[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 115 (Thursday, September 4, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H6909-H6914]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE ISSUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to 
discuss several defense issues, but before discussing those issues, I 
would like to follow up on the previous special order that we just 
heard, since many of our colleagues perhaps in their offices, and 
citizens around the country, have been listening to three of our 
colleagues discuss education.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to, first of all, applaud the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Green] because I heard him use the word ``bipartisanship'' a 
number of times in reference to education success. I want to applaud 
him, because I want to distinguish my colleague from Texas as opposed 
to the other two Members from whom we heard nothing except the phrases 
``Democrats, Democrats, Democrats.''
  Now, I do not know what amount of classroom teaching experience my 
colleagues that spoke have. I spent 7 years in the public schools of 
Pennsylvania, was active in my education association as a vice 
president, was a negotiator for a while, was involved in running a 
chapter 1 program in an impoverished area in my county. So my 
experience is based on real life. I am not one of the attorneys in this 
institution.
  Mr. Speaker, Republicans have in the past, continue today, and will 
be in the future, in the forefront of working to improve our 
educational system in this country, and for some Member to stand up 
here for 50 minutes and talk about only one party has a market on what 
we need to do to improve our schools is an absolute outrage. It is 
really a shame, because I think it is a slap in the face to people like 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling] who chairs our Committee 
on Education and the Workplace, who himself was a classroom teacher, a 
superintendent, and someone who was involved in education. Or the 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter], who spent a significant amount of 
time working on education priorities.
  The successes that we have had in this Congress have been bipartisan, 
and they have not been because of any one party. In fact, I would 
remind some of my colleagues who just spoke, and I again say with the 
exception of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Green], that it was the 
Democrat Party who for 50 years controlled this institution. In fact, 
the first 2 years of the Clinton administration the Democrats 
controlled the White House and both Houses of Congress.
  Is not it amazing that those who would seek to be most partisan in 
this debate on education would now begin to take credit as a political 
aspect of the Democrats' agenda for what a Republican Congress has 
enacted in the last 3 years? It has, in fact, not been a Democrat win 
and it has not been a Republican win. It has been a bipartisan effort, 
as the gentleman from Texas alluded to, to bring Members of Congress 
together for the good of our children and the schools of this country.

[[Page H6910]]

  Mr. Speaker, I take exception to some of the comments that were made, 
and as a classroom teacher who spent a number of years working to 
improve the quality of our children's educational opportunities, I am 
proud of what this party and this Congress has done, bringing Democrats 
in with us, to bring forth new initiatives and new ideas to help all of 
our schools across this great Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, my real purpose tonight is to discuss several defense 
priorities that are going to be coming up and should be on the minds of 
our colleagues over the next several weeks. In fact, one issue is going 
to be coming before several of our committees. It already has, in fact, 
been an issue in the Committee on International Relations as well as 
the Committee on the Judiciary where a bill has passed and is now 
pending before the Committee on National Security, the House Permanent 
Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on Commerce.
  This bill, Mr. Speaker, is a very technical piece of legislation 
dealing with an issue that many of us have not focused on, and that is 
the whole issue of information.
  One of our greatest challenges as we approach the 21st century is how 
to manage information and to make sure that we, in fact, can become 
smart cities, smart regions, and further utilize information technology 
to enhance the quality of the lives of our people.
  Mr. Speaker, in that process, however, we face a dilemma. At a 
hearing that I chaired in March of this year as the chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Research and Development, I took testimony for 6 hours 
on the issue of information warfare, and I heard recommendations and 
reports provided to us that an adversary in the 21st century may not 
have to spend his or her dollars on sophisticated weapons systems or on 
bigger bullets or larger missiles or longer range technologies, but 
rather concentrate on using methods to compromise our information 
systems, to bring down our banking and financial systems, our mass 
transit systems.
  Mr. Speaker, the recommendation coming out of that hearing from the 
Defense Science Board was that we should dramatically increase spending 
for information security and control by about $3 billion a year.
  Mr. Speaker, we cannot afford to do that because that is just too 
much money. We made a modest increase in this year's defense bill and 
we are working to keep that modest increase in place to demonstrate new 
technologies to allow us to protect our systems in this country from 
the threat of an adversary taking them down.
  But there is a piece of legislation that is being pushed on a fast 
track basis that would totally remove the export controls over 
encryption technology. Encryption, Mr. Speaker, as we all know, is the 
technology and the process used to code information so that when we 
have a conversation over the Internet, no one else can intercept that 
conversation.
  There are very important principles in question here relative to the 
security of the people of this country having their ability to 
communicate and not having the Government or anyone else be able to 
have access to that.
  Encryption provides that protection and, in fact, it is available in 
this country. However, the piece of legislation that is now under 
consideration, H.R. 695, which a number of our colleagues have 
cosponsored, would basically remove export controls and allow this 
technology in its most sophisticated form to be sent overseas.
  Now, there are some in this country, and myself included, who have 
some concerns about the administration's current policy over encryption 
and want to see reforms that will allow our software industry to 
continue to be on the cutting edge of new technologies to encrypt 
information that, in fact, we will be using every day.
  However, while I do not support the current policy of this 
administration, I cannot in good conscience support a total wiping out 
of any export control on technology that a cartel, a drug cartel, or 
an adversary nation has been using and could be using to prevent our 
law enforcement, intelligence, and defense resources from protecting 
the American people from the threats of drug dealing, from the threats 
of intimidation, terrorist activities, or other activities of that 
type.

