Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 101 (Wednesday, July 10, 1996)

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H7251-H7257]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

FBI FILES SCANDAL

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleagues to
continue joining me in this discussion, and then I will use the last
half-hour or whatever I have left to go on about the patent issue,
which is an issue that I have been championing here, and will go into
great detail for the record after we are done with this discussion.
Let me just note that I worked in the White House for 7 years. I was
a speech writer for Ronald Reagan during that time period. I am fully
aware of the apparatus in the White House, and I was absolutely
horrified to see what was going on there in terms of these FBI files.
Let me also note that I was horrified when Billy Dale, who was a
hard-working, just regular human being, a civil

[[Page H7252]]

servant who spent his time in the Reagan administration but before that
the Carter administration, so Democrat and Republican administrations,
sacrificed his life, had done a terrific job, always having to
improvise because every time it was a crisis getting people here and
there, and then to have this person fired dramatically, right off the
bat.
This President showed what he thinks of the working people and the
standard operating procedures of the White House by firing this civil
servant, and trying to replace him with who? Some Hollywood producer
who had a travel agency, in order for them to get this person into a
position to basically make some money off getting people to and from
Presidential functions.
Well, that was totally out of line, the procedure was totally out of
line, but the President did that, and now we find out that that was
just basically the first significant indication of what this White
House was going to be like.
We would not even know about the FBI files, the hundreds of FBI files
that are in the hands of a political operative, actually two political
operatives, Democrat political operatives people who had been active in
campaigns. Not only active in campaigns, but their job in the campaigns
was opposition research, dirt diggers.
These people ended up with hundreds of FBI files in their position,
and would we know about it if the Republicans had not won control of
this body? We had to subpoena these documents. We had to force the
While House to give us the documents which eventually led to the
information they had violated the procedure, that they were such
scofflaws at the White House that they permitted this to happen.

{time} 2300

Let us note one thing, Chuck Colson, I was a reporter prior to
becoming Reagan's speechwriter, I remember Chuck Colson. I was a
reporter during the White House and Watergate years. I remember what
Chuck Colson went to jail for. He went to jail because he was in
possession of one FBI file and showed half of one FBI file to one
person who was not qualified to see that FBI file. And now this
administration has put hundreds of FBI files in the possession of
political hacks.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I wanted to
make a point. I have a staff member whose file was pulled. I want to
give you the background, because when you think about this political
operative left over from the Al Gore campaign, this Livingston and
Marceca fellow, you think that they are checking out Newt Gingrich's
file or maybe Dana Rohrabacher's file, but here is a profile of
somebody who they checked on: hometown girl from Savannah, GA, mid-
twenty's, graduated from the University of Georgia, comes to
Washington, idealistic, as we all see thousands of young people each
year, comes to Washington, gets a job, maybe making $18,000 a year in
the White House. She is not in the inner circle. In fact, she never
sees the President. But it is fun and exciting and in her own way she
got to help change America. Well, 2 years of that, Clinton wins, she is
out. She has moved up the ladder. I hired her for $25,000 a year in her
late twenty's. This is the kind of person we are talking about.
Now she finds out that her FBI file has been pulled and that some
sleazy political operative is looking at her college education
transcripts, her speeding tickets, her employment records, if a
neighbor said something bad about her.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Every dirty little thing that anybody can say,
totally unsubstantiated rumors are put in FBI files. And they are put
in there so that later on if there is a problem, people might follow
up, the FBI might follow up to see if there was someting valid to this
terrible rumor.
So this young lady that you are talking about, if she is ever made an
enemy of somebody by stealing somebody's boyfriend, if that person is
jealous and says terrible things about her moral character, that is in
those FBI files.
Mr. KINGSTON. If they can invade her privacy, none of us are safe.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman will yield, I would come back to a
very important point that Representative Rohrabacher raised. That is
this whole story started with the firing of the White House Travel
Office, and we heard the testimony. We have the documentation, sworn
testimony that the reason was they wanted their people out, they wanted
out people in. We need those slots. That was a direct quote. That was a
direct quote.
What really disturbs me about this story probably more than anything
else was they had every right to fire those people. The truth of the
matter is, they had the right to fire them. They were at will servants.
They could be fired at any time. But they were not satisfied just to
fire them. They had to make the story better. They had to embellish the
story. They had to besmirch these people.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. They charged them with crimes.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. I will tell you what, what really eats at me more than
anything else, maybe it is because my dad is getting on and my father-
in-law is now gone, but what really bothered me more anything about
that story was that two of the seven of those individuals had to bury
their fathers while their fathers went to their graves not knowing that
they were not crooks.

