[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 35 (Tuesday, March 18, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1103-H1108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CIA OPERATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Waters] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I started a presentation and a 
conversation about the Central Intelligence Agency. Recently I have 
become involved in taking a closer look at the Central Intelligence 
Agency. This was after the San Jose Mercury News series detailing 
allegations that the CIA operatives were involved in the trafficking of 
crack cocaine in south central Los Angeles.
  What we have learned is quite disturbing. The CIA operatives, Oscar 
Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses were indeed connected with both the 
CIA and the DEA; that is, the Drug Enforcement Agency. Both Blandon and 
Meneses have long histories of involvement with drugs. Mr. Meneses in 
particular was well-known among the United States and Latin American 
law enforcement agencies as having trafficked drugs for years. These 
men were staunch supporters of the Nicaraguan contras and the FDN. That 
is the army of the contras.
  There are those who question whether the CIA had any involvement with 
the distribution or trafficking of crack cocaine into south central Los 
Angeles. One need only look no further than current newspapers to find 
recent cases of CIA involvement with drugs.
  Before I began to detail some more of the recent involvement, I would 
like to just share for a moment the fact that Mr. Danilo Blandon and 
Mr. Norwin Meneses both have been identified not only as having been 
involved with the CIA, but Mr. Danilo Blandon himself testified in 
Federal court that he was a CIA operative.

[[Page H1104]]

  There are those who question whether or not this really could have 
happened, and did this fuel the explosion of crack cocaine in south 
central Los Angeles and across the Nation. There are some of us who are 
well aware that in the 1980's in south central Los Angeles, where I 
have served for a number of years prior to coming to Congress, there 
was indeed a huge infusion of drugs, and it was commonly referred to as 
drugs that were being brought in by the Colombians. Little did we know 
until the San Jose Mercury News did this extensive investigation that 
indeed these operatives were directly in south central Los Angeles and 
Mr. Meneses himself was connected with these drug cartels that were 
bringing in the drugs to Mr. Danilo Blandon.
  Well, the newspapers have been full of a lot about what took place. 
Not only did the San Jose Mercury News describe this whole operation 
and a young man in south central Los Angeles that was connected to the 
trafficking of huge amounts of crack cocaine, but since that time we 
have discovered that Mr. Danilo Blandon is now in the witness 
protection program of the DEA and, despite the fact he had been a large 
drug dealer, bringing all of this cocaine into south central Los 
Angeles, he was now on the DEA payroll, having been paid over $160,000 
by them last year.

