[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 25461-25467]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      RUSSIA'S ROAD TO CORRUPTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) is 
recognized for the remainder of the time.
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to enter into the Record and share 
with my colleagues a report that was recently released by the gentleman 
from California (Chairman Cox). It is entitled ``Russia's Road to 
Corruption.''
  This is the Speaker's advisory group on Russia. In addition, I would 
like to share with Members that the New York Times reported this month 
that, without reporting to Members of the House or the Senate, Vice 
President Gore concluded a secret agreement in 1995 with then-Russian 
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin not to enforce U.S. laws requiring 
sanctions on any country that supplies advanced conventional weapons to 
Iran. Specifically, Vice President Gore, purportedly on behalf of the 
United States, secretly authorized Russia to continued the sale of 
advanced weaponry to Iran.
  Now, this occurred while there was a U.S. law on the books, and let 
me quote from a comment made by the gentleman from California (Chairman 
Cox) at the time. He said, ``The 1992 act required the President to 
sanction any country that transfers goods or technology that contribute 
knowingly and materially to the efforts by Iran or Iraq to acquire 
destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons.''
  At the very moment Vice President Gore was making this secret deal 
with Chernomyrdin, bipartisan majorities in Congress were deeply 
critical of the Clinton Administration's failure to sanction Russian 
arms sales to Iran.
  It is now clear why the administration took no action. Vice President 
Gore actually signed off on the Russian sales to Iran. The secret Gore-
Chernomyrdin agreement reportedly allowed Russia to sell weapons to 
Iran for 4 more years, including an advanced submarine. This is the 
ultra-quiet Kilo Class Russian submarine.

[[Page 25462]]