In other words, their dads went to their graves not knowing that
their sons were not crooks because the White House fabricated these
stories. They used the FBI. They abused the IRS. That is all part of
the testimony.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. We know what happens when someone is put into this
situation. Ordinary working people, they say, you can defend yourself
against these charges. We know what that means. That means that
someone's life savings is gone. That means that someone who has been
saving up for maybe all their life in order to have a little house at
the lake or something or a dream vacation with their wife, that is
gone. That is over with. Any of the niceties that they wanted to save
up for, gone, because the money that should be going into that which
they have worked for and struggled for all their life goes to pay some
lawyer to defend themselves from going to jail so that the President of
the United States can put a crony in that position.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. It is true that the money cannot be replaced. What
really cannot be replaced is your reputation. I cannot imagine much
worse than having my daughter call me, as I think Billy Dale's daughter
did call him when she saw the story on the national news, where they
were accusing him of fraud and so forth. And his daughter said to him,
Dad, say it is not so. I do not know how you could talk to your family.
I do not know how you could face your family when on the national news
you are being besmirched this way.
I sat in these hearings. I was absolutely certain, absolutely
convinced that they were wronged and that I told them I hoped that
whoever was responsible, and I think we have a responsibility to try
and get to the bottom of who is culpable under this, but I told them
that I hoped that whoever was responsible would have to pay and pay
dearly because it seems to me that where this whole story started with
the seven White House travel office employees and then you see the
pattern that has evolved, and it is always denial, delay, an they do
not want to give the documents.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. How this ties in, of course, is that Billy Dale's
FBI file was pulled in order to what? In order to destroy that person,
in order to give cover to the President and his clique. They were going
to destroy this man, and those are the people now who are in possession
of hundreds of other FBI files. This is totally outrageous.
Chuck Colson goes to jail for one half of one FBI file and these
people and these media, I might add, who are sitting and letting this
thing go by, yes, there is some criticism, there is some criticism, but
have we seen the follow-up questions and the follow-up questions at the
press conferences that we would have seen if this would have been a
Republican administration?
Mr. GUTKNECHT. As the one fellow said, if this was an innocent
bureaucratic mistake, why is the bureaucrat most responsible taking the
fifth amendment: If it is innocent, I would think they would be eager
to get all this information out. They would be eager to get it all
cleared up.
But somebody said, Well, the people in the White House should come
clean. It only helps to come clean if you are

[[Page H7253]]

clean. And the fear and the suspicion that is building here, and I
think among the American people, is that there are people inside that
White House who are not clean. And there has been things going on there
that they are not proud of, no one is proud of. The only way it is
going to stop is if the Congress exercises its constitutional
responsibilities and actually, the whole system is built on a system of
checks and balances. It would not happen if it were not for the
Republican Congress.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. This would never have happened, the American people
would never know about this had the Republicans not won a majority in
this body. Even with the Republican majority, the White House tried to
stonewall us every step of the way in getting this information.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. I am going to close. I just want to share one other
thing that I learned from one of my constituents, and it is a very
important thing. He said, this was several months ago when I was home,
he said, sometimes, and we get into this, Republican versus Democrat,
he said, it is not Republican versus Democrat. In fact, he said, it is
not even really right versus left. He said, it is right versus wrong.
And what we have been talking about, some of the instances that we have
been talking about tonight, it really is right versus wrong.
Mr. KINGSTON. I want to mention to you on the subject, I sit on the
Appropriations Subcommittee, Treasury, Post Office, White House. We
fund the White House and we put in an amendment that said that if you
worked for the White House, that unless it involves national security,
you are not allow to look at anybody's FBI file, period. That amendment
was passed on a bipartisan basis. We had a few Democrats who voted
``no'', but the ranking member supported it and so forth and we passed
it.
Because exactly what your constituent said, this is not Democrat
versus Republican, this is right versus wrong. If you are over at the
White House and you need to look at somebody's files for national
security purposes, particularly with all the people who are falling out
of airplanes and jumping over the White House fence, I want the
President to be protected. I want him to grow to be an old man. I want
him to enjoy his last few months of being President peacefully. But the
fact is that we do not want people over there on an extracurricular
basis invading the privacy of normal citizens.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. This is totally consistent. Even before Billy Dale
was fired, I remember when this administration came in, I remember it
like it was yesterday, all of a sudden they started calling taxation,
what, contributions. And they started calling government spending an
investment. Remember that? They would not use the word ``taxation'' and
they would not use the words ``government spending.''
And when I knew that when someone who is so disciplined to do
something so, what I considered disrespectful as to try to just change
the words so the American people do not even know what is going on, so
they cannot make a decision based on what policies they like or do not
like because they are just corrupting the whole language so the
American people will not understand what they are talking about, I
said, this is one of the most heinous administrations that I have ever
seen.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. It is almost 1984. It goes back to that book. But I
will say this, again, I will close becasue I know you want to talk
about patents. I think it is really refreshing to go home and have town
meetings. And, frankly, I think the American people are a lot smarter
than some of the polls and some of the newspaper people and some of the
media people and some of the people in this city give them credit for.
I think they are beginning to figure this out.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I had faith that the American people would know that
taxes are not a contribution and that all government spending is not
just an investment. I think we can trust the American people. It says
in God we trust, but was also trust the American people. And we hope
that God works his will through the American people. So I wanted to
thank you both.
Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The Steal American Technologies Act