  Mr. Speaker, I urge our colleagues to carefully review the impact 
that this legislation will have, first of all, on our national security 
and on our intelligence-gathering capabilities. In fact, everyone in 
fact in the administration concerned with defense intelligence has come 
out with grave reservations about this legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I have also received a letter from Secretary Cohen 
expressing his grave reservations about this legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, when the Committee on National Security 
marks up this piece of legislation, I will be offering an amendment 
that will enjoy the support of both the gentleman from South Carolina 
[Mr. Spence], chairman of the Committee on National Security, and the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], ranking Democrat on that 
committee, that hopefully will pass, that will deal with one-half of 
the issue and that is whether or not we should completely eliminate all 
export controls and export process to review encryption technology that 
would be sold overseas and marketed overseas.
  I think it is a fair compromise. It does not, in fact, satisfy all of 
the industry groups who want to have no export controls, and it does 
not satisfy the administration, but it does give us an ability to have 
a process in place to continue to allow our Department of Defense to 
monitor the kinds of technologies that we allow to be sold to rogue 
nations. It is a very important amendment.
  It also closes a loophole, Mr. Speaker, in H.R. 695 that, in effect, 
would allow supercomputers to be sold overseas if, in fact, they have 
encryption built in.
  Now, this is kind of an ironic twist here, because many of the 
cosponsors of this bill voted for an amendment that criticized the 
administration for allowing Cray supercomputers to be sold to China and 
Russia. Yet, Mr. Speaker, in this very provision that some of them have 
unknowingly cosponsored, there is a loophole that would allow those 
same supercomputers, if encryption is contained in those 
supercomputers, to be sold overseas with no restrictions. I do not 
think that is the intent of most of our colleagues, and the amendment 
that I will be offering on Tuesday will correct that.
  Now, I would also encourage our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to try to 
get briefings from Louis Freeh, the Director of the FBI, who I had in 
my office today for 1 hour, or from the National Security Agency, on 
the domestic impact of a total elimination of controls over encryption.
  Again, I am not happy with the administration nor am I happy with 
their proposal to establish what is called a key recovery system. But 
we do need to allow the law enforcement entities in this Nation, we do 
need to allow the Justice Department, to go through the established 
system of our courts with court and judicial approval to gain access to 
gather data that can be used; for instance, in uncovering pedophiles 
who in fact have been using and continue to use our Internet to 
unknowingly get the attention and to communicate with young people 
through the Internet; or to get access to encrypted data that, in fact, 
has been used by drug cartels; or for instance, the group that was 
involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
  Our law enforcement community has to have some ability, through a 
very difficult and very well-thought-out process, to get the approval 
from our courts to get access to encrypted data for very specific 
purposes when the national security of this Nation and our people is at 
risk.
  It is extremely important every law enforcement head in our Federal 
Government has, in fact, signed a letter to every Member of Congress 
stating their concern with this bill. I would also, Mr. Speaker, like 
to enter that letter into the Record.

                               Office of the Attorney General,

                                    Washington, DC, July 18, 1997.
       Dear Member of Congress: Congress is considering a variety 
     of legislative proposals concerning encryption. Some of these 
     proposals would, in effect, make it impossible for the 
     Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement 
     Administration (DEA), Secret Service, Customs Service, Bureau 
     of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and other federal, state, 
     and local law enforcement agencies to lawfully gain access to

[[Page H6911]]