                              {time}  2230

  Ricky Ross, the young man that connected with him in south central 
Los Angeles, is now in prison for life. Well, some people may say that 
perhaps happened and perhaps the CIA did not really involve itself in 
the trafficking of cocaine, it just kind of turned its back and allowed 
it to happen. And that was the CIA of the past. And perhaps they were 
so involved in trying to support the Contras, because they felt that 
they were the correct organization to confront the Sandinistas, even 
though they did not have the support of the Congress of the United 
States, that perhaps they made a mistake.
  Well, for those who think they made a mistake, let us take a look at 
recent events. Let us take a look at Venezuela. Earlier this year, 
General Ramon Davila Venezuela's former drug czar, was indicted by 
Federal prosecutors in Miami for smuggling cocaine into the United 
States.
  Now, according to the New York Times, November 20, 1993 article, the 
CIA antidrug program in Venezuela shipped a ton of nearly pure cocaine 
to the United States in 1990. The CIA acknowledged that the drugs were 
sold on the streets of the United States of America. The joint CIA-
Venezuelan force was headed by General Davila and the ranking CIA 
officer was Mark McFarlin, who worked with antiguerrilla forces in El 
Salvador in the 1980's. Not one CIA official has ever been indicted or 
prosecuted for this abuse of authority.
  You need to know and understand that when the CIA came up with this 
cockamamie scheme of bringing the drugs into the United States, they 
claimed that this was the only way that they could gain the confidence 
of the drug dealers in Venezuela and thus set them up so that they 
could bust them for a bigger deal later on. They went to the DEA and 
told the DEA about the scheme and the DEA, who supposedly has the 
authority to determine whether or not you can do these kinds of 
operations, said to them, no. You cannot do it.
  The CIA defied the DEA. They did it anyway. And they broke the law 
because they allowed the drugs to hit the streets.
  Well, let me just say that whether we are looking at south central 
Los Angeles or any of our other major urban areas or even areas that 
are not so urban, and we see this continuing influx of cocaine that is 
cooked into crack and we see all of this devastation and we wonder, 
where does it come from, and people in many of these communities will 
say, we have no airplanes, we do not have the wherewithal to bring the 
drugs in, so it must be coming from places as they would consider 
higher-ups.
  We do not know where it comes from but we do know some things. We 
know that the ton of nearly pure cocaine that reached the streets in 
1990 was cocaine that was brought in by the CIA. We know that. We do 
not care what they were attempting to do, we do not care that they 
thought they had a scheme that would help them to bust big dealers 
later on. The fact of the matter is, they brought the cocaine in and 
they defied the law. They broke the law. They allowed it to hit the 
streets.
  Let us take a look at Haiti. In a March 8, 1997, Los Angeles Times 
article, it was reported that Lt. Col. Michel Francois, one of the 
CIA's reported Haitian agents, a former Army officer and a key leader 
in the military regime that ran Haiti between 1991 and 1994, was 
indicted in Miami and charged with smuggling 33 tons of cocaine into 
the United States.
  The article detailed that Francois met face to face with the leaders 
of three Colombian cartels to arrange for drug shipments to pass 
through Haiti via a private air strip it helped to build and protect. 
Lt. Col. Francois was trained by the U.S. Army in military command 
training for foreign officers in Georgia. He was a senior member of the 
service intelligence agency, a Haitian intelligence organization, 
founded with the help of the CIA in 1986.
  After the 1991 coup that put Francois in power, cocaine seizures in 
Haiti plummeted to near zero, according to DEA records. United States 
prosecutors have requested the extradition of Francois from Honduras 
where he has been living under a grant of political asylum.
  What is important about this? We went through a very, very 
confrontational history right in this Congress in this House about 
Haiti. There were those of us who supported Aristide and there were 
those who did not support him but, rather, they supported Cedras and 
Francois and others who were involved in attempting to overthrow 
Aristide. These were the people we were fighting to get Aristide 
returned to Haiti. These were the people who were embraced by Members 
of this House who swore by them, who tried to make sure that Aristide 
never returned to power, who embraced Cedras and the head of Cedras's 
Army, Mr. Francois.
  Members of this House literally had wrapped their arms around drug 
dealers. Members of this House not only swore by them and protected 
them, while they were protecting them, Francois was building an air 
strip in Haiti where he could receive the drugs flown in from Colombia 
on that air strip and the same air strip used to fly it right back out 
to the United States. This was a transshipment point.
  This was the head of the army in Haiti working with Cedras, with 
Members of this House supporting them and working against the return of 
Aristide.
  Well, we were able to get the support of the President of the United 
States and those who really began to understand what was going on down 
there. And we returned Aristide and, of course, Francois was helped out 
and given a grant of political asylum.
  Now we find that he, too, is responsible for helping to put drugs on 
the streets of the United States of America, another instance where the 
CIA either knew or turned their backs and allowed it to happen. There 
are those who swear that the CIA was called when this large shipment of 
drugs was being prepared for entering into the United States, and the 
CIA did nothing.
  Let us go a little bit further and try and discover who the CIA is 
and what they are doing and how they are viewed around the world.
  In a Los Angeles Times article, we see a caption recently, just a day 
or so ago, that says, CIA finds itself out in the cold with U.S. 
allies. In this Los Angeles Times article, that was just Monday, March 
17, our international allies' dislike of the CIA and their clandestine 
activities is stated, and I quote:

       Around the world America's friends are sending a quiet but 
     stern message to the Central Intelligence Agency. The Cold 
     War is over. The rules of the spy game have changed, and it 
     is time, they said, for the United States to curb its 
     espionage operations on allies' turf.