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate being part of that discussion.
I would like to now talk a few minutes about another issue that is, I
believe, perhaps just as disturbing as anything we were talking about
in terms of what is going on down at the White House.
I have spoken on the floor on many occasions on this issue. But it
has yet to come to the floor because there seems to be some maneuvering
going on. The issue I am talking about is whether or not the American
patent system will survive as was envisioned by our Founding Fathers
and whether the patent rights of the American people will be protected
or whether the patent rights as we know them will just totally be
destroyed and another system, totally alien to the patent system of the
United States, superimposed on us, destroying our rights as Americans
and hurting our ability to compete and to produce new technologies.
I have spoken on this so many times that everywhere I go people are
asking me, how is it possible that after I have given so many speeches
and I have been on so many talk shows that Congress still may pass, and
there is a very good chance that this bill still may pass when it comes
to the floor, and that is H.R. 3460, I call it the Steal American
Technologies Act, how is it possible that a bill like this, like H.R.
3460, that will basically destroy the American patent system as we know
it and that will mandate every American inventor to fully disclose all
the details of every new invention that he is working on, even before
the patent is issued, how is it possible that patriotic Members of
Congress may well pass this travesty into law? This attack on America's
future may well pass this body and this Congress.
I am standing here basically by myself tonight. So how is it
possible, when this room is filled with all of these people, 435
Representatives, that they could possibly pass a bill like this.
Because once you know the basics, that it is going to mandate that
every inventor disclose to every thief in the world every secret of new
American technology even before patents are issued, that does not take
a rocket scientist to know what the outcome of that is going to be.
Yet I am telling you today that when this vote comes to the floor, if
it comes soon, it will happen, there is a good chance that the 435
Members of this body will vote to make that part of the law. They will
vote to take, which is another part of H.R. 3460, the Steal American
Technologies Act, they will vote to take the current patent office,
which has been part of the United States Government since our
Constitution, since Benjamin Franklin wrote it into our Constitution,
and obliterate it, eliminate it as part of the Government and resurrect
it in a new form, which is a post office like, quasi-corporate entity
that, once resurrected, would be under the control of one director who
could not be removed for policy decisions but instead only for cause.
Once he is in there, he has almost dictatorial power over the patents
issued to the people of the United States.
How is it possible that we would be willing to take this system that
we have got that has done so well for America and come up with this
result?
Well, it is possible, number one, because there are powerful foreign
multinational and even domestic corporations that want to steal
people's patents. Surprise, surprise. Is anyone really surprised when
they hear that? Is it odd that a foreign corporation or some
multinational corporation or even a huge domestic corporation would
like to steal people's ideas and not pay them for royalties for their
new ideas and their new creations?

{time} 2315

Well, that is not odd at all when you think about it. That is not odd
at all. It is odd, however, that 435 Members of Congress are going to
listen to big corporations and perhaps not take it one step further and
say: ``Wait a minute. What does this mean to the American people?''
Their interests basically, these very, you know, big multinational
corporations, their interests are not the same as those people who are
part of the citizenry.
Now, that is not hard to understand as well, and basically these
large corporations, unlike the American citizenry, have money to pay
for lobbyists,

[[Page H7254]]