     criminal telephone conversations or electronically stored 
     evidence possessed by terrorists, child pornographers, drug 
     kingpins, spies and other criminals. Since the impact of 
     these proposals would seriously jeopardize public safety and 
     national security, we collectively urge you to support a 
     different, balanced approach that strongly supports 
     commercial and privacy interests but maintains our ability to 
     investigate and prosecute serious crimes.
       We fully recognize that encryption is critical to 
     communications security and privacy, and that substantial 
     commercial interests are at stake. Perhaps in recognition of 
     these facts, all the bills being considered allow market 
     forces to shape the development of encryption products. We, 
     too, place substantial reliance on market forces to promote 
     electronic security and privacy, but believe that we cannot 
     rely solely on market forces to protect the public safety and 
     national security. Obviously, the government cannot abdicate 
     its solemn responsibility to protect public safety and 
     national security.
       Currently, of course, encryption is not widely used, and 
     most data is stored, and transmitted, in the clear. As we 
     move from a plaintext world to an encrypted one, we have a 
     critical choice to make: we can either (1) choose robust, 
     unbreakable encryption that protects commerce and privacy but 
     gives criminals a powerful new weapon, or (2) choose robust, 
     unbreakable encryption that protects commerce and privacy and 
     gives law enforcement the ability to protect public safety. 
     The choice should be obvious and it would be a mistake of 
     historic proportions to do nothing about the dangers to 
     public safety posed by encryption without adequate safeguards 
     for law enforcement.
       Let there be no doubt: without encryption safeguards, all 
     Americans will be endangered. No one disputes this fact; not 
     industry, not encryption users, no one. We need to take 
     definitive actions to protect the safety of the public and 
     security of the nation. That is why law enforcement at all 
     levels of government--including the Justice Department, 
     Treasury Department, the National Association of Attorneys 
     General, International Association of Chiefs of Police, the 
     Major City Chiefs, the National Sheriffs' Association, and 
     the National District Attorneys Association--are so concerned 
     about this issue.
       We all agree that without adequate legislation, law 
     enforcement in the United States will be severely limited in 
     its ability to combat the worst criminals and terrorists. 
     Further, law enforcement agrees that the widespread use of 
     robust non-key recovery encryption ultimately will devastate 
     our ability to fight crimes and prevent terrorism.
       Simply stated, technology is rapidly developing to the 
     point where powerful encryption will become commonplace both 
     for routine telephone communications and for stored computer 
     data. Without legislation that accommodates public safety and 
     national security concerns, society's most dangerous 
     criminals will be able to communicate safely and 
     electronically store data without fear of discovery. Court 
     orders to conduct electronic surveillance and court-
     authorized search warrants will be ineffectual, and the 
     Fourth Amendment's carefully-struck balance between ensuring 
     privacy and protecting public safety will be forever altered 
     by technology. Technology should not dictate public policy, 
     and it should promote, rather than defeat, public safety.
       We are not suggesting the balance of the Fourth Amendment 
     be tipped toward law enforcement either. To the contrary, we 
     only seek the status quo, not the lessening of any legal 
     standard or the expansion of any law enforcement authority. 
     The Fourth Amendment protects the privacy and liberties of 
     our citizens but permits law enforcement to use tightly 
     controlled investigative techniques to obtain evidence of 
     crimes. The result has been the freest country in the world 
     with the strongest economy.
       Law enforcement has already confronted encryption in high-
     profile espionage, terrorist, and criminal cases. For 
     example:
       An international terrorist was plotting to blow up 11 U.S.-
     owned commercial airliners in the Far East. His laptop 
     computer, which was seized in Manila, contained encrypted 
     files concerning this terrorist plot.
       A subject in a child pornography case used encryption in 
     transmitting obscene and pornographic images of children over 
     the Internet.
       A major international drug trafficking subject recently 
     used a telephone encryption device to frustrate court-
     approved electronic surveillance.
       And this is just the top of the iceberg. Convicted spy 
     Aldrich Ames, for example, was told by the Russian 
     Intelligence Service to encrypt computer file information 
     that was to be passed to them.
       Further, today's international drug trafficking 
     organizations are the most powerful, ruthless and affluent 
     criminal enterprises we have ever faced. We know from 
     numerous past investigations that they have utilized their 
     virtually unlimited wealth to purchase sophisticated 
     electronic equipment to facilitate their illegal activities. 
     This has included state of the art communication and 
     encryption devices. They have used this equipment as part of 
     their command and control process for their international 
     criminal operations. We believe you share our concern that 
     criminals will increasingly take advantage of developing 
     technology to further insulate their violent and destructive 
     activities.
       Requests for cryptographic support pertaining to electronic 
     surveillance interceptions from FBI Field Offices and other 
     law enforcement agencies have steadily risen over the past 
     several years. There has been an increase in the number of 
     instances where the FBI's and DEA's court-authorized 
     electronic efforts were frustrated by the use of encryption 
     that did not allow for law enforcement access.
       There have also been numerous other cases where law 
     enforcement, through the use of electronic surveillance, has 
     not only solved and successfully prosecuted serious crimes 
     but has also been able to prevent life-threatening criminal 
     acts. For example, terrorists in New York were plotting to 
     bomb the United Nations building, the Lincoln and Holland 
     Tunnels, and 26 Federal Plaza as well as conduct 
     assassinations of political figures. Court-authorized 
     electronic surveillance enabled the FBI to disrupt the plot 
     as explosives were being mixed. Ultimately, the evident 
     obtained was used to convict the conspirators. In another 
     example, electronic surveillance was used to stop and then 
     convict two men who intended to kidnap, molest, and kill a 
     child. In all of these cases, the use of encryption might 
     have seriously jeopardized public safety and resulted in the 
     loss of life.
       To preserve law enforcement's abilities, and to preserve 
     the balance so carefully established by the Constitution, we 
     believe any encryption legislation must accomplish three 
     goals in addition to promoting the widespread use of strong 
     encryption. It must establish:
       A viable key management infrastructure that promotes 
     electronic commerce and enjoys the confidence of encryption 
     users.
       A key management infrastructure that supports a key 
     recovery scheme that will allow encryption users access to 
     their own data should the need arise, and that will permit 
     law enforcement to obtain lawful access to the plain text of 
     encrypted communications and data.
       An enforcement mechanism that criminalizes both improper 
     use of encryption key recovery information and the use of 
     encryption for criminal purposes.
       Only one bill. S. 909 (the McCain/Kerrey/Hollings bill), 
     comes close to meeting these core public safety, law 
     enforcement, and national security needs. The other bills 
     being considered by Congress, as currently written, risk 
     great harm to our ability to enforce the laws and protect our 
     citizens. We look forward to working to improve the McCain/
     Kerrey/Hollings bill.
       In sum, while encryption is certainly a commercial interest 
     of great importance to this Nation, it is not solely a 
     commercial or business issue. Those of us charged with the 
     protection of public safety and national security, believe 
     that the misuse of encryption technology will become matter 
     of life and death in many instances. That is why we urge you 
     to adopt a balanced approach that accomplishes the goals 
     mentioned above. Only this approach will allow police 
     departments, attorneys general, district attorneys, sheriffs, 
     and federal authorities to continue to use their most 
     effective investigative techniques, with court approval, to 
     fight crime and espionage and prevent terrorism.
           Sincerely yours,
     Janet Reno,
                                                 Attorney General.
     Louis Freeh,
                        Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
     Barry McCaffrey,
                 Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy.
     Thomas A. Constantine,
                        Director, Drug Enforcement Administration.
     Lewis C. Merletti,
                                    Director, U.S. Secret Service.
     Raymond W. Kelly,
      Undersecretary for Enforcement, U.S. Department of Treasury.
     George J. Weise,
                               Commissioner, U.S. Customs Service.
     John W. Magaw,
     Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
                                                                    ____

