[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 18, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5900-S5901]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I wish to follow up on some comments that my
colleague from Colorado made. First, however, I should like to address
a subject briefly which has relevance to one of the bills we will be
taking up, if not today, then later this week, and that is the
intelligence authorization bill.
This is a bill which should not have a great deal of controversy
surrounding it. It provides for the funding of the intelligence
agencies of the United States and the substantive policy that governs
our intelligence activities, but it is especially relevant and
propitious, I think, that we take up that bill this week following the
news accounts of the arrest and incarceration of a man whose name is
Kanzi, ostensibly from Pakistan, who is the alleged perpetrator of a
violent crime against employees of the CIA a few years ago here in the
Washington, DC, area.
The reason I bring this up now is to make two points. One, we
frequently hear the stories when things go wrong in law enforcement and
in particular in operations involving our intelligence agencies. We try
to learn from those lessons, but there have been bitter experiences
with which we have had to deal. What we do not hear so much about are
the many, many successes that go unreported, frequently because they
involve law enforcement or intelligence activities that simply cannot
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be disclosed publicly. They involve classified material, sources, and
methods of collection of information which we simply cannot discuss or
we would be compromising those sources and methods.
So these stories are not told, and it is too bad because I think the
American people, in order to support our law enforcement and
intelligence agencies, need to appreciate the work that they do and the
danger that they frequently face and the many times in which by their
actions American lives are saved and yet we do not even know about it.
In this case, the details will have to come out later. We have been
briefed, and certainly there is a very fine story to be told here. But
the details will have to come out later. What we can say at this point
is that this will be found to be yet another example of where American
law enforcement officials played a key role in bringing to justice a
terrorist, a person who at least allegedly has committed a heinous
crime and hopefully, as a result of that information coming out, we
will be supportive of agencies such as the FBI, such as the CIA, the
DIA, and the other agencies, some of which we will be discussing in the
intelligence authorization bill a little bit later.
The second point is that we will find, track down, take into our
jurisdiction, and prosecute terrorists. They can run, but they cannot
hide. And they should note that we do not rest until we bring these
people to justice. If you look at the number of terrorist incidents
over the last several years, in many, many cases we have found and we
have gained jurisdiction over and in some cases already prosecuted the
people who have perpetrated heinous crimes against society in general
and frequently against Americans. We will continue to be successful in
doing that and in protecting American people if we are able to
adequately fund and provide proper policies to guide our law
enforcement agencies.
So when we take that bill up later, I hope that my colleagues will be
supportive and the American people will appreciate the continued
necessity of providing that kind of support. In the end it is what will
preserve our democracy as well as peace around the world.
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