they actually have access to congressman, they have access to me as
well, just like every other congressman. We will listen to the big
corporations in our district because they employ a certain number of
people in our district, but we have to understand that when we are
talking to corporate representative, that that representative may not
even represent the interests of his own working people. He may only
represent the interests of the people who own that corporation. And
Lord know who own these corporations these days. Might be national
interests, might be foreign interests, might be who know who is really
controlling the board of directors of many large corporations?
But one thing is for sure: That corporate entity does not necessarily
speak for the well-being of the community, or the State, or the
country, or even the employees of that corporation, to some degree.
Now, they claim, the big corporations claim, that the reason why they
are backing, the most of the large corporations are backing, this H.R.
3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, they claim the real reason
they are doing that is to stop a few inventors from gaming the patent
system. It is called submarine patenting. That is what they claim is
the reason that they want to make these drastic changes in the patent
system of the United States of America: because these few people, they
are gaming the system, and by doing so they extend the length of time
that the patent will be actually in force in the outer years when that
time period would not really be due to them had they not, quote,
elongated the system and worked it.
Well, to stop this submarine patenting, these powerful forces claim
that we must destroy the whole payment system. That is a patent system
that has served us well since the founding of our country. We cannot do
other things that will perhaps try to solve the problem for
administrative, you know, focus on the problem. We cannot do things by
trying to basically just single out submarine patenting and say these
are the things we need to do to solve that. No, we have to basically
destroy the American patent system and replace it with something else.
That is their excuse, that is the basic excuse that they are using for
their actions, the submarine patent issues.
Basically it is like a doctor saying: ``Well, you got a hangnail. Oh,
yeah, I see you're in pain, and I really sympathize with that.
Hangnails are problems, and hangnails are bad. Look at how evil
hangnails--here is a giant picture of hangnails.'' And then you hear
lectures about hangnails, lectures about hangnails, and in the end the
doctor says, ``And by the way, we're going to amputate your leg in
order to cure the hangnail.''
You say: ``Wait a minute, doctor, I just want my hangnail cured.
Can't you just sort of cut the nail off or something?''
``No, no. We're not going to think of anything else. If you want to
talk about anything else, we know you're in favor of hangnails. We're
going to amputate your leg.''

Well, if you get a doctor giving you that type of, you know, that
approach to solving your hangnail problem, you better get yourself a
new doctor or you better question what that doctor's motives--or you
better question his sanity.
To stop a few inventors from having a couple of extra years on their
patent term, the idea of destroying the patent term as we know it,
eliminating the guaranteed patent term of 17 years, it is absolutely
ridiculous. You basically are declaring war in order to stop some petty
theft at a local store.
We must basically--what they are asking us to do is to force all our
creative people in the name of stopping a few submarine patentors who
are gaming the system to elongate their patent by a little bit--
basically we are, in the name of doing that, we are going to force
every one of the inventors of the United States of America, every one
of our creative geniuses, to expose and to publish every detail of the
new technologies they are working on. They are saying, on top of that,
we are going to obliterate the Patent Office as part of our Government
and resurrect it as a quasi-independent, post office-like government
corporation.
Now, that does not make sense, that in order to solve that problem
that we have got to go to those lengths to do it. That is why I happen
to believe that the submarine patent issue is what we call a straw-man
argument. I mean it is something that has been created there for people
to argue with, and it is really not--you know, really you are not
fighting against the submarine patent because the submarine patent
issue may or may not be real. It is a problem, but compared--but
obviously it is such a small problem as compared to the incredible
solution that is being offered us that that may not be the real force
that is driving the changes in our patent system.
By the way, one of the things that they are suggesting as a solution
to the submarine patent problem is this new system, of course a new
patent office, totally new patent office, obliterate the old one that
has been serving us since the Constitution, and in the new Patent
Office the patent examiners who decide--these patent examiners, they
work hard, and they decide who owns these new technologies that are
worth billions and billions of dollars. Some of these new technologies
will be creating billions of dollars of wealth. The new patent
examiners in this new quasi-government, quasi-private corporation will
be stripped of their civil service protection, which is an invitation
to people from the outside to try to influence the process, and it is
an invitation to corruption because these people now will not have
their civil service protection to protect them against being fired for
unjust reasons.
Now, this is a scenario that we are going to take these civil
servants who have been protecting us, that we are going to change the
system that has been protecting us and that we are basically going to
force our people to publish everything so every thief in the world can
see it.
This is an obscene and an insane proposal, and I have no doubt that
some of those pushing the H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies
Act, actually believe that this destruction of the American traditional
patent system is necessary because a few inventors, so-called
submariners, are gaining a few extra years out of the system.
But I also have no doubt that for many of the multinational
corporations pushing H.R. 3460, this submarine issue, like I say, is
nothing more than a front, and what they really want to do, what they
really want to do is to steal and to control the new wealth-producing
technologies that are being invented by Americans, especially those in
the years ahead.

