[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 73 (Wednesday, May 22, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5389-H5424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1997
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 437 and rule
XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House
on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 3259.
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in the committee of the whole
Accordingly the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole
House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H.R.
3259) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 1997 for intelligence
and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government,
the Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency
Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes, with Mr.
Dickey in the chair.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having
been read the first time.
Under the rule, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] and the
gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] will each control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest].
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to bring H.R. 3259, the Intelligence
Authorization Act for fiscal year 1997, before my colleagues for
consideration and, I trust, approval.
Before I turn to the contents of the bill, I would like to thank the
staff of the committee for their hard work. We marked up two bills in 1
week and brought this bill to the floor in half the time that we have
taken in the past. None of this would be possible without our staff's
diligence and very long hours.
Five short months ago, I spoke on the floor about the conference
report for the fiscal year 1996 authorization. I noted at that time
that we had been disappointed in the President's budget submission on
intelligence for fiscal year 1996 because it did not show the forward
thinking and vision I think our intelligence policy needs. Instead of a
blueprint, we got a snapshot of 1 year's needs. I also noted that
another such submission would not be acceptable. I had been assured by
both the Vice President and the Director of Central Intelligence that
the fiscal year 1997 intelligence budget would show vision and
foresight.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case. The budget we received was
more of the same, another status quo budget. To say that we have been
disappointed would be an understatement. That is why the committee has
made more substantial changes in the intelligence budget than last
year. The details of those changes are in the classified annex, which I
hope Members have taken the time to read.
Our changes were made only after the most careful consideration. We
held 6 full committee hearings, 15 member briefings, and more than 100
staff briefings. I might add that we expect to have further briefings
between now and conference on issues that are still undergoing changes.
Overall, this bill increases the amount requested by the President by
an additional 3.9 percent. It is money well spent. As always, our
ability to talk in detail on this subject is limited, but as many of my
colleagues know, U.S. intelligence continues to provide crucial support
for sensitive negotiations and for U.S. forces deployed overseas, and
in combating terrorism, narcotics, and proliferation.
I would like to spend a few moments highlighting some of the major
aspects of this bill.
Our most important intelligence asset is the people who are the
intelligence community. Downsizing, more drastic than we had first
assumed, has taken its toll and yet we are still faced with the problem
of the proper skills mix in each NFIP agency. There are also a number
of quality of life issues that are of fundamental importance. I give
DCI Deutch full credit for making personnel reform his highest priority
issue. Unfortunately, he did not provide the committee with the kinds
of detail we require in order for us to commit the sums of money he
needs. Section 403 of our bill denies authorization for the expenditure
of funds for personnel reforms until the committee is briefed. Some may
argue that we are taking the DCI to task with this provision. We are
not. Our colleagues in the other body have no provisions at all in
their bill that deal with personnel reform. Section 403 is a good-faith
pledge on the part of our committee that we will address this important
issue when we have a detailed proposal.
Some of our most important changes to the President's budget are in
the National Reconnaissance Program. Last year we began to force the
NRO to give more thought to alternative means of intelligence
collection, with satellites that are smaller and cheaper, yet no less
capable. Many attacked this vision. I am happy to report that it has
been confirmed by experts and that we will continue to push the NRO
along these lines. We are coming up to a crucial moment of generational
change in our satellite systems. Unless we begin planning for that now,
we will face a future when we will pay more to know less in a more
complex world.
As we did last year, we are limiting the amount of money that can be
spent on declassification under President Clinton's Executive Order
12958. We favor more open government. Some of the recent
declassifications of such programs as CORONA and VENONA underscore the
achievements and importance of intelligence. But we do take exception
to having annual expenditures mandated by an Executive order for a
program that has yet to prove it can declassify without revealing
secrets.
H.R. 3237 helps put us on the path toward the intelligence community
we will need in the 21st century. I despair that this President will
ever give us the kind of intelligence budget that will move us in the
right direction by bold and large steps, rather than hesitant ones. I
look forward to the next President doing so, soon. Until then, I know
that my colleagues will support this bill so that we can move the
intelligence community in a positive direction.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the legislation now before the
House.
I want to begin by commending Chairman Combest for the manner in
which he has presided over the committee's activities this year. He has
been solicitous of the views of the Democratic members and has sought
to address our concerns when he felt it possible to do so. We do not
agree on every issue, although we do agree on many, but I have always
felt that he was willing to give us the opportunity to make our case,
particularly on matters concerning the intelligence budget.
We are, of course, waiting to have a couple of additional hearings,
Mr. Chairman, on some of the issues that we discussed in our markup.
At a time when most programs are feeling the effects of a constrained
budget environment, H.R. 3259 provides a significant increase--nearly 5
percent over the amount authorized for the current fiscal year and
about 6.5 percent over the amount appropriated for fiscal year 1996.
While some of this increase is the result of the substantially higher
defense budget approved by the House, a major portion reflects
decisions by the committee that a number
[[Page H5390]]
of intelligence systems need to be modernized to respond to future
requirements. These improvements to highly complex systems are
expensive, but they are necessary if the United States is to retain the
world's preeminent intelligence capability--a capability that will be
of increasing importance as a source of early warning to policymakers
and military commanders in the years ahead. I urge the House not to
adopt amendments which would make across-the-board reductions in the
authorization level in this bill. While I understand the sincerity of
the views which motivate those amendments, I believe they would
substantially impair the ability of the intelligence community to make
investments in several systems that will be of great value in the
future.
In spite of the positive aspects of this bill, committee Democrats
have, as we did last year, several fundamental disagreements with the
majority over programs administered by the National Reconnaissance
Office [NRO]. The bill would terminate or delay a number of programs
designed either to address intelligence shortcomings noted in the
Persian Gulf war or in other ways to improve the provision of timely
support to intelligence customers, particularly the battlefield
commander. Military operations, and the sophisticated weapons systems
which are used in them, place an increasingly high premium on accurate
intelligence.
On March 6 of this year, former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and
former Senator Warren Rudman appeared before the committee in open
session to report on the work of a commission they led, and on which I
served, to examine the roles and capabilities of U.S. intelligence. At
the March 6 hearing, Secretary Brown noted that ``if it were not for
the existence of the Department of Defense, the intelligence budget
would, in my judgment, be maybe 10 percent of what it is.'' I agree
with Secretary Brown about the priority of military requirements within
those assigned to the intelligence community. I further believe that we
should proceed very carefully when we decide to alter a satellite
architecture which Defense Department officials, both civilian and
uniformed, have indicated is essential to ensuring that future military
operations can be conducted successfully without unnecessarily
endangering American personnel.
Regrettably, the committee has embarked on a course, with respect to
NRO programs, which will leave important military intelligence
requirements unmet. That is not a good result in a bill which
establishes authorization levels that in the aggregate can only be
justified on national security grounds. Before we finally endorse
decisions which may place at risk the ability of the Department of
Defense to fulfill its mission, we need to clearly understand what
capabilities we are being asked to forgo and the consequences of those
actions. To his credit, Chairman Combest has promised that, before we
get to conference on this legislation, hearings will be held on these
matters. I hope those sessions will provide a firmer basis than we now
have for making judgments in these critical areas.
Mr. Chairman, despite the reservations just expressed, I believe the
bill before us is, in balance, a sound one and should be approved. I
look forward to working with Mr. Combest to improve it in conference,
but I urge its adoption today.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr.
Richardson], a distinguished member of our committee.
(Mr. RICHARDSON asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for yielding
time to me.
Mr. Chairman, let me first express my most heartfelt appreciation to
Chairman Combest for his support in allowing me to undertake several
initiatives in the intelligence and foreign policy arena. Mr. Combest
has been very accommodating since assuming the chairmanship of the
Intelligence Committee and I want to commend him for his stewardship.
Second, I would like to congratulate the chairman for crafting a bill
in a nonpartisan fashion that catapults our intelligence community into
the future armed with the necessary tools to perform an ever changing
and diverse mission. In past years, the focus of our intelligence
operations and efforts were rightfully targeted predominately at the
former Soviet Union. With the demise of the cold war and the
splintering into several independent states of the Soviet Union, new
and different requirements have been leveled on the intelligence
community. No longer can we concentrate solely on issues concerning
Soviet force strength and military concept of operations. Today's
policy makers need accurate intelligence information on global issues
such as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, narcotics,
terrorism and world economies. I am confident that the bill crafted by
the chairman and ranking democratic member Norm Dicks, prepares the
community to meet the challenges posed by their new missions and
requirements.
When Director Deutch testified at his confirmation hearing before the
Senate Intelligence Committee he stated that his No. 1 priority was to
replace an arcane and ancient personnel system with a system that
responded to the dynamics of todays working men and women. I am
concerned with the committees action in not fully supporting the
Director in his personnel initiative and fear the action that the
committee has taken is simply not in the best interests of the
dedicated men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency. These
individuals perform very difficult tasks and it is in large part
because of the tireless work they do that Americans across our great
Nation are able to sleep peacefully at night without fear of a foreign
threat. In the coming weeks I hope that the committee will not lose
sight that people are the CIA's most valuable asset and that the
necessary funds should be authorized if we are to maintain an
intelligence agency second to none in the world. The DCI has put a
tremendous amount of thought and work into this effort and we should
support the employees of CIA by throwing the weight of this committee
and the Congress behind the personnel proposal.
Mr. Chairman, when I was first appointed to serve on this important
committee I was struck by the dearth of minorities employed in the
intelligence community. The percentages of minorities represented in
the various intelligence agencies lagged so far behind the civilian
labor force that it was quite frankly embarrassing. Since that time,
significant progress has been achieved and I congratulate the directors
of intelligence community agencies for their attention to this very
important issue. Women and minorities have always been and shall
continue to be significant contributors to our society. Their talent,
commitment, and patriotism is as evident as anybody's and they should
have the same opportunities as any American. I encourage the leaders of
the intelligence community to continue to tap into the vast resources
of our minority and female population. Additionally, I want to praise
Chairman Combest for his commitment in continuing this committee's
resolve to discharge our oversight responsibility in this critical
area.
Mr. Chairman, throughout my tenure on the Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence I have been a constant proponent of covert action. When
used properly in support of foreign policy, covert action is an
effective weapon in a diplomats arsenal. To ensure our capability to
conduct successful covert action activities, an infrastructure must be
maintained that will permit the CIA to undertake covert action
activities on short notice yet with the necessary support base required
for successful operations. I believe that the bill before us today
satisfies my concern that such a capability be sustained at an
appropriate level. While the need for engaging in covert activities may
be minimal today, nobody can predict the future. Therefor, maintaining
a prudent infrastructure acts as an insurance policy for our Nation and
I am pleased to recognize that our bill provides our citizens with the
necessary coverage.
In closing Mr. Chairman, I would like to express one final concern.
While I support this bill I am somewhat troubled by the funding level.
The measure before us today is 3.9 percent above the administration's
request and 4.9 percent over last year's authorized level. In a period
of Government downsizing
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every effort should be made to ensure that no agency is getting more
money than it needs. In fact, we in Congress should do everything in
our power to ensure that the Federal Government operates on an astute
budget. I am fully aware of the importance intelligence plays in our
Nation's security and of the argument that as our defense establishment
downsizes the role of the intelligence community increases if for no
other reason than for indications and warning purposes. However, we
must not exempt intelligence agencies from sharing their fair burden in
downsizing the Federal Government. That being said, let me point out
that I have full and complete confidence in the chairman and ranking
Democratic members ability to formulate an intelligence budget that
accurately reflects the needs of our country. I just wanted to raise
this issue as a concern of mine because I don't want to send a signal
that there is a bottomless reservoir of funds available for
intelligence purposes. My concerns about funding levels and commitment
to maintaining a lean yet sufficient intelligence budget is in no way
reflective of the high regard in which I hold intelligence community
personnel. I appreciate the fine work intelligence employees do, the
Nation appreciates the duties they perform.
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Mr. Chairman, at a later time in this amendment process I will be
offering an amendment that I believe makes sense, that is supported by
the Nation's journalists and media, that basically states, which is
already a policy of the agency, that no intelligence assets will be
used with journalists. I will be offering this amendment later. I urge
support for this provision.
Again, my thanks to Chairman Combest for his support of my activities
and for crafting a good bill, not a perfect bill, but still a bill that
deserves our support.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes to say I
appreciate the kind remarks of both the ranking member, Mr. Dicks, and
the gentleman from New Mexico, Mr. Richardson. It is a pleasure working
with all members of this committee. While we may have some
philosophical differences, we, I think as well as any committee, have
always tried to make certain that every member was heard.
Let me just make two quick comments, one on the issue of the comments
by the gentleman from New Mexico on the overall amount of the budget. I
would remind Members that in real numbers this budget is 14 percent
below fiscal year 1990 in terms of expenditures.
The issue of personnel, I would just want to state for the record
that this committee has always had, No. 1, a keen respect and
admiration for the individuals who put their lives on the line and for
the intelligence community. We initiated on this committee in the past
major personnel reforms. I might add last year we did that, as well,
and found both the administration and other committees of the Congress
in objection to those, and subsequently those were removed from the
bill.
As explained to the Members in the personnel hearing, we will be
moving forward on the DCI's recommendations for personnel reform, only
wanting to look at those in a much more detailed fashion than we have
been able to do up to this point. I would be remiss if I did not
indicate we do have great admiration for those people who are involved
in the community.
In the area of overall funding, without getting into those areas that
make it difficult to discuss, I am sure the gentleman from New Mexico
is aware, following a discussion of the National Reconnaissance
Organization's carry-forward account last year, which was discussed
quite publicly, and even more so recently, there were substantial
reductions taken in last year's level. When we compare our this year's
bill to the last year's level, we are accommodating a request of the
administration to replace some of those funds that were taken out last
year, to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars and,
consequently, that is reflected in the overall.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania
[Mr. Shuster], a very valued member who is in his second term or
sentence on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, however one
might put that, and at one time served as ranking member, who I had the
fortune of sitting next to.
Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank Chairman Combest for yielding me
the time. I certainly rise in strong support of this legislation. This
act funds a wide range of extremely important intelligence activities
which are vital to our national security.
One of the areas in which I paid particular attention when I did
serve as the ranking member of the committee, and have continued to
focus on, is the area of illegal drugs coming into this country.
Indeed, in 1989 I was very supportive, along with others, in creating
the counternarcotics center at the CIA.
Since the creation of that center and in large measure because of the
creation of that center, extraordinary successes have been realized in
bringing down key elements of the Colombian drug cartel. While the
specific examples remain classified, one can say quite positively,
forcefully, and enthusiastically that our country and our intelligence
community has made very substantial contributions and great successes
in weakening the Colombian drug cartel.
Sadly, however, in the last 3 years we have not seen the same robust
effort with this administration that we witnessed during President
Bush's tenure, when he really revitalized our counternarcotics
intelligence programs and announced for the first time a national drug
control strategy in August 1989.
Many people do not realize that in America, from 1980 to 1992, our
country witnessed a steady decline in drug use. Let me emphasize that.
From the beginning of the Reagan administration through the Bush
administration, our Nation witnessed a steady decline in drug use. This
was in large measure because both President Reagan and President Bush
and their administrations were very serious about targeting the drug
flow into the United States.
Sadly, since 1993 drugs have once again been on the upsurge.
According to Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services,
marijuana use in our most vulnerable youth, ages 12 through 17, doubled
between 1992 and 1994, and virtually every hard-core user once started
as a casual user. It usually starts with marijuana, amphetamines, or
other so-called soft drugs that are attractive to our youth.
We indeed need to revitalize at the very top levels of this
administration our counterdrug programs, and the dramatic rise in
marijuana use is a wake-up call to all of us.
Now, as Chairman Combest and the committee considered what can be
done about this problem this year, an important opportunity presented
itself, which was the transfer of the National Drug Intelligence Center
to the National Foreign Intelligence Program. This drug intelligence
center, which was first chartered in 1991, provides strategic
intelligence for all sources, including the national foreign
intelligence community, collates it and provides information to law
enforcement entities to assist their activities in the United States.
They are able to provide critical intelligence to chosen links to
foreign narcotics organizations and indeed their arms in the United
States. This enables law enforcement here, both DIA, FBI and others, to
reach out and strike against narcotics traffickers in the United States
as well as those abroad. The Drug Intelligence Center can draw on a
pool of highly talented and motivated professionals.
Congressman Jack Murtha deserves tremendous credit for really being
the father of this program, and I am very pleased to continue the
support of that effort. Moreover, I pledge as a member of the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence to ensure that the national foreign
intelligence community provides all the support it can to the Drug
Intelligence Center consistent with existing law.
For all those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I strongly urge the passage of
this legislation.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs], a very valued member of our
committee.
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the
time.
[[Page H5392]]
Mr. Chairman, first of all, I also want to thank our chairman, who
has been very responsive and accommodating, as well as our ranking
member, the gentleman from Washington, and the terrific staff that this
select committee is privileged to rely on.
I want to support this bill because I believe on balance it does meet
vital national security needs. However, I do have some serious concerns
about it.
It is obviously essential to support the activities of the
intelligence community as we seek to understand and confront a whole
range of post-cold-war challenges, whether terrorism or weapons of mass
destruction, environmental degradation, many other things. This bill
provides budget authority for these important responsibilities. And we
should also be under no illusion that, just because the cold war is
over, that this country faces no traditional threats to our national
security, at which intelligence capabilities need to be directed.
I do have concern about the overall authorization level, as has
already been pointed out. It exceeds substantially the amount requested
by the President, the amount authorized and the amount appropriated for
this fiscal year. In a time of tight budgets, when we are cutting
environmental enforcement, education or any number of things, I would
have preferred an authorization closer to the President's request. But
authorizing more doesn't automatically translate into appropriations.
Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of serious concerns that I would like
to address, involving continued support for the declassification of
documents, and funding for what is known as the Environmental
Intelligence and Applications Program.
The first of these relates to the President's Executive order
establishing a uniform system for declassification, safeguarding and
handling national security information and the implementation of that
order. There are some statements in the committee's report on this bill
that criticize the approach being taken under that order and the way
reviewing agencies are handling document declassification.
The statements suggest that the majority may be proposing the
adoption of an extremely restrictive and, I fear, an extremely slow and
expensive, risk elimination approach, rather than a risk management
approach, to the handling of declassification. It remains a fact that
there are documents that should be declassified, documents that remain
classified for no other reason than inertia. Declassifying them should
proceed, and I am convinced that this task can be managed at acceptable
cost and without compromising sensitive information.
The current risk management approach does not lead to any abdication
of agency responsibility to protect sources and methods; it simply is a
sensible acknowledgement that resources should be focused in areas of
greatest risk. If Congress mandates a system of reviewing documents
that is so cumbersome that there is virtually no chance of anything
getting declassified, we will be right back where we started before
this reform effort got underway.
Mr. Chairman, the second area I would like to speak to has to do with
the Environmental Intelligence Applications Program. The bill before
the House right now would authorize only $6 million here, significantly
below the President's request. I think this is a shortsighted cut and
one that I hope can be addressed, either through Mr. Weldon's proposed
amendment today or later in conference. Six million dollars is simply
not sufficient to carry out the goals of the program.
It would limit the use of intelligence products for environmental
research and could jeopardize very important environmental information
exchanges with Russia. This program is clearly responsive to the needs
of national policymakers. It brings unique information to our
understanding of global environmental challenges, and it has provided
striking benefits to the intelligence community in improved technical
capabilities of their collections systems. It is a low-cost, high-yield
effort which is well supported among intelligence consumers, both in
and out of intelligence agencies, and it should not be singled out for
reduction from among all the analytic efforts of the intelligence
community.
I think Congress should continue to support the President's bold
initiative to implement a safe and cost-effective means of
declassifying documents, and I am also hopeful that we will be able to
work in conference, or through the adoption of Mr. Weldon's amendment,
to authorize adequate funding for the Environmental Intelligence and
Applications Program.
With those points in mind, Mr. Chairman, I urge the passage of the
bill.
Mr. Chairman, I support this intelligence authorization bill because
I believe that on balance it meets vital national security needs.
However, I do have several serious concerns.
It is essential to support the activities of the intelligence
community as we seek to understand and confront such post-cold-war
challenges as ethnic conflict, terrorism, the proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction, and global environmental degradation. This bill
provides authority for these important functions. We should also be
under no illusion that we face no traditional threats to our national
security, at which intelligence capabilities need to be directed.
I do have a concern about the overall authorization level. This bill
authorizes an intelligence funding 3.9 percent above the amounts
requested by the President, 4.9 percent above the amounts authorized
last year, and 6.9 percent above the amounts appropriated last year. In
a time of tight budgets, when funding for education and the environment
is being slashed, I would have preferred an authorization level closer
to the President's request. But authorizing more does not automatically
mean we will appropriate all that's authorized.
I also have serious concerns about two specific matters: continued
support for declassification of documents; and funding for the
Environmental Intelligence and Applications Program [EIAP].
My first of these relates to implementation of President Clinton's
Executive order that establishes a uniform system to classify,
safeguard, and declassify national security information. There are some
statements in the committee report on this bill that criticize the risk
management approach that Government agencies have adopted in reviewing
documents to be declassified under that Executive order. These
statements suggest that the majority may be proposing the adoption of
an extremely restrictive, and extremely slow and expensive, risk-
elimination approach to handle the review of classified documents.
It remains a fact that there are documents that should be
declassified, documents that have remained classified for no reason
other than inertia. Declassifying them should proceed, and I'm
convinced that this task can be managed, at acceptable costs and
without compromising sensitive information.
The current risk management philosophy does not lead to an abdication
of the agencies' responsibility to protect sources and methods; it is
simply a sensible acknowledgement that resources should be focused on
areas of greatest risk. If Congress mandates a system of reviewing
documents that is so cumbersome that there is virtually no chance of
anything getting declassified, we will be right back where we started
before efforts began to rationalize the system.
In a democratic and free society, the people are entitled to be
informed about the activities of their government. State secrets are a
necessary exception to that general principle, but an exception that
should be limited.
When I joined the Intelligence Committee in 1993, I was astonished to
learn that agency heads couldn't say even roughly how much of their
budget was spent on document classification and security. Millions of
documents that posed no real threat to national security were
nonetheless being held under lock and key at tremendous cost to U.S.
taxpayers. Some of the most astonishing examples included documents
about U.S. troop movements in Europe during the First World War, and
documents concerning POW/MIA's in the Korean war. Despite sweeping
changes in the international arena, the classification bureaucracy was
still stuck on autopilot, stamping ``secret'' on nearly 7 million new
documents each year and marking 95 percent of these papers for
indefinite restrictions.
I decided to do something about this. The result was the first ever
accounting of the costs and number of personnel involved in classifying
and maintaining Government secrets. These reports revealed that keeping
millions and millions of accumulated documents secret was keeping
32,400 workers employed and consuming $2.28 billion worth of agency
budgets.
The next year, I took the reform effort one step further, by
requiring agencies to come up with suggestions about how to cut
spending on classification and secrecy. This initiative led to a
government-wide program of cost accounting and expenditure reduction
efforts involving all the agencies that make up the intelligence
community.
[[Page H5393]]
The President consolidated the reform effort with the issuance of
Executive Order 12958 on April 17, 1995. Section 3.4 of the order
requires that, unless grounds for an exemption exist, classified
information contained in records over 25 years old and of permanent
historical value, shall automatically be declassified within 5 years.
Information is exempt from declassification if, among other reasons,
its release likely would: reveal the identity of human sources; impair
U.S. cryptological systems or activities; undermine ongoing diplomatic
activities; or, assist in the development of weapons of mass
destruction.
Congress should work with the administration so that the agencies can
continue to implement classification reform in a cost-effective manner.
Let's not cripple agency efforts to reform just as we're beginning to
turn the tide on the costly sea of secret paper.
My second specific area of concern is the reduction contained in this
bill for the Environmental Intelligence and Applications Program
[EIAP].
The bill would authorize only $6 million for the program,
significantly below the President's request. I think this is a
shortsighted cut, and one that I hope can be addressed either through
Mr. Weldon's proposed amendment today or later in conference. Six
million dollars is not sufficient to carry out the goals of the program
in fiscal year 1997. It would limit the use of intelligence products
for environmental research and could jeopardize environmental
information exchanges with Russia.
The EIAP is clearly responsive to the needs of national policymakers.
It brings unique information to our understanding of global
environmental challenges. And it has provided striking benefits to the
intelligence community in improved technical capabilities of collection
systems. This is a low-cost, high-yield effort which is well supported
among intelligence consumers, both in and out of intelligence agencies.
It should not be singled out for reduction from among all the
analytical efforts of the intelligence community.
One of the main purposes of the EIAP is to ensure that a select group
of the Nation's leading scientists in hydrology, geology, oceanography,
and other earth sciences, are fully briefed on the capabilities and
information resources of the U.S. intelligence agencies. These
scientists, through what is known as the MEDEA Program, in turn bring
their insights and expertise to bear on environmental questions--both
in the civil and national security arenas.
For example, the MEDEA scientists found that imagery from the Corona,
Argon, and Lanyard systems would have particular value to the
environmental sciences, and this contributed to the President's
decision to declassify these images.
The scientists also have worked on experiments to understand how our
intelligence systems can be useful in addressing environmental
questions. With the many billions that have been invested in these
systems, it makes good common sense to use them for additional purposes
that won't detract from their intelligence missions.
In addition, this program has been of particular benefit to the Navy.
The MEDEA group has worked with the Navy's operational and research
oceanographers to address problems in Naval oceanography.
The program also was the catalyst for a cooperative arrangement with
a similar group of scientists from the civil and military sector
established in Russia. The Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission Environmental
Working Group led to the Navy's reaching an agreement with its Russian
counterpart to conduct a survey in the Sea of Okhotsk, an area closer
to continental Russia than has ever before been surveyed by the Navy.
It will lead to the collection of twice the data that could have been
collected unilaterally.
We cannot develop national policies to deal with national and
international environmental threats like decertification, the
destruction of rain forests, global climate degradation, and unsafe
dumping of environmental and nuclear waste, unless our policymakers and
scientists have access to data that identifies where threats are coming
from. The best technology for obtaining this data is already available.
We just need to put it to use.
I think Congress should continue to support the President's bold
initiative to implement a safe and cost effective means of
declassifying documents. And I'm hopeful that we will be able to work
in conference to authorize adequate funding for the Environmental
Intelligence and Applications Program.
I urge passage of the bill.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I would inquire of the Chair of the time
remaining in general debate.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] has 18\1/2\
minutes remaining, and the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] has 16
minutes remaining.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].
(Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise
and extend his remarks.)
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I thank my distinguished
chairman and friend for yielding me the time, and I want to commend
both the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] and the gentleman from
Washington [Mr. Dicks] for their outstanding leadership on intelligence
matters.
Mr. Chairman, I rise as the chairman of the Committee on National
Security's Subcommittee on Military Research and Development. My
subcommittee has joint jurisdiction over at least $9 billion of funding
in this intelligence effort, and so I have a real and genuine interest
in the fine work that is being carried forth by this committee. I
applaud both Members for their bipartisan efforts to support and
enhance the intelligence operations that are so vital to decisions that
we make in the defense community, especially as they relate to missile
to missile technology and those new R&D initiatives that are so
important to allow America to maintain its leadership role.