                              {time}  2310

  Also, to sell torpedoes and antiship mines, and hundreds of tanks and 
armed personnel carriers. This submarine, as but one example, is 
exactly the type identified by Congress when it passed the law as 
posing a risk to U.S. forces operating in the Middle East.
  The secret deal cut by Vice President Gore directly contradicts the 
1992 law he coauthored. As then Senator Gore said on April 8 of 1992, 
``We do feel that the sanctions package has got to lay out the choice 
for dealers in these technologies in very stark terms. It is abundantly 
clear that we need to raise the stakes high and we need to act without 
compunction if we catch violators.'' That is what was said then.
  The report of the Speaker's advisory group noted a series of 
interlocking flaws in the Clinton-Gore policy towards Russia. 
Unjustified confidence in unreliable officials like Chernomyrdin was 
the first that they pointed out; refusal to acknowledge mistakes and 
revise policies accordingly, and excessive secrecy designed to screen 
controversial policies, to screen them from both the Congress and from 
the U.S. public. This secret agreement exemplifies every one of these 
flaws, stated the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox). Tragically, as 
the Times report notes, the decision to flout U.S. law gained us 
nothing from the Russians.
  The September 2000 advisory group reported concluded, in spite of 
evidence that both Russian government agencies and private entities 
were directly involved in proliferation to such States as Iran and 
Iraq, the Clinton administration continued to rely on personal 
assurances from its small cadre of contacts in the Russian government. 
Administration officials, including Vice President Gore and Deputy 
Secretary of State Talbot, accepted these assurances, despite clear 
evidence of continued proliferation rather than believe or admit that 
proliferation could continue despite the stated opposition of their 
partners.
  To continue, I wanted to share with my colleagues a second issue, a 
second secret Gore-Chernomyrdin deal, that was described not by The New 
York Times this time, but this one by the Washington Times on October 
17 of this year. In a classified ``Dear Al'' letter to the Vice 
President in late 1995, Chernomyrdin described Russian aid to Iran's 
nuclear program. The letter states that it is quote, ``ot to be 
conveyed to third parties, including the U.S. Congress.'' Not to be 
conveyed to the U.S. Congress. It appears to memorialize a previous 
personal agreement between the two men that the U.S. would acquiesce in 
the nuclear technology transfer to Iran.
  As with the first Gore-Chernomyrdin deal, this agreement too was kept 
from Congress. This letter from Chernomyrdin to Gore indicates that 
Vice President Gore acquiesced to the shipment of not only conventional 
weapons to Iran in violation of the Gore-McCain Act, but also nuclear 
technology to Iran. According to Vice President Gore, the purpose of 
this secret deal was to constrain Russian nuclear aid to Iran in the 
construction of two nuclear reactors. If that is so, Vice President 
Gore plainly did not succeed. In August of this year, the CIA reported 
that ``Russia continues to provide Iran with nuclear technology that 
could be applied to Iran's weapons program.''
  Now, our House Committee on International Relations chairman, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), asked the administration on 
October 18 if it had pointed out to Vice President Gore's Russian 
partner in this that it is not the American way for the President to 
keep secrets from Congress when it comes to such serious national 
security concerns as proliferation of nuclear technology. The gentleman 
from New York (Mr. Gilman) has yet to receive an answer.
  The law requires that ``The text of any international agreement to 
which the United States is a party be transmitted to Congress as soon 
as practical, but in no event later than 60 days'' after it is reached. 
The law does not contemplate that Congress will discover such 
agreements 5 years after the fact by reading about them through leaks 
to a newspaper, commented the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox), the 
chairman of this committee. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
requested the first secret Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement on arms to Iran 
on Friday, October 13, the day The New York Times revealed it. Weeks 
later, the administration has yet to produce either it or the second 
Gore-Chernomyrdin letter dealing with nuclear transfers to Iran.
  Lastly, I wanted to cite from Russia's Road to Corruption, the 
Speaker's Advisory Group on Russia chaired by the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Cox) comments about the ongoing Russian assistance to 
Iran's ballistic missile program. To quote from the report, 
``Throughout the 1990s, despite repeated pledges by the Yeltsin 
government given during summits, Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission meetings, 
administerial level meetings, Russian private and government entities 
continue to provide critical technological assistance to Iran's 
ballistic missile program.''
  In testimony before the House Committee on International Relations in 
October of 1999, proliferation expert Kenneth Timmerman testified that 
top Clinton administration officials were aware of Russian aid to 
Iran's missile programs and did little to counter it.
  In March 1997, a CIA intelligence report labeled ``secret'' 
reportedly disclosed the then Iranian President Rafsanjani was pleased 
with the growing ties between Iran and Russia and that he expected Iran 
to benefit from Russia's highly developed missile program. Iran's 
President stated that he considered obtaining Russian military 
technology one of Iran's primary foreign policy goals, yet the Clinton 
administration, anxious to present a positive image of Russian-American 
relations, continued to accept the commitments from Yeltsin and 
Chernomyrdin during this period at the Clinton-Yeltsin summit in 
Helsinki, at the June Clinton-Yeltsin summit in 1997, and at the Gore-
Chernomyrdin meeting in 1997 that Russia would hold its missile 
technology assistance to Iran, and all of this, while in November 1998, 
the Russian Duma passed a resolution calling for increased military 
cooperation with Iran.
  Nevertheless, the Clinton administration still refused to adjust U.S. 
policy to the torrent of information from the U.S. Intelligence 
community that corroborated the evidence from U.S. allies. American 
policy was based on the assurances from the administration's small 
circle of official Russian counterparts. Objective intelligence, 
objective reporting was discounted. While information from Russian 
sources, who clearly stood to be injured by the imposition of 
sanctions, was accepted.
  The bipartisan Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act of 1997, 
which passed the House and Senate with veto-proof majorities, closed 
many of the loopholes invoked by the Clinton administration to justify 
its refusal to use sanctions. The act required suspension of U.S. 
Government assistance to foreign entities that assist Iran's ballistic 
missile program, but President Clinton vetoed that bill on June 23 
1998. One month after that veto, Iran tested its Shahab 3 missile, 10 
years ahead of the U.S. Government's original estimate of when it would 
be capable of doing so.
  Under threat of a congressional override of the veto of the Iran 
Missile Proliferation Act, the President finally issued an Executive 
Order. However, the Executive Order did nothing to address Russia's 
export control system, which even National Security Adviser Sandy 
Berger said was necessary when he announced the sanctions.

                              {time}  2320

  In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in February of 
2000, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet 
testified that Iran probably will soon possess a ballistic missile 
capable of reaching the United States. The impact of Russian assistance 
was clear. Only a year earlier, Tenet had testified that it would take 
many, many years for Iran to develop a missile capable of reaching the 
United States.
  The Clinton administration's willful blindness to Russian 
proliferation has

[[Page 25463]]

