[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 115 (Thursday, September 12, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8521-S8535]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     HOMELAND SECURITY ACT OF 2002

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the hour of 12 noon 
having arrived, the Senate will now resume consideration of H.R. 5005, 
which the clerk will report by title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 5005) to establish the Department of Homeland 
     Security, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Lieberman Amendment No. 4471, in the nature of a 
     substitute.
       Thompson/Warner Amendment No. 4513 (to Amendment No. 4471), 
     to strike title II, establishing the National Office for 
     Combating Terrorism, and title III, developing the National 
     Strategy for Combating Terrorism and Homeland Security 
     Response for detection, prevention, protection, response, and 
     recover to counter terrorist threats.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
South Carolina is recognized to offer an amendment.


                Amendment No. 4533 To Amendment No. 4471

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hollings] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 4533 to amendment No. 4471.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

    (Purpose: To modify the membership and advisors of the National 
                           Security Council)

       At the end of subtitle D of title I, add the following;

     SEC. 173. MODIFICATION OF MEMBERSHIP AND ADVISORS OF NATIONAL 
                   SECURITY COUNCIL.

       (a) Members.--Subsection (a) of section 101 of the National 
     Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 402) is amended--
       (1) in the fourth undesignated paragraph, by redesignating 
     clauses (1) through (6) as subparagraphs (A) through (G), 
     respectively;
       (2) by designating the undesignated paragraphs as 
     paragraphs (1) through (4), respectively; and
       (3) in paragraph (4), as so designated--
       (A) by striking subparagraphs (E) and (F) and inserting the 
     following new subparagraphs:
       ``(E) the Attorney General;
       ``(F) the Secretary of Homeland Security; and''; and
       (B) in subparagraph (G), as so redesignated, by striking 
     ``the Chairman of the Munitions Board,'' and all that follows 
     and inserting ``to serve at the pleasure of the President.''.
       (b) Advisors.--That section is further amended--
       (1) by redesignating subsections (g) through (j) and 
     subsection (i), as added by section 301 of the International 
     Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-292; 112 Stat. 
     2800), as subsections (i) through (m), respectively;
       (2) by transferring subsection (l) (relating to the 
     participation of the Director of Central Intelligence on the 
     National Security Council), as so redesignated, to appear 
     after subsection (f) and redesignating such subsection, as so 
     transferred, as subsection (g); and
       (3) by inserting after subsection (g), as so transferred 
     and redesignated, the following new subsections:
       ``(h) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation 
     may, in the performance of the Director's duties as the head 
     of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and subject to the 
     direction of the President, attend and participate in 
     meetings of the National Security Council.''

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, will the Senator withhold for a 
parliamentary inquiry?
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have been speaking to the manager of the 
bill, Senator Lieberman. We have two amendments pending. Senator 
Thompson opposes the Hollings amendment. It would seem that the Senator 
from Tennessee should have one-half hour in opposition to that 
amendment. Senator Lieberman opposes the Thompson amendment. He should 
have one-half hour in opposition to that. If the two managers agree 
with that, we should have that in the form of an order so somebody can 
designate the time on it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is the understanding of the Chair.
  The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Chair.
  This amendment is so simple that it becomes suspicious, in a sense. 
All I amend here is the National Security Council so as to include the 
Attorney General, the future Secretary of Homeland Security, and the 
Director of the

[[Page S8522]]

FBI in an advisory position similar to the CIA as presently included in 
the 1947 law. The reason for this, of course, is to get not only the 
responsibility of the Council fixed, but more particularly to realize 
now that domestic threats are far greater than any international 
threats. I don't believe Russia is going to attack us. I don't think 
China is going to attack us. I don't think Saddam, after all he has 
heard about us attacking him, is going to attack us, except perhaps 
maybe overseas but not the homeland. But homeland security must be 
emphasized.
  Let me refer immediately to that section of the 1947 act signed by 
President Harry Truman on July 26, 1947. I quote:

       The functioning of the Council shall be to advise the 
     President with respect to the integration of domestic, 
     foreign, and military policies relating to the national 
     security so as to enable the military services and the other 
     departments and agencies of the government to cooperate more 
     effectively in matters involving the national security.

  In other words, the function of joining all the dots is with the 
National Security Council.
  You have all these entities now, here with a new one, to take certain 
analyses: the Department of Homeland Security. But you still have the 
CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency. You have intelligence 
sections of the State Department. They are all over the Government; 
Intelligence Committees within the Congress, and everything else like 
that. Wherein is the responsibility fixed to join the dots?
  Harry Truman said it best in 1947. He said: ``The buck stops here.'' 
So my particular amendment is to fix that responsibility, and assist 
the President, so there would be no misunderstanding.
  Incidentally, only the President of the United States can change this 
culture of the so-called ``need to know.'' I speak advisedly. I was in 
the intelligence game back in the 1950s. I was a member of the Hoover 
Commission. We investigated the CIA, the FBI, the Army, Navy, Air Force 
intelligence, the Defense Department, the Secret Service, the Q 
clearance, the atomic energy intelligence, and all the other functions.
  I will never forget, in October of 1962, I got a call from my friend 
who would later operate this desk as a Senator, Bobby Kennedy. Bobby 
said: I would like to get that report from you with respect to this 
Cuban missile crisis, and the background on it. I turned over my 
report, my particular one. I never have gotten it back.
  But, in any event, the glaring error that persists this minute is 
that there are no joining of the dots, people are not talking to each 
other. Intelligence has gone like economics and trade--globalization, 
globalization. I cannot emphasize that too much in the little bit of 
time that is given me.
  Immediately after 9/11 the CIA, the FBI, the various intelligence 
agencies said: Oh, this was a surprise. They could know nothing about a 
plane going into a building.
  Let me talk about terrorism and give you a dateline:
  The bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983 by the 
Islamic Jihad; the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in October 
1983, also by the Islamic terrorists; the Hezbollah restaurant bombing 
in April 1984; the Naples USO attack in April 1988; the attempted Iraqi 
attacks on U.S. posts on January 18 and 19 of 1991; the World Trade 
Center bombing in February of 1993; the attempted assassination of 
President Bush by Iraqi agents in April of 1993; the attack on U.S. 
diplomats in Pakistan in March of 1995; the Khobar Towers bombing in 
June of 1996; the U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es 
Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998; the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October of 
2000; and the terrorist attacks on, of course, September 11. And they 
have not stopped. We have the car bombing outside the U.S. consulate in 
Karachi, Pakistan, in June of 2002.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this document be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                           Terrorism Timeline

       Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut, April 18, 1983: Sixty-
     three people, including the CIA's Middle East director, were 
     killed, and 120 were injured in a 400-pound suicide truck-
     bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. The 
     Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
       Bombing of Marine Barracks, Beirut, October 23, 1983: 
     Simultaneous suicide truck-bomb attacks were made on American 
     and French compounds in Beirut, Lebanon. A 12,000-pound bomb 
     destroyed the U.S. compound, killing 242 Americans, while 58 
     French troops were killed when a 400-pound device destroyed a 
     French base. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
       Hizballah Restaurant Bombing, April 12, 1984: Eighteen U.S. 
     servicemen were killed, and 83 people were injured in a bomb 
     attack on a restaurant near a U.S. Air Force Base in 
     Torrejon, Spain. Responsibility was claimed by Hizballah.
       Naples USO Attack, April 14, 1988: The Organization of 
     Jihad Brigades exploded a car bomb outside a USO Club in 
     Naples, Italy, killing one U.S. sailor.
       Attempted Iraqi Attacks on U.S. Posts, January 18-19, 1991: 
     Iraqi agents planted bombs at the U.S. Ambassador to 
     Indonesia's home residence at the USIS library in Manila.
       World Trade Center Bombing, February 26, 1993: The World 
     Trade Center in New York City was badly damaged when a car 
     bomb planted by Islamic terrorists explodes in an underground 
     garage. The bomb left six people dead and 1,000 injured. The 
     men carrying out the attack were followers of Umar and Abd 
     al-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric who preached in the New York 
     City area.
       Attempted Assassination of President Bush by Iraqi Agents, 
     April 14, 1993: The Iraqi intelligence service attempted to 
     assassinate former U.S. President George Bush during a visit 
     to Kuwait. In retaliation, the U.S. launched a cruise missile 
     attack 2 months later on the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
       Attack on U.S. Diplomats in Pakistan, March 8, 1995: Two 
     unidentified gunmen killed two U.S. diplomats and wounded a 
     third in Karachi, Pakistan.
       Khobar Towers Bombing, June 25, 1996: A fuel truck carrying 
     a bomb exploded outside the U.S. military's Khobar Towers 
     housing facility in Dharhran, killing 19 U.S. military 
     personnel and wounding 515 persons, including 240 U.S. 
     personnel. Several groups claimed responsibility for the 
     attack.
       U.S. Embassy Bombings in East Africa, August 7, 1998: A 
     bomb exploded at the rear entrance of the U.S. embassy in 
     Nairobi, Kenya, killing 12 U.S. citizens, 32 Foreign Service 
     Nationals (FSNs), and 247 Kenyan citizens. About 5,000 
     Kenyans, six U.S. citizens, and 13 FSNs were injured. The 
     U.S. embassy building sustained extensive structural damage. 
     Almost simultaneously, a bomb detonated outside the U.S. 
     embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing seven FSNs and 
     three Tanzanian citizens, and injuring one U.S. citizen and 
     76 Tanzanians. The explosion caused major structural damage 
     to the U.S. embassy facility. The U.S. Government held Usama 
     Bin Ladin responsible.
       Attack on U.S.S. Cole, October 12, 2000: In Aden, Yemen, a 
     small dingy carrying explosives rammed the destroyer U.S.S. 
     Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. Supporters 
     of Usama Bin Ladin were suspected.
       Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Homeland, September 11, 2001: Two 
     hijacked airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World 
     Trade Center. Soon thereafter, the Pentagon was struck by a 
     third hijacked plane. A fourth hijacked plane, suspected to 
     be bound for a high-profile target in Washington, crashed 
     into a field in southern Pennsylvania. More than 5,000 U.S. 
     citizens and other nationals were killed as a result of these 
     acts. President Bush and Cabinet officials indicated that 
     Usama Bin Laden was the prime suspect and that they 
     considered the United States in a state of war with 
     international terrorism. In the aftermath of the attacks, the 
     United States formed the Global Coalition Against Terrorism.
       Car Bombing outside U.S. Consulate, June 14, 2002: A 
     suicide bomber drives a car filled with explosives into a 
     guard post outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, 
     killing 11 Pakistanis and injuring at least 45 people, 
     including one U.S. Marine who is slightly wounded by flying 
     debris.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Now, they say: Well, Senator, you point all those 
things out. But, after all, we didn't know anything about a plane going 
into a building.
  Well, in December 1994, the al-Qaida hijacked an Air France plane 
that was headed into the Eiffel Tower. Who has not heard of flying a 
plane into a structure?
  In 1995, the CIA was hot on the Philippines and thwarted the blowup 
or the crashing of eight planes at one particular time. They learned of 
the plan to do what? To crash a plane into the CIA building. That was 
back 6 years before 9/11.
  And then, in January of 2000, in Malaysia, there was an article with 
respect to al-Qaida. Let me read from the article. I quote:

       At the time, the men had no idea that they were being 
     closely watched--or that the CIA already knew some of their 
     names. A few days earlier, U.S. intelligence had gotten wind 
     of the Qaeda gathering. Special Branch, Malaysia's security 
     service, agreed to follow and photograph the suspected 
     terrorists. They snapped pictures of the men sightseeing and 
     ducking into cybercafes to check Arabic Web sites. What 
     happened next, some U.S. counterterrorism officials say, may 
     be

[[Page S8523]]

     the most puzzling, and devastating, intelligence in the 
     critical months before September 11. A few days after the 
     Kuala Lumpur meeting . . . the CIA tracked one of the 
     terrorists, Nawaf Alhazmi as he flew from the meeting to Los 
     Angeles. Agents discovered that another of the men, Khalid 
     Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple-entry visa that 
     allowed him to enter and leave the United States as he 
     pleased. (They later learned that he had in fact arrived in 
     the United States on the same flight as Alhazmi.)
       Yet astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this 
     information. Agency officials didn't tell the INS, which 
     could have turned them away at the border. Nor did they 
     notify the FBI, which could have covertly tracked them to 
     find out their mission. Instead, during the year and nine 
     months after the CIA identified them as terrorists, Alhazmi 
     and Almihdhar lived openly in the United States, using their 
     real names, obtaining driver's licenses, opening bank 
     accounts and enrolling in flight schools--until the morning 
     of September 11, when they walked aboard American Airlines 
     Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed 
in the Record, in addition to another article of this particular week 
where we had an informant from the CIA who was staying with them all 
the time. And when he heard that they were the names, he said: Oh, I 
knew them. Yeah, they were terrorists and everything else.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From Newsweek, June 10, 2002]