  At least four friendly nations, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and 
France, have halted secret CIA operations on their territory during the 
last 2 years. In Germany, a CIA officer was ordered to leave the 
country, apparently for trying to recruit a German official in 1995. 
There was a major intelligence failure in Paris, when the French 
uncovered and put an end to an economic espionage operation run by the 
CIA.

[[Page H1105]]

  Let us take a look at the Washington Post on the 18th. House panel 
affirms some allegations against the CIA. Just in today's Washington 
Post, there was a report that the House Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence report affirmed a previous conclusion that CIA contacts in 
Guatemala were involved in serious human rights violations with the 
agency's knowledge and their involvement was improperly kept from 
Congress in the early 1990s.
  In fact, the article stated, and I quote, ``The report represents a 
sharp criticism of the CIA from a Republican-controlled committee that 
has tended to be more sympathetic to CIA arguments that it must deal 
with unsavory individuals to get good intelligence.''
  Mr. Speaker, what is the mission of the CIA in a post-cold war 
environment? Is it really necessary to continue allocating $30 billion 
to the CIA? Should we not use these funds for other purposes such as 
job development or school infrastructure rehabilitation?
  We are pleased that the New York Times on the 3rd of March this year 
recently reported on scrubbing, they call it, by the CIA in an effort 
to sever ties with 100 foreign agents, about half of them in Latin 
America, whose value as informers was outweighed by their acts of 
murder, assassination, torture, terrorism and other crimes.
  According to these articles, the Latin American division of the CIA's 
clandestine service proved to be the one most riddled with foreign 
agents who were killers and torturers and that the CIA also has had on 
its payroll people who are terrorists and drug dealers or who were 
terrorists and drug dealers.
  It is not enough to cleanse some of the rogue agents employed by the 
CIA in their clandestine activities. We need to take another look at 
the CIA.
  What I have just said to you is this: In addition to the drug 
trafficking and allegations of continued involvement, in addition to 
the south central Los Angeles drug trafficking with Danilo Blandon and 
Norwin Meneses, in addition to the event that I just described to you 
in Venezuela, in addition to the connection in Haiti, we find that we 
have a CIA who is being questioned by some of our closest allies and 
who are saying, we do not want them around here anymore.
  The CIA, in this latest attempt to try and cleanse itself, tried to 
send a message, we are getting rid of the terrorists. We are getting 
rid of the murderers and the drug dealers. We are scrubbing the agency.
  Well, that is not good enough. What indeed is the mission of the CIA? 
The Cold War is over. What do they do? What are we paying $30 billion 
for?
  They are meeting, that is the Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence of the House, is meeting this week in a little secret room 
upstairs with this not so secret organization anymore where they are 
talking about, I suppose, their mission and the funding of the CIA. But 
I think more than our allies who are questioning the mission of the 
CIA, many citizens in this country are discussing what is the mission 
of the CIA.
  I think that that debate really needs to take place in this Congress. 
At a time when we are trying to balance the budget, when the resources 
are not so plentiful, where we are making serious and severe cuts in 
programs that have children and seniors, programs that provide housing, 
programs that are really basically safety nets for American citizens, 
many of them who have been taxpayers, many of them elderly, many of 
them who need a helping hand from their government, we continue to fund 
the CIA to the tune of $30 billion without understanding what their 
mission is.

