[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 118 (Wednesday, September 12, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9300-S9302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         TERRORIST ATTACKS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES--Continued

  Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the 
resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, I ask that all Senators take their 
desks and that we vote from our desks on this resolution. I appreciate 
the cooperation from both sides.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the engrossment and third 
reading of the joint resolution.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading 
and was read the third time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the 
third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass? The yeas 
and nays have been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--yeas 100, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 277 Leg.]

                               YEAS--100

     Akaka
     Allard
     Allen
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Cantwell
     Carnahan
     Carper
     Chafee
     Cleland
     Clinton
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Corzine
     Craig
     Crapo
     Daschle
     Dayton
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Miller
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Nickles
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden
  The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 22) was passed.
  

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. For the information of all Senators, this will be the 
only vote cast today. We will stand in recess until 3:30 this afternoon 
to accommodate the briefing that begins--now at 2:30, not 2 o'clock, in 
room 407.
  Tomorrow it is my hope to renew the deliberations and hopefully 
complete our work on the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill. 
That will be tomorrow.
  After 3:30 this afternoon, we invite Senators to come back to the 
floor to express themselves if they have not yet had the opportunity to 
do so.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, was it the intention to recess 
immediately or will there be an opportunity to make a short statement 
with regard to yesterday's matters? May I ask the leader?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, if I may respond, under the previous 
unanimous consent request, two of our Republican colleagues had sought 
recognition and we had locked in time for those two speakers prior to 
the time we recess. That will still be the order.
  Mr. THOMPSON. I thank the leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, we meet here today to express our 
outrage even though words cannot express the sorrow and anger that 
fills our hearts. But we must express these feelings--on behalf of the 
family and friends of thousands of innocent victims, many whose 
identities we do not yet know--and on behalf of our entire nation.
  Our young people must wonder why the United States who they are 
taught is the beacon of hope and liberty for the world--why we of all 
countries--should be the world's main target of such savagery.
  I suggest it is because those teachings to our young people are true. 
It is because our history and the principles on which our country was 
founded go against the trend of thousands of years of human history. 
Thousands of years of ``might makes right,'' of rulers and 
dictatorships of all shapes and forms, of religious intolerance and 
subjugation. We have shown the world that it doesn't have to be that 
way. And today's tyrants and would-be tyrants cannot afford to let that 
example stand.
  But stand it will. If this giant, America, has been sleeping as some 
say, it has been awakened once again and will not rest until an example 
is make of those who would murder our innocent citizens and tear at the 
very fabric of our national existence. Part of a great nation's 
responsibility for keeping peace in the world is the threat it must 
pose to those who would upset that peace. Therefore, we must act as a 
deterrent to outrageous activity when our interests are involved.
  And America's response in this matter should set a lasting example of 
what happens to those who unleash bloody attacks especially on our own 
soil.
  The time for carefully measured pinprick responses to terrorists 
activities has passed.
  But we in this body and in the House do not have the luxury of simply 
expressing our outrage demanding retribution. We, along with the 
President, set policy and we must quickly reconcile ourselves to some 
of things that we must do.
  Since our victory in the cold war, we have become somewhat complacent 
in the notion that the most significant danger to our nation has 
passed. We see it in our military budget and we hear it in our 
rhetoric. We see it in our debates over which threat to our country is 
most probable even though yesterday's events should remind us once

[[Page S9301]]

