister, because these turned, in Colombia and
other countries we will talk about here, and particularly in Mexico,
into potentially explosive international incidents that we were able to
help facilitate.
{time} 1615
Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman for his contribution. I would also
like to recognize our good friend and fellow traveler, Mr. Mica, from
Florida.
Mr. MICA. Well, I want to, first of all, Mr. Speaker, thank Mr.
Hastert for his leadership. When this trip was originally planned,
about 11 people indicated they were going to go; and as it turned out,
Mr. Hastert, Mr. Souder, and Mr. Zeliff, and myself were the only
Members that went.
I want the Speaker and my colleagues to know that, and listen to
this, despite cables indicating 22 deaths from terrorist bombings on
April 10, that is just before we left, in Columbia, and the discovery
of dynamite at the Colombia Supreme Court, also on April 10, codel
members stood by their commitment, and those who stood by their
commitment are on the floor.
This trip is a culmination of some of the efforts that I and a few
others, Charlie Rangel, Bill Richardson, on the other side of the
aisle, have attempted to get the attention of this administration and
this Congress on this issue. In the last Congress I had over 100
Members sign a letter to the former Democratic chairman of the
Government Operations Committee asking for an oversight hearing on our
national drug policy, and two farcical abbreviated hearing were held.
Nothing was really held, until Mr. Zeliff took over this position. Mr.
Clinger and Mr. Hastert have also shown their leadership.
I would say that required reading, and I have seen on the floor for
this, this committee is taking this very seriously, and they have
produced a document that every American parent, every Member of
Congress, and every member of the media should look at, and this
details the epidemic drug situation in this country. It is not just
with adults, it is with our children. Every single drug, marijuana,
cocaine, heroin, designer drugs, are absolutely just going off the
charts. This is a national tragedy. We have 70 percent of the people in
our jails and in our prisons that are overloaded with people who are
convicted of crimes that have some drug relation to it.
We have an epidemic in this country and no one, except some of these
Members, is paying any attention. And these Members risked their lives
and also time with their families to go on this visit to see firsthand.
The first codel in my memory in the last 3 or 4 years, and certainly in
this administration.
Then, also in required reading, I ask everyone to get a copy of this
trip report, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues. This is an unclassified
report. I know the media could not care less about it, but it details
what is going on in the drug war and where we are. We have the report
that details the failure, we have the report that details this
delegation's travel to these countries and why they traveled to
Bolivia, to Peru, to Colombia, to Panama, and to Mexico.
First of all, in Bolivia and Peru, they have nearly 100 percent of
the cocaine being produced. If my colleagues want to hear some shocking
news, we learned in Colombia, which was originally a transit zone, even
though now they are producing some cocaine, but every American, every
Congressman, and the Speaker of the House should be concerned about
this, there are 10,000 hectares of poppies being grown there. Heroin
will be on the streets of this country in tremendous amounts.
What is another concern, we learned from some agents that we met with
that for the first time in Peru they found some cultivation of poppies.
So we can see that we have a long way to go.
Part of the history of how we got in this situation is the
administration shifted most of its resources to drug treatment, which
is at the far end. Anyone who looks at the problem of drugs in this
country knows that we must have a four-pronged approach. It must be,
first of all, interdiction, which is dramatically decreased in these
countries. We must have enforcement. In this administration the number
of prosecutions has dropped dramatically in drug prosecution. We must
have education and then we must have treatment. But it must be a four-
pronged approach, and we are losing the war.
These people met with the leaders and other people who are involved
in this war. And I must take just a minute, too, if I may, to tell the
Members of Congress, Mr. Speaker, and the American people, that we have
some dedicated people out there. I am still itching from bug bites. Our
staff, almost all the staff got sick. The DEA agent that traveled with
us had to almost be hospitalized by going into some of these areas,
getting sick and bitten, but we came back. The good news is we came
back.
The other news that everyone should know is that we have hundreds of
dedicated Americans, our ambassadors, our Department of Defense
employees, these young men and women who are out there in the jungles
working with these people that are dedicated young Americans, committed
to this fight. The Department of State employees in the narcotics
assistance unit.