Mr. Chairman, I will be, however, offering an amendment under title I
today dealing with a shortfall in terms of the funding amount in the
bill for the Environmental Intelligence and Applications Program,
formerly known as the Environmental Task Force.
{time} 1115
This funding has been cut to about one-third to only $6 million.
Several of our colleagues have spoken to the issue. I had been
intimately involved in a firsthand way with this program and think it
would be an absolute travesty if we were to allow this program to be
cut to this level.
In December of last year, Mr. Chairman, my subcommittee held a
hearing, where I had as one of my witnesses Alexei Yablakov. Mr.
Yablakov is a member of the Yeltsin National Security Council for
Environmental Issues. He is a recognized world expert on the 30-year
historical track record of the Soviet Union illegally dumping its
nuclear waste in the Bering Sea, the Sea of Japan, and the Arctic
Ocean. Only because of Yablakov's openness and his advocacy have we in
the West been able to deal with this environmental tragedy.
When Mr. Yablakov came before my subcommittee last December, he in
great detail outlined the specifics of what occurred. Much of the
efforts of Mr. Yablakov and numerous other scientists of the same
caliber is directly attributable to this program, established under the
guise of the Environmental Task Force.
This program has been supported by the administration, specifically
by Vice President Al Gore, who sees it as a top priority, and a cut of
this magnitude in this bill would be devastating.
This program also allows us to pursue an initiative known as MEDEA,
the Measurement of Earth Data for Environmental Assessment, an
extremely important program. In fact, Mr. Chairman, I would like to
enter into the Record pages 41 and 42 of the document dealing with the
scientific utility of naval environmental data, which goes into great
detail with the kinds of initiatives and projects currently funded
through the MEDEA Program. It has the highest support of Navy and in
fact helped lay the foundation for a major new initiative we were able
to place in this year's Defense Authorization Act which passed last
week, a $30 million initiative calling for new partnerships and
oceanographic efforts with the Navy in the lead role. This partnership
effort will also allow us to share technology where available with
other nations, and in particular Russia.
Mr. Chairman, this an important amendment. I would hope that our
colleagues would in fact support the amendment to restore the funding.
Mr. Chairman, one important point of this amendment is that it pays
for itself. In fact, we cut another account, and that is the $25
million for declassifying documents, we cut that by 50 percent. I know
there will be some objections to that cut, Mr. Chairman, but I stand
before this body offering to pay for the increase that in fact I think
is so important and the administration thinks is so important.
I also in the end will have to oppose an effort to not have the
decrease in the declassification program, because if we do not have a
bill payer, that
[[Page H5394]]
means another $12.5 million will have to come someplace out of my
overall R&D budget, which passed on the House floor last week. I have
no idea where that money would come from. I have not been given any
indications as to where those who oppose the decrease in the
declassification accounts would take that money. Therefore, I have to
oppose that as the chairman of the R&D subcommittee.
Even though that is not my main fight, it is critically important
that we not establish this increase which has bipartisan support for
the environmental initiative that is so vitally important, at the same
time decreasing or not having a bill payer, a way to pay for that. My
amendment will have a bill payer, it will have a method for paying for
this initiative, and I would hope that our colleagues will in fact
support the amendment and also would support the bill paying mechanism
that I have identified with the committee staff as an appropriate way
to pay for this initiative.
Mr. Chairman, I thank both my distinguished chairman and ranking
member, and include for the Record the data referred to earlier.
TABLE 8. FIRST TIER OF SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Data Description Scientific utility
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marine gravity.................. Relational Classified marine
database of point gravity data
observations with provide a view
latitude, into the
longitude, underlying
observation time, geological
free air anomaly, structure at very
and gravity short spatial
values, supported wavelengths
with survey, data currently
processing, and inaccessible to
statistical public data.
information. Classified gravity
Includes Lacoste data could be
and Romberg Air- used to address
Sea Gravity Meter three problem
measurements from areas: (1)
1966 to 1983. spatial
Bell Aerospace variations in
BGM-3 and BGM-5 gravity at mid-
gravimeters were ocean ridges, (2)
introduced in mapping of
1969. crustal
thickness, and
(3) the structure
of fracture
zones.
Classified gravity
data would
provide the
information
needed for the
Northern
Hemisphere to
facilitate
research into the
genesis of
Earth's surface.
Current accessibility:
Entirely classified; no public access.
Geomagnetics.................... Consists of both Magnetic surveys
aircraft (Project could be used to
Magnet) and constrain the age
satellite vector of the age of the
data. seafloor
Ship collected accurately, to
data; consists of calculate more
scalar point data accurate plate
by latitude and reconstruction
longitude. rotation
parameters, to
analyze the
Jurassic and
Cretaceous Quiet
Zones, and to
determine the
origin of
intermediate
wavelength
crustal
anomalies.
Current accessibility:
Ship data are classified; no public access; aircraft data are
unclassified.
Classified largely because of association with specific ship tracks
and ship track densities.
Ice keel depth acoustic data.... Measures ice Data are
roughness, ridge significant in
frequency, and their own right,
ice depth (ice and as
draft) below the calibration for
sea surface. satellite-borne
Data are collected instruments.
using upward- Knowledge of the
looking sonar mechanical
starting with the redistribution of
Arctic journey of ice thickness
SNN Nautilus in categories would
1957. improve our
Approximately 50 ability to
data sets exist. forecast ice
conditions for
navigation.
Submarine sonar
profiles might
settle the
question of
whether or not
ice thickness has
undergone a
secular trend.
Current accessibility:
Classified; no public access.
Classified primarily because of the association with specific
submarine tracks and dates.
Marine bathymetry............... A large collection The accuracy of
of ocean undersea current
topography representations
databases. of the seafloor
Gridded digital is not sufficient
databases for many studies.
resulting from The scientific
survey uses of more
measurements, accurate data
many using include
multibeam evaluating the
profilometers. square root
Data as fine as relationship
0.1 arc minute between age and
are available for depth of the
some areas. seafloor.
Availability of
these finely
sampled data
would allow for a
detailed study of
the spatial
variations in
this important
evolutionary
process.
Current accessibility:
Most data having a resolution as high as 1 arc minute are
unclassified.
Data at 0.5 arc minute resolution may be declassified as part of the
classification review of bathymetric data.
That data chosen for release would then be made part of DBDB-V.
Geosat altimetry................ Geosat altimetry Provides important
measures sea reconnaissance
height with world information over
coverage of 72 degrees uncharted areas
latitude and 3.4 such as the
km spacing (1.7 Southern Ocean
km footprint). and Antarctic
3 km track spacing margins.
at the equator. If declassified it
3.5 cm sea height could be used
precision. with the ERS-1
data to improve
the resolving
power beyond the
capabilities of
either data set
alone.
Large bathymetric
features can be
inferred from
altimetry sea
height data.
Current accessibility:
Classified north of 30 S; no public access.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE 9. SECOND TIER OF SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Data Description Scientific utility
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ice morphology.................. Describes sea ice Data would be of
conditions and considerable use
extent over the to
Arctic Outer climatologists;
Continental Shelf. to scientists
Contains studying the near-
information shore transfer of
describing ice pollutants; and
drift and to individuals
movement and studying near-
includes ice edge coastal sea ice
boundary data in dynamics.
hand-drawn charts. Data set would
also be of
particular use to
a variety of U.S.
companies who are
currently faced
with difficult
offshore design
problems for
sites in the
marine Arctic
region.
Current accessibility:
Classified; no public access.
Includes a synthesis of classified and unclassified data.
Seafloor sediment properties.... Consists of a Having these data
collection of available
ocean basin wide digitally is a
sediment starting point
thickness and for additional
sediment type. studies.
Is the first Availability of an
(only) global existing global
seafloor sediment estimate of
thickness sediment
database for thickness and
geological approximate
studies. sediment types
would provide a
background
against which the
quality of future
data could be
assessed and
upgraded.
Current accessibility:
Many of these data are unclassified.
Sediment type and sediment thickness is largely unavailable.
Some sediments data are restricted because of bilateral
international agreements.
Realtime salinity and GOODS contains a Ship observations
temperature fields (GOODS). wide variety of could be adapted
ocean based on the
measurements state of the
collected from ocean, greatly
drifting buoys, increasing the
moorings, ships, efficiency of
and aircraft. costly civilian
These data are sampling
assimilated into resources.
a near realtime Would allow
view of the testing of
oceans. satellite
GOODS contains algorithms for
approximately either sensor
four months of calibration or
global validation.
temperature and As in weather
salinity fields. forecasting,
ocean models
could incorporate
GOODS data into
the nowcast
system.
Techniques could
migrate into
civil systems to
support
commercial and
regulatory needs.
Current accessibility:
Most data incorporated into GOODS are unclassified.
A small fraction are classified data because of locations of
platforms providing the data, rendering the entire database
inaccessible.
Archival temperature and Contains a variety Public domain
salinity fields (MOODS). of ocean transfer
measurements from capability
drifting buoys, already in place
moorings, ships, (NAVOCEANO to
and aircraft. NODC).
Data include Can ensure timely
salinity and progression of
temperature data.
profiles. Availability to
MOODS is the Navy ocean science
archive location community would
for GOODS. increase ocean
data
explorations.
Current accessibility:
Majority of MOODS data are unclassified and eventually enter NODC.
The classified fraction, primarily in the Arctic region, classified
because of platform locations.
Ocean optics and bioluminescence Contains ocean Next-generation
clarity in satellite ocean
specific color sensors
measurement will provide much
locations. better
Bioluminescence measurements in
data more complex coastal
prevalent at waters. Access to
selected both civilian and
measurement sites. operational
Observations databases of in
include both situ observations
underway and on- would
station significantly
measurements. improve the
quality of these
satellite
retrievals.
Could enhance the
usage of less
capable sensors
(less expensive)
in greater
densities or in
areas where loss
of sensors is
likely.
Current accessibility:
Many of these date are classified.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
California [Mr. Dornan], a member of the committee.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Chairman, much of what I intended to say in my
remarks has already been stated. Some of it might be well restated.
First of all, I want to pass out some compliments that I did not tell
anybody I was going to do. But the prior speaker, the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] has developed into a national treasure. I am
talking about you, Mr. Weldon, a national treasure on the way he tracks
the Soviet Union. He is the only Member I know that has been over there
more than the 10 or 11 trips I have made. He leaves me in the dust.
When he speaks on the House floor on problems with all the nations that
were prior Soviet Union nations, Americans had better listen.
I also wanted to thank my chairman, the gentleman from Texas [Mr.
Combest]. I just do not know a chairman that has taken the helm of a
full committee and has steered it on such a straight and critically
important course as my colleague from the great State of Texas.
I do not have time to mention all the staff, but our senior chief of
staff of the professional staff, Mark Lowenthal, is also a national
treasure when it comes to intelligence.
I watched the ``60 Minutes'' show Sunday night. In the open world of
intelligence, the story on Russia was absolutely stunning. It just took
your breath away. We claim to have won the cold war, but that country
is melting down from 2 or 3 abortions to every live birth, to pollution
that waters your eyes from afar; it puts our pollution problems into a
totally different universe.
[[Page H5395]]
The country is just coming apart at the seams, but that does not mean
we should not have a strong intelligence budget, because China, as I
have said many times on this House floor, is still a Communist
dictatorship. It is five times larger than the United States in
population, it is a 6,000-year-old culture, captured by the raw evil of
communism, and they have a mercantile heritage that makes anything the
Soviet Union did look like child's play. They are going to own the next
century, for good or for evil, and our intelligence budget should be
larger than it is.
What the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] has done is amazing. This
year's request was in fact only slightly higher than last year's
request. I think it should have been a lot higher. Some people have
spoken on the floor on the other side of the aisle that they thought we
added too much.
Actually, the request in tactical intelligence-related activities,
joint military intelligence programs, my area as a subcommittee
chairman, there is still too much of a decline in that area. The
request had a large decline, we plussed it up about 10 percent, and all
of these intelligence support activities around the world that support
our men and women, it should be a much larger increase. We did the best
we could to keep the bill bipartisan.
Just one other thing I would like to mention in my prepared remarks,
I wanted to talk about the Bosnian crisis, where I went over with Mike
Meermans last August, evaluated secret programs. On manned systems, we
have added one more J-STARS aircraft, EP-3 Aries 2, and U-2, keeping
that great legendary program alive, RC-135 rivet joint, where Mr.
Meermans has actually active duty experience in the Air Force, all the
less glamorous things. We worked hard on this bill.
Mr. Chairman, I submit 3 pages of proper pride in this excellent
bill. I hope we get a unanimous vote out of this.
Mr. Chairman, in preparation for this bill: we held six full
committee hearings, I chaired a Technical and Tactical Subcommittee
hearing specifically on airborne reconnaissance issues; we received 15
member briefings and our staff received over 200 staff briefings.
This is a bipartisan bill that provides critical intelligence
collection, analysis and reporting support to national and military
decision makers. I would like to point out that this bill provides
specific emphasis in support to military operations: by increasing
funding for airborne reconnaissance development and operations; by
increasing funding for unmanned aerial vehicles to augment current and
future operations; and providing unique, not duplicative, information.
Trend had been a 2-3 percent yearly reduction in intelligence
spending over the 4 years prior to the 1996 authorization. The House
bill reversed that downward trend by increasing the funding over the
President's request by a mere 1.3 percent.
This year's request was, in fact, only slightly higher than last
year's request.
However this request had a large decline, over 5 percent in the
intelligence support activities that directly support our men and women
serving around the world in the U.S. Armed Forces--the intelligence
support provided by the tactical intelligence and related activities
and joint military intelligence programs.
This bill adds funding for many underfunded tactical intelligence
programs critical to keeping our Armed Forces--young men and women--
supplied with the best information this country can supply. In this
intelligence bill, and in concert with the House National Security
Committee's bill which this body approved last week, we have added over
$800M for these purposes.
Bill re-looks the Nations' intelligence needs in the post cold war
era. It has a long term vision to take us well into the 21st century:
Focuses on ``right sizing,'' not ``down sizing,'' the intelligence
collection and analysis capabilities; realizes that the world is not
necessarily a safe place. U.S. interests around the world are changing,
but not decreasing; and the world-wide threat environment is changing.
As is evidenced by our troops being deployed in many areas around the
world: Intelligence operations in continuous use around the globe. For
example: Bosnian crisis; Iraq aggression; and Korean Peninsula.
Focuses on the elimination of expensive one of a kind systems for
more cost effective commercial off-the-shelf systems where possible,
and provides significant funding for improving our manned airborne
reconnaissance platforms, some of which have not realized technical
upgrades in this fast-paced highly technical world since 1992.
On manned systems: RC-135 Rivet Joint, U-2, EP-3 Aries 2; and J-STARS
one extra.
Provides a emphasis on unmanned platforms to decrease the necessity
to put U.S. forces into harms way.
Provides additional funding for the less glamorous and often
overlooked intelligence support systems critical to supporting soldiers
at the individual platoon or squad level: balances collection,
processing operations; emphasizes dissemination of critical information
at the right time, to the right place, in the right quantity, and in
the right form for decision makers.
For basic themes to the bill:
First, evaluate each budgetary line item in the President's request
solely on the program's merits, not a given funding level;
Second, the committee did not work to a specific budget number. That
is, the committee did not specifically fund some programs and then make
offsetting cuts in other programs in order to meet an arbitrary total
dollar figure.
The committee believes the Congress will accept an intelligence
authorization consisting of properly funded programs--even if that
amount is an increase to the intelligence budget.
Third, focused on the production, exploitation and dissemination
functions of intelligence stated above.
Fourth, avoided short-term thinking about intelligence priorities,
needs and capabilities and to look longer range at these issues into
the 21st century.
The numbers in this bill are right sized. This bill provides the
Nation a strong, but not bloated, intelligence community. It makes some
fundamental decisions necessary to take us into the next century. I
urge my colleagues to pass this bill.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
The CHAIRMAN. All time for general debate has expired.
Pursuant to the rule, the committee amendment in the nature of a
substitute printed in the bill shall be considered under the 5-minute
rule by titles, and the first section and each title shall be
considered read.
No amendment to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute
is in order except those printed in the designated place in the
Congressional Record.
The Chairman of the Committee of the Whole may postpone until a time
during further consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request
for a recorded vote on any amendment and may reduce to not less than 5
minutes the time for voting by electronic device on any postponed
question that immediately follows another vote by electronic device
without intervening business, provided that the time for voting by
electronic device on the first in any series of question shall not be
less than 15 minutes.
The Clerk will designate section 1.
The text of section 1 is as follows:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Intelligence Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 1997''.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that
the remainder of the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute
be printed in the Record and open to amendment at any point.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Texas?
There was no objection.
The text of the remainder of the committee amendment in the nature of
a substitute is as follows:
TITLE I--INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES
SEC. 101. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal
year 1997 for the conduct of the intelligence and
intelligence-related activities of the following elements of
the United States Government:
[[Page H5396]]
(1) The Central Intelligence Agency.
(2) The Department of Defense.
(3) The Defense Intelligence Agency.
(4) The National Security Agency.
(5) The Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy,
and the Department of the Air Force.
(6) The Department of State.
(7) The Department of the Treasury.
(8) The Department of Energy.
(9) The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(10) The Drug Enforcement Administration.
(11) The National Reconnaissance Office.
(12) The Central Imagery Office.
SEC. 102. CLASSIFIED SCHEDULE OF AUTHORIZATIONS.
(a) Specifications of Amounts and Personnel Ceilings.--The
amounts authorized to be appropriated under section 101, and
the authorized personnel ceilings as of September 30, 1997,
for the conduct of the intelligence and intelligence-related
activities of the elements listed in such section, are those
specified in the Classified Schedule of Authorizations
prepared to accompany the bill H.R. 3259 of the 104th
Congress.
(b) Availability of Classified Schedule of
Authorizations.--The Schedule of Authorizations shall be made
available to the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate
and House of Representatives and to the President. The
President shall provide for suitable distribution of the
Schedule, or of appropriate portions of the Schedule, within
the executive branch.
SEC. 103. PERSONNEL CEILING ADJUSTMENTS.
(a) Authority for Adjustments.--With the approval of the
Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Director
of Central Intelligence may authorize employment of civilian
personnel in excess of the number authorized for fiscal year
1997 under section 102 when the Director of Central
Intelligence determines that such action is necessary to the
performance of important intelligence functions, except that
the number of personnel employed in excess of the number
authorized under such section may not, for any element of
the intelligence community, exceed two percent of the
number of civilian personnel authorized under such section
for such element.
(b) Notice to Intelligence Committees.--The Director of
Central Intelligence shall promptly notify the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of
Representatives and the Select Committee on Intelligence of
the Senate whenever he exercises the authority granted by
this section.
SEC. 104. COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT ACCOUNT.
(a) Authorization of Appropriations.--There is authorized
to be appropriated for the Intelligence Community Management
Account of the Director of Central Intelligence for fiscal
year 1997 the sum of $93,616,000. Within such amounts
authorized, funds identified in the classified Schedule of
Authorizations referred to in section 102(a) for the Advanced
Research and Development Committee shall remain available
until September 30, 1998.
(b) Authorized Personnel Levels.--The Community Management
Staff of the Director of Central Intelligence is authorized
273 full-time personnel as of September 30, 1997. Such
personnel of the Community Management Staff may be permanent
employees of the Community Management Staff or personnel
detailed from other elements of the United States Government.
(c) Reimbursement.--During fiscal year 1997, any officer or
employee of the United States or a member of the Armed Forces
who is detailed to the Community Management Staff from
another element of the United States Government shall be
detailed on a reimbursable basis, except that any such
officer, employee or member may be detailed on a
nonreimbursable basis for a period of less than one year for
the performance of temporary functions as required by the
Director of Central Intelligence.
(d) Declassification.--In addition to amounts otherwise
authorized to be appropriated by this Act, there is
authorized to be appropriated $25,000,000 for the National
Foreign Intelligence Program for the purposes of carrying out
the provisions of section 3.4 of Executive Order 12958, dated
April 17, 1995.
(e) National Drug Intelligence Center.--In addition to
amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated by this Act,
there is authorized to be appropriated $32,076,000 for the
National Drug Intelligence Center located in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania. Amounts appropriated for such center may not be
used in contravention of the provisions of section 103(d)(1)
of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 403-3(d)(1)).
The National Drug Intelligence Center is authorized 35 full-
time personnel as of September 30, 1997.
(f) Environmental Programs.--In addition to amounts
otherwise authorized to be appropriated by this Act, there is
authorized to be appropriated $6,000,000 for the
Environmental Intelligence and Applications Program, formerly
known as the Environmental Task Force, to remain available
until September 30, 1998.
TITLE II--CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY RETIREMENT AND DISABILITY SYSTEM
SEC. 201. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
There is authorized to be appropriated for the Central
Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability Fund for fiscal
year 1997 the sum of $194,400,000.
TITLE III--GENERAL PROVISIONS
SEC. 301. INCREASE IN EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS
AUTHORIZED BY LAW.
Appropriations authorized by this Act for salary, pay,
retirement, and other benefits for Federal employees may be
increased by such additional or supplemental amounts as may
be necessary for increases in such compensation or benefits
authorized by law.
SEC. 302. RESTRICTION ON CONDUCT OF INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES.
The authorization of appropriations by this Act shall not
be deemed to constitute authority for the conduct of any
intelligence activity which is not otherwise authorized by
the Constitution or the laws of the United States.
SEC. 303. LIMITATION ON AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS FOR AUTOMATIC
DECLASSIFICATION OF RECORDS OVER 25 YEARS OLD.
Section 307 of the Intelligence Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 1996 (109 Stat. 966) is amended by striking out
``fiscal year 1996 by this Act'' in subsection (a) and
inserting in lieu thereof ``any of the fiscal years 1996
through 2000''.
SEC. 304. APPLICATION OF SANCTIONS LAWS TO INTELLIGENCE
ACTIVITIES.
(a) Extension.--Section 905 of the National Security Act of
1947 (50 U.S.C. 441d) is amended by striking out ``on the
date which is one year after the date of the enactment of
this title'' and inserting in lieu thereof ``on January 6,
1998''.
(b) Format Amendments.--Section 904 of such Act (50 U.S.C.
441c) is amended by striking out ``required to be imposed
by'' and all that follows and inserting in lieu thereof
``required to be imposed by any of the following provisions
of law:
``(1) The Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and
Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (title III of Public Law 102-
182).
``(2) The Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994
(title VIII of Public Law 103-236).
``(3) Section 11B of the Export Administration Act of 1979
(50 U.S.C. App. 2410b).
``(4) Chapter 7 of the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C.
2797 et seq.).
``(5) The Iran-Iraq Arms Non-Proliferation Act of 1992
(title XVI of Public Law 102-484).
``(6) The following provisions of annual appropriations
Acts:
``(A) Section 573 of the Foreign Operations, Export
Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1994
(Public Law 103-87; 107 Stat. 972).
``(B) Section 563 of the Foreign Operations, Export
Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1995
(Public Law 103-306; 108 Stat. 1649).
``(C) Section 552 of the Foreign Operations, Export
Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1996
(Public Law 104-107; 110 Stat. 741).
``(7) Comparable provisions.''.
SEC. 305. EXPEDITED NATURALIZATION.
(a) In General.--With the approval of the Director of
Central Intelligence, the Attorney General, and the
Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, an applicant
described in subsection (b) and otherwise eligible for
naturalization may be naturalized without regard to the
residence and physical presence requirements of section
316(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, or to the
prohibitions of section 313 of such Act, and no residence
within a particular State or district of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service in the United States shall be
required: Provided, That the applicant has resided
continuously, after being lawfully admitted for permanent
residence, within the United States for at least one year
prior to naturalization: Provided further, That the
provisions of this section shall not apply to any alien
described in subparagraphs (A) through (D) of section
243(h)(2) of such Act.
(b) Eligible Applicant.--An applicant eligible for
naturalization under this section is the spouse or child of a
deceased alien whose death resulted from the intentional and
unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding
the alien's participation in the conduct of United States
intelligence activities.
(c) Administration of Oath.--An applicant for
naturalization under this section may be administered the
oath of allegiance under section 337(a) of the Immigration
and Nationality Act by the Attorney General or any district
court of the United States, without regard to the residence
of the applicant. Proceedings under this subsection shall be
conducted in a manner consistent with the protection of
intelligence sources, methods, and activities.
(d) Definitions.--For purposes of this section--
(1) the term ``child'' means a child as defined in
subparagraphs (A) through (E) of section 101(b)(1) of the
Immigration and Nationality Act, without regard to age or
marital status; and
(2) the term ``spouse'' means the wife or husband of a
deceased alien referred to in subsection (b) who was married
to such alien during the time the alien participated in the
conduct of United States intelligence activities.
TITLE IV--CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
SEC. 401. MULTIYEAR LEASING AUTHORITY.
Section 5(e) of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949
(50 U.S.C. 403f(e)) is amended to read as follows:
``(e) Make alterations, improvements, and repairs on
premises rented by the Agency and, for the purpose of
furthering the cost-efficient acquisition of Agency
facilities, enter into multiyear leases for up to 15 years
that are not otherwise authorized pursuant to section 8 of
this Act; and''.
SEC. 402. REPEAL OF ADDITIONAL SURCHARGE RELATING TO
EMPLOYEES WHO RETIRE OR RESIGN IN FISCAL YEARS
1998 OR 1999 AND WHO RECEIVE VOLUNTARY
SEPARATION INCENTIVE PAYMENTS.
Section 2 of the Central Intelligence Agency Voluntary
Separation Pay Act (50 U.S.C. 403-4 note) is amended by
striking out subsection (i).
SEC. 403. IMPLEMENTATION OF INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY PERSONNEL
REFORMS.
None of the amounts authorized to be appropriated by this
Act may be used to implement
[[Page H5397]]
any Intelligence Community personnel reform until the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of
Representatives and the Select Committee on Intelligence of
the Senate are fully briefed on such personnel reform.
TITLE V--DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES
SEC. 501. STANDARDIZATION FOR CERTAIN DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES OF EXEMPTIONS FROM
DISCLOSURE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND PERSONNEL
INFORMATION.
(a) Consolidation and Standardization.--Chapter 21 of title
10, United States Code, is amended by striking out sections
424 and 425 and inserting in lieu thereof the following:
``Sec. 424. Disclosure of organizational and personnel
information: exemption for the Defense Intelligence Agency
and National Reconnaissance Office
``(a) Exemption From Disclosure.--Except as required by the
President or as provided in subsection (b), no provision of
law shall be construed to require the disclosure of--
``(1) the organization or any function of the Defense
Intelligence Agency or the National Reconnaissance Office; or
``(2) the number of persons employed by or assigned or
detailed to that Agency or Office or the name, official
title, occupational series, grade, or salary of any such
person.
``(b) Provision of Information to Congress.--Subsection (a)
does not apply with respect to the provision of information
to Congress.''.