So there are some people who are very sincere and, I am sure, have
been taken in by the argument. There are also some people who know very
well, the corporate interests who are out in the hinterland pushing
this, know very well that they want to take American technology and use
it without paying for it.
I mean this is an incredible scenario. People can say: Can this
really happen in the United States of America?
Yes, it can, and the 435 Members of the body here could possibly pass
this bill.
It is heinous, and it is evil, and basically, if they get away with
it, they will be not only stealing technology, but they will be
stealing the standard of living of the American people's children
today. If we Americans lose our technological edge, the standard of
living of our people will go down, and our children will suffer because
of it. Our Nation will not be able to compete as we are today.
What gives us the competitive edge today? What gives us the
competitive edge is the fact that you know people making more money,
they have better technology in order to our-compete those poorly paid
people overseas.
Yet as I said, Congress may pass H.R. 3460, and why? Because many
Members, perhaps a majority of my fellow colleagues who are going to
vote on this issue, do not know a thing about it. They do not know
about this bill. They are at home now asleep or they are with their
families or out to a movie or they are reading their work for tomorrow,
their paperwork for tomorrow's committee session. Whatever it is, most
of my colleagues are not listening to this. But if your Congressman
does not know about it, your congressman, a Congressman from anywhere
in the United States could vote on this bill, and you know about it,
but that Congressman does not. Someone who is reading the Congressional
Record or

[[Page H7255]]

listening in over C-SPAN will now know more about this bill than their
own Congressman, and it is vital, if democracy is to work in an
atmosphere like this, that the people get involved in the process
because you make a difference; every citizen makes a difference when it
comes to a situation where a bill may come to this floor when people
out there listening to C-SPAN know more about this bill than their own
Representative in Congress does.
By the way, this bill already passed through subcommittee and
committee, and it passed through in a breeze. There was almost no
opposition in the committee.
Now, I am not a Member of either one of those committees, but I did
ask members of the subcommittee and the committee if they knew that the
bill that they had voted for would mandate the publication of all of
our American ideas to every thief in the world so every thief in the
world would know it even before the patent is issued. And I will tell
you that Members I talked to said:
``Oh, no. It doesn't do that. No, no, you're kidding me. That bill
doesn't do that.''
I said:
``Yes, it does.''
``No, no, no. It doesn't. No one would put that bill in front of us
like that.''
The members of the subcommittee, several of the members I talked to,
would not believe me that that is in the bill. Because they could not
believe that the committee would actually pass something so stupid.

Well, how about eliminating the Patent Office and ripping away the
civil service protection from our patent examiners? I asked several of
my Democratic colleagues about that.
``Oh, no. That's not in the bill. I didn't vote for that. That's not
what happened.''
But it was, and the fact is those colleagues that I talked to are
very concerned about public employees and whether or not Government
people who work for our Government, Federal employees, are being
treated fairly, and they could not leave believe that was in the bill.
They had just voted for it.
It takes telephone calls and letters from constituents to get the
attention of many people who are voting on this floor, especially when
they are being approached by powerful interest groups like huge
corporations from their own district.
Now, basically there is only one thing that I believed in, can
basically stop this underhanded attack on America's future, and that is
if our system, as our Founding Fathers envisioned it, works, and
meaning that the people of America start working at making sure that
our system works. Basically people have got to call their Congressmen
or their Representative here in the House and insist that he or she
oppose H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act and support the
Rohrabacher substitute. That is my substitute that I will offer on the
floor if this bill gets to the floor, and, as I say, there is some
back-room maneuvering going on now that may--that you know, I will have
to watch out very carefully for and the American people may have to
mobilize to oppose H.R. 3460 at a moment's notice.
My substitute will eliminate the provisions of H.R. 3460 that would
critically wound our patent system and replace them with the language
in the bill that restores American patent protection. Basically we are
going to restore something that was taken away, and most Americans do
not even know this was taken away.
Up until this Congress passed the GATT implementation legislation,
Americans, as a right just like any other right, the right to go to
church, the right to speak, the right to assemble, you name it, that we
have a right to a guaranteed patent term of 17 years. This is something
we have had. It was 14 years for about the first 50 years of our
country, and then after that it was 17 years of a guaranteed patent
term. It was always our right to have a guaranteed patent term, meaning
no matter how long once you applied for a patent, no matter how long it
took you to get your patent, you were guaranteed after that patent was
issued that you would have 17 years of protection.
Well, has already been obliterated because into the GATT
implmentation legislation we snuck a provision that was not required by
GATT. This was not something that we agreed to in the General Agreement
on Trade and Tariffs. We did not agree to changing that. These people
just snuck this provision in even though it was not required by GATT,
knowing that we would have to vote for the Whole GATT--you know if we
did not, if we wanted to stop this, we would have to vote against the
entire world trading system.