I am one of the biggest critics of AID, Agency for International
Development, and a lot of their programs was wasteful, but down in
these countries they are trying to work with crop substitution and
other programs where we should be putting our emphasis, not on giveaway
programs where we can make a difference.
And the DEA people. I met a DEA agent who has been in DEA for 12
years, 6 years in South America, his name is Bill, and he is a
committed person. And I cannot single out all of them, but we have
dozens of these people who are out there in the jungle working every
day trying to stop this narcotics trafficking, when sometimes the
administration or Congress undermines their efforts. So there are
American heroes, our Customs people and intelligence agency people,
that are also involved and should be recognized.
Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. MICA. So that is the problem, that is where we are, and I wanted
to shed that background of what we are trying to do and what some
people are doing out there in the field.
Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman. What I want to do now is take a
few minutes and sort of let the Speaker, and the Members of Congress
know exactly what we did, where we went, what we found during that
period of time, and we will try to move through that as quickly as
possible and then come up with wind-up remarks on this.
As I started out and talked about Mexico, I think the key thing is in
our meetings with the President of Mexico and with the Ambassador, Mr.
Jim Jones, a former Member of Congress, that we found out in
discussions with the President, that he thinks that the drug problem,
the trafficking problem up through Mexico is really Mexico's number one
problem, because it is a
[[Page H3629]]
false indicator on their economy. The money laundering, which only
forces legitimate people out of business, and the tremendous amount of
drugs that move up through Mexico really cause violence and shooting
and some guerrilla activity.
For instance, in the last few years, deaths in Mexico because of this
grew 145 percent, and there were over 2,000 speed or what we call speed
or methamphetamine-related deaths between 1991 and 1992, even in the
borders along Mexico, in Los Angeles, and San Diego, and San Francisco
alone.
So the incidence of increase and literally trainloads of marijuana,
thousands of pounds of cocaine and crack, and literally thousands of
pounds also of heroin that is moving up through Mexico is not only a
United States problem, but the Mexican President in our discussions has
admitted it is the number one problem in Mexico as well.
The next place that we stopped was in Panama, and we met with
Ambassador Bill Hughes and the new Ambassador to Colombia and the
country team there. Then we met with the SOUTHCOM, which is the U.S.
command that is out of Panama City, that is literally the source that
we can send our AWAC planes down to Colombia and off the Andes area in
Peru and Bolivia and we can actually see foreign flights coming up and
the flights that deliver and drop--pick up the cocaine or coca paste
and bring them up north either into Colombia or then into Mexico to be
processed. That is a very sensitive place.
But Panama itself has a problem because they are in a very precarious
position and a vulnerable position. The city on the north coast, on the
north part of the Panama Canal that empties into the Atlantic Ocean,
has the free trade zone in that area, has virtually been overtaken by
Colombians, and literally hundreds of tons or pounds of cocaine and
coca leaf and coca paste move through that area; and they understand a
country without a military, with just a police force, that they have to
do a better job of cracking down on that.
Also, Panama has over 400,000 shell companies or paper companies that
are used as fronts to launder illegal drug profits. In talking with the
Vice President of Panama, he admitted this and said this is one of the
most important things that they need to do and they need to try to
control. They know that Colombia is a primary drug transit zone.
The United States is currently in the process of turning over
military bases to the Panamanians, and that is a sensitive thing to the
United States. I think Howard Air Force Base, where we base our P-3's
and our helicopters, and is the repair base for many of the operations
in South America, was very important to the United States in drug
control. So that is something else the United States has to deal with
in the next couple of years.
But Panama has no military. It has not been eligible for the military
sales systems. And in the last couple of days we have passed a piece of
legislation in this Congress to allow the Ambassador to be able to use
some of that money to work on the counternarcotics in Panama. Panama
can and will be likely the gateway for the overtake of the narcos if we
do not get something done there and if we do not beef up our
activities.
Now, people talk about, well, how come we are sending money to Panama
or Mexico. We are not sending money, we are sending people; those
people who on the ground can make a difference. We are sending
intelligence officers, members of the DEA, so that they can actually
get in and find out where the source is of the storage, where the
transshipment is, where the manufacturing of these narcotics is, and
they are doing a good job. But we cannot shut that faucet off, because
if we do shut that faucet off, we will see a huge increase of infusion
in drugs added to the drugs that we already have in this country.