                              {time}  2245

  What, indeed, is it that they do that cannot be done by the DIA, that 
is, the Defense Intelligence Agency? We know that there is an overlap. 
There has been some duplication in the past.
  I would recommend that we turn whatever these responsibilities are 
over to the DIA, and I would recommend that we eliminate the CIA from 
the budget of this Nation.
  I know there are some who will say that is a very, very harsh 
recommendation. It is no harsher than recommendations that came to this 
House from the other side of the aisle when they said get rid of the 
Department of Education. In addition to that, they said let us get rid 
of the Department of Commerce.
  Not only did they question the value of the Department of Education, 
that has a responsibility for educating America's children, and the 
Department of Commerce, with the responsibility for trade, the same 
people are now coming forward to raise questions about outdated and 
outmoded operations such as the CIA.
  I am very, very concerned about the CIA and this $30 billion. I am 
concerned that they have had a role in, that they have had operatives, 
that somehow too many times in too many ways their name and their 
operation and their business is connected to or identified with drug 
dealing.
  I think it is time for us to have this debate. I am challenging this 
House to get involved in taking a real close look at who the CIA is and 
what do they do.
  We have some investigations that are going on. When we brought the 
information to this House about drug trafficking in south central Los 
Angeles, with this drug ring in the 1980s that had dumped all of this 
cocaine into south central Los Angeles, we had enough information to 
convince the Speaker that there, indeed, should be investigations. And 
so our House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is involved in 
an investigation. This is running parallel with an investigation by the 
Inspector General of the CIA that is supposed to be independent and the 
Inspector General of the Justice Department. They are supposedly 
culling through thousands of documents and interviewing many people who 
were perhaps involved.
  There are a lot of people who do not trust that the Inspector 
Generals of the CIA and the Justice Department will come back with the 
kind of information that will help us to understand who knew what, when 
did they know it, and how high did it go. They are suspicious of these 
investigations.
  I tell them it is important that we let the process go forward; that 
some of us are not simply relying on these investigations, even though 
we think it is important for them to go forward. Some of us are 
responding to the calls that we are getting with people who have 
information about drug trafficking and intelligence community 
involvement.
  We have met with any number of people who have called, given us 
documents and information. We are doing this because we want to be able 
to compare what we are learning with the so-called investigations that 
are going on. If and when hearings take place as a result of the 
investigations that are being done, we will be able to ask questions 
about why certain people are not being subpoenaed, why they are not 
being called, why certain documents are not being entered.
  I am very serious about wanting to know who knew what and when did 
they know it and how high did it go, and whether or not the CIA or the 
DEA or the DIA or any other intelligence agency has been involved in 
drug trafficking. I would consider that the most profound undermining 
of the American people of any action that could be taken by anybody.
  We do not pay our intelligence community to protect and serve, to 
find out that they are indeed involved in the kind of devastation that 
has been caused by this explosion of crack cocaine in our communities. 
And so, in essence, we are kind of running our own parallel 
investigation because we are responding to the calls that we get.
  I went to Nicaragua myself because I was contacted by someone in 
Managua who had information, who knew about the drug cartels and who 
had been connected with Norwin Meneses. I went to a place called 
Grenada, up outside of Managua, and I went to a prison and I 
interviewed Mr. Enrique Miranda Jaime, who not only indicated his 
willingness to cooperate with the investigations that are going on here 
but asked that I share this information with the investigators.
  I have done that. I have shared this information with the Inspector 
General of the Justice Department. I have asked him to go and take a 
look and to talk with Enrique Miranda Jaime and to make sure nothing 
happens to Enrique Miranda Jaime. I am concerned that if we do not get 
to him and place him in a witness protection program so that he can 
make the information available to us, that we may not

[[Page H1106]]

