[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 126 (Friday, September 13, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10533-S10535]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               TERRORISM

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I want to raise the issue today of how we, 
as a nation, are continuing to address the question of terrorism.
  Yesterday, the committee which I chair, the Subcommittee on State, 
Justice, Commerce, a subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, had 
the

[[Page S10534]]

chance to hear from the Attorney General, Janet Reno, who is, I think, 
doing a very admirable and effective job as Attorney General, on what 
the policies are of the administration relative to the issue of 
addressing in a strategic way the threats of terrorist acts directed at 
Americans, not only in the United States but overseas.
  Clearly, I think we now understand, America understands that this is 
our primary international threat to American lives and American 
interests. We may have instances going on in Iraq today which are 
significant. We may have wars going on in Bosnia which are significant. 
But as it relates to the threat to America, nothing right now is more 
significant than the threat of terrorist actions.
  Coming out of the cold war, I think we, as a nation, decided to 
become a little more complacent. We felt we had gotten past one of the 
great hurdles of history: a confrontation between the Soviet Union and 
the United States, a confrontation which was always overlaying with the 
issue of nuclear annihilation and confrontation on a variety of fronts, 
but, most important, the possibility that mankind might end up in a 
nuclear war.
  With the end of the cold war, there was a great sigh of relief, 
obviously, and appropriately so. We, as a nation, went back to looking 
after problems which are American problems and our perspective became 
one of looking at our internal issues.
  But in the process, we couldn't step out of the world arena, and the 
fact is that the United States remains the single most influential 
nation in the world. As would be expected, because we maintain that 
position of influence, we obtain enemies and people use us as their 
foil and they use us as their rallying point as they try to gin up, or 
generate, their concerns and their own issues in other parts of the 
world.
  We have, therefore, become targeted by large groups, a large number 
of groups, disparate in nature, as the opposition. Many of these groups 
are motivated for religious reasons, fanatical religious reasons. Many 
of them are motivated for reasons that they see themselves as oppressed 
and they see the capitalist marketplace approach that we take to the 
world as being an oppressive approach, which, of course, is wrong, but 
it is their attitude.
  We view ourselves as a generous people, and we are a generous people 
and a people that has a history of not seeking any territorial gain, 
not using our military forces for the purposes of exploiting other 
nations.
  We have been through two major world wars where we have been left as 
the most powerful nation on Earth and have not used that for any 
purposes of aggrandizement of the American situation, but have rather, 
in a most generous way, rebuilt our enemies and allowed them to proceed 
on a course which has improved the lifestyle of our enemies we 
confronted in past wars.

  So it comes as a surprise to the American people that there are 
people out there, that there are interest groups out there, that there 
are actually even nations out there that view us as their enemy and 
wish to exercise against the American people horrific acts, acts that 
involve the killing of innocent individuals--children, people who have 
no involvement in the military.
  Yet, that is the way it is in today's world, and we must be realistic 
about it, and we must acknowledge the fact that as we move into the 
next century, and certainly in the beginning of the next century, that 
our most significant threat to Americans is going to be generated by 
terrorist action. It is not only terrorist action which may involve a 
bomb placed on an airplane, it is terrorist action which could well go 
beyond that. It is terrorist action which could involve, of course, a 
threat of chemical activity, biological activity and, of course, even 
of nuclear activity.

