[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 62 (Wednesday, April 10, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2366-S2368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Nomination of John P. Abizaid
Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise to speak today about the vote we
cast earlier confirming GEN John Abizaid, Retired, to be U.S.
Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
I was proud to vote for him. I think he is very well qualified for
that position. The position has been vacant since 2017. Other critical
countries in this most important region are without Ambassadors--Egypt,
Jordan, and Pakistan.
General Abizaid has his work cut out for him, and I want to speak
specifically about some of the challenges in Saudi Arabia now.
I believe there is a great day of reckoning that is now pending in
the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a Senate resolution
ordering the President to stop U.S. military action in support of Saudi
Arabia's intervention in Yemen's civil war. The Senate had earlier
acted on that bill in 2018. It went to the House and died. The Senate
took up the bill again recently, and the House passed it. The bill is
now on its way to the President's desk.
The President has indicated that he is likely to veto the bill, to
continue U.S. support for Saudi military activity in Yemen. If that
happens, the bill will come back to the Senate, and the Senate will
then have the opportunity to vote on whether that veto should be
overridden.
The House vote to withdraw U.S. support for this military activity
was 247 to 175. The Senate vote was 54 to 46.
The Yemen civil war has been a humanitarian disaster. Many of my
colleagues have spoken at length about this, so I will not speak at
length. Just to underline key points, it has been a humanitarian
disaster, and the United States should not be involved. Saudi
intervention has made it worse.
As of November 2018, nearly 7,000 civilians have been killed, nearly
11,000 had been wounded--the majority by Saudi Arabia-led coalition
airstrikes, many of which are targeted and prosecuted in amateurish
ways. Those statistics are according to the Office of the U.N. High
Commissioner for
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Human Rights. The actual human casualties are actually much higher
because the war has led to famine and disease outbreaks that have
killed many more. Thousands have been displaced by fighting, and
millions are suffering from shortages of food and medical care, with
the country on the brink of famine. There are 12 to 13 million
civilians at risk of starvation largely because of the effects of this
civil war.
In addition to the poor prosecution of this military activity by
Saudi Arabia, there are other issues we have to grapple with.
A Virginia resident who is a Saudi citizen, Jamal Khashoggi, who was
a journalist for the Washington Post, criticized the Saudi policy in
Yemen. For his advocacy against the war, the Government of Saudi Arabia
lured him into their consulate in Istanbul and then tortured and
assassinated him, dismembering his body with a bone saw. Then the Saudi
Government engaged in a massive misinformation and disinformation
campaign, lying to the United States and to the world about what had
happened, saying that he had left the Embassy on his own, saying that
it had been an accident, coming up with all manner of excuses before
the even cursory investigation demonstrated that he had been
assassinated.
The U.S. intelligence community is unified in their assessment of
what happened to this Virginia resident--a gross violation of human
rights to assassinate a journalist, especially in a safe haven, which
is what a consulate is supposed to be.
In addition to the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia has
been arresting civil rights activists for years, including, recently,
two Virginia residents--Aziza al-Youssef, who is a Saudi citizen who
studied at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and then went
to back to Saudi Arabia to teach women computer science. Her son, Salah
al-Haidar, also has been arrested for advocating for women's rights.
What rights are they advocating for? The right of women to drive. The
right of women to make some of their own decisions under Saudi law.
Decisions by women cannot be made independently but must generally be
agreed to by a father or a husband. Simply for advocating that women be
treated as equal, with equal rights, these Virginia residents and many
others have been jailed and tortured.
One would think that the United States would be up in arms about the
assassination of a U.S. resident journalist, about the arrest of U.S.
residents, including U.S. citizens advocating for women's rights, but
that is not the case. The President refuses to submit a report
determining whether Jamal Khashoggi's murder was a human rights
violation.
The Magnitsky Act was designed to promote cooperation between the
legislative and the executive branches. When Congress has information
that suggests there is a significant human rights violation by a
foreign government, we write a letter to the President. The President
has 120 days to investigate and then offer a determination as to
whether there was a human rights violation. It is a cooperative
dialogue. We wrote the letter, 120 days passed, and President Trump and
the administration will not answer it. They will not say there was a
human rights violation. They will not say there wasn't a human rights
violation.
I am not aware of their doing this for any other nation. For Saudi
Arabia, they are ignoring the clear requirements of the Magnitsky Act.
President Trump said: ``It could very well be that the Crown Prince had
knowledge of this event--maybe he did and maybe he didn't.'' That
comment is at odds with the assessment of the U.S. intelligence
community that this assassination was an official act of the Saudi
Arabian Government that would not have happened without the knowledge
of the Crown Prince, M.B.S.
