[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 25672-25707]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    CONFERENCE REPORT ON S. 2845, INTELLIGENCE REFORM AND TERRORISM 
                         PREVENTION ACT OF 2004

  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 870 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 870

       Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be 
     in order to consider the conference report to accompany the 
     bill (S. 2845) to reform the intelligence community and the 
     intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the 
     United States Government, and for other purposes. All points 
     of order against the conference report and against its 
     consideration are waived. The conference report shall be 
     considered as read.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) is 
recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), 
pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During 
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose 
of debate only.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a traditional rule for consideration of the 
conference report for the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention 
Act of 2004. The rule waives all points of order against the conference 
report. It also provides that the conference report shall be considered 
as read.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this rule and approving 
the underlying conference committee report on truly historic reform 
legislation, S. 2845.
  Mr. Speaker, final passage of this legislation today will be viewed 
by many as one of the most noteworthy accomplishments of the 108th 
Congress. Playing critical roles in getting us to this point in time 
have been the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. DeLay), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) and a 
host of others. The American people owe these Members an enormous debt 
of gratitude.
  A world in which the enemy is easily identifiable has changed. We 
face more and more states without solid institutions, national 
consciousness and internal cohesion which are providing new threats 
such as the transfer of weapons of mass destruction and an increasing 
number of nonstate actors such as terrorist networks.
  Terrorism has existed for hundreds of years, but the last decade has 
seen a rise in terrorist networks and their coordination amongst 
themselves. Many terrorists groups actively share hostage-taking 
tactics, weapons training,

[[Page 25673]]