again how faulty such predictions can be. We attempt to decide with 
precision what the chances are of a missile attack by a rogue nation or 
by terrorists versus a suitcase bomb versus a biological attack versus 
a cyber attack. Surely, we must now realize that as the world's number 
one target, we must protect our citizens from all of these 
possibilities. While protection can never be complete, who is going to 
decide which window of vulnerability we are going to allow to remain 
open. The old Soviet threat has been replaced by new ones that are in 
many ways more dangerous and more insidious. We have been warned about 
this repeatedly--by the Hart-Rudman Commission, the Gilmore Commission, 
by the Bremer Commission, and by experts in numerous committee 
hearings. Surely, now we will listen. Surely now we will resist the 
temptation to continue to squeeze out more ``peace dividends'' from the 
cold war which place our defense requirements in a secondary position 
to our domestic wish list.
  And surely, we will reanalyze the wisdom of America contributing to 
the proliferation of militarily useful technology simply because we 
want the sales. It is my belief that this is what we did as late as 
last week with the passage of the Export Administration Act.
  If we place short term considerations, our desire for profit, or our 
desire to maintain record high surpluses above our national security, 
we will become much more vulnerable to the potential of experiencing 
other days like yesterday.
  Historians tell us of another democracy which, after major military 
success, cut its military budget, turned inward, and failed to react to 
provocation in hopes of maintaining peace--a nation of leaders who 
followed the popular demand for more butter and fewer guns and who felt 
that if worse came to worse technology could bail them out and that 
treaties with dictators would substitute for defenses. That country was 
England after World War I and those policies contributed to causing the 
biggest war in the history of the world. We must not make a similar 
mistake.
  We cannot alter the past. But we can affect the future. I sincerely 
urge that we keep these things in mind as we consider our 
appropriations bills and especially as we consider what monies are 
necessary to keep this country safe. It is not only the right and 
necessary thing to do. It is the real tribute we can pay to our 
citizens who have so recently paid such a dear price simply for being 
Americans.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, as some of my colleagues here today and 
so many Americans across our country, I rise to express great sorrow, 
and send our prayers to those who lost loved ones and who have been 
injured. Unfortunately, in my own community right next door, the 
copilot of the American Airlines Flight 11, Tom McGuinness, came from 
Portsmouth and leaves behind a 14-year-old son and a 16-year-old 
daughter. One of the fire chiefs who went into the building to save 
lives, Jack Fanning, testified before our committee on the issue of 
terrorism just a few weeks ago. This touches all of us in 
extraordinarily personal ways, and it touches our Nation dramatically.
  We wish to also congratulate and express great appreciation to those 
people who are risking their lives to rescue the injured and the 
harmed--firefighters, policemen, the citizenry who are stepping forward 
during this time of crisis.
  There has been significant harm to our Nation. But we are a resilient 
people and a resilient country, and we shall not allow these doers of 
evil, these perpetrators of such huge criminal activity to 
fundamentally harm our society.
  The fact that we meet today and the fact that our Nation goes forward 
is a reflection of our strength and our commitment to maintaining the 
openness and freedom that comes with the greatest democracy in the 
world.
  We stand here united and resolute that we shall not allow this 
democracy to be undermined by such horrific and criminal acts.
  We as a Congress have recognized for a fair amount of time that 
terrorism is the threat which we as a nation see as most imminent. 
Clearly, since the end of the cold war that has been true. We have 
attempted to address that threat. Obviously, in this instance we were 
not successful. But I think it is important that we review where we are 
and what we need to do as we move forward because this is not the end, 
regrettably, of the issue. This is simply a sign of what our times are 
going to bring. We need to prepare, and we need to plan the battle 
lines.
  The issue of terrorism and the confrontation of it basically divides 
itself into three categories. The first is maintaining adequate 
intelligence capability. The second is apprehension of people who would 
commit terrorist acts. And the third is dealing with the events should 
they occur, as they regrettably have in New York and here in 
Washington.
  In hearing after hearing, we have heard regrettably that we were not 
ready but that we were moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, it 
was predicted that there would be a major terrorist event in this 
Nation. In fact, at three different hearings that I know of when I was 
chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that has jurisdiction over 
the Justice and State Departments, it was clearly stated by our 
intelligence community that they anticipated a significant terrorist 
act sometime in the future. No one was specific as to when. We now know 
when. It has occurred.
  How do we prepare so it does not occur again or so we can mitigate 
the damage?
  First, our commitment to intelligence must be dramatically increased. 
During the 1980s and into the 1990s, we allowed our intelligence 
community to basically atrophy in the area of human intelligence--
people on the ground.
  We have electronic intelligence of immense capability. It needs to be 
improved, especially in the area of encryption. But specifically, we 
need more people involved in intelligence efforts. We have to, as a 
nation, recognize that this is, for all intents and purposes, a war, 
and that it is going to take soldiers, and that some of those soldiers 
are going to have to participate in counterintelligence activities that 
are covert and personal, something from which we have shied away as a 
society. We are going to need to commit significant resources to this.
  In the area of apprehension, we need to get more coordination between 
our Nation and those other nations that should be helping us so that 
when individuals whom we know are threatening us or some other 
democratic government are on the move, when those individuals are 
planning, we have the capacity to apprehend them. This means 
significantly increasing the efforts of the FBI in reaching across 
international boundaries, something our committee has tried to do, 
something to which former Director Freeh made a major commitment: the 
expansion basically of the overseas activities of our premier and key 
law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  Most importantly, we need to get coordination within our own house, 
not only in the area of apprehension but, even more importantly, in the 
area of response. We have watched what has happened in New York. We 
congratulate the city of New York, the State of New York, and the 
Federal people who are on the ground. An extraordinary effort and a 
heroic and courageous effort has been undertaken.
  The fact is that within our own Federal agencies we have considerable 
overlap, inconsistency, and lack of command and control.
  Our committee has suggested, on innumerable occasions, that we 
centralize control over counter terrorism activity and, specifically, 
response activity and consequence management, both in FEMA and in the 
Attorney General's office. We have to have budgetary line-item 
operational personnel control. There are 46 agencies in this Government 
today that have some level of responsibility to counter terrorism. The 
overlapping confusion of purpose is dramatic.
  As the hearings showed--which I chaired, along with Senator Stevens 
and Senator Warner and Senator Shelby from the Intelligence Committee; 
the first tripartite hearing of that nature, where we had every major

