[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 135 (Thursday, September 26, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H11360]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   UNITED STATES ROLE IN IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS TO CROATIA AND BOSNIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to inform the House of the serious 
problem that has come to my attention as chairman of the select 
subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations 
established to look into the Clinton administration's policy of giving 
Iran a green light in setting up military assistance programs in 
Croatia and Bosnia.
  We are well along in our investigation and hope to have a report 
ready to share with the House and the public next month. I can 
guarantee you that if we can manage to get the administration to 
cooperate concerning the rules of classification, that report will make 
very interesting reading. It will document an incredibly ill-advised 
policy that was conceived and executed in an incredibly inept manner.
  Moreover, and more importantly, it will lay out for all to see the 
tragedy in the making that is its legacy, a well-entrenched and hostile 
Iranian foothold in Europe. The Iranian presence and 
influence, pervasive in some of the highest circles of the Bosnian 
Muslim political leadership, is now playing havoc with our policymakers 
trying to implement the Dayton accords and our military trying to keep 
the lid on violence in the region. This cloud of Iranian influence and 
the terrorist infrastructure it has fostered in this part of Europe 
are, and will remain, very real threats to the West for years to come.

  The problem I wish to bring to your attention concerns the difficulty 
our subcommittee has had in trying to pry loose information that must 
be shared with the American people if they are to understand our 
findings. The administration is doing this by hiding behind the rules 
of classification. That is, they are insisting that important 
information is classified and cannot be shared with the American people 
due to concerns of its compromising national security.
  What sort of information am I talking about? The names of 
intelligence agents? No. Information on our military's capabilities? 
No. What we are talking about are embarrassing little comments and 
facts.
  We are talking about secrets that look like this.

                              {time}  1945

  This is one of three documents we asked the administration several 
months ago to declassify for our report. After over a month of 
deliberation, the State Department refused to declassify two of them, 
and, for this one, they selectively declassified 60 percent of the 
text. What then is in the 40 percent they deleted?
  Well, I cannot tell you exactly, because the administration says it 
is classified. I can let you know in the most general terms it includes 
such things as an embarrassing comment by a senior Department of State 
official on his department's performance in formulating the policy that 
gave Iran a green light into coming into the Balkans. It contains an 
embarrassing statement about the administration's ability or inability 
to reach a decision on policy guidance to issue an ambassador. It 
contains an statement whether or not to interpose itself between a 
foreign government and the Iranians. It also contains an embarrassing 
statement about whether or not the administration would advise our 
allies who have troops on the ground in Bosnia of a decision that could 
affect the safety of those troops.
  I ask then, is this classification to protect the national security, 
or is it to avoid embarrassment and avoid admitting mistakes?
  This administration has made a great hullabaloo about declassifying 
information. Openness has been its byword. When it comes to sensitive 
military information, the motto has been when in doubt, declassify.
  Well, unfortunately, that is not how it works in practice. I invite 
the administration to live up to its fine rhetoric. In its public 
pronouncements of openness, the administration went so far as to issue 
a new executive order specifically stating it shall be illegal to use 
the rules of classification to ``conceal violations of law, 
inefficiency or administrative error,'' or ``to prevent embarrassment 
to a person, organization or agency.''
  That is from Section 1.8 of the Clinton Administration's Executive 
Order 12958. Accordingly, I have referred this matter today to the 
Information Security Oversight Office and the Interagency Security 
Classification Appeals Panel for investigation and appropriate action.
  Finally, I wish to assure the House that we will continue to 
investigate the administration's efforts at providing the Iranians a 
unique opportunity, that amounted to a franchise for insinuating and 
entrenching themselves into a very vulnerable and volatile part of 
Europe.

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