[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 117 (Friday, August 2, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9480-S9482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               TERRORISM

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wish to talk a little bit today about an 
issue which is on everyone's mind in America, which is the question of 
terrorism. I spoke briefly yesterday on this matter, but I wanted to 
expand on those comments because there is a great deal happening within 
this body and the other body and in the Government generally on how we 
react to this new world, which has brought this threat to us with such 
immediacy, as we see in Atlanta, as we see in flight 800. I think it is 
important to review what is happening here in the Federal response to 
it, where we should go from here, and also to talk a little bit about 
other areas that need to be addressed.
  First off, the scope of the problem, I think, cannot be 
overestimated. The immediacy of the problem cannot be overstated. The 
fact is, we have stepped out of the cold war into a very hot war, and 
it is a hot war that involves people who have targeted Americans and 
American institutions with the intention of bringing physical harm to 
those institutions and to our citizens.
  We should not be naive about this. We are a nation which has some 
wonderful characteristics. One of the great characteristics of our 
Nation is that we always believe in the best in people. We always give 
people the benefit of the doubt. We are an optimistic and upbeat 
country. It is our nature to think positively, not only about ourselves 
but about our neighbors throughout the world. That is a wonderful 
characteristic, and, hopefully, nothing will ever cause us to lose that 
better nature which makes up the American personality. But it is time, 
also, for us to be realistic. There are evil people out there. 
Unfortunately, there are also governments out there which fund, 
support, and endorse those evil individuals. There are people out there 
whose intention it is to kill Americans, to destroy American 
institutions simply because we are Americans.
  Some of this terrorist threat is obviously domestic. But the domestic 
threat is a manageable threat. It is a containable threat, and it is 
one which I believe our institutions are well structured to address 
already. The FBI and the various State agencies which do law 
enforcement are well-tooled and well-experienced in how to address, to 
meet, to obtain intelligence on and to respond to, domestic terrorism 
and acts of violence. We, as a nation, have had this happen in the 
past.
  I remember in the 1960's we had a group called the Weathermen, in New 
York. We have been able to respond. I do not have any question in my 
mind but that we will find the perpetrator of the bombing in Atlanta 
and we will prosecute that person, and we will do likewise relative to 
Oklahoma in the prosecution area and obtain a conviction, hopefully, if 
that is what the jury finds appropriate.
  So, domestic terrorism is a very severe problem, but it is not the 
core threat that we face as a nation. The core threat that we face as a 
nation is internationally sponsored terrorist acts, because here you 
have individuals who are backed up by governments or by institutions or 
large groups of people who have the physical and economic capacity to 
wreak incredible harm on our country and our citizens. This 
international terrorism is a new breed of threat. It is something we as 
a country have not faced before.
  As a result, we need to take a new look from a different view of how 
we approach the prevention, anticipation, and, hopefully, termination 
of this threat.
  It was reported in the press today that there are actually functions 
camps in Iran that may have as many as 5,000 individuals who are 
specifically being trained for the purposes of executing terrorist 
acts, killing of Americans, killing of people from other cultures 
around this world that these fanatics, these criminals disagree with.
  Now, whether that report is accurate, I do not know, but it is 
legitimate enough to have been put on the wire by a reasonable news 
source, and it is clearly reflective of the concern which we, as a 
nation, must be ready to address.
  So, how do we address it? How do we address this new international 
threat, this new cold war which is now a hot war for us?
  I think we have to begin by recognizing that as of right now, the 
Federal Government is not ready to address it. We have to acknowledge 
our weakness in this area. We have very good people at the heads of the 
agencies which are charged with the responsibility for anticipating and 
developing a response to international terrorism directed at the United 
States.
  There are four primary agencies involved: the State Department, the 
Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, and the Justice 
Department. There are also a lot of ancillary agencies that have a role 
in this--the Treasury Department, for example--but the four primary 
agencies are headed by good people, in my opinion, and they are all 
committed to doing something on this issue.
  But the problem is that there isn't a comprehensive, systematic plan 
in place. There are, on paper, some systematic plans. For example, the 
National Security Council is, by law, charged very appropriately with 
the responsibility of organizing, orchestrating, anticipating the 
threat of terrorism and the response to the threat of terrorism. But it 
doesn't really do it in practice. In practice, it does very little, 
actually.
  If you talk to each of the heads of the different Departments in 
charge here, they will tell you of their sincere interest in pursuing 
this and what their Department is doing. You can ask them, ``How are 
you interfacing with the other Department?'' And they say, ``Well, 
we're occasionally speaking on this point and speaking occasionally on 
this point,'' and it is almost always a personal-relationship-type 
exchange. There is no system in place, no management structure in 
place, no comprehensive plan in place which directs the response to the 
international terrorist threat. That has to be changed.
  Now, in a bill that was reported out of the Appropriations Committee 
yesterday, the Commerce, State, Justice bill, which is the subcommittee 
I chair, we put in place a series of new initiatives in the area of 
fighting terrorism. Not new in some instances; in some instances, they 
were supportive of initiatives which were already in place. But the 
most important part of this proposal was that we have developed by the 
Attorney General a comprehensive plan which will be reported back to 
the