(b) Clerical Amendment.--The table of sections at the
beginning of subchapter I of such chapter is amended by
striking out the items relating to sections 424 and 425 and
inserting in lieu thereof the following:
``424. Disclosure of organizational and personnel information:
exemption for the Defense Intelligence Agency and
National Reconnaissance Office.''.
amendment no. 16 offered by mr. mc collum
Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment No. 16 offered by Mr. McCollum:
At the end of title III, insert the following new section:
SEC. 306. SEEKING ENFORCEMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT TO PROTECT
THE IDENTITIES OF UNDERCOVER INTELLIGENCE
OFFICERS, AGENTS, INFORMANTS, AND SOURCES.
It is the sense of the Congress that title VI of the
National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 421 et seq.)
(relating to protection of the identities of undercover
intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources)
should be enforced by the appropriate law enforcement
agencies.
Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that the gentleman
from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson] plans shortly to offer an amendment
that would apparently expand the rights of journalists and protect some
of their interests under this act. I am at the same time of the belief,
which is why I am offering this amendment, that we should have a
reminder in this bill that with constitutional rights also comes some
serious responsibilities, not only for journalists but for all public
officials.
Mr. Chairman, simply stated, my amendment seeks to remind Members of
this body as well as senior law enforcement officials in the executive
branch that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which has been
in effect for nearly 14 years, demands more aggressive enforcement
measures.
In the 1970's, former CIA officer Philip Agee and others opposed to
U.S. intelligence activities embarked on a campaign to expose the
identities of CIA officers. In publications such as ``Counterspy'' and
``Covert Action Information Bulletin'' they revealed not only the
methodologies employed by the CIA to establish cover but also
identities of scores of officers serving overseas.
The Congressional response to this problem was the enactment in 1982
of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, 50 U.S.C. 421 et seq.
sections 421(a) and 421(b) of the act make it an offense for persons
who have had authorized access to classified information that either
identifies a covert officer or through which such activities can be
learned to disclose identifying information to an individual not
authorized to receive classified information. The Government must prove
that the disclosure was made with the knowledge that the information
identifies the covert officer and that the United States is taking
affirmative measures to conceal the covert officer's intelligence
relationship.
Section 421(c) does not require that the offender had authorized
access to classified information. It is aimed at the Agee-style
exposure of covert identities and proves as follows:
Whoever in the course of a pattern of activities intended
to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to
believe that such activities would impair or impede the
foreign intelligence activities of the United States
discloses any information that identifies an individual as a
covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive
classified information knowing that the information disclosed
so identifies such individual and that the United States is
taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual's
classified intelligence relationship to the United States
shall be fined not more than $150,000 or imprisoned not more
than three years or both * * *
Section 421(c) places particular emphasis on a discloser's ``pattern
of activities'' which could include seeking unauthorized access to
classified information counterintelligence activities such as physical
or electronic surveillance or the systematic collection of information
``for the purpose of identifying the names of agents.'' Section 421(c)
also requires that the government prove that the discloser had reason
to believe that the activities in which he was engaged would impair
U.S. foreign intelligence activities.
Having summarized the relevant provisions of the act, I wanted to
take this opportunity to express my concern about the apparent
unwillingness of the Justice Department to enforce this particular law
in several recent cases involving public officials and journalists.
Because of the obvious sensitivity involved in naming names of
intelligence officers, I will refrain from providing details on the
security investigations and potential cases that have been set aside
for a variety of reasons by the Justice Department. Nevertheless, I am
most concerned that a significant number of unauthorized disclosures of
U.S. intelligence agents and assets in the U.S. media during the past
year or so have resulted in significant and measurable damage to our
intelligence capabilities in Latin America and Europe. A more
aggressive enforcement posture by the Department of Justice would do
much to reassure our allies and restore the confidence of our public
servants who are serving as intelligence officers in often hazardous
assignments.
Mr. Chairman, I strongly urge a ``yes'' vote in favor of this
amendment as a signal from the House that enforcement of this act will
be a national security priority, and that we intend to oversee in that
the Justice Department vigorously enforce this act. It must be
enforced, and I urge a yes vote on the sense of the Congress resolution
that is encompassed in this amendment.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to rise and say the gentleman from
Florida [Mr. McCollum] is a very valuable member of the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence as well as the Committee on the
Judiciary. I wholeheartedly endorse this effort in a consent of
Congress, and would certainly be willing to accept the amendment.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. COMBEST. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to compliment the chairman and the
gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum]. I believe that all of our laws
should be properly enforced, and in that spirit we will accept the
amendment.
{time} 1130
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum].
The amendment was agreed to.
amendment no. 7 offered by mr. dicks
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment No. 7 offered by Mr. Dicks:
At the end of title V, add the following:
SEC. 502. TIER III MINUS UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE.
In addition to the amounts authorized to be appropriated by
title I, there is authorized to be appropriated an additional
$22,000,000 for the tier III minus unmanned aerial vehicle.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] has a
perfecting amendment to my amendment.
My amendment would authorize an additional $22 million for the
endurance unmanned aerial vehicle known as Darkstar. This funding is
needed to recover from the loss of the first vehicle during flight
testing, which took place
[[Page H5398]]
just before we marked up this bill in committee. At that time, we did
not have good information from the Department of Defense on the impact
of the crash, so the report accompanying the bill includes language
which reserved the committee's right to revisit this issue as better
information became available. While the accident investigation is still
not quite completed, DOD has been able to provide a good estimate of
what the cost impact is likely to be. DOD has determined that there
will be a delay in getting the second aircraft ready for flight, and in
carrying out the necessary set of flight tests once testing is resumed.
During this period, a substantial engineering team must be sustained
and the amendment will provide the funds necessary to do that. I urge
the adoption of this amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
amendment offered by mr. combest to the amendment offered by mr. dicks
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Combest to the amendment offered
by Mr. Dicks: In proposed section 502, add at the end the
following: ``The Secretary of Defense may not obligate or
expend any of these funds until after the Secretary submits
to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the
House of Representatives and the Select Committee on
Intelligence of the Senate a detailed cost analysis and
report on specifically how these funds will be used.''
Mr. COMBEST (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment to the amendment be considered as read and
printed in the Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, the perfecting amendment to the Dicks
amendment would simply indicate that the Secretary of Defense may not
obligate or spend any of the funds until the Secretary has submitted to
the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House and Select
Committee on Intelligence of the Senate a detailed cost analysis and
report on specifically how the funding would be used.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last work.
Mr. Chairman, I want to tell the gentleman I will be glad to accept
his amendment. I want to say I have no problem at all with the
additional language proposed by the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest].
In fact, I hope DOD would respond even before the conference on this
bill.
I want to stress that nothing in this amendment inhibits DOD in any
way from recommending again that a replacement air vehicle be made a
high priority in the coming fiscal year. Report language already
accompanying the bill, as I noted previously, serves notice the
committee will continue to examine this program's need carefully prior
to conference.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I want to say to the gentleman that, as
amended, I would be very willing to accept the amendment of the
gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I am willing to accept my amendment, as
amended by the chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] to the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks].
The amendment to the amendment was agreed to.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks], as amended.
The amendment, as amended, was agreed to.
amendment offered by mr. weldon of pennsylvania
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Weldon of Pennsylvania: In section
104--
(1) in subsection (d), strike ``$25,000,000'' and insert in
lieu thereof ``$12,500,000''; and
(2) in subsection (f), strike ``$6,000,000'' and insert in
lieu thereof ``$18,500,000''.
(Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise
and extend his remarks.)
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished
chairman of the committee and the subcommittee, the ranking member, for
agreeing to work with me on this amendment, which is an extremely
important amendment that has been discussed by Members of both sides of
the aisle.
The amendment would restore significant cuts that were made in the
bill to the Environmental Intelligence Applications Program, formerly
known as the Environmental Task Force. The funding level in the bill
has been cut to about one-third of the request, or only $6 million,
and, to me, that is really totally unacceptable for a program that is
providing not only information for the public good but having
tremendous benefits for our national security as well.
I mentioned during earlier discussion, Mr. Chairman, that last year I
had a leading scientist from Boris Yeltsin's National Security Council
come to America to testify on the problem of the Russian nuclear waste
disposal. I have worked with Mr. Yablakov over the past 2 years, and he
is one of the outstanding scientists who has been very candid in
helping us assess the environmental problems and security implications
of those problems and how we can address them.
In fact, because of the revelations of Mr. Yablakov and the Yablakov
report that was produced for Mr. Yeltsin 3 years ago, we were able to
put money into DOD's bill to actually work with the Russians up in the
North Sea and the Bering Sea to help them find ways to deal with their
nuclear waste storage and disposal problem.
So this program is of vital interest for our security as well as our
relationship with Russia. It has tremendous environmental implications.
This program, which is operated by the intelligence community, has
also been the leading driving force behind the MEDEA Program, which is
a program that has paid tremendous dividends to our defense
establishment in understanding data relative to the oceans of the
world, but also allowing us to take information that up until now has
been classified and use that for environmental purposes.
In fact, we have a group of some 60 leading scientists who have been
working both with the Russian side and with our side on some of the
environmental problems relative to the oceans; and we have also,
through the MEDEA Program, we have allowed American scientists access
to high level information which not only protects our national security
but has paid tremendous dividends in helping us more fully understand
the environmental implications of those decisions that we make. These
programs are vital.
Mr. Chairman, I will submit for the Record the President's message on
this bill, the paragraph that refers specifically to the
administration's concern with the reduction in this program.
I appreciate the support of my friend and colleague, the gentleman
from Washington [Mr. Dicks] and the comments of the gentleman from
Colorado [Mr. Skaggs]. I understand there is some concern about the
bill paying portion of this. My understanding is that the two leaders
of this committee have agreed to work this out. I have no problem with
that.
As chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee, I
am concerned about an action that we take that would have a negative
impact on the R&D overall budget, but I am certainly willing to let
these gentlemen work that issue out and have confidence that the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] and the gentleman from Washington
[Mr. Dicks] can work the funding issue out in a way that would not
disrupt our R&D portion of the defense bill that we passed last week.
So, Mr. Chairman, I would encourage our colleagues to support this
amendment. It is vital. And I want to thank the chairman of the
committee and the ranking member, as well as the gentleman from
Colorado [Mr. Skaggs] and everyone else for their support of this
important environmental initiative. I think it is vital not just for
our national security but it is also vital for a better understanding
of environmental implications relative to classified data.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I want
to commend the gentleman for his amendment.
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
[[Page H5399]]
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Chairman, I echo the comments of the gentleman from
Washington. I appreciate the gentleman from Pennsylvania's very helpful
efforts to plus up the Environmental Intelligence Applications Program
account. In discussions that we have just had on the floor, I think
there is an understanding that there may be some unintended
consequences in the offset that the gentleman proposes, an
understanding that we can, I think, reach satisfactory resolution to
this problem between now and conference, or in conference.
One ironic consequence, I think, flows from the fact that these two
programs are positively linked, not negatively linked. That is, if we
cut the declassification efforts, it could get in the way of
declassifying some of the Corona product that, under the MEDEA Program,
we want to make available.
So I appreciate the efforts on the part of all concerned to both deal
with the gentleman's very commendable efforts to augment the
environmental effort and not have it negatively affect the
declassification efforts.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to say to my colleague from
Pennsylvania that the one thing I worry about with regard to
declassifying, and why it is such an important issue, if we do not do
the job of looking through all these documents, we might inadvertently
declassify some information that could be harmful to the country. That
is why having this process is important.
I do not want to cloud the issue here today. We are prepared to
accept the gentleman's amendment. We compliment him on it. This is a
very important program to the director and to the vice president, and I
want to commend the gentleman for his amendment.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to say we will be very happy to work in
getting this amendment cleared up. I do rise in strong support of the
amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania and recognize the
significance and importance of both the declass and the environmental
funding to certain members of our committee and will try to make
certain that that concern is accommodated.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].
The amendment was agreed to.
The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to the bill?
Amendment Offered by Mr. RICHARDSON
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Richardson: At the end of title
III, insert the following new section:
SEC. 306. PROHIBITION ON USING JOURNALISTS AS AGENTS OR
ASSETS.
An element of the Intelligence Community may not use as an
agent or asset for the purposes of collecting intelligence
any individual who--
(1) is authorized by contract or by the issuance of press
credentials to represent himself or herself, either in the
United States or abroad, as a correspondent of a United
States news media organization; or
(2) is officially recognized by a foreign government as a
representative of a United States media organization.
Mr. RICHARDSON (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
New Mexico?
There was no objection.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, on April 28 of this year the Tampa, FL,
Tribune published an editorial entitled ``Don't Recruit Journalists As
Spies.'' The editorial argued forcefully that only a blanket
prohibition against their use as intelligence agents or assets was
likely to minimize the risk to American journalists or representatives
of American media organizations who are suspected of being spies by
governments or individuals with whom they must deal in dangerous parts
of the world. Describing the circumstances in which foreign
correspondents must work the Tribune said, ``They die in combat. They
are killed by governments intent on silencing them. And they are
imprisoned and sometimes killed when they are suspected of being spies.
That is what happened to our colleague, Tampa Tribune reporter Todd
Smith, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1989 while on a working
vacation in Peru. Shining Path guerrillas killed him because they
didn't believe he was a journalist and thought he was a spy.''
No amendment can guarantee the safety of Americans traveling or
working abroad, especially when their work puts them in contact with
terrorist groups or representatives of despotic regimes. The amendment
I am offering, however, can enhance the safety of American journalists
by removing the suspicion that rather than being reporters gathering
information for their newspapers, they are operatives of American
intelligence.
Under current CIA regulations, journalists are not to be used as
intelligence agents or assets. The regulations do, however, permit the
prohibition to be waived when the Director of Central Intelligence
determines that national security interests compel that result. My
amendment would codify the prohibition without providing the waiver
authority. Adoption of the amendment will ensure that neither the
independence guaranteed to the press by the Constitution nor the lives
of journalists are endangered by blurring the distinction between
reporters as commentators on government and reporters as instruments of
government. As the New York Times editorialized on March 18, ``If the
United States Government does not honor that distinction, who anywhere
will believe that it really exists?''
Mr. Chairman, current CIA regulations prohibit the use of active
Peace Corps volunteers and members of the clergy as intelligence
agents. The prohibitions are absolute. They cannot be waived. The
prohibitions recognize the risk to the lives of Peace Corps volunteers
in some countries if they were believed to be working for the CIA and
the constitutional separation of church and state in our country which
would be endangered if members of the clergy were seen as Government
agents.
Current CIA regulations prohibit the use of journalists as
intelligence agents but that prohibition is waivable.
{time} 1145
Reporters working overseas are in every bit as much danger, perhaps
even more, as Peace Corps volunteers, if they are suspected of being
spies.
Mr. Chairman, every journalist, every journalist entity, and
editorial board supports this amendment. It is my judgment that the DCI
and the intelligence community can use it usefully. I am a strong
supporter of the DCI and the CIA. But I think that when it comes to
this issue, it is important that we have some clear distinctions.
Why then is there a distinction in CIA regulations between
journalists on the one hand and Peace Corps volunteers and members of
the clergy on the other? Intelligence officials claim that, while they
do not want to use journalists as agents, they need to retain the
option for situations so extraordinary that they cannot be described.
A better way to promote the safety of American journalists and
preserve their independence is to prohibit their being employed as
intelligence agents. Mr. Chairman, at some point I will be prepared to
entertain an amendment that I believe achieves our mutual objectives
and would enable this provision to be accepted.
Mr. Chairman, this is a good amendment. It is supported by every
journalist, every newspaper, every reporter. It is within our
constitutional prerogatives. It makes sense. I do not think it would
hamper our intelligence objectives overseas.
[From the Tampa Tribune, Apr. 28, 1996]
Don't Recruit Journalists As Spies
CIA Director John Deutch has done it again. In February he
was questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee about
whether he would recruit journalists as spies, and he refused
to say flatly that his agency would not.
He has repeated that position again in a letter to news
executives in response to widespread complaints by the press
and electronic media, who fear that his stance puts their
foreign correspondents in danger. Deutch wrote that he had no
intention of using journalists or news credentials as a
cover, but then qualified his position by saying he reserved
the right to do so and would consider it under ``genuinely
extraordinary'' circumstances.
[[Page H5400]]
Unfortunately, nothing short of a blanket prohibition is
likely to work in the dangerous circumstances encountered by
reporters traveling and working abroad. The CIA has an
unshakable prohibition against using the Peace Corps as a
cloak for its undercover missions. That is done for the
obvious reason that Peace Corps volunteers would be in grave
danger if their host nations or partisans in some foreign
conflict suspected them of being spies. According to Quill
magazine, a presidential order issued in 1977 prohibited the
use of journalists and members of the clergy as spies, but
apparently there are loopholes in that restriction.
The news media should be put in that same restricted
category as the Peace Corps. Under the best of circumstances,
international reporting is a dangerous endeavor. At least 50
journalists died in 1995 while covering conflicts in such
places as Algeria and Chechnya; the year before, the number
killed was 103.
They die in combat. They are killed by governments intent
on silencing them. And they are imprisoned and sometimes
killed when they are suspected of being spies.
That is what happened to our colleague, Tampa Tribune
reporter Todd Smith, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1989
while on a working vacation in Peru. Shinning Path guerrillas
killed him because they didn't believe he was a journalist
and thought he was a spy.
On the surface, the desire for a blanket statement from
Deutch ruling out the use of journalists and news
organizations may strike some as unpatriotic. After all, why
shouldn't reporters help their country gather intelligence
about a potential foe?
It is not that reporters, editors, publishers and
broadcasters are any less patriotic than other Americans. It
is a question of national priorities.
The information provided by journalists is vitally
important to the health of the nation. U.S. citizens depend
upon a steady, reliable supply of news about foreign affairs.
That continued relationship far outweighs the significance of
whatever intelligence might be uncovered by a reporter
working as a spy or a spy pretending to be a journalist.
The government has numerous alternative means of gathering
information. But journalists need only slip up once and it
will ruin their reputation for independence. After that, they
will never be trusted and will be in grave danger in many
nations.
American citizens need to know the truth about what is
taking place around the world. Often their tax dollars are
involved, their international export markets affected, and
sometimes their lives and those of their children are on the
line. People cannot make sound judgments without solid
information from independent news media.
____
[From the Indianapolis News, Apr. 23, 1996]
Spies (Who Act) Like Us
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency continues to cling to
a policy that both contradicts its own regulations and
clearly puts the lives of American journalists in danger.
Last week, reports from the Associated Press revealed that
CIA Director John Deutch made the agency's intentions clear
in a letter to Louis D. Boccardi, president and chief
executive officer of The Associated Press, and W. Thomas
Johnson, president of Cable News Network.
Deutch wrote. ``We do not use American journalists as
agents or American news organizations for cover, nor do I
have any intention of doing so.
``As you know, past DCI's (directors of central
intelligence) have reserved the right to make exceptions to
this policy. The circumstances under which I--or, I believe,
any DCI--would make an exception to this policy would have to
be genuinely extraordinary.''
In other words, if the CIA wants to use the media as cover
for its secret agents or recruit journalists to be spies, it
will.
Such a policy and the suspicion it breeds not only
endangers the lives of journalists but greatly hinders them
from doing their jobs of news gathering, particularly in
foreign lands.
The CIA's justification for keeping its ``extraordinary''
exception contradicts its mission of protecting American's
security and American lives.
In February, when Deutch appeared before the Senate
Intelligence Committee, he sympathized with the journalistic
community. But he maintained that ``directors of central
intelligence have to also concern themselves with perhaps
very unique and special threats to national security where
American lives are at risk.''
If Deutch and other top CIA officials cannot bring
themselves to retract these statements and make a clear, firm
commitment to the contrary, then President Bill Clinton
should step in and do so himself.
Already journalists, and particularly journalists working
in foreign countries, face enough threats. They don't need
the CIA to continue to saddle them with unnecessary risk.
Many journalists taken hostage have suffered unjustly
because their captors thought they might be part of the CIA.
Last November, for instance, when Bosnian Serb rebels held
Christian Science Monitor reporter David Rohde hostage for
almost two weeks, they continually asked him if he was a CIA
agent.
And don't forget Terry Anderson, an Associated Press
correspondent held in Lebanon for seven years. He said his
captors asked him who his CIA contact was within the AP.
The CIA must reverse itself on the issue of using
journalists as cover or as agents. And if it won't, the
president should intervene.
____
[From the St. Petersburg Times, Mar. 25, 1996]
Dangerous Deceptions
Terry Anderson, the Associated Press correspondent who was
held hostage in Lebanon for almost seven years, says his
captors never believed that he was simply a journalist.
Anderson says the Muslim terrorists who imprisoned him
``believe all Americans are spies, particularly those who go
around asking questions.''
That common belief in much of the rest of the world creates
obvious dangers for journalists and other Americans traveling
abroad. It certainly made life even more unpleasant for
Anderson during his harsh confinement. Unfortunately, the
CIA's own rules unnecessarily feed such suspicions about the
integrity and credibility of American journalists working in
foreign countries.
CIA Director John Deutch continues to defend rules that
give him and his deputy the discretion to employ American
journalists as spies, or to allow CIA agents to pose as
journalists. Deutch and his predecessors have said they would
use such tactics only in cases involving extraordinary
threats to national security. However, the CIA's insistence
on those exceptions creates unacceptable risk for innocent
American citizens and does violence to one of our most
revered constitutional principles.
The American press' clear independence from government is
fundamental to a truly free society, but the CIA's rules blur
those lines. Journalists can't do their jobs properly if
sources have reason to believe that they might really be
speaking to a government agent.
This is not an issue that concerns only journalists. Every
American who travels abroad is endangered by the CIA policy.
Business executives, Peace Corps workers and ordinary
tourists come under suspicion from governments and groups who
fear the influence of American intelligence. Most such fears
are unfounded, but the CIA policy feeds paranoia in other
countries.
The policy is a vestige of the Cold War, when government
routinely recruited journalists and other citizens for
intelligence work. Many former journalists bear
responsibility for willingly participating in such schemes.
However, representatives of national press organizations are
now unanimous in their opposition to the CIA's policy.
The CIA should not be allowed to recruit journalists for
spying activity, nor should it permit agents to pose as
journalists. Period. Otherwise, the safety of American
citizens abroad and the integrity of the Constitution at home
are left to the whim of the CIA director and his deputy.
____
[From the New York Times, Mar. 21, 1996]
Journalists Aren't the Only Risky C.I.A. Cover
Washington, March 19, 1996.
Re ``No Press Card for Spies'' (editorial, March 18).
To The Editor: Do you think it wrong if journalists are
used as cover by the Central Intelligence Agency, but all
right for others to have integrity and lives put in question?
Members of the clergy and Peace Corps volunteers were also
singled out by the Council on Foreign Relations' Intelligence
Task Force project director as potential candidates for
C.I.A. cover, but you say nothing in their defense.
They and others--for example, human rights monitors and
relief workers--work abroad in dangerous areas.
The mere suspicion of association with the C.I.A. will make
them as vulnerable as journalists to arrest and questioning
and, much worse, will call into question the integrity of the
institutions they represent.
Not a few members of the Council on Foreign Relations,
myself included, were deeply disturbed by the task force's
proposal. Our concern was not just for its impact on
journalists.
Roberta Cohen.
____
[From the New York Times, Mar. 18, 1996]
No Press Cards for Spies
An old debate has been needlessly revived in a report on
intelligence sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.
The report, prepared under the guidance of the project's
director, Richard Haass, a former Government official, calls
for reviewing ``a number of legal and policy constraints'' on
clandestine operations dating to the 1970's. Those
constraints chiefly concern the use of spies posing as
reporters and the employment of bona fide reporters for
intelligence missions. Both practices were all but banned
then, and should be prohibited now.
During the cold war, a pattern of informal collaboration
developed between some journalists and the Central
Intelligence Agency. Foreign correspondents and C.I.A.
station chiefs sometimes swapped information In 1976, a
Senate committee headed by Frank Church learned that this
practice had gotten out of hand. Fifty journalists at various
times had been paid by the C.I.A., and many more were used as
``unwitting sources.''
There is no record of New York Times correspondents having
financial relationships with the C.I.A., and the newspaper,
along with other news organizations, has taken steps to
eliminate the kind of informal information-sharing that went
on early in the cold war.
[[Page H5401]]
The Church committee disclosure caused a justifiable
uproar, resulting in a statement by George Bush, then
Director of Central Intelligence, that the agency would not
enter into any paid relationship with any full- or part-time
correspondent accredited to a United States news
organization. In November 1977, his successor, Adm.
Stansfield Turner, put this prohibition in writing. The
Turner regulation provided that the C.I.A. would not employ
journalists for intelligence work but unwisely said
exceptions could be made with the specific approval of the
C.I.A. director.
Admiral Turner says that during the 1980 Iranian crisis,
the agency considered making such an exception but that it
did not prove necessary. No waivers have been approved by the
current Director, according to the C.I.A. There is no
information on waivers during the intervening years.
The prohibition on paying accredited journalists for
intelligence work should be absolute. The same applies to
issuing bogus press credentials to a covert agent. Such a
firewall is essential, first of all, to protect foreign
correspondents, whose job of questioning and probing makes
them especially vulnerable to arrest by hostile regimes.
But more broadly, using reporters as agents offends and
confounds the principles of American democracy. Under
constitutional protections, the press is the chronicler of
and check on government, not its instrument. If the United
States Government does not honor that distinction, who
anywhere will believe that it really exists?
____
[From the Chicago Tribune, Mar. 11, 1996]
Journalists Cannot Be Used As Spies
It long has been debated whether the second-oldest
profession is journalism or espionage, and the two do have
many purposes in common: to gather great heaps of
information, often in hostile environments or from
antagonistic sources; to synthesize the key elements of the
data; to present the information to an audience that relies
on it in making critical decisions.
But there the similarities end. Journalists file their
reports for anybody in the world willing to part with the
price of their product, while spies practice their art solely
in service of their presidents and potentates.
Journalists are held to high standards of professional
conduct; only in the movies can a reporter build a reputation
on stealing documents from the mayor's desk, seducing a
secretary for the inside corporate dope or pouring whiskey
down a nosy building superintendent who keeps his eye to the
keyhole. Contrast that to the world of espionage, with its
vast array of space-age eavesdropping equipment and its slush
funds for passing around bribes, buying information outright
and setting up honey traps.
Great nations have legitimate national interests that
warrant the use of secret services. And the citizens of great
nations like the United States have the constitutional right
to a free press that serves the national interest by
contributing to a well-informed electorate.
That's why recent comments by John Deutch, the director of
central intelligence, are so worrisome. In testimony before
Congress, Deutch disclosed that the CIA retains the right to
solicit U.S. journalists as spies and to give his own
operatives forged press passes to pose as working journalists
to conduct surreptitious investigations and undertake covert
activities.
Although the use of journalists, clergy and Peace Corps
workers as spies is banned by federal law, Deutch said
``unique and special threats to national security'' might
make it necessary to ``consider the use of a journalist in an
intelligence operation.''
Deutch is wrong and should immediately announce a blanket
ban on using journalists as spies. American journalists can
and should serve but one master: the American public. Any
blurring of that line by intelligence services jeopardizes
the lives of real journalists and their ability to inform
their readers and viewers.
