[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 87 (Friday, June 18, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7250-S7253]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    FOREIGN RELATIONS AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEARS 2000 AND 2001

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report H.R. 886.
  The legislative assistant read as follows:

       A bill (S. 886) to authorize appropriations for the 
     Department of State for fiscal years 2000 and 2001; to 
     provide for enhanced security at United States diplomatic 
     facilities; to provide for certain arms control, 
     nonproliferation, and other national security measures; to 
     provide for the reform of the United Nations; and for other 
     purposes.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from North 
Carolina.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, to make the Record absolutely clear, what 
is the pending business now?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending business is S. 886.
  Mr. HELMS. Which is?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. State Department authorization.


                       Unanimous Consent Request

  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent with respect to the 
State Department authorization bill, all amendments in order pursuant 
to the consent agreement of June 10 must be offered and debated during 
Friday's session of the Senate. I further ask

[[Page S7251]]

consent that any votes relative to the bill occur in a stacked sequence 
beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, with 2 minutes for explanation prior 
to each vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will 
object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will suspend. We will please have 
order in the body.
  The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Reserving the right to object, I will object, and I want 
to explain why. The reason I object is there are several amendments 
from Senators who are not going to be able to be here today. They are 
necessarily absent. So they would be shut out completely from 
introducing their amendments.
  On behalf of the leadership, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, with the permission of my colleague from 
North Carolina, I ask unanimous consent, with respect to the State 
Department authorization bill, any amendments on the list of amendments 
in order to the State Department authorization bill must be filed at 
the desk by 11:30 today, that there be no further votes today, and the 
next vote would occur beginning at 5:30 on Monday.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. HELMS. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request 
relating to staff?
  Mr. HELMS. Certainly.


                         privilege of the floor

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the privilege of 
the floor be granted to the following members of the minority staff of 
the Foreign Relations Committee: David Auerswald, an American political 
science fellow, and Joan Wadelton, a Pearson fellow, during the 
pendency of the State Department authorization bill, S. 886.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Senator from North Carolina.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, I suggest 
Senators not leave town because there are going to be additional votes 
today.
  Having made that announcement, I hope it is clear to all Senators we 
were willing to offer an agreement, but that failing, we must proceed.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. HELMS. Yes, sir.
  Mr. REID. I could not quite hear, but you indicated there would be 
votes during today?
  Mr. HELMS. Yes, sir.
  Mr. REID. There was an announcement made by the leader yesterday that 
there would be no votes occurring after 11:45 a.m. today. There are 
people who have based their schedules on that public announcement made 
yesterday.
  Mr. HELMS. I ask the Chair if the unanimous consent agreement stated 
11:45 a.m.
  Mr. REID. I am not sure there was a unanimous consent agreement. 
There was a public statement made.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no agreement on limiting votes for 
the remainder of the day.
  The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I believe I am authorized to say there will 
be no votes after 11:45 a.m. today. At least I will not participate in 
ordering them.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I understand a couple of Senators are out 
of town and therefore are not, even though they may want to, able to 
physically meet the unanimous consent request of the chairman. I wonder 
if the purposes of the Senate in moving this legislation forward are 
not equally well served by narrowing the universe of amendments by 
requiring that they all be laid down before the hour when there will be 
no further votes. We will then have a fixed universe of amendments, and 
we can begin debating them and proceed rapidly.
  Mr. HELMS. I am unable to pass judgment on that. 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.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. HELMS. I have to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. The clerk will continue 
calling the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk continued with the call of the roll.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I am a father. Like everybody else, every 
daddy wants to get home, except a few who will not give time agreements 
on their amendments. So we will just have to plow ahead and do the best 
we can.
  On behalf of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, I offer the 
foreign relations authorization bill, approving specific State 
Department activities for fiscal years 2000 and 2001, including funds 
for payment of some dues arrearages to the United Nations and other 
international organizations conditioned upon reform of those 
institutions.
  In the course of debate, the distinguished Senator from Delaware, Mr. 
Biden, and I will offer an amendment naming this bill the Admiral James 
W. Nance Foreign Relations Authorization bill, in memory and in honor 
of the late chief of staff of the Foreign Relations Committee, Bud 
Nance.
  The Foreign Relations Committee approved this bipartisan legislation 
back in April--I believe on April 21st--by a vote of 17 to 1.
  This is the first authorization of State Department activity since 
enactment last October on the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring 
Act, which required the consolidation of the Arms Control and 
Disarmament Agency and the U.S. Information Agency into the State 
Department. These were temporary agencies. They were established in the 
1950s and were explicitly and emphatically described as temporary 
agencies.
  As Ronald Reagan said, there is nothing so near eternal life as a 
temporary Federal agency. So what we did, we folded two of those into 
the State Department, their responsibilities, and got rid of them.
  Both of these temporary agencies were created about a half century 
ago, and this effort by the Foreign Relations Committee is the first 
time any body has tried to do away with those nontemporary or temporary 
agencies.
  The bill addresses several significant oversight and authorization 
issues. It proposes to strengthen and preserve the arms control 
verification functions of the U.S. Government, while addressing other 
nonproliferation matters as well.
  The bill authorizes a 5-year $3 billion construction blueprint for 
upgrading U.S. embassies around the world to provide secure 
environments for America's personnel overseas. Unlike the funds 
provided more than a decade ago in the wake of a report by Admiral 
Inman calling for improved security of U.S. embassies, this bill 
creates a firewall for funding from other State Department expenditures 
which will ensure that embassy funds are not raided to pay for other 
State Department pet projects.
  The bill makes some reforms to strengthen the Foreign Service. Most 
Foreign Service officers are supportive of ensuring poor performing 
members of the Foreign Service are not automatically kept in the 
Service by statutes manipulated to protect unworthy employees from 
discharge and/or personnel actions. The changes in the bill will 
streamline the grievance and disciplinary process stipulated by the 
Foreign Service Act.
  The bill augments a coordination and oversight of the U.S. 
Government's role in assisting parents seeking return of abducted 
children. These provisions are an outgrowth of the Foreign Relations 
Committee oversight hearing this past year on the growing problem of 
international abduction of children in disputes growing out of divorce 
and separation. It is a real problem, I say to the distinguished 
occupant of the Chair.

