[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 28 (Thursday, March 6, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2010-S2013]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NOMINATION OF ANTHONY LAKE

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I wish to speak today on the nomination of 
Anthony Lake to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. This 
nomination has raised a troubling issue, an issue that has nothing to 
do with the candidate's qualifications. Rather, that issue is the 
credibility of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to conduct a 
fair, nonpartisan examination of this nominee.
  That committee, of which I have been a proud member for 4 years, has 
a well-earned reputation for bipartisanship. But that hard-won 
reputation is being jeopardized by the committee's conduct in this 
matter.
  In a speech before the Senate last night, Chairman Shelby said he 
wants to treat the Lake confirmation ``in a serious, thorough and fair 
manner.'' That is a laudable goal. It is a goal I fully support. I 
commend the chairman for establishing a high standard. The position of 
Director of Central Intelligence is an extremely sensitive one. We have 
a responsibility to the American people to subject the nominee to close 
scrutiny.
  I accept and welcome the responsibility as a member of the committee. 
Unfortunately, it is a responsibility my colleagues and I have been 
unable thus far to exercise.
  The reason for this failure is that the committee, although having 
officially received this nomination on January 9, has yet to conduct 
its first hearing on the nominee. Meanwhile, the Senate has acted 
judiciously but swiftly on two other members of the President's foreign 
policy team, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense.
  Mr. Lake remains the exception. Indeed, his hearings have been 
postponed not once, but twice. In the first instance, the chairman 
postponed the hearings ``dependent upon the status of the Justice 
Department's investigation'' into Mr. Lake's stock transactions and his 
role in the Iran-Bosnia arms sale.
  The Department of Justice completed its investigation on February 7, 
giving Mr. Lake a clean bill of health in regard to the arms sale and 
determining there was no evidence that he ever took any action to 
conceal or misrepresent his or his wife's financial holdings.
  Nevertheless, the chairman again postponed the hearings, this time 
asserting that the Department of Justice investigation ``is only a 
small part of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's overall, 
ongoing investigation * * *'' He now cites new concerns.
  After two delays, the chairman is now committed to a hearing on March 
11. I welcome that commitment.
  Mr. President, I fear, however, that the March 11 hearing is only a 
prelude to what is turning into an extended fishing expedition. If 
anyone doubts that, they only have to read the February 27 issue of the 
Washington Post, which reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee 
has now requested White House documents involving Haiti--documents 
which our House colleagues requested last year as part of their 
extensive investigations into the administration's Haiti policy.
  Those investigations have so far produced rather paltry results, 
despite extensive hearings, document reviews and testimony.
  The International Relations Committee was able to generate only a 
majority staff report. The members of that committee--neither 
Republican or Democrat--signed the report--not exactly a vote of 
confidence.
  The Republican majority of the House Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence has yet to produce any report at all.
  In each case, the administration made available literally hundreds of 
documents for congressional review.
  Although withholding approximately 50 documents, citing executive 
privilege, the administration did offer to brief House Members and 
provide certain redacted versions of those documents. Republicans 
rejected the proposal.
  The administration has made the same offer to our committee. It is a 
reasonable one that balances congressional rights and executive 
privilege. I urge the chairman to accept it, rather than creating a 
pretext for further delay.
  Mr. President, the Haiti issue is just one of several the committee 
is pursuing.
  The implication of the chairman's remarks are that the committee now 
intends to investigate the Department of Justice's investigation of Mr. 
Lake's divesture of stock. The Justice Department, as I mentioned 
earlier, found no evidence that Mr. Lake ever took any action to 
conceal or misrepresent his or his wife's financial holdings. It found 
no fault in his conduct of the Iran-Bosnia matter.
  With regards to Mr. Lake's FBI file and the Tower nomination, the 
chairman has requested Mr. Lake's complete FBI file, based on the 
purported precedent of the nomination of former Senator John Tower for 
Secretary of Defense in 1989. As my colleague from Michigan, Senator 
Levin, stated yesterday, ``neither the Armed Services Committee nor the 
full Senate ever had access to the raw investigative files used by the 
FBI to compile its summary of the background investigation of Senator 
Tower.''
  In his statement, Senator Levin further cites Senator Nunn's comments 
in 1989. Senator Nunn stated on the Senate floor that, ``What we have 
in S-407 is the summary of interviews the FBI conducted. They prepare 
the summary. We do not see nor do we have the underlying interviews.''
  In the case of Mr. Lake, that summary has already been provided to 
the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  I am concerned that we are engaged in a fishing expedition in which 
the