and planning techniques with one another. More than ever the terrorist 
networks are finding it easier to blend into society and are becoming 
harder for intelligence agencies to track. Former Director of the 
Central Intelligence Agency James Woolsey put it best when he said, We 
have slain a large dragon, the U.S.S.R., but we now live in a jungle 
filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. In many ways, 
the dragon was easier to keep track of.
  The job of keeping track of these terrorist networks belongs to the 
U.S. Intelligence Community, and we thank the CIA and all the other 
members of our Intelligence Community who make it a vital contribution 
to our Nation's security.
  More than ever, timely and accurate intelligence is recognized as a 
critical weapon in the global war on terrorism. We have already begun 
to rebuild our intelligence capabilities, and law enforcement and 
intelligence agencies are now working closer together.
  As the 9/11 Commission concluded, we are safer today than we were 3 
years ago, but we are not safe enough. As such, great changes and 
reform are needed. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act 
of 2004 before us today will do much to keep America safe, and it is 
important that we act to enact this legislation now. Protecting the 
American people is the number one priority of this President and the 
United States Congress.
  This legislation builds on the steps we have already taken since the 
attacks of September 11, 2001, and improves our intelligence-gathering 
apparatus. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act is a 
broad-based approach that seeks to reform our government agencies and 
strengthen our Intelligence Community to make them more effective to 
address the global terrorist threat.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a traditional rule for conference reports. I 
urge support for the rule and for the underlying measure.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, could the attacks of September 11 have been prevented if 
someone had connected the dots? Could the war in Iraq have been avoided 
if intelligence had been better? I honestly do not know. But what both 
situations tragically highlight is one fundamental truth: Our Nation 
needs intelligence reform.
  The September 11 Commission report released over 5 months ago 
outlined the gaps and weaknesses in our current intelligence system. It 
also made 41 recommendations to Congress that, if implemented, would 
make America safer.
  Today the House at long last is poised to consider the conference 
report to S. 2845, the National Intelligence Reform Act. This measure 
seeks to implement the core intelligence reforms recommended by the 9/
11 Commission and makes significant improvements to emergency 
preparedness and aviation and border security.
  Since July, Governor Kean and Representative Hamilton have tirelessly 
worked to ensure their recommendations are not relegated to the 
circular file of history. Throughout the summer, they testified before 
congressional committee after congressional committee in the hopes of 
building momentum before the third anniversary of the attacks. After 
reading their fine report and participating in a hearing with them in 
the Select Committee on Homeland Security, I, like most, if not all, of 
my Democratic colleagues in the House, endorsed all 41 recommendations.
  The Commission report attributed structural weaknesses as partially 
to blame for the intelligence failures prior to the 9/11 attacks. A 
culture of isolation and separation exists between the 15 intelligence 
agencies that must be dismantled if we are to transform the environment 
and foster information-sharing among government agencies. We need to 
have a strong Director of National Intelligence to coordinate all 
intelligence efforts.
  It is my understanding that last-minute changes were made to the 
conference report. We only received it an hour ago. I sincerely hope 
that the final version of this report vests the new Director with the 
people and the budget authority necessary to assert control over all 15 
intelligence-collection agencies.
  Mr. Speaker, we all know that the men and women on the front lines in 
Iraq and Afghanistan need to be assured that the intelligence they get 
is good intelligence. No one in this body would ever agree to reform 
our intelligence apparatus in any manner that would undermine our 
soldiers.
  Today we mark the 63rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. 
Yesterday terrorists opened fire on Americans working in the U.S. 
Consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. Whatever changes we make cannot be 
simply cosmetic. Our Armed Forces, Congress, the President, and the 
American people need to have confidence in the quality of their 
intelligence.
  In the post-September 11 world Americans demand a national 
Intelligence Community that works together for the benefit of the 
national security, and Congress must act decisively to bring about 
those structural reforms. The stakes are very high. There is no room 
here for egos. There is no room for turf war. There is no room for 
bureaucratic haggling.
  The report also closes critical gaps in aviation and border security. 
With respect to aviation security, it calls for the deployment of new 
explosive-detection screening technologies for carry-on bags and blast-
resistant cargo containers. On border security the report calls for 
unmanned aerial vehicles to be placed along the 5,500-mile border 
between the United States and Canada, especially in areas far from a 
legal port of entry. This is an issue I care deeply about as my western 
New York district is a major gateway to Canada, the second busiest at 
Niagara Falls, New York.
  Ever since the 9/11 Commission recommendations were released in July, 
there has been a steady drumbeat of support from my district. Like me, 
my constituents believe that an overhaul to the Nation's intelligence 
apparatus is critical to the future of this great land, and much of 
what is being considered here today will accomplish this vital end.
  Mr. Speaker, it bears repeating that we could have passed these 
reforms months ago, but the leadership did not want to act. Now, today, 
they want us to consider the report under martial law, even though 
Democrats have been ready to act for months. Moreover, if Democrats had 
not insisted on a recorded vote to correct a taxpayer privacy provision 
in the omnibus bill, Congress would not have returned to Washington, 
and this bill would not have passed before adjournment.
  Democrats have worked hard to make the country safer, and we look 
forward to working with the new Director of National Intelligence to do 
everything we can to make sure this tragedy is never repeated.
  Mr. Speaker, I look forward to an active debate on this critical 
piece of legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), the chairman of the Committee 
on Rules.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Atlanta, Georgia 
(Mr. Linder) for yielding me time.
  I rise in strong support both of this rule and the conference report. 
This has been one of the most difficult conferences that we have ever 
gone through, and I want to say at the outset that I want to 
congratulate my two colleagues who led this, the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Harman) from the House side, and our Senate colleagues, Senator Collins 
and Senator Lieberman who provided leadership there.
  We had two bills the likes of which I had never seen such a major 
disparity. H.R. 10, which emerged from this House, is one which I was 
very proud to

[[Page 25674]]

support. It included very important national security provisions, very 
important provisions as it relates to immigration and the problems that 
we saw with the deficiencies that led to what took place on September 
11 of 2001. I believe that the Senate measure consisted solely of those 
provisions that emerged from the good work of the 9/11 Commission.
  I happen to believe that H.R. 10 was a much better piece of 
legislation than the one that we have ultimately ended up with here 
today.