                      The Hijackers We Let Escape

                (By Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman)

       The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to a Qaeda summit 
     in Malaysia in January 2000, then looked on as they re-
     entered America and began preparations for September 11. Why 
     didn't somebody try to stop them? Inside what may be the 
     worst intelligence failure of all. A Newsweek exclusive.
       Kuala Lumpur is an easy choice if you're looking to lie 
     low. Clean and modern, with reliable telephones, banks and 
     Internet service, the Malaysian city is a painless flight 
     from most world capitals--and Muslim visitors don't need 
     visas to enter the Islamic country. That may explain why Al 
     Qaeda chose the sprawling metropolis for a secret planning 
     summit in early January 2000. Tucked away in a posh suburban 
     condominium overlooking a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, 
     nearly a dozen of Osama bin Laden's trusted followers, posing 
     as tourists, plotted future terrorist strikes against the 
     United States.
       At the time, the men had no idea that they were being 
     closely watched--or that the CIA already knew some of their 
     names. A few days earlier, U.S. intelligence had gotten wind 
     of the Qaeda gathering. Special Branch, Malaysia's security 
     service, agreed to follow and photograph the suspected 
     terrorists. They snapped pictures of the men sightseeing and 
     ducking into cybercafes to check Arabic Web sites. What 
     happened next, some U.S. counterterrorism officials say, may 
     be the most puzzling, and devastating, intelligence in the 
     critical months before September 11. A few days after the 
     Kuala Lumpur meeting, Newsweek has learned, the CIA tracked 
     one of the terrorists, Nawaf Alhazmi, as he flew from the 
     meeting to Los Angeles. Agents discovered that another of the 
     men, Khalid Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple-entry 
     visa that allowed him to enter and leave the United States as 
     he pleased. (They later learned that he had in fact arrived 
     in the United States on the same flight as Alhazmi.)
       Yet astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this 
     information. Agency officials didn't tell the INS, which 
     could have turned them away at the border, nor did they 
     notify the FBI, which could have covertly tracked them to 
     find out their mission. Instead, during the year and nine 
     months after the CIA identified them as terrorists, Alhazmi 
     and Almihdhar lived openly in the United States, using their 
     real names, obtaining driver's licenses, opening bank 
     accounts and enrolling in flight schools--until the morning 
     of September 11, when they walked aboard American Airlines 
     Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.
       Unitl now, the many questions about intelligence 
     shortcomings leading up to the attacks have focused on the 
     FBI's clear failure to connect various vague clues that might 
     have put them on the trail of the terrorists. Last week, in 
     the aftermath of Minnesota agent Coleen Rowley's scathing 
     letter ripping the FBI for ignoring warnings from the field, 
     Director Robert Mueller announced a series of reforms aimed 
     at modernizing the bureau.
       All along, however, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center--base 
     camp for the agency's war on bin Laden--was sitting on 
     information that could have led federal agents right to the 
     terrorists' doorstep. Almihdhar and Alhazmi, parading across 
     America in plain sight, could not have been easier to find. 
     Newsweek has learned that when Almihdhar's visa expired, the 
     State Department, not knowing any better, simply issued him a 
     new one in June 2001--even though by then the CIA had linked 
     him to one of the suspected bombers of the USS Cole in 
     October 2000. The two terrorists' frequent meetings with the 
     other September 11 perpetrators could have provided federal 
     agents with a road map to the entire cast of 9-11 hijackers. 
     But the FBI didn't know it was supposed to be looking for 
     them until three weeks before the strikes, when CIA Director 
     George Tenet, worried an attack was imminent, ordered agency 
     analysts to review their files. It was only then, on Aug. 23, 
     2001, that the agency sent out an all-points bulletin, 
     launching law-enforcement agents on a frantic and futile 
     search for the two men. Why didn't the CIA share its 
     information sooner? ``We could have done a lot better, that's 
     for sure,'' one top intelligence official told Newsweek.
       The CIA's belated and reluctant admission now makes it 
     impossible to avoid the question that law-enforcement 
     officials have tried to duck for weeks: could we have stopped 
     them? Tenet has vigorously defended his agency's performance 
     in the months before the attacks. In February he told a 
     Senate panel that he was ``proud'' of the CIA's record. He 
     insisted that the terrorist strikes were not due to a 
     ``failure of attention, and discipline, and focus, and 
     consistent effort--and the American people need to understand 
     that.'' Yet last week intelligence officials acknowledged 
     that the agency made at least one mistake: failing to notify 
     the State Department and the INS, so the men could have been 
     stopped at the border.
       CIA officials, who have been preparing for the start of 
     Senate intelligence committee hearings this week, seem at a 
     loss to explain how this could have happened. The CIA is 
     usually loath to share information with other government 
     agencies, for fear of compromising ``sources and methods.'' 
     CIA officials also say that at the time Almihdhar and Alhazmi 
     entered the country in January 2000, they hadn't yet been 
     identified as bin Laden terrorists--despite their attendance 
     at the Malaysia meeting. ``It wasn't known for sure that they 
     were Al Qaeda bad-guy operators,'' says one official.
       CIA officials also point out that FBI agents assigned to 
     the CIA's Counterterrorism Center were at least informed 
     about the Malaysia meeting and the presence of Almihdhar and 
     Alhazmi at the time it occurred. But FBI officials protest 
     that they only recently learned about the most crucial piece 
     of information: that the CIA knew Alhazmi was in the country, 
     and that Almihdhar could enter at will. ``That was 
     unforgivable,'' said one senior FBI official. This led to a 
     series of intense and angry encounters among U.S. officials 
     in the weeks after September 11. At one White House meeting 
     last fall, Wayne Griffith, a top State Department consular 
     official, was so furious that his office hadn't been told 
     about the two men that he blew up at a CIA agent. (Griffith 
     declined to comment.)
       To bolster their case, FBI officials have now prepared a 
     detailed chart showing how agents could have uncovered the 
     terrorist plot if they had learned about Almihdhar and 
     Alhazmi sooner, given their frequent contact with at least 
     five of the other hijackers. ``There's no question we could 
     have tied all 19 hijackers together,'' the official said.
       It was old-fashioned interrogation and eavesdropping that 
     first led U.S. intelligence agents to the Qaeda plotters. In 
     the summer of 1998, only a couple of weeks after bin Laden 
     operatives truck-bombed two U.S. Embassies in Africa, the FBI 
     got a break: one of the Nairobi bombers had been caught. 
     Muhammad Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, a young Saudi from a wealthy 
     family who became a fierce bin Laden loyalist, was supposed 
     to have killed himself in the blast. Instead, he got out of 
     the truck at the last moment and fled. He was arrested in a 
     seedy Nairobi hotel, waiting for his compatriots to 
     smuggle him out of the country.
       Questioned by the FBI, al-Owhali made a detailed 
     confession. Among the information he gave agents was the 
     telephone number of a Qaeda safe house in Yemen, owned by a 
     bin Laden loyalist named Ahmed Al-Hada (who, it turns out, 
     was also Almihdhar's father-in-law).
       U.S. intelligence began listening in on the telephone line 
     of the Yemen house, described in government documents as a 
     Qaeda ``logistics center,'' where terrorist strikes--
     including the Africa bombings and later the Cole attack in 
     Yemen--were planned. Operatives around the world phoned Al-
     Hada with information, which was then relayed to bin Laden in 
     the Afghan mountains.
       In late December 1999, intercepted conversations on the 
     Yemen phone tipped off agents to the January 2000 Kuala 
     Lumpur summit, and to the names of at least two of its 
     participants: Almihdhar and Alhazmi. The condo where the 
     meeting took place was a weekend getaway owned by Yazid 
     Sufaat, a U.S.-educated microbiologist who had become a 
     radical Islamist and bin Laden follower. He was arrested last 
     December when he returned from Afghanistan, where he had 
     served as a field medic for the Taliban. Sufaat's lawyer says 
     his client let the men stay at his place because ``he 
     believes in allowing his property to be used for charitable 
     purposes.'' But he claims Sufaat had no idea that they were 
     terrorists.
       After the meeting, Malaysian intelligence continued to 
     watch the condo at the CIA's request, but after a while the 
     agency lost interest. Had agents kept up the surveillance, 
     they might have observed another beneficiary of Sufaat's 
     charity: Zacarias Moussaoui, who stayed there on his way to 
     the United States later that year. The Malaysians say they 
     were surprised by the CIA's

[[Page S8524]]