already done immense damage. The extensive Russian assistance has 
allowed Iran to improve significantly its ballistic missile capability. 
As a matter of fact with Russian assistance, Iran is now building a 
2,600 mile-range Kosar missile based on a Soviet era SS5 missile 
engine.
  This missile could ultimately form the basis for an Iranian 
Intercontinental ballistic missile. Russia has also ignored the Clinton 
administration's ineffectual objections to its plans to build nuclear 
reactors in Iran.
  Both the Clinton administration and outside experts fear that Iran 
will use the civilian reactor program as a cover for a secret nuclear 
weapons program, but the Clinton administration has failed to move 
effectively to end this Russian assistance. Moreover, congressional 
attempts to influence Russian behavior by reducing U.S. bilateral aid 
to the Russian central government have been undercut by continued 
unconditional administration support for aid to Russia through the IMF 
and the World Bank and other multinational institutions.
  Iran is seeking to acquire Russian assistance in building other 
weapons of mass destruction as well. In December of 1998, the New York 
Times reported that high-ranking Iranian officials were aggressively 
pursuing biological and chemical expertise in Russia.
  In interviews conducted with numerous former biological weapons 
exerts in Russian, more than a dozen stated that they had been 
approached by Iranian nationals and offered as much as $5,000 a month 
for information relating to biological weapons. Two weapons experts 
claimed they had been asked specifically to assist Iran in building 
biological weapons.
  The Russian scientists who had been approached noted that the 
Iranians showed particular interest in learning about or acquiring 
microbes that can be used militarily and genetic engineering techniques 
to create highly resistent germs.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield time to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Weldon), my colleague; and he has some points to make for the Record as 
well.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman and 
good friend for yielding. I thank the gentleman for following up on 
this Special Order. I was not aware we would be up so soon, but I 
appreciate your interests.
  The gentleman and I have traveled to Russia together. As the 
gentleman knows, we have tried to find a way to build a relationship 
with Russia, one that differs significantly from what we have seen over 
the past 8 years.
  Let me start off by following up with the comments the gentleman has 
just made, which I think the most important issues confronting this 
election and that is the status of our relationship with Russia and the 
problems that Russia currently presents to us from a threat's 
standpoint.
  The best way to characterize where we are today is look at where we 
were in 1992. As President Bush was finishing up his last year in 
office, Boris Yeltsin was leading the overthrow of the Communist system 
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
  I am sure my colleague remembers the vivid pictures on CNN of Boris 
Yeltsin standing on a tank outside of the Russian White House waving an 
American flag and a Russian flag with tens of thousands of Russians 
around him as he proclaimed the end of Communism, the end of the Soviet 
Union; and he announced that there would be a new strategic 
partnership, Russia and America working together.
  After 7 years of Clinton-Gore, last fall what did we see on CNN? We 
saw this picture: we saw tens of thousands of young Russians outside 
the American embassy in Moscow throwing paint at our embassy, firing 
weapons at our embassy, and burning the American flag. In fact, it got 
so bad that for a while our State Department had to issue warnings to 
Americans that wanted to travel to Moscow because the hatred for 
America had grown so great in such a short period of time that the 
Russian people were adamantly opposed to any Americans in their 
country.
  How could this policy and how could this feeling between Russia and 
the people of Russia against America grow so rapidly? In fact, one of 
President Putin's first speeches this year, after he was sworn in in 
January, was to announce a new strategic partnership for Russia. That 
partnership was Russia and China against the West, against America.
  It is because our policy for the past 7 years, 8 years under Clinton 
and Gore was based on a personal relationship between Bill Clinton and 
Boris Yeltsin and Al Gore and Viktor Chernomyrdin, and they felt as 
long as those two people were in power in Russia, nothing else 
mattered. Instead of doing institution building, building the 
institution of the parliament, the court system, the free market 
economy, if they just focused on those two people, those two 
personalities, then America would be okay. That worked in the 
beginning, when Yeltsin was strong and when he was honest.
  As Yeltsin became an alcoholic and surrounded himself with thieves 
who were the oligarchs running the Russia banking system; as 
Chernomyrdin got involved in corruption and in the oil and gas 
industry, the Russian people became to lose confidence in their 
leaders, but there was Bill Clinton and Al Gore still supporting these 
two failed leaders.
  We knew 5 years ago that the oligarchs were siphoning off billions of 
dollars of IMF money and because President Clinton and Al Gore did not 
want to embarrass their friends, they pretended they did not see it. 
They pretended it was not happening.
  Just last year we saw the Bank of New York, several officials being 
indicted by the Justice Department for allegedly siphoning up to $5 
billion of money that should have been going to the Russian people. So 
the Russian people saw this IMF money and World Bank money coming in, 
but they saw it not going to help them improve their communities, but 
rather they saw that money be shifted to Swiss bank accounts and U.S. 
real estate investments.
  What did we see? We saw Russia sending technologies to our enemies. 
We saw Russia, as my colleague just pointed out, sending technology to 
Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, all covered by arms control 
agreements, and this administration not wanting to call Russia on 
those, because again it was based on personal friendships.
  One instance in particular that I can relate to was in January of 
1996, I was in Moscow. It was a month after The Washington Post had run 
a front page story that highlighted the fact that we had evidence, 
America had evidence that Russia had sent guidance systems to Iraq to 
improve the accuracy of their missiles. Now, that is a violation of an 
arms control treaty called the Missile Technology Control Regime. So I 
asked the American ambassador to Russia, Tom Pickering, who is now 
number three at State, I said, Tom, what was the response of the 
Russians when you asked them about The Washington Post story? He said, 
Congressman Weldon, I have not asked them yet. I said, why would you 
ask them? It is a gross violation of a treaty. He said that has to come 
from the White House.
  I came back to Washington, and I wrote to the President. I wrote him 
a letter. He wrote me back in April, and he said, Dear Congressman 
Weldon, you raise serious concerns; and, in fact, if Russia did send 
those items to Iraq, that is a flagrant violation and I assure you, we 
will take aggressive action. We will impose the required sanctions, but 
he said, Congressman Weldon, we have no evidence.
  That is the story they used 37 times in violations of arms control 
agreements in 8 years. Well, I say to the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Royce) I brought the evidence tonight so the American people can 
see them. As I have shown around the country, this is a Soviet Union 
accelerometer and this is a Soviet gyroscope. These were taken off of 
Russia SSN19 missiles that used to be pointed at America's cities.
  Under arms control negotiations, these devices are supposed to be 
destroyed. They are not supposed to be

