[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 68 (Friday, May 20, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1041]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           STATEMENT TO HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DENNIS KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 19, 2005

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, on May 12, 2005, I made the following 
statement during a hearing in the House Committee on Government Reform 
on ``Securing Our Borders: What We Have Learned from Government 
Initiatives and Citizen Patrols'':

       Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairman Davis, for holding this 
     important hearing and thank you to the witnesses. We can all 
     agree on the tremendous importance of securing our border. 
     But frankly, I am not confident in how our government has 
     been handling border security one bit. I have two concrete 
     examples of deficiencies on the part of U.S. Customs and 
     Border Protection that my office has been investigating that 
     I'd like to highlight--that I think are representative of a 
     much greater problem.
       The first case involves how U.S. Customs has handled an 
     investigation into slave labor allegations regarding a 
     product that we import into the U.S.--as you know, importing 
     products made with slave labor has been illegal since 1930. 
     Allegations of slave labor used in the production of pig 
     iron, in the Para state of Brazil, came out in the summer of 
     2004. As the United States reportedly imports 92 percent of 
     the pig iron produced in Brazil, most of which is produced in 
     Para, it is highly probable that this importation violates 
     section 1307 of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930, which states,
       ``All goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, 
     produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign 
     country by convict labor or/land forced labor or land 
     indentured labor under penal sanctions shall not be entitled 
     to entry at any of the ports of the United States, and the 
     importation thereof is hereby prohibited.''
       I sent a letter to U.S. Customs to ascertain what actions 
     had been taken in response to this violation of law. After 
     six months, I finally got a response, which said that Customs 
     had opened a file on the case in July 2004, and had 
     referred it to the FBI Attache Brasilia for further 
     investigation. The rest of the letter explained how 
     logistical difficulties had prevented even a single 
     investigator from visiting Para for a site visit. One 
     excuse: ``The Amazon Basin in Brazil is in a remote area 
     where the majority of the roads to this area are only 
     accessible via 4-wheel drive vehicles.'' The Trans-Amazon 
     highway, an important route for the economic development 
     in that area, runs right through Para. It can carry the 
     pig iron out of Para, but can't take our investigators 
     into Para. And frankly I would be surprised if none of our 
     FBI investigators in Brazil had access to a 4-wheel drive 
     vehicle.
       The inaction of the investigators in this case is highly 
     unsatisfactory, and I am deeply disturbed by the broader 
     implications of such inadequacies. U.S. Customs and Border 
     Patrol, along with FBI Attache offices, are responsible not 
     only for investigating violations of tariff law, but they are 
     also responsible for keeping terrorists out of our country. I 
     believe the inefficiencies highlighted in this case reflect 
     the greater threat to the national security interests of the 
     United States. Furthermore, I am disturbed to think of the 
     possibility that trade motivations are hidden behind the 
     inadequate investigation in this case. I can assure you that 
     all the American miners forced to compete with slave labor 
     would also be disturbed by that possibility.
       The second case involves the presence of an international 
     terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, in the United States, and 
     his recent application for asylum. Posada, a CIA- trained 
     Cuban exile, was responsible for organizing the bombing of a 
     Cuban civilian airliner flying from Bermuda to Venezuela. The 
     bombing killed all 73 people on the plane on October 6, 1976. 
     In addition to the civilian airline bombing, Posada 
     was implicated in the 1976 Washington, DC assassination of 
     former Chilean government minister Orlando Letelier. 
     Letelier, a prominent opponent of the Pinochet 
     dictatorship, was killed along with the American Ronni 
     Moffit in a car bombing, which was at the time, one of the 
     worst acts of foreign terrorism on American soil. Carter 
     Cornick, a retired counterterrorism specialist for the FBI 
     who worked on the Letelier case, said in an interview that 
     both bombings were planned at a June 1976 meeting in Santo 
     Domingo attended by Posada in addition to others. Mr. 
     Cornick said that Posada was involved ``up to his 
     eyeballs'' in planning the attack. A newly declassified 
     1976 F.B.I. document has confirmed this. Furthermore, at 
     the time of the bombings, Venezuelan police found maps and 
     other evidence in Posada's Venezuelan home that tied him 
     to the terrorist killings.
       Posada was imprisoned in Venezuela, but escaped while 
     waiting for an appeal in 1985. In 1998, he admitted to the 
     New York Times that he was responsible for organizing a 
     number of bombings in tourist locations in Cuba, including 
     hotels, department stores and other civilian targets during 
     the summer of 1997. The bombings killed an Italian tourist 
     and injured 11 other people. In November 2000, Posada was 
     arrested in Panama for preparing a bomb explosion in the 
     University of Panama's Conference Hall where Fidel Castro was 
     going to speak. Hundreds of people were expected to attend 
     the event there, and had intelligence not uncovered the plot 
     beforehand there would have been massive civilian casualties.
       Our nation's policy against terrorism is unequivocally 
     clear. President Bush defined this policy when he said on 
     September 19, 2001, ``anybody who harbors a terrorist, 
     encourages terrorism, will be held accountable. I would 
     strongly urge any nation in the world to reject terrorism, 
     expel terrorists.'' The National Security Strategy, released 
     in 2002, further defined this policy with, ``no cause 
     justifies terror. The United States will make no 
     concessions to terrorist demands and strike no deals with 
     them. We make no distinction between terrorists and those 
     who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them.'' Back in 
     1989; when the Justice Department was considering the 
     deportation of Orlando Bosch, one of Posada's associates, 
     Joe D. Whitley, then-Associate U.S. Attorney General said, 
     ``The United States cannot tolerate the inherent 
     inhumanity of terrorism as a way of settling disputes. 
     Appeasement of those who would use force will only breed 
     more terrorists. We must look on terrorism as a universal 
     evil, even if it is directed toward those with whom we 
     have no political sympathy.'' Mr. Whitley, now General 
     Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security has 
     declined to comment on the Posada case.
       Posada supposedly crossed the U.S. border six weeks ago, 
     and is presently here. His Miami lawyer, Eduardo Soto, 
     confirmed at a news conference last month that he had arrived 
     clandestinely into the United States. Orlando Bosch said in a 
     recent interview broadcast in Miami that he had spoken by 
     telephone with Posada, who, ``as everybody knows, is here.''
       Yet the U.S. government has not even acknowledged it. Roger 
     F. Noriega, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere 
     Affairs in the State Department said he did not even know 
     whether Posada was in the country. State Department spokesman 
     Tom Casey said in a recent press conference, ``In terms of 
     where he presently is, I think it's fair to say we don't 
     know.''
       The U.S. government has not sent teams of investigators 
     into South Florida to find Posada--or if they have, the 
     investigators haven't done a very good job of finding him. No 
     bounties have been offered to recover Posada. U.S. Customs 
     and Border Patrol is responsible for securing our border, and 
     preventing terrorists from crossing it, yet a known 
     international terrorist--who committed an act of terrorism on 
     U.S. soil that killed an American citizen--crossed it, and 
     the U.S. government hasn't done a thing. It just isn't a 
     political priority.
       I hope this hearing and the series of hearings on border 
     security that this Committee intends to hold will shed some 
     light not only on the two cases I described, but on the 
     larger problem that those cases represent: major deficiencies 
     on the part of the U.S. government to investigate Customs and 
     Border violations, when it frankly isn't in the political 
     interest of the United States. That is unacceptable. We 
     cannot pick and choose when to apply our laws and our 
     policies; they must be applied in universal situations. And 
     when they aren't, it compromises our national security. Thank 
     you.




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