     lack of interest following the Kuala Lumpur meeting. ``We 
     couldn't fathom it, really,'' Rais Yatim, Malaysia's Legal 
     Affairs minister, told Newsweek. ``There was no show of 
     concern.''
       Immediately after the meeting, Alhazmi boarded a plane to 
     Bangkok, where he met a connecting flight to Los Angeles on 
     Jan. 15, 2000. Since the CIA hadn't told the State Department 
     to put his name on the watch list of suspected terrorists, or 
     told the INS to be on the lookout for him, he breezed through 
     the airport and into America. Almihdhar was also on the 
     plane, though CIA agents did not know it at the time.
       The CIA is forbidden from spying on people inside the 
     United States. Had it followed standard procedure and passed 
     the baton to the FBI once they crossed the border, agents 
     would have discovered that Almihdhar and Alhazmi weren't just 
     visiting California, they were already living there. The men 
     had moved into an apartment in San Diego two months before 
     the Kuala Lumpur meeting.
       The CIA's reluctance to divulge what it knew is especially 
     odd because, as 2000 dawned, U.S. law-enforcement agencies 
     were on red alert, certain that a bin Laden strike somewhere 
     in the world could come at any moment. There was certainly 
     reason to believe bin Laden was sending men here to do grave 
     harm. Just a few weeks before, an alert Customs inspector had 
     caught another Qaeda terrorist, Ahmed Ressam, as he tried to 
     cross the Canadian border in a rental car packed with 
     explosives. His mission: to blow up Los Angeles airport. 
     Perhaps agency officials let down their guard after warnings 
     about a Millennium Eve attack never materialized. Whatever 
     the reason, Alhazmi and Almihdhar fell off their radar 
     screen.
       Free to do as they pleased, the 25-year-old Alhazmi and 26-
     year-old Almihdhar went about their terrorist training in 
     southern California. They told people they were buddies from 
     Saudi Arabia hoping to learn English and become commercial 
     airline pilots. The cleanshaven Alhazmi and Almihdhar played 
     soccer in the park with other Muslim men and prayed the 
     required five times a day at the area mosque. They bought 
     season passes to Sea World and dined on fast food, leaving 
     the burger wrappers strewn around their sparsely furnished 
     apartment. And, despite their religious convictions, the 
     men frequented area strip clubs. Neighbors found it odd 
     that the men would rarely use the telephones in their 
     apartment. Instead, they routinely went outside to make 
     calls on mobile phones.
       People who knew the men recall that they couldn't have been 
     more different. Alhazmi was outgoing and cheerful, making 
     friends easily. He once posted an ad online seeking a Mexican 
     mail-order bride, and worked diligently to improve his 
     English. By contrast, Almihdhar was dark and brooding, and 
     expressed disgust with American culture. One evening, he 
     chided a Muslim acquaintance for watching ``immoral'' 
     American television. ``If you're so religious, why don't you 
     have facial hair?'' the friend shot back, Almihdhar patted 
     him condescendingly on the knee. ``You'll know someday, 
     brother,'' he said.
       Neither man lost sight of the primary mission: learning to 
     fly airplanes. Almihdhar and Alhazmi took their flight 
     lessons seriously, but they were impossible to teach. 
     Instructor Rick Garza at Sorbi's Flying Club gave both men a 
     half-dozen classes on the ground before taking them up in a 
     single-engine Cessna in May. ``They were only interested in 
     flying big jets,'' Garza recalls. But Garza soon gave up on 
     his hapless students. ``I just thought they didn't have the 
     aptitude,'' he says. ``They were like Dumb and Dumber.''
       Had law-enforcement agents been looking for Alhazmi and 
     Almihdhar at the time, they could have easily tracked them 
     through bank records. In September 2000, Alhazami opened a 
     $3,000 checking account at a Bank of America branch. The men 
     also used their real names on driver's licenses, Social 
     Security cards and credit cards. When Almihdhar bought a dark 
     blue 1988 Toyota Corolla for $3,000 cash, he registered it in 
     his name. (He later signed the registration over to Alhazmi, 
     whose name was on the papers when the car was found at Dulles 
     International Airport on September 11.) Of course, agents 
     might have used another resource to pinpoint their location: 
     the phone book, Page 13 of the 2000-2001 Pacific Bell White 
     Pages contains a listing for ``alhazmi Nawaf M 6401 Mount Ada 
     Rd. xxxxxxxxxxxx.''
       By then, though, the case seems to have gotten lost deep in 
     the CIA's files. But Almihdhar's name and face surfaced yet 
     again, in the aftermath of the October 2000 bombing of the 
     Cole. Within days of the attack, a team of FBI agents flew to 
     Yemen to investigate. They soon began closing in on suspects. 
     One was a man called Tawfiq bin Attash, a.k.a. Khallad, a 
     fierce, one-legged Qaeda fighter. When analysts at the CIA's 
     Counterterrorism Center in Langley, Va., pulled out the file 
     on Khallad, they discovered pictures of him taken at the 
     Kuala Lumpur meeting. In one of the shots, he is standing 
     next to Almihdhar.
       If, as the CIA now claims, it wasn't certain that Almihdhar 
     had terrorist connections, it certainly knew it now. And yet 
     the agency still did nothing and notified no one.
       In mid- to late 2000, Almihdhar left San Diego for good. It 
     appears that he spent the next several months bouncing around 
     the Middle East and Southeast Asia. While he was away, his 
     visa expired--a potentially big problem. Yet since the CIA 
     was still not sharing information about Almihdhar's Qaeda 
     connections, the State Department's Consular Office in Saudi 
     Arabia simply rubber-stamped him a new one.
       Almihdhar returned to the United States on July 4, 2001, 
     flying into New York. He spent at least some of the time 
     leading up to September traveling around the East Coast and, 
     at least once, meeting with Mohamed Atta and other September 
     11 plotters in Las Vegas.
       Meanwhile, Alhazmi, having flunked out of two California 
     flight schools, decided to try his luck in Phoenix in early 
     2001. There he hooked up with Qaeda terrorist in 
     training, Hani Hanjour, who eventually piloted Flight 77. 
     In April 2001 Alhazmi headed east, and was pulled over for 
     speeding. Oklahoma State Trooper C. L. Parkins ran 
     Alhazmi's California driver's license through the 
     computer, checked to see if the car was stolen and made 
     sure there wasn't a warrant out for Alhazmi's arrest. When 
     nothing came up, he issued the terrorist two tickets, 
     totaling $138, and sent him on his way. (The tickets were 
     not discovered until after 9-11.) Like Almihdhar, Alhazmi 
     eventually went east, spending time in New Jersey and 
     Maryland. On Aug. 25, he used his credit card to purchase 
     two tickets for Flight 77.
       Two days earlier, CIA officials finally, and frantically, 
     awoke to their mistake. That summer, as U.S. intelligence 
     picked up repeated signals that bin Laden was about to launch 
     a major assault, Tenet ordered his staff to scrub the 
     agency's files, looking for anything that might help them 
     thwart whatever was coming. It didn't take long to discover 
     the file on Almihdhar and Alhazmi. CIA officials checked with 
     the INS, only to discover that Almihdhar had traveled out of 
     the country, and was allowed back in on his new visa. On Aug. 
     23, the CIA sent out an urgent cable, labeled immediate, to 
     the State Department, Customs, INS and FBI, telling them to 
     put the two men on the terrorism watch list.
       The FBI began an aggressive, ``full field'' investigation. 
     Agents searched all nine Marriott hotels in New York City, 
     the place Almihdhar had listed as his ``destination'' on his 
     immigration forms in July. They also searched hotels in Los 
     Angeles, where the two men originally entered the country 
     back in 1999. But it's unclear whether agents scoured public 
     records for driver's licenses and phone numbers or tried to 
     track plane-ticket purchases. In preparation for their 
     mission, the men had gone to ground.
       Now, amid the escalating blame wars in Washington, federal 
     agents are left to wonder how different things might have 
     been if they'd started that search nearly two years before. 
     The FBI's claim that it could have unraveled the plot by 
     watching Alhazmi and Almihdhar, and connecting the dots 
     between them and the other terrorists, seems compelling.
       The links would not have been difficult to make: Alhazmi 
     met up with Hanjour, the Flight 77 pilot, in Phoenix in late 
     2000; six months later, in May 2001, the two men showed up in 
     New Jersey and opened shared bank accounts with two other 
     plotters, Ahmed Alghamdi and Majed Moqed. The next month, 
     Alhazmi helped two other hijackers, Salem Alhazmi (his 
     brother) and Abdulaziz Alomari, open their own bank accounts. 
     Two months after that, in August 2001, the trail would have 
     led to the pilot's ringleader, Mohamed Atta, who had bought 
     plane tickets for Moqed and Alomari. What's more, at least 
     several of the hijackers had traveled to Las Vegas for a 
     meeting in summer 2001, just weeks before the attacks. ``It's 
     like three degrees of separation,'' insists an FBI official.
       But would even that have been enough? There's no doubt that 
     Alhazmi and Almihdhar could have been stopped from coming 
     into the country if the CIA had shared its information with 
     other agencies. But then two other hijackers could have been 
     sent to take their place. And given how little the FBI 
     understood Al Qaeda's way of operating--and how it managed to 
     mishandle the key clues it did have--it's possible that 
     agents could have identified all 19 hijackers and still not 
     figured out what they were up to. That, one former FBI 
     official suggests, could have led to the cruelest September 
     11 scenario of all: ``We would have had the FBI watching them 
     get on the plane in Boston and calling Los Angeles,'' he 
     says. `` `Could you pick them up on the other end?' ''
                                  ____


                    [From Newsweek, Sept. 16, 2002]

               The Informant Who Lived With the Hijackers

                  (By Michael Isikoff with Jamie Reno)

       At first, FBI director Bob Mueller insisted there was 
     nothing the bureau could have done to penetrate the 9-11 
     plot. That account has been modified over time--and now may 
     change again. Newsweek has learned that one of the bureau's 
     informants had a close relationship with two of the 
     hijackers: he was their roommate.
       The connection, just discovered by congressional 
     investigators, has stunned some top counterterrorism 
     officials and raised new concerns about the information-
     sharing among U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. 
     The two hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were 
     hardly unknown to the intelligence community. The CIA was 
     first alerted to them in January 2000, when the two Saudi 
     nationals showed up at a Qaeda ``summit'' in Kuala Lumpur, 
     Malaysia. FBI officials have argued internally for months 
     that if the CIA had more quickly passed along everything it 
     knew about the two men, the bureau could have hunted them 
     down more aggressively.

[[Page S8525]]

       But both agencies can share in the blame. Upon leaving 
     Malaysia, Almihdhar and Alhazmi went to San Diego, where they 
     took flight-school lessons. In September 2000, the two moved 
     into the home of a Muslim man who had befriended them at the 
     local Islamic Center. The landlord regularly prayed with them 
     and even helped one open a bank account. He was also, sources 
     tell Newsweek, a ``tested'' undercover ``asset'' who had been 
     working closely with the FBI office in San Diego on terrorism 
     cases related to Hamas. A senior law-enforcement official 
     told Newsweek the informant never provided the bureau with 
     the names of his two houseguests from Saudi Arabia. Nor does 
     the FBI have any reason to believe the informant was 
     concealing their identities. (He could not be reached for 
     comment.) But the FBI concedes that a San Diego case agent 
     appears to have been at least aware that Saudi visitors were 
     renting rooms in the informant's house. (On one occasion, a 
     source says, the case agent called up the informant and was 
     told he couldn't talk because ``Khalid''--a reference to 
     Almidhdhar--was in the room.). I. C. Smith, a former top FBI 
     counterintelligence official, says the case agent should have 
     been keeping closer tabs on who his informant was 
     fraternizing with--if only to seek out the houseguests as 
     possible informants. ``They should have been asking, `Who are 
     these guys? What are they doing here?' This strikes me as a 
     lack of investigative curiosity.'' About six weeks after 
     moving into the house, Almidhdhar left town, explaining to 
     the landlord he was heading back to Saudi Arabia to see his 
     daughter. Alhazmi moved out at the end of 2000.
       In the meantime, the CIA was gathering more information 
     about just how potentially dangerous both men were. A few 
     months after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in 
     Yemen, CIA analysts discovered in their Malaysia file that 
     one of the chief suspects in the Cole attack--Tawfiq bin 
     Attash--was present at the ``summit'' and had been 
     photographed with Almihdhar and Alhazmi. But it wasn't 
     until Aug. 23, 2001, that the CIA sent out an urgent cable 
     to U.S. border and law-enforcement agencies identifying 
     the two men as ``possible'' terrorists. By then it was too 
     late. The bureau did not realize the San Diego connection 
     until a few days after 9-11, when the informant heard the 
     names of the Pentagon hijackers and called his case agent. 
     ``I know those guys,'' the informant purportedly said, 
     referring to Almihdhar and Alhazmi. ``They were my 
     roommates.''
       But the belated discovery has unsettled some members of the 
     joint House and Senate Intelligence Committees investigating 
     the 9-11 attacks. The panel is tentatively due to begin 
     public hearings as early as Sept. 18, racing to its end-of-
     the-year deadline. But some members are now worried that they 
     won't get to the bottom of what really happened by then. 
     Support for legislation creating a special blue-ribbon 
     investigative panel, similar to probes conducted after Pearl 
     Harbor and the Kennedy assassination, is increasing. Only 
     then, some members say, will the public learn whether more 9-
     11 secrets are buried in the government's files.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. So what you have, in January of 2000, is not only the 
informant, the CIA had the information. Again, like I said, they did 
not communicate it. The dots are never going to get joined. I can see 
poor Condoleezza Rice standing up and saying: We didn't have anything 
specific. We didn't have anything specific. She will never get anything 
specific. She will not get a phone call saying, ``We are coming,'' like 
we have already called Saddam with. We have told him, ``We are 
coming.'' But that is not the way the world works with the al-Qaida 
crowd.
  So right to the point, on July 10, 2001, the FBI learned about the 
Phoenix, AZ, flight school. A memo was sent to the FBI. But it stopped 
at midlevel--never communicated to the White House, never communicated 
to the CIA. Again, the dots not joined. I can tell you that right here 
and now.
  Here is a news story from July 21, 2001, before 9/11 of last year, in 
the Iraqi news. The name of that particular newspaper is Al-Nasiriya.
  Quoting from it:

       Bin Ladin has become a puzzle and a proof also, of the 
     inability of the American federalism and the CIA to uncover 
     the man and uncover his nest. The most advanced organizations 
     of the world cannot find the man and continues to go in 
     cycles in illusion and presuppositions.

  It refers to an exercise called ``How Do You Bomb the White House.'' 
They were planning it.
  Let me read this to all the colleagues here:

       The phenomenon of Bin Ladin is a healthy phenomenon in the 
     Arab spirit. It is a decision and a determination that the 
     stolen Arab self has come to realize after it got bored with 
     promises of its rulers; After it disgusted itself from their 
     abomination and their corruption, the man had to carry the 
     book of God . . . and write on some white paper ``If you are 
     unable to drive off the Marines from the Kaaba, I will do 
     so.'' It seems that they will be going away because the 
     revolutionary Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that 
     he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting.

  In other words, the World Trade Towers. Here, over a year ahead of 
time in the open press in Iraq, they are writing that this man is 
planning not only to bomb the White House, but where they are already 
hurting, the World Trade Towers.
  I ask unanimous consent to print this article in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   [From Al-Nasiriya, July 21, 2001]

              America, an Obsession Called Osama Bin Ladin

                        (By Naeem Abd Muhalhal)

