[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3987-3989]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       MOVING ON THE ENERGY BILL

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to discuss 
where we are on the energy bill and how I see us moving forward. As I 
think the record will note, prior to the recess I filed an amendment on 
sanctions against Iraq. The specific justification for that was my 
belief that, at a time when we are seeing the situation in the Mideast 
erupt, we find ourselves in a position where we are importing over 
800,000 barrels a day from Iraq, a country where we are enforcing a no-
fly zone, putting the lives of our men and women at risk. At the same 
time as we are importing this oil, we put it in our aircraft and use it 
to enforce the no-fly zone. As a consequence, in Iraq, Saddam Hussein 
generates a cashflow that allows him to keep his Republican Guard well 
paid and obviously contributes to Iraq's capability of developing 
weapons of mass destruction.
  The purpose of the amendment is to initiate a sanction against Iraq 
until such time as we can satisfy ourselves that the U.N. inspectors 
have evaluated whether, indeed, Saddam is using his oil money to 
develop weapons of mass destruction. I may bring that up today. I have 
previously received from the majority leader a commitment that he would 
allow an up-or-down vote on that particular subject at a point in time. 
I think this may be an opportune time.
  The rationale for that is obvious. We find ourselves in a position 
now where Iraq has indicated it probably will initiate a curtailment of 
oil exports from that country for a 30-day period. We can only ponder 
the results of that, as to what it will mean to the consumers in the 
United States as we see ourselves continuing to be dependent on foreign 
sources of oil.
  I want to take a moment here to discuss where we are in the energy 
bill and my commitment to see us move forward on it. As you know, we 
have had a number of successful amendments. I think we have developed a 
stronger bill. I think it is appropriate to give a rundown on the 
current situation in the Mideast before I discuss that, and how that 
has increased the importance of moving an energy bill off the floor.
  There is virtually no way to explain the situation in the Mideast. I 
will not go into the details, other than to highlight the effects it 
will have on the United States.
  While we were on our Easter recess, clearly the tinderbox in the 
Mideast exploded. In 2 weeks, we have seen 5 suicide bombers; we have 
seen some 29 Israelis killed, 100 wounded. The same is true on the 
other side, the Palestinians. Israelis rolled into Yasser Arafat's 
headquarters in the Palestine settlement when Prime Minister Sharon 
declared, ``Israel is at war.''
  What did that do to the price of oil? It jumped, first $3 a barrel on 
Monday, March 25, closed at $24.53; trading at $28, and it is going up 
over $30. The Iraqis are calling on the Arab States to use oil as a 
weapon--oil as a weapon, Mr. President. Quoting from a statement issued 
by the ruling Iraqi Baath Party:

       If the oil weapon is not used in the battle to defend our 
     nations and safeguard our lives and dignity against American 
     and Zionist aggression, it is meaningless.

  Now Saddam announces a 30-day embargo against U.S. consumption--
basically a 30-day reduction of his output.
  New reports emerge that Saddam Hussein had planned to ram a suicide 
tanker into a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf. That came out of a 
Christian Science Monitor story, which I ask unanimous consent to have 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  [From the Christian Science Monitor]

        Ex-Smuggler Describes Iraqi Plot To Blow Up U.S. Warship

                          (By Scott Peterson)

       Iraq planned clandestine attacks against American warships 
     in the Persian Gulf in early 2001, according to an operative 
     of Iranian nationality who says he was given the assignment 
     by ranking members of Saddam Hussein's inner circle.
       The alleged plan involved loading at least one trade ship 
     with half a ton of explosives, and sailing under an Iranian 
     flag to disguise

[[Page 3988]]

     Iraq's role, using a crew of suicide bombers to blow up a 
     U.S. ship in the Gulf.
       The operative, who says he smuggled weapons for Iraq 
     through Iran for Al Qaeda during the late 1990s, says he was 
     told that $16 million had already been set aside for the 
     assignment--the first of ``nine new operations'' he says the 
     Iraqis wanted him to carry out, which were to include 
     missions in Kuwait.
       The first plot, remarkably similar to the attack on the USS 
     Cole on Oct. 12, 2000, was never carried out. The status of 
     the other nine operations remains unclear.
       The smuggler, Mohamed Mansour Shahab, now in the custody of 
     Kurdish opponents of Mr. Hussein in northern Iraq, says he 
     was first told of the role he was to play in the plan in 
     February 2000--one month after an apparently unrelated 
     attempt in Yemen to target a U.S. destroyer, the USS The 
     Sullivans, failed when the bombers' boat, overloaded with 
     explosives, sank. Suicide bombers later succeeded in striking 
     the USS Cole in Yemen, leaving 17 U.S. sailors dead and a 
     gaping 40-by-40 foot hole in the side of the warship.