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hearings are being used to determine if some malfeasance can be found, 
rather than to develop information on a credible hypothesis of 
inappropriate behavior.
  Mr. President, I am also concerned that the goalposts are clearly 
being moved on this nominee. Questions are asked; responses are given; 
and then new, different questions are asked. If members of the 
committee have inquiries, we should all welcome the opportunity to 
question this nominee in the best possible forum, under oath, during 
his confirmation hearings. He in turn has the right and the opportunity 
to respond. That is the purpose of a nomination hearing.
  Unfortunately, there is a growing public perception, aptly expressed 
by one commentator, that the committee ``seems to be waiting for 
something scandalous to turn up to sink the nomination.'' The 
perception, right or wrong, is that we are leaving Mr. Lake to twist in 
the wind. I am afraid that that says more about our committee than it 
does about Mr. Lake.
  Some history. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has a hard-
earned and proud tradition of bipartisanship. It is the successor to 
the Church committee of 1975-76, which was an investigative committee 
only. The purpose of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is 
both to oversee sensitive intelligence activities and to maintain and 
improve intelligence capabilities and efficiency.
  The issues that come before the committee, including the nomination 
of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, are extremely 
sensitive. They demand a high level of bipartisanship. I fear that the 
committee's bipartisanship is fraying and that fair play is falling 
victim to partisan gamesmanship.
  That, Mr. President, should concern all of us, Republican and 
Democrat alike. Intelligence activities, by their sensitive nature, run 
counter to Democratic principles of openness. Yet, in my view, good 
intelligence is essential to our democracy's security.
  Effective congressional oversight, in turn, is a critical ingredient 
to maintaining some balance between these two inherently contradictory 
forces--democratic openness and the necessary secrecy that surrounds 
intelligence procedures and operations. Oversight is a serious 
responsibility. The public must have confidence that we are above 
politics when we deal with intelligence issues.
  In almost every other area of Federal Government, the public has 
multiple sources of information. That is what freedom of speech and 
freedom of press provide in a democratic society. But as it relates to 
the operations of the intelligence community, the general public must 
rely on a handful of its representatives to provide the necessary 
oversight and scrutiny to assure that the operations are being 
conducted in a manner that advances the public interest and assures 
that the public interest is not being rendered vulnerable by 
clandestine operations.
  So far, the committee has largely succeeded. One measure of the 
committee's success has been the impressive number of newly emerging 
democracies that have sought the Senate Intelligence Committee's advice 
over the past few years. Each of those countries is struggling to 
establish an intelligence community that will safeguard democracy, not 
undermine it. They look to us as a model of bipartisan oversight and 
have come to us for guidance.
  That expression of confidence is our most valuable asset. We have 
earned it through hard work, diligence and a determination to play the 
honest broker. We can ill-afford to fritter it away and give life to 
the perception that the CIA is becoming an instrument of partisan 
warfare, that the Lake nomination is simply an attempt to attack the 
President's foreign policy over the last 4 years.
  The CIA, in turn, can ill-afford partisan bickering at a time when it 
is struggling with a painful transition from a cold war where we faced 
one principal enemy to a new world in which we face multiple threats.
  Those emerging threats run the gamut from terrorism and biological 
and chemical weapons proliferation to narcotics trafficking. Each in 