  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. And finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to 
ask our colleagues to please listen to the law enforcement community. 
For the last year, Members of Congress, especially those who have 
cosponsored this legislation, have heard from the software industry, 
the Microsofts and those companies that see dollar signs in terms of 
export sales that could grow astronomically. And I want to see them 
succeed, too. That is part of my ultimate goal. But we also need to 
listen to law enforcement.
  Mr. Speaker, I would ask to include a letter signed by four of the 
major law enforcement groups in this country, including the District 
Attorney's Association, the Chiefs of Police, and others, expressing 
their strong reservations about a total elimination of our ability to 
deal with encryption as it relates to law enforcement.

         International Association of Chiefs of Police,
                                    Alexandria, VA, July 21, 1997.
       Dear Member of Congress: Enclosed is a letter sent to you 
     by the Attorney General, the Director of National Drug 
     Control Policy and all the federal law enforcement heads

[[Page H6912]]

     concerning encryption legislation being considered by 
     congress. Collectively we, the undersigned, represent over 
     17,000 police departments including every major city police 
     department, over 3,000 sheriffs departments, nearly every 
     district attorney in the United States and all of the state 
     Attorneys General. We fully endorse the position taken by our 
     federal counterparts in the enclosed letter. As we have 
     stated many times, Congress must adopt a balanced approach to 
     encryption that fully addresses public safety concerns or the 
     ability of state and local law enforcement to fight crime and 
     drugs will be severely damaged.
       Any encryption legislation that does not ensure that law 
     enforcement can gain timely access to the plaintext of 
     encrypted conversations and information by established legal 
     procedures will cause grave harm to public safety. The risk 
     cannot be left to the uncertainty of market forces or 
     commercial interests as the current legislative proposals 
     would require. Without adequate safeguards, the unbridled use 
     of powerful encryption soon will deprive law enforcement of 
     two of its most effective tools, court authorized electronic 
     surveillance and the search and seizure of information stored 
     in computers. This will substantially tip the balance in the 
     fight against crime towards society's most dangerous 
     criminals as the information age develops.
       We are in unanimous agreement that congress must adopt 
     encryption legislation that requires the development, 
     manufacture, distribution and sale of only key recovery 
     products and we are opposed to the bills that do not do so. 
     Only the key recovery approach will ensure that law 
     enforcement can continue to gain timely access to the 
     plaintext of encrypted conversations and other evidence of 
     crimes when authorized by a court to do so. If we lose this 
     ability--and the bills you are considering will have this 
     result--it will be a substantial setback for law enforcement 
     at the direct expense of public safety.
           Sincerely yours,
     Darrell L. Sanders,
         President, International Association of Chiefs of Police.
     Fred Scoralie,
                        President, National Sheriffs' Association.
     James E. Doyle,
             President, National Association of Attorneys General.
     William L. Murphy,
               President, National District Attorneys Association.

