[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 16970-16971]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I am going to speak on two issues: first, 
the imminent release of the final report of the 9/11 Commission, and 
then on the three judges we are voting on shortly.
  First, on the imminent release of the report: First, I thank the 
commissioners. They have done an incredible job. In this town, racked 
by partisanship, to come up with bipartisan recommendations is an 
amazing accomplishment in itself. But when you look at what the 
recommendations are and the thoroughness with which the Commission 
investigated the mistakes that were made in the past, the report 
assumes even greater magnitude.
  We will have a real challenge in Washington, at each end of 
Pennsylvania Avenue, to make sure these recommendations are 
implemented.
  The area I want to touch on right now is homeland security, but I do 
want to say the reforms that were recommended, in terms of intelligence 
gathering, were right on the money. Many of us were puzzled after 9/11, 
learning that the FBI knew this little piece of information and an 
agent in another part of the FBI knew another piece, and the CIA knew 
this piece and that piece. The question was, why weren't these pieces 
tied together, which might have drawn the picture of what was going to 
happen? And I underline the word ``might.'' Who knows if it would have? 
But it certainly would have given us better odds.
  The reason, as the Commission unveiled, is very simple: These 
intelligence agencies do not talk to one another. They regard the 
intelligence they have gathered, their work product, as so valued that 
they do not want to give it up to another agency. The recommendations 
of the Commis-
sion are outstanding--outstanding--in terms of requiring the 
intelligence agencies to talk to one another.
  I am very pleased the Commission did not engage in the blame game or 
finger pointing but, rather, looked at the facts--just the facts, 
ma'am; that seems to be their underlying view--and then looked at 
recommendations based on those facts so that another 9/11, God forbid, 
would never happen again.
  There is a particular area that has not received too much focus that 
I want to mention today. That is homeland security. The Commission's 
report shows that while mistakes were made in intelligence gathering 
and while mistakes after September 11 have certainly been made in 
fighting the war overseas--we need a strong foreign policy, a muscular 
foreign policy to fight terrorism--those are mistakes of commission. In 
a brave new world, a post-September 11 world, anyone is going to make 
certain mistakes. The mistakes that have been made on homeland 
security, on protecting our Nation from another terrorist attack, are 
mistakes of omission. We are simply not doing enough. That is what the 
Commission's report is going to reveal when they release it at 11:30. I 
have been briefed on it already, and I guess many Members are being 
briefed today.
  To win this war on terror--it is the same as a good sports team. We 
need a good offense, we need a good defense. Most of the focus has been 
on the offense. There has been verbiage devoted to homeland security, 
but the actual dollars, the actual focus, the actual changes that have 
to be made are not being made, plain and simple.
  The bottom line is that in area after area, when billions of dollars 
are required, the administration recommends and Congress allocates tens 
of millions of dollars. They do not do nothing. They don't want to say 
we are not putting any money into port security, rail security, truck 
security, or improving security at the borders. But they do the bare 
minimum essential to get away with saying we are doing something.
  It is frustrating to me, particularly coming from New York and 
knowing too many of the people who were lost on September 11, that we 
are not fighting a war--it is a war on homeland security--the way we 
are fighting a war overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is 
interesting is the technology is there. We know how to detect nuclear 
materials which, God forbid, might be shipped into this country. We 
know how to detect explosives if somebody

[[Page 16971]]

were to walk into a railroad station or Disney World or somewhere else 
loaded with explosives that they might detonate. We know how to make 
our truck security more secure so people cannot use truck bombs. We 
know how to tighten up the borders.
  The question is twofold: will and money. We are not doing either. As 
we stand here today, what are we doing in the Senate? We are debating 
three judges from Michigan who we know will not pass in a controversial 
and partisan way while Homeland Security appropriations languish. It 
has not been brought to the Senate. Why? What are our priorities? This 
is not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is not a liberal or 
conservative issue. This is an American issue. We want to preserve our 
homeland security. We want to make people secure. We want to make 
people safe.
  Over and over again, we are not doing what we should be doing. The 
number of bills introduced and even passed out of committee to tighten 
homeland security are too many. It is not just homeland security 
legislation, it is legislation on ports, legislation on borders. Over 
these past few months, the Senate has been occupied by partisan 
political issues when nonpartisan and bipartisan issues that are far 
more important related to homeland security languish.
  I hope the Commission's report is a clarion call. Let's get our act 
together. Again, this is not a partisan issue. This should not 
instigate fighting with one another. We should just do it.
  I wish the White House in their budgets had allocated more money. 
When people in the Senate, both Democrat and Republican, said, We need 
to do this, that, and the other, had the President said, Yes, sir, 
right on--but we do not have that. We do not have leadership on 
homeland security. That is what the Commission's report shows.
  Being a great leader and being a strong leader does not just mean 
fighting wars overseas in this brave new post-September 11 world; it 
means tightening things up at home. The bottom line is simple: Why 
aren't we protecting our airplanes from shoulder-held missiles which we 
know the terrorists have? Why aren't we saying more than 5 percent of 
the big containers that come to our ports on the east coast, the west 
coast, the gulf coast, should be inspected to see if they might contain 
materials that could hurt us? Why aren't we doing more to protect the 
borders? My State of New York has a large northern border. They have 
not allocated the dollars, the bottom line is they do not have enough 
manpower at the borders to prevent terrorists from sneaking in. They 
are doing a great job with the resources they have, but Lord knows they 
don't have them. We are not doing any of these things.
  I point out one other thing the Commission has mentioned--here, 
Congress is as much to blame as the White House--and that is the 
allocation of homeland security funds. The Commission is very strong on 
this issue. The moneys that go to police, fire, and the others who are 
our first responders--we learned in New York how valuable they were. 
The report today will show the number of people who died below where 
the planes hit the World Trade Center towers was few--too many, but 
few--because of the great job the police and the firefighters did. Yet 
we are treating that money as pork barrel.
  My State has greater needs than, say, the State with the smallest 
population, Wyoming. Yet Wyoming gets much more money on a per capita 
basis. To the credit of the administration, that did not happen the 
first year we allocated homeland security money. Mitch Daniels, a true 
conservative, the head of OMB, says he does not want to waste these 
dollars. He is sending dollars to the places of greatest need. I might 
have wanted more dollars, but at least the dollars that were allocated 
were allocated fairly. But now we have slipped away from that. Frankly, 
we do not hear the voice of Tom Ridge, who was the successor as we 
created a new Homeland Security Department, saying, allocate this money 
fairly. We do not hear the voice of the President, and we do not hear 
the voices of the House and Senate.
  This wonderful report is very critical of what our Nation is doing on 
homeland security. It is saying we are not doing enough in area after 
area. I hope and pray this report will be a wakeup call. We do not want 
to be in the ``what if'' situation. God forbid there is another 
terrorist attack and the next morning we say: What if? What if we had 
done the job? What if the attack was by shoulder-held missiles? And we 
say: What if we had done the job. What if the attack was from ships and 
ports? We say: What if we had done the job on port security or on the 
rails? Or because someone got across our borders and shouldn't have? We 
do not want to be in a ``what if'' situation.

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