I think the next place that--I know the next place that we went was
Colombia, and I would like to have Mr. Mica from Florida give you a
little bit of a review on what we found in Colombia.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for yielding and, again, we wanted to
trace the trail of illegal narcotics coming into this country. As you
know, Colombia traditionally has been one of the major transit areas.
We have had a program to eliminate some of the kingpins, and the
Colombians have been very aggressively pursued, destroying both the
Cali and the Medellin cartels.
In Colombia, under some pretty heavy security I might add, the
Congressmen and the other members who traveled with us of our staff met
with our Ambassador Myles Ferchette, who again I commend on his
efforts, his incredible living conditions; as well as Defense Minister
Esguerra, and Commander of Armed Forces Delgado.
As I mentioned, too, nearly several dozen police officers had been
killed just prior to our arriving, and I understand another several
dozen people have been killed in incidents down there just the past few
days, plus other terrorist activities. So you can imagine the
conditions that our representatives and Ambassadors are under.
It was necessary for this tight security to meet in our embassy. We
met there and conversed with our DEA agents and others who were
involved in the various projects.
Two of the Colombian leaders, and I must say that there are questions
surrounding some of the drug relationships to the current President of
Colombia. There are 109 members, I understand, of the Colombia's
Congress, over 100 members of the Colombian Congress that may have some
problems, and there are some investigations going on there.
{time} 1630
But we met with 2 stars in their drug war, who have done an
incredible job, and one is the national police chief, Mr. Serrano. He
told us that they have lost over 3,000 officers in this war.
As you know, the drug cartels have killed judicial members, they have
killed members of congress, they have killed hundreds, literally
thousands, of police officers in their struggle.
We also had an opportunity to meet with defense minister and
commander of the Colombian Armed Forces Admiral Delgado. So we had an
opportunity to hear firsthand what they are doing, some of the
problems.
I might say that one of the problems that we had is in 1994 this
administration reversed its policy on the drug shootdown policy. They
stopped giving information and intelligence and radar to the Colombians
in the Andean countries through a liberal interpretation of one of the
attorneys in the administration.
As you may know, Members of Congress, Mr. Torricelli, Mr. Rangel,
others on the Republican side, Mr. Gilman, raised extreme concerns with
the President, the vice president, the national security adviser.
Congress did amend this, and there have been some changes. But some
damage was done in the program.
The Colombians do not shoot the planes down out of the skies with
drug traffickers, but they do shoot them when they reach the ground.
One of the problems that we have now is that some of the shipments are
being shipped around Colombia directly into Mexico, and Mexico is now
one of the greatest transshipment areas.
Another problem that we have are these small cocaine producers. With
the drug cartels being destroyed, we now have small producers. And they
discussed that problem. They do need our assistance, continued
assistance in this war, additional equipment and supplies. There are
people there that are willing to fight, and they have seen how it has
destroyed their country.
So those are a couple of the things that we saw in Colombia.
One other thing that I must mention again is the alarming news of
10,000 hectares of poppy growing, and they are now producing heroin
there. And as you know, they have a great flower production, probably
the flower capital of the world, and poppy is another flower.
So they have an unbelievable capacity to produce a new, inexpensive,
illegal narcotic, and it is flooding our schools and our communities
and our society, and we will probably see even more of it.
So those are some of the folks that we met with, some of the heroes I
talked about, and some of the leaders in Colombia who are helping in
our effort.
Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman from Florida. We also want to
mention that in our time in Mexico, we
[[Page H3630]]
were joined by Senator Coverdell of Georgia, who also has taken, in the
other body, a great interest in this issue.
Now I would like to yield some time to our good friend from Indiana,
who has done a great deal of work on this narcotics issue, Mr. Mark
Souder.
Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for yielding.
I want to first just sketch a little bit of the problem. The United
States is basically up here in relationship to this map, with Mexico
and Panama and Central America coming down into Colombia, Peru and
Bolivia. It does not take a genius to figure out what is going on here.
