[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 21, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1912-E1913]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 CONFERENCE REPORT ON S. 1059, NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR 
                            FISCAL YEAR 2000

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN M. SPRATT, JR.

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 21, 1999

  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I want to elaborate on the remarks I made on 
September 15, 1999, regarding certain provisions of S. 1059, the 
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000.
  As I noted during floor debate, I strongly support the vast majority 
of this bill, particularly the pay and retirement provisions. But this 
good bill is marred by some of the text that sets up a National Nuclear 
Security Administration (NNSA) as a semi-autonomous agency within the 
Department of Energy (DOE). I have reservations about the way these 
provisions were inserted in the bill--with little discussion among the 
Members of the Conference Committee--and I have reservations about the 
substance of some of these provisions.
  I will not speak on the conference process at length, but I cannot 
dismiss it because I cannot remember the Congress acting on such an 
important matter with so little information and so little discussion 
among the Members of the conference committee. Neither the House nor 
the Senate Defense Authorization bill contained language requiring a 
comprehensive restructuring of the Department of Energy, yet we ended 
up with about 50 pages worth of text. We did have former Senator Warren 
Rudman testify before the committee prior to conference, but we did not 
take testimony from the Energy Department itself, or from the senior 
statesmen of the labs and nuclear weapons complex, men like Johnny 
Foster or Harold Agnew. The legislation that the conference committee 
ultimately produced was not vetted in any meaningful manner among the 
Members, the Administration, or outside experts. This is not a good 
process for an important piece of national security legislation.
  My first and foremost concern on the substance of the legislation is 
that we have blurred the lines of accountability when it comes to 
preventing and ferreting out future espionage at our nuclear labs and 
weapons complex. I think one thing we can all agree on is that counter-
intelligence requires a clear line of command and accountability. A 
clear chain of command was at the heart of Presidential Decision 
Directive (PDD) 61, which the Cox Committee unanimously recommended be 
implemented. This legislation contradicts PDD 61 by setting up two 
different counterintelligence offices with overlapping 
responsibilities, and no clear direction on how the offices are 
supposed to interface with each other. As a member of the Cox 
Committee, I find it disturbing and ironic that the restructuring 
provisions fail in what should have been its top priority: setting up 
clear lines of command and accountability on counterintelligence.
  My second and more general concern is that the Secretary's ability to 
conduct oversight of the complex could be seriously hampered by this 
legislation. We already know that the price of no oversight is a legacy 
of contaminated sites that will cost hundreds of billions to clean up. 
Revelations about contamination of workers at Paducah show that we 
cannot disregard the health and safety concerns for workers in the 
nuclear weapons complex and the communities that surround these sites. 
The history of the last few decades tells us that the nuclear weapon 
sites and activities of the Department of Energy require more sunshine, 
more scrutiny, and more oversight, not less. Any Secretary of Energy 
must have strong oversight authority, and I fear that this legislation 
detracts from rather than adding to the Secretary's oversight powers.
  Having criticized these provisions, let me say that I do not think 
they were drafted with bad intent. But they were drafted hastily, 
without adequate hearings, with no vetting among outside authorities, 
without the benefit of constructive criticism that comes in the mark-up 
process, and without any discussion among members of the conference 
committee.
  A good example of the type of confusion that arises from these 
hastily-drafted provisions is the work of the Energy Department's non-
weapons facilities--the science labs. The science labs perform a great 
deal of work for almost every element designated as part of the new 
National Nuclear Security Administration. This is especially true for 
the current Offices of Non-Proliferation and National Security (NN), 
Fissile Materials Disposition, Naval Reactors, and the Office of 
Intelligence. The language of the conference report, though, raises the 
question of whether the current cooperation between the science labs 
and weapons facilities will be allowed to continue, or be prohibited by 
the language separating the weapons labs from the rest of the DOE 
complex.
  For the Office of Non-Proliferation and National Security for 
example, the science labs provide a significant portion of the 
technologies and expertise for such programs as Materials, Protection, 
Control and Accountability (MPC&A), a program I helped establish. This 
is also true for the Nuclear Cities Initiative, in which a science lab 
(Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, or PNNL) co-chairs the U.S. 
effort in one of the first three Russian nuclear cities selected. That 
arrangement is especially fruitful because PNNL is the only U.S. lab 
with real-life experience making the transition from a closed U.S. 
``nuclear city,'' Hanford, which produced key nuclear materials for the 
WWII-era nuclear weapons, to a non-weapons community in which such 
scientific expertise is put to more peaceful use.
  The science labs play a major role in providing technical expertise 
and collaboration for the Initiatives to Prevent Proliferation (IPP) 
program, attempting to develop self-sustaining, U.S. and Russian 
scientific collaborations that are mutually beneficial. The science 
labs provide valuable technologies and expertise of the NN efforts in 
Safeguards and Transparency regarding Russian nuclear warheads. Science 
lab personnel, in fact, chair important working groups in that effort, 
and have developed technologies that will be used in identifying and 
securing Russian warhead materials.
  The science labs are vital parts of all of DOE's efforts to build 
lab-to-lab relationships and programs that enhance U.S. national 
security by applying American eyes and know-how to the potentially 
dangerous situations in the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) complex 
of the former Soviet Union. The science labs also play a critical role 
in the NM arms control programs, providing vital technologies

[[Page E1913]]

for verifying compliance with arms control agreements (reductions, 
dismantlement, production, testing, safeguard and storage, etc.) and 
detecting the attempted proliferation of WMD materials. Such 
technologies are proving useful in terms of all WMD materials--
chemical, biological and radiological.
  Science labs also make major contributions to the efforts of the 
Office of Fissile Materials Disposition (MD). A science lab leads the 
U.S. effort in the International Nuclear Safety Program. Of course, the 
science labs will continue to contribute a great deal to the DOE 
offices outside the NNSA, on matters, for example, of energy, the 
environment and nuclear cleanup. Also, like the weapons labs, have the 
authority and expertise to ``work for others,'' and often perform 
important work for other agencies such as the Department of Defense, 
Justice, State, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
  The science labs' contribution to the offices that are scheduled to 
be in the NNSA is clear, and I do not believe the conferees had any 
intention of scuttling these contributions by implying that the science 
labs could not work for NNSA offices. However, the language contained 
in the conference report is not clear on this question. Title XXXII 
concentrates solely on the three nuclear weapons laboratories and 
production facilities, and while it makes specific provision for those 
weapons labs to perform work for other agencies and for DOE offices 
outside the new, semi-autonomous administration, it is silent on the 
role of the non-weapons labs. Such ambiguity breeds confusion and 
illustrates the flaws in the process of drafting the DOE reorganization 
title and inserting it into the conference agreement. I served on the 
conference committee and I was involved in negotiating some of the 
conference report. I do not think that it was the intention of the 
conferees for this legislation to impede the continuation of these 
services in any way.

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