                              {time}  1645

  I will say this. I do believe that we have come a long way towards 
taking steps that will ensure that we do not see another September 11 
and that we have in place a structure which will ensure that we have 
the intelligence capability to deal with conflicts on the ground, 
wherever they exist in the world.
  We know from having met with the family members of the victims of 
September 11 that this is a very emotional issue. This has been an 
emotional issue for all of us because, as we all know, we lost friends 
on September 11. A plane went down a few miles from here into the 
Pentagon, and we have heard, of course, from our colleagues who 
represent New York and Pennsylvania of the loss there. I would like to 
point to the fact that, tragically, all of those planes that took off 
were headed to my State of California on September 11. So we have all 
felt this.
  The families appeared at the first meeting we had of this conference, 
and we were all moved by the extraordinarily strong statements that 
they made to us as we were preparing to meet there, and that is why the 
work of this conference has been so important.
  I want to congratulate the other House conferees who worked hard on 
this. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) is sitting right 
here, and while he is going to support the rule, I know that he has 
chosen not to support the conference report. I will say, Mr. Speaker, 
that the concerns that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) 
has as it relates to the conference report are concerns that I share 
right down the line.
  A year ago last August, I was asked to join in leading the charge for 
an effort to recall the Governor of California and to help Arnold 
Schwarzenegger get elected Governor of California. One of the main 
issues of that campaign was the fact that driver's licenses were ending 
up in the hands of people who are here illegally, and they were used 
fraudulently, and that is a real problem, and it is a real problem when 
it comes to security.
  The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) has been a great 
champion, and I have been pleased and proud to stand with him in our 
attempt to ensure that we do provide standards as it relates to 
driver's licenses because, again, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Sensenbrenner) pointed out in our conference this morning, Mohamed Atta 
was using a fraudulent driver's license and was simply pulled over for 
a traffic violation and told to appear in court. That would have been 
after what he did on September 11, when he was one of those flying the 
planes into the World Trade Center towers.
  It also is, I think, very important for us to do everything we can to 
secure our southern border, and my colleague, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Ose), who is going to be presiding over the sine die 
adjournment of the 108th Congress later today or this evening, is a 
person who offered an amendment to H.R. 10 which was designed to 
complete a 3\1/2\ mile gap that exists in the 14-mile fence which was 
put in during the Clinton administration with the support of Bill 
Clinton, in a bipartisan way, with strong support here in the House and 
the Senate, and it has been successful, with the exception of a 3\1/2\ 
mile gap that extends from the Pacific Ocean to the Tijuana estuary.
  I know we are all concerned about environmental quality, and I am 
very concerned about the environment, and it has been an environmental 
issue that has led to the delay in completion of that fence. The 
presence of something known as the Bell's vireo bird nesting on that 
fence has prevented completion of it. So, yes, we are all concerned 
about the environment, but the real tragedy to me is the fact, and I 
just flew over it a few weeks ago, the environment is plundered in this 
area because of illegal border crossings. The fact that we are seeing 
that area environmentally damaged because of that gap, it seems to me 
that we need to look at that. Unfortunately, it is not included in this 
measure, but I chose to sign this conference report and am supporting 
this conference report today based on the fact that we are, in the 
first must-pass piece of legislation we have in the 109th Congress, 
going to have the opportunity to include these very important 
immigration issues.
  The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) has done a great 
job. The gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) did a great job. The 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) worked hard on this as well. The 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), my colleague, has focused on 
this very important chain-of-command issue, and I believe that he has 
been right in pursuing it.
  We are at an extraordinary time in our history. My colleague from 
Rochester just mentioned the fact that today is the 63rd anniversary of 
the tragic bombing that took place in Pearl Harbor; 2,400 lives were 
lost there. We know that 3,000 plus lives were lost on September 11, 
2001. Earlier today we saw the inauguration of the first democratically 
elected President in the history of Afghanistan, and that could not 
have come about, Mr. Speaker, were it not for strong, bold, dynamic 
leadership on the part of the United States of America.
  The United States of America is the only Nation on the face of the 
Earth, the only Nation, that can effectively deal with the kinds of 
challenges that we have. We have not done it unilaterally. It is not 
doing it unilaterally today. We have never done it unilaterally. We 
have done it with strong and building international coalitions. We will 
continue to do that.
  Passage of this legislation is simply a first step. It is a first 
step, and that is the reason that I have chosen not to turn my back on 
it and to get as much as we possibly can as we go down this road 
towards doing even more to have a National Intelligence Director, and 
make sure that that individual is strong and able to deal with 
intelligence issues and to deal with the overall national and border 
security questions that we have.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues again for the time and energy 
and effort they have put in these past weeks and now months to come to 
this point. I congratulate the gentleman from Illinois (Speaker 
Hastert) and the President of the United States for the leadership that 
they have shown in getting us to where we are today.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from New York (Mr. Hinchey).
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from New 
York for yielding me the time to address this very critical and 
important issue.
  This bill has come about as a result of a very labored process, and 
should it pass here today, which I assume it will, we should not 
deceive ourselves into believing that we have accomplished the 
objective that is necessary to accomplish in order to secure the 
security of the people of the United States.
  Getting good intelligence and having a good intelligence arrangement 
is one thing, but the use of that intelligence, the interpretation of 
that intelligence, the honest use of that intelligence is yet another 
thing.
  The intelligence agency must be an objective analyzer of secret and 
complex information, not just a tool of the White House. The 
intelligence agency must serve the interests of the Nation as a whole, 
not serve the President politically.
  It is increasingly obvious how the administration twisted and 
tortured and distorted intelligence to support their decision to go to 
war in Iraq. This bill does not solve that problem. It is up to the 
membership of this House to deal