its own way is as serious and in some ways more challenging a threat 
than that presented by the former Soviet Union.
  In attacking these targets, we will need to be focused, creative, and 
open to new ways of conducting intelligence operations.
  Whether the CIA successfully meets this challenge of transition 
depends in a large measure on stable leadership, something that has 
been in disgraceful short supply.
  Whether the CIA successfully meets that challenge depends in large 
measure on stable leadership, something that has been in disgracefully 
short supply. Four DCI's have rotated through the Agency in the last 5 
years.
  The position of Director of Central Intelligence has become 
Washington's ultimate revolving door. That's got to stop, and I hope it 
will with this nominee.
  Success also depends in no small part on the actions the SSCI and 
this Senate take in regard to Mr. Lake's nomination. This nomination 
provides us a valuable opportunity to publicly discuss the role of 
intelligence and its future in our democracy.
  A number of important questions call out for answers.
  With the demise of the Soviet Union, does the CIA have a mission?
  If so, what is it? And if it has a mission, has the Agency lost its 
way in pursuing it?
  How effectively is the community protecting the interests of America 
and its citizens?
  Is the culture of the Directorate of Operations hobbling the Agency's 
effectiveness. If so, how do we change it?
  Is the Agency ready to be held accountable for its actions and its 
failures?
  What role should human rights play in Agency operations?
  Is the Agency keeping congressional oversight committees and Members 
of Congress appropriately informed? How effective has it been in this 
regard?
  An elevated debate, one marked not by partisan rancor but by honesty 
and openness, can help answer these questions and contribute to 
reaching a consensus about the intelligence community's role in our 
society as we enter the 21st century.
  More important, such a debate will help educate ourselves and as well 
as the voters who sent us here about the appropriate role of 
intelligence in a democracy--its pluses and its minuses.
  Having said that, there clearly are specific issues regarding this 
nominee that deserve the committee's scrutiny.
  I question whether Mr. Lake's opponents have focused on the right 
ones. His supposed connections with the left and his views as to Alger 
Hiss' guilt or innocence obviously have enthralled some.
  But as former Director of Central Intelligence Bob Gates under 
President Bush wrote in the January 29 issue of the Wall Street 
Journal, these issues are ``wholly irrelevant and silly.''
  I certainly respect the right of any Member to purse these questions 
during upcoming hearings. Indeed, I would hope that those who find 
these issues troubling would urge the chairman to deal with this 
nomination expeditiously so that we can conclude committee hearings and 
move to floor debate.
  One question, I intend to ask of Mr. Lake is whether he can provide 
the President objective intelligence analysis after serving as his 
National Security Adviser the past 4 years.
  I also intend to ask him whether, having attempted to curry favor 
with representatives of the Directorate of Operations in an effort to 
bolster his nomination, he has weakened his ability to act decivisely 
as DCI on issues of accountability and reform.
  I also plan to ask him whether the nomination process and the 
criticism he has been subjected to will jeopardize his effectiveness if 
he is confirmed. Has he been so bloodied that he will be unable to 
perform effectively?
  Finally, I plan to question him about his management philosophy and 
skills, his attitude toward secrecy, and the role of human rights in 
intelligence operations.
  I am confident that Mr. Lake will acquit himself well before the 
committee. He has shown himself to be a man of great ability and 
integrity. Moreover, as National Security Adviser he has been an avid 
customer of intelligence and will bring that critical perspective to 
the job.
  Barring any stunning revelations that may arise during the hearings--
and I see no indication of any