Every reporter stopped by armed thugs at a military
checkpoint knows the inherent personal danger posed by
Deutch's announcement; citing Deutch's own statements, mad
militiamen will feel freer to interrogate, incarcerate--and
even execute--bona fide reporters with the verve and nerve to
cover combat.
Likewise, inquisitive reporters who are ``invited in for a
chat'' after filing accurate reports on a dictatorial regime
know the first question asked by the despot's henchmen is:
``Who is your CIA master?''
Journalists can and do swap rumors, fact and analysis with
intelligence officers, whether dining in a Paris bistro,
walking in Gorky Park or chatting on the line to Langley.
These relationships are built upon trust and a shared desire
to get the best information.
That is a far cry from enlisting journalists to carry out
CIA jobs or by passing off agency operatives as working
backs. Journalists cannot be used as spies.
____
[From the Sacramento Bee, Mar. 8, 1996]
Spy Vs. Spy, With Journalists in the Middle
(Anna Husarska)
My nonassociation with the CIA started 12 years ago. It was
in the war-emptied ghost town of Tenancingo, El Salvador,
that I was accused of being a CIA spy by local guerrillas who
I visited as administrator of a French humanitarian mission.
My first journalistic nonassociation with the CIA dates
from Christmas week of 1991, which I spent in detention in
Cuba, mostly in a squalid interrogation room where I was
repeatedly asked by a major from the interior ministry why I
wouldn't simply confess to spying for the CIA. I told him
that he must be crazy, that the agency's own regulations had
forbidden employing or posing as journalists since 1977,
following a scandal involving CIA use of reporters.
I repeated the same arguments in 1993, after I was stopped
at gunpoint with several other hacks in Pale, the so-called
Bosnian Serb capital. We were all accused of being on a spy
mission. Earlier that year, the Haitian supporters of then-
exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide accused me of being
on the CIA payroll; I told them that the opinion article that
so infuriated them was my own idea.
In 1994, I was accused of being a CIA spy because, with two
other journalists, both Russian, I crossed the Abkhazia/
Georgia border when there was some fighting going on. What
would I be doing there if not spying for the CIA? My two
fellow travelers had a bottle of vodka and--there is no limit
to Russian resourcefulness--an open can of sardines in tomato
sauce for an appetizer. In pouring rain, we carried these
goodies into the checkpoint and suspicion disappeared with
the sardines.
Then, in October 1995, while I was taking photographs of
paramilitary formations in Serbia at the invitation of the
Serb commanders, the press secretary of a local warlord
accused me of gathering material for the CIA.
Every time, I countered in good faith that the CIA did not
employ journalists, nor did it have spies pretending to be
journalists. So two weeks ago when I heard CIA Director John
M. Deutch defend a long-standing policy allowing clandstine
officers, under ``extraordinary circumstances,'' to waive
regulations and pose as reporters or to use reporters as
informers. I felt kind of outspooked.
Henceforth, I will not be able to laugh off thugs, warlords
and police officers in totalitarian states when they accuse
me of being a CIA spy. Nor can I be confident in pointing out
my two non-U.S. passports and protesting that I have no
loyalty links to the United States and even less with the
CIA. The Washington Post reported that whatever prohibitions
existed against recruiting journalists ``have never applied
to foreign journalists, whom the CIA still looks to recruit,
according to sources familiar with the matter.''
If the stain of suspicion is on all journalists, then those
foreign sources (official or not) who want to deny access to
media will have an excuse to do so. And the truth is, policy-
makers can ill afford to lose any reporting from the honest
news media. God forbid they should have to depend only on
what the spies know.
After many interviews with Western military and civilian
intelligence personnel in Haiti and then in Bosnia, I
realized that they often pooh-pooh journalism as unclassified
information not worthy of their attention. In Haiti, for
instance, the press reported consistently that the
paramilitary organiaztion called FRAPH were murderous thugs,
a direct heir to the feared Tontons Macoutes. The CIA
maintained that they were just another political party, and
told that to the U.S. forces arriving there as peacekeepers
in 1994. As a result, the Americans saw no need to neutralize
FRAPH, tainting their democratic image with the locals.
I was not too surprised either when a U.S. Marine
intelligence captain and a civilian intelligence expert from
the Defense Department with whom I flew from Tuzla to
Sarajevo in February assured me that the shuttle that they
were taking from the airport would be stopping ``right in
front of the Hotel Serbia'' in central Sarajevo. Now, to have
a Hotel Serbia in the center of Sarajevo these days is about
as likely as a Hotel Hanoi in Saigon in 1972. Stupidity is
the most charitable interpretation on these large and small
idiocies.
One can only hope that the intelligence community will make
an intelligent decision and start using journalists' work,
not their identities.
____
[From the Baltimore Sun, Mar. 5, 1996]
One Boundary Too Dangerous for the Press to Cross
(By Clarence Page)
Washington--I was appalled to discover the Central
Intelligence Agency can secretly recruit journalists and
clergy as spies. People all over the planet already have
enough reasons to hate us journalists. Why add another one?
Too many people have too hard of a time telling the
difference between journalists and spies as it is: our jobs
are so similar.
Both are assigned to get information the government or the
organization that is being reported on or spied on doesn't
want them to know.
Of course, there are significant differences. The sort of
information that can get you a Pulitzer Prize in this country
can get you shot in someone else's. That is why, if we are to
spread the blessings of liberty with any success, we must be
scrupulous in the way we distinguish independent journalists
from government employers.
That's not an easy distinction for much of the world to
grasp. Freedom of the press, like brokered political
conventions or the designated hitter, is a concept that is
not
[[Page H5402]]
easily understood by those who did not grow up with it.
Consider the difficulty I had trying to explain my role to
some university intellectuals in Tanzania while I was
traveling around Africa as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune
in the mid-1970s.
``Is your newspaper a government newspaper or a party
newspaper?'' one professor asked. He appeared to be genuinely
curious.
Neither, I said. It is a big independent newspaper.
``Big?'' said the other. ``It is a government newspaper?''
No, I said. It is a big private newspaper.
``But what party publishes it?''
Parties don't publish major newspapers in America. In
America, I explained, quoting A.J. Liebling, the press is
free to whoever owns one.
``But what party do the owners of your newspaper belong
to,'' one said.
That's not supposed to matter, I said. The only bias that
is supposed to matter is the bias in favor of a good story.
They looked at me incredulously. I have grown accustomed to
that look from Americans. How, I wondered, could I ever
persuade Tanzanians that America's press was not beholden to
some higher political power when I could not always persuade
my fellow Americans?
After all, I already had become accustomed to assuming that
any ``journalist'' was a spy (and, at the same time, an
unofficial government spokesperson) if he or she carried
credentials from the Soviet Union, mainland China or any
similar totalitarian regime.
Rare exceptions.
Regulations passed in 1977 in the wake of Watergate
prohibit the practice of using journalists as spies for the
United States. But current CIA Director John M. Deutch
revealed a loophole during recent Senate hearings. That
loophole allows the CIA to secretly waive the regulations in
``extraordinarily rate'' circumstances and use journalistic
or media cover for intelligence activities.
It's a terrible idea. Even with Senate oversight, the
practice of recruiting journalists or clergy casts a
dangerous shadow of suspicion over all American journalists
who operate overseas.
Yet, Mr. Deutch defended the practice. Since 1977, he said,
according to the Associated Press, the agency has been
operating under rules that ``will not use journalists except
under--American journalists--except under very, very rare
circumstances.''
How, asked Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, would he define those ``rare
circumstances?''
Mr. Deutch offered two hypothetical examples: ``One would
be where you had a journalist involved in a situation where
terrorists were holding U.S. hostages . . . journalists might
have tremendously unique access in such a situation . . . or
where there was a particular access to a nation or a group
who had an ability to use weapons of mass destruction against
the U.S.''
Well, you have to wonder how much access journalists will
have, once outlaw governments or terrorist groups get the
idea that the journalist may very well be an informant for an
agency that has undermined governments throughout the world.
Arnett's example
Let us not forget CNN's Peter Arnett, who reported live
daily from Baghdad during the Persian Gulf war. Despite the
worry warts back home who criticized Mr. Arnett every time he
reported the Baghdad's government point of view, Pentagon
officials said afterward that Mr. Arnett's live pictures
actually helped Defense Department assess the effectiveness
of their bombing.
That's how it is supposed to work.
In the course of doing their job, journalists can help the
efforts of their host government, but that is not their
primary purpose.
Some people have trouble telling the difference between
spies and reporters. But there is a difference. Let's not
fuzz it up.
amendment offered by mr. murtha to the amendment offered by mr.
richardson
Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Murtha to the amendment offered by
Mr. Richardson:
In the matter proposed to be added by the amendment--
(1) strike ``An element of'' and insert ``(a) Policy.--It
is the policy of the United States that an element of''; and
(2) add at the end the following:
(b) Waiver.--The President may waive subsection (a) in the
case of an individual if the President certifies in writing
that the waiver is necessary to address the overriding
national security interest of the United States. The
certification shall be made to the Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence of the House of Representatives and the
Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate.
(c) Voluntary Cooperation.--Subsection (a) shall not be
construed to prohibit the voluntary cooperation of any person
who is aware that the cooperation is being provided to an
element of the United States Intelligence Community.
Mr. MURTHA (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment to the amendment be considered as read and
printed in the Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Pennsylvania?
There was no objection.
Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, what I am doing here is trying to make sure
that in extreme, rare circumstances the President could waive the rules
or waive the law so that a journalist in acts of terrorism or something
like that would be able to allow a journalist to be used in the best
interests of the country. It is a remote possibility. The DCI does not
want to completely foreclose the option, if the national security
interest cannot be furthered in any other way.
I just think this is what we need in order to be able to pursue this
amendment. There is widespread support for the amendment, but I think
we need a clause which would allow the President of the United States
to decide that something like this can be used in the best interest of
the country.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. MURTHA. I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I would be prepared to accept this
amendment. I think this is important. It is the President that we are
giving this waiver to, not the DCI. The President would have to notify
the committees of the Congress of such an action. It is under the most
extreme of all circumstances. I suspect that we want to preserve that
ultimate option. I think it is important that, in accepting this
amendment, we approve my amendment, which basically states the policy
of the intelligence community not to recruit journalists as spies.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. MURTHA. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to say I strongly support the Murtha
amendment to the Richardson amendment. I think it was carefully
crafted. It makes clear that a voluntary effort could be undertaken. In
addition, a journalist could be used only if the President certifies to
Congress as to why it is necessary to do so. I think it gives us a very
good safeguard. I think it is a good compromise, and I applaud the
gentleman from New Mexico for accepting the Murtha amendment.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. MURTHA. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me.
I rise in strong support of the gentleman from Pennsylvania's
amendment. I completely understand the concerns of the gentleman from
New Mexico in offering the amendment. I would like to insert in the
Record a letter addressed to me as chairman of the committee from the
Director of Central Intelligence outlining his concerns but indicating
the fact that he would have no intention of using anyone within the
media but wanting to protect the right and in dire circumstances or
extreme circumstances, particularly as the case may affect the ability
to save lives, that they would like the option. The amendment of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania does preserve that right. I do rise in
strong support of it.
I include for the Record the letter to which I referred:
Central Intelligence Agency,
Washington, DC 21 May 1996.
Hon. Larry Combest,
Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House
of Representatives, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: I write to express opposition to an
amendment to be offered by Mr. Richardson of New Mexico to
H.R. 3259, the Intelligence Authorization act for Fiscal Year
1997. Mr. Richardson's amendment seeks to prohibit any use of
a U.S. journalist or U.S. journalistic organization for
intelligence collection.
I empathize with the sentiment behind the amendment. My
personal view as well as the official policy of the Central
Intelligence Agency is that we should not use American
journalists as agents or American news organizations for
cover. As Director of Central Intelligence, I have no
intention of doing either.
As Director of Central Intelligence, however, I am also
wary of categorically ruling out means to collect
intelligence that might, under extraordinary circumstances,
make the difference in saving American lives. That is why CIA
policy for the past twenty years has reserved the right to
make rare exceptions to that policy. I have not encountered
any set of circumstances that would lead me to consider that
possibility during my service, but I do not believe that we
should forever foreclose my or my successor's future
consideration of such a course.
[[Page H5403]]
I join all Americans in my respect for the independence and
credibility of our press. When I recently reviewed CIA's
policy on intelligence use of American journalists at the
direction of Congress, I put into place very stringent
guidelines that prohibit any intelligence use of American
journalists except under the most extraordinary
circumstances. I found that I was unable to assure the
President or the Congress that it would never be essential to
ask the assistance of a journalist to discover secret
information of supreme importance to the security of this
country or its citizens. Unfortunately, I can envision
circumstances where such cooperation might mean the
difference between life and death, possibly in a terrorist
situation involving a threat to many Americans. That is why I
am compelled to oppose the Richardson amendment as an
unnecessary and overly restrictive limitation on intelligence
activity.
I urge the Committee to provide me an opportunity to
explain in closed session the new guidelines I have adopted
and I urge the House to reject the Richardson amendment.
An original of this letter is also being sent to Ranking
Minority member Dicks.
Sincerely,
John Deutch,
Director of Central Intelligence.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha] to the amendment offered by
the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson].
The amendment to the amendment was agreed to.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson] as amended.
The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the ayes
appeared to have it.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and, pending
that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, further proceedings on the
amendment offered by the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson], as
amended, will be postponed.
The point of no quorum is considered withdrawn.
parliamentary inquiry
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman will state it.
Mr. DICKS. Does the gentleman have to restate his request for a
recorded vote at a later time, or is it going to be an automatic
recorded vote?
The CHAIRMAN. The request for a recorded vote will be pending at that
time. The vote is not automatically ordered.
Mr. DICKS. I thank the Chair.
The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to the bill?
AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MR. SANDERS
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Sanders: At the end of title I,
add the following new section:
SEC. 105. LIMITATION ON AMOUNTS AUTHORIZED TO BE
APPROPRIATED.
(a) Limitation.--Except as provided in subsection (b),
notwithstanding the total amount of the individual
authorizations of appropriations contained in this Act,
including the amounts specified in the classified Schedule of
Authorizations referred to in section 102, there is
authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 1997 to carry
out this Act not more than 90 percent of the total amount
authorized to be appropriated by the Intelligence
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996.
(b) Exception.--Subsection (a) does not apply to amounts
authorized to be appropriated for the Central Intelligence
Agency Retirement and Disability Fund by section 201.
Mr. SANDERS (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Vermont?
There was no objection.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is simple. It is
straightforward and, in fact, it should be supported by every Member of
this House, especially those who are concerned about our national debt
and the deficit situation.
This amendment is about honesty. It is about consistency, and it is
about national priorities. It is about whether the Members of this
body, many of whom have voted to cut programs which will be very
negative, which will have a lot of pain, cause a lot of pain for some
of the weakest and most vulnerable people in this country, programs for
our kids, programs for our senior citizens, programs for our young
people, whether the Members who have voted to cut those programs now
have the courage to take on the very powerful intelligence community
and to say that with a $5 trillion national debt, we should not be
increasing funding for intelligence when we cut back on so many
programs that tens of millions of Americans depend upon.
Mr. Chairman, this amendment cuts the intelligence budget by 10
percent from the level authorized for fiscal year 1996, and that is
approximately a $3 billion cut.
Mr. Chairman, there are three basic reasons why this amendment should
be supported.
First, major sections of the intelligence community are fiscally
irresponsible and need to be held accountable for their hugely
inaccurate reports to Congress and for their wasteful habits.
Second, like every other agency of Government, the intelligence
community must bear its burden in balancing the budget. We cannot say
to pregnant women, we do not have the funds to provide health insurance
for you, we cannot say to senior citizens, we do not have the money to
make sure you get your prescription drugs, we cannot say to young
working-class families, we do not have the money to make sure that your
kids can go to college, we do not have the money to adequately fund
Medicaid or Medicare, but, yes, we have more than enough money to put
into the intelligence agencies despite the fact that the cold war has
ended.
Mr. Chairman, let me read for my colleagues an article that appeared
in the May 16 New York Times. I am going to read this slowly, because I
want the Members to appreciate what we are talking about today and why
it is totally irresponsible for any Member to be talking about a 4.9
increase in funding.
Let me quote for the article: ``In a complete collapse of
accountability, the government agency that builds spy satellites
accumulated about $4 billion in uncounted secret money, nearly twice
the amount previously reported to Congress, intelligence officials
acknowledge today.''
Mr. Chairman, let us repeat what was in the New York Times so that
every Member understands what this debate is about. I quote from the
New York Times; ``In a complete collapse of accountability, the
government agency that builds spy satellites accumulated about $4
billion in uncounted secret money, nearly twice the amount previously
reported to Congress.''
Let me continue from the New York Times: ``The agency, the highly
secretive national reconnaissance office, said last year that the
surplus money totaled no more than about $1 billion. Congressional
intelligence overseers in December said the amount was about $2
billion. They were misinformed. The secret agency was unaware until
very recently exactly how much money it had accumulated in its
classified compartments.''
Listen to this, to put the $4 billion in perspective, still quoting
New York Times, ``what the national reconnaissance office did was to
lose track of a sum roughly equal to the annual budgets for the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and the State Department combined.''
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SANDERS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I support the gentleman,
but I begin to get second thoughts because maybe we have found a way to
really cut the deficit. This hidden money that we lost track of started
out at a billion. Then within a couple of months it was $2 billion. Now
it is $4 billion. There is not revenue source in the Federal Government
growing at so rapid a rate. Maybe we ought to leave these people alone,
because at the rate these people salt away money and have it increase,
pretty soon we will get rid of the deficit.
Mr. CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders]
has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Sanders was allowed to proceed for 2
additional minutes.)
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, let me continue reading from the New York
Times:
John Nelson, appointed last year as the reconnaissance
office top financial manager
[[Page H5404]]
and given the task of cleaning up the problem, said in an
interview published today in a special edition of Defense
Week that the secret agency had undergone, quoting from Mr.
Nelson, fundamental financial meltdown.
The article continues:
The financial incompetence of the reconnaissance office
meant that one of the Nation's biggest intelligence agencies
misinformed Congress, the director of the Central
Intelligence Agency and the Secretary of Defense about how
much money it had.
Continuing the New York Times:
The agency's secrecy made congressional oversight next to
impossible, intelligence officials said. Thus the
congressional intelligence committees kept appropriating
money for the secret agency unaware that it was building up a
surplus of billions of dollars.
End of quote from the New York Times.
Mr. Chairman, how are we going to have credibility with the American
people when we say to hungry kids, we have got to cut back on nutrition
programs, when we say to homeless people, there is not enough money
available for affordable housing, when we say to elderly people, the
Congress cannot help you pay for the prescription drugs you desperately
need, when we say there is not enough money for education and have got
to cut back and then, after this horrendous financial irresponsibility
on the part of an intelligence community, we say, hey, no problem, you
need more money, we are there to help you out.
This is wrong. This is not what deficit reduction is about. This is a
horrendous sense of national priorities.
For all of those Members who have been cutting, cutting, cutting, who
have been coming up here every day talking about the national debt, I
ask you to support my amendment, a 10-percent cut in the intelligence
budget.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, While I disagree strongly with the amendment of the
gentleman from Vermont, I do respect his interest and his position and
his tenacity in his annual concern about the spending of intelligence.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to discuss all of the aspects of the
bill. Let me just make some general comments.
{time} 1200
The gentleman mentioned that there are tens of millions of people,
Americans, dependent upon other programs which are not sufficiently
funded. I would agree with that. I would contend that every American
depends upon and receives equally the positive results of a strong
national defense, which a vital part of that is intelligence and the
ability to determine intentions of other countries, particularly as we
enter into wartime situations. The reduction of our capabilities abroad
in the areas of defense, I think, heighten the magnification of the
need for strong intelligence to make for certain we do not send
Americans into harm's way. That is on the international front.
On the domestic front, concerns of terrorism, concerns of narcotics,
concerns of crime are also very important to the American people, and
the abilities of intelligence organizations to counter and to be aware
of intentions many times go unnoticed, unheralded and, most of the
time, unspoken because we simply cannot discuss them.
I share the gentleman's concern on the primary subject that he
mentioned, and that was the carry-forward account in the NRO, and he is
correct in the $4 billion figure that was recently announced by the
newly appointed financial manager of the NRO who was brought in after
the carry-forward account was discovered. Some have accused the
majority in this year's authorization bill of micromanaging the NRO,
and the NRP, National Reconnaissance Program.
I made a commitment to the members of this committee that the
committee that was brought under task in the New York Times editorial
of last year when the NRO account, carried-forward account, was first
mentioned, and the committees of Congress with oversight were chastised
for inadequate oversight that, as long as I had the luxury and the
ability to serve as chairman of this committee, I would make every
effort that I would not subject the committee to that type of criticism
in the future, and it is with great interest and looking at all of the
programs of the NRO that the mark that we have brought to the committee
in our authorization bill this year is being questioned by so many
people.
We want to be able to assure, those of us who have been given the
ability to serve on this committee and basically have to ask Members of
the Congress to trust us, that we are scrutinizing the expenditures of
those funds, and while I do not agree that the accounting was done well
at all, and in fact I think it was shoddy at best, that those moneys
were appropriated and expended for, authorized and appropriated for,
programs over the years of which the expenditure did not need to take
place because the programs that they were to replace in our
architecture had worked so well.
There was not a loss of the funds, there was not a squandering of the
funds. We are continuing to demand an actual and exact accounting of
those funds and the purposes for which they were initially authorized
and appropriated, not money which was wasted. It is not money which was
wasted, it is money which I will be the first to admit was done very
shoddily in reporting to Congress, even to the director of Central
Intelligence, that those funds existed.
We do not intend to allow that to happen again and are very concerned
about that.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] has
expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Combest was allowed to proceed for 2
additional minutes.)
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. COMBEST. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from
Texas for yielding, I thank him for his graciousness with which he is
managing this debate, but I do have concern about the $4 billion. My
question is:
When we discovered that there was $4 billion that was unspent
because, as he said, it turned out that they did not need to spend it,
did we recapture that for the U.S. Treasury and use it to reduce the
deficit?
My problem is that my information is, no, the people who in fact were
responsible for the overspending and no accounting essentially were
allowed to spend it for other purposes or give it to the Defense
Department, which means they have been given them zero incentive not to
do this again. And if, in fact, it was unneeded spending, why did we
not recapture it and apply it to reducing the deficit?
Mr. COMBEST. The gentleman does make a point, and he is correct in
the fact that it was not taken and it was not used toward the deficit.
Let me mention to the gentleman from Massachusetts the $4 billion
only is recently. We are still looking to find the fact amount.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Is there more? Maybe can we hope?
Mr. COMBEST. Well, hopefully not, but it did begin at 1, and, as we
know, went to 2. The committee has been kept informed of this, of the
additional amounts that continue to be uncovered, but of the amount
last year, over $2 billion has been taken. Some of that was taken by
other committees. Some of it was taken by the Director of Central
Intelligence and expended for----
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the gentleman will yield. How much? Of
the $2 billion that he saved and did not spend, or his predecessor, how
much of a reward did he get of that to spend on other things?
Mr. COMBEST. I guess the reward was the fact that there was no
punitive action taken. But we have taken $400 million out of the
account, more than we had in our authorized bill. We are below some
$400 million below the authorization from, $800 million below the
authorization for 1996.
I do not want to make light of, and I do not make light of, the
concerns that are raised. I will assure the gentleman that the
committee shares those concerns.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] has
again expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Combest was allowed to proceed for 2
additional minutes.)
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
[[Page H5405]]
Mr. COMBEST. Let me just finish this, and I will be happy to yield.
Mr. Chairman, the committee is extremely concerned about the
accountability because of all those good things that are there that do
happen. It is this type of problem that arises that obviously makes,
stretches the credibility of many of these agencies of Government.
I would only want to try to assure the gentleman that we are looking
at this very carefully, very closely, and we intend for there to be
complete and thorough accountability.
Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders].
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the difficulty of the
gentleman's job as chairman of the committee, but let me ask the
gentleman this:
To put $4 billion into perspective that the National Reconnaissance
Office, quote unquote, lost track of, I would mention to my friend I
know he is from Texas and it is a little bit bigger State than Vermont;
our entire annual budget for the State of Vermont for 1 year is $1.5
billion. In other words, they lost track of an amount of money
equivalent to 3 years of the budget of the State of Vermont.
Last year, I was on the floor of the House, the gentleman from
Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] was on the floor of the House, other Members,
and we opposed an increase in the intelligence budget. We were
concerned about exactly what we are talking about today, and we were
told, ``No problem. They need every dime.''
Somehow or other they lost $4 billion, and I would suggest that the
problem that I have with my friend's argument is that I fear next year
we are going to be in the same position again.
When some agency is so irresponsible, I think we have got to say
enough is enough.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I understand the gentleman's concern. Let
me say first of all it was not lost. The money is there and accounted
for. These were programs that were authorized and appropriated and
programs for which commitments have been made, and I would just simply
say to the gentleman, in comparing with the State of Vermont's budget,
fortunately the State of Vermont does not have to fund national defense
for all Americans.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I want to try to see if I can provide some
clarification.
On most of the major weapons systems that we fund in the Defense
Department, like an aircraft carrier or the F-22, which is still an R&D
program, we authorize all of the budget authority at one time.
Therefore we have each year tremendous amounts of unobligated funds for
those programs. If we looked at the Department of Defense, we would see
there are a lot of unobligated funds.
In this area there was adopted a procedure when George McMahon was
chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. There was a concern that
at the end of the fiscal year if Congress did not pass the budget, that
some of these programs would be adversely affected.
These are the crown jewels of our national technical means. We have a
series of satellite programs that are funded on an incremental basis.
One of the things we do not want to do is have them do what some
agencies do, and that is rush at the end of the fiscal year to spend
all the money. We have somewhere between 7 and 12 programs that have
had various levels of unspent funds which added up to this total.
We have no evidence whatsoever that any of this money was wrongly
spent. The money would have ultimately been spent for each of these
programs. The mistake of the NRO was not keeping Congress properly
informed about the total of those carryforward funds. That is what we
objected to, and we were very upset about it. The Director of Central
Intelligence, Mr. Deutsch, was very upset about it. He has taken steps
to appoint a chief financial officer to get these accounts in order.
The money is no longer there, I want to point out to my colleagues.
Some of it was used in Bosnia, some of it was used for other defense
purposes, the administration took part of it in terms of their budget
request. So that balance has been reduced to a much smaller level, and
again there is some management reason to have modest reserves in each
of these line items.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I would like to just also mention that in
the authorization of last year our committee, and I am sorry in the
conference report, which finally became the law, this committee and the
Senate Intelligence Committee put a limit of 1-month carryforward money
so that those could be substantial so that we can make for certain that
it does not grow into the amounts. But it is written into law that
there is a 1-month carryforward, no more than an 1-month carryover.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I must tell my friend from Texas I am
less reassured by that than I might have been, given the fact that
after we passed that conference report and it was signed into law, the
unobligated, unaccounted for secret surplus went from $2 billion to $4
billion. So this restriction on them did not appear to lay a glove on
them because they passed this tough restriction, and then we find out
months after they pass the restriction that it was $4 billion instead
of $2 billion. Maybe our colleagues should stop trying to restrict
them, because they are not doing too well.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman from Massachusetts will let
me have my time back, I would appreciate that. I want to point out to
the gentleman that when we named the chief financial officer, he had to
go back in and go through all these accounts. I admit and agree with
the gentleman that the amount here was totally out of proportion to
what is needed to properly take care of these contingency purposes.
