[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 141 (Thursday, October 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12297-S12300]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         A TRIBUTE TO SAM NUNN

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I was privileged to shake the hand of Sam 
Nunn just now, the distinguished, esteemed Senator from Georgia, as he 
departed the Chamber. He said to me, ``This will be our last handshake 
on the floor of the U.S. Senate.''

  That was, indeed, a very moving split second for me, because we have, 
through the 18 years that I have been a member of the Armed Services 
Committee, shaken hands many times on this floor--and on occasion 
shaken a few fists at one another. But the period that I remember the 
best is when he was chairman of the committee, having succeeded a long 
line of very distinguished individuals: John Stennis, ``Scoop'' 
Jackson, John Tower, Barry Goldwater--all Senators. But my most 
memorable period is when I was privileged to serve as the ranking 
member

[[Page S12299]]

of the Armed Services Committee some 6 years. I served with the 
chairman, who was Senator Nunn, and we took, in each of those years, to 
this floor legislation of our committee, the authorization bills, and 
debated them with our colleagues, sometimes long into the night.
  We don't seem to have the night sessions as we did in the old days, 
but I can remember leaving the Chamber with some of those bills and the 
Sun was coming up--12, 14, 16 hours of continuous debate as 1 day's 
activities on usually a 3- or 4-day consideration of our bill.
  So I will miss him a great deal. He is a very dear friend.
  I think back on how he was elected to the Senate in 1972 and served 
on the Armed Services Committee for 24 years. He served as chairman of 
the Manpower and Personnel Subcommittee in the seventies. I remember 
serving briefly with him on that subcommittee. He was chairman of the 
committee, of course, after becoming ranking minority member. It is a 
distinguished career.
  He was chairman of the full committee from 1986 to 1993 and now, in 
the last years of his career, again is the ranking member. I point that 
out because he was always, to the maximum extent possible by any Member 
of the U.S. Senate, bipartisan in his approach to the responsibilities 
of our committee and those issues that related to national security and 
foreign affairs.
  He followed in the tradition of two great Georgia Members of the U.S. 
Congress, his uncle, Congressman Carl Vinson, chairman of the House 
Armed Services Committee. I have a picture, which I treasure greatly, 
from when I was Secretary of the Navy. I recommended to the President 
of the United States, at that time Richard Nixon, that the tradition in 
the U.S. Navy that existed from the first day of a sailing ship should 
be broken and that the Navy should name a ship for a living individual.
  The Secretary of Defense, Mel Laird, at that time, consulted with me. 
I took the decision to Mr. Laird. He said, ``Let's give it a try.''
  Mr. Laird had been in the U.S. Navy in World War II. We went to see 
the President. The President had been in the Navy. He was an officer 
during World War II. Three sailors sat down and decided we would name a 
supercarrier the ``Carl Vinson,'' on the occasion of his 50th year in 
the Congress of the United States and concluding many of those years as 
chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
  I mention that because we had a model of the ship built and the 
President of the United States, myself and Secretary Laird presented 
that model to Carl Vinson. Sam Nunn is in the picture. It is a 
remarkable picture, because Senator Nunn's sideburns were down almost 
below his jaw. I will never forget that. It hangs in his office.
  Another distinguished Member of Congress, of course, was Richard 
Russell, who was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee for 16 
years. I will have further to say about that Senator as I close my 
remarks.
  Senator Nunn quickly established himself as one of the leading 
experts in the Congress and, indeed, all of the United States on 
national security and foreign policy. He gained a reputation in our 
country and, indeed, worldwide as a global thinker, and that is where I 
think he will make his greatest contribution in the years to come, 
wherever he may be, in terms of being a global thinker.
  His approach to national security issues has been guided by one 
fundamental criteria: What Sam Nunn believes is in the best interest of 
the United States of America.
  As a junior Senator in 1978, he ultimately voted in favor of the 
Panama Canal Treaty because he thought--Mr. President, he thought--it 
was in the long-term national security interest of our Nation, even 
though he knew it was not a popular position, particularly in the South 
and most particularly in Georgia. He supported the policies of 
Presidents of both parties when he thought they were right, and he 
raised questions about the policies of the Presidents of both parties 
when he thought questions needed to be raised.