       Osama Bin Ladin says that he took from the desert its 
     silence and its anger at the same time.
       He has learned how to harm America and has been able to do 
     it, for he gave a bad reputation to the Pentagon as being 
     weakened in more than one spot in the world. In order to 
     follow one step taken by Bin Ladin America has put to work 
     all its apparatus, its computers and its satellites just as 
     the governor cowboy of Texas has done. Bin Ladin's name has 
     been posted on all the internet sites and an amount of $5 
     million dollars has been awarded to anyone who could give any 
     information that would lead to the arrest of this lanky, 
     lightly bearded man. In this man's heart you'll find an 
     insistence, a strange determination that he will reach one 
     day the tunnels of the White House and will bomb it with 
     everything that is in it.
       We all know that every age has its revolutionary 
     phenomenon. In Mexico there was Zapata. In Bolivia there was 
     Che Guevara, during the seventies came out Marcos and the Red 
     Brigades in Italy, the Baader Meinhof Gang in Germany and 
     there was Leila Khaled the Palestinian woman and others. They 
     all appeared in violence and disappeared quietly. During the 
     nineties Bin Ladin came out in the open having been 
     completely overtaken in his mind by the robbery happening to 
     his country and its treasurers. For him it was the beginning 
     of the revolution. For this endeavor he mobilized everything 
     that he had of money, of investments and Sudan was his first 
     stop. Bin Ladin ended up in Afghanistan where his 
     revolutionary drive pushed this stubborn revolutionary to 
     plan very carefully, and in a very detailed manner, his stand 
     to push back the boastful American onslaught and to change 
     the American legend into a bubble of soap.
       Because Bin Ladin knows what causes pain to America, he 
     played America's game, just as an oppressed man entertains 
     itself with the thing oppressing him. He countered with the 
     language of dynamite and explosives in the city of Khobar and 
     destroyed two US embassies in Nairobi and Dar al Salaam.
       America says, admitting just like a bird in the midst of a 
     tornado, that Bin Ladin is behind the bombing of its 
     destroyer in Aden. The fearful series of events continues for 
     America and the terror within America gets to the point that 
     the Governor of Texas increases the amount of the award, just 
     as the stubbornness of the other man and his challenge 
     increases. This challenge makes it such that one of his 
     grandchildren comes from Jeddah traveling on the official 
     Saudi Arabia airlines and celebrates with him the marriage of 
     one of the daughters of his companions. Bin Ladin has become 
     a puzzle and a proof also, of the inability of the American 
     federalism and the C.I.A. to uncover the man and uncover his 
     nest. The most advanced organizations of the world cannot 
     find the man and continues to go in cycles in illusion and 
     presuppositions. They still hope that he could come out from 
     his nest one day, they hope that he would come out from his 
     hiding hole and one day they will point at him their missiles 
     and he will join Guevara, Hassan Abu Salama, Kamal Nasser, 
     Kanafani and others. The man responds with a thin smile and 
     replies to the correspondent from Al Jazeera that he will 
     continue to be the obsession and worry of America and the 
     Jews, and that even that night he will practice and work on 
     an exercise called ``How Do You Bomb the White House.'' And 
     because they know that he can get there, they have started to 
     go through their nightmares on their beds and the leaders 
     have had to wear their bulletproof vests.
       Meanwhile America has started to pressure the Taliban 
     movement so that it would hand them Bin Ladin, while he 
     continues to smile and still thinks seriously, with the 
     seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he 
     will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White 
     House . . .
       The phenomenon of Bin Ladin is a healthy phenomenon in the 
     Arab spirit. It is a decision and a determination that the 
     stolen Arab self has come to realize after it got bored with 
     promises of its rulers: After it disgusted itself from their 
     abomination and their corruption, the man had to carry the 
     book of God and the Kalashnikov and write on some off white 
     paper ``If you are unable to drive off the Marines from the 
     Kaaba, I will do so.'' It seems that they will be going away 
     because the revolutionary Bin Ladin is insisting very 
     convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is 
     already hurting. That the man will not be swayed by the plant 
     leaves of Whitman nor by the ``Adventures of Indiana Jones'' 
     and will curse the

[[Page S8526]]

     memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs. This 
     new awareness of the image that Bin Ladin has become gives 
     shape to the resting areas and stops for every Arab 
     revolutionary. It is the subject of our admiration here in 
     Iraq because it shares with us in a unified manner our 
     resisting stand, and just as he fixes his gaze on the Al Aqsa 
     we greet him. We hail his tears as they see the planes of the 
     Western world taking revenge against his heroic operations by 
     bombing the cities of Iraq . . .
       To Bin Ladin I say that revolution, the wings of a dove and 
     the bullet are all but one and the same thing in the heart of 
     a believer.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Then on August 15, just prior to September 11 of last 
year, we had Moussaoui arrested in Minnesota. He wanted to know how to 
fly a plane, but not how to take off in a plane. And the FBI's Coleen 
Rowley, from Minnesota, testified before the Congress that she had 
written a memo, and the way she summed it up, they could crash the 
plane into the World Trade Towers.
  Again, Mr. President, I could continue to go down the list, but we 
have this USA Today article of September 2 of this year, where the 
hijacker allegedly bragged what they were going to do on September 11. 
The year before the attacks, the Germans reported the particular 
terrorist saying that was exactly what they were going to do.
  And there is a Time magazine article of May 27 of this year that sums 
up how the United States missed all of the clues. We have seen all the 
particular articles, and now we have the amendment in to fix the 
problem.
  Let me just say a word about, and not in any criticism of our 
distinguished Director of the National Security Council, but 
Condoleezza Rice is about as steeped in domestic security as I am in 
foreign policy.
  You can't find anyone more qualified in foreign policy. This young 
lady graduated at 20 years of age Phi Beta Kappa from the University of 
Denver. Then she earned her master's at the University of Notre Dame a 
year later, when she was 21. At the age of 27, she received her 
doctorate from the School of International Studies at the University of 
Denver, and then in 1981 became a faculty member of Stanford University 
in foreign policy.
  So she has been steeped in that particular discipline all her life. 
Let me quote from her particular biography:

       The Bush administration has substantially restructured the 
     National Security Council during its first three weeks in 
     office, providing an early indication of how the new White 
     House plans to handle foreign policy.

  She cut the NSC staff by a third, reorganized it to emphasize defense 
strategy, national missile defense, and international economics.

       In a White House first, Rice has expanded her regular 
     meetings with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense 
     Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to include Treasury Secretary 
     Paul O'Neill.

  It also indicates:

       . . . Bush's desire to decrease U.S. involvement in the 
     Balkans and signal to Russia ``that this administration is 
     not going to treat Russia as a special case.'' Other notable 
     changes have been the elimination of the divisions handling 
     international environmental and health issues, and of the 
     NSC's communications and legislative offices.

  The reason I point this out is that prior to coming on board, the 
previous Director of the National Security Council, Sandy Berger, had a 
one-on-one meeting, telling Dr. Rice: Look, you are coming on board, 
and most of your time is going to be taken up with counterterrorism. 
There isn't any question about it. But what does she do? Instead, she 
takes action on everything that she knows about and she is absolutely 
authoritative in, but is not the need of the moment.
  My problem with this bill is that it doesn't include any of the 
agencies that had a failure on 9/11 in the proposed Department. The CIA 
failed. The FBI failed. The National Security Agency failed. On 
September 10, the NSA got a message in Arabic: Tomorrow is zero hour. 
But they didn't translate it from Arabic into English until September 
12. And then the National Security Council, limply standing there, not 
being informed of anything, just said: Well, they didn't give us 
anything specific.

  It is the National Security Council's function to bring all the 
elements together, the gathering of intelligence, the analysis of 
intelligence, the joining of dots, the fixing of responsibility. The 
buck stops here. That is what this simple amendment does.
  It puts the FBI Director on the Council. Now we have a domestic 
intelligence effort, something we never had. I met immediately with Bob 
Mueller. I have his particular budget. I gave him some $750 million to 
up-date his computers and synchronize them with the FAA and the 
Immigration Service, the Border Patrol, and everything else, so that we 
could have one-stop shopping on knowledge of any kind of a terrorist 
threat.
  We also gave him the money transfer of the funds last fall to 
institute his new Department of Domestic Intelligence. Now the Domestic 
Intelligence is supposed to give that over to the Department of 
Homeland Security. But the Homeland Department does not gather any 
intelligence. It only takes what it is given, and it only analyzes what 
is given and, in a sense, doesn't know what to ask for because they are 
not in the game. It is the same with the CIA. I can see right now a 
breakdown continuing between domestic and foreign intelligence.
  I have talked to Director Mueller on this particular score. He has 
hired experienced CIA personnel at the FBI to help him set it up as a 
Department of Domestic Intelligence. He says he is talking with the 
CIA. But he hasn't really gotten all the way down to his agents and 
directors talking at the State level. They have yet to talk to the 
chiefs of police. I know because we have had meetings with respect to 
port security. It will take time. It may take 5 years for this new 
Department to really get in gear and work correctly.
  But let me say here and now that we have to have this fixed. The only 
place I know to be able to fix it is with the President himself--and we 
have that type of President. That President is no nonsense. He wants to 
have on his desk timely reports on intelligence, just like he gets from 
Carl Rove, timely reports on politics. Let's give the emphasis and 
time--a little bit at least--to intelligence. Give me those timely 
reports. And that timely report has to be fused not just from the 
Department of Homeland Security, or the office, or the bureau, or 
whatever else they call Governor Ridge over there, but it has to be 
fused at the National Security Council level, with foreign 
intelligence.
  I am not for the President having to get his director over here 
confirmed by the Senate. I would favor the Thompson amendment. We don't 
want the National Security Council Director to come here and be 
confirmed. I think Governor Ridge, in contrast to Condoleezza Rice, 
knows law enforcement. He has been a Governor, been in Congress, been 
chief law enforcement officer of Pennsylvania. He knows domestic 
security, which is something that Dr. Rice has never been into until 9/
11. She will have a hard time learning at that level, unless she gets 
help.
  So I think Governor Ridge is an excellent individual in that White 
House, or wherever they put him, to help her begin to report. But she 
has to ultimately, as Director, fuse domestic with foreign 
intelligence, and all the other intelligence you might get from places 
like the Drug Enforcement Administration. The financing of terrorism is 
drugs. We know it. They have to follow the banks. She has to get 
intelligence from the Secretary of the Treasury. She has to work with 
all these particular entities, and the President doesn't have to take 
this volumes and volumes of intelligence reports and sit down and read 
all day. It has to be not only analyzed but prioritized. So it is right 
in front of him, what he has to give his attention to at that moment 
and throughout the day, each day, on our homeland security.
  I yield the floor temporarily.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I was going to ask the Senator a question.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes, sir.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, as our highly esteemed colleague knows 
full well, he occupies a position in this Chamber almost second to none 
by virtue of his long experience and as a chief executive officer of 
his State, a Governor. In listening very carefully to what he said, it 
occurs to me that there is merit in this amendment.
  However, my question to our colleague, given the rather dramatic 
points he makes here, is: Should we not allow the current President the 
opportunity to communicate with the Senate his views on this? It seems 
to me

[[Page S8527]]

this council was established for the specific reason of being advisory 
to him. It is thought of as his means of establishing an 
infrastructure, as all Presidents have done, that best serves the 
method by which they wish to govern and discharge their 
responsibilities as President. My committee, Armed Services, the 
Foreign Relations Committee, the Committee on Governmental Affairs, and 
others that possibly have some oversight on this type of amendment, it 
seems to me, could quickly gather the views and, in all probability, we 
may end up with our colleague's amendment. But at least afford the 
courtesy to the President to share with the Congress--and most 
specifically the Senate--the views before they act on such a dramatic 
piece of legislation as this.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Of course, we have the President's views. He submitted 
a bill. In general, that particular view is before the Senate in the 
form of the House bill. While we have our own views--and that is our 
responsibility--this is not to preempt the President. In all fairness, 
when you see the distinguished chairman of Armed Services, he is who is 
disturbed. Talk about turf--not of the Senator from Virginia, but the 
Pentagon, the Department of State. Calls went out to the Department of 
State on this particular amendment. They don't want that FBI. They 
don't want the domestic intelligence. They don't want that Secretary of 
Homeland Security. They want their National Security Council to be 
solely engaged in foreign policy and foreign and international threats, 
not domestic.
  So no siree, that would be a put off, as it would be for the Pentagon 
crowd. We worked very closely with the Army and Navy and their 
intelligence, and I have the greatest admiration for Secretary 
Rumsfeld. But they have to report in, too, to this domestic 
intelligence. That still has to be--the intelligence--fused with CIA 
foreign intelligence at the level of the National Security Council. 
There is no substitute for it.
  If the President doesn't like it, he will say so to the House and it 
will be knocked out in conference. So don't worry about that. I am not 
worried about it. I want everybody to know here and now this bill does 
nothing to avoid and prevent another 9/11. All the agencies that, on 9/
11, performed admirably--the Coast Guard was doing its job, FEMA was 
doing its job, and they got the agriculture people who were doing their 
job--they are the ones being included. Some 110,000 of the 170,000 
people to be in this proposed department, with respect to seaport 
security, airline security, and rail security are already together in 
the Department of Transportation. We have been working on that. We have 
instituted an Office of Domestic Preparedness within the Justice 
Department. We have all of that going.
  But the ones that failed are totally left out of the Department of 
Homeland Security--the ones that failed us on 9/11 go untouched. 
Please, my distinguished colleague, don't come up and say let's find 
out what he thinks and put this off. We know what he thinks. Vote for 
this amendment and send it to the House. If they knock it out, it will 
be dropped out.
  For one, I go along with Senator Thompson. We don't need to confirm 
Dr. Rice at the National Security Council. Generally speaking, we don't 
have her name over on her budget. We talk about that on the 
Appropriations Committee level--if there is an Office of Homeland 
Security there. I go along with the Senator from Tennessee not to 
require that office be confirmed over here because, as President, I 
know good and well I would not depend on the legislative branch's 
intelligence. I can tell you that right now.
  With any Department they would institute, I have a mammoth 
responsibility. The buck stops here, and I cannot explain another 9/11 
by going along with this bill and saying the problem is solved. It is 
not solved at all. Don't delay me, Senator. You know and I know it will 
be taken out if the President opposes it.
  Mr. WARNER. I thank my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time for the Senator of South Carolina has 
expired.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator 
from Virginia be yielded 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee. I wish 
to commend the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman, and our very 
dear, soon-departing friend from Tennessee for their very important 
work on this bill, homeland security.