[[Page S7252]]

  Significantly, the bill includes a U.N. reform package which includes 
payments of arrearages in exchange for--I reiterate for emphasis--in 
exchange for key reforms of and by the United Nations.
  I say parenthetically to the distinguished occupant of the Chair that 
on the day that Kofi Annan was designated to be the Secretary General 
of the United Nations, I called him and invited him to come to 
Washington. We worked out a stipulated number of reforms that had to be 
done before any thought or agreement could be considered regarding the 
so-called arrearages.
  He agreed to that. He went back to the United Nations and made some 
other statements, but we are working that out.
  Interestingly enough, we are getting some support from the gentleman 
who probably will be confirmed in a week or so as the new U.S. 
Ambassador to the United Nations who strongly favors the reform of the 
United Nations. He stipulated that to me yesterday.
  The reform agenda required by this bill, prior to the payment of any 
U.S. taxpayer dollars, has the full support of the Secretary of State 
and the distinguished Senator from Delaware, Mr. Biden, and me. These 
reforms were approved by the Senate during the 105th Congress by a vote 
of 90-5, but it was vetoed by the President of the United States.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  I believe we are going to have to have order, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. There is not order in 
the body.
  Please, may we have order in the body so we can proceed on this 
important piece of legislation. Conversations will please be taken off 
the floor.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum until we 
can get order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HELMS. I am going to depart from what we agreed to. The 
distinguished Senator from Vermont needs 3 minutes, he says, for a 
statement in the form of a eulogy. I yield that time to him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized for 3 
minutes.