One hundred percent of the cocaine coming in from outside the United
States is coming from here. Roughly 60 percent is now coming from Peru,
which we will hear more about in a minute. About 30 percent of the
growth is in Bolivia, with some in Colombia. Not only that, it is
coming from basically two places just on the other side of the Andes in
Peru and in Bolivia. Bolivia has been growing; Peru has been slightly
declining.
Furthermore, we are seeing more of the processing. As the pressure
goes on in Colombia, the processing starts to move to these two
countries in these two valleys. Not surprisingly, as you put the
pressure on, and this is a chart that shows some of the success in the
Chapare region of Bolivia, that they have had. You can see that they
seized aircraft, they have seized coca leaf, they hav seized coca-based
paste and base. They have eradicated crops. They have made a major
effort in this zone to try to crack down.
If you look at this third chart, what has happened, and this shows
the Mexico through Central American areas we were in, as they put the
pressure in the air, it starts to move to maritime.
What we were in was literally the jungle, the rivers areas that were
feeding into the Amazon River Basin. It was very disturbing, quite
frankly, as somebody who, in spite of the earlier comments, does care
about the environment, and I am a Republican; it was very disturbing to
see how the rivers were being killed by the chemicals from the cocaine
labs and what that was doing to the wildlife.
We hear a lot of times about cutting down the Amazon rainforest, and
we get many letters from schools. But we could see it burning in
different places, and we could see it being cut so they can put cocaine
labs in.
I want to show, if I can have the pictures now, what we did in
Bolivia. After we had our country team briefing, we flew up in a C-130
Vietnam-era transport plane up into the Chapare region to meet with the
Puma powers, the soldiers who are busy working in the fields. We did a
helicopter, a Huey helicopter, overflight where you can see they have
had success in converting things into banana production, pineapple
production and others.
You could also see that they were hedging their bets, and some places
underneath the banana plants you can see the coca. But they were
working to eradicate that. They passed tougher laws.
Then they took us back in after we had had lunch. They landed us in
helicopters. We took four-wheel-drives. We went back down dirt roads.
The day before, they had a tip, and they took down a primitive lab.
Here what you see is the lab where they are turning it into paste.
Here you see we got to witness them blowing up a lab, watching it burn.
This is very dark because it is a jungle. It is the literal Amazon
jungle. You cannot see it from an airplane overhead. They find six to
eight of these a day that they destroy in the jungle that these troops
are going through.
Here you see leaf that has been pulled up, green leaf that is
planted.
Later on in the day we stopped at a local market, walked in and there
the coca leaf was for sale in those markets, not converted to cocaine
where we were.
Here you see the coca field that is feeding into this particular lab
and the soldiers destroying it.
In the back part of this field there was a small area where the
little coca plants were planted that would then continue to feed this
field.
In my home area in Fort Wayne, IN, there are kids dying. You do not
see the blood on the coca plants, but there are kids dying; they are
shooting each other; they are destroying each other because of the coca
plants that are coming in from these countries.
What they are telling us, however, is also it is not all our
problems, you can see their troops here, you can see their airplane
flights and crops being destroyed. We listened to their governments.
It is their police that are dying as we heard in Colombia how many
are dying. And they are saying, you know, we would not have this
problem if you were not consuming it all in your country, too, and you
are bringing the problems into our country. It is twofold. We need to
stop the interdiction, we need to put more money into these efforts,
because our kids and people are dying in our country, and back up the
people there, and at the same time we need to work at the demand
reduction on our side.
Mr. HASTERT. I appreciate the gentleman yielding back for a second,
but he makes very important points that the reason we are doing this is
our children. Kids in the streets of the United States and our
neighborhoods, both middle-class neighborhoods, upper-class
neighborhoods, lower-class neighborhoods, are being effected by this.
If a kid uses crack cocaine, he only has to use it twice, and he
gives up his free will for the rest of his life. Now that is something
that is pretty important. I think parents and teachers and community
leaders need to understand that.
Only two times do you need to use the crack cocaine, the pictures
that Mr. Souder showed us, and a kid is hooked for life, and what an
expense, what a waste of human life, what a waste of the human vitality
that we have in this country and the potential that every kid has in
this country to be a better person, to make a living, to raise a family
and to be an American.
So that is really the issue there, and, Mr. Souder, we really
appreciate the work you have done on this.