{time} 2330

So they have already eliminated that. My bill, by the way, H.R. 359,
which is my substitute to the Steal American Technologies Act, would
restore, would take their language out and put language into the law
that restores the guaranteed patent term that was taken away 1\1/2\
years ago.
This battle is so vital that I would hate to think that Members are
going to vote on this and not be fully aware of what they are voting
on. We cannot sit back and expect that that is going to happen on its
own. Many Members may think that this bill, when they come in here to
vote on it, is just a routine bill that has no interest to their
constituents and no long-term interest to the United States of America,
because what we have is huge corporations with a lot of money pushing
H.R. 3460 on one side, and a bunch of little guys on the other side. We
have the Inventors' Association, small business people.
Many of America's universities are on the side of the Rohrabacher
substitute, because they rely on the royalties from their own patents
to sponsor much of their research at American colleges, and they have
come out, MIT and Harvard, many of the major universities in our
country, 60 of them have come out in favor of my substitute.
But basically they do not have the money to put in to fight this.
They do not have big PR firms coming down to talk to us and lobby us.
So basically we have to make sure, the American people have to make
sure, that the people representing them in Congress know how important
this is.
Let us get down to basics, get down to the basics of why it is
important. America has had the strongest patent system in the world
since the founding of our country. This is basic to what our Founding
Fathers believed in. We needed up, because we had this patent
protection, with more freedom and a higher standard of living than any
other country in the world. Average people were living well. They had
rights. They had decent lives. We were not created by people who
thought we were going to be a country where just the elites lived well.
We have seen that erode over the years. But before this time, during
the last century and even now, America has been the world's innovator.
McCormick, the one that invented the reaper, and Fulton, the steamboat;
it was Samuel Morse who invented the telegraph, and Bell the telephone;
Edison the electric light; and of course two fellows, two ordinary
Americans, two fellows who did not have a big college education, who
worked in a bicycle shop, two brothers invented the airplane, invented
manned flight.

If they had to change the rules back then, who knows, the Wright
Brothers, would they have kept their invention? Maybe Mitsubishi would
have come by and stolen their ideas, because it had not been published,
so Mitsubishi would hear about it and read about it, and then come into
court. And you tell me who is going to win in court, the guys in the
bicycle shop, or this huge megacorporation over in Japan trying to
steal the patent. Tell me who is going to win in court in a situation
like that. We would have ended up with an aerospace industry in Japan,
and we would end up with working people in the United States
impoverished.
Instead, our Founding Fathers knew the importance of technology and
put that right into our Constitution. It did not just happen. Thomas
Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, they understood that. They planned for
it. Thank God for our Founding Fathers, thank God for their foresight.
Now we are taking that idea of technology and freedom, and people
right now are maneuvering behind the scenes to destroy that basic
concept. Other countries, of course, will own their patent systems over
the years. Those patent systems were established to help

[[Page H7256]]

who? It was totally different than our system. Their patent system was
based on the idea that what we want to do is have a patent system so
that we can get the information out to as many people as possible, so
that our corporations will be able to have all this information, and
they will be able to put it into their production processes.
That is a totally different concept than what emerged here in the
United States. There they felt it was more of a collectivist approach,
and the system was set up to help the hierarchy. Here we believe that
patent protection is like the protection of property rights.
In fact, a patent as established by the Constitution is a property
right, just like owning a small farm. Our Founding Fathers did not put
things in about collective farms, like they did in Russia and all this
stuff, because they knew if the individual farmer owned his own land,
that we would produce more wealth from it.
They knew also that if you had patent protection, that our creative
genius, our American people would come up with ideas that would produce
enormously more wealth, and they would do it because we were protecting
that new idea as their right for a given period of time, a guaranteed
patent term. That served us well because we looked at the invention of
new ideas as the creation of new property, of new wealth.
With this, with this idea, as compared to the Japanese system and the
European system, which looked at a patent system as just a distribution
of information, America became an unmatched economic dynamo in the
world. We were on the cutting edge of all new technologies for a
century and a half, because we had a patent system that encouraged our
people, and that is why we prospered.
Some people say Americans worked so hard. That is why America is a
prosperous country, because Americans worked so hard. I hate to tell
you this, Mr. Speaker, I have been all over the world and there are a
lot of people who work really hard. They work hard. They struggle and
they slave and they sweat, and they get nowhere. They have no standard
of living, they are treated like dogs. They have no decent living for
their family and they have no hope that their family will ever live any
better.
Why is that? Because when our people worked hard, our people had the
benefit of cutting edge technology. Our people were always equipped
with the best technology so they could produce more wealth. When they
worked hard, it was as if 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 other people in other
countries were working hard, because those people were basically
working as slaves. Our people were working as independent, proud
laborers and were provided the technology they needed because we had a
system that encouraged people to invest in technology; because it was a
guaranteed patent term, people would invest in it, and also inventors
could come up with new ideas because they would benefit from that
guaranteed patent term.
Basically, with that technological edge, we defeated our enemies in
war. We did not win the cold war because we matched the Communists may
for man. We did not win the cold war because of that. Everybody knows
that. Look back at our other wars. We did not win these wars because
our people just, you know, had human wave attacks against our enemies.
It was because our people were equipped with the best technology, and
we could send them into battle with the dignity of knowing their lives
counted, and we were trying to do our best to help them do their
mission and come home safely, because we invested in the technology.
That was the same reason we were winning the economic wars. We beat
our economic competitors because we had technology. Coupled with the
hard work and responsibility of our people, this new technology made
sure America beat our competitors and ensured a higher standard of
living for our people.
That has not escaped, by the way, the attention of our adversaries.
That is very easy to see. Our adversaries understand that fact, that it
has been our technology that gave us our leverage. So should it
surprise anyone that today our patent system is under incredible
attack, and that it is kind of a hush attack, people do not know not
know much about it? Even the Members of Congress do not know about it.
Even the 430 Members of Congress who are going to vote on this do not
know about it.
But I can tell the Members, our economic adversaries know exactly
what is going on. They understand that America's patent system has
provided us the edge to defeat them in the past, so what they are going
to do is just totally change and destroy our American patent system. If
it is done in the way, the manner that is going on, they may just
succeed.