[[Page 25675]]

with that issue, and the issue has not yet been dealt with. We have not 
exercised the proper oversight to determine why and in what ways the 
intelligence was distorted.
  We need to secure the people of this country. The 9/11 Commission and 
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report tells us that prior to 
the attack of September 11, the administration had been warned dozens 
of times that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the United 
States, but this administration failed to act on those warnings. Why? 
This House has not exercised the appropriate oversight to understand 
why the intelligence was not used by the administration the way it 
should have been used.
  The administration insisted on focusing its attention elsewhere, 
including its obsession with Iraq prior to and after the attack of 
September 11.
  Paul Wolfowitz, for example, the Deputy Defense Secretary, and his 
Under Secretary for Policy argued that there was a terrorist alliance 
between the Hussein regime in Iraq and al Qaeda, despite the fact that 
intelligence reports showed that no such alliance existed. Why was that 
the case, and why has this House not exercised its oversight 
responsibilities to determine why we were deceived and the American 
people were deceived?
  The same is true concerning the missing Iraqi weapons of mass 
destruction. We were told over and over and over again by everyone 
across the administration, President, Vice President, Secretary of 
Defense, National Security Adviser, in fact, the President right here 
in this room from the podium behind me talked about weapons of mass 
destruction and even gave us the vision of a mushroom cloud, suggesting 
very clearly that there were atomic weapons that could be used. Why 
have we not exercised our oversight responsibilities to determine why 
that information was missing?
  So that is the issue that we ought to be confronting not just today, 
but as we go into the next Congress, confronting that issue in the way 
it needs to be addressed.
  Yes, it is fine to reform the intelligence procedures and 
administration, restructure them, modernize them, make them perhaps 
more compatible than they may have been with present-day needs, improve 
the communication between one and another. That is one thing, and maybe 
this bill will do that.
  But why has the leadership of this House not asked these questions? 
Why have hearings not been held? Why have the oversight 
responsibilities of the leadership of the House not been exercised 
appropriately in the way in which the Constitution requires they be 
exercised?
  At no time in the history of our country have we gone to war with 
another Nation based on information so badly misinterpreted, twisted, 
distorted and misrepresented. This House has an obligation to find out 
why that was done, why we have lost so many lives of American 
servicemen and women on the basis of that twisted, distorted, 
misrepresented information.
  Even today, when we are told that everything is going fine in Iraq, 
we are learning from the intelligence agencies and learning it in ways 
that are indirect, even surreptitious, that the situation in Iraq is 
deteriorating, that the opposition there is increasing. In spite of the 
fact that our servicemen were successful in Fallujah, nevertheless the 
insurgency is growing stronger. That is what we are being told by the 
intelligence agencies. We are told that indirectly. We do not get it 
directly from the administration. They want a different picture to be 
painted entirely, and this is what our responsibility is as Members of 
the House of Representatives, to find out why this conflict exists and 
why we are not getting to the bottom of it.
  Why, when we are told things by the administration and later found 
out that they are completely untrue, are we just to accept it, gloss 
over it, pretend it did not happen? That seems to be the attitude that 
has been taken by the majority here. It ought not to be. If we were 
living up to our obligations, under the separation of powers, the 
obligations in the Constitution, we would be adequately exercising our 
oversight obligations and responsibilities on the issue of the way in 
which this intelligence was misrepresented, distorted, tortured, and 
why we are in the situation we are in today as a result.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood).
  Mr. LaHOOD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose the 9/11 conference 
report being considered.
  I have had the privilege of serving on the Permanent Select Committee 
on Intelligence thanks to the appointment from the gentleman from 
Illinois (Speaker Hastert) for 6 years, and I want to stipulate for the 
record that a number of reforms have taken place long before the 9/11 
Commission was appointed, long before the 9/11 Commission report was 
issued.
  Immediately following what took place in New York and Washington and 
the loss of 3,000 American lives, President Bush and his team and the 
Congress put together a homeland security agency that combined 22 
agencies at a cost of $40 billion. We created a TSA agency at all major 
airports at a cost of $5.2 billion. Every airport is now secure, and 
people do feel safe flying.