                             LEONARD RIESER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Vermont and the United States lost one of 
its most distinguished academics last winter. Leonard Rieser, a 
physicist, a professor, a dean, and chairman of the board of the 
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, holder of so many titles that we 
couldn't repeat all of them, died at the same time his great gifts and 
talent were still expanding.
  I knew Leonard and his wife, Rosemary, through their son, Tim Rieser. 
Tim has been the most extraordinary advisor to me for many years, and 
he holds the best attributes of his father: decency, a towering 
intellect, and a constant search for knowledge.
  Leonard Rieser is a man who lived more in a decade than most people 
will live in a lifetime. He accomplished in a few years what others 
would be proud to have as their life's work. What is extraordinary is 
that he did it for decade after decade.
  In Vermont and throughout the Nation, expressions of sorrow but also 
of admiration and gratitude for his life poured in. We have all 
benefited by his life. He leaves a great void, especially for his wife, 
his sons, Tim, Leonard, and Ken, his daughter, Abby, his grandchildren 
and all his friends.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that just one of the many 
tributes written about him be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the tribute was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

      [From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mar./Apr. 1999]

                      Leonard M. Rieser, 1922-1998

                            (By Mike Moore)

       Leonard M. Rieser, 76, who chaired the board of the 
     Bulletin from 1985 to June of last year, died in December of 
     pancreatic cancer. His tenure as chairman spanned a 
     tumultuous era. When Rieser took the chair, the Bulletin's 
     ``Doomsday Clock'' stood at three minutes to midnight and 
     ``Evil Empire'' rhetoric still ricocheted back and forth 
     across the Atlantic.
       But by late 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union 
     had signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, a coup 
     attempt in the Soviet Union had failed, and the United States 
     and Russia had begun to withdraw thousands of tactical 
     nuclear weapons from forward deployment. That fall, the board 
     voted to move the minute hand ``off the scale''--from 10 
     minutes to 17 minutes to midnight.
       In speaking to the press after the meeting, Rieser 
     displayed the rooted-in-the-real-world optimism that 
     characterized his life. The Cold War was clearly over, 
     Leonard told the audience, as was the East-West arms race. 
     That was a cause for celebration, and it surely justified the 
     unprecedented seven-minute move. ``But the world is still a 
     dangerous place and governments continue to pour vast sums of 
     money and intellectual capital into weaponry. The Bulletin 
     has much work left to do. It will continue reporting on the 
     destructiveness of seeking military solutions to the world's 
     ills.''
       He was surely right about the Bulletin having more work to 
     do. In 1995, the board moved the minute hand back onto the 
     scale, to 14 minutes to midnight, in part because of the slow 
     U.S. and Russian pace in cutting back nuclear arsenals. And 
     last June, the board moved the hand to nine minutes to 
     midnight, partly because of nuclear tests by India and 
     Pakistan, and partly because East-West arms reductions were 
     still agonizingly slow.
       In December of 1942, Rieser, an undergraduate in physics at 
     the University of Chicago, enlisted in the army, but received 
     a deferment so he could finish his degree. After receiving 
     his baccalaureate, he was assigned to the Manhattan Project, 
     first in the Chicago laboratory and then at Los Alamos.
       In later years, he seldom talked of his bomb-related work, 
     other than to say that he had no interest in pursuing weapons 
     work after the war. Al Baez, a physicist who met Rieser in 
     the late 1940s while both were graduate students at Stanford, 
     said they became lifelong friends partly because of their 
     mutual belief that scientists had a moral responsibility to 
     weigh the consequences of their work.
       Rieser joined the Dartmouth College physics faculty in 1952 
     and remained active in Dartmouth affairs until his death. He 
     became dean of the faculty, provost, and the Sherman 
     Fairchild Professor in the Sciences. During the socially and 
     politically chaotic years of the late 1960s and early 1970s, 
     he helped transform Dartmouth from a small men's liberal arts 
     school into a more diverse coed institution.
       Rieser retired as provost in 1982, the year he joined the 
     board of the Bulletin, but he remained chairman of 
     Dartmouth's Montgomery Endowment, which brings scholars, 
     artists, and political figures to the campus for periods 
     ranging from a week to a year. In 1984, he became the 
     founding director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for 
     International Understanding at Dartmouth.
       Despite his decision to follow a largely administrative 
     track, he remained passionately committed to science, pure 
     and applied, and to the teaching of science. He was a member 
     of the American Physical Society, the American Association of 
     Physics Teachers, and the American Association for the 
     Advancement of Science (AAAS).
       Rieser chaired the AAAS's Commission on Science Education 
     from 1966 to 1971, and he successively served as president-
     elect, president, and chairman of the AAAS board in the early 
     1970s. He later chaired the association's Committee on Future 
     Directions and the Committee on Scientific Freedom and 
     Responsibility.
       In 1974, Rieser was a co-founder of the Interciencia 
     Association, an organization based in Caracas that is 
     dedicated to uniting scientific communities in the Americas, 
     so they can more effectively promote the welfare of the 
     people. He later served as president of Interciencia, and he 
     was still a director at his death.
       At various times, Rieser was president of the New England 
     Council on Graduate Education, an overseer at Harvard, a 
     member of the Commission on the International Exchange of 
     Scholars, a member of the Council on Humanities and Sciences 
     at Stanford, a trustee of Hampshire College, and a trustee of 
     the Latin American Student Programs at American Universities.
       In 1990, Rieser became a consultant to the John D. and 
     Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. For four years, 
     beginning in 1993, he chaired MacArthur's Fellows program--
     the so-called ``genius grant'' program in which scholars, 
     artists, and innovators of all description are awarded 
     handsome sums so they can more readily pursue their work by 
     freeing them of financial constraints.
       The program's yearly awards regularly make headlines. They 
     have been applauded as being imaginative and visionary and 
     criticized for being too offbeat, ``too politically 
     correct.''
       ``It was not a matter of `political correctness,' '' says 
     Adele Simmons, president of MacArthur. ``Leonard delighted in 
     finding people not already being supported by mainstream 
     institutions, and giving them an opportunity to look at 
     institutions and issues in a new way, getting people to 
     really think.''
       Victor Rabinowitch, senior vice president of MacArthur, 
     said Rieser took particular