How we can see this is really easy. Bruce Lehman was appointed by
Bill Clinton to head our Patent Office. He is the head of our Patent
Office. One of the first things he did was go to Japan, and there in
Japan he signed a hushed agreement. I have a copy of that and I put it
in the Congresssional Record a couple of weeks ago.
He signed a hushed agreement with the head of the patent office in
Japan, and here are two unelected officials, and what was the
agreement? The agreement was to harmonize the American patent system
with Japan's. It did not say anything about submarine patents. They are
going to claim the reason they are doing everything is the submarine
patent, get rid of those submarine patents. But in reality that
agreement in Japan mentioned nothing about submarine patents.
What it did say was that our system was going to be cast off, and
instead we were going to have the Japanese system superimposed on us.
That is what harmonization means. Harmonization does not mean we are
bringing the Japanese up to our level of protection. It means that our
people are going to lose protection and our system is going to become
like Japan's. What kind of system does Japan have? Let us just remember
this.
How many new inventions have come out of Japan in the last 100 years?
The Japanese are accurately known as people who are basically copiers
and improvers, and basically people who perfect other people's ideas
and other people's inventions. They do not, they are not known, because
they do not really develop a lot of new technology on their own.
Why is that? Under the Japanese system, yes, they have immediate
publication. What happens when they have immediate publication in
Japan? Immediately the big guys, the huge corporations and these
Japanese conglomerates and these monopolists surround the little guy,
and this little guy, or maybe it is just two bicycle shop owners, just
two brothers who work in a bicycle shop or something, but whoever it is
who has the idea, they are confronted with the most powerful economic
forces in society and they are beaten down. They are beaten down and
they are destroyed if they try to resist.
The Japanese have had to put up with this, and Japan has been the
worse for it, because their creative people have not had the outlook
the American people have had. Thus, they have had to rely on the United
States and others to produce the technology they need for their whole
industrial infrastructure. Now people in our Government are trying to
maneuver to make our system identical to what Japan has had in these
last 50 years. It is absolutely mind-boggling.
Basically, how are they going to achieve this? Step No. 1, as I said,
already happened. It already happened. We had our guaranteed patent
term of 17 years and they snuck that change into the GATT
implementation legislation, and it sailed right on through. I will tell
the Members, I was outraged. I felt betrayed, because I had supported
the GATT implementation legislation. I voted for fast track, knowing
that there was an agreement that they would not put anything into the
GATT implementation legislation unless it was required by GATT itself,
and that way they could bring the whole bill here. That is what fast
track means, they could bring the whole bill before this Congress and
there could be no amendments, you would have to vote up-or-down on it.
They snuck this provision in as if it did not mean anything, but it has
tremendous implications for our future.

I raised hell about it, and the gentleman from Georgia, Newt
Gingrich, and other leaders of the Republican Party guaranteed to me
that I would

[[Page H7257]]