[[Page S9481]]

Congress by November 15 and which will outline how we are going to get 
these different agencies to work together.
  I don't know if this proposal is going to go anywhere, because that 
bill, which subcommittee I happen to chair, is sort of at the end of 
the trail here as we move down the appropriations path, and it may not 
even get up until the end of September. As a practical matter, we 
really shouldn't have to have a law passed to tell the administration 
to do this. As a practical matter--and I don't say this to be 
derogatory because I don't intend to be, I hope it is constructive--as 
a practical matter, the President should meet with the Secretary of 
State, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Attorney 
General, and the Defense Secretary and require them to develop such a 
plan. And those meetings should continue on a regular basis with the 
heads of those agencies over a series of weeks and months until that 
plan is not only developed but being executed.

  As a practical matter, we are not going to accomplish the goal of 
putting in place a systematic response from the Federal Government to 
the threat of international terrorism until we have the President of 
the United States driving his Department heads to accomplish just that 
in an organized way.
  Having served as a chief executive at a State level--and it doesn't 
really work much differently at the Federal level; in fact, it probably 
is even worse at the Federal level as far as getting coordination 
going--I know from experience that unless the chief executive 
physically participates and demands a physical participation of the key 
department heads, then issues like this then get lost either, one, to 
inattention, or, more significantly and more often is the case, get 
undermined by the battles over turf.
  An equally important initiative to having the President drive this 
process with his Department heads is that there must be put in place a 
system which accomplishes the follow-on followup that is necessary to 
produce results so that it doesn't depend on individuals in the end, 
but it is functioning as an element of an organized plan which can be 
executed by people no matter who is sitting in the key seats around the 
table. Unfortunately, none of that has occurred to date. I hope that it 
will occur soon.
  In the meetings that have been going on this week on the special task 
force on terrorism that was set up where Members of the Senate, Members 
of the House, and the White House were meeting, along with the Justice 
Department, it was suggested we have a blue ribbon panel. I believe the 
House today will appoint a blue ribbon panel.
  Now, I like blue ribbon panels as well as the next person, and I am 
sure a blue ribbon panel could be useful here to some degree, but the 
lead time for such a group is considerable, and we don't have to wait 
to get things started, to hear back from a commission, as good as it 
may be and as constructive as it may be.
  There is a tremendous amount of coordination and planning that can 
begin now. It is not occurring now. There is a lot of planning and 
effort going on right now, I don't want to underestimate that. These 
Departments individually are doing a superior job in trying to get up 
to speed in their area of responsibility. But so often, the right hand 
doesn't know what the left hand is doing, and the left hand doesn't 
tell the left foot what it is doing, and the left foot doesn't tell the 
right foot what it is doing, and we all end up in different directions, 
and we end up in a pretzel-like position. And that is, unfortunately, 
what is occurring, to some degree, to our response of the overall issue 
of a comprehensive initiative.
  So, yes, let's go forward with a blue ribbon commission, because I 
think it would be helpful to get outside review from people who are 
very knowledgeable on terrorism as to how to proceed. And yes, let's 
keep the energies going in the FBI, and the CIA, and in the State 
Department and in the Defense Department on various actions in their 
bailiwicks that can be taken to try to get their responsibilities in 
terrorism response proceeding effectively.
  But at the same time, we need to have this comprehensive approach 
coming from the top, from the President, through the Secretariats, to 
the departments so that we have an integrated, cooperative effort and 
one that is focused. That is the most critical thing we need to do 
right now to address the international terrorist threat, which is huge 
and extraordinarily dangerous.
  In addition to this comprehensive plan, within the bill that was 
passed out of the Appropriations Committee, we basically took five 
other steps, five other philosophical steps--or not philosophical 
because I think they are very tangible steps--steps to try to beef up 
the effort in fighting terrorists.
  First off, we have given significantly more resources to the FBI to 
help it monitor terrorist groups in the United States and overseas. 
Obviously, the best way to stop a terrorist attack on the United States 
is to know when it is going to come and who is going to pursue it. But 
to do that, you have to have people. You have to have intelligence-
gathering. Unfortunately, the intelligence-gathering capability by 
human beings, which is the way you really have to do it in this area of 
terrorism, has been significantly reduced, especially at the CIA.
  However, the FBI, which our committee has jurisdiction over, is 
attempting to reach out to police forces around the world in order to 
use the resources of the police forces in various countries where 
terrorist groups may be organizing and to take advantage of their 
knowledge base, which is extraordinary, and thus multiply by hundreds 
if not thousands and actually tens of thousands their ability to obtain 
information.
  The FBI is attempting to expand that pool of information-gathering by 
moving agents into international posts. In this bill we propose to 
strongly support that initiative so that we can begin to better 
anticipate who and where the threat is coming from.
  It is an interesting thing. I met with President Mubarak yesterday, 
or Wednesday. There is a man who obviously understands and knows the 
threat of terrorism. One of his biggest concerns--and I would put it 
down almost as a gripe, and it is a legitimate one. Maybe I should not 
use the word ``gripe'' because it is a very legitimate frustration. His 
biggest frustration is that it is our democratic allies in Europe who 
have become the prime harborers of some of the most vicious murderers 
and terrorists.
  He points to England and to some of the European Continent countries 
as being nations which, for whatever reason, have decided to allow to 
live within their shores people who are known to have an intention of 
committing terrorist acts and who have a stated policy of doing so 
relative not only to Egypt and to other modern Arab states, but 
relative to America.
  So we are not talking about access to information in nations which 
maybe we have trouble dealing with. We are talking about getting access 
to information in nations who are our allies and maybe working with 
those allies to be a little more responsible in the manner in which 
they deal with individuals whom they have allowed into their countries 
and who may represent threats to our country.
  The third issue which we attempted to increase the effort here in our 
bill is to create a better capacity for response, both at the Federal 
level and at the State and local level, to a terrorist event. In this 
area we are very concerned about terrorist events that might involve 
biological or chemical threats. So that is something we really need to 
focus in on.