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     joy in mentoring younger people. ``He loved to play that 
     role. He was idealistic--but also realistic. He believed in 
     the goodness of people, a man of enormous decency. The 
     secretaries all adored him--he listened to them.''
       An adjective often used to describe Rieser is 
     ``graceful''--in the sense that he was a considerate man, a 
     ``gentleman'' in the old-fashioned use of the term. 
     Listening, says Barbara Gerstner, assistant provost at 
     Dartmouth, was one of Rieser's greatest gifts. ``When he 
     conducted a meeting, he made sure that everyone's point of 
     view was heard and understood. A person could leave a meeting 
     unsatisfied with the result. But at least he knew he had had 
     a fair chance to be heard.''
       MacArthur's Rabinowitch, who has attended high-powered 
     meetings throughout the world for most of his professional 
     life, says simply: ``Leonard was the most talented chairman I 
     have ever seen.''
       Dorothy Zinberg, on the faculty at Harvard's John F. 
     Kennedy School of Government, recalls Rieser's ability to put 
     people at ease. She first met Leonard in the early 1970s, 
     when she ``parachuted into Washington'' to serve as the 
     ``token woman'' on the AAAS's Committee for Science and 
     Social Responsibility. It was a small but steller group that 
     included former Chief Justice Earl Warren and John Knowles, 
     then president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Alan Astin, 
     a towering figure in Washington science policy. Zinberg, who 
     was then a young professor at Harvard, was ill at ease. 
     ``Don't worry,'' said Leonard. ``You have every right to be 
     here. Speak up.'' That she did, and she went on to serve on 
     several more aaas committees.
       In the early 1990s, Zinberg was a consultant at the 
     MacArthur Foundation and often found herself working closely 
     with Rieser. ``Leonard challenged every statement to make 
     certain that no issue under discussion had been superficially 
     examined. Behind the boyish smile, the informal style, the 
     casual country clothes, and the droll humor lay a steely 
     determination to get things right.''
       Leonard M. Rieser, according to those who knew him well, 
     did get it right.

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in a quorum call.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be dispensed with so I may have 3 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.

                          ____________________