[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 116 (Friday, September 13, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8590-S8592]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HOMELAND SECURITY

  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, let me thank the chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee and the ranking member. We have a very short 
amount of time in which to do a great deal of business. I did not wish 
to interrupt their work on Interior if in fact there was an amendment 
that was to be acted upon. I appreciate their courtesy.
  Let me make some comments about the broad question of homeland 
security and relate it to the discussion yesterday at the United 
Nations that was offered by President Bush.
  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, will the distinguished Senator yield for a 
question?
  Mr. DORGAN. I am pleased to yield for a question from the Senator 
from West Virginia.
  Mr. BYRD. I wish I could be on the floor to hear what the Senator has 
to say. I have an appointment. I have to be down below this floor at 11 
o'clock, which is 1 minute or 2 from now. I will read the remarks of 
the Senator. I know they will be good. If I can come back before he 
completes his remarks, I will do that.
  Is it the understanding of the Senator that he will complete his 
remarks by 12 noon?
  Mr. DORGAN. Yes.
  Mr. BYRD. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I have not been on the floor until now 
to speak about the homeland security bill and the issues surrounding 
that bill. I have been thinking a lot about it, as have many of my 
colleagues. We have had a good number of amendments, and I do not 
believe anyone here thinks the issue is whether we shall pass a piece 
of legislation dealing with homeland security. Of course we should 
enact a piece of legislation dealing with homeland security. We need to 
respond to the President's request. We will do that. The question isn't 
whether, the question is how.
  There are many ideas about homeland security that come from all 
corners of this Chamber. We ought to take the best of all of those 
ideas and incorporate them into this legislation.
  Yesterday the President spoke at the United Nations about the threat 
that comes from Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Because that also relates to 
the issue of homeland security, I wanted to make some comments of a 
general nature this morning.
  In my desk, I have a couple of pieces of materials taken from weapons 
that were once targeted at the United States. I ask unanimous consent 
to be able to show them on the floor. I am doing this for a very 
important reason.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this piece of material is part of a wing 
strut from a Backfire bomber that the Soviets used to fly. This 
Backfire bomber doesn't exist anymore. It wasn't shot down. It wasn't 
part of combat with the United States. This was sawed off of an 
airplane. The wings were sawed off of a Backfire bomber that used to 
carry nuclear weapons--presumably that would threaten our country in 
the middle of the Cold War. It was dismantled, sawed apart, and 
destroyed. And in a sense, we purchased it. We paid for it under the 
Nunn-Lugar program, in which we decided through arms control agreements 
with the Soviet Union--and then with Russia--to reduce the number of 
nuclear warheads and reduce the delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads, 
because we believed that allowed us to step back from the dangers of 
nuclear war.
  I hold in my hand part of a Soviet Backfire bomber that we didn't 
shoot down. We helped pay to saw the wings off this bomber.
  This other material is ground up copper wire that used to be in a 
Soviet submarine that carried nuclear missiles with warheads aimed at 
the United States of America. That submarine doesn't exist any longer. 
I am able to hold in my hand this ground up copper from that dismantled 
submarine because of an arms control agreement by which we negotiated 
with the Soviets to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and reduce the 
delivery vehicles for those nuclear weapons, and, therefore, have made 
this a safer world. A bomber and a submarine that used to carry nuclear 
weapons no longer exists. We have made progress.
  But there are, of course, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 
nuclear weapons that continue to exist on the face of this Earth. And 
many in this world aspire to acquire nuclear weapons. Terrorist groups 
and other countries want to become part of the club that has nuclear 
weapons. Our children and their children are threatened by the 
proliferation of nuclear weapons.
  It doesn't take 100 nuclear weapons or a thousand nuclear weapons to 
create chaos and hysteria and concern for the future of the world. It 
just takes one--just one nuclear weapon.
  Today, if someone is notified that there is a nuclear weapon missing 
from the Russian arsenal and that has been stolen by terrorists and is 
put in the trunk of a rusty Yugo car on the dock at New York City, or 
in a container on a ship coming into the ports of Los Angeles--if just 
one nuclear weapon is thought to be entering this country's space, its 
ports, its docks, its cities--that is enough for the kind of nuclear 
blackmail that can cause chaos and hysteria and threaten a nuclear war.
  The President gave a very forceful speech yesterday to the United 
Nations. He is--and we are--concerned about Iraq and Saddam Hussein 
having access to weapons of mass destruction. He is--and we are--
concerned about the potential of a Saddam Hussein getting access and 
acquiring a nuclear weapon.