                           Amendment No. 4513

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I will now turn, I say to the Senator from 
South Carolina, my remarks to the question of the pending amendment by 
the Senator from Tennessee, and I thank my good friend for his reply to 
my question.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, we were, as a body in recess--fortunately, 
the leadership decided this body should go into recess so we could 
watch the President of the United States deliver a speech which, in my 
judgment, is one of the most important speeches ever delivered before 
the United Nations.
  He laid out with specific clarity the threats to the world posed by 
Saddam Hussein, the threats to the world of inaction at this time, and 
that those who say to him, there is concern this Nation is acting 
unilaterally--our President very clearly gave the United Nations a 
clear and respectful mandate to act now in the face of unrefuted facts 
that in 16 instances, Saddam Hussein has defied the United Nations and 
the Security Council. What better evidence?
  He alluded to the fact that Saddam Hussein has provided evidence--
clearly, it is there--of a highly increased tempo of activities toward 
the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, weapons which in no way 
are needed for the rightful defense of the sovereign Nation of Iraq, 
weapons that could only be manufactured and devised for offensive 
actions against other nations.
  This is not a war, which we are alluding to, between Iraq and the 
United States. This is a war of free nations--many free nations--free 
people, innocent people whose lives are at risk in the same way lives 
were risked on 9/11 a year ago in New York, in my State of Virginia, 
and in Pennsylvania. I commend the President.
  It is interesting, against his speech is the background of another 
President, President Clinton, who on February 19, 1998, referring to 
his own perspective on terrorism, said, referring to the terrorists:

       They actually take advantage of the freer movement of 
     people, information and ideas, and they will be all the more 
     lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, 
     chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver 
     them. We simply cannot allow this to happen. There is no more 
     clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His 
     regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of 
     the region, and the security of all the rest of us.

  Our President built on that foundation in this historic speech that 
was delivered today. It is my fervent hope that the Congress of the 
United States, hopefully led by the Senate, will accede to the 
President's request made to a group of us from the House and Senate who 
were in his office just weeks ago, when he called on the Congress, to 
act with respect to this situation such that the executive branch, led 
by President Bush, and the Congress are arm in arm as we carry forward 
our war against terrorism and, most specifically, the threats posed by 
Iraq.
  We are here on the issue of homeland defense, the issue of a new 
Department. We have had a good debate. We have our differences of view 
but, nevertheless, I see the momentum, I hope, in this body to move 
forward with this legislation.
  I support the overall intent of this legislation. I strongly agree 
with the need to better organize our Government to protect our 
homeland, but I do not support all the provisions of this bill.
  Two such provisions are addressed by the pending Thompson amendment, 
which I strongly support, which would strike titles II and III of the 
underlying legislation. These titles have been of concern to me for 
some time, and in a letter dated July 17 of this year, which I ask now 
unanimous consent to print in the Record at the conclusion of my 
remarks, I so expressed my concerns to the managers of this 
legislation.

[[Page S8528]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 1.)
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, title II mandates the establishment of a 
National Office for Combating Terrorism, and title III mandates the 
development of a national strategy for combating terrorism and homeland 
security response. I note that the administration is strongly opposed 
to both of these titles.
  The arguments against title II are not unlike the questions I posed 
to the distinguished Senator from South Carolina regarding his measure, 
which is also pending before the Senate. And that is, we should accord, 
as a legislative body, the Congress, the maximum flexibility to our 
President, be he Democrat or Republican, in establishing that structure 
he deems necessary in his Department to best serve his style of 
discharging the obligations of the Office of President.
  Our President respectfully says to the Congress: I do not need what 
is proposed in title II.
  Again, on October 8, 2001, following the tragic events of September 
11, President Bush formed the Office of Homeland Security in the 
Executive Office of the President to oversee immediate homeland 
security concerns and to propose long-term solutions.
  Governor Ridge has discharged with great distinction the 
responsibilities of that office. They worked hard under the President's 
guidance to produce a comprehensive plan that now deserves our serious 
consideration and support.
  Again, the mandate to establish an Office for Combating Terrorism 
within the Executive Office of the President of the United States, in 
my judgment, would be redundant to the structure currently in place, 
particularly since the President has already stated his intention to 
retain the position of Assistant to the President for Homeland 
Security. I urge the Senate to respect the right of the President under 
the Constitution to establish his office, his infrastructure, which 
best serves his style of management.
  Turning to a second concern, and that is budget review and 
certification authority provided for in this legislation to the 
proposed Director of the National Office for Combating Terrorism, in my 
view, such authority will undercut the ability of several Cabinet-level 
officials, most notably the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, 
Attorney General, and the Director of Central Intelligence, as well as 
the new Secretary of Homeland Security, assuming the Senate and the 
House act, to carry out their primary responsibilities.
  In the case of the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense--
and I have had the privilege in my 24 years in the Senate of working 
with a succession of those Secretaries--the Secretary of Defense has a 
wide-ranging responsibility to protect the vital U.S. interests and to 
protect against the threats that are ever mounting against our Nation.
  The Department, under the leadership of Secretary Rumsfeld, is 
currently engaged in an all-out global war against terrorism designed 
to bring to justice those responsible for the September 11 attacks on 
our Nation and to deter would-be terrorists and those who harbor them 
from further attacks. The Secretary of Defense must ensure that the 
Department is adequately and properly funded to carry out its many 
missions.
  Pending before the Congress is the largest increase in defense 
spending in many years, decades, but it is necessary. Our committee, 
the authorization committee, together with the Appropriations 
Committee, will soon bring their respective conference reports to this 
body for approval, and I anticipate rapid approval by both Houses of 
Congress.
  It would be unwise to subject portions of the budget of these 
respective Cabinet officers to a veto in many respects.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Would the Senator like additional time?
  Mr. WARNER. I ask for an additional 2 minutes.
  Mr. THOMPSON. I yield 2 additional minutes to the Senator from 
Virginia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WARNER. I turn now to title III. The pending legislation requires 
the development of a national strategy for combating terrorism and 
homeland security response. I have been the author, with colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle, Senator Nunn, who was chairman of our 
Committee on Armed Services, and Chairman Levin, the current chairman, 
and urged that these various reports concerning the security of our 
United States be brought by the administration to the Congress in a 
timely manner so we can make our appropriate decisions on the budget.
  Time and again, our committees have done that. It has been, generally 
speaking, a good response by successive administrations on this 
subject.
  When the President established the Office of Homeland Security, he 
directed Governor Ridge to develop a comprehensive strategy to protect 
the United States from attack, which is right here. Therefore, I think 
it is again redundant for this specific section in title III to be 
enacted which more or less formalizes, again, the necessity for 
producing this report which the President has voluntarily done.
  I see the distinguished Senator from Connecticut in the Chamber. I 
commend him for the hard work he has done, and I strongly urge that 
this body be given the opportunity soon to make its final deliberations 
and that this important legislation be adopted in whatever form is the 
will of the Senate.
  I congratulate the Senator from Connecticut, as well as the Senator 
from Tennessee.
  I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

                                                      U.S. Senate,


                                  Committee on Armed Services,

                                    Washington, DC, July 17, 2002.
     Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman,
     Chairman,
     Hon. Fred Thompson,
     Ranking Member,
     Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Senator Lieberman and Senator Thompson: On July 15, I 
     joined with Senator Levin in sending a letter to your 
     Committee on the Bush Administration's proposal to create a 
     Department of Homeland Security. That letter addressed issues 
     in the Administration's proposal which fall under the 
     jurisdiction of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Today, I 
     am writing to express my concerns about certain aspects of S. 
     2452, the National Homeland Security and Combating Terrorism 
     Act of 2002, which was reported out of the Government Affairs 
     Committee on June 24, 2002. While I support the overall 
     intent of the legislation and agree with the need to better 
     organize our government to protect our homeland, much has 
     changed since this bill was reported to the Senate.
       In the intervening weeks, the President has proposed the 
     establishment of a Department of Homeland Security and the 
     most fundamental reorganization of the United States 
     Government since the passage of the National Security Act of 
     1947. This proposal is the logical culmination of a very 
     deliberate process that started when then-Governor George W. 
     Bush established homeland security as his highest priority 
     during a speech at the Citadel in September 1999, stating, 
     ``Once a strategic afterthought, homeland defense has become 
     an urgent duty.''
       Following the tragic events of September 11, President Bush 
     formed the Office of Homeland Security in the Executive 
     Office of the White House to oversee immediate homeland 
     security concerns and to propose long-term solutions. 
     Governor Ridge and others have worked hard under the 
     President's guidance to produce a comprehensive plan that now 
     deserves our serious consideration and support.
       While I support the establishment of a Department of 
     Homeland Security, I do not support creating a National 
     Office for Combating Terrorism as outlined in Title II of S. 
     2452. In my view, establishing this position within the 
     Executive Office of the President would be redundant to the 
     structure put in place by the President on October 8, 2001. 
     The President has already stated his intention to retain the 
     position of Assistant to the President for Homeland Security.
       I have serious concerns about the budget review and 
     certification authority provided to this proposed Director of 
     the National Office for Combating Terrorism by S. 2452. In my 
     view, such authorities would undercut the ability of several 
     Cabinet-level officials, including the Secretary of Defense, 
     the Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Director 
     of Central Intelligence, to carry out their primary 
     responsibilities. In the case of the Department of Defense, 
     the Secretary has wide-ranging responsibilities to protect 
     vital U.S. interests and to prevent threats from reaching our 
     shores. The Department, under the leadership of Secretary 
     Rumsfeld, is currently engaged in an all-out global war 
     against terrorism--designed to bring to justice those 
     responsible for the September 11 attacks on our nation and to 
     deter would-be terrorists and those who harbor them from 
     further attacks. The Secretary of Defense must ensure that 
     the Department is adequately and properly funded to carry out 
     its many missions. It would be

[[Page S8529]]

     unwise to subject the budget carefully prepared by the 
     Secretary of Defense to a ``decertification''--in essence, a 
     veto--by an official who does not have to balance the many 
     competing needs of the Department of Defense and the men and 
     women of the Armed Forces.
       I also note that Title III of S. 2452 requires the 
     development of a National Strategy for Combating Terrorism 
     and the Homeland Security Response. When the President 
     established the Office of Homeland Security, he directed 
     Governor Ridge to develop a comprehensive strategy to protect 
     the United States from terrorist attacks. President Bush 
     unveiled his Homeland Security Strategy earlier this week, 
     precluding the need for the requirement in Title III, S. 
     2452. Legislating anything other than a periodic review and 
     update of this strategy would be burdensome and would divert 
     attention and resources away from the Administration's focus 
     on homeland defense and the global war on terrorism. As the 
     President stated in releasing the Homeland Security Strategy 
     on July 16, ``The U.S. Government has no more important 
     mission than protecting the homeland from future terrorist 
     attacks.'' We in the Congress should do all we can to help 
     our President achieve this goal.
       I hope my comments are useful as you continue your work on 
     this important legislation.
       With kind regards, I am
           Sincerely,
                                                      John Warner,
                                                   Ranking Member.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I am proud of the work our Governmental Affairs 
Committee has done. It was a very open process. We included provisions 
recommended by members of both parties. I think it is a strong 
proposal. Obviously, there is some disagreement with the White House 
about parts of it, but I repeat what I have said before, that we are in 
agreement on: First, the basic necessity to better organize our 
homeland defenses, because this disorganization which exists now is 
dangerous. Second, there is broad bipartisan agreement on this bill we 
have reported out of our committee and the White House about what I 
have estimated to be 90 percent of the components of the bill. We are 
having a series of tussles about the remaining 10 percent. The sooner 
we resolve them, the better. The sooner we get this bill passed and on 
the way to a conference committee with the House and authorize the 
administration to set up this new Department, the safer the American 
people will be.
  I appreciate the Senator's call for expedited action, and I hope and 
pray that others in the Senate heed that call.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Pennsylvania.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to speak in 
opposition to the idea for a National Office for Combating Terrorism, 
which would be a position confirmed by the Senate, because I believe 
the responsibilities which are enumerated in the bill can be handled by 
the Secretary for Homeland Security so that it is not necessary to have 
another position of Director for the National Office for Combating 
Terrorism.
  As the responsibilities are set forth in section 201(c), first to 
develop national objectives and policies for combating terrorism, that 
is a core function for the Secretary of Homeland Security. Second, to 
directly review the development of a comprehensive national assessment 
of terrorist threats, again, I believe is something which can be 
handled by the Secretary of Homeland Security, which is a position to 
be confirmed.
  Another responsibility enumerated in the statute is to coordinate the 
implementation of the strategy by agencies with responsibilities for 
combating terrorism, and there again it is my view that that can be 
handled by the Secretary of Homeland Security.
  Another responsibility is to work with agencies, including the 
Environmental Protection Agency, to address vulnerabilities identified 
by the Director of Central Infrastructure Protection within the 
Department. Again, that is a matter which can be handled by the 
Secretary of Homeland Security.
  Another responsibility is to coordinate, with the advice of the 
Secretary, the development of a comprehensive annual budget for the 
program and activities under the strategy, including the budgets of the 
military departments and agencies within the national foreign 
intelligence program related to international terrorism, but excluding 
military programs, projects, or activities relating to force 
protection.