  So the issue for us as a Government must be: How do we reorient 
ourselves as a nation, which for years structured its defensive 
mechanisms for the purposes of confronting the Soviet Union, a 
definable threat, a threat which, although huge, massive and awesome, 
was at least able to be brought into focus because the Soviet Union was 
a definable entity, how do we shift from that sort of a threat to a 
threat which is so amorphous, to a threat which comes at us from so 
many different directions, and a threat which is so much more difficult 
to tie to rational thought, and respond to it in a rational way? That 
becomes the main issue for us as a nation relative to how we structure 
our defensive policies over the next few years.
  So the hearing which we held yesterday was for the purposes of trying 
to get an idea as to how the White House and the administration is 
approaching this issue. The way that they appear to be approaching it 
is that they are going to put more money into certain agencies which 
have responsibilities for addressing questions of terrorist threat. 
They have sent up a supplemental package of spending which represents 
about $1.1 billion. They sent it up about a week ago. Many have asked 
whether or not the package was structured for political purposes or 
whether it was structured for substantive purposes. And that is 
probably a very legitimate question in the middle of a Presidential 
campaign, because the fact is that over a year ago the President set, 
theoretically set in place, an Executive order which should have led to 
the definition of the policy which would have then led to the 
commitment of resources.
  It is ironic that it has taken a year for that policy to evolve to 
the point where money comes forward--or a proposal to spend money comes 
forward just a few weeks before an election, whereas, clearly, one 
would have presumed that if there was a need for more dollars to be 
spent, and you had a 1-year lead time, that you would have requested 
those additional dollars at the beginning of the appropriating process, 
which occurred back in March and April of this year.
  But independent of that question of whether or not it was a primarily 
political motivation for bringing this forward at this time, there is a 
question of whether or not the request comes in the terms of a strategy 
or whether it comes in the terms of a haphazard response to the issue, 
to the threat of a terrorist action against the United States.
  For the part of these dollars which are under the jurisdiction of the 
committee on which I serve, which is the State, Commerce and Justice 
Committee, of the $1.1 billion that the President requested, about $300 
million of that comes under my committee's jurisdiction. Our committee, 
about 5 months ago, took a look at the way we were approaching 
terrorism and responding to terrorism, and decided we were not doing 
enough.
  Our committee has jurisdiction over the FBI, over the State 
Department, over the DEA, over the INS, over a number of agencies which 
clearly have front-line responsibility on the issue of terrorism. So we 
set up a proposal which essentially outlined a number of basic 
approaches to how we could better address the issue of terrorism.
  First, we asked that the White House give us a strategic plan by 
November 15. We picked November 15 because we did not want it to end up 
being a political plan. We wanted it to end up being a substantive 
plan. Thus, we pushed it past the election so that it would not end up 
in the political whirlwind that occurs before every Presidential 
election.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for an 
additional 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. It is absolutely critical that we get such a proposal.
  Second, we felt that if we were going to adequately address the 
terrorist issue, we should do it in an orderly manner, that first we 
should address what the threats are. And that means we have to beef up 
a number of functions in the Federal agencies that have 
responsibilities, specifically the FBI area. We need to put more agents 
on-site on this issue. We need to also be improving our ability to 
respond to a chemical and biological attack.
  In the international arena, we need to make sure that our personnel 
who are serving overseas are protected from attack, and, therefore, we 
need to significantly increase the security, physical security of 
people who are serving overseas, not only the people who are serving, 
but the physical security for their families, which is very important.

[[Page S10535]]

 We should not be putting at risk either an individual who works for 
the Government or the family of that individual who has gone overseas 
to live with that individual.
  Fourth, we addressed the interrelationship of the Federal agencies 
and the State agencies, because although this is a uniquely Federal 
role, the role of protecting this country against terrorist action, 
there are tremendous strengths which can be drawn by a coordinated 
policy of State agencies.
  So we took all this together and had a package that I think was put 
together in a fairly thoughtful and concise way. We came up with a need 
for additional dollars, about $150 million. And we took money out of 
other accounts--other accounts--and moved them into the spending 
accounts which were necessary to pay for these additional resources to 
improve our efforts relative to terrorists.
  Now the White House comes along, and they increase that number from 
$150 million to $300-plus million. There is some overlap here. We are 
not absolutely sure what the dollar difference is, but let us presume 
the dollar difference is over $100 million. Yet, in doing this, they 
have suggested no offsets; they have not suggested where we should take 
this money from. They said simply, let us put more money into this and 
that and more money into something else. That is not really a 
responsible way to do this.
  To the extent more dollars are needed than the package which we put 
together, it should be paid for. We should recognize that the priority 
in protecting this country from terrorism is high enough so that those 
dollars that we are going to allocate to terrorism should represent a 
reallocation and should not just be used to aggravate the deficit. That 
is the first thing.
  Second, if the White House's decision is to spend this additional 
money to expand those accounts, they have to do it in a coordinated 
way. This, I guess, is where I have my greatest concern.
  I asked the Attorney General about this, and, of course, the Attorney 
General feels there is coordination. But as you look at what is going 
on, and how the different instances of terrorism that we have seen so 
far have occurred and how they have been reacted to, you sense maybe 
there is not as much coordination as there should be.