  I don't diminish at all the concern about that. We ought to be 
concerned about that. We and the President are all concerned about 
that.
  But let us understand that the broader issue of arms control and arms 
reduction ought to be front and center in this Chamber. This country 
needs to be a leader in the world to help reduce the number of nuclear 
weapons and help prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to other 
countries.
  Regrettably, in recent years, some Members in this Chamber--and 
elsewhere in the Government of the United States--have expressed, if 
not a benign neglect, an open hostility to arms control and arms 
reductions.
  Let me go through a few of the things that have happened. We had a 
vote in this Chamber on the issue of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban 
Treaty. We should have such a treaty. After all, we don't test anymore 
in this country. The first George Bush Presidency said we will no 
longer test nuclear weapons. But this Senate voted

[[Page S8591]]

against a Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty--despite the fact that 
we unilaterally decided not to test, and have not tested for a decade. 
This Senate turned that treaty down, sending a message to the rest of 
the world that this is not our priority.
  There is nothing more important, in my judgment, to the children of 
America and to their children and their future than dealing with this 
question of a nuclear threat. The Soviet Union is gone. The Cold War is 
over.
  The President's discussion about Saddam Hussein underscores the 
concern about one dictator in Iraq--an evil man in Iraq who is seeking 
to get nuclear weapons.
  But I am just saying that there is much more at stake than that. The 
Iraq situation is at stake for us, and we need to respond to that. But 
there is much more at stake.
  So many others want to acquire nuclear weapons. There are so many 
nuclear weapons around in this world. I indicated that there are 
somewhere between, perhaps, 25,000 and 30,000 nuclear weapons in 
existence. A fair number of them for a number of reasons are not very 
well controlled. So we need to talk in the broader context about what 
our responsibility is, and what our role is with respect to arms 
control and arms reduction in the future.
  The Senate was asked to consider the nomination of a fellow named 
John Holum, who the President said he wanted as senior adviser for arms 
control. John Holum is a remarkable American, who has had incredible 
experience, and he was nominated for the position of Under Secretary of 
State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. He is 
somebody who believes in his heart that we need to pursue negotiations 
and efforts to achieve treaties for nuclear arms reduction and to 
achieve progress in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. But his 
nomination was blocked.
  The President sent us instead John Bolton, who doesn't have 
experience in arms control, who has never served in an arms control 
position, who has expressed disdain for arms control and those who 
promote it, and who expressed disdain for the United Nations. He said:

       . . . a building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 
     it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

  And his nomination was approved by the Senate.
  So we have someone in this area who really isn't interested in 
pursuing the approach that we have used, which has been quite 
successful in beginning the process of reducing nuclear weapons and 
reducing the nuclear threat.
  We also have had discussions in recent months about perhaps 
developing a new type of nuclear weapon. Perhaps a nuclear weapon can 
be developed that will be a cave buster--some nuclear-tipped bomb that 
will bust into caves and be more effective in dealing with the problem 
that we encountered in Afghanistan where terrorists burrowed into 
caves.
  The minute you start talking about designing nuclear weapons--
especially a little nuclear weapon with a special nuclear tip that can 
be used against caves--once you start talking about the potential to 
use nuclear weapons, the genie is out of the bottle.
  Our discussion in this country ought never to be a discussion about 
how to use a nuclear weapon. That is not what we ought to be 
discussing.

