[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 80 (Thursday, June 22, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1081]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      HELP WANTED--NIGHT WATCHMAN

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. BOB BARR

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 22, 2000

  Mr. BARR of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I submit for the record the 
attached editorial written by Oliver North and published in the 
Washington Times.

               [From the Washington Times, June 18, 2000]

                           (By Oliver North)

       Prince Albert is on his ``progress and prosperity tour'' 
     asking Americans ``are you better off than you were eight 
     years ago?'' If ``better off'' includes America's national 
     security, the answer is: You have to be kidding. The day the 
     vice president began to ``re-introduce himself to the 
     American people,'' shell-shocked Clinton-Gore administration 
     officials dodged questions about how they lost more of 
     America's dwindling supply of nuclear secrets.
       After a monthlong cover-up, it was finally admitted on June 
     12 that computer hard drives from the Los Alamos National 
     Laboratory's ``X Division''--where nuclear weapons are 
     designed--have been missing from a vault at the lab since 
     ``some time in May.'' This is the latest embarrassment for 
     Los Alamos, which is still reeling from a string of security 
     lapses, including the arrest of Taiwanese-American scientist 
     Wen Ho Lee on 59 counts of mishandling nuclear secrets. 
     Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, a potential running mate 
     for Internet Al, claims ``there is no evidence of espionage'' 
     and ``the missing computer files may be related to the 
     evacuation of the facility during the recent forest fires.'' 
     Get the word: ``missing''--as in, ``My home work is 
     `missing.' Maybe the dog ate it.''
       The ``missing'' multi-gigabyte computer drives contain 
     detailed, highly secret, nuclear weapons data used by the 
     super-sensitive Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST)--an 
     interagency contingent of military and civilian specialists 
     who respond to nuclear accidents and nuclear-related 
     terrorist threats. The data on the had drives includes all 
     the information necessary to disarm all nuclear weapons 
     worldwide. This is, of course, the same kind of data needed 
     to arm or build a nuclear device. That is what's ``missing.''
       Security lapses are nothing new for this regime. In the 
     wake of the administration's latest fiasco, Rep. Porter Goss, 
     Florida Republican, chairman of the House Select Intelligence 
     Committee, told me that ``when it comes to security, the 
     Clinton-Gore administration manifests a culture of disdain.'' 
     He is right and it is an attitude that pervades not just our 
     nuclear weapons labs but the whole administration.
       In 1994, more than a year after taking office, more than 
     100 high-level White House staff members still had no 
     security clearances because they never bothered to complete 
     the paperwork for requisite background investigations. They 
     were granted access to highly classified information anyway.
       By 1996, White House security was so lax that shortly 
     before fleeing the country, Democratic Party fund-raiser 
     Charlie Trie smuggled a foreign businessman into the White 
     House using false identification. When the General Accounting 
     Office reported that from January 1993 until June 1996 there 
     were no procedures to control access to Sensitive 
     Compartmental Information (a level of classification higher 
     than Top Secret) within the Executive Office of the 
     President, White House officials promised to ``fix the 
     problem.'' They did not.
       At the State Department, foreign spies stand in line to rip 
     off America's secrets. In 1998, an unidentified individual 
     posing as a reporter walked out of the Secretary of State 
     Madeleine Albright's office suite with a stack of classified 
     documents. Last year, the FBI caught a Russian Intelligence 
     Service spy wearing headphones outside the State Department 
     headquarters and discovered a device planted in a secure 
     conference room inside the building. This January, a laptop 
     computer containing top secret information vanished from the 
     department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Mrs. 
     Albright said she was ``outraged.''
       Last year, FBI agent Michael Vatis told Congress that 
     computer hackers broke into the Pentagon's classified 
     computer systems and downloaded ``vast quantities of data'' 
     containing ``sensitive information about essential defense 
     matters.'' The FBI suspected the Russian intelligence 
     service. What did the Clinton-Gore administration do? They 
     asked the Russians to help. Like O.J., the Russians are still 
     looking for those who really did it.
       But even when the perpetrators of massive security 
     violations are caught, it hardly matters. According to the 
     CIA's inspector general, John Deutch, the Clinton-Gore CIA 
     director from 1995-1996, routinely ``placed national security 
     information at risk'' by processing a ``large volume of 
     highly classified information'' on his unprotected home 
     computer. After covering up the breach (and failing to notify 
     the FBI as required by law) for more than 18 months, Mr. 
     Deutch had his security clearances revoked and was given a 
     letter of reprimand.
       The abysmal seven-year national security record of the 
     Clinton-Gore administration should come as no surprise--nor 
     should their predictable spin: First comes the plea not to 
     ``make a partisan issue'' out of what is at best gross 
     incompetence and at worst dangerous malfeasance. Then comes 
     the accusation there has always been espionage (remember the 
     ``everyone does it'' defense from Monicagate?). Finally the 
     counterallegations: ``It is all the fault of the Reagan and 
     Bush administrations.''
       Don't be surprised to hear Bill's and Al's pals tell you 
     that if Presidents Reagan and Bush hadn't planted so many 
     trees, the Clinton-Gore administration wouldn't have had to 
     do a ``controlled burn'' of several thousand acres and 205 
     houses, thus forcing the evacuation of the Los Alamos lab. If 
     that doesn't wash, they can argue there is nothing on these 
     missing hard drives that the Communist Chinese didn't already 
     get.

     

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