have him available to us sometime later on.
  I am going back to Nicaragua. I am going back to Managua. I have been 
requested to come back by some legislators who now understand a lot 
about what perhaps has taken place, and they have new information and 
they are looking at some money laundering schemes.
  We have identified that one of the persons now in the Nicaraguan 
government was connected to Danilo Blandon and was responsible for 
laundering money out of Miami during the 1980's when Mr. Danilo Blandon 
was trafficking in cocaine and crack cocaine in south central Los 
Angeles.
  So I will be going back. There will be others going back. We have 
people there who are documenting some of the information that is going 
to be necessary for us to make sure our investigators have. This is the 
kind of work that must be done because the Congressional Black Caucus 
of the Congress of the United States have decided that they are going 
to make the eradication of drugs in our community our number one 
priority.
  We are sick and tired of drug addiction. We are sick and tired of the 
violence that is associated with drug trafficking. We are sick and 
tired of the babies that are being born addicted to crack cocaine. We 
are sick and tired of the loss of lives, the loss of opportunities and 
the loss of a future for our children in our communities because of 
cocaine and drugs and crack cocaine in particular.
  We find that crack cocaine is one of the most devastating drugs that 
has ever been known to man. We find that it is the most addictive, that 
it is very difficult for people to get off of. We find that people 
commit some of the most horrendous acts in pursuit of more crack 
cocaine to fuel their habits.
  We are sick and tired of waiting on others to do. We do not care if 
there is a drug czar, we do not care if there is advertising and 
continuation of programs that say ``Just say no.'' We are in this now 
and we are going to provide leadership.
  We have been working with the President of the United States to 
increase the drug budget. I have worked with the drug czar to support 
more prevention, more education and more rehabilitation, and we are 
going to fight for the budget that has been produced that would help us 
to deal with this securing in our communities.
  But we are not going to stop there. We are going to do all of those 
things and we are going to work hard. We will be in the town meetings, 
we will be talking with the young people, we will do all we can do to 
help get rid of these drugs in our community. We are going to work to 
see that there is justice and fairness.
  Just as the Justice Department has targeted small crack cocaine 
dealers, we are going after the big guys. We want to make sure that 
these dealers of large amounts of cocaine and crack cocaine are 
targeted and that they are apprehended and that they are brought to 
justice.
  We want to make sure that the Justice Department does not have the 
American public believing that they are doing something about drugs 
simply by getting these small crack cocaine dealers, getting them into 
these mandatory minimum prison sentences in the Federal prisons, 
filling up the prisons all over America with these small-time crack 
dealers, 19 and 20 years old, who are stupid, who should not be 
involved, should not have been involved, but the sentencing that they 
are getting does not match the crime.
  Big drug dealers are going free, and those in the intelligence 
community, who we pay to protect and serve, may still be involved in 
these covert operations where drugs are involved and causing tons of 
drugs to be dumped on our streets.
  We are tired of waiting on law enforcement to do it job. We are sick 
and tired of those who tell us, oh, you cannot do anything about 
interdiction; as long as the appetite is what it is in America, we will 
have drugs coming in in huge numbers because of the profits of it. 
Well, we do not think that is true. We think we should be involved in 
interdiction, just as we should be involved in education and prevention 
and rehabilitation.
  We think that we are going to have to look very carefully at our 
relationship and our relationships to other countries. We are going to 
have to look carefully at our relationship to anybody that we think is 
involved in bringing drugs into the United States of America.
  We heard this big debate about certification. Who are we certifying? 
What do we know about them? Are we turning our backs and fighting for 
certification despite the fact we may know some of our allies and some 
of our friends right here in this hemisphere are involved in drug 
trafficking?
  We have got to understand there is no threat from the Soviet Union. 
There is no more Soviet Union. There is no threat from Russia, some of 
the countries that made up the Soviet Union. Nobody wants to fight with 
the United States of America. That is not where the threat is to this 
country anymore.
  The threat to this country is this influx of drugs, of cocaine that 
is causing addiction and crime and violence and murder. The threat to 
this Nation is this influx of huge amounts of drugs that is undermining 
the very social fabric of our country.
  Our national security must be redefined. The need to take a look at 
what our threat is is urgent. This debate must take place and we must 
redefine what our national security interests are.
  I submit to my colleagues that one of the greatest threats that we 
have in this country today is this influx of drugs, this influx of 
cocaine, this scourge of crack cocaine in our communities and all of 
the violence that goes along with it, and so we cannot afford to let 
anybody off the hook.
  We should have no friends that we love so much that we will allow 
them to bring drugs into our country because we have some trade 
relationship with them. We should allow no one to bring drugs into this 
country because we want to expand our ability to do business with them.
  We should let the shoe fall wherever it should fall. We should be 
willing to identify those who undermine us with drugs, no matter who 
they are.