  We ought to be discussing our obligation to assume a world leadership 
position to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and stop the 
proliferation of nuclear weapons. Do you want a future 10 years from 
now or 40 years from now in which 50, 75, or 100 countries, including 
terrorists and rogue nations, have nuclear weapons at their disposal? I 
don't think so.
  We have had a 50-year effort in this country--50 years--to stigmatize 
nuclear weapons and brand them only as a weapon of last resort. We 
ought not do anything to undermine that basic approach to nuclear 
weapons.
  We are talking about homeland security in these days. When you talk 
about nuclear weapons, you have to talk about homeland security against 
the ultimate weapon; that is, a nuclear weapon. But there are many 
other kinds of weapons.
  We may spend $7 to $8 billion this year, in this Congress, on a 
national missile defense program, trying to build a missile that has 
the capability of hitting a bullet with a bullet. The purpose of that 
is a defensive mechanism by which if a rogue nation or terrorist or 
some other country were able to launch an intercontinental ballistic 
missile against the United States, we would be able to shoot it down 
and prevent a nuclear attack using an ICBM.
  We will spend an enormous amount of money on that, believing that one 
of the threats is an intercontinental ballistic missile coming in at 
14,000 miles an hour, with a nuclear warhead, sent by some rogue nation 
or terrorist state. It is one of the less likely threats; the Pentagon 
will tell you that. Rogue nations and terrorist states would have a 
very difficult time dealing with an ICBM, if they could acquire one in 
the first place.
  A far more likely prospect would be a container, on a container ship, 
pulling up to a dock in New York City at 3 miles an hour, with a low-
yield nuclear device in the middle of a container, in the middle of a 
container ship.
  There are 5.7 million containers that come into this country every 
year to all of our ports and docks. These big ships pull up with 
containers stacked on top of their decks. Of the 5.7 million, 100,000 
are inspected. So 5.6 million are not. I was at a dock in Seattle 
recently, and they had pulled off a ship container, and they were 
inspecting it at the Customs facility. I asked them: What is this? What 
is in the container?
  They said: Frozen broccoli, from Poland.
  I said: Well, do you know anything about it, the frozen broccoli from 
Poland?
  They said: No, but we'll show you.
  They opened up the container, pulled the bag out, and ripped it open, 
and, sure enough, there was broccoli from Poland.
  I said: How do you know what's in the middle of this container? You 
just pulled the one bag out.
  They said: Well, we don't. We just opened it to see that it was 
frozen broccoli from Poland.
  So we have 5.6 million containers that come into this country, and 
they are largely uninspected. Does anyone here not believe that port 
security, the security of containers, is critically important?
  Did you read the story about the fellow from the Middle East who 
decided to send himself to Canada, presumably with the thought of 
coming into the United States, and he put himself in a container? He 
had a cot, he had potable water, he had a telephone, he had a computer, 
he had a GPS system, he had a heater. And there he was living in a 
container, on a container ship, shipping himself to Toronto, Canada.

  Well, they found this guy. They thought he was a terrorist. I don't 
know what the disposition of that was. But think of it, how easy it is, 
if 5.7 million containers come into this country, and we only take a 
look at 100,000 of them. What is in the other 5.6 million?
  That is a big homeland security issue. What are we going to do about 
that?
  We have heard discussions about the potential for a dirty bomb. The 
National Research Council gave a long listing the other day with 
respect to homeland security, about our shortcomings on preparedness to 
defend against nuclear and dirty bomb threats, and against biological 
warfare.
  Here is what the report said. We have to develop vaccines for 
airborne pathogens--we are way behind in doing that--create better 
sensors and filters for dangerous chemicals; build a system to counter 
sabotage of the Nation's food supply; find better methods to fend off 
attacks on nuclear reactors, electrical power grids, and communications 
systems; and develop defense in depth for airport and other 
transportation security.
  Much of what we are talking about in the current debate about 
homeland security is organizational. We say, let's take a look at an 
organizational chart and find the boxes and evaluate how we can put all 
these boxes together in a different way. And so you have, at the end, 
170,000 people in a new agency.
  Putting agencies together in a way in which they are better prepared 
to deal with homeland security makes good sense to me. But there is not 
a right or a wrong way to do it. There are a lot of different ideas on 
how it might or might not work, and we will not know, perhaps for a 
year or 2 or 3 or 4 years,

[[Page S8592]]

after the Congress finishes its work, and the President signs the bill, 
whether what we have done advances our interests or retards it.
  It is reasonable to ask the question, if homeland security is going 
to be restructured, should we consider some change to the way we use 
the FBI and the CIA, and the way we gather and analyze intelligence? I 
know there is a portion of that in this bill, and I think this is a 
question we have to consider carefully.
  Good intelligence is critical. I mentioned the issue of nuclear 
weapons. Russia, which is now the nuclear repository of the old Soviet 
Union, has thousands of excess nuclear weapons in storage facilities 
that fall far short of what we expect for decent security standards. We 
are told they have more than 1,000 metric tons of highly enriched 
uranium and at least 150 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, much 
of it in less than adequate storage facilities. That is enough for 
80,000 nuclear weapons, by the way.
  In addition, dangerous biological pathogens are kept at scores of 
poorly guarded sites around the former Soviet Union.
  Tens of thousands of former Soviet Union scientists and engineers are 
living hand to mouth because of military downsizing and the collapse of 
the economy. These are people who know how to make these bombs, were 
involved in the development of the Soviet nuclear capability.
  We know that individuals and groups have attempted to steal uranium 
or plutonium from sites in the former Soviet Union dozens of times in 
the past 10 years.
  Former Senate Majority Leader James Baker and former White House 
Counsel Lloyd Cutler headed a panel last year that studied the threat 
to our country posed by nuclear weapons, materials, and know-how in the 
former Soviet Union. Here is what the panel said about a scenario where 
a terrorist would have access to some basic material and could get the 
engineers and scientists to put this together:

