[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20120-20121]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      9/11 COMMISSION LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Madam Speaker, we have spent a number of 
hours on the floor of the House discussing issues that hold a great 
deal of emotion for many people around this Nation. With that said, I 
offer my respect for the different views that were expressed on the 
floor of the House, driven with emotion and passion, driven by your 
personal faith, and others as myself driven by the sanctity of our 
Constitution and the desire to preserve this Union.
  It is interesting that the Republican majority would offer this 
debate at this time. There is no doubt that voices of the American 
people must be heard. But at the same time, an enormous responsibility 
of ensuring the safety and the protection of the American people by 
passing the 9/11 Commission recommendations through the Collins-
Lieberman-McCain bill along with the House provision of the Shays-
Maloney bill goes unattended. So what we have is a mishmash of 
provisions that have really nothing to do with the security of this 
Nation.
  When we found that the CIA had, in fact, provided intelligence to 
this administration that if we went to war the insurgent aftermath, the 
efforts of the insurgents, the violence that would be perpetrated after 
any battle or war would be claimed over would be almost insurmountable. 
Yet because of the

[[Page 20121]]

meshing of those disciplines, if you will, the complete glove-and-hand 
relationship between the CIA director, apparently that intelligence was 
ignored, and maybe because the CIA director failed to understand that 
his allegiance was really to the American people and not, in fact, to a 
single head of government.
  The American people should have known that this intelligence 
ultimately was going to undermine any victory that was given or had by 
our brave men and women who were on the front lines for us, Reservists, 
National Guard, enlisted personnel, already doomed because of the fact 
that intelligence said that it was the insurgent action that was going 
to undermine peace and security and freedom in Iraq.
  And lo and behold, here we are today with an insurgent movement, a 
terrorist movement that has overtaken Baghdad and Iraq. Yet this 
administration has no policy, has no exit strategy, has no relief, not 
only for the Iraqi people but for the American people. And while 
Baghdad is burning, we are refusing to take up the 9/11 Commission 
report.
  All day yesterday in the Committee on the Judiciary, all we had was 
extraneous law enforcement matters that could be defended and could be 
promoted and argued and promoted at another time, extraneous 
immigration policies that had no place in a bill that is dealing with 
the safety and security of the United States of America, the immediacy 
of the 9/11 report.
  And what was it? It was to establish a new structure of intelligence, 
to provide the leader of the intelligence community with budgetary 
authority. And what did our friends in the 9/11 legislation do? They 
argued against giving budgetary authority. With no budgetary authority, 
you have no authority because you cannot move intelligence resources 
where they are needed. And here we are ignoring the families of the 9/
11 victims who have waited for 3 years for us to move forward with the 
necessary security.
  Do you know why intelligence is so important, Madam Speaker? Because 
it was the FBI who had information already on their desk in the Midwest 
that told them that there were individuals in this country taking 
flying lessons, learning to take off but not learning to land; and the 
information never got off the desk into Washington, D.C. That is why 
the tragedy of 9/11 occurred.
  Those individuals came into this country illegally. We have fixed 
that problem. We have worked to fix and improve the technology. The 
State Department has put in new criteria where visas are issued. We are 
working to stop terrorists before they come into our homeland. But 
unfortunately we have a debate as to whether the Select Committee on 
Homeland Security should even continue, when we know that Secretary 
Ridge said he wants a steady, organized, focused committee to deal with 
homeland security issues rather than the tens of tens that he has to go 
to. Is that securing America?
  But on the politics of this Republican government, President, Senate, 
House, rather than deal with the serious issues, we are now taking away 
rights of Americans, trying to pass the PATRIOT Act, trying to pass in 
the bill that is supposed to be the 9/11 Commission report something 
that was never raised by the 9/11 Commission. We are now giving 
employers the right to call the Department of Justice on people's 
backgrounds. We are now putting that into place. Not just security 
officers, which I perfectly support, but anybody that is trying to cook 
hamburgers at McDonald's. That is not a function of the Department of 
Justice massively as it is. Yes, single isolated cases in circumstances 
where the necessity of knowing the background may be the requirement of 
the employment, but this is an outrage.
  Then, of course, as I close, Madam Speaker, they then want to 
obliterate the Constitution and the very values of this country by 
sending individuals who are barely charged with ideas of terrorism into 
places where they might be tortured, not even convicted but maybe 
speculated that they may be associated with such and we are going to 
obliterate our values and send them home or send them someplace to be 
tortured.
  This is what we have done this week, Madam Speaker, and I would just 
argue that we can do better. I would ask that the homeland security 9/
11 Commission recommendations be placed into law by this body.

                          ____________________