[[Page 25464]]

reused. We caught the Russians not once, not twice, but three times 
giving these devices to Saddam Hussein. What would Saddam use them for? 
He would use these devices to provide the guidance system to make those 
SCUD missiles more accurate, those same SCUD missiles that killed those 
28 young Americans in Duran, Saudi Arabia, in 1991.
  These devices would make those missiles have much more accuracy. Iraq 
cannot build these; neither can Iran. They are too sophisticated. The 
only way Iraq or Iran can get these devices, the only way Syria and 
Libya can get these devices is if Russia sells them to them or gives 
them to them, and that is why we have arms control regimes.
  We caught Iraq getting these devices from Russia three times. We 
imposed no sanctions. Why would we not do that? People would say to me, 
well, Congressman Weldon, you mean to tell me the President would 
deliberately not hold Russia accountable? The answer is yes. Why? 
Because 1996 was the year Yeltsin was running for reelection. In fact, 
the secret cable is now public that Bill Clinton sent to Boris Yeltsin 
in 1996. It was the Dear Boris memo, and it was a cable that the 
American people can get in the back of a book called ``Betrayal,'' 
written by Bill Gertz.

                              {time}  2330

  That cable to Boris Yeltsin from Bill Clinton says, ``Don't worry, 
Boris, we will not do anything to weaken your chance for reelection 
this year.'' So the policy, whether it was the theft of IMF money or 
whether it was the transfer of technology, was to keep Boris Yeltsin in 
power.
  My colleague mentioned another incident involving transfer of 
technology to Iran and the Iran Missile Sanctions Act. My colleague did 
not mention one part of that equation I would like to go into some 
elaboration on.
  Before the vote on that bill in the House, even though it was 
supported overwhelmingly by Democrats and Republicans. In fact it was a 
huge bipartisan base of support. The week before the bill came up for a 
vote, I got a call from Vice President Al Gore and his staff said to my 
staff, Vice President Al Gore wants Congressman Weldon to come down to 
the Old Executive Office Building to talk about the Iran Missile 
Sanctions bill.
  So I went down to the White House. I was joined in the Old Executive 
Office Building by Carl Levin, by John McCain, by John Kyl, by Jane 
Harman, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and Lee Hamilton. 
There were about 12 of us who sat in the room as the Vice President of 
the United States, the current candidate for the President, sat with 
Leon Fuerth, his top security advisor, and for 1 hour the Vice 
President lobbied us not to pass the Iran Missile Sanctions bill. 
Because he said if we did, it would upset the relationship between Bill 
Clinton and Boris Yeltsin and he and Viktor Chernomyrdin.
  When he finished, all of us in the room, Democrats and Republicans, 
Senators and House Members, said to the Vice President: Mr. Vice 
President, it is too late. You do not get it. The technology is flowing 
like water down a waterfall, and you are not stopping it.
  Two days later, in spite of that personal lobbying by the Vice 
President of the United States, the bill came up on the floor of the 
House for a vote and 396 of us voted in favor of that bill, slapping 
the Vice President and the President across the face, because we knew 
they were being ineffective and we knew that instead of doing what was 
right, they were standing up for their friends, Boris Yeltsin and 
Viktor Chernomyrdin.
  We broke for the Christmas recess and we came back in February. In 
February, the Senate was going to take up the same bill. In February, 
the bill came up. A week before the vote, the Vice President's office 
called my office again and said: The Vice President would like 
Congressman Weldon to come back down to the Old Executive Office 
Building. I went back down.
  Again, there were 10 to 12 Members of the Senate and the House, 
Democrats and Republicans. The same group. This time the Vice President 
had two people with him, Leon Fuerth, and Jack Caravelli from the 
National Security Council. They met with us for 90 minutes to try to 
convince us not to let the Senate vote for the Iran Missile Sanctions 
bill.
  When he finished, we again told the Vice President: Mr. Vice 
President, you do not know how serious this is. This technology is 
helping Iran and Iraq develop new capabilities. But there was the Vice 
President, currently running for the presidency, telling us do not 
worry, we are going to take care of all of this. We are getting Yeltsin 
and Chernomyrdin to go along with us.
  The Senate voted 96 to 4 in favor of that bill. The Vice President 
also told us and ensured us that he would take care of everything. That 
he was the one negotiating with Chernomyrdin, as my colleague pointed 
out, and I think he mentioned this earlier about the memo that the CIA 
wrote to him. We have evidence that his partner, Viktor Chernomyrdin, 
was involved with oil and gas corruption and the CIA sent him a memo to 
warn him that his friend and partner in Russia was not a clean person.
  The White House has now acknowledged, though they initially denied 