  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, again I am not saying that 
the administration's policy is a correct one nor is their policy of key 
recovery one that I can support. What I am saying is that this bill 
should not be rushed through. Members need to look at this very 
complicated subject in detail.
  Yes, we need to protect the civil liberties of our citizens to be 
able to communicate in a confidential and protected manner. But we also 
need to look out for the national security implications of this 
legislation, the intelligence implications of this legislation, and for 
the ability for our law enforcement community, our State Police, the 
FBI, the Justice Department, when necessary through an established 
legal process to be able to get access to deal with those rogue 
entities that are using encryption to hide the activities they are 
involved in which are illegal. So I would ask our colleagues to closely 
monitor this legislation as it moves through the process.
  Mr. Speaker, the second issue I would like to discuss is also a 
national security and defense issue, and I want to bring this up 
because it is going to be a major issue this weekend in the national 
media. It deals with a concern that I have relative to the former 
Soviet Union, especially now with one of the former Soviet States, 
Russia, the largest one.
  Mr. Speaker, as many of our colleagues know, I spend a great deal of 
time working in a positive way with Russia and its leadership on energy 
issues and environmental issues. This year I focused on establishing a 
middle-income housing program for the Russian people. I have 
established a new Russian Duma American Congress study group, which I 
cochair with the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer] and which is 
chaired on the Russian side by Deputy Speaker Shokhin.
  So I spend a lot of time trying proactively to improve our 
relationships, but I have a great deal of concern with what I think, 
and with my impression of the administration not being aggressive 
enough in pursuing concerns that many of us have relative to Russia's 
ability to control its nuclear material, its strategic weapons, and the 
state of the military in Russia.
  Mr. Speaker, the problem is compounded by the fact that the 
administration, especially the Commander in Chief, has repeatedly used 
the bully pulpit to convey a message to America that we no longer have 
to worry about a threat coming from Russia. Again, I do not want to 
recreate a scenario where we depict Russia as some ``Evil Empire,'' 
because it is not. And I trust Boris Yeltsin for what he is trying to 
do, and applaud him for his efforts, as well as his key leadership, 
Chernomyrdin, Nemtsov, Chubays, and all of his people involved in 
leading his country.

                              {time}  2315

  But facts are facts. And there are major problems that we cannot 
sweep under the rug or put our head in the sand and ignore. And to that 
extent, Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about my most recent trip to Russia 
in May of this year and I have been there twice.
  The most recent trip was a part of an interparliamentary exchange 
where we met with senior members of their Duma and discussed common 
issues. And we found many areas where we can work together.
  Along with that, Mr. Speaker, I wanted to focus on some security 
concerns that I have with Russia and the need for Russia to be more 
transparent in terms of what their objectives and intents are relative 
to national security issues.
  In the course of these meetings, I had the occasion to meet, along 
with the entire delegation, for 2 hours with Gen. Alexander Lebed. As 
we know General Lebed was a major candidate for the office of President 
when Boris Yeltsin ran for that office and won successfully last year 
against Mr. Zuganov, the candidate of the Communist Party.
  Many speculate that the reason why Yeltsin was so successful was 
because he was able to get Lebed out of the race, partly by offering 
him a position as senior defense advisor to President Yeltsin on 
defense issues as a very respected retired Russian general. So the 
credibility of General Lebed is not something that I can vouch for but 
rather, based upon what President Yeltsin did in moving General Lebed 
into this position on his confidence in General Lebed as a senior 
defense advisor.
  In our meeting with General Lebed he talked to us without the press 
being present and this is now in the public record and our trip report 
about the status of the stability of the Russian military. He raised 
some very serious concerns to us, Mr. Speaker, that we have to deal 
with and understand and that this administration has got to be more 
aggressive in pursuing as to whether or not they are facts or fiction.
  One of our questions to General Lebed was whether or not there was a 
possibility of armed revolution inside of Russia by its own military. 
General Lebed said he thought that was not possible primarily because, 
as General Lebed said, former Defense Minister Pavel Grachev had 
removed all the professionals from the army. General Lebed went on to 
say that the trained professional soldiers and leaders are gone and are 
now working with the criminal elements inside of Russia. And many of 
these generals and admirals have had access in the past to very 
sophisticated weapons and technologies that in fact could be sold on 
the black market.
  And, in fact, we are seeing some evidence of proliferation of both 
weapons, strategic materials and in some cases even the seeking of 
nuclear materials. In fact, General Lebed went on to say that the army 
and the military does not have sufficient control over nuclear weapons.
  In fact, he said to us that of 132 nuclear submarines being 
decommissioned by Russia, only 25 have had their reactors dismantled. 
In fact, two submarines nearly sank. Some reactors, he said, are in 
emergency condition. We have an aggressive program through our Navy to 
work with Russia to help them deal with their nuclear technology. I 
have been supportive of that.
  But the problem is a very real one. Russia has severe problems with 
control of their nuclear material. He went on to say something that is 
even more provocative and something that is going to be the subject of 
a ``60 Minutes'' speech on Sunday evening this week, which I urge our 
colleagues to tune into. It is also going to be the subject of a 
Washington Post story and an