                              {time}  2300

  I challenge those who somehow think the CIA and the DEA and the DIA 
are so important that we should have a hands-off policy, that we should 
not question what the intelligence community is all about, that somehow 
we should not be concerned about the $30 billion in that CIA budget. 
There are those who say to me, ``Oh, Ms. Waters, you better be careful, 
you can't go around talking about the CIA. You can't challenge them. 
Don't you know what they do? Don't you know that they're very special, 
and that nobody talks about the CIA?''
  I am here to say, I think the day for the CIA has come and gone. I 
think it has no mission that is worthy of the $30 billion that we are 
paying for its so-called operations. I think the CIA cannot scrub 
itself. This business of scrubbing, talking about they are getting rid 
of the terrorists and the drug traffickers and the murderers, is a day 
late and a dollar short. Not only have they involved themselves with 
the scum of the Earth, many of whom are responsible for horrendous 
crimes against our people, but it is no need to even try and make the 
American people believe that it is necessary to be involved with those 
kind of people anymore. For what?
  And so this challenge that I bring right at the point that we are 
talking about funding the CIA one more time, at this time where their 
budgets supposedly are being looked at, at this moment in the debate of 
Congress about where we put our resources, where we make our 
priorities, there is no better time.
  I would like all of those who embraced Mr. Francois, for example, 
down in Haiti, who swore by Mr. Cedras, who fought us day and night to 
try and make sure they were in control of Haiti, I ask them, this Mr. 
Francois that was trained right in Georgia by our people, who built an 
airstrip right when they were working with the CIA, who brought in the 
drugs from Colombia and sent them to the United States, I challenge 
those Members to make it right. They know who they are. They need but 
step forward and say, ``We made a mistake. We should not have embraced 
Francois in Haiti. We should not have been involved with them at all.''

[[Page H1107]]