  This committee is trying to do that. We have created rapid response 
teams or increased the funding--they already exist--but increase the 
funding to allow us to have more capacity to move rapid response teams 
into positions where there is a local emergency.
  In addition, we have significantly increased the effort to break down 
communication barriers between the Federal Government and the State 
governments and the local governments. Once again, you have this 
unfortunate atmosphere which develops amongst bureaucracies, whether 
they are law enforcement bureaucracies or social services 
bureaucracies, that is known as turf.
  I remember when I was Governor of New Hampshire, one of my great 
frustrations was that we could not get the State police and the local 
police to even be on the same radio band so if a State police officer 
wanted to talk to a

[[Page S9482]]

local police officer while they were chasing a car at a high speed, 
they basically had to call in to headquarters and have the headquarters 
call out to the other police car. They could not talk to each other. It 
was a turf issue.
  Unfortunately, that gets magnified hundreds and hundreds of times in 
innumerable circumstances. What we are trying to do is break down those 
barriers of communication so that we will have better communication 
between Federal, State, and local law enforcement on a two-way-street 
effort for information.
  Fifth, we have attempted to increase the technological information 
and capability of the FBI. This is very important. We all know that we 
are dealing in a technological world and there are in the area of 
communications, in the area of detection, in the area of crime 
prevention, huge technological advances being made, and we have to stay 
current. So we are going to significantly increase that effort.
  Sixth, it is our desire to make sure that our key facilities in the 
law enforcement and international community, international stage, are 
protected. So we have increased the funding for security at our 
courthouses, and, very important in my mind, we have increased the 
funding for security for our personnel who are serving overseas in our 
State Department.
  I cannot and will not tolerate--and I do not think anybody in this 
body would tolerate--putting American citizens who are working for our 
Government in a post that has a fair amount of risk to it at an 
unnecessary risk. There are simple things that need to be done to help 
these people and protect their security and, equally important, protect 
their family security.
  There is no reason why an American who is working for the State 
Department who has his or her family with him or her should feel that 
that family is not getting adequate protection from our Government if 
there is a threat occurring in that country to Americans. So we needed 
to increase that security effort. And we have done that.
  So this bill, this State-Commerce-Justice bill, is a major step, in 
my opinion, but not a final step, hardly even a midway step really. It 
is just a part of the beginning steps, but a major thrust in the 
beginning steps toward getting together our counterterrorism effort. 
But as I mentioned earlier, it all depends to a great extent on the 
capacity of the administration to pull together these various agencies. 
And that has to start at the top.