  I believe there is sound reason for having budget authority to 
coordinate overall the intelligence functions. However, again, I think 
to the extent we grant that overall budget authority, the logical place 
to put it is in the Secretary of Homeland Security.
  As the other responsibilities are enumerated, to have the exercise, 
function, and authority for Federal terrorism prevention and response 
agencies, again, these are matters for the Secretary of Homeland 
Security.
  The intent of the drafter of these provisions is correct in seeking 
to provide the coordination, but to have another officeholder confirmed 
by the Senate and in the West Wing is not advisable. The analogy to the 
National Security Council position now held by Dr. Condoleezza Rice, I 
think, is inapposite and does not apply to making the Director for the 
National Office of Combating Terrorism a confirmed position.
  There is a real need on the overall coordination, to be sure we have 
all of the agencies responsible for intelligence and analysis under one 
umbrella, such as the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, 
the National Security Agency, and all of the intelligence agencies.
  A point worth repeating is that had we put all of the dots together 
on matters known prior to September 11, 2001, there was a veritable 
blueprint and September 11 might well have been prevented. There was 
the Phoenix office of the FBI reporting on a man taking flight 
training, a big picture of Osama bin Laden on his wall, and other 
respective connections to al-Qaida. We had the two terrorists known by 
the CIA in Kuala Lumpur who turned out to be terrorist pilots of planes 
on 9/11. The information was not given to the FBI or the INS in a 
timely fashion. There was the threat given to the National Security 
Agency on September 10, 2001, which was not transcribed, that something 
was going to happen the next day. It was not interpreted until 
September 12, after the events of 9/11 had occurred.
  Perhaps most importantly, there was the effort to obtain a warrant 
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as to Zacarias 
Moussaoui, and had that warrant been obtained, there was an actual 
treasure trove of information linking Moussaoui to al-Qaida.
  The FBI used the wrong standard, as disclosed in the testimony of 
Special Agent Coleen Rowley, who appeared with FBI Director Mueller on 
June 6 at an oversight hearing by the Judiciary Committee. In Agent 
Rowley's letter, she talked about the U.S. attorney in Minnesota 
requiring 75 to 80 percent probabilities. Agent Rowley thought that was 
wrong. She thought the standard should be a preponderance of the 
evidence, more likely than not--51 percent, as she put it. However, she 
was wrong as well because the standard is articulated in the case 
captioned Gates v. Illinois, an opinion written by then-Justice 
Rehnquist, saying the standard was suspicion, and Justice Rehnquist 
went back to the Krantz case with Chief Justice Marshall talking about 
suspicion on the totality of the factors. However, there was ample 
evidence to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for 
Zacarias Moussaoui.
  It would have been thought that the FBI would have had its house in 
order after their experience on Wen Ho Lee, when at the highest levels 
of the Justice Department, the matter rightfully went to the Attorney 
General at that time and they declined to issue a vice warrant and 
later determined, even by the review of the Justice Department, there 
was probable cause. That matter was subjected to very intense oversight 
by the Judiciary Committee at that time.
  We have pursued the oversight on Zacarias Moussaoui. We found in 
closed hearings--this much can be disclosed--the FBI agents are still 
not applying the correct standard. I wrote to FBI Director Mueller on 
July 10, 2002. We had the hearings on July 9. I asked when they would 
apply the right standard. Earlier this week on Tuesday there was 
another oversight hearing by the full Judiciary Committee, this time 
publicly, and the Department of Justice representative acknowledged

[[Page S8530]]

the wrong standard had been applied, but says they have corrected it 
with examples. We are waiting to see the specifics.
  The impact of this is that there ought to be one umbrella under which 
the analysis of all of the intelligence agencies occurs. The amendment 
which has been offered here, the provision of section 201, which the 
pending amendment seeks to strike, has a laudable purpose. It is 
seeking that kind of coordination, but it simply does not require a 
director for a national office of combating terrorism, which would be a 
confirmed position.
  The language in the bill needs to be specified so the burden is on 
those who oppose the coordination to come forward. I wrote to Governor 
Ridge on August 1 referring to a meeting which had been held the 
previous day. I think it appropriate to quote briefly from this letter. 
I was very pleased to hear the President's affirmative response 
yesterday to the proposal to have analysis from every intelligence 
agency--CIA, FBI, DIA, et cetera--under the umbrella of the Department 
of Homeland Security with the Secretary having the authority to direct 
those intelligence agencies to supply his Department with the requisite 
intelligence data.
  The key language of the responsibilities which I believe should be in 
the bill, and I intend to offer an amendment if we cannot get this 
worked out by agreement is that the Directorate of Intelligence within 
the Department of Homeland Security shall be responsible for the 
following:

       (1) On behalf of the secretary, subject to disapproval by 
     the President, directing the agencies described under 
     subsection (a)(1)(B) to provide intelligence information, 
     analyses of intelligence information and such other 
     intelligence-related information as the Directorate of 
     Intelligence deems necessary.

  The thrust of this language would give the Secretary the authority to 
command all the analyses unless the President disapproves. However, the 
language to have the President direct the Secretary to have this 
oversight responsibility is unworkable because you cannot take it to 
the President to ask for his authority on each occasion. However, if 
there is strong reason to disallow the Secretary's authority in a 
specific case, then it is subject to disapproval of the President. I do 
not think that is necessary, but in order to avoid any controversy, the 
language ought to be included in the statute.
  Although I have already put this letter in the Record before, I think 
it is worth including at this stage of the debate, so I ask unanimous 
consent that the letter be printed in the Congressional Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                   Washington, DC, August 1, 2002.
     Hon. Tom Ridge,
     Director of Homeland Security,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Tom: I was very pleased to hear the President's 
     affirmative response yesterday to the proposal to have 
     analysts from every intelligence agency (CIA, FBI, DIA, etc.) 
     under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security 
     with the Secretary having the authority to direct those 
     intelligence agencies to supply his Department with the 
     requisite intelligence data.
       As I said in the meeting in the Cabinet Room yesterday, I 
     think that had all of the intelligence information known 
     prior to September 11th been under one umbrella, the 
     terrorist attacks of September 11th might have been 
     prevented.
       Senator Thompson, as I understand him, did not disagree 
     with that ultimate approach except to express the view that 
     he thought that changes in the structure of the intelligence 
     community should await further studies. My own strongly held 
     view is that we have a unique opportunity to make the changes 
     in the intelligence community now because of the imminent 
     terrorist threats; and, if we don't act now, we will be back 
     to business as usual.
       As you and I discussed in our meeting of July 29, 2002, 
     there have been many proposals to place the intelligence 
     agencies under one umbrella, including legislation which I 
     introduced in 1996 when I chaired the Intelligence Committee, 
     and the current proposals which have been made by General 
     Scowcroft.
       I suggest that Section 132(b) of the bill reported by the 
     Governmental Affairs Committee be modified by adding at the 
     beginning a new paragraph (1) to read as follows:
       (b) Responsibilities.--The Directorate of Intelligence 
     shall be responsible for the following:
       (1) On behalf of the Secretary, subject to disapproval by 
     the President, directing the agencies described under 
     subsection (a)(1)(B) to provide intelligence information, 
     analyses of intelligence information and such other 
     intelligence-related information as the Directorate of 
     Intelligence deems necessary.
       I am sending copies of this letter to Senator Lieberman and 
     Senator Thompson so that we may all discuss these issues 
     further.
       My best.
           Sincerely,
                                                    Arlen Specter.
  Mr. SPECTER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Miller). The Senator from Tennessee is 
recognized.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania 
for his remarks and his support of the Thompson amendment. I thank the 
Senator from Virginia for the same. I think both of these Senators, 
without dispute, would be recognized as people who have been students 
and have been leaders in the areas we are dealing with today. I think 
their support on this important amendment is crucial.
  I was particularly taken with the comments of Senator Warner as he 
related his thoughts listening to the President a little while ago 
before the United Nations. I had the same thoughts. The President made 
a magnificent speech. In part, it was a legal brief, where he outlined 
ad seratim the various instances where Saddam Hussein had rejected the 
sanctions that had been placed on him by the United Nations, rejected 
the resolutions that had been passed by the Security Council time and 
time and time again, rejected inspectors, rejected sanctions, basically 
rendering what the United Nations and the international community as a 
whole and specifically the Security Council, what they had done, 
rendering it a nullity.
  I thought it was a very effective walk through history. There was no 
secret information disclosed. It was a rendition of what we all should 
have known. The people who were listening to him today were taken on 
that walk down memory lane of all the things that have happened since 
1990 and the attempts that the United Nations have made, the attempts 
the Security Council have made, all thwarted by this one country, as he 
continued to oppress his own people, as he continued to either attack 
or plan attacks for others, as he continued to develop his weapons of 
mass destruction, as he finally acknowledged, yes, he did have chemical 
and biological weapons after lying about it for all those years and our 
inspectors telling us he had a virtual Manhattan nuclear project the 
last time we went in there. And now he has closed us out and we are 
wringing our hands over what we know and what we do not know.
  That is our position. Internationally, the entire world is, because 
he has put us in that position, once again, and deprived us of any 
knowledge of exactly what he is doing, although we know he has the 
intelligence, he has the scientists, he has the infrastructure, the 
capability, the know-how, the desire, everything, except possibly 
enriched uranium with which to make a nuclear weapon. Unfortunately, 
there is a lot of that in the world. We do not know whether he has it.
  Part of it was an effective legal brief. Part of it was 
inspirational. It was an appeal to the United Nations for it not to 
become irrelevant in terms of world peace. If the U.N. and the Security 
Council allow a country such as this, a regime such as this, to thwart 
the very purpose of the creation of the United Nations, then what 
authority, what standing, what moral suasion is it going to have in the 
future when the next tinhorn dictator comes along and hunkers down and 
takes a little bombing and goes on with his suppression of people and 
killing of innocents and using weapons of mass destruction on his own 
people as he prepares for the next attack. I thought it was very 
effective.
  And what is the relationship between Saddam Hussein and terrorism? 
The President pointed out one of the most dangerous circumstances we 
can contemplate is having a regime such as his with the ability to 
transfer his capabilities over to terrorists.
  We know he has a long history of relationships with various terrorist 
organizations, including some with al-Qaida. Are we to assume he would 
not ever use as a surrogate someone to do his dirty work? It is 
extremely relevant to the battle on terrorism. I think those who urge 
that we totally clean up the battle on terrorism over here, because it 
is a distinct problem, before we address the situation in Iraq are 
missing that point.

[[Page S8531]]