  For example, has the President of the United States ever sat down 
with the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the CIA, the Attorney 
General, and the Secretary of State around the table, and said, ``What 
is our strategy on approaching international terrorism? How do we get 
about anticipating a terrorist act against the United States?''
  We are very good, I believe, once a terrorist act has occurred, in 
reacting and investigating. And the FBI, I am absolutely confident, 
will reach the bottom as to what happened, find out what happened in 
the TWA situation and in the Atlanta situation and in the Saudi 
situation. But we should be ahead of that as much as possible, ahead of 
that curve. To be ahead of that curve, you simply have to have 
cooperation at the top, with the senior officials within the 
Government, and it has to be made a priority with the President. The 
President actually has to physically sit in that room for at least a 
few meetings and drive the process so that we get a substantive 
strategy, the purpose of which is to anticipate where the terrorist 
threat is coming from and be ready to take action prior to the incident 
occurring.
  My sense is that although strides have been made in this area, and 
although there is a sincere effort on the part of all the major 
players, certainly in the Defense Department, the intelligence agency, 
the CIA, in the State Department, and at Justice, my sense still is 
that there is not an attitudinal approach which says, we intend to 
anticipate, we intend to coordinate, and we intend to have an effort 
which tries to strategically position ourselves to be ahead of the 
curve in the area of addressing the terrorist threat.
  We should be approaching this with the same thought process that we 
used relative to the Soviet Union when we considered it to be a threat. 
When we saw the Soviet Union as a threat, basically the Defense 
Department spent an inordinate amount of time--not inordinate, an 
appropriate amount of time, a huge amount of time, dollars, resources 
and people on developing scenarios anticipating various events.
  We do not have that type of structure. We do not have that type of 
dollar commitment or personnel commitment yet in the area of strategic 
planning. We have it in the area of reactive planning. It is improving. 
Just yesterday, the FBI asked that they be able to move 200 senior 
agents into the Terrorism Activist Unit, which is a very appropriate 
action to take, not putting green new agents into this area. We are 
putting our best into this area. That is a good decision by the 
Attorney General and the Director of the FBI. We are going to increase 
the terrorism functions within the FBI by 5 percent, so basically 10 
percent of the FBI effort would be directed toward counterterrorism.
  The fact is that we still do not have a strategic structure 
overlaying this. That strategic structure and how it gets overlayed and 
how the process gets evolved really has to come from the White House 
with the President. We are going to see, unfortunately, that the 
failure to have this type of a structure probably was one of the 
problems in Saudi Arabia. There will be a report coming out sometime 
next week that will point out that there was not adequate anticipation 
of the threat, even though there was knowledge of the threat, there was 
not adequate participation and anticipation of the threat, and that the 
senior officials within the Government simply did not react properly.
  Why did they not act properly? I think probably because there was not 
a protocol in place because there had been no strategic planning put in 
place for how to get ahead of the curb. We still are taking the view 
that we wait until the act occurs rather than taking the view that we 
go on the offensive.
  I recognize that the White House is trying hard in this area and the 
administration is trying hard. I greatly admire the efforts of the 
Attorney General in this area. I think the effort is incomplete. We 
have recognized but have not yet absorbed the nature of this, its 
significance to us, and the fact that we as a nation are going to have 
to use all our resources, all our creativity and our imagination in 
order to address it.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in 
morning business until the hour of 11:30.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is at the hour of 11:30 
there is, by previous consent, an opportunity for the Senator from 
Wyoming and others to make a presentation. I believe there is an 
opportunity following that for others of us to make presentations.
  I wanted to introduce a piece of legislation and I will do that in 
just 5 minutes, but first I want to comment about the bill on the 
floor.

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