[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 133 (Monday, September 10, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11317-S11319]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESERVING STRONG RELATIONS WITH OUR INTERNATIONAL NEIGHBORS
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, among the important issues I wish to
discuss this morning is an important issue, an international border
issue with our friends and neighbors in Canada and Mexico, that could
have severe implications for the social and economic ways of life for
border communities in my own State of Vermont but all across the
country.
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a number of new
border security measures have been put in place, all with the express
goal of preventing another terrorist incident. I worked hard to provide
balance and needed resources and to ensure that in the intervening
years we did not focus solely on our southern border. I also have tried
to convey to the administration and to this body something of the
special relationship we have with our northern neighbor, Canada.
It is convenient to forget that most of the 9/11 hijackers entered
the United States with legal visas. They would not have been stopped at
any border. Some were on secret watch lists by this Government, but
they were not being watched. And even later on, the Bush administration
sent them official letters after they had killed themselves and
thousands of innocent people in their attacks. The Bush administration
had them on a watch list but did not watch them. In reaction, after
these mistakes, the administration has demanded billions of dollars for
constructing border fences, seeking to develop and to deploy
surveillance technologies, and adding troops along our borders. Now in
doing this, we have snared some illicit drug shipments, we have snared
a few criminals. We have not picked up many terrorists.
Nobody questions that any country has a right to protect its borders,
as we do to protect ours, but we should do it sensibly and
intelligently. Instead, the administration's policy threatens to fray
the social fabric of countless communities that straddle the border.
They have needlessly offended our neighbors, they have sacrificed much
of the traditional good will we have enjoyed, and they have undermined
our own economy in border States. Local chambers of commerce along the
border estimate that the costs of the administration's plans will
amount to hundreds of billions of dollars and, I might say, the loss of
thousands upon thousands of American jobs.
I have heard from many Vermonters about problems they have
encountered at U.S. border crossings, from long traffic backups to
invasive searches and questions, to inadequate communications from
Federal authorities about new facilities and procedures. Such a top-
down approach does not work well in interwoven communities along the
border where people cross daily from one side to the other for jobs,
shopping, and cultural events.
I live an hour's drive from the Canadian border. Traditionally in my
State, as in most border States, people go back and forth all the time.
Many of us have family members in Canada. We have enjoyed an over
5,000-mile-long unguarded frontier. Canada has been an important
trading partner. It has been a friendly neighbor not only to Vermont
but to the rest of the United States for more than 200 years. It is in
the best interest of both of our countries to keep those relationships
as positive and productive as possible. Post 9/11, everyone on both
sides of the border recognized the potential threat and security needs.
We have hardened security around the U.S. Capitol, hardened it around
the White House, and built fences near San Diego. But those procedures
do not work on Canusa Avenue in Beebe Plain, a two-lane road where one
side of the road is Vermont and the other side is Quebec. That is
actually true. This is a street, an avenue. On one side, you are in
Vermont; on the other side, you are in Quebec. What are we going to do,
put an enormous barrier down the middle of the street? People are used
to going back and forth to their neighbors to borrow a cup of flour or
something such as that. Are they going to take two hours to go through
some kind of an unnecessary, baseless search?
And we have the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Derby Line,
VT, and Stanstead, Quebec. The library and opera house is half in Derby
Line, VT, half in Stanstead, Quebec. It straddles the international
border. Mr. President, I invite you to come see that some time. It is a
beautiful piece of architecture.
That is why I am so troubled by the so-called Western Hemisphere
Travel Initiatives, which would require individuals from the United
States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean to present passports or other
documents proving citizenship before entering the United States. This
is a dramatic change in the way border crossings have been processed in
the western hemisphere since the Treaty of Paris set up the
international boundary to Canada in 1783. That is already costing us
greatly.
The Departments of State and Homeland Security have been charged with
implementing this law. They should be coordinating their efforts with
our neighbors in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean to ensure a smooth
transition at our borders. Unfortunately, as I detailed to Secretary
Rice and Secretary Chertoff on several occasions, there are serious
problems in the ways in which their agencies have pushed forward with
implementation of the
[[Page S11318]]
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, before any of the necessary
technology installation, infrastructure upgrades, or training takes
place in our border stations. If these critical features of deployment
are not in place, we are going to see severe delays at our border, and
law-abiding citizens from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the
Caribbean will have great difficulties moving between our countries.