be able to have a chance to rectify that on the floor of the House of
Representatives. That is why I then authored a bill, H.R. 359, and
submitted that legislation, because I had that guarantee that they
would have a chance to rectify it, because it should not have been in
the GATT implementation legislation in the first place.
Guess what, H.R. 359 was tied up in subcommittee for over a year.
Eventually what came out of subcommittee was not H.R. 359, but H.R.
3460, which is officially the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act, which I am
calling, and I think more accurately is reflected by the title, the
Steal American Technologies Act. So at least, however, I have been
guaranteed that if that bill, H.R. 3460, comes to the floor, that I
will have a chance to offer my bill, which restores the American
patent, guaranteed patent term, as a substitute for 3460.
Basically, I believe H.R. 3460 would finish the job, and if we take a
look at it, this is what the provisions are, it would finish the job of
harmonization started with this underhanded change in the GATT
implementation legislation. America's huge corporations have apparently
bought off on the idea that we should have a global economy, and that
our harmonization of patent law with the Japanese is the first step
toward this global economy.
I happen to believe that global commerce is a good thing. I am not an
isolationist and I am not someone who is a protectionist. I believe in
free trade between free people, and I make absolutely no apologies for
that. If American companies cannot compete, they should not be
protected by the Government.
But we should make sure that we set the ground rules up so Americans
are protected from having their technology stolen from them and used
against them, and basically H.R. 3460 would take us toward global
harmonization, a global economy, by destroying the rights of the
American people, by attacking our ability to create a high standard of
living in America. In other words, they are trying to bring down the
standard of living of the American people in order to achieve a global
economy; you know, dilute our rights as Americans. It is ridiculous.

{time} 2345

What does H.R. 3460 do?
No. 1, it demands that any idea, when an inventor comes in and
applies for a patent after 18 months if that patent is not issued, that
inventor is going to see his ideas published so every thief, every
Asian copycat, every pirate in the world will be able to see it and
steal it. No. 2, it obliterates the Patent Office as we have known it
since it was put into the Constitution and resurrected some quasi-
governmental or quasi-private corporation which is basically run under
the dictatorship of one man who is appointed by the President but
cannot be kicked out without cause, not just for policy disagreements.
The patent examiners there will lose their civil service protection and
there is an invitation to steal our technology and an invitation to
corrupt the whole system at the Patent Office. Basically we will have
established a czar of the Patent Office for 5 years.
Mr. Speaker, we do not need czars or dictators or kings in the United
States of America. We need Government officials who are accountable to
the American people for the decisions that they are making. Basically
this is a formula for catastrophe. We are basically trying to remake
the American patent system into the Japanese system.

I had a Member of Congress tell me today, ``Well, you know, if those
other countries have certainly gotten their systems ahead of ours and
they're more modern than ours, we should have a patent system like
theirs.''
I wanted to basically explode when I heard this idea that the
Japanese system--that has fostered no new improvements, that has kept
the Japanese people at the mercy of these huge corporate interests--
that that is a better system than ours which was established by our
Founding Fathers to guarantee the property rights of our people and has
basically given birth to a standard of living and a degree of freedom
that the people of the world have never seen before, that the Japanese
system is better than ours? Basically there are many people who have
influence on the people who will vote on this. There are large
corporations, there are people who maybe honestly believe that we have
to have a global economy and if it means sacrificing the American
people, so be it, because a global economy will bring world peace and
all the blah-blah-blah. Well, those people may believe in it. Those
people may really believe and there may be some who honestly believe
that the submarine patents are so heinous that we can destroy
everything in order to get to those few submarine patenters. Let me add
this about submarine patenters just to let you know. Ninety-nine
percent of all people who apply for a patent in the United States beg
and plead to have their patent issued immediately. ``Please give me my
patent right away,'' because they know until they get the patent issued
to them, they cannot go out and start earning money from it because
they cannot get investors, that very few investors will invest in
patent pending. But if you have got your patent issued, they will pay
attention to you. They are pleading, please, and they know, and these,
quote, submarine patenters they are talking about, if they elongate the
system, they might find out that they are left behind because new
technologies have come along and just left them behind and made their,
quote, great technologies obsolete. They know that. The submarine
patent issue, some people may believe in it. I hope they listen to the
arguments I am presenting because I believe it is a totally fallacious
argument that is being used to justify a horrible, horrible change in
our system that will bring about terrible consequences for the United
States of America. How can we stop this juggernaut? Those people who
honestly believe in submarine patents, if they do, they do. You try to
give them the logical arguments. But those other people, those other
companies, those other corporations and those people, the influence
peddlers they hire, we can stop them because democracy works. We can
stop them if people will contact the man or woman who represents them
in Congress and say, H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act,
has to be defeated, and the Rohrabacher substitute has to be put in its
place. If we get enough people doing that, we will make the system
work, I believe it will work, and I believe we will triumph over this,
because 200 years ago when our Founding Fathers and mothers established
this country, there were so many hardships and there were so many
challenges and they knew that people would be coming at us just like
this. Our Founding Fathers knew this. They knew that people would say,
``Hey, where is America's Achilles' heel?'' They knew that. They knew
they would come straight forth. But they also knew you could trust the
people, you could count on people to defend their standard of living
and their families and their freedom. That is what we are up against
today. It is a fight for the future of the United States of America. I
hope and I pray that the American people will become activated after
the Fourth of July and that we will win the day.

____________________