it, they have now acknowledged that people remember that memo. And 
there is a CIA analyst who has said he saw the memo with the words 
scribbled across the front. The Vice President wrote a word across the 
front that we are not supposed to use on the floor of the House, but it 
started with ``bull'' and we just cannot complete the rest of the word, 
because Vice President Gore did not want to hear from the CIA that they 
had information that his friend and partner was involved with 
corruption in Russia.
  So the policy of this administration for 8 years was deny reality. 
Then we find out, as my colleague just pointed out, that Vice President 
Gore went beyond denying reality. He did his own diplomacy and actually 
negotiated with Chernomyrdin the allowance for Russia to transfer 
technology to Iran which was strictly prohibited by the law that was 
passed by this Congress. In fact, when he was in the Senate it was 
passed under the leadership of John McCain.
  It is outrageous that a Vice President could secretly allow a country 
like Iran, when this Congress had gone on the record expressing our 
grave concern with what Iran was doing, that this Vice President could 
allow that technology to continue to flow to Iran. And we now find out 
that Russia did not pay attention to what the Vice President said. They 
went beyond the original understanding. In my opinion, this requires a 
serious investigation by the Congress.
  Now, we are not going to be able to do this before the election. But 
the American people deserve to know what this Vice President did in a 
secret negotiation with the prime minister of Russia, a man who 
eventually left office in disgrace, that the CIA said was involved in 
corrupt activities. This country deserves to know what this Vice 
President did in arranging for some kind of a secret allowance for Iran 
to get technology from Russia, even though the law of the land in this 
country prohibited Russia from sending that technology to Iran.
  How many other guidance systems went to Iran? How many other weapons 
besides the submarine and the arms that went to Iran? And what is the 
impact going to be on our security?
  In fact, I would say to my colleague that I think this Congress ought 
to consider taking some type of action even before we leave this week 
to show our absolute outrage that any elected official, President or 
Vice President, would unilaterally take action that would eventually 
harm America.
  Let me say before returning back to my colleague, I do not rise as a 
rabid conservative Republican, and I know my friend feels the same way 
I do, wanting to trash the administration. I have been to Russia 21 
times. Every time I have gone, I have taken my colleagues on the other 
side with me. In fact, I have enjoyed a great relationship with the 
Democrats in our bipartisan Duma-Congress initiative. Each

[[Page 25465]]

year, when the administration sought votes on the Cooperative Threat 
Reduction Program, the Nunn-Lugar program, I would get calls from the 
White House and from people in the administration asking me to lobby my 
Republican colleagues to support the initiative, which I did.
  So I supported this administration in some of their policy issues 
toward Russia, and I am absolutely outraged, however, that this new 
revelation has come out that the White House has still not provided 
documentation to us, even after the chairman of the Committee on 
International Relations, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) has 
written to the White House requesting copies of the memo and the 
letters that were written from Viktor Chernomyrdin to Al Gore in which 
he says specifically: Do not tell any third parties about this 
agreement, including your Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, Viktor Chernomyrdin has no right to be above our 
Constitution. He has no right to send a letter to Vice President Al 
Gore saying ignore the Constitution of America; we will have some 
secret arrangement where I will tell you that only certain types of 
things can be shipped to Iran. Even though Vice President Gore knew 
there was a law on the books that specifically prohibited the transfer 
of technology to Iran, even though Vice President Gore knew that our 
vote on Iran proliferation was 396 votes in the House and 96 votes in 
the Senate.
  As my colleague, I think, agrees with me, the biggest scandal of the 
past 8 years is what this administration has done to our defense and 
foreign policy. The past 8 years will go down in history in my opinion 
as the worst period of time in undermining America's security. Not just 
because of what we did in these secret relationships in supporting 
people in Russia as opposed to institutions in Russia, but because of 
what we have done to force Russia into a new coalition where Russia and 
China have gone together in what they both characterize as a strategic 
partnership against America and the West.
  Mr. Speaker, we are going to be trying to rebuild the confidence and 
the trust between these countries and us for the next 25 years. That is 
the legacy of this administration. It is a legacy that I think is 
absolutely embarrassing.