What I am trying to point out is that the money has not been
squandered, has not been used for unauthorized purposes; there is no
waste, fraud, or abuse. What we had is lousy bookkeeping on the part of
the NRO.
Let me just say one thing further. The NRO has been one of the
premier organizations in this Government. They are great engineers.
They build incredible satellites. They may be lousy accountants, and in
this case they certainly were. We should always remember what they have
done. They have created the best capabilities that anybody has in the
world and we should remember that this agency has been very effective
for the American people.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. My point was, and I must say I am again
unreassured that these crack intelligence people who are so terrific
cannot keep track of the money.
I will say, in fairness to them, I do not think this was lousy
accounting, I think this was cleverness on their part, knowing that
they can build this up and those guys are going to spend it.
But the point I want to make is this: The chairman said, ``You came
up with a way to prevent this from happening last year, and what
happened? It got worse after you presented it.'' So I am saying it is--
--
Mr. DICKS. That is for this year's budget.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Oh, I see. So what is the excuse going to
be next year?
Mr. DICKS. Well, we hope there will not be one, I would say to my
colleague.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks]
has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Dicks was allowed to proceed for 2
additional minutes.)
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, my friend from Washington will recall that
last year, same time, same place, we had the same debate. The gentleman
from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] and myself and others said we think we
are spending too much on the intelligence, and we had leaders from both
political parties coming forward saying they
[[Page H5406]]
need every single nickel. And what we are hearing today is, in fact,
that there was an unaccounted-for slush fund of $4 billion that, in
fact, was not needed.
We were right on the debate last time, and in due respect to my
friend from Washington, his position was wrong.
So the question now comes before us this year. I am not here to pass
blame on any Member of the Congress.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I take back my time, and I say to my friend,
first of all, I would not characterize this as a slush fund. I would
characterize it as a management reserve for each of these important
programs, and the money that Congress appropriated and authorized is
needed at some point for these programs.
We have taken the money away. That means at some point in the future
we have to restore it.
I would also say to the gentleman that we are going through a period
where we are reducing the number of programs that we have, we are
trying to change the architecture, we are trying to, in essence, invest
in more capable systems for the future so that we will be able to save
some money.
{time} 1215
I would argue that all of the money would have been legally spent on
the programs as required, eventually, and there is no indication of
waste, fraud, or abuse.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the
requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, we have never had a clearer demonstration of the
importance of an amendment. We are constrained by one of the dumber
laws in the United States from telling the American people what the
overall intelligence budget is. If we cannot tell people what the
overall intelligence budget is, we cannot tell them the percentage,
because even the accountants at the National Reconnaissance Office
could figure out what that meant the total was.
But I can say this, Mr. Chairman. The $4 billion that has hidden away
and spent for purposes other than was legally authorized, and let us be
very clear, there is no doubt about that; what the gentleman from Texas
said was it turned out they did not need to spend that.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman, I know, is not intending to
say that. There was no evidence whatsoever that funds were spent for
anything that was unauthorized.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. That is not my point. I did not say it
was unauthorized, I said they spent clearly more----
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman wants to read the Record
back, that is exactly what he said.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes, and I will explain what I said to
the gentleman. I am sorry the gentleman and his colleagues have done,
frankly, such a lousy job in letting these people put $4 billion away,
and it was $1 billion and then $2 billion, and now it is $4 billion.
Every time, they come up with more money. You explained to us how you
had it under control.
What happened, Mr. Chairman, was this: They were allowed to spend
almost all of that on other purposes, not things that were not
authorized, but they were allowed to spend more, because the accounts
were added to. They were given that $4 billion, they were given a
limit: You can spend so much on this and so much on that and so much
there. And because they underspent here, they were allowed to reuse
that.
You have provided them with every incentive to keep fooling you, and
fooling you they have been doing. You have not penalized them at all.
If any other agency of the Federal Government got caught with a surplus
of this percentage, there would be calls for resignations and
impeachments and denunciations.
Mr. Chairman, the $4 billion that was found, that was spent in
addition to what was authorized in these purposes, that $4 billion is
more than the amendment of the gentleman from Vermont would cut. You
lost track of more money than we want to cut, so that is how, I think,
unfounded it is for you to claim that this in any way jeopardizes it.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Massachusetts is on the
Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the Committee on
Banking and Financial Services with me. He will remember a few weeks
ago, there was a photograph and great discussions about mismanagement
of public housing. Does the gentleman recall that?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes, I do.
Mr. SANDERS. How terrible it was; how could we continue to have
covered, how would we continue to fund the HUD agencies when they are
going mismanagement like that? Does the gentleman not a see a little
bit of a discrepancy in judgment, in opinion, in terms of the gross
mismanagement of billions of dollars through the National
Reconnaissance Office and what we heard about HUD and the running of
public housing?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would make this
distinction, and in the case of HUD, I am more critical, because we had
for 8 years a Secretary of HUD, appointed by Ronald Reagan, who was
dishonest and incompetent, in combination. I do not think that is the
case here. I do not think people had the kind of abuses and criminality
here. I know they did not. But what we had was they gamed the system
very effectively. They were able to not have to spend it.
Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Texas said it turned out they did
not need to spend it. They were able to save $4 billion. And they got
the ability, after authorizations, to reprogram that and reuse it so
they were able to spend more in other areas, since they did not have to
spend as much in the first area.
Given the commitment we hear about deficit reduction, it is striking
that almost none of that undiscovered, unspent money went for deficit
reduction.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman was a little more
accurate in his latter phrases. I want to make sure that what we did,
what the Defense Department did, was take some of the excess money and
use it for Bosnia. Then they did not have to come to Congress, and we
approved that.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. How much for Bosnia, I would ask the
gentleman?
Mr. DICKS. The sum of $200 million was used.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. That is $200 million out of $4 billion.
Mr. Chairman, let me take back my time to say, here is the point:
Yes, $200 million, maybe a couple hundred more, was used for Bosnia.
Billions of dollars were unspent. I am making two points. First of all,
I am wholly skeptical of the toughness of your oversight, since no one
was penalized at all. As a matter of fact, they are rewarded by this.
They are rewarded when they overspend, by being allowed then to spend
more than was authorized.
My point is this: If you authorize correctly in the first place, then
you must admit you overspent, because if in fact they were able to make
savings to the tune of $4 billion in one set of programs, then we
should have been able to get at least some of the benefit of that $4
billion, instead of your rewarding them by putting it elsewhere.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr.
Frank] has expired.
(On request of Mr. Dicks and by unanimous consent, Mr. Frank of
Massachusetts was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would say to my friend, the gentleman from
Massachusetts, first of all, this was not without penalty. The Director
and the Deputy Director of the NRO were replaced by the administration
and a new head was brought in.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. When?
[[Page H5407]]
Mr. DICKS. Several months ago, in February or March of this year, so
there was direct action taken. I take some umbrage at this, because it
was the staff on our committee, and the minority staff in particular,
that were at the forefront of discovering this problem and bringing it
to the administration's attention.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman,
where did it get to $4 billion.
Mr. DICKS. Last year.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. You were telling us $2 billion.
Mr. DICKS. At the time they discovered it.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. They hid $2 billion from you.
Mr. DICKS. They did not know what the total was.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Who did not know?
Mr. DICKS. The NRO did not.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. They just lost $2 billion? With their
satellites they could not find $2 billion?
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I just would say we tried our very best to
ensure that. We supported Mr. Deutsch's steps to reform the NRO such as
appointing a chief financial officer. We found the money in the first
instance, and we now have a more accurate figure.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I will take back my time to say this, Mr.
Chairman; the record is clear. As the gentleman from Vermont said, you
always have an explanation of how everything is fine. I understand this
is difficult. They are very sophisticated things they are doing. I do
not believe it was an honest error. I believe they figured out a game.
The central point I want to make is this, and I am not for hanging
anyone, but the fact that an agency was able to accumulate a surplus
greater than 10 percent of the total authorization here is an
indication that you are giving them more money than they need for the
purposes you say you are giving it to them for.
In fact, what you were doing, that $4 billion, that is the entire
Community Development Block Grant Program for the United States. It was
twice the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for the United
States. You are talking about the deficit, and people should
understand, because we are going to get to a zero deficit.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr.
Frank] has again expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Frank of Massachusetts was allowed to
proceed for 30 additional seconds.)
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I say to the gentleman,
continue this trend of ever-increasing appropriations and
authorizations for this agency, even when they have shown it is
excessive by building up these surpluses, and you mandate deeper cuts
in the environment and law enforcement and college education and public
safety and everything else, because we are in a zero-sum situation. The
$4 billion they accumulated without the knowledge of this committee is
taken out of other important programs. We would be gravely mistaken if
we did not try to recapture that for other purposes.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, this is a stealth cut. Technically, the American
people do not know what the budget is in the first place. I think it is
very important today that we pass the Conyers amendment and once and
for all bring some fiscal responsibility to the Central Intelligence
Agency.
I have voted for cuts in this bill nearly every year I have been in
Congress. It is amazing for me to announce here now that I am not going
to vote to cut this budget by 10 percent. I am not going to do that
because I believe that John Deutch, his word is good. He is doing a
good job. We have an opportunity here to put this department, the
Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence units in order.
But we wonder why the American people are so upset with our
Government. I would like to make this statement, because I do trust the
chairman and the ranking member, two of our finer members, but I think
it is very unusual when the American people learn about an invasion of
Kuwait on CNN news. There must be an aggressive congressional oversight
to ensure that these intelligence agencies are not just operating in a
stealth vacuum, doing absolutely nothing. This will be the one chance
this Member will give.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to say one other thing. Unless we pass
the Conyers amendment, we would not know what the Sanders amendment
would cut if we were not a Member of the Congress of the United States.
I think the American people are paying for the freight coming down the
track and should know what our intelligence community is doing.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I want the gentleman to know
that I have supported Chairman Glickman, I am supporting and
cosponsoring the amendment of the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Conyers,
and the President supports, as does the Aspin-Brown Commission, making
the aggregate dollar number known to the American public.
I would only say one thing to the gentleman about his statement about
Kuwait. George Bush, as President, the first thing he stated after the
invasion was that it was not an intelligence failure. We knew several
days ahead of time, but again, it is always hard for the American
Government, the national command authority, when it is getting
differing opinions from government heads in the area that, well,
Saddham will not do this, to take action. It was not a failure of
intelligence. We did have 2 or 3 days of warning. It is acting on that
warning that is always difficult under our form of government.
So I do not want to disparage the intelligence agencies here. They
gave them the information. The leadership could not make a decision
that quickly.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I will not support
this cutting amendment. I will give John Deutch a hand. But I will say
this next year, if we continue to find ourselves in this big sinkhole
without passing a Conyers amendment, I would recommend we hire Ted
Turner and Rush Limbaugh and let the CIA stay home, and other defense
intelligence agencies, because they are not getting too much done,
folks.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment, but I want to
commend the gentleman from Vermont, Mr. Sanders. I think he may help
pass the Conyers amendment, and that may be the best thing we do here
in this Congress today.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite
number of words.
Mr. Chairman, as a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence who
has served on the committee now for a couple of years, I cannot help
but rise at this point to first express my deep appreciation for the
work of both the chairman, the gentleman from Texas, Larry Combest, and
my colleague, the gentleman from Washington, Mr. Dicks, for the very,
very fine job they are doing on an extremely difficult subject area,
developing and bringing the intelligence budget to this House floor.
Mr. Chairman, it is a very, very popular thing to rise and oppose the
intelligence community and presume that lightly we can, using
essentially a machete approach, cut 10 percent across the board in this
program. Since the end of the cold war, we have progressively been
reducing a very significant portion of our budget; that is, the defense
budget. Defense has come down by approximately $100 billion. It is the
presumption of many that since the cold war is over and since we are
reducing our defense budget, that lightly we can just wipe out our
intelligence needs. To suggest that that is the case would suggest to
me that not very much light has been applied to the intelligence that
is involved here.
The reality is that we are living in a very, very complex and very
dangerous world. At the very time that we have been reducing defense
spending, it is the very moment that the President and the appropriate
committees need more and better intelligence around here.
The heart of the discussion relative to this proposed 10-percent cut
has been that of the expenditures of the
[[Page H5408]]
NRO. The NRO is that agency which develops and deploys our satellite
systems, a source of information, intelligence information, that is
most critical and one of the more important sources.
{time} 1230
To suggest that we can blithely reduce the entire intelligence budget
because of problems that have developed in the NRO is to not understand
the need for intelligence at all. I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that
the very people who are making this proposal are the same people who
for all of their careers here have opposed our national defense, have
not supported expanding the national defense when we truly needed to
expand those budgets. To not understand the significance of these
information flows to the President at this critical time is to ignore
the reality of this changing world.
This budget is within 3.9 percent of the President's request. It is
not an excessive budget. Indeed, there is a need for oversight and
review. I suggest to my colleagues that absolutely we support not just
the chairman and the ranking member in this budget, but support the
President as well.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, in response to the last gentleman, they are within 3.9
percent of the President's budget, but of course it erred on the side
of increasing the rather generous allotment that the President has
already made for these agencies, as though a fiscal crisis did not
exist here in Washington.
This is an extraordinary debate, and I think the burden goes to those
who are defending against a 10-percent cut in a secret number that we
cannot know. Now, a case can of course be made that it is a dangerous
world and we need these various organizations, and they need and can
spend productively every penny which has been allocated, even a 4-
percent increase over and above the generous allotment requested by the
President.
But the burden does rest with the members of the Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence because they are overseers, they are the
monitors, they are the protectors of the Constitution that says only
Congress should appropriate funds and that it should know how much it
is appropriating.
I do not know. I have not gone to look at the secret number, because
if I go and look at the secret number, then I cannot tell people what
the secret number is, which I can read in the New York Times. But this
is somehow protecting us against the threats of our enemies. What it is
protecting us against is fiscal responsibility at these agencies.
Now, wait a minute, the National Reconnaissance Agency, well, they
did have a little problem. They built a building for some $300 or $400
million out at a shopping center, and Congress did not know about it.
Perhaps the agency itself did not know about it or most parts of the
agency did not know about it, because it keeps secrets from itself.
This is the agency that monitors everything that goes on on Earth at
all times. At this moment they are recording my conversation, if not by
supersecret satellite, from CNN, where they get a good deal of their
information.
Now they are saying that they have found an extra $4 billion in their
budget. Not to worry, $4 billion. We kill on the floor of the House of
Congress, for a couple hundred thousand crummy dollars over here, and
talk about welfare cheats and food stamp fraud and all that, and
amounts of 10 or 20 or 30 thousands of dollars.
But here is an agency that had $4 billion, more than the total
appropriation of the FBI and the State Department for their general
operations, and they just did not know it, and that does not need that.
Never too much money. No; an extra $4 billion. I mean given the
magnitude of their annual budget, secret number, we cannot know how
much that is, they needed this $4 billion. They just did not know they
had it and they did not know how to spend it.
Now, there is something very, very wrong with this picture. They know
everything that is going on. They are monitoring my speech on the
floor, but they do not know how much money they have because they are
so awash in funds, they cannot even be bothered to go out and buy a $39
software program to keep track of it.
Now, that is absurd, absolutely absured, and to say that that agency
cannot withstand a cut of 10 percent is indefensible. The burden lies
on those who would defend it. They get $4 billion they have not been
able to spend, they did not know they had, and now they cannot
withstand a 10-percent cut of their annual budget, secret number, no
one can know it.
The Soviet Union might learn something from knowing how much we are
spending on that agency. They will learn that we are spending more on
these agencies than they are spending on their entire military budget,
is what they will find. They will shake their head and wonder.
Of course the Soviet Union does not exist anymore, and that has
almost percolated down to some of these agencies. They have found that
fact out and we will be getting a report on that soon.
So I would rise in support of this amendment and say that the burden
lies with those who would say an agency, just one of many, we do not
know how much the others have lost or have an account that they have
not spent. That is secret, too.
But just one of our supersecret agencies had $4 billion it did not
know it had, that it has not spent, and we are being told now it was a
management reserve. If that was a management reserve there, how much is
reserved at the other agencies? Do they really need this year's budget?
Because maybe they should spend down the reserve a little bit, because
they might be at an imprudent level.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. The CIA is out of
control. It is not just the $4 billion that they had lying around that
they did not know that they had. There are many other ways that the CIA
is out of control, and the CIA would greatly benefit from some
downsizing and some streamlining. The CIA would greatly benefit from a
cut in the funds that they have while they reorganize and regroup.
This is the CIA that did not predict the collapse of the Soviet
Union. This is the CIA that could not predict the most momentous event
of our century. This is the CIA that could not see a dinosaur event,
like the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is something radically
wrong with the CIA. It has been wrong for a long time.
It is amazing that people would come to this floor and defend an
agency which has lost track of $4 billion, lost track of $4 billion,
and to talk about them as if they are heroes now because they are going
to let some of that $4 billion be spent taking care of the war in
Bosnia, somewhere else. They are not heroes. And do not talk about the
fact that this is just mismanagement. It is more than mismanagement. We
do not know.
Anybody here who has ever been the head of any kind of organization,
if they have ever been an administrator of a public agency or they are
the owner, the administrator of a private sector business, they know
that when money cannot be accounted for, if it is lying loosely around
and the head of the department did not know it, the head of the CIA did
not know it, the President did not know it, somebody did steal money.
We can assume there is a lot of stealing going on, because if we do not
have any accountability, human beings always will steal.
This is the CIA that for a number of reasons should be downsizing,
reorganizing, and streamlining. Nobody has mentioned Aldrich Ames here.
We have discussed the $4 billion, although the $4 billion is something
that the administration has admitted. They fired two people. It was on
the front page of the New York Times. Some people did not know it. They
fired two people, so mismanagement was occurring.
For the first time they fired the people, openly stated their names,
so we know it took place, and it upset the administration a great deal
because, they publicly fired the people. That is a well-documented
example of great waste, monumental waste and probably corruption also.
But what we do not know, what is not talked about more is Aldrich
Ames,
[[Page H5409]]
the implication of the fact that Aldrich Ames was the head of
intelligence for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and he was the
biggest spy of the century for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Aldrich Ames was there for numerous years, and they never detected him
and finally announced it was the FBI which really trapped Aldrich Ames.
Out of control, something is radically wrong there. It is a welfare
agency, in that they have a lot of incompetent people there who are not
doing their job, or not doing a job which is going to benefit the
welfare and protect the security of the United States. Something is
radically wrong. Incompetence must be monumental in that agency.
This is the agency that paid the salary of Emanuel Comstonce, who was
the man who led the demonstration on the docks in Haiti when we were
sending ships down there. We sent ships down there with a peacekeeping
mission which had police, engineers, et cetera. They led a
demonstration where they were shooting guns, intimidating the Charge
d'Affaires of the U.S. Embassy. It was led by a man named Emanuel
Comstonce, who was on the payroll of the CIA.
Emanuel Comstonce is right now in prison here in this country. They
want to keep him here. They want to keep him isolated and quiet because
he has confessed and he is telling: ``I was on the payroll of the
CIA.''
This is an agency that is obviously out of control. It needs to be
reexamined, downsized, streamlined. In modern society, any institution
that operates in secrecy is in danger. Our complex society is such that
any complex institutions needs to be open, so that other folks from
outside the decisionmaking circles can be able to look at what is going
on and offer some objective criticisms.
The Soviet Union collapsed because its whole society was a closed
circle of decisionmaking, and they made monumental errors which we are
still discovering and still suffering from. Chernobyl, they did not
have a nuclear commission that was open and people could talk to. They
did not have a environmental movement. They would suppress anybody who
tried to have a movement critical of anything, so they ruined their
environment.
The CIA is a closed circle of decisionmaking. The secrecy in the CIA
guarantees that is always going to be a big problem. We need to open up
as much as possible, not tell everything, but we can have a discussion
of the budget. We should know the full amount of the budget. The New
York Times estimates it is between $28 and $30 billion. We are talking
about a 10-percent cut on $28 to $30 billion. We are talking about a
10-percent cut which will at the most amount to $3 billion.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] has
expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Owens was allowed to proceed for 1
additional minute.)
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, it has already been pointed out a 10-percent
cut, which would amount to $3 billion, is less than the amount of money
they lost track of. They lost track of $4 billion. They put a spin on
it, they said it was $1 billion, then it became $2 billion. Now they
are admitting $4 billion, and we do not know how honest they are
because it keeps mounting. If they have lost track of that kind of
money, they certainly can afford a 10-percent cut.
We have been offering this amendment now for the last 4 years. If
they accepted it in the first place, we might be much further along the
way in terms of streamlining the CIA.
I think we need the CIA. We certainly do not need the monster, the
dinosaur that we have had so many years, that could not detect the
changes of the Soviet Union, that gave us Aldrich Ames, that gave us
Emanuel Comstonce, and then had $4 billion lying around while we are
cutting the budget of Head Start, and cutting the budget of the school
lunch program, and we are cutting the budget of title I, and we are
cutting the budget of public housing.
We are cutting all these budgets while they have $4 billion lying
around unused. We need to get control of the CIA, Mr. Chairman. We need
to get control of the CIA.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders].
The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the noes
appeared to have it.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and, pending
that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, further proceedings on the
amendment offered by the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] will be
postponed.
The point of no quorum is considered withdrawn.
amendment offered by mr. traficant
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Traficant: At the end of title
III, add the following:
SEC. 306. COMPLIANCE WITH BUY AMERICAN ACT.
No funds appropriated pursuant to this Act may be expended
by an entity unless the entity agrees that in expending the
assistance the entity will comply with sections 2 through 4
of the Act of March 3, 1933 (41 U.S.C. 10a-10c, popularly
known as the ``Buy American Act'').
SEC. 307. SENSE OF CONGRESS; REQUIREMENT REGARDING NOTICE.
(a) Purchase of American-Made Equipment and Products.--In
the case of any equipment or products that may be authorized
to be purchased with financial assistance provided under this
Act, it is the sense of the Congress that entities receiving
such assistance should, in expending the assistance, purchase
only American-made equipment and products.
(b) Notice to Recipients of Assistance.--In providing
financial assistance under this Act, the head of the
appropriate element of the Intelligence Community shall
provide to each recipient of the assistance a notice
describing the statement made in subsection (a) by the
Congress.
SEC. 308. PROHIBITION OF CONTRACTS.
If it has been finally determined by a court or Federal
agency that any person intentionally affixed a fraudulent
label bearing a ``Made in America'' inscription, or any
inscription with the same meaning, to any product sold in or
shipped to the United States that was not made in the United
States, such person shall be ineligible to receive any
contract or subcontract made with funds provided pursuant to
this Act, pursuant to the debarment, suspension, and
ineligibility procedures described in sections 9.400 through
9.409 of title 48, Code of Federal Regulations.
Mr. TRAFICANT (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Ohio?
There was no objection.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, we have the stealth budget. This could
be a stealth Buy American type of program.
Mr. Chairman, before I yield to the distinguished ranking member, I
would just like to say this. I think it is important today that the
Conyers amendment be passed. I think it is absolutely necessary, as
indicated by previous debate.
I am here pledging to work with the chairman and the ranking member
in supporting this budget and to give John Deutsch a real chance. John
Deutsch's word has always been good. I have dealt with many bureaucrats
down here. I think he is top flight. He deserves a chance to bring this
in order.
My amendment, I think everybody understands it. I want to make sure
that if we are going to be making these stealth purchases, that these
stealth purchases take place in the United States of America.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say to my friend from Ohio, he has offered a
similar amendment in years past, with the goal of ensuring that the
intelligence community maximizes its purchase of American-made
products. As the gentleman knows, we are the leader in stealth
technology. This is a goal I support.
We have worked with the gentleman from Ohio on other occasions to
preserve the spirit of his amendment in conference, even though the
committee is aware that the record of the intelligence community on the
procurement
[[Page H5410]]
of U.S. products is exemplary. We will do so again this year, and we
are pleased, at least I am pleased for the minority, to accept the
amendment. I yield to the chairman.
{time} 1345
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, as we traditionally have been on this
bill, we are very happy to accept the gentleman's amendment, and
appreciate his continued work on this for all of these 12 years.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the only thing I can
say is if the Conyers amendment passes, we will know the aggregate
amount, we will not know the line items, the public will not, but I am
going to go up and check to see if these intelligence agency sleuths
are buying American.
Mr. Chairman, with that, I urge an ``aye'' vote on the amendment.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant].
The amendment was agreed to.
The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to the bill?
amendment offered by mr. brownback
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Brownback: At the end of title III
insert the following new section:
SEC. 306. RESTRICTIONS ON INTELLIGENCE SHARING WITH THE
UNITED NATIONS.
(a) In General.--The National Security Act of 1947 (50
U.S.C. 401 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end of title
I the following new section:
``restrictions on intelligence sharing with the united nations
``Sec. 110. (a) Provision of Intelligence Information to
the United Nations.--(1) No United States intelligence
information may be provided to the United Nations or any
organization affiliated with the United Nations, or to any
official or employee thereof, unless the President certifies
to the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on
Intelligence of the Senate and the Select Committee on
Intelligence of the Senate and the Committee on International
Relations and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
of the House of Representatives that the Director of Central
Intelligence (in this section referred to as the `DCT'), in
consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of
Defense, has required, and such organization has established
and implemented, procedures for protecting intelligence
sources and methods (including protection from release to
nations and foreign nationals that are otherwise not eligible
to receive such information) no less stringent than
procedures maintained by nations with which the United States
regularly shares similar types of intelligence information.
Such certification shall include a description of the
procedures in effect at such organization.
``(2) Paragraph (1) may be waived upon written
certification by the President to the appropriate committees
of Congress that providing such information to the United
Nations or an organization affiliated with the United
Nations, or to any official or employee thereof, is in the
national security interest of the United States and that all
possible measures protecting such information has been taken,
except that such waiver must be made for each instance such
information is provided, or for each such document provided.
``(b) Periodic and Special Reports.--(1) The President
shall periodically report but not less frequently than
quarterly, to the Committee on Foreign Relations and the
Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate and the
Committee on International Relations and the Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives on
the types and volume of intelligence provided to the United
Nations and the purposes for which it was provided during the
period covered by the report. Such periodic reports shall be
submitted to the Select Committee on Intelligence of the
Senate and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of
the House of Representatives with an annex containing a
counterintelligence and security assessment of all risks,
including an evaluation of any potential adverse impact on
national collection systems, of providing intelligence to the
United Nations, together with the information on how such
risks have been addressed.
``(2) The President shall submit a special report to the
Committee on Foreign Relations and the Select Committee on
Intelligence of the Senate and the Committee on International
Relations and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
of the House or Representatives within 15 days after the
United States Government becomes aware of any unauthorized
disclosure of intelligence provided to the United Nations by
the United States.
``(c) Limitation.--The restrictions of subsection (a) and
the requirement for periodic reports under paragraph (1) of
subsection (a) shall not apply to the provision of
intelligence that is provided only to, and for the use of,
appropriately cleared United States Government personnel
serving with the United Nations.