                          terror's footprints

       If this Iranian smuggler is telling the truth, it would 
     represent the first information in nearly a decade directly 
     linking Baghdad to terrorist plans. No evidence has surfaced 
     to date that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks or the 
     bombing of the Cole. But President George W. Bush has 
     declared Iraq part of an ``axis of evil,'' and makes no 
     secret of his determination to end the rule of Saddam Hussein 
     as part of his ``war on terrorism.''
       The last publicly known terrorism involvement by Baghdad 
     was a failed assassination plot against Bush's father, former 
     President George H. W. Bush, during a visit to Kuwait in 
     1993. The elder Bush orchestrated the 1991 Gulf War against 
     Iraq.
       ``The Iraqis may have been waging war against the U.S. for 
     10 years without us even knowing about it,'' says Magnus 
     Ranstorp, at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and 
     Political Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland. 
     ``Iraq may have fought, using terrorism as the ultimate fifth 
     column, to counter U.S. sanctions and bombing. Plausible 
     deniability is something Iraq . . . would want to ensure, 
     putting layer upon layer to hide their role.''
       Part of the justification for any future U.S. strike 
     against Iraq may be the kind of information provided by the 
     young-faced, nervous Iranian smuggler, now held in the U.S.-
     protected Kurdish ``safe haven'' of northern Iraq.
       Mr. Shahab spoke last weekend in an intelligence complex 
     run by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two 
     rival armed Kurdish factions that control northern Iraq. He 
     did not appear coerced to speak, and bore no physical signs 
     that he had been mistreated since his arrest on May 16, 2000.
       Still, shaking nervously and swallowing repeatedly, he at 
     first refused to answer questions, saying that he was 
     concerned about his family's safety in Iran. Two days later--
     after learning that part of his smuggling history and role in 
     several killings had already been made public in the New 
     Yorker magazine--he agreed to describe information that he 
     had previously withheld, about Iraq's plan to target U.S. 
     warships.
       ``If this information is true, it would be in the interest 
     of the U.S., and of all the world, for the U.S. to be here to 
     find out,'' says a senior Kurdish security officer involved 
     in the case. Kurdish investigators were initially skeptical 
     of some parts of Shahab's story. But the investigators say 
     they later independently confirmed precise descriptions of 
     the senior Iraqi officials Shahab says he met, by cross-
     examining a veteran Iraqi intelligence officer in their 
     custody, and checking other sources.
       Wearing a pale-green military jacket, dark-blue sweat pants 
     and worn plastic sandals, Shahab softly recounts how he 
     smuggled arms and explosives for Al Qaeda and the Iraqis. He 
     at times flashes a boyish smile--the same disarming grin he 
     uses in images on a roll of film he was carrying when 
     arrested. Shahab also claims to be an assassin. The photos--
     shown to the Monitor--show Shahab killing an unidentified man 
     with a knife. He grins at the camera as he holds up the 
     victim's severed ear.
       During a two-and-a-half-hour interview, Shahab describes 
     the origin of the plot to blow up U.S. warships, while his 
     hands work nervously. He received an urgent phone call early 
     in 2000, from a longtime Afghan contact named Othman, who 
     told him to go to a meeting in Iraq. In February 2000, Shahab 
     says he was taken to the village of Ouija, the birthplace of 
     Saddam Hussein near Hussein's clan base at Tikrit, in north 
     central Iraq.
       At the meeting, he says, were two influential Iraqis, 
     fellow clansmen of Saddam Hussein: Ali Hassan al-Majid--Mr. 
     Hussein's powerful cousin and former defense minister--and 
     Luai Khairallah, a cousin and friend of Hussein's notoriously 
     brutal son Uday. Mr. al-Majid is known among Iraqi Kurds as 
     ``Chemical Ali,'' for his key role in the genocidal gassing 
     and destruction of villages in northern Iraq that killed more 
     than 100,000 Kurds in 1987 and 1988.
       The Iraqis said they considered Shahab to be Arab, and not 
     Persian, and could trust him because he was from Ahvaz, a 
     river city in southwest Iran rich with smugglers and close to 
     the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Kuwait. It is known as 
     ``Arabistan'' because of the number of Arabs living there.