  The CIA's involvement was deep in Haiti for a long time. They know 
who these people are. They know what they were doing. And the Members 
of this House who embraced them and who fought for them need to step 
forward and make it right and say, ``I made a mistake. I should not 
have embraced them and I'm not going to support them any longer.''
  We are going to not only take a look at what the CIA has done in the 
past, we are going to understand, or try to understand, what their 
mission is supposed to be and hopefully come to the conclusion that I 
would like them to come to, that they have no more mission. And if they 
conclude what I have concluded, we can find us $30 billion to help 
offset this deficit, $30 billion that we can place in our school 
systems in America.
  Just think about it. The President of the United States has asked for 
$5 billion to help repair our infrastructure in our schools, to help 
rehabilitate our schools. The need is over $100 billion. The 
Congressional Black Caucus would at least like to have $20 billion so 
that we could leverage it up to about $80 billion, because our schools 
are crumbling down around us in many of our communities. We have 
schools where the air-conditioning does not work. We have schools that 
you cannot even put computers in because they are not wired for 
computers. We have schools that have no science labs. We have schools 
that have no place for the children to eat lunch. Thirty billion 
dollars could really help us rehabilitate these schools for our 
children, for our children's future. We need to get tough about 
stopping drugs and giving these children a chance. We need to get tough 
about redirecting our priorities to educate our young people, and to 
make them competitive, and to give them a chance to grow and to be and 
to realize their full potential as human beings. We cannot do that as 
long as we are allowing money to go out the window of something like 
the CIA.
  I submit that it is time to totally eliminate the CIA. I understand 
exactly what I am saying. I am saying what I mean and I mean what I 
say. I am of the belief that they do not have a serious mission 
anymore, and I am further concerned and outraged by the fact that I 
have learned too much about them and their connection to drug 
trafficking. And when I go to parts of my district or to New York or 
Philadelphia, Missouri, St. Louis, and when I go into the South, places 
in Arkansas and Mississippi, and I see the scourge of crack cocaine and 
I think about the fact that the CIA or the DEA and others could have 
been involved in turning their backs or been involved in covert 
operations that have allowed these drugs to hit our street, then I am 
convinced that we are making a mistake to continue to fund the CIA.
  If there is any mission at all, if there are any activities they 
should be involved in, I submit to you that the DIA can take over those 
activities. Why are we paying all of these different intelligence 
communities to kind of trip over each other in a post-cold-war era? 
What are they doing? What is their responsibility? Who are they spying 
on? What information are they bringing us? If they know so much, why 
did they not know that the drug czar in Mexico was a drug dealer? Here 
we were allied with the drug czar in Mexico who was supposed to be 
working closely with us, who was supposed to be the man who was helping 
us to identify the drug dealers there, and to help us get rid of this 
transshipment point that is dumping tons of cocaine and heroin into 
America. But we did not know. Where was our CIA? Where was our DEA? 
Where were those in the intelligence community who should have known 
that the drug czar was the drug dealer? They did not know. They did not 
even know that the Mexican authorities had arrested him until days 
after it had been done.
  If they have a mission, of protecting us, of knowing what is being 
done in foreign countries that may be harmful to us, they missed the 
mark. They missed the point. They did not do their job. But, I suppose 
whether it is the case in Mexico that they did not know the drug czar 
was a drug dealer, I suppose they did not know in Venezuela where they 
were working with the so-called drug czar who ended up again being the 
dope dealer and not only dumping drugs into the United States on his 
own behalf but on behalf of the CIA. It is enough information here for 
people to be angry about, for people to be concerned about, that people 
should want to be able to get to the bottom of what is going on.
  I think the American public is going to move faster than the Members 
of this House. I think that the articles that you now see popping up in 
the newspapers are going to multiply. In addition to that, I know about 
some documentaries that are going to be done about the CIA and its 
mission or lack of a mission. I know that there is going to be 
increasing discussion outside of this House about the CIA and its role, 
and the American citizens are going to rise up against the funding of 
an agency that should be extinct. They too will join with me in the 
final analysis and call for the elimination of the CIA.
  This is not the first time that I have been on this floor talking 
about the CIA and drugs. This is not the first time that I have 
reminded the public of the San Jose Mercury series called ``The Dark 
Alliance'' that helped to document their involvement in the dumping of 
cocaine into south central Los Angeles, and this will not be the last 
time.
  I do not usually come to the floor this late at night, but I am 
willing to do some extraordinary things to try and communicate this 
threat, to try and engage not only my colleagues but the American 
public on this issue of drugs.
  This country deserves better. We do not deserve to have to suffer 
what we are suffering with drugs overrunning too many communities in 
America. Not just the inner cities. Certainly it shows up there. But 
also it is in little towns and in rural areas, and it is not confined 
to any one ethnic group. It is not confined to any one age group. 
Increasingly people are getting involved and children are getting 
involved at a younger and younger age.
  American citizens, we deserve better, and we deserve our policymakers 
to get serious. We deserve the policymakers who supposedly come here to 
represent the people of the United States of America to take this issue 
on, to give it some time and some attention, to be involved in 
interdiction and prevention and rehabilitation. The people should not 
have to wonder, have we been abandoned? They should not have to suffer 
being told we cannot do anything about it, as long as there is an 
appetite for it.
  I wish all American citizens and all Members of Congress were perfect 
human beings, but we are not. We are all vulnerable in many ways. There 
are many people who get involved and get addicted who wish they could 
get out of it, and we should help provide them with some opportunities 
to rehabilitate. I wish there was no appetite. But I suppose, until we 
do our job on the front end to educate and to discourage and to teach 
and to prevent, many people will fall prey to this menace.
  We should not be involved in a situation where we are allowing young 
people to either be addicted or to end up thinking that somehow they 
can sell a little bit of rock cocaine, earn enough money to have a 
better life. We should not allow these things to happen. Those young 
people who are sitting in the prisons, falling prey to this business, I 
can get away with selling a little drugs, these are young people whose 
lives are cut short. And even though again they were silly enough to 
get involved, oftentimes the crimes do not fit the punishment and the 
big guys are getting away.
  I am going to keep talking about this, I am going to keep challenging 
this House, I am going to keep challenging America to challenge its 
elected officials, to get involved, to learn more, to get to the root 
of this problem, to deal with the intelligence agencies, to deal with 
the law enforcement agencies, to deal with the families, the children, 
the communities, despite the fact I am oftentime discouraged and 
frustrated as I travel around this country and I see what is going on.
  I suppose in the final analysis, I am the eternal optimist. I believe 
we can do something about it. I believe if we put our minds to it, we 
can turn this situation around. I believe if we are committed to a 
future for our young people, we can indeed make this our top priority. 
The Congressional Black Caucus decided we are going to make this our 
top priority. We extend our

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hand to those who would like to join with us to make this a top 
priority of this Nation. America, we can do better.

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