Most importantly, a hasty implementation without assurances that the
technology to be used is truly effective can actually result in a less
secure border.
Month after month, and despite hearing after hearing, the Department
of Homeland Security, one of the least functional Departments in our
Government, and the Department of State has highhandedly rushed to
impose this new border crossing plan on the America people before they
are ready with the necessary technology, infrastructure, and training,
and at every step their rosy assurances to the Congress and the
American people have been wrong. The administration's record on
implementing the new passport program is clear, and it has been
abysmal. Hundreds of Vermonters have been calling my office for
assistance in salvaging their travel plans. I know that Americans from
other States have experienced high levels of concern and problems as
well. We have been doing what we can, passport by passport, but a large
backlog persists.
The huge passport backlogs prompted by the launch of DHS's
requirement for air travel passports earlier this year are just a taste
of the chaos that is likely next summer when they want to start
enforcing passport checks at our land and sea borders. DHS, which has
difficulty implementing most of their programs, said it will be very
easy; look how well it is working for those who are flying to have the
passports. They had press conferences, they had announcements, they got
their talking points in the press on how well it is working. And then,
within weeks, they had to pull it back. Why? Because it was not
working. They did not have anything in place to make it work. And that
is only about 5 to 10 percent of the actual traffic that will go across
these borders. Well, think what is going to happen next summer when
they start enforcing passport checks at our land and sea borders. If
they cannot handle the small percentage, what is it going to be like
when they have to do it for 100 percent?
I have been urging the State Department and the Department of
Homeland Security not to rush into establishing rules and procedures
that shut our borders to legitimate travel and trade and, instead, work
with our neighbors, coordinate with our neighbors on security plans
that might actually work. We can be smarter and more effective, rather
than arrogantly insulting our traditional friends in Canada and Mexico.
We have worked with them on joint intelligence operations to identify
and target terrorists. I would much rather see, instead of wasting tens
of billions of dollars on a program that is not going to work, lose
hundreds of billions of dollars in jobs in America, that we spend a
tiny fraction of that talking about our northern border now, working
with our friends in Canada, and do a better job of intelligence and
identifying possible terrorists.
Unfortunately, my calls and the pleas from border communities from
Maine to Alaska--for that matter, from California to Texas--have been
largely ignored. This administration is setting the American people up
yet again for a fiasco of failure and frustration.
Since DHS and State keep saying WHTI is a congressionally mandated
program, they should stop opposing the bicameral and bipartisan flow
moving through Congress to shift the new requirement to June of 2009.
They have been warned repeatedly that they are not ready. Even the
fresh embarrassment of this passport debacle does not humble these
arrogant purveyors of a failed program. In the memorable words of
President Bush: They are doing a ``heck of a job.'' The incompetence
that led to the human and economic tragedy of Katrina and its
aftermath, a tragedy that has not been rectified for more than 2 years,
is striking again. By maintaining the fiction that they will be ready
to implement the largest phase of this program next January, they are
recklessly risking the travel plans of millions of Americans, but they
are also risking the economies of scores of States and communities.
Today is September 10. Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the
attacks. I remember that day so well, being right here in Washington.
The administration's failure to prevent those attacks, to connect the
dots, to take seriously the warnings of Richard Clarke, to listen to
FBI field agents in Minnesota and Arizona, all because of the
preeminence of its ideological agenda, is no longer subject to denial.
Those failures before 9/11 are no excuse to indulge in authoritarian
excesses now and in the future.
When we sacrifice our freedoms, Americans lose and the terrorists
have taken from us what they cannot by force of arms. As we commemorate
the sacrifices of so many that took place 6 years ago tomorrow, we need
to rededicate ourselves to American principles and values.
In the days ahead, the Judiciary Committee will be holding a series
of hearings into important security matters. Today I am writing to the
Director of National Intelligence inviting him to join us on September
25 for a hearing into warrantless surveillance of Americans.
I am not convinced that the sweeping scope and lack of checks and
balances in the recently enacted temporary amendment to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act are necessary to address the national
security concerns the administration had identified. As elected
representatives of the American people, we need to consider whether
there are more effective mechanisms to ensure appropriate oversight of
surveillance involving U.S. persons. We need to restore the proper
balance in order to maintain our security while preserving the
constitutional rights of Americans and providing appropriate oversight
of executive action involving private communications of Americans.