  Which brings us to the bill we are considering today. It is very 
relevant. It is a homeland security bill. This is where all the 
chickens come home to roost in regard to our Nation's security.
  What concerns me about this bill is that in more than one instance 
there is an attempt to diminish the President's authority. This bill 
would not give the President authority that other Presidents have had. 
Most all of the Members serving here today served under President 
Clinton. It would take away authority President Clinton had with regard 
to national security. This bill would lessen--give less authority, in 
terms of the management of this monolithic new Department we are about 
to create, than the head of the FAA has to manage the FAA.
  With regard to the subject matter that is addressed by the Thompson 
amendment, we would not give the President the right to have his own 
adviser inside the White House as he deals with all these issues. That 
concerns me. I do not think that is going in the right direction.
  We are not going to do anything in this Congress to diminish 
Congress's traditional role. Senator Byrd and Senator Stevens have made 
it clear that they are not going to stand back and let the traditional 
appropriations authority of the Congress be set aside. Senator 
Lieberman has made that clear. The bill reflects that position. I am 
sure we will be able to work out something along those lines that does 
not diminish our authority in any way. We have the power of the purse. 
We have the power of the purse.
  This bill creates many positions, including the new Secretary, that 
will be Senate confirmed. He will have to come before this body. So we 
are not diminishing the authority of the Congress. What we are doing is 
establishing a brandnew, important Department that we are going to have 
to approach in a bit of a different way than we have approached other 
Departments at other times because we have not been very successful 
with other Departments at other times. This Government is rife with 
Departments and governmental agencies that have waste and fraud and 
abuse, sending out checks for billions of dollars to people who are not 
even alive; losing large pieces of equipment, at least on the books, 
such as ships and things of that nature; having the GAO come before us 
year after year after year, saying these agencies are not doing any 
better. They cannot pass an audit. Government as a whole cannot pass an 
audit. We do not know what assets and liabilities we have. We cannot 
keep up with them. It is a mess.
  We are pulling 22 of these agencies into a new Department. We cannot 
approach it the same old way. We have to have a 21st century paradigm 
in order to address a 21st century problem.
  Most of the rules we are operating under now were created in the 
1950s when we had a paperwork Government. People came into Government 
at this position, worked for 20 years, and were promoted in lockstep in 
these 15 steps, with 10 steps within each of the 15, totally unable to 
address modern-day problems.
  As the GAO tells us we cannot handle the information technology 
challenge that faces our Government, private industry has been able to. 
We have been trying to incorporate information technology capability in 
the IRS for years. We have spent billions of dollars and still the 
computers will not talk to each other--and they are not the only ones. 
We have human capital problems. We have financial management problems--
year after year.
  So that is all the background for considering an amendment such as 
this, which addresses the bill where it creates a new Office of 
Combating Terrorism.
  We are suggesting the President ought to have a little flexibility, a 
little traditional flexibility to have, in the White House--not over at 
the new Department but in the White House--a person he chooses to 
coordinate not only what is going on in the new Department but the 
important national security, or homeland security, entities that are 
not in the new Department. Coordination is needed.
  We have that coordinated. The President established an Office of 
Homeland Security. The President established an Office of Combating 
Terrorism within the NSC. Those are already there. You say we need them 
Senate confirmed. NSC is not Senate confirmed. We have a Senate-
confirmed position we are creating in the new Secretary of the 
Department of Homeland Security.
  This bill, as it is drafted now, mandates the development of a 
national strategy. We have a national strategy. We have had it since 
July. I don't know whether the idea is to set the old one aside and 
come up with a new one or submit the one the President has already put 
out again. This was a good idea back several months ago. Time has 
passed it by.
  The suggestion is made that this new person inside the White House, 
confirmed by the Senate over the President's objection, would have 
budgetary authority that would allow this new person to decertify the 
homeland security budget. The budget goes to him before it even goes to 
OMB. What kind of situation is that going to be? What if you were asked 
to take on the job of new Secretary of Homeland Security knowing that 
your budget was going to go to some guy over in the White House and he 
had to be satisfied before it even got to you? How would you like it 
over at the OMB, when we are going into a period of deficit, when 
people, apparently in this Congress, still think we can have guns and 
butter indefinitely, we don't have any problem spending helter-skelter, 
left and right?
  He has to balance all that. And he has a guy over in the White House 
who has only one priority, homeland security. And as important as it 
is, it is not the only priority this Government has. But he has veto 
power over the Government.
  There never has been a circumstance like this in the history of 
Government. There never has been a big Department, like the Department 
of Homeland Security, and what we are creating, with authority and 
responsibility and jurisdiction over the issue at hand, homeland 
security in this case, and a White House-confirmed position with 
decertification budget authority all at the same time.
  I think it would absolutely be havoc for any administration, Democrat 
or Republican. I think it would lessen accountability, not increase 
accountability. Goodness knows, we need increased accountability.
  The President has said he is going to keep Governor Ridge. I don't 
know whether the idea is we will give this new fellow an office down at 
the other end of the hall or that the President is not being square 
with us, that he will really get rid of Ridge or that he will give 
Ridge this job. I don't know what the idea is. The President said he is 
going to keep up the office. He is entitled to have his own counsel, as 
Presidents traditionally have.
  So I urge we not do that. I urge we maintain the status quo there; 
that we not take another step to restrict the President, to restrict 
either his national security authority that Presidents traditionally 
have, restrict the new Secretary's authority to manage the Department, 
in the new age and time and challenge that we face, and we not restrict 
the President within his own office in terms of whom he wants to bring 
in and have confidential conversations with, who cannot be called up to 
the Hill at any time.
  I said early on in this discussion before these bills were presented 
that ultimately it was clear Congress was going to have somebody's leg 
to chew on. Congress needed to have somebody who is accountable to come 
up here and testify. I didn't particularly welcome this back and forth 
as to who was going to talk and what office they would talk in and what 
other office they would not talk in. I don't think that would do any of 
us any good. I knew that ultimately somebody was going to have to come 
up here and be a spokesman and be accountable. We now have that. That 
is the new Secretary. That is the new Department of Homeland Security.
  We don't need it with regard to the position in the White House. The 
President said he doesn't want it. I believe on these close questions, 
if indeed my colleagues believe it is a close question, that we ought 
to give the President the benefit of the doubt. He is now, without 
boast, the leader of the free world. As we are facing the challenge of 
terrorism and the challenge that is presented by Saddam Hussein, as 
evidenced by his speech today, the

[[Page S8532]]

ears of the entire world were trained upon him. That is not anything to 
do with him personally. That is the position of the President of the 
United States.
  In times such as these, if you can compare any other time with this--
especially in times of war, especially in times of issues of war and 
peace--whoever is President of the United States is the leader of the 
free world and is the leader in espousing those values that we hold 
dear, knowing as the entire world does that we are going to be on the 
front lines of any enforcement action the world deems necessary for the 
cause of freedom and democracy.
  That is not a hokie sentiment. That is not Democrat-Republican. That 
is just reality.
  I hope as we consider these issues that my colleagues will give on 
balance the call for a bit of flexibility, at least as much as we have 
given prior Presidents, and at least as much as we have given heads of 
these other agencies when facing challenges that are much less than 
what we are facing today.
  I urge my colleagues to vote for the Thompson amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. President, I stand in strong support of the Craig- 
Domenici amendment to improve the tragic health of our Nation's 
forests. Years of complete fire suppression has resulted in unnaturally 
dense forests. In many places out West where nature would have 50 trees 
per acre, there are 500 trees per acre, this tremendous build-up in 
hazardous fuels significantly increases fire danger and makes trees 
more prone to insect infestations.
  The facts are clear: Unnaturally dense forests result in unnaturally 
hot burning and fast moving fires. The Forest Service and other land 
management agencies have known the facts for years but have been 
hamstrung, in large part due to shifting political winds.
  And here is the dilemma: interest groups and agencies argue about 
what needs to be done while forests go up in flames, endangered species 
are destroyed, and human life and property are jeopardized.
  The amendment that we are proposing does not point the finger at any 
one group or agency. Rather, this amendment moves beyond the politics 
and focuses on results consistent with plans developed by the Western 
Governors' own ``10-Year Comprehensive Strategy for a Collaborative 
Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the 
Environment.''
  Where the agencies are unable to proceed with hazardous fuels 
reduction, this amendment directs the Secretaries of Agriculture and 
Interior to expedite responsible forest management projects in a 
balanced way and is very similar to language previously passed by this 
body to allow for fuel reduction in certain other western States.
  This amendment looks at the facts. In this year alone, 62,924 fires 
have scorched more than 6.3 million acres of land across this Nation. 
But what about people, how has wildfire affected our communities?
  Since April of this year in my State of Colorado, 12 communities, 141 
subdivisions totaling 81,068 people have been evacuated because of 
wildfire. When those Coloradans returned after being evacuated, they 
found 384 homes burned to the ground and 624 other structures 
destroyed.
  Although property damage and widespread dislocation are devastating 
on communities, the wildfire season of 2002 has proved even more 
tragic. Wildfires have claimed the lives of 10 firefighters in 
Colorado, and 21 in the nation. Returning to a pile of ash instead of 
your home is one thing, coming home without a father or sister is 
another altogether.
  Without responsible hazardous fuel reduction, this year's fire 
situation is bound to repeat itself and I cannot allow this to happen. 
This year's fires came close enough to my own front porch at one point, 
that it was difficult for my wife and me to breathe. Given the drought 
conditions that the West is enduring, the situation on the 181 million 
acres that are currently classified as a Class 3 fire risk is not going 
to get any better.
  I urge my colleagues to support this amendment to reduce the threat 
unhealthy forests pose nationwide.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, yesterday, being obviously the first anniversary of 
the horrific attacks against us on September 11 of last year, we 
commemorated with very moving--and I thought unifying--purpose at 
events here in the Capitol in Washington, at the Pentagon, in New York, 
and Pennsylvania--and really throughout America and so many places. Our 
attention was riveted again on what happened to us and how urgent it is 
to act to prevent that horror from ever happening again.
  I will state again what I have said on the floor before. I am not one 
who believes that another September 11 type of attack against America 
is inevitable. It is not inevitable if we are aggressive in searching 
out and destroying the remaining al-Qaida terrorists, if we are wise 
and strong in marshaling the unique capabilities we have in America to 
better organize our homeland defenses. Of course, that is what this 
bill is about.
  I think the President's statement today at the United Nations is 
further testimony and further draws our attention to the urgency of the 
challenges we face.
  I want to say parenthetically that I thought the speech the President 
gave at the United Nations today was a powerful and convincing 
indictment of Saddam Hussein and the grave threat he poses--not just to 
the United States and to his neighbors in a most critical region of the 
world, but to the legitimacy and the authority of the United Nations in 
the world community, a United Nations which Saddam has outrageously and 
consistently defied and deceived for more than a decade.
  I fully support the President's call to action by the United Nations. 
I hope the nations of the world will take a look at the record. I think 
my friend from Tennessee said it was in some sense a lawyerly 
statement. It really was an indictment of the 16 resolutions of the 
United Nations that Saddam Hussein has ignored, and he has defied and 
thumbed his nose at every one of them. How can the United Nations be 
the institution we want it to be--bringing peace and resolving 
conflicts--if one rogue leader of one nation treats its orders and 
resolutions with such disrespect?
  This is a moment of decision for the members of the United Nations. I 
hope they rise to the challenge that President Bush has quite correctly 
put before them today.
  This does bring us back to where we are on this amendment and Senator 
Thompson's motion to strike titles 2 and 3 of this amendment which is 
before the Senate and which was reported out of the Governmental 
Affairs Committee. These were authored largely by Senator Graham of 
Florida, who has spoken on them. They are part of an attempt in this 
bill to deal not just with homeland security, but to deal with the 
problem of terrorism that the President spoke about so eloquently and 
convincingly today at the United Nations.
  Homeland security is just one part of the battle against terrorism. 
We obviously have other parts that are critically important as well--
certainly the Defense Department, certainly our intelligence community, 
the State Department, the Treasury, and various foreign aid and public 
diplomacy programs, and law enforcement agencies, a lot of which will 
not in any sense come under the purview of this new Department of 
Homeland Security.
  That is why it was the wisdom of the committee--I believe it was 
certainly the judgment of the committee--that in addition to creating 
the Department of Homeland Security, we would guarantee the kind of 
aggressive antiterrorism effort that the country needs now and in the 
years ahead by creating in the White House an office to combat 
terrorism, to coordinate not just the Homeland Security Department but 
the other agencies of our Government that are involved in the fight 
against terrorism.

  It is my understanding that many have spoken in support of Senator 
Thompson's amendment to strike these sections. Perhaps some at the 
White House agree that there will be an office in the White House, but 
they object to the confirmation requirement in our proposal that the 
director of that office be confirmed by the Senate. And there was also 
objection to the budget certification authority that we give the 
director of the office.

[[Page S8533]]

  Senator Graham is a practical and realistic man on matters of this 
kind. We know there is concern in the Senate about the requirement of 
confirmation of the director of this office and the budget 
certification authority. We are consulting with our colleagues to see 
if they will support a proposal that would modify these titles by 
simply removing the Senate's authority to confirm and the budget 
authority given to the director and leave an office of 
counterterrorism. This office would be appointed by the President 
without confirmation by the Senate, but with a guarantee that the 
broader counterterrorism war that we will be fighting for years will 
have in the White House, close to the President, an adviser for whom 
that is his or her only responsibility.
  We think this proposal is a way that Congress, respecting the 
President and his authority--this President and Presidents to follow--
can guarantee as much as we can by the law that is in a quieter time 
further from the pain and shock of September 11, 2001; that America 
will not fall into a slumber and allow itself to be vulnerable once 
again as we were a year ago yesterday to terrorism's awful sword.
  I report that to my colleagues. I hope members of both parties and 
our friends at the White House will consider that as a good-faith 
possibility and see whether we can build a consensus to go forward on 
it.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time 
consumed by the quorum calls be taken equally from both sides on the 
time remaining.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair and, again, suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I also yield myself 10 minutes on the side 
of Senator Lieberman in opposition to the Thompson amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, President Bush could not have made a 
better choice for Director of the White House Office on Homeland 
Security than Gov. Tom Ridge. We served together in the House of 
Representatives. We are personal friends. And I hold him in the highest 
regard. He is clearly the right person for this extremely difficult 
task and assignment and has done a great job under trying circumstances 
and in a very brief period of time.
  However, I believe we must keep title II in the bill, which 
establishes a National Office for Combating Terrorism in the White 
House, with a Presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Director, not 
as any rebuke to the President or Governor Ridge, but to give Governor 
Ridge the tools he needs to be even more effective.
  I cosponsored Senator Graham's bill, S. 1449, to establish this 
office and supported its inclusion in Senator Lieberman's original bill 
to establish a Department of Homeland Security, which I also 
cosponsored.
  I refer my colleagues to testimony given by Retired General Barry 
McCaffrey, before the Governmental Affairs Committee, on October 12 of 
last year. He spoke about organizing our Government to protect America. 
Here is what he said:

       Our government does best when it establishes institutions 
     for the long haul that are based on rationality, not 
     personality. . . . The terms of this office--how its 
     leadership is appointed, where its monies come from, what 
     powers it wields, who it is accountable to--must have the 
     permanence of law. . . . Any Cabinet member, current or 
     former, will tell you how important it is to have the 
     Commander-in-Chief in your corner. However, when push comes 
     to shove, it is even more important to have the law on your 
     side.