``(d) Delegation of Duties.--The President may not delegate
or assign the duties of the President under subsection (a).
``(e) Relationship to Existing Law.--Nothing in this
section shall be construed to--
``(1) impair or otherwise affect the authority of the
Director of Central Intelligence to protect intelligence
sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure pursuant to
section 103(c)(5) of the National Security Act of 1947 (50
U.S.C. 403-3(c)(5)); or
``(2) supersede or otherwise affect the provisions of title
V of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 413 et
seq.).''.
(b) Clinical Amendment.--The table of contents for the
National Security Act of 1947 is amended by inserting after
the item relating to section 109 the following:
``Sec. 110. Restrictions on intelligence sharing with the United
Nations.''.
Mr. BROWNBACK (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Kansas?
There was no objection.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in an attempt to restore
sanity to our policy of sharing intelligence information with the
United Nations.
My amendment would amend the 1974 National Security Act to prohibit
the sharing of U.S. intelligence information with the United Nations or
any of its affiliated organizations unless the President certifies to
Congress that the organization has implemented CIA, Defense, and State
Department procedures to protect U.S. intelligence sources and methods.
This provision is not intended to end U.S. intelligence sharing with
the United Nations, nor does it mean to set unreasonable or impossible
standards for the protection of critical U.S. sources and methods of
intelligence gathering.
The only purpose of this provision is to restore basic rationality to
the administration's imprudent sharing of sensitive intelligence
information with the United Nations.
My provision establishes logical and reasonable standards for sharing
intelligence information with the United Nations. All it says is that
the United States should require the same level of protection of U.S.
intelligence information from the United Nations that we require in our
intelligence sharing arrangements with other states.
If for some reason the United Nations is unwilling or incapable of
providing that level of protections, my provision will still permit the
sharing of U.S. intelligence with the United Nations on a case-by-case
basis. In each of these cases, all that is required is a certification
that the information shared advances U.S. national security interests.
Protecting our sources and methods of intelligence gathering is not
an academic subject. It is a matter of national security. It is a
matter of protecting lives. It is a matter of protecting billions of
dollars of investments that the American people have made in our
country's vital national security interests.
Mr. Chairman, the United Nations has acted like a sieve when it comes
to safeguarding intelligence information to the same degree as the
United States.
Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine has identified four instances in which
the United Nations has breached the security of classified documents
provided by the United States. The most egregious violation occurred in
Somalia where sensitive data was almost compromised due to the United
Nation's carelessness.
In addition, Senator Snowe has discovered that no agreement has been
in place that requires the United Nations to provide for the protection
of intelligence supplied by the United States.
As a result of her findings, Senator Snowe drafted a provision
included in the conference report of the State Department Authorization
Act that mirrors the amendment I am offering today. The House has
passed this provision twice. I simply ask now that my colleagues now
act on it again.
Mr. Chairman, the administration has failed to implement the
safeguards needed to protect U.S. intelligence information from
unauthorized disclosure.
[[Page H5411]]
In fact, rather than further safeguarding our intelligence
information, CIA Director Deutch has tried to institutionalize the
widespread sharing of sensitive U.S. intelligence material by making it
easier for foreign consumers to register complaints about the use of
security markings, which protect the national security of the United
States.
Mr. Chairman, if my colleagues have any misgivings about this
amendment, I simply want to point out to them that U.N. General
Secretary Boutros-Ghali has appointed an Iraqi national, Ismat Kittani,
to be the head of the United Nations' Department of Peacekeeping
Operations. It is truly disturbing that a national from a country with
which the United States has no diplomatic relations, which is on the
U.S. State Department list of terrorist states, and with which the
United States recently went to war could be appointed to such a
sensitive position in the United Nations.
This is wrong, and this is indicative of the recklessness with which
the United Nations treats sensitive matters and sensitive information.
The United States should not share our intelligence information with
the United Nations unless it adopts the standards to which we hold our
own agencies accountable.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise I opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, the Brownback amendment places new, unworkable
restrictions on the United States sharing information with the United
Nations--even when it is in the national interest to do so. It would
make it extremely difficult to provide intelligence support to those
U.N. activities which are supportive of U.S. foreign policy goals.
The administration is opposed to the Brownback amendment. This
amendment is identical to language contained in the conference report
on H.R. 1561, the Overseas Interests Act, which was vetoed by the
President. As the President noted in his veto message, this amendment
would unconstitutionally infringe on the President's power to conduct
diplomatic relations and limit Presidential control over the use of
state secrets.
The DCI has already established guidelines to protect intelligence
sources and methods, when it is determined to be in the interest of the
United States to provide information derived from U.S. intelligence to
the United Nations. Furthermore, the United Nations is working with a
senior delegation of State, Defense, and CIA officials to implement a
number of improvements to its internal security procedures.
The DCI's guidelines ensure that information is carefully reviewed
and sanitized so that the least sensitive intelligence that satisfies a
U.N. requirement is provided. Even if information that is provided to
the United Nations fell into the wrong hands, it will have been
sanitized so that it will not compromise U.S. intelligence sources and
methods.
The Brownback amendment would impede the ability of the United States
to maintain a flexible and efficient information sharing arrangement
with the United Nations, and may adversely impact the ability of the
United States to achieve foreign policy successes.
The waiver provided in the amendment is too burdensome to be
effective. It requires the President to issue a waiver for each
instance that information derived from intelligence is provided to the
United Nations, or for each document that is provided. Furthermore, the
President may not delegate this authority.
The amendment also requires the President to personally report, at
least quarterly, to Congress on the types and volume of intelligence
provided to the United Nations and the purposes for which it was
provided, and report to Congress within 15 days of any unauthorized
disclosure. The President ought to be able to delegate this authority
to the DCI.
The Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the committee of this
Chamber with the greatest concern over the protection of sources and
methods, considered legislation similar to the Brownback amendment at
the beginning of the 104th Congress and rejected it on a bipartisan
basis.
The committee found several instances where the current intelligence
sharing arrangement with the United Nations has yielded specific
foreign policy successes. Information was shared with Security Council
members on Iraqi troop build-ups, in support of a multilateral effort
to prevent a repeat of Iraq's 1991 invasion of Kuwait. Intelligence has
also assisted United Nations Special Commission in Iraq [UNSCOM]
inspectors in their attempts to enforce U.N. sanctions calling for the
dismantling of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. U.S.
imagery has helped U.N. relief agencies determine the magnitude and
direction or refugee flows within and from Rwanda. Timely intelligence
sharing has also helped save the lives of the United States Protection
Force [UNPROFOR] peacekeeping troops in Bosnia.
While I do not believe it is necessary to legislate in this area to
restrict the President's ability to share intelligence information to
promote U.S. foreign policy, a compromise amendment worked out by the
Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees adopted by the
Senate last year would be clearly preferable.
I urge a no vote on the Brownback amendment.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say initially that I am in total agreement
with the gentleman's intent, that I share his concerns and voted for
provisions in H.R. 7 of last year that would have substantially
improved the process by which intelligence could be shared with the
United Nations.
Unfortunately, those restrictions did not become law, and I still
support the idea of requiring that to the appropriate committees of
Congress, that any information which is shared with the United Nations
commanders must be provided to the Congress for oversight.
I am concerned, and our committee spent a good deal of time over the
last year following some recognition of some problems in pursuing those
to make certain that there was no loss of sources or methods in some of
them mishandling of classified information, and we have a very strong
concern.
Let me mention two areas of concern that I have in regards to the
gentleman's amendment that I certainly do not presume in any shape,
form or fashion would be intentional. But let me mention two areas of
real concern that I have, in which I am concerned that the amendment as
offered by the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback] in its current
form would have.
One is in the area of providing and sharing intelligence in which
U.S. troops are involved. That would be that we would be prohibited in
certain instances by a basic prenotification, that we could not share
intelligence with NATO forces in any area in which U.S. troops were
involved, and consequently could potentially put them into greater
harm. In addition to that, in certain instances that would require
prenotification that might not be possible in a timely fashion.
I will give you an example in which Captain O'Grady was shot down.
That information through the processes of determining the fact that
there were surface to air missiles that were in a location that had not
previously been determined, literally came down to a matter of minutes,
in which we may have been able to be aware of that, but not been able
to share that with U.N. forces in the area that they would have been
able to get that information to Captain O'Grady.
Those concerns in a real timely fashion I believe were legitimate,
and I have an amendment to the Brownback amendment that I would submit,
Mr. Chairman, that would in fact allow a broader authority for sharing
of intelligence when it goes to support U.N. forces in which the United
States is a participant, and, secondly, to allow a waiver for emergency
situations involving imminent risk to U.S. lives, in which case the
President would have to report to Congress as to the specific details
of that waiver.
amendment offered by mr. combest as a substitute for the amendment
offered by mr. brownback
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment as a substitute for
the amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Combest as a substitute for the
amendment offered by Mr. Brownback: At the end of title III,
the following new section:
[[Page H5412]]
SEC. 306. RESTRICTIONS ON INTELLIGENCE SHARING WITH THE
UNITED NATIONS.
(a) In General.--The National Security Act of 1947 (50
U.S.C. 401 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end of title
I, the following new section:
``restrictions on intelligence sharing with the united nations
``Sec. 110. (a) Provision of Intelligence Information to
the United Nations.--(1) No United States intelligence
information may be provided to the United Nations or any
organization affiliated with the United Nations, or to any
officials or employees thereof, unless the President
certifies to the appropriate committees of Congress that the
Director of Central Intelligence, in consultation with the
Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, has
established and implemented procedures, and has worked with
the United Nations to ensure implementation of procedures,
for protecting from unauthorized disclosure United States
intelligence sources and methods connected to such
information.
``(2) Paragraph (1) may be waived upon written
certification by the President to the appropriate committees
of Congress that providing such information to the United
Nations or an organization affiliated with the United
Nations, or to any officials or employees thereof, is in the
national security interests of the United States.
``(b) Periodic and Special Reports.--(1) The President
shall report semiannually to the appropriate committees of
Congress on the types and volume of intelligence provided to
the United Nations and the purposes for which it was provided
during the period covered by the report. The President shall
also report to the appropriate committees of Congress within
15 days after it has become known to the United States
Government that there has been an unauthorized disclosure of
intelligence provided by the United States to the United
Nations.
``(2) The requirement for periodic reports under the first
sentence of paragraph (1) shall not apply to the provision of
intelligence that is provided only to, and for the use of,
appropriately cleared United States Government personnel
serving with the United Nations.
``(c) Delegation of Duties.--The President may not delegate
or assign the duties of the President under this section.
``(d) Relationship to Existing Law.--Nothing in this
section shall be construed to--
``(1) impair or otherwise affect the authority of the
Director of Central Intelligence to protect intelligence
sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure pursuant to
section 103(c)(5); or
``(2) supersede or otherwise affect the provisions of title
V.
``(e) Definition.--As used in this section, the term
`appropriate committees of Congress' means the Committee on
Foreign Relations and the Select Committee on Intelligence of
the Senate and the Committee on Foreign Relations and the
Permanent Select Committee on Foreign Relations and the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of
Representatives.''
``(b) Clerical Amendment.--The table of contents for the
National Security Act of 1947 is amended by inserting after
the item relating to section 109 the following:
``Sec. 110. Restrictions on intelligence sharing with the United
Nations.''.
Mr. COMBEST (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment offered as a substitute for the amendment be
considered as read and printed in the Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I will only reiterate the substitute that
I will be offering to the Brownback amendment would provide those two
caveats, one for the allowance of intelligence sharing, broader
authority for allowance of intelligence sharing when it goes to
supporting U.N. forces in which the United States is a participant, and
the second to allow a waiver for emergency situations that involve
imminent risk to U.S. lives, in which case the President would have to
report to Congress the details of that waiver.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in very strong support of the Combest
substitute and urge its adoption.
{time} 1300
Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, this is not specifically addressed to the amendment
that is being offered by the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest]. I want
to speak in favor of the legislation because I am very concerned about
how the United Nations has mismanaged not only classified information
but other financial matters that they have gotten, and I am speaking
specifically to Cambodia, where they lost some $20 million plus worth
of equipment that has just disappeared.
We are not just talking about hardware here, we are talking about
classified information and the inability of the United Nations to
handle that information in a prudent fashion.
Before I came to the Congress, I worked for the Boeing company, and I
worked in classified areas where top-secret documents were stored and
handled and even developed. We were under very strict guidelines. And
if I look at what has happened in Somalia, as pointed out by Senator
Snowe, if similar occurrences had occurred in the work environment that
I was working under, it would have resulted in a certain loss of job
and a potential prosecution under U.S. law.
Because we are giving classified information to the United Nations,
they do not fall under the same guidelines, the same legal restrictions
that we have here in the United States. This information can be passed
on or lost or stolen and can fall into the wrong hands.
I share the concerns of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] for
situations where we have U.S. troops in critical situations and that
there may be a sudden need to share locations of anti-aircraft missile
sites, but when we look at the general trend that goes on in the United
Nations when they handle information of this classified nature, they do
not have the proper guidelines. They do not follow the common sense
criteria that we have laid out in the United States.
Mr. Chairman, I have risen in strong support of the amendment of the
gentleman from Kansas, Representative Brownback, because I believe
there needs to be some confidence on the part of the United States that
when it does share information that was gained at a very high cost in
terms of expensive satellite systems or in developmental hardware or in
a high cost to taxpayers, that it not fall into the hands of people who
could use it against the very people that paid for the information;
that it could go against the best interests of this country, whether it
is military purposes or social purposes or political purposes or
whatever.
I think it is important that this type of information be guarded;
that there be a high degree of responsibility in making sure that it is
only narrow in its scope; that it is directed specifically for an
instance, and that broad-based intelligence, classified intelligence
information is not shared for unnecessary purposes.
Mr. Chairman, I do not see those guidelines around. So I think the
Brownback amendment is certainly a step in the right direction and I
would stand in support of the Brownback amendment.
Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
(Mr. CHABOT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the amendment
offered by my good friend, fellow freshmen, and thoughtful colleague on
the International Relations Committee the gentleman from Kansas [Mr.
Brownback].
This amendment would prohibit the sharing of U.S. intelligence
information with the United Nations or any of its affiliates unless the
President certifies to Congress that the U.N. organization has
implemented the proper CIA, Defense Department, and State Department
procedures to ensure that U.S. intelligence sources and methods are
protected.
It is a good amendment. It was passed by both Houses earlier this
year as part of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act--a bill that
was unfortunately, and I believe wisely, vetoed by President Clinton.
We can rectify some of the damage done by that veto if we adopt the
Brownback amendment today.
Mr. Chairman, I can see no logical reason why anyone would want to
oppose this amendment. The United Nations is not known for its sympathy
to American interests. And when sharing our intelligence data, we must
be extremely careful. The Brownback amendment protects that data,
protects our intelligence sources, and protects our intelligence
methods. I urge my colleagues to support it.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I want to engage, if I could, in a bit of a dialog with
the
[[Page H5413]]
chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest], on his amendment to my amendment.
As I understand from his discussion of this amendment, he would
maintain the majority of the bill that we have put forward, as far as
the concerns that we have of the loose treatment of intelligence
information by the United Nations of U.S. intelligence information.
That is maintained; is that correct?
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BROWNBACK. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is correct.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the gentleman is
attempting here to get at particularly the issue of when we are engaged
in a particular theater that that information can be shared on that
theater of operations, not just on a specific instance by instance?
Mr. COMBEST. My concern would be, for example, we can take the
UNPROFOR forces, where the United States is a part of that operation;
requiring a prior approval on each case-by-case basis might not be able
to be done in a timely fashion.
If it is required that there be a waiver or that that be reported to
Congress as a theater, the American forces involved with UNPROFOR in
Bosnia, that would certainly be something I would support.
It is the individual case, in which in a timely manner prior approval
could not be given, just simply because there was not enough time that
existed prior to the need to share that information for protection of
American lives, either be it a single situation, such as Captain
O'Grady, or U.S. forces that might be involved in a situation where we
became aware of something that was fixing to happen or was going to
happen in a very short order but there was not time for the President
to actually get engaged and to grant the waiver prior to the time that
action had to be taken.
Those are the concerns I have. And in those instances, I would try to
protect in my substitute that the appropriate committees of Congress
would have to be notified that, in fact, that waiver was granted and
could then make their own determination about whether or not it, in
fact, qualified.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Chairman, our amendment had put forward particular
safeguarding procedures to try to encourage there to be an agreement
between the United States and the United Nations on any sort of sharing
of information and that we tighten up that procedure.
Those are maintained, as I understand it, in the amendment that the
gentleman has put forward.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I support the idea of requiring an
agreement to be made. That may not be true of every member of the
committee, but I certainly do support that.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Chairman, with that, I have no objections to the
amendment.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words. We accept the amendment. I commend the gentleman. I think he has
made the right decision here. He is moving the ball forward, and we are
just as concerned as he is about making sure that U.S. intelligence is
secured properly. I think by accepting the Combest amendment we can
make progress because of his initiative. I urge support for the
amendment.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] as a substitute for the amendment
offered by the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback].
The amendment offered as a substitute for the amendment was agreed
to.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback], as amended.
The amendment, as amended, was agreed to.
amendment offered by mr. conyers
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Conyers:
SEC. 306. ANNUAL STATEMENT OF THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF
INTELLIGENCE EXPENDITURES FOR THE CURRENT AND
SUCCEEDING FISCAL YEARS.
At the time of submission of the budget of the United
States Government submitted for fiscal year 1998 under
section 1105(a) of title 31, United States Code, and for each
fiscal year thereafter, the President shall submit to
Congress a separate, unclassified statement of the
appropriations and proposed appropriations for the current
fiscal year, and the amount of appropriations requested for
the fiscal year for which the budget is submitted, for
national and tactical intelligence activities, including
activities carried out under the budget of the Department Of
Defense to collect, analyze, produce, disseminate, or support
the collection of intelligence.
Mr. CONYERS (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Michigan?
There was no objection.
(Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer today a modest proposal that would
do no more than provide the American people and the Congress with
information they are entitled to. The amendment would essentially
declassify the aggregate figure of the intelligence budget. It would
make public the requested amount in the current fiscal year's
appropriated amount beginning October 1996. It would not disclose any
specific operation or department budgets, only the bottomline budget
number.
The amendment would conform to the recommendations of the Commission
on Role and Capabilities of the Intelligence Community, chaired by the
former Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown. This bipartisan commission
proposed that the President or his designee disclose the total amount
of money appropriated for intelligence activities during the current
fiscal year and the total amount being requested for the next fiscal
year.
Similarly, the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations report on
intelligence reform likewise urged the opening of the intelligence
budget.
This amendment would also mirror the provisions contained in the
intelligence authorization bill produced by the other body, which has
passed in the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Now, why? The reason is, first of all, constitutional, which in our
Constitution, it is clearly stated that a regular statement and account
of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published
from time to time.
It is simple, straightforward, and clear. The Framers of the
Constitution, themselves fresh from secret military operations against
the British, were no strangers to the need for secrecy. Yet, they
decided they needed to be accountable to the taxpayers. As early as
1790 and 1793, when the Congress created a secret fund for persons to
serve the United States in foreign parts, the law provided for public
disclosure of the aggregate amount. I think if Americans could have
openness after the Revolutionary War, then we can certainly have the
same openness after the cold war.
Now, in my earlier service on the Government Operations Committee of
this body, I had a number of decades of experience dealing with
classified information and the procedures for handling that
information. When the Government unnecessarily withholds information
from the public, believe me, it undermines the legitimate secrecy of
information that really should be protected. When we have an open
secret, as we do presently, and let us make it public, like the
intelligence budget, it creates a government by leaks, where
information is controlled more by access than by policy.
Withholding this kind of information from the public, in addition,
undermines confidence in government. I think Americans support an
intelligence system that provides accurate, timely information to our
policymakers. When the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was
asked in April what was the purpose of disclosure of the budget, he
said that ``the importance here is to gain public support for
intelligence.''
I do not think it is asking too much for Congress to tell our
citizens and constituents, in general terms, how many resources we are
allocating for intelligence purposes.
Mr. Chairman, I conclude by observing that it is time to stop
withholding
[[Page H5414]]
this information. My amendment to make public the bottomline amount of
the intelligence budget is a sensible step toward fiscal
responsibility.
I have a great deal of support both in and out of the Congress for
this amendment and I urge that it be speedily approved.
{time} 1315
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I will not take the 5 minutes. I would just like to
mention a few points that I have mentioned before and my objections to
the concept of the gentleman's amendment. The ranking member of the
committee is in support. In fact, I think a cosponsor, chairman of the
committee in the previous Congress, our friend the Secretary of
Agriculture, Mr. Glickman, supported the idea.
I believe this is starting down a slippery slope. I think this is an
inside-the-Beltway issue. I do not believe the American people are
clamoring to know the intelligence budget. I believe that they
understand the need for there to be national secrets. I believe that,
and in fact the staff have begun to put extreme pressure on knowing the
individual amounts of various programs, various agencies within the
intelligence community. That information, I think, provides information
to folks that we would rather not know what our plans and programs are;
that, in fact, is harmful.
Finally, I would just simply say that in the administration's support
of this, of declassification of the topline figure, the President has
the authority today, if he wished, to call a news conference and
disclose the amount, he could do so. He does not need congressional
approval.
I think he is looking for congressional cover. I would suggest that,
if the administration wishes to take this action, that they would move
forward under the authority which they currently have. The President
may so desire to do that. That is his decision. I simply do not feel
comfortable with it. I have always opposed it, continue to oppose it
and would not in fact be supportive, could not lend my support to a
provision which in fact would cause him to, given that he has the
authority now.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words and speak in favor of the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I want to rise in support of the Conyers amendment as a
cosponsor of it. The amendment will require the disclosure of the
aggregate budget figure only, not the budgets of any intelligence
agency, nor the budget for any program or activity. There is no threat
to national security from the disclosure of only the aggregate figure.
No potential adversary of the United States has the ability to thwart
any intelligence collection activity as a result of knowing just the
aggregate budget figure.
The executive order on classification permits information to be
classified only if its disclosure would be expected to cause damage to
the national security. Classification of the aggregate intelligence
budget figure does not meet that test.
The Constitution requires a public statement and account of the
expenditure of public funds. Disclosure of the aggregate budget figure
is more consistent with that constitutional requirement than the
current practice.
I might just add I had the pleasure of serving on the Aspin-Brown
Commission. The Commission endorsed disclosing the aggregate number.
The current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. John
Deutch, has also come out in favor of it, as has the President. I think
it would be totally appropriate for the Congress to take this step.
That is why I was delighted to join with my colleague, the gentleman
from Michigan [Mr. Conyers], in presenting this amendment today.
I urge my colleagues to vote for it.
Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite
number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Conyers amendment. This debate
here is about national security. National security is about confidence,
confidence in Government, trust in the Congress of the United States.
How can we expect the public to trust the House of Representatives when
we continue to keep budget information secret?
Think about it. We are in the month of May. Every city council, every
school board, every county government, every State government has to
have their budgets adopted by the fiscal year July 1. That means right
now throughout the United States these hearings on local budgets are
going on. All publicized, the public knows every cent that comes in and
every penny that is spent, except here in the House of Representatives,
where we keep and have traditionally kept secret a portion of the
national security budget. I think that is wrong. I think we need to
have confidence in what we do here. We can only have that confidence if
indeed we tell everybody where their money is going.
Mr. Chairman, in light of the debate here today, it is interesting
that the President says we should make this public. The Senate
Intelligence Committee voted to make it public. The former and current
CIA Directors agree that it ought to be public. The only way we can
ensure that it will be made public is to vote for the Conyers
amendment, help restore confidence in Congress. Support this amendment.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 1
additional minute.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I do not believe we have any further
speakers on this side. I just wanted to make a point that emphasizes
something I had said earlier. The White House press statement relative
to the intelligence community budget of 1996 said, reflecting the
President's determination to promote openness in the intelligence
community, he has authorized Congress to make it public.
Mr. Chairman, the President can make it public. I would state that
the report of the Aspin-Brown commission says that the commission
recommends that the President or his designee disclose the total amount
of money appropriated for intelligence activities during the current
fiscal year and the total amount being requested for the next fiscal
year. That is my suggestion. In compliance with the Aspin-Brown
commission, if the President wishes the budget to be disclosed, he or
his designee should do it.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the Conyers
amendment to H.R. 3259, the fiscal year 1997 intelligence authorization
bill. The Conyers amendment would require the release of a separate,
unclassified statement of budget outlays for intelligence activities.
It is high time that this come under the same scrutiny as other
Government spending. For many years during the cold war, the budget
figures for intelligence were kept secret so that our enemies would not
know our aggregate spending levels. Although I might question that
justification, the point is now moot. The cold war is over, and any
attempt to use it to justify the continuing secrecy of a large,
expensive set of programs seems to be a cynical attempt to evade
oversight and proper accounting.
The need for public scrutiny is clear: from the press reports of the
last few weeks, I learned that the National Reconnaissance Office, the
agency that manages spy satellites, has accumulated a financial surplus
of $3.8 billion. Let's assume that any other agency--one less popular
with the majority party, perhaps--had stockpiled billions of dollars.
Do you think, with a public viewing of their finances, that such an
agency would have been allowed to continue stockpiling money? How do I
explain to mother that the Federal Government has no money for well
baby care but has billions for spies slush funds?
As if the human costs of continued Government secrecy weren't bad
enough, there is a clear constitutional mandate for public disclosure
of intelligence spending. The Constitution states that ``No Money shall
be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made
by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of Receipts and
Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to
time.'' Whey then do we continue to shroud intelligence spending, and
keep our taxpayers in the dark?
When the public receives the amount of money spent on intelligence by
accident--the 1994 Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearings
disclosed an aggregate of $28 billion dollars--or by press leaks, it
merely contributes to the dangerous perception of Government as ``Big
Brother''. We can help stop that perception today by adopting the
Conyers amendment and proving that no arm of Government is immune to
public scrutiny.
[[Page H5415]]
It's time to bring the intelligence community in line with the rest
of Government. No agency should be free from a public examination of
its finances. It's common sense, it's constitutional, and it's
responsible. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the Conyers amendment.
Mr. FAZIO of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the
amendment offered by the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers]. His
amendment to the fiscal year 1997 intelligence authorization bill would
declassify the aggregate figure of the intelligence budget.
I believe, as do many of my colleagues, that a classified
intelligence budget is inconsistent with the accountability
requirements of the Constitution, and that it inhibits the openness
that must prevail in order to facilitate informed participation in our
democracy.
Moreover, as many fiscal watchdog organizations have pointed out,
American taxpayers deserve fiscal accountability when it comes to the
intelligence budget. If we continue to ask the taxpayers of this
country to contribute billions of dollars to the intelligence budget,
they deserve to know how much is being spent on their behalf. We need
only look at the example of the National Reconnaissance Office to see
what happens when intelligence budgets are kept hidden.
I understand the critically important national security questions
which are at stake in this debate. But as a former member of the Armed
Services Committee, I do not believe that public disclosure of the
total amount of money appropriated to the intelligence budget would
compromise our Nation's security
The President supports disclosure of the intelligence budget, as does
the Senate Intelligence Committee. I urge my colleagues to support
disclosure of this budget as well. Vote ``yes'' on the Conyers
amendment.