                              {time}  2340

  Now, my colleague I think was quoting from the Task Force, which I 
was a member of, where we looked in depth at these issues. And the 
American people need to look at these issues, as well. Because the 
rhetoric coming out of the Vice President's mouth, the rhetoric coming 
out of those who were supporting what they would say has been a strong 
foreign policy is just rhetoric.
  In fact, if you look around the world today, the instability in the 
relationships that America has with Russia, with China, the situation 
in the Middle East, the problems with North Korea are all problems that 
are not going to go away and problems which we have to address up 
front.
  I know my friend feels like I do, we want Russia to be our good 
friend, we want the Russian people to be our good friends, and we want 
the Russian people to know that we are on their side. We are 
embarrassed that our administration ignored the transfer of illegal 
money out of Russia to illegal bank accounts. We are embarrassed that 
some of the current problems of the Congress with Russia were caused 
because we did not hold Yeltsin accountable when there were 
institutions in Russia that were in violation of arms control 
agreements.
  And as a result, when Yeltsin was about ready to leave office last 
year, all the polls in Moscow showed that only two percent of the 
Russian people supported Boris Yeltsin. But even though only two 
percent of the Russian people supported Boris Yeltsin, there was Bill 
Clinton and Al Gore still supporting Boris Yeltsin and Viktor 
Chernomyrdin and his successor. Because Viktor Chernomyrdin eventually 
left and a whole multitude of prime ministers came in behind him.
  It was summed up best by a visiting Duma deputy who came over in the 
middle of the Kosovo conflict. We had a press conflict and he said, you 
will, America for 70 years the Soviet Communist party spent billions 
and billions of dollars to convince the Soviet people that Americans 
were evil, and they failed. But your President and your administration 
in just a few short years has been able to convince the Russian people 
that Americans are evil.
  What a terrible statement for an elected official of the Russian Duma 
to make that for 70 years the Soviet Communists tried to convince 
Russians that we were evil and they failed, and yet our policies from 
1993 up until the Kosovo fiasco just a few short years ago turned the 
Russian people against us.
  We have to correct all of that, and we also have to hold this Vice 
President accountable for the actions he took unilaterally.
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I have one question that I would like to ask 
the gentleman and that concerns the law as it pertains to these 
international agreements.
  Now, according to the law, as I understand it, when there is an 
agreement with a foreign power, that information is supposed to be 
given to Congress as soon as practical or no later than within 60 days.
  My question is this: Since we are now in a position where some 5 
years after the agreement we are finding out about such agreements in 
the New York Times, what recourse does Congress have under the law at 
this time in order to assert our constitutional rights to be informed 
about what the administration is doing negotiating without sharing that 
information with either the Senate or with the House and in particular 
negotiating when there are laws on the books?
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the 1995 law that was 
passed, which was championed by John McCain, basically prohibited 
Russia from sending technology to Iran.
  There is now evidence in a secret agreement that Vice President Gore 
worked out with Viktor Chernomyrdin, the same Viktor Chernomyrdin that 
the CIA told Vice President Gore was involved in corruption with 
Russia. That agreement never came to the Congress. No member of the 
Senate intelligence Committee, the House Committee on Intelligence, no 
member of the leadership in either party was aware that Vice President 
Gore on his own made an arrangement with Viktor Chernomyrdin to allow 
Russia to transfer certain technology to Iran.
  Now, the State Department and the White House are not denying this. 
What they are claiming is the technology was not covered by this law. 
That is hogwash. This technology was covered. But what Vice President, 
what the President for that matter, has the power to overrule the 
Congress?
  I mean, this gets back to shades of what the Democrats raled about 
during the Vietnam era and during the era of the Central American 
fiasco. No President has the right, no Vice President has the right 
especially, to enter into a secret agreement with a foreign leader that 
does not involve the express advice and consent of the Congress. And 
yet that is what Vice President Gore did.
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that during the debate 
on the original 1995 law itself, the very example given in the debate 
was the super secret kilo class type of submarine that could be 
transferred from Russia to Iran because of our concerns of what that 
would do to our strategic interests in the Middle East.
  How would it be possible for the administration now to claim that in 
fact it did not intend or their interpretation is that it is not 
covered by the statute when in fact the debate on the original law 
mentioned that kilo class submarine?
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely 
correct. And for other colleagues who are listening in their offices, 
the kilo class submarine is a submarine that can do tremendous harm to 
America, our Navy, and our allies.
  Iran now has that because of what Vice President Gore did secretly in 
this agreement with Viktor