                             nine missions

       Al-Majid and Mr. Khairallah spoke of the nine operations: 
     We've allocated $16 million already for you,'' Shahab 
     remembers them telling him. ``We start with the first one: We 
     need you to buy boats, pack them with 500 kilograms of 
     explosives each, and explode U.S. ships in Kuwait and the 
     Gulf.''
       The plan was ``long term,'' Shahab says, and meant to be 
     carried out a year or so later, in early 2001, after he had 
     carried out another mission to take refrigerator motors to 
     the Taliban. Each motor had a container attached holding an 
     apparently important liquid unknown to Shahab. He says he 
     doesn't know if all nine operations mentioned were similar to 
     the boat plan, or completely different. Some were to take 
     place in Kuwait.
       The attack against a U.S. vessel, Shahab recounts al-Majid 
     and Khairallah explaining, was to be ``a kind of revenge 
     because [the Americans] were killing Iraqis, and women and 
     children were dying ``because of stringent UN sanctions, 
     which the U.S. backed most strongly. ``They said: `This is 
     the Arab Gulf, not the American Gulf,''' Shahab recalls, 
     referring to the large U.S. naval presence in the area.
       The Iraqis knew that Shahab, with his legitimate Iranian 
     passport and wealth of smuggler contacts, would have little 
     trouble purchasing the common 400-ton wooden trading boats. 
     He would have raised few eyebrows sailing under an Iranian 
     flag--the only ships in the area, since UN sanctions prohibit 
     such Iraqi trade.
       Shahab was to rent or buy a date farm along the water at 
     Qasba, on the marshy Shatt al-Arab waterway that narrowly 
     divides Iraq and Iran, just a few hundred yards from the 
     Iraqi port city of Fao. Using a powerful small smuggling 
     boat, he says he would have been able to reach Kuwaiti waters 
     from Qasba in just 10 minutes.
       Iraqi agents were to provide the explosives and suicide 
     squad; Shahab was to handle the boats and the regular crew. 
     ``The group that worked with me would sail the ship, and not 
     know about the explosives,'' Shahab says. ``When we crossed 
     out of Iranian waters, we were to kill the crew, hand over 
     the ship to the suicide bombers, and then leave by a 
     smuggler's way.''
       The job, Shahab said, ``was easy for me, I could start at 
     any time.'' Shahab said the Iraqis told him they ``had a lot 
     of suicide bombers in Baghdad'' ready to take part in such an 
     operation.
       But the plans were never finalized for Shahab, and after 
     delivering the refrigerator motors to the Taliban, he was 
     arrested in northern Iraq in May 2000, with his roll of film, 
     as he tried to avoid Iranian military exercises going on 
     along the border to the south. Though carrying a false 
     Kurdish identity card, his accent gave him away at the last 
     PUK checkpoint.
       Iraqi experts say that such a plot is plausible, since 
     Saddam Hussein's multiple intelligence services are 
     sophisticated and smart.
       ``Anything is possible,'' says Sean Boyne, an Ireland-based 
     Iraq specialist, who writes regularly for Jane's Intelligence 
     Review in London. ``Certainly Saddam has gone to great 
     trouble to shoot down [U.S. and British] aircraft'' 
     patrolling no-fly zones in northern and south Iraq, Mr. Boyne 
     says. ``He has invested heavily in his antiaircraft system. 
     He is eager to have a crack at the Americans.''
       That impulse may also help explain the presence of a 
     training camp at Salman Pak, a former biological-weapons 
     facility south of Baghdad. It includes a mock-up Boeing 707 
     fuselage, which Western intelligence agencies believe has 
     been used for several years to train Islamic militants from 
     across the region in the art of hijacking. A senior Iraqi 
     officer who defected told The New York Times last November 
     that the regime was increasingly getting into the terrorism 
     business. ``We were training these people to attack 
     installations important to the United States,'' an unnamed 
     lieutenant general said. ``The Gulf War never ended for 
     Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were 
     repeatedly told this.''
       Still, the political situation Saddam Hussein finds himself 
     in today--in light of the example of decisive U.S. military 
     action in Afghanistan--may not be as conducive to a strike at 
     the U.S. as it was when Shahab says he first heard of the 
     plan to blow up a U.S. warship. In recent months, Boyne 
     notes, Iraq has engaged in a region-wide charm offensive to 
     portray itself as a victim, and to build Arab and European 
     support against any U.S. attack. Baghdad is even pursuing 
     warmer ties with Kuwait (at the Arab League summit last week) 
     and with Iran, in an attempt to gain mileage from Iran's 
     anger at being listed as part of Washington's ``axis of 
     evil.''
       While the Bush administration focuses on Iraq's apparent 
     pursuit of weapons of mass destruction--in the absence of UN 
     weapons inspectors, who were kicked out in 1998--clues to 
     Iraq's true role may lie in the credibility of the 29-year-
     old smuggler from Ahvaz.
       Why is he talking now? ``Afghanistan is finished, so now I 
     feel free to speak,'' says