                              {time}  1700

  We gave the airline industry $15 billion to secure airplanes and 
cockpits, and now airplanes are safe to fly.
  We enacted the PATRIOT Act, which now allows law enforcement agencies 
all over the country to communicate with one another and has allowed 
law enforcement officials to arrest people in this country who are 
terrorists in Buffalo, New York, and Portland, Oregon, who were here 
for no other purpose than to hurt Americans.
  We contributed between $20 billion and $40 billion to the City of New 
York to clean up what took place there after the 9/11 bombings and also 
to compensate families for the loss of their loved ones. We created the 
TTIC agency within the CIA and the FBI, and we created JTTFs, Joint 
Terrorism Task Forces, in every major city so that there is 
communication. Under Director Mueller, the FBI has been organized and 
is doing a marvelous job.
  We invaded Afghanistan, brought down al Qaeda at a cost of $18 
billion, and a new president has been sworn in as of today. We invaded 
Iraq, brought down Saddam Hussein; and the people there, for the first 
time, have an opportunity and a chance to vote for their own leadership 
in January.
  The bottom line is this: the last 3 years, since America has been 
attacked, have been years when the country has not been attacked. The 
President deserves credit. We deserve credit here in Congress for the 
work we have done to create these opportunities to fight terrorism. We 
have not neglected our responsibilities, and we have not been sitting 
around on our hands waiting for some recommendation from some 
commission.
  A thousand new FBI agents have been authorized and a thousand new CIA 
agents have been authorized, and many of them are being hired. There is 
a lot better communication between the CIA and the FBI today and the 
executive branch of government.
  I believe creating a National Intelligence Directorate is a huge 
mistake. It is another bureaucracy. It is another layer of government. 
It would not have prevented 9/11, and it will not prevent another 9/11. 
We are fooling ourselves by creating this kind of public policy and 
trying to lead people to believe that when we pass this bill today 
America will be safer or America would have been safe prior to 9/11. It 
will not happen.
  We are going to create a monster that will not really inhibit the 
ability of terrorists. We are going to have another terrorist attack. 
This will not prevent it, and I urge my colleagues to read the bill and 
look at the bill and think long and hard about the idea of creating 
some sort of other bureaucracy on top of everything else, because I 
just think it will not work.
  We have done good work in the House, in the Senate, and with the 
President's leadership have really done a good job in combating 
terrorism. This bill is not good public policy. I hope Members will 
look at it. I think it is the wrong approach, and that is why I oppose 
it.

[[Page 25676]]


