[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14032-14033]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                                VIEQUES

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise to spend a couple minutes talking 
about an issue that has received some notoriety in recent months and 
some specific attention over the last few weeks. That is the issue of 
the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico and the incarceration of a number 
of people who went down to express their opposition to the continued 
use of Vieques as a bombing site.
  First of all, I say to those who have demonstrated there and have 
been sentenced to 30 days--in one case, I think 60 days--I think all of 
these people involved certainly were aware that when you engage in 
civil disobedience, there will be a price to be paid for that civil 
disobedience. I will address the underlying issue of Vieques, but my 
hope is that the authorities will recognize that there is some sense of 
balance in all of this and that 30 days and 60 days may be a bit 
excessive, to put it mildly, in light of some of the sentences we see 
meted out on crimes that are far more serious in our society.
  I take particular note of my friend Bobby Kennedy from the State of 
New York and his wife Mary who are wonderful parents. During this 
period of incarceration, a new son was born to them. Bobby Kennedy, 
obviously, could not be there for the birth of his son because of his 
incarceration in Puerto Rico. I know how difficult and painful this was 
for him and his family. I want them to know that they have my strong 
sympathies and expressions of support. My hope would have been that 
Bobby Kennedy might have been able to be with his family during that 
important moment, despite the fact that he would be the first one to 
tell us that he understood fully the implications to the action he 
would take to express what were not only his views but the views of 
thousands of others within Puerto Rico and beyond the island over the 
issue of whether or not Vieques ought to be used as a continued site 
for targeting practice by the U.S. military.
  I express my sympathies for Bobby Kennedy, Dennis Rivera, and others 
who are in prison at this moment for those actions.
  There has been a long history here of divergence of interest with 
respect to the people of Puerto Rico and the Navy's interest in 
maintaining the capability for important live training exercises on the 
island of Vieques. Over the years, efforts have been made to reconcile 
these different interests. During the Clinton administration, in fact, 
an agreement was reached with the then-Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro 
Rossello, that called for the holding of a referendum in November of 
the year 2001 to allow the residents of Puerto Rico to choose whether 
to end the military's use of Vieques by 2003 or to indefinitely permit 
military exercises to continue after that date.
  That seemed at the moment to reduce the tensions over this matter and 
to provide a way for the people of Puerto Rico to express their views. 
On the idea of a referendum, I was thinking to myself, living in 
Connecticut, along Long Island Sound where there are small islands off 
the coast of Connecticut, that if one of our islands were being used as 
a target by the military, how long we would allow it to persist if the 
people of my State felt strongly about it. I see the Presiding Officer 
from the State of Florida with a huge coastline. In many cases, of 
course, people have tolerated and supported it in their jurisdictions 
or States.
  This is a matter which has provoked tremendous interest on the island 
of Puerto Rico, a part of the United States, of course.
  Since the inauguration of Sila Maria Calderon, the new Governor of 
Puerto Rico, in January of this year, the efforts by President Clinton 
and Pedro Rossello, it has become clear that the resolution calling for 
the referendum in November of 2001 has been sort of put aside, that the 
plan did not resolve these tensions, despite the good efforts of those 
involved in crafting that particular solution.
  On June 14, in response to continued tensions, President Bush, in 
consultation with the U.S. Navy, announced that all military exercises 
in Vieques would cease by May 1, 2003.
  That provoked serious voices of dissent within this Chamber. In fact, 
there were those who were very disappointed by President Bush's 
decision. I happen to think he made the right decision. I know it was 
not an easy one to make, but he did listen to the various sides of this 
story and decided that, given all the information and facts, this was 
the right decision to make. Naval training on the island was to proceed 
between then and May of 2003.
  In addition, in accordance with the earlier agreement, the Navy 
returned

[[Page 14033]]

more than a third of its Vieques holdings to the island on May 1, 2001.
  Notwithstanding the Bush announcement, a number of issues have led to 
increasingly vocal opposition to the continued use of Vieques by the 
Navy in the interim period. Puerto Rican critics of the Navy cite the 
loss of economic development opportunities on the island because access 
to most of the island's land is restricted. They also mention the 
failure of the Navy to live up to pledges to compensate for these lost 
economic opportunities.
  Damage to the environment and ecology have also been mentioned. Most 
worrisome, concerns have been raised about the impact the Atlantic 
Fleet Weapons Training Facility has had on the health and safety of the 
people on the island of Vieques. Were we to put ourselves in the shoes 
of the mothers and fathers of the children on the island of Vieques, we 
might better understand to some degree why there is increasing 
impatience and concern about having to wait 3 years before a potential 
danger to their loved ones will cease.
  The relationship between the Navy and the people of Vieques has been 
a rocky one, to put it mildly, over the years. More recently the 
situation has grown from bad to worse. Visits by prominent Members of 
Congress and other well-known public figures, including the wife of 
Jesse Jackson and Robert Kennedy Jr., have served to educate Americans 
writ large about the Vieques issue.
  Overly harsh treatment of these protesters by the court has only 
served to make, in my view, the matter even worse. It seems to me that 
the time has passed for the relationship between the Navy and the 
people of Vieques to ever be mended in a satisfactory manner that would 
allow both to coexist on this little island.
  The matter is going to get even more heated, in my view, as the July 
29 referendum called for by the Governor of Puerto Rico draws near. It 
seems fairly obvious what the results of the referendum will be. And 
while I appreciate President Bush's decision to end the use of Vieques 
by the year 2003, at this juncture I believe that is not going to be 
satisfactory. Those are the realities, Mr. President. Many wish it 
would be otherwise, but I don't think it is going to be so.
  As a practical matter, continued civil disobedience is going to make 
the Navy's use of its facilities impossible. We need to accept it and 
move on, in my view.
  Certainly, we need to find a way for our military to conduct training 
exercises. That is extremely important, and I don't, in any way, 
minimize the significance of that particular issue. The question is 
whether or not there are alternatives to this particular venue which is 
provoking so much dissent and so many problems for both the Navy and 
the people of the island of Puerto Rico. A Department of Defense panel 
has already recommended that the Navy work toward ceasing all training 
activities on Vieques within 5 years. In light of recent events, that 
timeframe will clearly have to be accelerated. I find it hard to 
believe that some interim locations can't be found where much of the 
necessary training that the Navy needs to conduct could take place. 
Search for alternative sights needs to be given a much higher priority 
than was anticipated.
  I don't fault those who tried to come up with a time line that would 
be satisfactory, but the realities are such that I don't think that is 
any longer possible. The steps I have outlined can begin the process 
for moving forward on this very difficult and contentious matter that 
undoubtedly has important implications for the people of Puerto Rico 
and for our national defense.
  Mr. President, again, I salute my friends who have gone down to 
express not only their views but the views of the overwhelming majority 
of the people on Vieques. My plea at this particular hour, after having 
these members serve two weeks in incarceration, is that the courts 
might find it possible for them to have expressed their obligations by 
incarcerating these people in light of their civil disobedience, but I 
think moving on is the best course of action.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.

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