[[Page 3989]]

     Shahab, who was given the name Mohamed Jawad by accomplices 
     in Afghanistan. Asked if he fears the wrath of senior members 
     of the regime in Baghdad, who still hold power, Shahab 
     replies: ``I lost everything. For many years I worked with 
     assassinations and killing--it doesn't make a difference to 
     me.''

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, yesterday major oil producers in 
Venezuela went on strike. Between Venezuela and Iraq, nearly 30 percent 
of our oil imports are at risk. And that is nearly 12 million barrels 
today.
  We also learned that Saddam Hussein has indicated a payment to the 
families of the Palestinian suicide bombers of roughly $25,000. 
Previously it was around $10,000. That is a terrible incentive for 
terrorism. One has to wonder where he gets the cash. But you don't have 
to wonder very long because of the $4-plus billion that the United 
States paid Saddam Hussein last year for oil.
  The Senate needs to remember that Saddam is much more than just a 
member of the axis of evil. He is an energy partner of the United 
States.
  We now understand that Iraq, Libya, and Iran have called for an OPEC 
oil embargo--an event that could cripple the world economy.
  With each passing hour, the Mideast grows more unstable, and the 
future grows more uncertain. With each passing day, the United States 
grows more dependent on foreign sources of energy.
  What does tomorrow hold? More chaos and more bloodshed. The United 
States has a role and an obligation to help lead the region to peace. I 
applaud the President for sending Secretary Powell to personally 
supervise these efforts. But now more than ever we should turn our 
attention to here at home. We need to look at the realities of how we 
are going to meet our energy needs with or without the Mideast.
  Given the choice, will we choose to keep us dependent on foreign oil 
or will we choose solutions found here at home to lessen our dependence 
on imported oil, solutions within our borders free from the chaos and 
uncertainty in the Mideast?
  I go back to 1995. If the Senate passed an amendment in the omnibus 
bill that would have allowed the opening of ANWR, where would we be 
today? We would be in production. We would be generating at least a 
million barrels more from domestic sources, eliminating at least a 
million barrels from imports. Unfortunately, our former President 
vetoed that bill.
  The energy bill before us is one on which we spent nearly 3 weeks. 
There is some criticism for the delay, but I remind my colleagues that 
we are taking on an extremely difficult and divisive issue and dealing 
with it on the floor of the Senate as opposed to the committee process. 
Since the debate started on this issue, we have disposed of 49 
amendments--21 offered by Republicans and 28 by Democrats. Working with 
my good friend, Senator Bingaman, I think we have moved in a 
responsible manner.
  That total, I might add, does not include the two amendments dealing 
with judicial nominees, or several amendments that have been dealt with 
off the floor. We have dealt with extremely difficult amendments, 
including CAFE, and specifically whether Congress should decide on new 
vehicle standards or leave that decision to experts; whether Congress 
should impose a renewable portfolio standard on some electric producers 
or leave the decision on appropriate standards to the States; whether 
the Federal Government should continue the liability protection on 
nuclear powerplants--that is the Price-Anderson amendment--the issue of 
reliability, and how best to ensure reliability on our electricity 
grid; ethanol; and whether to create a reasonable fuel requirement.
  But there are still significant issues left to decide. We need to 
close out the issues dealing with electricity. We need to reach some 
agreement on the climate change provision in the bill. Of course, we 
must address the tax provisions for renewable conservation, alternative 
fuel efficiency and production. We must decide how best to increase our 
domestic production of energy sources since there are no real 
production provisions in the Daschle substitute.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has used 10 minutes.

                          ____________________