Mr. CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers].
The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the ayes
appeared to have it.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending
that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.
Mr. CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, further proceedings on the
amendment offered by the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] will be
postponed
The point of no quorum is considered withdrawn.
Mr. CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to the bill?
amendment offered by mr. combest
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Combest: In the matter proposed to
be inserted by section 401, strike ``Make'' and insert in
lieu thereof the following: ``Subject to such amounts as may
be provided in advance in appropriations Acts, make''.
Mr. COMBEST (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
Mr. CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply provides the
opportunity for the Central Intelligence Agency to execute multiyear
leasing authority. The CIA has routinely signed multiyear leases since
1949, relying on section 8 authority to expend appropriated funds of
the CIA Act. The CIA inspector general now has concerns about the
propriety of using that authority for overt leases.
CIA needs are such that it often requires space on a very short
notice. If it can do so only for short-term leases, 1 year, landlords
demand higher rental payments. GSA has difficulty meeting CIA's very
specific needs: readily available space, special security and
communications needs resulting in added cost for CIA and thus for the
Government as a whole.
The CBO raises concerns about the availability of appropriations for
multiyear leases. My amendment would require that multiyear leases be
subject to the availability of funds. CBO is also concerned that this
provision could cost several million dollars per year. We have to
remember that without this authority, the CIA will continue to use 1-
year leases that will inevitably cost more money. Our best estimate is
that this provision will save more than a million dollars per year.
Mr. Chairman, it is technical. It is my understanding that my
colleague, the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks], has no objection
to this amendment.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
The amendment would amend section 403 of the bill, giving CIA the
authority to enter into multiyear leases to require that the CIA have
an appropriation for the total amount of the lease in advance.
I understand the concern of the Congressional Budget Office and the
Budget Committee that section 401 as it appears in the bill would allow
CIA to enter into long-term leases without being subject to
appropriations action. This was not the intent of the committee.
However, I do have some concerns about the language of the amendment.
Since these leases could easily run into many millions of dollars, it
is not clear to me that there would ever be an authorization or
appropriation for these leases in advance.
It is also not clear how funds could be made available for the entire
term of a 15- or 20-year lease. Nevertheless, because I believe it
should be possible to find mutually acceptable language in conference,
I am prepared to accept this amendment for our side.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest].
The amendment was agreed to.
amendment offered by mr. combest
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. COMBEST: Amend section 402 to read
as follows:
SEC. 402. ELIMINATION OF DOUBLE SURCHARGE ON THE CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE AGENCY RELATING TO EMPLOYEES WHO
RETIRE OR RESIGN IN FISCAL YEARS 1998 OR 1999
AND WHO RECEIVE VOLUNTARY SEPARATION INCENTIVE
PAYMENTS.
Section 2(i) of the Central Intelligence Agency Voluntary
Separation Pay Act (50 U.S.C. 403-4 note) is amended by
adding at the end the following new sentence: ``The
remittance required by this subsection shall be in lieu of
any remittance required by section 4(a) of the Federal
Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994 (5 U.S.C. 8331 note).''.
Mr. COMBEST (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, this section corrects existing law which
currently requires the CIA to make two payments, one of 9 percent, one
of 15 percent, for employees who take incentivized retirement from the
CIA during fiscal years 1998, 1999. The CIA is required to make the
Government retirement trust fund whole for those individuals who take
these incentivized retirements. In order to do so, it must reimburse
the Federal Government 15 percent of the final base pay of each
individual who retires. Requiring the CIA to make an additional 9
percent payment becomes a penalty.
Section 403 eliminates the double surcharge. This amendment is
identical to one offered by the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica],
chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service. It is my understanding
that Mr. Dicks has no objections.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, the amendment makes clear that what we were trying to
do in the bill was ensure CIA makes only one payment and not two, to
the civil service retirement and disability fund for those agency
employees who take an early retirement or resign and receive separation
incentives in fiscal year 1998 and 1999.
The CIA was required to make these payments under both amendments to
the CIA Voluntary Separation Pay Act enacted last year and the Federal
Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994. It was never intended that the CIA
would have to pay 24 percent for employees leaving the agency under its
separation incentive program.
The amendment clarifies that the required 15-percent payment to the
fund under the CIA Voluntary Separation Pay Act is in lieu of the 9-
percent payment required under the Federal
[[Page H5416]]
Workforce Restructuring Act. Thus we would be happy to accept it on our
side and urge the committee to pass it.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest].
The amendment was agreed to.
amendment offered by mr. combest
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. COMBEST: In section 303--
(1) Insert ``(a) Authorization of Appropriations.--''
before ``Section 307''; and
(2) add at the end thereof the following:
(b) Transfers.--The second sentence of section 307(a) of
the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996 is
amended to read as follows: ``Within the amount authorized to
be used by this section, the Director, consistent with his
duty to protect intelligence sources and methods, may
transfer such amounts to the agencies within the National
Foreign Intelligence Program for the purpose of automatic
declassification of records over 25 years old.
Mr. COMBEST (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, again this is basically a technical
amendment. The section provides the Director of Central Intelligence
the authority to transfer funds authorized for automatic
declassification within the national foreign intelligence community to
execute section 3.4 of Executive Order 12958. This provision would
allow that money which is basically in one pool to be dispensed within
the NFIP agencies, depending upon the need of that agency to comply
with the declassification order of Executive Order 12958. It is my
understanding that there are no objections to this amendment.
{time} 1330
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, the amendment of the gentleman from Texas clarifies
that the DCI may transfer the funds authorized by section 303 of the
bill to the agencies within the National Foreign Intelligence Program
for the automatic declassification of records over 25 years old.
The community management staff has pointed out that this transfer
authority is necessary to move the money the bill provides in the
community management account back to the various agency programs. I
have no problem with this technical correction.
The gentleman's amendment also states that the DCI is to make these
transfers consistent with his duty to protect sources and methods. This
particular language is superfluous because the DCI is already required
by current law to protect sources and methods in everything he does.
Because I am certain the gentleman does not mean to imply by the
inclusion of this redundant language that the DCI has any intention of
violating the requirements of current law in transferring money we
authorize in this area, I am prepared to accept the amendment for this
side.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest].
The amendment was agreed to.
amendment offered by mr. combest
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Combest: At the end of the bill,
add the following new title:
TITLE VI--MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS
SEC. 601. AUTHORIZATION OF FUNDING PROVIDED BY 1996
SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT.
Amounts obligated or expended for intelligence or
intelligence-related activities based on and otherwise in
accordance with the appropriations provided by the Omnibus
Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996
(Public Law 104-134), including any such obligations or
expenditures occurring before the enactment of this Act,
shall be deemed to have been specifically authorized by the
Congress for purposes of section 504 of the National Security
Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 414) and are hereby ratified and
confirmed.
Mr. COMBEST (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, this is also a technical amendment that
would correct an oversight in the Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and
Appropriations Act of 1996. The law requires specific authorization for
expenditure of funds for intelligence. The act in question obligated
funds for intelligence, but contains no provisions for authorization.
This amendment would correct that oversight.
It is my understanding that the amendment is acceptable to the
Committee on Appropriations, and I would yield back the balance of my
time.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, section 504 of the National Security Act requires that
funds may be obligated or expended for an intelligence or intelligence-
related activity only if those funds were specifically authorized by
the Congress for use for such activities.
The Combest amendment will provide the necessary authorization for
funds appropriated earlier this year in the Bosnia supplemental. I
support the amendment and we are prepared to accept it on our side.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest].
The amendment was agreed to.
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, debate concluded a few minutes ago on the amendment
offered by the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] about the question
of declassification of the aggregate amount of intelligence
expenditures. I wanted nonetheless to address that question briefly at
this time.
The debate on this, I think, is easily misconstrued and, therefore,
misunderstood. It seems to me always appropriate to start with first
principles, which, in a democracy, ought to be that the maximum amount
of information about the activities of our Government be made available
to our citizens.
Now, there are necessarily exceptions to that principle for national
security information, for State secrets, but the general principle
again ought to be to make as much information about the operations of a
democratically elected, representative government as possible
available, so that citizens may make informed judgments in the process
of self-government.
It has been alleged that somehow vital national security interests
are going to be compromised if this aggregate intelligence expenditure
is declassified. I think that is a proposition that is virtually
impossible to support rationally. It is a figure that is often nearly
accurately reported in the open press. It is a number that ought to be
accurately and openly reported in the press so that our fellow citizens
have at least an overall sense of how much of their hard-earned tax
dollars is being devoted to this important national purpose.
The slippery slope argument is often offered up as a reason not to
take this step, because this step, it is asserted, will inevitably lead
to the disclosure of constituent amounts within the intelligence
budget, I think that argument simply is unable to be sustained. We are
able to keep ourselves from sliding down lots of slopes around this
place, and I think we can draw a firm line after this particular
disclosure, and it does not need to lead to others.
It has also been suggested that this should just be done as a matter
of executive decision by the President. I think it is an important
policy judgment that ought to be validated and ratified by a vote of
the Congress, not just done by act of the executive branch alone.
Perhaps most helpful is to realize that an extensive review of this
issue of the disclose of the aggregate intelligence expenditures was
undertaken by the Aspin-Brown Commission. It has been scrubbed and
vetted and examined, and it was the judgment of that distinguished
group of American patriots and experts in defense and intelligence and
national security matters, that keeping this total budget figure secret
any longer just simply does not serve any legitimate national security
or national defense purpose. And it certainly fails to serve the
legitimate interests of the public in being able to have access to as
much information about their Government as possible.
So I hope, when we reach the point in the proceedings where we have a
vote
[[Page H5417]]
on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers],
that my colleagues will support his proposal. I think it is an
appropriate step forward. It will ultimately enhance public
understanding and, therefore, I would hope public support, for this
important function of our national Government.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I rise to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Conyers amendment to make
public the cumulative number of the intelligence budget.
This is not a new issue to the Congress, Mr. Chairman. Over the past
several Congresses we have had this debate on the floor about whether
this number should be released and whether its release would jeopardize
our national security. I believe the answer is yes, that it should be
released, and, no, it does not jeopardize our national security.
When the issue first arose we had the debate, and it was said that we
needed more information. So our chairman at the time, Mr. Glickman,
Chairman Glickman, held hearings, very extensive hearings, where
experts in the field of intelligence confirmed that our national
security would not be jeopardized and indeed it would be healthy to
release the number.
As early as some of the statements as early as 1991 on the subject
have said, former DCI Robert Gates said, ``I don't have any problem
with releasing the top-line number of the intelligence community
budget.''
That same year former Director of NSA, Bobby Inman, said, ``I am
certainly prepared to make unclassified the total amount and defend it
to the public, why 10 percent of our total defense efforts spent both
for national and tactical intelligence is not a bad goal at all.''
And of course this year the White House statement on this subject
said, reflecting the President's determination to promote openness in
the intelligence community, he has authorized Congress to make public
the total appropriation.
Going way back 20 years, the select committee that studied
governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities stated
intelligence oversight committee should authorize on an annual basis a
national intelligence budget, the total amount of which should be made
public.
So over the years and as recently as the statements of this year,
most currently that of DCI John Deutch, the President is persuaded that
disclosure of the annual amount appropriated for intelligence purposes
will inform the public and not in itself harm intelligence activities.
I think that there is a good cross-section of studies and DCI's from
both, appointed by Presidents of both parties, who have supported
making this number public, and I think it is a healthy thing to do.
The defense, the intelligence, community should have to defend the
amount of money that is spent on intelligence in relationship to the
rest of the budget. It is especially important this year so that we can
restore some of the confidence to this process that has been undermined
by the recent NRO revelations, and on that point, Mr. Chairman, I would
like to say that when people accept the public trust, they and we all
have a special responsibility. We must be responsible fiscally for the
funds that are in our trust, we must understand the stiff competition
for the funds and, therefore, have to be able to justify how they are
expended.
We need to maintain the public confidence in what we are doing, and
so what happened at NRO is most unfortunate because it did undermine
all of these, the public confidence and the trust that we all should
have in husbanding the public dollars.
And most of all, the actions of any one of these agencies should not
undermine the strength, the perceived strength, of our country. We have
to look like we know what we are doing and can account for the
responsibilities of both fiscal and otherwise in our charge, and so I
would say that with all of the testimony that we have had over the
years, with the cooperation now of the executive branch, with the
definite need that has been demonstrated for in one instance by the NRO
situation, it behooves this Congress to move to support the Conyers
amendment to make this number public, to open the intelligence process
to the extent of saying this is a number that can, that should have to,
be defended within the total budget process and that it should be done
in a manner that is not harmful to our intelligence activities nor
jeopardize the national security of our country.
I am satisfied by the statements of such a wide-ranging, as I said,
bipartisan group of people who have testified in hearings of the House
of Representatives and on the Senate side over a long period of time,
that there is no doubt that we should make this number public. I urge
my colleagues to support the Conyers amendment.
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I will be offering some amendments later on, but I
wanted to rise in favor of the Conyers amendment also.
I have always believed that government is not a fungus, that it can
thrive in sunshine, and I understand that during the whole period of
the Cold War we wanted to keep this number secret. But I think now we
ought to be able to get this number out, and I salute the President of
the United States for saying we ought to put the number out, and I hope
that this body finally does that.
Coming here to debate this issue, I always feel very silly because we
cannot talk about the numbers, we cannot talk about the issues, we
cannot talk about anything. So what can we talk about? It all sounds
like a bag of smoke at some point. But I think one of the things that
the average person wonders is why are we not much more rigorous in our
oversight? And I must say the only reason I think we do not reveal the
number is we do not want to admit how poorly we have done some of the
oversight.
Now, this is not a great secret. I brought it from the newspapers so
nobody wants to turn me in to jail. But if my colleagues remember, the
Washington Post and many other articles were pointing out how the NRO
had purchased 14 more acres than they needed for their $304 million
complex, and of course most people remember the big brouhaha about the
$304 million complex. Here it was being built in suburban Washington on
the Virginia side, and no one knew. Viola.
{time} 1345
Mr. Chairman, in the district I come from, Denver, CO, they have had
to shut down Head Start already this year. They ran out of money. We
have all these people desperately looking for just pennies to keep
something running, and yet they can, first of all, do a headquarters
that no one knew about, there it is, and then we find out they had all
these extra acreages, and nothing ever happens. Then we also find out,
as we found out this year, that they admitted they had a $3.8 billion
slush fund.
I understand we are supposed to call it the surplus unspent funds,
but I think if any other agency in Government had that kind of slush
fund or surplus unspent funds, whatever you want to call them, people
would be down here, the deficit hawks would be down here screaming and
yelling and hollering, and rightly so.
I guess the problem I see, Mr. Chairman, is that on one side of the
budget we are very critical, and I think that is fine, but when it
comes to defense and intelligence, it does not make any difference. We
have the report of the slush fund, and yet nobody really wants to talk
about cutting. Yet, you cannot talk about what percentage of the budget
that slush fund is because we cannot tell what the budget number is.
But that is a lot of money.
If we look again in the generic press, and I am staying right in the
generic press, my goodness, we would not want to reveal any of these
secrets because they probably would have to shoot me and whoever else I
would reveal them to, and I would not want that on my conscience.
So if we go and look at those numbers, let us look at these numbers
and look at them seriously, they are saying in the generic press that
these surplus unspent funds, they are adding about $1 billion to it
every year. That seems to say to me maybe we are putting too much money
in it. Are we awake? Are we doing any oversight, or are we just
[[Page H5418]]
saying that this is so important that we will just give them any amount
of money, whether they can spend it or not?
I am also sad that we cannot get into more details. I was very
troubled by the late article in the Atlantic Monthly about some of the
training that had gone on in the Middle East, so that they think we may
be responsible for training some of the terrorists, that it was done
with good will, but it kind of got out of control.
So if we add all of those things together, we scratch our heads and
say surely we can at least do what the gentleman from Michigan [Mr.
Conyers] and the President of the United States have said we could do,
which is at least put the overall number out of here. Even though I
will not be here next year, then maybe whoever is here next year can
have a little bit better debate and put this in a little bit better
context because we can talk about what percentages these are. I hope
that the Conyers amendment is passed, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise to engage the chairman of the committee in a
colloquy concerning section 304 of the bill. I would say to the
gentleman from Texas, the chairman of the committee, as he knows, this
provision extends the laws allowing the President to delay the
imposition of a sanction upon a determination that to proceed with the
sanction would risk a compromise of an ongoing criminal investigation
or an intelligence source or method.
My question, Mr. Chairman, is whether the legislative history
developed during the debate on this provision last year would still be
applicable to the extension of the authority for 1 year? My further
question is that can we expect that this provision will be narrowly
construed, and only used in the most serious of circumstances, not to
protect routine intelligence activities?
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?
Ms. PELOSI. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I would certainly concur and say yes, we
would intend for this to still be in effect. As the gentlewoman so
adequately pointed out, and has been very effective, I think, in
leading on this issue, we would certainly expect that this provision
would be narrowly construed and only used in the most serious of
circumstances. That is certainly the intent of the committee to carry
forward in this year's authorization.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for engaging in the
colloquy, and for his confirmation of the understanding that we had of
the legislative background on this last year. As Members may recall, I
worked closely with the gentleman from California [Mr. Berman] who is
an expert in this field, and has an interest in the waiver of sanctions
and the particular limitations that the chairman of the committee has
confirmed. I thank the chairman of the committee once again for that
confirmation.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate a couple of concerns I have about
this bill. As I have stated, I am going to support it, but we need to
remember that the money we are spending for intelligence today, in my
mind, is a tremendous force multiplier for our military.
When we consider the fact that we can now literally fuse into the
cockpits of our aircraft intelligence gathered in space to give the
locations of enemy weapons systems in almost real time, so they can be
properly targeted, I think all of a sudden we recognize the
revolutionary improvements that are being made in our overall military
capability.
To my friends on the Democratic side, I believe strongly that such
capabilities will allow us in the future to deter military conflicts. I
would urge my colleagues, to support the Conyers amendment, of which I
am a sponsor.
I think we can disclose the aggregate number, but I want everyone to
remember that this is still a part of the Defense Department. It is a
portion of the defense budget that is used not only to gather
intelligence for our national leadership, but also to be used
effectively to protect the people that we are sending in harm's way
every single day all around the world and to convince our adversaries
that picking a fight with the United States just simply does not make
sense.
I had a chance just a few weeks ago to go to our combined air
operation in Vincenza and to see a real fusion center where
intelligence from all of our collection platforms is gathered. This
intelligence is used by our military to find problems in Bosnia that
are then communicated to the military commanders, and thus they are
able to avoid possible conflicts that could occur; because of the
ability to find enemy radars and things of that nature.
This is truly a revolutionary change in intelligence capabilities, so
as we sometimes get harsh with the NRO, I would say that John Deutch
took effective steps. He named a new chief financial officer. He named
a new head of the NRO, a very fine public servant. The two people that
were removed are people who have given distinguished service to our
country. Unfortunately, the financial people at the NRO did not do
their job properly, and Congress was not properly informed about the
size of these carryforward funds.
Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate, there is no evidence that any of
that money was spent on items not authorized by Congress. One of my
colleagues talked today about the very famous NRO building. Our
committee, a bipartisan basis, put out a report that said that we knew
about this building. In fact, we had good oversight over the building.
We pointed out that in the other body there were amendments offered by
members of the Intelligence Committee to accelerate and possibly to
expand the size of the NRO building.
So when they then turned around at a later date and said they knew
nothing about it, many of us in this body had serious reservations
about how they in fact could say that. Sometimes in a rush we do not
keep the facts in sight, and we sometimes do not know the history.
The point I am trying to make, Mr. Chairman, is that the NRO has been
one of the stellar institutions in our Government. One of the reasons
we won the cold war was because we had the finest intelligence. We have
the finest intelligence community of any nation on earth. Those
intelligence community assets are used to enhance our military
capability in order to protect American lives and to deter future wars.
That is why I have always strongly supported our intelligence
community.
Can we reduce the money? Yes. Have we reduced the money? Yes. We have
reduced it significantly.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks]
has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Dicks was allowed to proceed for 3
additional minutes.)
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, have we reduced the money for defense? Yes.
We have cut the Defense budget by about $100 billion a year between
1985 and 1995. We have also cut back on the amount of money for the
intelligence agencies. We have cut back on the number of personnel. I
am talking about across the board cuts in the Defense Department, the
CIA, and all of these agencies, we have reduced the size. Yet, today,
America is in more countries around the world with military forces that
require accurate intelligence for their security and support.
Mr. Chairman, I just urge my colleagues to remember that fact. Yes,
we can always beat up on an agency, but I am always reminded of the
fact that this agency is composed of American citizens who serve our
Government faithfully, who have done an extraordinary job. I just urge
us to put this into some perspective. If they had failed in building
these national technical means, then we would be here criticizing them.
They certainly failed to keep Congress appropriately informed of the
size of the carryover funds. There is no evidence whatsoever that any
of that money was improperly spent.
So let us try to keep this in perspective. Sometimes, with all the
criticism, the harsh rhetoric, we forget that these are men and women
who have done a fantastic job for this Nation, and who really do
deserve our support.
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
[[Page H5419]]
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado, an outstanding
member of the Committee on Armed Services.
Mrs. SCHROEDER. The gentleman is a good friend and I respect him very
much, Mr. Chairman.
My question, Mr. Chairman, is not to be confrontational, but the
gentleman is not questioning the fact that almost $1 billion a year had
gone into this $3.8 billion surplus fund, is that correct?
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman was not on the floor, I
think, when we talked about this a little earlier. As she knows, when
we buy a weapons system at the Pentagon, sometimes there are billions
of dollars of unobligated funds that are spend over a period of time.
In the intelligence area, we incrementally fund. It was the opinion of
George Mahon and some of the senior members of the Committee on
Appropriations many years ago that we could not risk a situation where
Congress has not passed its budget by the start of the fiscal year.
They believed it was necessary to have a certain amount of flexibility
in carryforward funds to keep these programs going, if the Congress did
not get the Defense budget passed. There was a kind of agreement among
the players to do this.
What I object to, and I know the gentlewoman from Colorado objects
to, is that this account, and each one of these were for different
national technical means, different satellite programs, is that these
accounts grew too large in the aggregate. None of the money was
misspent. I think the fault was that Congress was not kept
appropriately advised about the magnitude.
I can tell the Members, I am very pleased that it was the staff of
the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and particularly the
minority staff, that went to the NRO, found this out, made it known to
the other key committees in the Congress, and last year we dramatically
reduced the amount of money in those accounts. We used it for Bosnia,
we use it for other defense priorities, so that the money was not
wasted. The American people did not get ripped off.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks]
has expired.
(By unanimous consent and on request of Mrs. Schroeder, Mr. Dicks was
allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado.
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Chairman, the issue is that the money was not
spent, and then it forced us to spend a tremendous amount of money just
on interest on that additional debt we incurred by spending more than
we really needed to spend at that time, when we build up an account of
that much over that period of time. And the gentleman knows and I know
that the fastest growing part of the Federal budget has been interest
on the debt. We would not allow any other agency to do that.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, of course, as the gentlewoman certainly
knows and appreciates, this is budget authority. You do not really
spend money until you spend it. That is an outlay. So they had the
budget authority, but they never spent the money. So that would not
incur any obligation by the Federal Treasury.
In a sense, they had the ability to draw on the Treasury up to $4
billion, but they did not do it. What we did with that BA is move it to
other higher priority items like Bosnia, so we did not have to
appropriate additional money, and again that was agreed to.
{time} 1400
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado.
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman knows that
everybody in the world would love to have that kind of budget authority
in the bank that they could move around for things, and we lose the
oversight capacity.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the chairman and myself
have limited the amount of the carry-forward. The director of the CIA,
one of the most competent individuals I know, has made changes in the
NRO, has named a new chief financial officer. So in a sense, I think we
ought to give Mr. Deutch and the administration some support for the
steps that they have taken to ensure that this does not happen again in
the future.
Yes, the NRO made a mistake. Yes, they were wrong. But I want us to
place in perspective that these same people who did a bad job in their
accounting also have done some tremendously positive things for the
country in terms of the satellites that have been built over the years
that helped us avoid a confrontation with the Soviet Union.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks]
has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Dicks was allowed to proceed for 1
additional minute.)
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I am glad to hear the
gentleman say we should give support to the administration. We can do
that in part by abiding by their budget request and not spending well
over $1 billion in this budget than the administration requested. We
will deal with that in some later amendments.
sequential votes postponed in committee of the whole
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, proceedings will now resume on
those amendments on which further proceedings were postponed, in the
following order: the amendment, as amended, offered by the gentleman
from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson]; the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders]; and the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers].
The Chair will reduce to 5 minutes the time for any electronic vote
after the second vote in this series.
amendment offered by mr. richardson, as amended
The CHAIRMAN. The pending business is the demand for a recorded vote
on the amendment, as amended, offered by the gentleman from New Mexico
[Mr. Richardson] on which further proceedings were postponed and on
which the ayes prevailed by voice vote.
The Clerk will designate the amendment, as amended.
The Clerk designated the amendment, as amended.
recorded vote
The CHAIRMAN. A recorded vote has been demanded.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 417,
noes 6, not voting 10, as follows:
[Roll No 184]
AYES--417
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allard
Andrews
Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baesler
Baker (CA)
Baker (LA)
Baldacci
Ballenger
Barcia
Barr
Barrett (NE)
Barrett (WI)
Bartlett
Bass
Bateman
Becerra
Beilenson
Bentsen
Bereuter
Berman
Bevill
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop
Blute
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bonior
Bono
Borski
Boucher
Brewster
Browder
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Brownback
Bryant (TN)
Bryant (TX)
Bunn
Bunning
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Canady
Cardin
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Chapman
Christensen
Chrysler
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clinger
Clyburn
Coble
Coleman
Collins (GA)
Collins (IL)
Collins (MI)
Combest
Condit
Conyers
Cooley
Cox
Coyne
Cramer
Crane
Crapo
Cremeans
Cubin
Cummings
Cunningham
Danner
Davis
de la Garza
Deal
DeFazio
DeLauro
DeLay
Dellums
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Dicks
Dingell
Dixon
Doggett
Dooley
Doolittle
Dornan
Doyle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Durbin
Edwards
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
Engel
English
Ensign
Eshoo
Evans
Everett
Ewing
Farr
Fattah
Fawell
Fazio
Fields (LA)
Fields (TX)
Filner
Flanagan
Foglietta
Foley
Forbes
Ford
Fowler
Fox
Frank (MA)
Franks (CT)
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Frisa
Frost
Furse
Gallegly
Ganske
Gejdenson
Gekas
Gephardt
Geren
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Gonzalez
Goodlatte
Goodling
Gordon
Goss
Graham
Green (TX)
Greene (UT)
Greenwood
Gunderson
Gutierrez
Gutknecht
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hamilton
Hancock
Hansen
Harman
Hastert
Hastings (FL)
[[Page H5420]]
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Hayworth
Hefner
Heineman
Herger
Hilleary
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hobson
Hoekstra
Hoke
Holden
Horn
Hostettler
Houghton
Hoyer
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jacobs
Jefferson
Johnson (CT)
Johnson (SD)
Johnson, E. B.