[[Page H6913]]

AP story and also is going to be highlighted in a book that is going to 
be released next week by two authors. That book, by the way, is the 
basis, part of the basis for the Steven Speilberg movie that will be 
released this month entitled ``Peacemaker,'' which is a fictional 
depiction of the possible transfer of a Russian SS-18 missile out of 
Russia to a rogue nation.
  General Lebed, in our meeting with six Members of Congress, said that 
when he had been Boris Yeltsin's chief defense advisor, he was given 
the responsibility to account for the location of 132 suitcase-sized 
nuclear devices, these are nuclear bombs, each with a capacity of 1 
kiloton. One kiloton is not as great as the bomb at Hiroshima because 
that was approximately 15 kilotons. But 1 kiloton would cause a 
significant amount of damage wherever it was used.
  Now, General Lebed said to us in a session with the bipartisan 
delegation, he was given the responsibility to account for the location 
of 132 suitcase-sized nuclear devices that Russia had manufactured. 
During his time in the capacity of advising Boris Yeltsin, he could 
only find 48. When we asked him where the rest of these devices were, 
he shrugged his shoulders and could not answer us. That is troubling. 
That is troubling because here was a man who Boris Yeltsin put into a 
key position advising him on defense matters who, according to him, was 
given the responsibility to account for these suitcase-sized nuclear 
weapons. And yet he told us, in a meeting in Moscow, that he could not 
in fact account for them. And I believe on ``60 Minutes'' this Sunday 
night you will see General Lebed again repeat that in his own words on 
that program.
  I have asked the administration, both through our intelligence 
agencies as well as in a briefing that I gave to the current Secretary 
of Energy, to try to get an accounting from the Russians as to the 
validity of this statement.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the kind of issue that we cannot sweep under the 
rug. I have the same ultimate objective that Strobe Talbott and 
President Clinton have in terms of a stabilized relationship with 
Russia. But that does not mean that we ignore problems that exist, 
whether it is suitcase-sized nuclear devices that may be out there 
available on the black market or whether it is the transfer of 
accelerometers and gyroscopes that had Russian markings, that were 
intercepted by the Jordanians on their way to Iraq, which is a 
violation of the missile technology regime, or whether it is the 
response by Russia to a Norwegian rocket weather launch that they had 
been given prior notice of and that Russia is in such a paranoid state 
that it put its entire strategic offensive force on alert because of 
Norway's launch of a weather rocket which meant that Russia was within 
60 seconds of an all-out attack in response to a Norwegian weather 
rocket which they had been previously notified of.
  Now the President of Russia has acknowledged publicly that his 
chegets, the devices that control the nuclear trigger, were in fact 
activated as a response to that Norwegian rocket launch.
  Mr. Speaker, these are real issues, just as is the concern that many 
of us have over whether or not Russia just detonated another 
underground explosion, which is not in sync with the test ban treaty 
the administration has been pursuing. It is the same issue that I have 
over Yamantau Mountain, a major multibillion-dollar complex that has 
been under construction in the Ural Mountains for 18 years that is the 
size of the city of Washington, DC, where the Russians have built a 
city of 65,000 people, a closed city, continuing to work on this 
project when Russian military officers do not have decent housing, when 
Russian retired officers have not been given back pay.