[[Page S2012]]

occuring--I will vote for Tony Lake. In my view, he will make a fine 
Director of Central Intelligence.
  Mr. President, the issue for today is, will we protect the 
credibility? Will we protect the now almost 20 years of investment that 
has been made in a credible Senate oversight of this most sensitive of 
Government activities, or will we allow it to be frittered away and 
degraded by partisan wrangling? That will be the challenge that our 
committee will face, commencing with the hearings that will begin on 
March 11. I trust that the committee will meet its high standard.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a January 29, 1997, 
column by former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Robert 
Gates, as printed in the Wall Street Journal in support of Mr. Lake's 
nomination as well as a January 26, 1997, column by Reagan 
administration official Richard Schifter, as printed in the Washington 
Times, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 29, 1997]

                  The Case for Confirming Anthony Lake

                          (By Robert M. Gates)

       I am barely acquainted with Tony Lake, the president's 
     national security adviser and nominee to become CIA director. 
     But I have read about his views on foreign policy for years 
     and disagree with him on a number of important issues. I 
     think that the administration's foreign policy, which he has 
     helped shape, has been erratically interventionist, 
     excessively tactical, insufficiently supportive of resources 
     for defense and intelligence, and lacking in strategic 
     priorities, coherence and consistency. Even so, I believe Mr. 
     Lake should be confirmed.
       An ideal nominee for CIA director would have universally 
     recognized integrity, expertise in foreign affairs (but with 
     no controversies), experience managing large enterprises, 
     savvy in intelligence operations (with no failures), 
     analytical insight (with no mistakes), political skill, the 
     confidence of and ready access to the president, and a 
     winning personality. None of the 17 men who have been CIA 
     director have had that combination of credentials. Mr. Lake 
     has three of the most important, however.
       First, he is broadly recognized as a man of integrity and 
     principle--and as a man with the courage to stand up for what 
     he believes is right. This offers reassurance that he will be 
     independent of the White House in which he served and will be 
     directed by a moral grounding most Americans would find 
     admirable. Second, whether or not one agrees with him on the 
     issues, he is thoroughly knowledgeable about foreign affairs. 
     Moreover, as national security adviser, he is clearly 
     familiar with current intelligence operations and analysis, 
     and will be able to improve both. Third, he has the 
     confidence of the president and knows well the rest of the 
     president's national security team, two assets without which 
     a CIA director is deeply, if not fatally, weakened.
       Mr. Lake does have deficiencies. He has no relevant 
     intelligence background, but then neither did 13 of his 17 
     predecessors. He has not managed a large (and difficult) 
     organization, but his power of appointment (and the incumbent 
     deputy) can compensate for that. As for a winning 
     personality, I am in no position to judge.
       There are contentious issues surrounding Mr. Lake that will 
     doubtless be important in his confirmation hearings before 
     the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Most 
     significantly, the administration's failure to tell Congress 
     about its actions in at least tacitly encouraging Iran to arm 
     Bosnia was, at minimum, a serious mistake. Mr. Lake should 
     say so, and the committee should extract appropriate pledges 
     from him about keeping Congress informed--and his willingness 
     to resign if ordered by the president to keep lawmakers in 
     the dark, a pledge I made prior to my confirmation in 1991. 
     At the same time, primary responsibility for this mistake in 
     Bosnia rests more heavily with the president and the then-
     secretary of state, and Mr. Lake should not be disqualified 
     as CIA director simply because others senior to him are 
     beyond the reach of the Senate.
       Other issues that have been raised in connection with his 
     nomination are not, in my view, disqualifying. He obviously 
     must satisfactorily explain his tardy disposal of stock after 
     entering public office. But the charge that Mr. Lake was once 
     equivocal as to the guilt of Alger Hiss and allegations of 
     other manifestations of ``left-leaning'' views years ago 
     strike me--someone who was attacked in my own confirmation 
     hearings as too much of a Cold War hawk--as wholly irrelevant 
     and silly in 1997, even if true.
       The committee must satisfy itself on Iran-Bosnia and Mr. 
     Lake's commitment to congressional oversight, as well as 
     other issues, such as the stock sale. But these should be 
     resolvable. Then perhaps the hearings can serve a positive 
     function by eliciting Mr. Lake's thinking on continued reform 
     and restructuring of U.S. intelligence, his views of its 
     strengths and weaknesses and the adequacy of resources in 
     light of the tasks assigned by the president and Congress. 
     The answers to these tough questions could prove 
     illuminating, not to mention highly relevant to his 
     confirmation.
       The bipartisan nature of the Senate intelligence committee 
     since its early days under the leadership of Daniel Inouye 
     and Barry Goldwater has been one of its greatest assets, and 
     a source of its credibility. As Congress becomes more 
     polarized and partisan, it would be a tragedy if the 
     Republican and Democratic leadership of this very sensitive 
     committee were to allow its special nonpartisan character to 
     be weakened. I was nominated to be CIA director by President 
     Reagan in 1987 and again by President Bush in 1991, and 
     despite the struggles I went through in a Democratic-
     controlled Senate, I never felt the disputes were partisan.
       Mr. Lake's confirmation ought not become a matter of 
     partisan conflict, an opportunity to attack the 
     administration's foreign policy. There are other, more 
     appropriate forums for that, even in Congress--the Senate's 
     Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, and the 
     House's equivalent committees. Republicans should not use 
     hearings for CIA director--a position that should be outside 
     of politics--to make Mr. Lake the designated partisan target.
       Tony Lake isn't perfect for CIA director, but he is a 
     capable senior official of integrity who is the choice of the 
     president to head the U.S. intelligence community. As the 
     last CIA director nominated by a Republican president and 
     confirmed by a Democratic-controlled Senate, I strongly 
     believe that hard questions should be asked of Mr. Lake, and 
     then he should be confirmed expeditiously with broad 
     bipartisan support. This would be in the best interests of 
     the country and of the intelligence community.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Times, Jan. 26, 1997]