  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman 
from New York (Mrs. Maloney).
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me 
this time and for her leadership.
  Right after 9/11, the Congress had never been more united and 
determined to work together in a bipartisan way to keep America safe 
from further attacks. We got a great deal done in a short period of 
time. It was a proud moment in this body's history. Unfortunately, it 
did not last long enough. But today, the last act of this session of 
Congress, passing this intelligence reform and anti-terrorism bill, 
will be a heartening reminder to the American people that the two 
parties can work together and live up to the ideal that was so often 
repeated after 9/11: united we stand.
  Mr. Speaker, 9/11 made the Cold War politics of containment obsolete. 
We all knew we had to change and modernize our intelligence network to 
be more agile, more proactive, to connect the dots across the agencies 
in order to protect and anticipate attacks. That is the kind of network 
that our new intelligence director will be able to lead. This is a true 
anti-terrorism bill that will harden our borders, tighten our visa 
restrictions, and strengthen our first responders: air, cargo, and 
transport security.
  The next Congress still needs to pass key recommendations to 
strengthen our security, but this is a big step forward. I want to 
thank the President, the minority leader, the Speaker and his Chief of 
Staff, Scott Palmer, for their dogged efforts to give this country this 
wonderful holiday gift.
  I also want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), 
chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, for his willingness to 
find a middle ground, and I want to thank my colleagues in the House 
and Senate who played critical roles in this passage: the gentleman 
from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Harman), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), Senator Collins 
and Senator Lieberman, and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays).
  Ultimately, however, this is not our moment. This moment belongs to 
the family members of the 9/11 victims, many of whom are with us 
tonight in this Chamber. For more than 3 years they fought to turn 
personal tragedy into public service. By sheer force of will they made 
today's results inevitable by persevering when it seemed impossible. 
They held vigils in the rain, they bowled over bureaucracies, they 
courageously channeled their pain. Without them, there would have been 
no 9/11 Commission and probably no major intelligence reform bill.
  I saw a number of 9/11 families last night alone at a White House 
vigil, their loved ones claimed by al Qaeda. As I stood there with my 
husband, it drove home the fact that they did not do this for 
themselves, but to ensure that all of us will never lose loved ones to 
terrorism. I would like to recognize their ultimate act of service and 
to thank them, especially Carol Ashley, Kristen Breitweiser, Patty 
Casazza, Beverly Ecckert, Mary Fetchet, Monica Gabrielle, Bill Harvey, 
Mindy Kleinberg, Carie Lemack, Sally Regenhard, Lori Van Auken and 
Robin Wiener. Today, their words are much more important than mine.
  Mr. Speaker, I will place in the Record their personal statements, in 
their own words, in support of this legislation.

   An Open Letter to Members of the 108th Congress on the 9/11 Bill 
                           Conference Report

                                                 December 7, 2004.
       Dear Members of Congress: You have at last reached 
     consensus on a bill that will implement the 9/11 Commission's 
     recommendations. A vote on the Conference Report appears 
     imminent. We believe this conference report accomplishes our 
     main goal, which was to fix our nation's broken intelligence 
     system.
       The passage of these reforms marks a critical point in a 
     long, three-year journey. We started as a diverse group of 12 
     individuals representing a number of 9/11 family groups who 
     shared a common loss. Our goals was to make our country 
     safer. Although at times our resolve was sorely tested, the 
     12 of us have remained steadfast refusing to ever give up.
       Having reached this critical junction, we want to 
     acknowledge the many individuals who have helped us. We thank 
     all of the Members of Congress who voted for the 
     establishment of an independent 9/11 Commission. We thank the 
     ten 9/11 Commissioners who acted in a truly bipartisan manner 
     and produced a report whose 41 recommendations became a 
     roadmap for today's Conference Report.
       We would also like to thank the individuals who have made 
     today's votes possible. In particular, we want to acknowledge 
     the leadership of President Bush, Speaker Hastert, Leader 
     Pelosi, Majority Leader Frist and Minority Leader Daschle. We 
     would also like to acknowledge the efforts of the Conference 
     Chairman, Pete Hoekstra as well as the other principal 
     conferees Susan Collins, Jane Harman and Joseph Lieberman. 
     Finally, we would like to acknowledge the hard work of the 9/
     11 Commission Caucus led by Congressman Christopher Shays and 
     Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.
       While we thank you for your work on this historic 
     legislation, we must keep in mind that more work needs to be 
     done. One critical issue is reorganizing Congress so our 
     intelligence agencies will have the oversight required to 
     ensure it is doing its job. We look forward to working with 
     you in the 109th Congress, to help enact the remaining 
     recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report, and to make 
     our country as safe as possible for this generation and 
     generations to come.
           Signed,
         Carol Ashley, mother of Janice Ashley, 25; Kristen 
           Breitweiser, wife of Ronald Breitweiser, 39; Patty 
           Casazza, wife of John F. Casazza, 38; Beverly Eckert, 
           wife of Sean Rooney; Mary Fetchet, mother of Bradley 
           James Fetchet, 24; Monica Gabrielle, wife of Richard 
           Gabrielle; Bill Harvey, husband of Sara Manley Harvey, 
           31; Mindy Kleinberg, wife of Alan Kleinberg, 39; Carie 
           Lemack, daughter of Judy Larocque; Sally Regenhard, 
           mother of Christian Michael Otto Regenhard, 28; Lorie 
           Van Auken, wife of Kenneth Van Auken, 47; Robin Wiener, 
           sister of Jeffrey Wiener, 33.