[[Page S9302]]

agency come before us to discuss their role--we saw that unquestionably 
there is confusion.
  This has to be sorted out. One way to sort it out we will have a 
chance to vote on tomorrow in the Commerce-State-Justice bill when we 
approve a Deputy Attorney General whose sole purpose will be the 
coordination of counterterrorism activity across agency lines. That 
must be done.
  We were not fortunate, of course, but the fact that this occurred in 
New York, a city that is extraordinarily well prepared, I am sure, 
saved many lives. The next event we do not know where it will occur, 
and we need to be ready.
  The last issue we must address is, who do we respond against? It is 
very obvious that we are dealing with people who are fundamentally 
evil. We have, as a nation, confronted such people in the past, but 
they have been sponsored by a nation, whether it was Adolf Hitler or 
the forces of Japan during World War II. But today there is an 
amorphousness to the threat which is hard to identify. The people who 
have committed this act are, for most purposes, religious fanatics, it 
would appear. They are driven by a cause for which they are willing to 
give their life and take innocent lives in order to make their point. 
That is a threat that is extraordinarily difficult to overcome.

  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. But we must be careful, as a nation, as we hunt these 
people down--and we have to do that--and as we seek retribution against 
anyone who will have supported them, that we not cast our net so wide 
that we catch nations which do not threaten us and people who are not 
our enemies.
  We must be careful to use the rule of law so that we do not abandon 
what has made us great in order to confront this type of evil. We are a 
nation which is built on openness and law, and it would be a mistake if 
we abandon it as we attempt to pursue these individuals.
  No rock must be left unturned to find them; it is clear they live 
under rocks. But in that process, let us not paint with a brush that 
causes us to create enemies that do not exist today. Let us also not 
act in a way that creates martyrs of those people who would also act in 
this way.
  This is a time that will test America. America has been tested before 
and we have met it. We shall certainly be resilient in the face of this 
test.
  I appreciate the courtesy of the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Akaka). The Senator from Michigan is 
recognized.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we be allowed 
to proceed--the two of us--for 2 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, through our rage at the terrorist attacks 
on our people and our free institutions shines a focused determination 
to recover our loved ones and friends who are still lost, and to assist 
their loved ones to cope with the devastating void into which they have 
been plunged.
  Our fury at those who attack innocence is matched by our united 
determination to protect our citizens from more terror and by our 
resolve to track down, to root out, and to relentlessly pursue 
terrorists and those who would shelter or harbor them.
  Last night, at the Pentagon, I joined Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, 
Senator Warner, and General Shelton in sharing that determination with 
the American people. That resolve is reflected by the fact that the 
Pentagon is functioning and the men and women who work there are 
assisting the heroic recovery efforts, although a few feet away loved 
ones and friends are still missing or presumed to have been killed, and 
while the smoke of the savagery is still permeating the Pentagon.
  The President, last night, spoke for all Americans and all civilized 
people everywhere about his commitment to recover, to deter, and then 
to root out and destroy the terrorists.
  Debate is an inherent part of democracy. And while our democratic 
institutions are stronger than any terrorist effort to shake them, in 
one regard we operate differently in times of national emergency. We 
set aside our differences to join forces together, with decent people 
everywhere, to seek out and defeat a common enemy of the civilized 
world.
  Our unity is unshakable, and, God willing, we will persevere and 
prevail.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________