  But, again, as we look back in the history of Congress and its 
constitutional role in foreign policy--and how many debates have I been 
in and Senator Nunn and others, for example, on the War Powers Act, on 
consultation? Just today in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and I 
think quite properly, questions were raised about the level of 
consultation between the President, President Clinton, and the 
Congress. But Sam Nunn, to me, applied what is known as the 
``Vandenberg rule,'' a very distinguished former Member of the U.S. 
Senate, recognized for his strength in foreign policy, who, to 
paraphrase his saying, always believed that partisanship politics 
should be checked at the water's edge, and that has been a guiding 
light for Senator Nunn.
  Sam Nunn always worked, as I say, in a bipartisan fashion, almost 
invariably. His numerous initiatives and legislative accomplishments 
invariably have Republican and Democratic cosponsors. Senator Nunn is 
fond of saying that he has yet to see a problem or a challenge facing 
this country that can be solved by only one political party. How true 
that is in national security and foreign policy.
  I started to go over his accomplishments and just selected a few, 
because I was involved. He was a tremendous supporter of the welfare of 
our men and women in uniform and their families. He helped restore 
quality of force, the total arms force, following the serious problems 
that we had in the aftermath of Vietnam; indeed, during Vietnam. He 
coauthored the Nunn-Warner benefits package of 1980, perhaps the first 
single piece of legislation for which I have received, I think 
unjustifiably, but nevertheless some modest recognition.
  He was a leader in establishing a program of transition benefits in 
the nineties to military and civilian employees of DOD who lost their 
jobs as a result of the downsizing of the defense infrastructure of the 
military services.
  NATO was a very, very favorite subject. I traveled with him on many 
occasions to NATO, as I did through the capitals of the world, and sat 
with him when he, on a one-on-one equal basis shared views with heads 
of state, heads of government, world leaders in Europe, in Asia, and 
the Middle East.
  He was a strong supporter of maintaining NATO as an active and 
energetic alliance. He wrote three reports to the Senate on the health 
of the NATO alliance. He is very highly regarded by political and 
military leaders throughout the NATO community.
  If there were one subject to concern him the most--and, indeed, it 
does me and, I am sure, almost every Member of this body--it is the 
proliferation of the knowledge of how to construct weapons of mass 
destruction, proliferation of that knowledge and, indeed, the 
proliferation of the arming of the weapons themselves.
  Senator Nunn, together with Senator Lugar of Indiana, created the 
Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to help countries of the former 
Soviet Union dismantle their weapons of mass destruction and the 
facilities to produce such weapons.
  He also offered legislation to improve our domestic capability in 
counter- terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction. I joined him. I 
happened to be the manager of the defense bill at the time that 
amendment was raised by Senators Nunn, Lugar, and Domenici.
  And I joined as a cosponsor in authorizing the Department of Defense 
and other Government agencies of the Federal Government to share with 
local law enforcement some of the basic knowledge of how to deal with 
the situation, should they be confronted with the threat of the use of, 
say, a crude weapon, chemical or biological weapon of mass destruction 
in any of our 50 States. I urge the communities to avail themselves of 
that authorization in our most recent 1997 bill.
  We had our differences. We have fought toe to toe on this floor when 
I, together with Senator Dole and others, passed the gulf resolution, 
that resolution to authorize President Bush to utilize the men and 
women of the United States, a half a million of whom were in positions 
ready, together with perhaps the most magnificent allied coalition ever 
formed in the history of the world, to repel the invasion of Saddam 
Hussein.
  But it was necessary in the President's mind to have the support of 
the Congress of the United States. And that is a chapter in history 
that should be studied carefully by all Presidents,

[[Page S12300]]

because when the men and women of the Armed Forces go forward beyond 
our shores, in harm's way, we want the total support of both the 
Presidency and the Congress and, to the extent possible, the people of 
the United States behind those troops, particularly when the risk of 
personal injury is very high.
  We had our differences. We fought that battle. It was about a 5-vote 
difference in the outcome. But from the very moment of the decision of 
the United States to support the resolution, which I was privileged to 
draft under the direction of the then-leader, Senate Dole, from the 
very first minute of the vote by the Senate of the United States, 
Senator Nunn backed President Bush in his decision to use force and to 
turn around the situation that was tragic in the eyes of the world.
  We had our differences on the interpretation of the ABM, the SALT, 
the START treaties, but always, once again, bipartisanship was 
foremost.
  A moment ago Senator Nunn spoke about the staff of the Senate. One of 
his hallmarks was his ability to attract the finest people for 
professional staff, in the years particularly when he was chairman and 
ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and in the 
Governmental Operations Committee. And I think that is the hallmark of 
a great Senator, the ability to attract quality staff, to spend long 
hours of dedicated service to their Nation and to their Senate.
  Mr. President, Senator Nunn always had a profound preference, as he 
should, for Senator Russell. He used to say from time to time that he 
only temporarily was the holder of the Senate seat from Georgia which 
was once held by Richard Russell. And I thought I would conclude my 
remarks by reading the remarks of our distinguished colleague, the 
Senator from West Virginia, Senator Byrd, at the unveiling of the 
statue in the Russell rotunda of Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. I 
ask unanimous consent to have the entire remarks printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               Richard B. Russell, Jr. (D-GA, 1933-1971)

       At the unveiling of the statue of Russell in the rotunda of 
     the Russell Senate Office Building on January 24, 1996, 
     Senator Byrd said of Russell:
       ``He was the senator, the uncrowned king of the southern 
     block, and he was as truly a Senate man as was Henry Clay or 
     Daniel Webster or John C. Calhoun or Thomas Benton or any of 
     the other giants who had preceded him.
       ``Senator Russell's philosophy of government was rooted in 
     constitutionalism. . . . He was always regarded as one of the 
     most fair and conscientious members of this body.
       ``Through it all he served his nation well. Richard Russell 
     followed his own star. He did not pander. His confidant was 
     his conscience. He was always the good and faithful servant 
     of the people. He was good for the Senate, and he loved it 
     dearly. I can say without any hesitation that he was a 
     remarkable senator, a remarkable American, a remarkable man 
     who enjoyed the respect and the affecting of all who served 
     with him.''

  Mr. WARNER. But I shall read this one paragraph.

       Through it all he served his nation well. Richard Russell 
     followed his own star. He did not pander. His confidant was 
     his conscience. He was always the good and faithful servant 
     of the people. He was good for the Senate, and he loved it 
     dearly. I can say without any hesitation that he was a 
     remarkable Senator, a remarkable American, a remarkable man 
     who enjoyed the respect and the affection of all who served 
     with him.

  I think, Mr. President, certainly this Senator, and I feel most, can 
say that Senator Byrd's remarks capturing the magnificence of Richard 
Russell--Sam Nunn can return to Georgia with a clear conscience that he 
did his best to fulfill the reputation of Richard Russell of Georgia. I 
yield the floor.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.

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