Now I would like to yield to the gentleman who really has been at the
crux of this whole issue, driving it forward for a number of years and
working on his committee to bring this issue forward, and certainly a
great American, somebody that we have all looked up to on this issue,
Mr. Zeliff of New Hampshire.
Mr. ZELIFF. I feel awfully good that as we have come back and renewed
our commitment, we are pleased to have the opportunity to talk to
Members of the House, both the Senate and the House, talking to Barry
McCaffrey, the drug czar, and hope to visit with the President, as
well, and get his commitment.
We need to renew the commitment to the drug war because it is vital,
it is the most important single thing that we have facing us. Crime,
drugs, and terrorism are all one, and it is costing us far too much in
terms of the next generation.
I just would like to talk a little bit about Peru. Saturday morning
we met with the President of Peru, quite a guy; our Ambassador Adams in
the country team in Peru. We met with them all day Saturday afternoon
and evening. What a guy; the President of Peru is totally committed.
Two-thirds of the world's cocaine is produced in coca leaf form right
here, and this photo right here, these are the coca fields, this is a
plant, and these are the coca leaves themselves. But the field is two-
thirds of the world's cocaine, produced in Peru.
Now, what has happened with his policies, frankly, it is called a
very effective shootdown policy. If they have intelligence that a plane
is loaded with cocaine, they will address that plane, send two fighters
up, have the plane be warned, have them bring it down. If they do not
come down, they shoot it down.
Now, what happens is that the 50 percent pure flights on the air
bridge, and you got now, you have got in Bolivia, you got Peru, Bolivia
and Colombia. The air bridge goes through all three of those countries
in terms of bringing the product up. So we basically have closed down
50 percent fewer flights in the air bridge and are now forced to do
alternate routes, either into Brazil or boat by boat, up along the
tributaries of the Amazon. We now have to ship policies and resources.
There are small boats, small craft, and we need now to make sure we can
fight the fight on the water as well.
[[Page H3631]]
The pilots before were making $25,000 a flight to fly a planeload of
cocaine. Now, because of the shootdown policy, it has grown up to
$200,000 a flight. And what is happening, by keeping the pressure on,
the farmers have abandoned 20 to 40 percent of the coca fields in Peru.
Peru and the United States have a delicate window of opportunity, while
prices of coca are down and the risk of production is high, to get
farmers out and start working with alternative crops. And this is true
of Bolivia as well.
One of the things that I have to say is I was pretty biased, based on
the GAO reports that we read, and we were told that programs and source
countries eradication programs were badly managed and were not
effective. Well, this may have been true a few years ago, but I
believe, and I think all of us agree, that we are starting to see some
signs, some light at the end of the tunnel, where programs are
effective.
Mr. HASTERT. I think an important point that you started to bring out
is that not only did the Peruvian campesinos or farmers start to
abandon their fields, but the price of cocaine in Peru went down
tenfold, and all of a sudden it was so cheap that they could not afford
to grow other solid anymore.
So I think that is an important issue of the whole supply and demand,
but it was directly because of Fujimora's actions.
Mr. SOUDER. He is a real hero in our books. I think we are all very
impressed when we left, and we told him that.
And I think the other thing that we have to look at, an AID program
and foreign policy programs need to be geared toward economic
development, infrastructure improvements. And what is happening here is
that if you leave it to their devices in working with the jungle, that
is where the terrorism is. If the towns and the regular government give
up the area, then we lose the war.
Let me just trace a very interesting article in the Union Leader back
in February 26, an article, and I give him a lot of credit for bringing
this out, and I believe that they are committed to this in a very
strong way, Sissy Taylor, ``Cocaine's Deadly Journey, Trip to New
Hampshire Long and Costly.'' Just go through a little bit of how it all
works.
{time} 1645
I will go through a little bit of how it all works. Coca leaves are
bundled. Again you have the field. Coca leaves are bundled into bags.
The bags are brought to pits where the processing begins.
This is the pit. This is about 4- by 12-foot long. The bottom is
lined with a filtering canvas. They dump the leaves in, add lime and
kerosene or diesel fuel, sulfuric acid, then grind them together with
the leaves. A paste is then formed and dried and then washed again with
either ether, diesel fuel, or kerosene and then washed again. At this
point it becomes coca base.