  General McCaffrey's experience as our antidrug czar at the Office of 
National Drug Control Policy brought him to his strong conclusion that 
the White House Office on Homeland Security must have its own budget 
and the position must be confirmed by the Senate. Without those 
ingredients, the Director would have neither the clout to fight 
Washington's bureaucracy nor the accountability before Congress to do 
his job effectively.
  General McCaffrey's testimony was borne out by our experience here in 
Congress when numerous committees asked Governor Ridge to testify about 
homeland security. He was unable to because he said: I am a staffer of 
the President. I am not appointed by the Senate.
  Governor Ridge was finally allowed to testify by the White House but 
only after the President decided he wanted to create this new 
Department.
  Title III, which the Thompson amendment would strike, gives the job 
of developing a national strategy to combat terrorism and a 
comprehensive antiterrorism budget to the National Office for Combating 
Terrorism.
  Having clout in the budget process is essential. President Bush says 
Cabinet Secretaries know that Governor Ridge has his trust and must put 
aside turf wars. But what we are setting up here are institutional 
structures.
  Government officials come and go. Not all will have the close 
personal relationship that Governor Ridge enjoys with President Bush. 
The President certainly has the right to structure his staff and his 
advisors as he pleases, but we have the responsibility in Congress to 
pass legislation to establish structures of Government which will 
endure.
  Let me say this as a parenthetical observation: One of the things I 
added to this bill--and in which I have particular pride--is an effort 
to try to establish some sort of architecture for computers and 
information technology in this new Department. I could go on for some 
time about the dismal state of computers at the premier law enforcement 
agency of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is 
a fact, if you look at the various agencies we will count on to protect 
America, that in terms of computer capability, it is almost as if you 
were traveling across the world and you picked countries that were 
computer illiterate and asked them to communicate with those that were 
the most sophisticated. That is what we have in the Federal Government.
  What I tried to do with this bill is to establish a standard for 
coordinating computer architecture, a Manhattan project. I put it in 
the Office of Management and Budget, frankly, because I couldn't assign 
it to a higher level and get it passed by committee. That is sad. But 
it is a fact. What I believe we are trying to establish in this bill is 
to make sure that within the White House there will be someone always 
close to the President who is willing to rip through the bureaucracy 
and to establish the standards and procedures to make sure that America 
is safe. Unless you have someone at that high level close enough to the 
President to get it done, someone who is going to deal with it, you 
will run into a problem. Saying in this situation that we are going to 
have in a Department of Homeland Security someone who is going to be 
subjected to Senate confirmation, separate budget authority, is to give 
them enhanced authority as well.
  Departments and agencies with major responsibilities for homeland 
security, including the Department of Defense, State, and Treasury, the 
FBI, the entire intelligence community, among many others, are properly 
not included in the new Department. There will be a critical job to do 
to develop a national strategy for computers, for information 
technology and beyond, and coordinate this strategy so that the 
agencies of this new Department can effectively combat the threat of 
terrorism against the United States.
  I hope my colleagues in the Senate will support the language put in 
this bill by Senator Lieberman after deliberation in committee and 
oppose the Thompson amendment.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S8534]]

  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAHAM. 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. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I speak in opposition to the amendment, 
which would strike titles II and III from this legislation.
  These two titles together will provide, within the community 
concerned about securing the homeland, the direction and capacity to 
develop a comprehensive strategic plan of how to accomplish that very 
difficult objective, and then to place within the White House an 
officer who is responsible for the specific function of combating 
terrorism. The subfunctions of that office will be to coordinate the 
variety of agencies that will have some responsibility for implementing 
the strategic plan.
  Some have thought that no office such as this is necessary because we 
are about to bring a whole Department of Homeland Security. We have a 
Department of Defense, but we also have within the White House a 
national security adviser whose job is to coordinate national security 
issues. The reason is because, as broad as the Defense Department is, 
it does not contain all of the activities of the Federal Government 
that relate to national security. It does not include the State 
Department, which has our diplomatic and foreign relations function. It 
does not include the Department of Treasury, which has some important 
national security responsibilities as it relates to economic issues. It 
does not include the Department of Energy, where most of our nuclear 
development responsibility is placed.
  So we have an agency in the White House to bring all those 
Departments that have some national security function behind a common 
strategy. This is exactly the purpose of this office within the White 
House, and that would be deleted if this amendment were to be adopted. 
There will be no entity that has statutory status that will be 
responsible, or capable, of trying to bring all of these agencies 
together. That is the most fundamental reason.
  But there is another reason why I think this office is very 
important. In my judgment, the threats the United States will be facing 
in our homeland and abroad are likely to escalate over the next period 
of time. No. 2, it is exactly during this period of time that this new 
Department of Homeland Security is going to be trying to integrate 
almost two dozen agencies that have had their homes elsewhere--in some 
cases, for a century or more.
  It is at this very time that there is likely--I suggest not likely, 
but there almost certainly will be considerable resistance to achieving 
the cohesion that is going to be necessary to accomplish this 
objective. I suggest that it will not be long before we have a debate 
on the floor about why did a certain misstep occur or why was a gap 
allowed to go unfilled, as we try to put together a structure to 
protect our homeland.
  I suggest that an answer to those questions is going to be that there 
was so much support for the status quo and resistance to the sort of 
change that could not be overcome sufficiently and in time to avoid an 
unnecessary vulnerability. That is my prediction. I don't believe there 
is any suggestion that will give absolute certainty that my prediction 
will prove to be false. But I believe that having this office within 
the White House, where there is somebody who wakes up every morning 
thinking about fighting terrorism, and who is in an office within 
walking distance of the President of the United States, will give us a 
greater opportunity to achieve the speedy, expeditious, and effective 
coordination activities that will be necessary to protect our homeland.

  This office has some considerable powers. For instance, it has the 
power to certify budgets. Why does it have that power? Because I can 
tell you that there is going to be a tendency of an agency that has 
been doing a set of functions for a long time, and now they suddenly 
have a homeland security function, and when that new function is 
battling inside the agency with all of those that have had a long 
history and a constituency and a political support base, any new 
function is not likely to do very well. We learned that lesson in the 
war against drugs. The very fact that Congress made this a priority 
didn't result in it being a priority in the agencies that had their 
operational responsibility. I suggest the same thing is likely to occur 
here.
  Unless you have somebody to tell that agency that unless you put an 
additional $15 million into carrying out your part of the strategic 
plan of homeland security, we are going to decertify that part of your 
budget--that is the kind of clout it is going to take--if we don't feel 
that this issue is worthy of giving this office that kind of 
responsibility, then I am afraid we are going to be coconspirators in a 
plot which is going to have a bad conclusion.
  So I urge that if, as I anticipate, there will be a motion to table 
the Thompson amendment, that motion be supported so we can retain this 
important position within the White House, recognizing that its 
ultimate power is going to come from the President himself, but it will 
give the President, who wants to have the most effective homeland 
security, an agency that we in Congress have established and, 
therefore, have invested our confidence in, which he appoints, and 
which will have the capability to give us the best hope that we can 
accomplish our objective of defending the homeland against terror.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, very briefly, I thank the Senator from 
Florida, Mr. Graham, for his hard work on this part of our bill. It is 
work that really goes back to last fall. I think he is absolutely 
right. I appreciate his accommodation to the fact that there may be 
Members of the Senate who support the basic idea of an office in the 
White House to coordinate our antiterrorism efforts in various agencies 
but are concerned about the power the current language gives the Senate 
to confirm the nominee to that position. Therefore, we will offer a 
motion to table at the time the vote on Senator Thompson's motion to 
strike comes up, with the intention of offering a second-degree 
amendment to give Members the opportunity to vote on the concept of an 
office of counterterrorism in the White House, to coordinate our 
antiterrorism efforts, without the necessity for Senate confirmation, 
which the President, we know, opposes.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I am prepared to yield back the 
remainder of our time. It is imperative that we have a vote in 2 
minutes. The Senator from Utah wanted a moment. From looking at the 
clock, we have 2 minutes until 2 o'clock; is that right?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. THOMPSON. How much time does each side have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee has 12 \1/2\ 
minutes. The Senator from Connecticut has 28 seconds.
  Mr. THOMPSON. The Senator from Connecticut has how much?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. He has 28 seconds.
  The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I strongly support Senator Thompson's 
amendment to strike the portions of Senator Lieberman's substitute 
amendment that would create a National Office for Combating Terrorism 
in the White House. Senator Lieberman's substitute would create this 
Office in the White House in addition to creating the Department of 
Homeland Security. I initially question the wisdom of creating two 
separate offices with identical goals and overlapping jurisdiction, 
when the entire point of creating a single Department of Homeland 
Security is to oversee and coordinate the efforts of many different 
agencies in this immensely important area. But I have another, more 
pressing concern: encouraging good decision-making.
  Senator Lieberman's bill would make the heads of both the National 
Office for Combating Terrorism and the Secretary of Homeland Security 
subject to confirmation by the Senate and congressional oversight 
hearings. So far as the office in the White House is concerned, I 
disagree with such an

[[Page S8535]]

invasive approach. We need to be mindful of the important role that 
confidential communications play in the deliberative process for all 
important decisions--including the decisions that we as lawmakers make 
after careful and candid discussions with our staff. Just as we would 
be wary of those who would seek to intrude into these communications, 
so too should we be reluctant to interfere with the President's 
deliberative process and the frank communications he has with his 
advisers in the White House on critically sensitive issues such as our 
nation's security. Of course, I have no objection that the head of the 
new Department of Homeland Security be Senate-confirmed, but it simply 
does not follow that such an approach should be extended to the 
President's own advisor on these issues.
  As responsible lawmakers, we must recognize that we simply do not 
have the same license to specify the duties of the President's senior 
advisers in the White House as we do to specify the duties of agency 
officers and staff members who exercise legislative duties. We should 
take our cue in this area from the National Security Act of 1947, which 
established the National Security Council. As we all know, the 
President may appoint very senior advisors to the NSC--like Dr. 
Condoleezza Rice--who are not subject to confirmation by the Senate. 
That fact certainly does not detract from Dr. Rice's stature, but in 
fact enhances it. Anyone who deals with Dr. Rice knows that she has the 
backing of the President--precisely because she has his confidence and 
is beholden to no one else.
  There certainly must be an advisor within the White House who advises 
the President on matters that pertain directly to our homeland 
security, as the President has recognized. But there is absolutely no 
reason why that office should be made--and micro-managed--by Congress. 
Why does both the head of the Department of Homeland Security and the 
President's Homeland Security Advisor need to be confirmed by the 
Senate? There is no doubt that Homeland Security is of paramount 
importance, but so is national security in general. And does this mean 
we are going to require that Dr. Rice be Senate confirmed? How about 
Karl Rove and Andy Card? A step in this direction is simply misguided 
and unwise.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I am prepared to yield back our time if 
the Senator is.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I am. I yield back our time as well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I move to table the Thompson amendment 
before the Senate. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Akaka) and the 
Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Torricelli) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby) 
and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Smith) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Clinton). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 41, nays 55, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 214 Leg.]

                                YEAS--41

     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Byrd
     Carnahan
     Carper
     Cleland
     Conrad
     Corzine
     Daschle
     Dayton
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Graham
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Stabenow
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--55

     Allard
     Allen
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Bond
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burns
     Campbell
     Cantwell
     Chafee
     Clinton
     Cochran
     Collins
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Gramm
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Jeffords
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     McCain
     McConnell
     Miller
     Murkowski
     Nelson (NE)
     Nickles
     Roberts
     Santorum
     Sessions
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Voinovich
     Warner

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Akaka
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Torricelli
  The motion was rejected.
  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. GRAMM. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                       Vote On Amendment No. 4533

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 
4533. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the 
roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Akaka) and the 
Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Torricelli) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. 
Smith) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 48, nays 49, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 215 Leg.]

                                YEAS--48

     Baucus
     Bayh
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Campbell
     Cantwell
     Carnahan
     Carper
     Cleland
     Clinton
     Conrad
     Corzine
     Daschle
     Dayton
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Graham
     Harkin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Stabenow
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--49

     Allard
     Allen
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burns
     Byrd
     Chafee
     Cochran
     Collins
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Gramm
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     McCain
     McConnell
     Miller
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Roberts
     Santorum
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Voinovich
     Warner

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Akaka
     Smith (NH)
     Torricelli
  The amendment (No. 4533) was rejected.
  Mr. THOMPSON. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

                          ____________________