  The question is, what is this huge complex being built for?
  The reason why I raised these points, Mr. Speaker, is that we need 
the administration to be more aggressive in pursuing transparency and 
candor with Russia on these issues. I am not raising these issues for 
the first time, because it is not my intent to try to put a monkey 
wrench in the relationship between the United States and Russia. In 
fact, I have raised the issue of Yamantau Mountain on at least 10 
occasions in written form and verbally with senior Russian leaders, my 
counterparts in the Russia Duma, and most recently a three-page letter 
that I wrote in Russian to Boris Yeltsin asking for transparency in 
terms of what is happening at Yamantau Mountain.
  For us to have a stable relationship and if we follow the logic of 
this administration, a relationship with Russia based on bilateral 
treaties, then we must make sure that not just the United States but 
also Russia is abiding by those treaties, whether it is ABM, MTCR, the 
chemical weapons treaty, the nuclear test ban treaty or whatever that 
treaty happens to be. My feeling is that we have not done that, and I 
could take time to go through and cite specific examples at least seven 
times where the administration has not imposed sanctions on violations 
of the missile technology control regime that we know took place.
  So I hope that what is going to unfold over the next several days, 
this weekend on ``60 Minutes,'' and into next week, as this new 
publication is released, will alert our colleagues that we must begin 
to focus on the problems of instability in Russia, not to create 
hostility between our two nations but, rather, to say we must be 
candid, we must be transparent, and we must work together to resolve 
the instability that currently exists and in the control of Russia's 
nuclear and conventional and strategic arsenal. It is of the highest 
importance for both nations and an issue that I am going to continue to 
pursue throughout the rest of this session of Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, my final point tonight is one that is a personal item 
that I would like to spend a few moments discussing. It also has 
security implications but it also is a very emotional human interest 
story that I would like to relate to my colleagues and pay appropriate 
thanks.
  Mr. Speaker, as you know, we are always looking for new technology in 
the defense arena that can assist us in civilian applications. Shortly, 
this fall, we are going to be announcing the use of cold war technology 
that was used to at one point in time to detect rocket launchers around 
the world that we have been working on for the last year that is now 
going to be used to tell us when a wild land or forest fire first 
begins, instant imaging to give us that information so that we can have 
our emergency responders be there on the scene quickly to prevent the 
kind of conflagrations we have seen in the West, the Midwest, and the 
Northwest over the past decades. So it is using cold war technology for 
a very valuable function to assist us.
  I saw evidence of a similar technology, Mr. Speaker, that we have now 
developed for commercial use called side scan sonar. I want to talk 
about the individual case because it involves a constituent family from 
Pennsylvania.
  Back in February of this year, a young 19-year-old from Chester 
County, a neighboring county to my home county, the eldest of six 
children and the only son of the Swymer family was doing a co-op 
program at Penn State up at the Finger Lakes in New York.
  During the course of his stay, right adjacent to Lake Owasco on a 
Saturday afternoon, where the temperature rose to the mid-60s, he 
ventured out into this very deep lake in a rowboat. A storm came up 
very quickly. And the individual evidently, for one reason or the 
other, because of the winds and the extreme nature of the storm, was 
tossed out of the boat.
  The boat was found 2 days later on the opposite side of the lake, 
which is about a mile wide, along with the oar and the life preserver 
and no sign of this young 19-year-old, 6-foot tall, strapping, very 
successful student and solid athlete.
  The State police in New York did a very commendable job in trying to 
locate the young man's body. They searched the entire lake perimeter. 
They tried to do dives and they just could not find this individual.
  The family, through State representative Bob Flick, called my office 
in March and asked if I could provide any kind of technical assistance. 
Using the resources that we have developed primarily for the military 
and for ocean research as well as for disaster recovery, I called my 
friends in the oceangraphic community and my friends in the emergency 
response community. We were able to get the same technology that was 
developed for the military called side scanning sonar

[[Page H6914]]

that was used to help us recover the remains of the TWA 800 crash off 
of Long Island in New York.
  We were able to get that technology through the generosity of the New 
York Police Commissioner, Howard Safir, to have it sent up to the lake 
to look to see whether or not we could in fact locate this boy's body. 
A couple of suspected sightings were made, but we could not complete a 
dive to determine whether or not it was a positive find. They came back 
and were unsuccessful.
  In June, I followed up with the Woods Hole Laboratory in 
Massachusetts and asked them to assist, and we identified perhaps the 
top national experts on deep dives relative to drownings.
  We assembled a team that in the last week of August was able to 
travel to Auburn, NY, to put together on the water a team consisting of 
four boats, all volunteers during their time, to try to locate this 
young man's body.