Then the base is bundled and flown or transported into clandestine
air strips in Colombia. It is then transported to processing
laboratories in the jungles. It then undergoes another chemical process
before it becomes cocaine hydrochloride or powdered cocaine.
It is packaged into kilos, kilo bags, weighing a little bit more than
2 pounds. The farmer gets about $2,500 a hectare, and a hectare is 2\1/
2\ acres, so he does not get much for growing the crop. Then it goes
into Bogota as processed cocaine, worth $500 a kilo. Then that is
transported either to New York, Miami, or Manchester or other cities
around the United States, and it could reach as much as $20,000 a kilo.
There is so much money in it. What is happening here in each of these
countries--President Fujimori of Peru, the President of Mexico, a lot
of the areas in the Caribbean, and I want to mention the great Governor
of Puerto Rico and some of the fine work he has done--but what happens
here is they are afraid of losing control of their countries, losing
control of democracy, losing control to drug traffickers, and frankly
the drug traffickers are the scum of the Earth. We have got to wake up.
Let me just read a note. I met with the Governor of Puerto Rico
yesterday, who is leading a valiant effort. We are going to be doing
two more hearings, one in Puerto Rico in July and one in the district
of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Souder], in Fort Wayne, and one in
the district of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], in Chicago
that day if we can work it out. We need to get on top of it.
What he said:
I want to say a few words about Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico,
along with Mexico, is a major transshipment point for Latin
America's illegal drug cartels. Eighty percent of all the
drugs that get into Puerto Rico end up in the continental
U.S.
There is no customs. It goes right through.
But Puerto Rico is ahead of the curve under the Governor's
leadership. In 3 years, he has shown what a good Governor can
do. He has implemented an effective prevention and law
enforcement strategy, and rescued 23,000 public housing
units. He has used the National Guard effectively, and
brought 16 different State agencies together to make Puerto
Rico more secure.
Governor Rosello's model is key, because other Governors
and leaders have to realize that we are now confronting what
is clearly a national security threat that has gotten into
every State in our Nation.
I also hope that the Governor's Conference in Puerto Rico
this July will focus on the leadership that this Governor has
shown. But more--the drug issue must be front and center with
all of us.
If Congress, this President and all of the Governors of the United
States make this number one, if we can put a man on the Moon, we can
win the war on drugs.
Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman from New Hampshire. I just wanted
to make another couple of comments.
When we saw what was going on, the results of President Fujimori's
shoot-down policy in Peru, what happens is that cocaine piles up there
and now they are trying to take it out in the river system. So another
country which has been involved somewhat unwittingly is out in the
Amazon Basin of Brazil, and so many of those flights now, because they
cannot fly up through Peru and through Colombia to get into Colombia,
now what they do is they go around through Brazil. That is a real job
for our ambassadorial corps and others, to make Brazil aware of the
problem that they have with drug traffickers moving that cocaine supply
out of Peru and out of Bolivia and on up into Peru through the river
system and ultimately through airways.
Mr. SOUDER. If the gentleman will yield, I want to make one
additional point on the pictures the gentleman was just talking about.
To give you the scale of why the best drug prevention program is
interdiction and as we get into some of the things we need to do, that
third picture, that is on fire, and the fourth picture. We took down
around 100 crack houses in Fort Wayne last year. That is how great our
problem is in a city the size of 300,000, roughly, in the metro area.
That little fire there would be the biggest drug bust in the history of
Fort Wayne, and they can make it in those little labs, starting for
$500. We destroyed the biggest drug bust in the history of Fort Wayne.
If we can get it there and reduce the supply, it has a major impact on
our cities.
Mr. ZELIFF. But if the gentleman will yield, it has got to be
balanced. We have got to do education, prevention. We have got to do
treatment, interdiction. We have got to do source country eradication
programs. If we do not, if we skip 3 or 4 of these pieces, then we
lose. We have got to do it in a balanced program across the board.
Mr. HASTERT. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Mr. MICA. I want to follow up on what the gentleman had said, Mr.
Speaker. This strategy has to start right at the top. It has to start
out at the White House.