The relationship following these arrests and this assassination has
not been downgraded or suffered repercussions within this
administration--in fact, to the contrary. Two weeks ago, right before
an Armed Services Committee hearing where Secretary of Energy Rick
Perry was testifying, we learned that the Trump administration has
approved secret transfers of nuclear technical information from
American companies to Saudi Arabia on seven occasions since 2017. These
transfers are called Part 810 authorizations. They require an approval
of the Department of Energy. Under my cross-examination, Secretary
Perry was forced to confirm that, yes, the administration has
authorized on seven occasions transfers of this nuclear know-how to
Saudi Arabia.
In the past, when these transfers were approved, they were made
public so that the American public and Congress could exercise
oversight on which nations in the world are being given nuclear
technology, but in this instance and possibly others in this
administration, the approvals were kept secret.
Why are they secret now? We know that Saudi Arabia is intent on
building a nuclear program. That is well covered. But they haven't
agreed to the nonproliferation rules that would prevent the development
of nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty is a bedrock
principle of international law that the United States has supported for
a very long time.
The principle is simple. We would not want countries to get nuclear
technology unless they give us guarantees that technology is only for
peaceful use, medical research, power production but not to produce
nuclear weapons.
We are transferring this technical know-how to the Saudi Arabian
Government secretly, without yet requiring that they sign on to the
important safety protections in the NPT. It is only logical that
Congress would want to know more about these approvals to make sure
they don't spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
In the recent hearing, I asked Secretary Perry about whether the
secret approvals of nuclear information transfer occurred before or
after the October 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi. He claimed not to
know. He has indicated he would provide that information in response to
written questions. I submitted the written questions. He has still not
provided the information. It is wrong to do these transfers without
letting Congress know; it is wrong to do these transfers when Saudi
Arabia has not yet agreed to the principles that would disallow nuclear
proliferation; and it would certainly be wrong to agree to transfers of
this kind of information after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi,
but as of yet the administration hasn't given us the data.
Beyond just the timing, who is getting these secret approvals?
Secretary Perry said the approvals were secret because there is
proprietary information. Companies might not want to have information
that they have developed through their own research available to all,
but that doesn't explain it. You don't have to give the proprietary
information to indicate what company has gotten an approval on what day
to do the transfer.
Who is getting these secret approvals? One major nuclear firm,
Westinghouse, has been reported as a frontrunner in the competitive
effort to do nuclear reactor construction in Saudi Arabia. Westinghouse
is owned by the same investors who bailed White House adviser Jared
Kushner out of a bad real estate deal. Remember, Jared Kushner was
originally denied a security clearance in the White House due to
concerns about foreign influence and personal financial conflicts.
Additional reporting connects disgraced National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn--who has been convicted for lying about his ties to and
communication with foreign governments--to the push for the Saudi
nuclear deal.
Finally, earlier today, I asked Secretary Pompeo in a Foreign
Relations Committee hearing about public reports in The National
Interest, in September of 2018, that say the Saudis have a robust anti-
ballistic missile program that has been largely built on Chinese
missiles--missiles from China that were constructed originally to carry
nuclear warheads--but that the Saudis have apparently used with
nonnuclear payloads or outfitted with nonnuclear payloads.
The National Interest article that I entered into the Record, dated
September 21, 2018, indicated that, in Saudi Arabia, these missiles
have been arranged so some of them would be directed toward Tehran and
others would be directed toward Israel. All of these
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issues are on the table: poor prosecution of a civil war leading to
humanitarian disaster, the murder of a U.S. resident journalist, the
arrest of U.S. residents for women's rights activism, secret transfers
of nuclear technology without letting Congress know, and then the story
I asked Secretary Pompeo about today. The buildup of an anti-ballistic
missile program based significantly on Chinese missiles leads me to
ask: Why would we help Saudi Arabia in a disastrous war in Yemen? Why
would we turn a blind eye to Saudi human rights abuses? Why would we
transfer nuclear know-how and plan for a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia
when they haven't agreed to nonproliferation rules that we expect other
Nations to agree to in a way that would possibly spark an arms race in
the Middle East? My final question is, who in the United States is
benefiting from this?
When I asked the Secretary of State this morning, again, on the dates
of the nuclear approvals and did they occur before or after the
assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, I am sure he knew I was going to ask
him that question. I asked Secretary Perry the question 2 weeks ago. I
submitted that question for the record. He knew I was going to ask him
that question, and he said he couldn't give me any information about
the approvals; he would have to get back to me about them.
Congress is not a student government. Congress is supposed to, as the
article I branch, exercise oversight over important matters. There is
hardly anything more important than the spread of nuclear technologies
that could be used to proliferate weapons of mass destruction anywhere
in the world, especially in a region as dangerous as the Middle East.
These are the items that Ambassador Abizaid will need to deal with in
his new role, but we need to exercise proper congressional oversight of
this relationship because there are so many problems with it right now
that are not being addressed by this administration. I think only
Congress can address them. I hope my colleagues will join me with that
oversight.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.