                              {time}  2330

  The head technologist for this whole operation was Butch Hendrick, 
the president of Lifeguard Systems, Inc. of Hurley, NY, who is an 
expert in locating people in these kinds of situations and dealing with 
drownings. We also had an expert in terms of reading side scan sonar, 
Brett Phaneuf, from Marine Sonic Technology who also donated his time.
  I spent the first 3 of the 5 days on the lake with this team, along 
with the very courageous volunteer firefighters from the Owasco Fire 
Department. Five of them spent the entire week away from their jobs 
volunteering the entire day each day to help us go back and forth 
across the 1,000-by-2,000 foot area of this lake and the lake was 1 
mile wide and 14 miles long, trying to use this technology to determine 
whether or not we could find this young 19-year-old. I had to leave New 
York on Wednesday. On Thursday, three specific sightings were made, the 
markers were identified, and on Friday we brought in a dive team from 
Buffalo, NY, the Buffalo Industrial Diving Co. headed up by Mark Judd, 
four divers prepared to go down 150 feet. We had a decompression 
chamber on standby, a helicopter to take the divers if they should have 
problems. On the first dive, they recovered the body of 19-year-old 
Nathan Swymer and brought him back up and were able to reunite him so 
that his family could have a proper, decent burial.
  Mr. Speaker, this story would not have been a success were it not for 
the cooperation of a number of very unselfish people, people who 
volunteered their time and their expertise to see if we could use a 
military technology to assist us in a very emotional situation 
involving the loss of someone's loved one.
  The importance here, Mr. Speaker, is not that we just were able to 
locate Nathan Swymer 7 months after he fell off that row boat in Lake 
Owasco, but the technology that can be used across this country, in 
lakes, in rivers to assist us in similar types of operations and to 
avoid, where possible, the exposure to losing additional lives to send 
down to recover people who in fact have been drowned.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, over the past several years, it is my 
understanding that we have begun to lose more and more people in the 
rescue efforts to bring people who have drowned back than we should, 
and that is partly because we have not used appropriate technology to 
assist us in that process.
  It will be my hope over the next several months to put together a 
congressional hearing where we can showcase this technology, where we 
can make the case that these kinds of technologies should be made 
available and that we should assist in that technology transfer process 
to departments across this Nation who have similar situations with deep 
lakes and with rivers so that we do not have to jeopardize additional 
lives in going down to recover our loved ones.
  I particularly want to thank the gentleman from New York [Mr. Walsh] 
whose district Auburn and Lake Owasco is in. He has been very 
cooperative throughout this entire process and he was very supportive 
of our effort the last week of August.
  I also want to thank Bill Andahazy, who is a consultant from Woods 
Hole who donated his time, Capt. Don Swain from the New York State 
Police and his team and all of those other individuals, the volunteer 
firefighters, the divers, the technologists who assisted us in closing 
this very difficult chapter in the lives of the Swymer family from 
Chester County, PA.
  I want to encourage our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to work with me, to 
see where we can find not just this kind of technology to use for 
commercial purposes but to see where we can take similar initiatives 
and assist us in solving day-to-day problems that face the people of 
this great Nation.
  For the record, Mr. Speaker, I include the list of the Owasco Lake 
search team and thank them for their tireless efforts in this 
operation. A number of companies and individuals in the Philadelphia 
area donated over $10,000 along with the Chester County Chamber of 
Commerce to help us defray the costs of transporting the equipment to 
that lake. All of the individuals that were there donated their time. 
The money that we raised was used to defray the costs of the 
transportation of that equipment to the site to allow us to complete 
the rescue mission.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank all of the staff who stayed this late hour for 
this special order.

                        Owasco Lake Search Team

       Rep. Curt Weldon, Member, US House of Representatives
       Rep. Robert J. Flick, Pennsylvania House of Representatives
       W.J. (Bill) Andahazy, Independent Consultant
       Capt. Donald Swain, Zone 2 HQ, New York State Police
       Trooper David Hartz, Troop E, NY State Police
       Trooper Karl Bloom, Troop E, NY State Police
       Walter (Butch) Hendrick, President, Lifeguard Systems Inc., 
     Hurley, NY
       Andrea Zaferes, Lifeguard Systems
       Craig Nelson, Lifeguard Systems
       Lt. David Holland, Inst. of Environmental Medicine, 
     Canadian Navy
       Brett Phaneuf, Marine Sonic Technology, White Marsh, VA
       Mark C. Judd, Buffalo Industrial Diving Company, Buffalo, 
     NY
       Andy Anderson, Buffalo Industrial Diving
       Brad McCullum, Buffalo Industrial Diving
       Brad Knight, Buffalo Industrial Diving
       Tom Burns, Chief, Owasco Vol. Fire Co.
       Joe Head, Assist. Chief, Owasco Vol. Fire Dept.
       Tom Morgan, Assist. Chief, Owasco Vol. Fire Dept.
       Tim Burns, Owasco Vol. Fire Dept.
       Angelo Massina, Owasco Vol. Fire Dept.
       Peter Pinckney, Sheriff, Cayuga County
       Jim Tabor, Under Sheriff, Cayuga County
       Gene Stiver, Dep. Chief of Navigation, Office of the 
     Sheriff, Cayuga County
       Chris Petrus, Navigation Deputy, Office of Sheriff, Cayuga 
     County
       Rev. and Mrs. (Dick and Pat) Streeter, Clergy and friends 
     of Mr. and Mrs. Swymer.
       Members of the Chester County Chamber Business and Industry 
     Council.
       Note that many other individuals also helped and offered 
     services such as Alice Hamill of Mayflower Movers, King of 
     Prussia, PA (although their services were not needed). The 
     Holiday Inn Hotel, Auburn, NY staff worked with us on local 
     arrangements as well as the Lake residents who let us use 
     phones, water, etc. This operation was a community coming 
     together that generated a successful conclusion to this 
     tragedy.

                          ____________________