       The national security benefits to the U.S. citizens from 
     securing and/or neutralizing the equivalent of more than 
     80,000 nuclear weapons and potential nuclear weapons would 
     constitute the highest return on investment in any current 
     U.S. national security and defense program.
       In a worst case scenario, a nuclear engineer graduate with 
     a grapefruit-sized lump of highly enriched uranium or an 
     orange-sized lump of plutonium, together with material 
     otherwise readily available in commercial markets, could 
     fashion a nuclear device that would fit in a van like the one 
     terrorist Yosif parked in the World Trade Center in 1993. The 
     explosive effects of such a device would destroy every 
     building in [the] Wall Street financial area and would level 
     lower Manhattan.

  The Baker-Cutler panel recommends spending a substantial amount of 
money, $30 billion over 10 years--three times what the administration 
is proposing--to secure weapons and fissile and biological material in 
Russia by expanding cooperative threat reduction, which is an important 
part of the outgrowth of the Nunn-Lugar program, and a range of other 
efforts.
  So Iraq is important, but there are broader issues to consider as 
well.
  Incidentally, the President yesterday did the right thing by going to 
the United Nations and saying to the U.N.: Look, you have had 
resolution after resolution after resolution, and Iraq has defied you. 
They have failed to live up to their terms of surrender from the gulf 
war, and they simply thumb their nose at your resolutions.
  What the President said to the United Nations yesterday was: You had 
better decide whether you are going to pass resolutions and enforce 
them or not. And the President said: We will take this to the National 
Security Council.
  A lot of people were worried that he would not do that. I am glad he 
has. It is exactly the right step. The notion of saying we don't care 
what the Security Council does or what the U.N. says, that is not the 
way to do it. The President yesterday did the right thing. He said to 
the National Security Council and the United Nations: You need to begin 
enforcing what you are doing by resolution with respect to the country 
of Iraq.
  I hope the United Nations will decide to do that. My hope is we can 
put together a coalition through the United Nations of coercive 
inspections that demand and achieve the inspections necessary to make 
sure we are not threatened by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
  But let us agree that the problem is bigger than just Iraq, and let 
us decide to be a world leader in dealing with stopping the spread of 
nuclear weapons. Let's bring back the comprehensive nuclear test ban 
treaty. Let's pass it. Let's send a signal to the world that we care 
about the chemical weapons ban, because this country wants to lead in 
the right direction to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
  Now, let me say a few words about the proposed Department of Homeland 
Security. The President says to us he wants to put this agency 
together, and he wants to do it in a way that he has maximum 
flexibility with respect to all of these workers. Whatever we do, 
however we do it, we will give this President very substantial 
flexibility. But to suggest somehow that the basic protections that 
workers expect and have received for many years in this Government of 
ours should be discarded or disallowed makes no sense.
  We propose to provide the same basic protections to workers in all of 
these agencies that you have for civilian workers at the U.S. 
Department of Defense. That makes good sense.

  I get tired of people saying: Federal workers, they are not worth 
much. They are people who can't find a job elsewhere.
  We have terrific people working for the Federal Government. We have 
great people in public service--not just the Federal Government, but 
State and local government as well.
  Among those people who filed out of the World Trade Center, we had 
firefighters and law enforcement officers climbing the stairs. Some of 
those firefighters were up on the 70th floor carrying 60-pound 
backpacks, climbing up as that fire was coursing through that building, 
knowing they were risking their lives. They were not asking about 
overtime or about how tough it might be, what the risk was. They were 
doing their jobs--wonderful, brave people. There are a lot of people 
like them all over this country in public service. This Government 
ought to say to them: We value your work. We honor your work.
  I don't want anything in this homeland security bill to in any way 
denigrate the work of those public employees or pull the rug out from 
under them. They are going to be our first defenders, the first line of 
defense. They are the ones who will make this work.
  We have a lot to do here. We have a government of checks and balances 
which requires cooperation, which requires that we work together. The 
President has some good ideas. I think our colleagues have good ideas. 
I think Senator Byrd does us a service by talking about how we put this 
together in the long term.
  In politics, there are always a couple of sides. Each side too often 
wants the other to lose. We should get the best of both rather than the 
worst of each. That is especially true on homeland security.
  It is up to us. The moment is now. The President is right to be 
talking about concern of weapons of mass destruction. But is it not 
just Iraq. This is a much bigger subject. We need those who now talk in 
the most aggressive ways about dealing with this issue to join us to 
develop new arms reduction strategies and to develop approaches by 
which the rest of the world joins us in stopping the spread of nuclear 
weapons.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.

                          ____________________