                      Close and Confident of Lake

       For the last month, a stream of unsubstantiated charges 
     have been leveled against the nomination of Anthony Lake to 
     be the next director of central intelligence. These attacks 
     are based on inaccurate information.
       I have worked closely with Tony Lake on the staff of the 
     National Security Council for the last three-and-a-half 
     years. I came to this job as a hard-liner on U.S. foreign 
     policy, a lifelong foe of communism, and one of the initial 
     members of the Committee on the Present Danger. I found Tony 
     Lake to be a kindred spirit in his devotion to the 
     enlargement of democracy and the global promotion of American 
     interests. Whether the issue was stopping aggression in 
     Bosnia or moving ahead with the expansion of NATO, Mr. Lake's 
     leadership, vision and competence played a vital role in the 
     formulation and success of these policies.
       Some have asserted that Mr. Lake's April 1994 decision 
     neither to approve nor to object to Iranian arms shipments to 
     Bosnia facilitated creation of a radical Islamic foothold. 
     According to the intelligence community, the Iranian military 
     and intelligence services have been present in Bosnia since 
     1992. There was no significant increase in that presence 
     after April 1994. Tony Lake, we should note, was the main 
     architect of the president's August 1995 initiative that led 
     to the Dayton agreement. That agreement banned foreign forces 
     and led the Bosnian government to sever military and 
     intelligence links with Iran as a condition for the train and 
     equip program. Hundreds of Iranian Revolutionary Guards have 
     left Bosnia, Mujahideen units have disbanded, and the 
     Bosnians are looking to the United States and moderate 
     Islamic states for security assistance. Mr. Lake, thus, 
     played a key role in the reduction of Iranian influence on 
     Bosnia, not the opposite.
       As for the issue of congressional consultation, Mr. Lake--
     recently praised by Senator Majority Leader Trent Lott for 
     his efforts to keep Congress informed--has said, in 
     retrospect, that informing key members of Congress on a very 
     discreet basis would have been wise. The Senate Select 
     Intelligence Committee report later confirmed there was 
     nothing illegal about this diplomatic exchange.
       Assertions that during Mr. Lake's tenure as national 
     security adviser CIA resources were massively diverted from 
     monitoring military threats to addressing global 
     environmental issues, and that this would continue with Mr. 
     Lake as the director of intelligence, are misguided. 
     Environmental issues are important--a Chernobyl reactor 
     disaster or a major oil spill in the Persian Gulf would have 
     major economic and security implications. However, Mr. Lake 
     and the CIA have, by no means, massively diverted 
     resources to look at the environment. In fact, the 
     agency's program on the environment, initiated during the 
     Bush administration, remains very modest. Mr. Lake's 
     intelligence priorities remain those previously decided 
     upon: critical support for military operations involving 
     U.S. forces, political, economic and military intelligence 
     about countries hostile to the United States, and 
     intelligence about transnational issues--weapons of mass 
     destruction, terrorism, organized crime, drug 
     trafficking--that affect national security and the lives 
     of Americans.
       Allegations that Mr. Lake had ties to the ``extreme Left'' 
     are ridiculous and tend to subvert fair discussion of an 
     important nomination. This, too, is not the case. An initial 
     supporter of our effort to stem communism in Vietnam, Mr. 
     Lake volunteered to serve there as a State Department 
     official. Like

[[Page S2013]]

     many other Americans, he later changed his mind as to whether 
     our continued military interest in Vietnam served the 
     national interest. After leaving the Foreign Service, he 
     supported, in 1971-72, the centrist presidential campaign of 
     Edmund Muskie. Mr. Lake was not a member of the Center for 
     National Security Studies, and did not ``help found'' it, as 
     has recently been charged. Mr. Lake's connection with the 
     Institute of Policy Studies was that at the invitation of an 
     acquaintance he delivered a single lecture to an IPS seminar 
     on Washington's government institutions.
       We currently live in an extraordinarily complex world, in 
     which our national security concerns are no longer focused on 
     a single country and a single movement. In this world we need 
     a director of central intelligence who is able to see the 
     whole picture and can then identify the multiple concerns 
     which require our special attention. We also need a director 
     who can incisively analyze the material presented to him by 
     his staff, can spot the flaws and insufficiencies and see to 
     it that a superior, thoroughly reliable product emerges from 
     the process. Finally, we need a director who combines 
     professional integrity with personal decency. Having seen 
     Tony Lake at work, I am confident that he meets all of these 
     criteria.

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________