[[Page 25466]]

Chernomyrdin. And even Madeleine Albright now has acknowledged what he 
did. My colleague probably is aware that there is a classified letter 
that was written by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in this year 
to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. And that is what it says. This 
is quoting Madeleine Albright.
  ``Without the 1995 Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement, Russia's conventional 
arms sales to Iran would have been subject to sanctions based on 
various provisions of our laws.''
  So now we have the Secretary of State this year affirming that what 
was done by Vice President Gore secretly in 1995, if that had not been 
done, those transfers would have caused sanctions to be placed on 
Russia.
  I mean, this is amazing. Russia is trying to become a democracy and 
it appears as though we are going to a totalitarian state where the 
Vice President thinks he could do whatever he wants. He does not have 
that authority.
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, there is one other issue that is of concern 
to me.
  When we were in Moscow, we had an opportunity to speak to various 
officials in the Russian Government; and, upon our return, there was a 
story in the media about the fact that support among the Russian people 
for the United States was down to single digits for our policies and 
their feelings about the intentions of the United States was down to 
single digits.
  When we contrast that with the attitudes after the fall of the Berlin 
Wall and after the disillusion of the former Soviet Union, at that 
particular time the support for U.S. policy and intentions was 
registered to be the majority of Russians. In one poll I recall it was 
70 percent.
  How does that go from 70 percent level of support down to a level of 
support that is around four or five percent? And at the same time, how 
do we go from a situation where we had a relationship with Russian 
parliamentarians to one where today a former KGB officer, now the 
President of Russia, states that his strategic alliance is going to be 
with China, not with the United States, but with China? How does that 
happen over the span of a few years?
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think it is just basically 
because the policy of this administration, two people, Bill Clinton and 
Boris Yeltsin, was as long as they got along with their counterparts in 
Russia, Boris Yeltsin and Viktor Chernomyrdin, to them nothing else 
mattered.
  In fact the Duma felt totally left out of the process. The Duma 
members told me. In fact, one of my Duma deputy friends, a very 
respected member of the Duma, Vladimir Luhkin, used to be the Soviet 
ambassador here in the U.S. He was recently the chairman of the 
Committee on International Affairs, and he right now is the chairman of 
the pro-Western Yablako faction. I am going to tell you what he said to 
me. And I never said this publicly before.
  I was in Moscow and arrived the day after President Clinton left 
Moscow right after the economic collapse.