  Also in this bill were two pieces of language--three actually--that 
have been passed by the Senate relative to terrorism in order to give 
our police and law enforcement community more flexibility and more 
capability, which passed this body by 90 to 0. They were a multipoint 
wiretapping and another wiretapping right and also a study on taggants 
relative to tracing explosives and the institution of that. That 
language is also in this bill.
  So it is a bill that has a lot of activity in the area of trying to 
address the terrorist threat. Specifically, the international terrorist 
threat is, I mentioned, the true concern, should be our true concern, 
in the area of trying to get ahead of this wave of potential violence 
directed at the United States. Now, on that score, the Government 
cannot do everything. The Government has never been able to do 
everything, in my opinion. It certainly cannot do everything in this 
arena. It is the primary player. The agencies which we have 
responsibility for have been described as the Defense Department in 
this area of counterterrorism. But there still has to be a 
responsibility among the communities of our citizenship. There still 
has to be a responsibility in our corporate community.

  On that point, I have written, along with some of my colleagues who 
wish to join me, a letter to the companies who manage Internet access. 
As I mentioned yesterday, we all recognize that the Internet is the 
Wild West of information. I, for one, have absolutely no interest in 
regulating it. I think it would be a mistake. I think it would 
undermine the great potential of the new medium of education.
  The fact is certain people are abusing the Internet. When you punch 
in the word ``explosive'' and trace that word on the Internet, you come 
up with something like 32,000 designations, of which 6,000--6,000--
involve directions on how to make an explosive device, directions 
titled, such as, ``How to make a pipe bomb and leave it at your 
favorite airport or Federal office building.'' That is wrong.
  What I have suggested in writing the leaders of these various 
entrepreneurial groups who are driving the economy of information, the 
information economy which is doing so much for our country, what I 
suggest to them, maybe it is time they gave a little thought here as to 
what type of access they are affording people relative to the Internet. 
Maybe they should create some sort of self-policing mechanism which 
says if something is clearly, clearly, on the Net for the purpose of 
explaining how to kill people, such as making a pipe bomb and leaving 
it at your favorite airport or Federal office building, that accessing 
that information should not be easy. It should not just involve typing 
in the word ``explosive.''
  When they index these items, maybe they decide not to index some 
items, recognizing that is a type of censorship they may not want to 
participate in. In this instance, it may be appropriate. In any event, 
when they index these systems, whether it is Yahoo, Magellan, or 
Netscape, generally, or America Online or CompuServe or some Microsoft 
system, they ought to make it more difficult to get that type of 
information, that you ought to go through more hoops before you can 
access. Granted, that might not stop the truly committed individual, 
but it will certainly make it more difficult for the casual pursuer of 
this information. That is why I am sending this letter.
  I am not sure what processes could be put in place. I think there 
ought to be some thought given. It should not come from the 
Government--in other words, the Government saying, ``You do this,'' as 
managers of the Internet, as people who create the access systems for 
the Internet. That will lead to all sorts of, in my opinion, more 
significant issues of freedom of speech and officiousness of 
Government.
  This should be a self-policing exercise. These folks should have the 
common sense and the civic attitude to proceed to try to develop 
something. These are creative and imaginative people that have come up 
with these systems. If put in a room, I suspect they could come up with 
creative and imaginative solutions to this problem.
  That is a brief summary--not that brief, actually--but a summary of 
where we stand in the counterterrorism exercise relative to the FBI, 
especially, but it is my concern relative to this administration and 
how it should pursue it and the Internet, and how it should be 
addressed in that arena.

  I yield back the balance of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.

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