Listen to this. The President has really hardly talked about the
issue for the last 3 years. Of the seven major addresses to the Nation
in 1993 and 1994, President Clinton mentioned drugs in none of those
addresses. In 1993, he gave 1,628 statements, addresses and interviews,
but mentioned drugs a total of 13 times. In 1994 there were 1,742
presidential statements and he referred to the drug problem 11 times.
This has to be a national priority from the administration. We have a
new drug czar. He has been great to work with so far. We have a great
working relationship with him. As the other Members have seen and as I
saw, we need the cooperation of many agents, we need the cooperation of
[[Page H3632]]
many committees of Congress in both bodies and everyone working in the
same direction.
We also must look at how we are spending these resources, and when
you see that most of the drug treatment and abuse programs, at the very
end, they are failures. Very few of them have any success rate
whatsoever. Then the international program is 2.34 percent, and you
dismantle an interdiction program at this critical juncture, you are
making a mistake as far as your priorities. It has to be interdiction,
enforcement, education, and there must be treatment also.
Mr. ZELIFF. If the gentleman will yield further, one of the things we
are finding out in Manchester, NH, again I cite Peter Favreau, who has
done a great job along with the Federal, State, and local agencies that
have worked with him. But we have worked with courageous people in the
school systems. You can put a policeman in a school yard but we have to
get inside the schools, work with the kids and be role models.
It is not just the President, it is all of us individually. We have
got to get the media to wake up and pay attention to this. We have got
to start talking to parents. Parents have to start talking to their
kids. Business people have to be involved, communities have to be
involved. We have to reconnect with basic values. If we do not, we are
going to lose big time and we will not have anything left.
It is time now, and hopefully with the leadership of the gentleman
from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], you might just describe what we ultimately
want to try to do here. We are trying to bring it all together to show
to everybody the importance of this issue, and we really appreciate
your effort.
Mr. HASTERT. Reclaiming my time, we have used the word ``balance'' a
number of times, but this is a balance purely between supply and
demand. We have to do our part. We promised those Presidents and those
Congresses in those Central American countries of Mexico and Panama,
and certainly in the Andean countries of Colombia and Bolivia and Peru,
that we would work in our country to try to hold down that demand.
That is partly a result of the government. If we take this chart, we
can see that from basically 1980 the demand for drugs, the kids' usage
of drugs in this country had fallen rapidly until 1992. All of a
sudden, the demand for drugs and the use of drugs goes up.
This chart here shows exactly what happens. Twelfth graders, in 1980
the use started to go down. In 1992, it went up. Tenth graders, it went
up. Eighth graders, it went up. I am sure if you have a chart there,
you will find that sixth and fourth graders' use went up too.
We have to change from a government that used to say ``just say no,''
and we had good results during that time, to a government which has
lately just said nothing, and we need to work and develop that as a
huge issue in this country. Parents, and as the gentleman from New
Hampshire [Mr. Zeliff] said, everybody has to work together. I am sure
we can get the job done, but it has to be a country effort. And we have
to work in those countries that produce this, work with their
governments, work with their presidents who are willing to work with
this country and try to eradicate the supply side of this, as well.
You can see in these charts it is there. They are doing it. They are
doing it today. Farmers are planting cocaine seedlings on sides of
mountains, under the brush in Bolivia and Peru, and we have to help
stop that.
I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
Mr. SOUDER. I am not necessarily known as ``Mr. Internationalist.''
In fact, I authored with the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Zeliff]
an amendment that said unless Mexico worked harder in this effort, that
we were going to cut off funding and support. I have been critical of a
number of the trade missions.
One thing I have seen, and we did not shy away from communicating
this to them, that all the issues that we are dealing with are related
to narcotics in our country. At the same time we need to acknowledge
that we have leaders around the world, as you said earlier, who are
committed to democracy, who need our support, or we are going to lose
the best chance for freedom around the world.
Mr. HASTERT. In closing, I thank all the gentlemen who have worked on
this, the gentleman from New Hampshire, Mr. Zeliff, who has taken the
lead in committee, our friend from Indiana, Mr. Souder, and of course
my friend from Florida, Mr. Mica. I thank the gentlemen.
____________________