                              {time}  2350

  Luhkin called me into his office. He said, Curt, I have a very 
serious concern that I have to raise with you. I said what is it, 
Vladimir? We have been friends. He said, the word around the Duma is 
that your President had discussions with Boris Yeltsin over what the 
U.S. response would be if Yeltsin disbanded the parliament altogether. 
He said, the fact that your President even engaged in those discussions 
is terribly alarming for us, because that would mean that your 
President does not even support our constitution, which is the basis of 
our democracy.
  So here we have the members of the Duma seeing our administration go 
to Moscow and openly discuss with Yeltsin, and I assume Chernomydin, 
the possibility of them disbanding their parliament and simply having 
what basically they used to have in Russia, one or two people running 
the system. That is why the Russian people have no confidence.
  If I were a citizen in Russia, I would not trust America, either, 
after I saw the world community sending billions of dollars into Moscow 
to help the Russian people build roads and schools and communities and 
to see the bulk of that money siphoned off to Swiss bank accounts. I 
would not trust America either.
  Mr. ROYCE. One of the comments that interested me was former Foreign 
Minister Federov's comment, where he told American officials do not 
give us money through the IMF into the central bank without strings, 
because if you do that that money will end up, quote, in Swiss bank 
accounts. Why was it, why was it, that we continued, against the advice 
of their own foreign minister who was trying to make reforms, to 
continue to put money into the government there instead of as an 
alternative attempting through democracy building to put the funding 
into building up political parties in Russia, building up a Democratic 
culture in Russia, assisting those who were trying to reform the 
country, why did all of the support go directly through the heads of 
state that were controlling the system, including the privatization? 
The gentleman alluded to Viktor Chernomydin's role there and in the 
report the indication is from the Russia's Road to Corruption, the 
Speaker's Advisory Group on Russia, the indication is that one of the 
main beneficiaries out of the entire privatization scheme was 
Chernomydin who ended up holding a large percentage of the oil and gas 
interests in Russia through so-called privatization, how could the 
administration allow this to occur without instead removing the 
resources from the government and putting the resources towards the 
forces of reform?
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. The gentleman knows full well that before 
Boris Yeltsin would leave office he made sure that his successor, who 
he hand picked, President Putin, would give him and his family amnesty. 
So that when Putin took over for Yeltsin, he immediately signed the 
first series of decrees, presidential decrees, that gave lifetime 
amnesty for Boris Yeltsin and his family because two of his daughters 
were involved in much of this corruption.
  To answer the gentleman's question, the reason why that amnesty was 
given was because the Russian people know full well that Yeltsin was 
taking care of his friends. He was taking care of those around him. He 
was the one who hand picked the bankers, the oligarchs where he was 
shuffling the money through. So the people that got wealthy were those 
close friends of Boris who kept him in power. Now this administration 
should have had the integrity to say to Yeltsin, look, we want 
democracy and free markets to succeed. We are not here to take care of 
your friends. But because they were so enamored with this personal 
friendship and relationship, they ignored the reality of what was 
occurring. That is why the Russian people in the end said we have no 
respect for America because you do not care about Russia's people; you 
care about your friends. You care about Boris Yeltsin and his family. 
You care about Yeltsin's friends and cronies and you care about 
Chernomydin and his friends and his family.
  What we said for the past 5 years in going over to Russia, to our 
government, is why do we not put the money out into the regions where 
the regional governors are making reforms? Let us reward them. Let us 
help them build new institutions, new communities. This administration 
wanted everything to go through Yeltsin and central Moscow because they 
wanted Yeltsin to be the strong man. They did not want the regions 
doing good things on their own because they would not be as loyal to 
Yeltsin. So we in fact helped cause the problem in Russia that focused 
everything in Moscow, through Yeltsin and Chernomydin and their 
friends, and now we find out that Al Gore even had secret dealings and 
agreements with Viktor Chernomydin that jeopardized the security of the 
U.S. and most specifically, and this is the key point, the first 
threatened nation to what Russia gave Iran is not the U.S.; it is 
Israel. The people of Israel now tonight can

[[Page 25467]]

thank Al Gore for a secret deal that he evidently worked out with 
Chernomydin that allowed technical supplies and equipment, components 
and military hardware and submarines to go to Iran, which will directly 
threaten Israel's security.
  Now Al Gore can talk a good game but the facts are, that is where the 
allowance was to send this technology, and the number one enemy of Iran 
is Israel. That is an absolute travesty. That is an absolute disgrace 
because, as the gentleman pointed out, Iran now has the Shahab 3 and 
Shahab 4 missile; they are now building a Shahab 5. Iran now has the 
ability to hit Israel directly and with this agreement that Chernomydin 
and Al Gore work out privately, Vice President Al Gore in my opinion 
helped Iran develop that technology that now directly threatens the 
safety of the people of Israel.
  Mr. ROYCE. There was one last question I wanted to ask, and that had 
to do with the issue of privatization. I think for us as confusing as 
the comments of Foreign Minister Federov, who says he warned the 
administration not to give this money to the central bank without 
strings attached, not to turn it over to the government in power 
without a method of auditing it and making certain that it went for the 
purposes to which it was intended, even more confusing are what we are 
hearing now about the privatization schemes in Russia and how the 
beneficiaries of that did not turn out to be the Russian people but 
instead certain oligarchs, how can it be that this administration that 
was involved in giving assistance in helping through the IMF and the 
World Bank and helping with financial assistance, how could it be the 
case that we could end up with so much in assets turned over instead to 
a very small group, cadre of people?
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. That is amazing. I do not know how. In 
fact, my colleague was with me when we met with Skuratov, who was the 
prosecutor general in Russia who is the equivalent of Janet Reno who 
told us he evidence of hundreds of insider people around Yeltsin who 
were involved in insider trading with GKO bonds, who made tons of money 
off of the economic problems of Russia. I do not know how this could 
occur. It is outrageous, but the fact is that we now have to live with 
this.
  I am outraged at this most recent story that my colleague brought up 
tonight, and I would urge our colleagues to take some kind of 
aggressive bipartisan action to hold this Vice President accountable 
for what he did. We have to stand up for what is right, and in my 
opinion what the Vice President did is not just wrong, it is 
unconstitutional and this Congress has a responsibility to make a 
statement on that before we leave this year, and I would say that 
should happen sometime this week.

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