Just this past weekend, we saw reports indicating that the
President's surveillance program of Americans was much more extensive
than he had led us to believe. The New York Times reported that the FBI
was not just concerned about known or even suspected al-Qaida
operatives, as the President spokespeople repeated over and over since
the programs became known in December 2005, but with casting a much
wider net for information about what they termed a ``community of
interest.'' We need to examine how far this so-called link analysis has
gone, how far down the daisy chain it has gone, what use was made of
the private call information, and whether private information of
innocent Americans has been collected and retained in Government
databases without any authorization. How many innocent Americans who
called someone else, who may have had some innocent contact with
someone else, are now in a Government database and suddenly wonder why
they didn't get a job promotion or why their child wasn't able to get a
student loan? It is telling that as this story became public--this
always happens only when it becomes public--the FBI responded by saying
that this data is ``no longer being used'' and, of course, ``was used
infrequently.'' Is the administration nonetheless going to prevent
Congress from obtaining the information it needs to provide appropriate
oversight? Will our patriotism be threatened anew if Congress seeks to
examine the administration's overreaching and ineffectiveness? I hope
not, but we will have to see. The very first hearing we held before the
Senate Judiciary Committee this year was on data mining. With the
leadership shown by Senator Feingold, we have passed a reporting
requirement on Government data mining. Now we need to follow up and get
the information we need and exercise oversight authority.
The first week in October, we are looking forward to hearing from
Professor Jack Goldsmith, who served at a critical juncture in 2004 as
the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel to the
Department of Justice. In that capacity, he considered the
constitutional underpinnings of the President's program of warrantless
wiretapping and helped lead the way to changes in that clandestine
surveillance affecting the rights of every single person in this
Chamber and all other Americans.
[[Page S11319]]
This past week, we were reminded yet again of the need to improve the
operations of the Terrorist Screening Center, which failed to make
watch list records of suspected known terrorists available to front-
line screening agents but continues to list the names of innocent
Americans in its watch list database. I won't go through all of the
stories that come out of some of these things: a year-old child having
to get a passport to fly and prove they are not a 45-year-old terror
suspect or one of the most senior Members of the Senate being blocked
10 times from taking a flight he has been taking for 30 or 40 years
because he is on a terrorist watch list. Somehow, they got the names
mixed up. We saw a recent Government Accountability Office report on
the Department of Homeland Security with its failing grades, having
failed to achieve half its performance expectations since 2003. If you
or I in college were to get a 50 or less on all our exams, we would be
out on our ear in a moment. This is what we have seen from the
Department of Homeland Security. We heard from an independent
commission and former military leaders who indicated the Iraqi police
force is so riddled with corruption and sectarianism that they should
be disbanded, and after 4 years and hundreds of millions of American
taxpayer dollars, we should start over from scratch. We can't even find
half the weapons we have given them until they turn up in terrorist
hands. But we send these hundreds of millions of dollars to the Iraqi
police force and we tell the police in America: We have to cut out the
COPS Program. We don't have money for our American police. We can't
afford to improve our American police because we have to send hundreds
of millions of dollars to the Iraqi police. If I have to call a police
officer, I am going to call an American police officer. I would like to
know that some of that money was spent on them.
This past week also provided a reminder of the need to refocus our
efforts on bin Laden. Six years after 9/11, he has not been brought to
justice but continues to taunt us. He should never have been allowed to
escape when our forces had him cornered in Tora Bora. One of the
greatest mistakes of this administration--not counting the great
mistakes made before 9/11--was withdrawing our special forces and not
providing the support needed. That was another mistake driven by
ideology. Think how much better it would be today had they actually
succeeded in the one thing the whole Congress agreed on--to go and get
bin Laden. They failed. The bipartisan leaders of the 9/11 Commission
are right that the occupation of Iraq has provided a recruiting bonanza
for al-Qaida and a costly distraction. Iraq, a country that didn't have
al-Qaida, is now a recruiting bonanza for them. We need to be smarter
and more focused in countering terrorism.
How many costly mistakes are the American people going to be asked to
bear? I hope all Senators, Republicans and Democrats, will join
together in the days ahead as we did 6 years ago, when so many of us
stood on this floor and joined hands to do the things that needed to be
done. The American people deserve a government that works and that
works for them. American freedom and values need to be defended and
reinforced, not mortgaged to fleeting and ill-considered promises of
security.
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