Johnson, Sam
Johnston
Jones
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kasich
Kelly
Kennedy (MA)
Kennedy (RI)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kim
King
Kingston
Kleczka
Klink
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaFalce
LaHood
Lantos
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Laughlin
Lazio
Leach
Levin
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Lewis (KY)
Lightfoot
Lincoln
Linder
Lipinski
Livingston
LoBiondo
Lofgren
Longley
Lowey
Lucas
Luther
Maloney
Manton
Manzullo
Markey
Martinez
Martini
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McDermott
McHale
McHugh
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek
Menendez
Metcalf
Meyers
Mica
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Miller (FL)
Minge
Mink
Mollohan
Montgomery
Moorhead
Moran
Morella
Murtha
Myers
Myrick
Nadler
Neal
Nethercutt
Neumann
Ney
Norwood
Nussle
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Orton
Owens
Oxley
Packard
Pallone
Parker
Pastor
Paxon
Payne (NJ)
Payne (VA)
Pelosi
Peterson (FL)
Peterson (MN)
Petri
Pickett
Pombo
Pomeroy
Porter
Portman
Poshard
Pryce
Quillen
Quinn
Radanovich
Rahall
Ramstad
Rangel
Reed
Regula
Richardson
Riggs
Rivers
Roberts
Roemer
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Rose
Roth
Roukema
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Rush
Sabo
Salmon
Sanders
Sawyer
Saxton
Schaefer
Schiff
Schroeder
Schumer
Scott
Seastrand
Sensenbrenner
Serrano
Shaw
Shays
Shuster
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skeen
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Smith (WA)
Solomon
Spence
Spratt
Stark
Stearns
Stenholm
Stockman
Stokes
Studds
Stump
Stupak
Talent
Tanner
Tate
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Tejeda
Thomas
Thompson
Thornberry
Thornton
Thurman
Tiahrt
Torkildsen
Torres
Torricelli
Towns
Traficant
Upton
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Volkmer
Vucanovich
Walker
Walsh
Wamp
Ward
Waters
Watt (NC)
Watts (OK)
Waxman
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
White
Whitfield
Wicker
Williams
Wilson
Wise
Wolf
Woolsey
Wynn
Yates
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
Zeliff
Zimmer
NOES--6
Campbell
Coburn
Istook
Sanford
Shadegg
Souder
NOT VOTING--10
Barton
Bliley
Chenoweth
Costello
Flake
Funderburk
Hefley
Moakley
Molinari
Scarborough
{time} 1421
Messrs. PETERSON of Minnesota, ZELIFF, EVERETT, WILSON, and STOCKMAN
changed their vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
So the amendment, as amended, was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Amendment Offered by Mr. Sanders
The CHAIRMAN. The pending business is the demand for a recorded vote
on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] on
which further proceedings were postponed, and on which the noes
prevailed by voice vote.
The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The Clerk designated the amendment.
Recorded Vote
The CHAIRMAN. A recorded vote has been demanded.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 115,
noes 311, not voting 7, as follows:
[Roll No. 185]
AYES--115
Andrews
Baldacci
Barcia
Barrett (WI)
Becerra
Bonior
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Bryant (TX)
Camp
Campbell
Clay
Clayton
Coble
Collins (IL)
Collins (MI)
Condit
Conyers
Coyne
Danner
DeFazio
DeLauro
Dellums
Duncan
Durbin
Ehlers
Ensign
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Foglietta
Foley
Fox
Frank (MA)
Furse
Gordon
Green (TX)
Gutierrez
Hilliard
Hinchey
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jacobs
Jefferson
Johnson (SD)
Johnston
Kanjorski
Kennedy (MA)
Kleczka
Klug
LaHood
Lewis (GA)
Lincoln
Lofgren
Luther
Maloney
Manzullo
Markey
McCarthy
McDermott
McKinney
Meehan
Meek
Metcalf
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Minge
Mink
Morella
Nadler
Neal
Neumann
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Owens
Pastor
Payne (NJ)
Peterson (MN)
Petri
Pickett
Poshard
Ramstad
Rangel
Reed
Roemer
Rohrabacher
Rose
Roth
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Rush
Sanders
Schroeder
Schumer
Sensenbrenner
Serrano
Shays
Slaughter
Stark
Studds
Stupak
Torricelli
Towns
Upton
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Waters
Watt (NC)
Williams
Woolsey
Yates
NOES--311
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allard
Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baesler
Baker (CA)
Baker (LA)
Ballenger
Barr
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Barton
Bass
Bateman
Beilenson
Bentsen
Bereuter
Berman
Bevill
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop
Blute
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Borski
Boucher
Brewster
Browder
Brownback
Bryant (TN)
Bunn
Bunning
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Canady
Cardin
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Chapman
Chenoweth
Christensen
Chrysler
Clement
Clinger
Clyburn
Coburn
Coleman
Collins (GA)
Combest
Cooley
Cox
Cramer
Crane
Crapo
Cremeans
Cubin
Cummings
Cunningham
Davis
de la Garza
Deal
DeLay
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Dicks
Dingell
Dixon
Doggett
Dooley
Doolittle
Dornan
Doyle
Dreier
Dunn
Edwards
Ehrlich
Emerson
Engel
English
Eshoo
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Fazio
Fields (LA)
Fields (TX)
Flanagan
Forbes
Ford
Fowler
Franks (CT)
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Frisa
Frost
Gallegly
Ganske
Gejdenson
Gekas
Gephardt
Geren
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Gonzalez
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Graham
Greene (UT)
Greenwood
Gunderson
Gutknecht
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hamilton
Hancock
Hansen
Harman
Hastert
Hastings (FL)
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Hayworth
Hefley
Hefner
Heineman
Herger
Hilleary
Hobson
Hoekstra
Hoke
Holden
Horn
Hostettler
Houghton
Hoyer
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Istook
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, E. B.
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Kaptur
Kasich
Kelly
Kennedy (RI)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kim
King
Kingston
Klink
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaFalce
Lantos
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Laughlin
Lazio
Leach
Levin
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Lightfoot
Linder
Lipinski
Livingston
LoBiondo
Longley
Lowey
Lucas
Manton
Martinez
Martini
Mascara
Matsui
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McHale
McHugh
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
McNulty
Menendez
Meyers
Mica
Miller (FL)
Mollohan
Montgomery
Moorhead
Moran
Murtha
Myers
Myrick
Nethercutt
Ney
Norwood
Nussle
Ortiz
Orton
Oxley
Packard
Pallone
Parker
Paxon
Payne (VA)
Pelosi
Peterson (FL)
Pombo
Pomeroy
Porter
Portman
Pryce
Quillen
Quinn
Radanovich
Rahall
Regula
Richardson
Riggs
Rivers
Roberts
Rogers
Ros-Lehtinen
Roukema
Sabo
Salmon
Sanford
Sawyer
Saxton
Schaefer
Schiff
Scott
Seastrand
Shadegg
Shaw
Shuster
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skeen
Skelton
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Smith (WA)
Solomon
Souder
Spence
Spratt
Stearns
Stenholm
Stockman
Stokes
Stump
Talent
Tanner
Tate
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Tejeda
Thomas
Thompson
Thornberry
Thornton
Thurman
Tiahrt
Torkildsen
Torres
Traficant
Volkmer
Vucanovich
Walker
Walsh
Wamp
Ward
Watts (OK)
Waxman
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
White
Whitfield
Wicker
Wilson
Wise
Wolf
Wynn
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
Zeliff
Zimmer
NOT VOTING--7
Bliley
Costello
Flake
Funderburk
Moakley
Molinari
Scarborough
{time} 1439
The Clerk announced the following pair:
On this vote:
Mr. Moakley for, with Mr. Scarborough against.
Mrs. CUBIN changed her vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
[[Page H5421]]
Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania and Mr. JOHNSON of South Dakota changed their
vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
So the amendment was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
amendment offered by mr. conyers
The CHAIRMAN. The pending business is the demand for a recorded vote
on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers]
on which further proceedings were postponed and on which the ayes
prevailed by voice vote.
The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The Clerk designated the amendment.
recorded vote
The CHAIRMAN. A recorded vote has been demanded.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The CHAIRMAN. This will be a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 176,
noes 248, not voting 9, as follows:
[Roll No. 186]
AYES--176
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Andrews
Baldacci
Barrett (WI)
Becerra
Beilenson
Bentsen
Berman
Bevill
Bonior
Borski
Boucher
Browder
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Bunn
Chabot
Chapman
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Collins (IL)
Collins (MI)
Conyers
Coyne
Cummings
Danner
de la Garza
DeFazio
DeLauro
Dellums
Dicks
Dixon
Doggett
Duncan
Durbin
Edwards
Engel
Eshoo
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Fazio
Fields (LA)
Filner
Foglietta
Ford
Fox
Frank (MA)
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Gibbons
Goodlatte
Gordon
Green (TX)
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hamilton
Harman
Hefner
Hilliard
Hinchey
Holden
Horn
Istook
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jacobs
Johnson (SD)
Johnson, E.B.
Johnston
Kanjorski
Kennedy (MA)
Kennedy (RI)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kleczka
Klink
Klug
LaFalce
Lantos
Leach
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lincoln
Lofgren
Lowey
Luther
Maloney
Manton
Markey
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy
McDermott
McHale
McKinney
Meehan
Meek
Menendez
Metcalf
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Moran
Morella
Nadler
Neal
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Owens
Pallone
Pastor
Payne (NJ)
Payne (VA)
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Petri
Pickett
Pomeroy
Poshard
Rangel
Reed
Richardson
Riggs
Rivers
Roemer
Rohrabacher
Rose
Roth
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanders
Sawyer
Schroeder
Schumer
Scott
Sensenbrenner
Serrano
Shays
Skaggs
Slaughter
Spratt
Stark
Stenholm
Stokes
Studds
Stupak
Thompson
Thornton
Thurman
Torres
Torricelli
Towns
Traficant
Velazquez
Vento
Volkmer
Ward
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Williams
Wilson
Woolsey
Wynn
Yates
Zimmer
NOES--248
Allard
Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baesler
Baker (CA)
Baker (LA)
Ballenger
Barcia
Barr
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Barton
Bass
Bateman
Bereuter
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop
Blute
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Brewster
Brownback
Bryant (TN)
Bryant (TX)
Bunning
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Canady
Cardin
Castle
Chambliss
Chenoweth
Christensen
Chrysler
Clinger
Clyburn
Coble
Coburn
Coleman
Collins (GA)
Combest
Condit
Cooley
Cox
Cramer
Crane
Crapo
Cremeans
Cubin
Cunningham
Davis
Deal
DeLay
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Dingell
Dooley
Doolittle
Dornan
Doyle
Dreier
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
English
Ensign
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Fields (TX)
Flanagan
Foley
Forbes
Fowler
Franks (CT)
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Frisa
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Geren
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gonzalez
Goodling
Goss
Graham
Greene (UT)
Greenwood
Gunderson
Gutknecht
Hall (TX)
Hancock
Hansen
Hastert
Hastings (FL)
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Hayworth
Hefley
Heineman
Herger
Hilleary
Hobson
Hoekstra
Hoke
Hostettler
Houghton
Hoyer
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Jefferson
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Kaptur
Kasich
Kelly
Kim
King
Kingston
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Laughlin
Lazio
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Lightfoot
Linder
Lipinski
Livingston
LoBiondo
Longley
Lucas
Manzullo
Martinez
Martini
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McHugh
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
McNulty
Meyers
Mica
Miller (FL)
Mollohan
Montgomery
Moorhead
Murtha
Myers
Myrick
Neumann
Ney
Norwood
Nussle
Ortiz
Orton
Oxley
Packard
Parker
Paxon
Peterson (FL)
Pombo
Porter
Portman
Pryce
Quillen
Quinn
Rahall
Ramstad
Regula
Roberts
Rogers
Ros-Lehtinen
Roukema
Royce
Salmon
Sanford
Saxton
Schaefer
Schiff
Seastrand
Shadegg
Shaw
Shuster
Sisisky
Skeen
Skelton
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Smith (WA)
Solomon
Souder
Spence
Stearns
Stockman
Stump
Talent
Tanner
Tate
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Tejeda
Thomas
Thornberry
Tiahrt
Torkildsen
Upton
Visclosky
Vucanovich
Walker
Walsh
Wamp
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
White
Whitfield
Wicker
Wise
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
Zeliff
NOT VOTING--9
Bliley
Costello
Flake
Funderburk
Gilman
Molinari
Nethercutt
Radanovich
Scarborough
{time} 1448
Mrs. ROUKEMA changed her vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania changed his vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
So the amendment was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
amendment offered by mr. frank of massachusetts
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Frank of Massachusetts: At the end
of title I, insert the following:
SEC. 105. REDUCTION IN AUTHORIZATIONS.
(a) In General.--Except as provided in subsection (b), the
aggregate amount authorized to be appropriated by this Act,
including the amounts specified in the classified Schedule of
Authorizations referred to in section 102, is reduced by 4.9
percent.
(b) Exception.--Subsection (a) does not apply to amounts
authorized to be appropriated by section 201 for the Central
Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability Fund.
(c) Transfer and Reprogramming Authority.--(1) The
President, in consultation with the Director of Central
Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense, may apply the
reduction required by subsection (a) by transferring amounts
among the accounts or reprogramming amounts within an
account, as specified in the classified Schedule of
Authorizations referred to in section 102, so long as the
aggregate reduction in the amount authorized to be
appropriated by this Act, equals 4.9 percent.
(2) Before carrying out paragraph (1), the President shall
submit a notification to the Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence of the House of Representatives and the Select
Committee on Intelligence of the Senate, which notification
shall include the reasons for each proposed transfer or
reprogramming.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask
unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed
in the Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Massachusetts?
There was no objection.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would
essentially hold this year's authorization at the current spending
level. It is a 4.9 percent reduction from the authorized figure, with
an exception made for the retirement disability fund. That fund is held
at the authorized level of the bill which is what is necessary. So it
has no negative effect there.
This amendment, if adopted, would give to the executive branch
officials the ability to reprogram within the totals. So they need not
apply the restriction across the board.
It is a 4.9-percent cut. Because of the vote just taken, I may not
say in public what it is 4.9 percent of, because then the Iranians
would have valuable information and endanger our security. But I can
say that it is a cut of well over a billion dollars. The key question
is, will we, as we move to a zero deficit and severely reduce the
amount of money available for discretionary programs, not only exempt
from any reduction national security but continue to give them rates of
increase well above the rate of inflation?
This is a proposal before us, an authorizing bill, that raises the
money
[[Page H5422]]
from the current spending by nearly 5 percent. As we continue that
pattern, Members must understand that inevitably means that
environmental cleanup and health care of a discretionary sort and
education and public safety and transportation get hurt.
We read recently of the difficulty of the Committee on Appropriations
in the allocations. They wanted to give more for the veterans and more
for health care and more for job training and education. They had to do
that at the expense of infrastructure and environmental cleanup and
energy and water. This is the reason we face such terrible choices. As
you increase the national security budget, you inevitably require
greater decreases everywhere else.
Members have said, well, it is still a dangerous world even after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Yes, it is. But let us reject now the
argument that says it is a more dangerous place. We have heard Members
say that it is a more dangerous place now that the Soviet Union has
collapsed. This House floor may be the only place where we have
nostalgia for the good old safe days of a heavily armed Soviet Union
because apparently people felt more secure then.
Members say, well, we no longer have the Soviet Union but we have
North Korea, we have Iraq, we have Cuba, those threats, and they are
threats that grew only since 1990. What we had 8 and 9 years ago was
all of the threats, the Soviet Union and all of those other nations.
Now we have a substantially diminished Russian threat and those other
nations. This amendment does not even call for a reduction, although I
voted for the previous amendment that would have.
What we have here is an effort to give more and more money to
national security, inevitably at the expense and intelligence of every
other program. I would argue, if you look at the collapse of the Soviet
Union, outside threats have diminished some. This does not even call
for a reduction. It calls for level funding.
Let us again remember that this is the agency which accumulated a $4
billion surplus in funds. This is the agency that was given more money
than it needed by its own admission because it took $4 billion and did
not spend it. That is undeniably an acknowledgment that they got more
money than they needed. How do we deal with this agency which got more
money than it needed and squirreled $4 billion away? We give them one
of the largest increases any Federal agency would get, a 5-percent
increase in the authorization, 4 percent more than the President asked
to give. This is an increase of more than a billion dollars over what
the President wanted to give them.
At a time when I believe environmental threats and public safety
threats and incomplete education, those are much graver problems, we
have to choose. You cannot reach a zero deficit within the time frame
we have chosen, increase, reward the national intelligence agencies for
their $4 billion squirreling away by giving them a big increase and
still have the funds to do other things. I urge adoption of this
amendment.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's
amendment.
Those who follow the floor debate on intelligence from year to year
are aware, in general terms, that the intelligence budget has been on a
steady decline, that capabilities are being shut down, and that
managing intelligence nowadays means making Russian roulette decisions
on which cuts are least likely to endanger lives.
Being on the committee has allowed me to see the specifics behind
these generalized facts. More importantly, it has allowed me to delve
in person into the intelligence processes and products and see with my
own eyes their strengths and weaknesses. Some of those weaknesses can
be sifted out of the mass of largely ludicrous public attacks which
intelligence is sometimes subject. The strengths, though, tend to be
largely unknown in the country at large and unheralded in the press.
Without being too specific, let me mention a few I have personally run
across.
Example one: Cooperative clandestine activities undertaken by the CIA
and other U.S. Government agencies resulted this last year in the
detection and foiling of planned attacks on U.S. public and private
citizens. Lives were saved.
Example two: The CIA worked with cooperative foreign governments to,
effectively speaking, shut down a terrorist organization that has had a
long history of successful attacks on U.S. citizens.
Example three: Young intelligence community scientists constructed
state-of-the-art computer hardware and custom software capabilities
that are allowing the Intelligence Community to do what outside
experts--and our country's enemies--believe to be impossible. I should
point out that these same scientists work in this specific intelligence
agency at a salary a fourth or fifth of what they have been offered in
the private sector--they refuse to leave the work they consider so
personally satisfying and important to national security.
Example four: Intelligence Community scientists and clandestine
operators cooperated to detect, penetrate, and neutralize the
activities of a pariah regime to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Example five: The Intelligence Community, working closely with law
enforcement agencies and foreign governments, provided the essential
intelligence that led to the crippling of international narcotics
trafficking organizations.
Mr. Chairman, I am in strong opposition to this proposed cut. The
committee recognizes the fact that each year from year to year that
there is a very small amount of the actual intelligence budget in its
operations programs that have become familiar to Members of Congress,
much less to the American people. We take this responsibility very
seriously.
There are a number of areas within the intelligence budget that have
been substantially reduced this year. We have tried to make priorities
in some areas that we feel are extremely important to move this Nation
in the future of its role for intelligence. This is not something that
can be done year by year. This is something that needs to be done on a
long-term basis to make for certain that the future provides the
continual need for intelligence capabilities that this country has for
so many years done very, very well. We are diligent in terms of our
oversight. We are serious about the fact that we want to make for
certain that each of these dollars is expended wisely.
These are dollars, however, that we feel that we can justify to our
fellow colleagues and to the American people that are critical and
crucial for the American intelligence capabilities which are at the
heart of our national security and national defense.
{time} 1500
I think the committee has done a good job of coming up with a
proposed budget in the authorization bill that we have this year. I
would strongly support the committee's position on that bill, and I
would again reiterate my opposition to the proposed cut amendment.
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered
by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].
Mr. Chairman, in 7\1/2\ hours of going door to door on Saturday in my
State of Indiana I heard over and over again from one door to another
as I listened to Hoosiers tell me what they want to see done in
Washington, DC, people said to me we want to see more openness and
honesty out of our elected officials, and we want to see some courage,
and we want to see some discipline on their part to cast the tough
votes, to cut spending first in Washington, DC, not to raise our taxes,
but to cut spending first in Washington, DC.
Now, if I was a challenger and I had just watched the last few
minutes of debate here in this esteemed institution, both the votes
that Members of this body have just cast over the last few minutes fly
in the face of what the American people want. Is it so much to ask and
then tell the American people the overall cumulative budget of the
Central Intelligence Agency? They do some wonderful work for us as
taxpayers. Should not the American people know what that overall budget
number is? That does not sacrifice any security on the part of the
American people to get that one figure, that little bit of knowledge.
But this body does not agree with that, so that openness and that
honesty does not come forward.
[[Page H5423]]
Second, some discipline and some courage around here. Now, the last
vote would have cut some of the CIA's budget, and in ideal times, since
they do such extraordinarily important work for us, I wish we could
give them more money, but we cannot. We are trying to make some tough
decisions in this place to work toward balancing the budget. So instead
of even cutting, which this body just rejected, this amendment, which I
rise in strong support of, simply says this:
``Let's keep it at last year's level. If we can't cut into the
intelligence budget, let's keep it at least last year's level, let's
make sure that we sacrifice together and that we're fair in terms of
our budgeting.''
So I rise in strong support of the gentleman's amendment. If my
colleagues are deficit hawks and they want a balanced budget, this is a
good vote. If they want fairness and they do not want to decimate
Medicare for senior citizens, they do not want to slash education and
Head Start for children, they want to make sure we have an adequate
defense, then there have to be some votes around here at least to
maintain last year's funding level, and that is what the Frank
amendment does.
This is a fair and honest and disciplined approach, and I would
strongly encourage the colleagues in this body to address not just the
deficit of the budget, but the deficit of will and courage around here
to cut some budgets other than education and Medicare. So I urge this
body to support this amendment.
Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last
word.
Mr. Chairman, my colleagues, I am not a member of the committee of
jurisdiction for this bill, and I do not come to the floor often to
talk about matters involving international security. Most of my time is
consumed with domestic issues and legal issues and banking issues
because I serve on those committees. I do not come to the floor this
time to talk about the technicalities of the CIA's budget. I have not
been upstairs, into the secret room, to review the details of that
budget.
Mr. Chairman, I come to talk about ordinary common sense, which is
what budgeting is about. I come to talk about the setting of
priorities, which is what budgeting is about. And I cannot believe that
at a time when we are talking about cutting every single program that
affects the domestic security of our Nation that, given choices that we
must make, we could be talking about raising and increasing the level
of funding for the CIA's budget by 5 percent.
At a time when we are talking about balancing the Federal budget and
doing much of it on the backs of the American people who are most
vulnerable, I cannot believe that we are talking about increasing the
budget for the Central Intelligence Agency by 5 percent.
So this is about common sense and priority-setting.
There are children who are starving in this country. There are
children who are under-educated in this country. There are children who
do not know where their next meal is coming from and do not qualify for
the school lunch program because we do not have enough funds to make
that possible. There are elderly people who need health care. There are
Head Start programs that need to be funded. And when we make the choice
to devote more of our resources to funding the Central Intelligence
Agency, we do so at the expense of every single one of those programs.
So, Mr. Chairman, I want to appeal to my colleagues in the wake of
these past three votes that have gone down that deprive the American
people of even basic knowledge about what we are even spending on the
CIA's activities, something that I personally think is sinister and
unacceptable, to at least bring a level of reasonableness to this
debate and to this vote in terms of the priorities we are setting for
our country.
I cannot believe that we do not have higher priorities for whatever
amount of money it is we are debating here; I am told it is over a
billion dollars that is at play in this amendment alone. And given a
choice between spying on somebody, even if it is for worthy objectives,
and I have no problem with that, or feeding our children and educating
our children and providing for the health care and security of our
people right here in our own country, I beg and plead with my
colleagues to make the priority our children and our domestic programs.
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number
of words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the gentleman from
Massachusetts' amendment, and if this does not pass, then I am going to
offer an amendment that says at least freeze the NRO budget at the 1996
fiscal year number.
What the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] is saying is let us
freeze the entire agency's budget except for retirement and personnel
and those things, but let us do the spending part of that budget on
projects. Let us freeze it at the fiscal year 1996 level. Wow, what a
radical concept. We are still in fiscal year 1996.
Now I want to ask my colleagues, do they really think the world is so
much scarier we got to add a whole lot more money for next year? Now we
cannot say how much, we cannot say what the overall numbers are because
the last amendment failed, and of course we are trying to keep this all
secret. I find this very, very frustrating.
As all my colleagues know, every day we pick up the paper and Great
Britain is dealing with mad cow disease. Here today on this floor we
are dealing with sacred cow disease. Spending when we come to the
Defense Department or when we come to the intelligence agency, oh my
goodness, this is a total sacred cow, we are going to keep it
classified, we cannot say anything, and we are going to keep increasing
it; have a nice day.
This is for an agency that just 2 weeks ago admitted that what we
thought was a billion-dollar slush fund was really more like a $4
billion slush fund. We have been giving them more money than they were
able to spend any way. So why can we not at least freeze it at the 1996
level? I think this makes a tremendous amount of sense. Do we really
think 1997 is going to be so much scarier than 1996 we got to increase
the spending? I would hope not, and that is what we are talking about.
If we are ever going to be serious about deficit reduction, we have
got to challenge our sacred cows as well as everything else. There
cannot be anything that we hold back, and this is an area where, trust
me, I have seen the numbers, we got mega bucks and giga bucks buried in
this, and we are dealing with an agency that has not gotten exactly an
A-plus for candor with the Congress or for disclosure or for management
of the funds.
Look, I think the new Director, John Deutch, is a class A person. I
think the CIA has many class A people. I think we need some
intelligence, of course. I think the spy satellites in the sky are very
important, yes. But I do not think things are so unstable that we need
to increase this budget this year when we have got so many other
demands.
Let me tell you about my city of Denver. Last week we had to shut
down Head Start. We had to shut down Head Start and send every little
kid home in the first week in May because they ran out of money.
Now, I think the education of 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds is every bit as
important to our national security as increasing the amount of money we
spend on the CIA. And I think that my colleagues will find Denver, CO,
is not that different than other places. All sorts of places have had
to make terrible choices because their budgets have been frozen or cut
or crunched, and what they had to decide in Colorado was were they
going to throw some of the little kids out that were eligible or were
they just going to run the program until they let all the kids who were
eligible come, and then when it was over send them home, that is it,
and shut the door. That is what they decided to do.
I do not know what the good decision is. If there are a whole lot of
children that are income-eligible and we have to pick and choose
between them and they are all American citizens, that is a rotten
choice, that is a rotten choice because those are our future and those
are our children.
I think the gentleman from Massachusetts' amendment makes all the
sense in the world, and anybody who does not vote for it, I do not know
how
[[Page H5424]]
they can call themselves a deficit hawk, I do not know how we will ever
get the budget in order if we allow sacred cows to keep grazing in the
budget year after year, hidden behind a screen, not being able to be
exposed out in front, and I really think just holding this at last
year's level, this freeze level, makes all the sense in the world.
Mr. Chairman, I only wish I thought of it. So I hope all of my
colleagues vote for the gentleman's amendment.
{time} 1515
The CHAIRMAN. The Committee will rise informally.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Goss) assumed the chair.
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