  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the 
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), chairman of the Committee 
on the Judiciary.
  Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the 
conference report. The House-passed bill not only reformed our 
intelligence community, it also secured our borders. Unfortunately, the 
conference has left us with an incomplete product that does not secure 
our border and, thus, makes us more vulnerable to another terrorist 
attack.
  At the beginning of this process I said that the object of this 
legislation should be to prevent a future attack on the United States, 
not to manage the consequences of that attack. This bill does not do 
that. And the reason it does not do that is that while we will have 
better intelligence, good intelligence is useless without good homeland 
security.
  The House bill followed the 9/11 Commission's common-sense 
recommendation that we have Federal standards for driver's licenses. 
The commission said, ``For terrorists, travel documents are as 
important as weapons.'' Despite many attempts to keep these weapons 
away from terrorists, the bill does not do the job.
  In fact, the language in the conference report is worse than the 
current law, and it practically invites terrorists to come into our 
country and to apply for these critical identification documents. There 
is no enforcement or certification at the national level. There is no 
expiration of the licenses when the visas expire. There is no data-
sharing between the States. And any State can simply walk away from the 
few requirements that are in the bill. That does not sound like 
driver's license reform to me. Rather it sounds like a recipe for 
disaster, the same kind of disaster that occurred on 9/11.
  Remember that the 9/11 hijackers had multiple validly issued State 
driver's licenses among them, and that is how they got on the 
airplanes. That is what we were trying to stop by changing the 
provisions in the conference report, and I regret that we failed. But I 
can assure you that this issue is not going to go away.
  We have also failed on asylum reform. Many terrorist aliens have 
applied for asylum and then have been released from detention to plot 
or commit their crimes. That must stop, and

[[Page 25677]]

the provisions in the House bill would have done that, but they too 
were dropped.
  Terrorists are getting asylum today for two main reasons. First, our 
government cannot even ask foreign governments what evidence they have 
about terrorist activities of asylum applicants. Thus, the U.S. 
Government must usually oppose asylum requests by arguing that the 
applicant is lying. The Ninth Circuit has effectively barred 
immigration judges from denying asylum claims on the basis of the 
credibility of witness statements. That is crazy, because every jury in 
the country judges the credibility of the witnesses in determining the 
guilt or innocence of the defendant. The House bill would have stopped 
that and removed that bar. The conference report does not.
  In addition, the Ninth Circuit has been granting asylum to applicants 
because their home government believes they are terrorists. It then 
says, therefore they are being persecuted because of the political 
beliefs of the relevant terrorist organizations. That is goofy. The 
House stopped it, but the Senate would not go along; and the conference 
report fails to deal with this issue.
  These provisions are not too controversial. They are not irrelevant. 
They are vital. And how could we face grieving families in the future 
and tell them that while we might have done more, the legislative 
hurdles were just too high? I, for one, cannot, and, therefore, oppose 
the bill.
  I have heard from many citizens from my district and across the 
country who understand and want these provisions, and I thank them for 
their support. I want to say to them, and to everyone else that is 
listening, I will not rest until these provisions are enacted into law. 
I will bring them up relentlessly until this job is completed. The bill 
was a chance to complete the job, and that chance was missed; but it 
will come again soon.
  Finally, I would like to pay tribute to two of my fellow conferees, 
the gentlemen from California (Mr. Hunter) and the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Dreier). The chairman of the Committee on Armed 
Services, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), I think did 
yeoman's work in cleaning up the problems with the chain of command in 
order to protect our warfighters in the field and reduce casualties, 
and the bill is an improvement over what was passed by the other body 
on this. But that only applies to safety of troops overseas. It does 
not deal with the issue of safety of Americans at home.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), and the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Dreier) in particular, were instrumental in trying to 
support the driver's license and asylum reform provisions as well as 
plugging the hole in the fence that needs to be plugged to prevent 
aliens from streaming across the border. We ought to vote this down and 
start over next year.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Harman).
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this 
time and commend her service on the Committee on Rules. I rise to make 
clear that I will not object to this rule waiving any points of order 
which might lie against the conference report, a report that I strongly 
support.
  I will be speaking about the content of the bill once we move to 
consideration of the conference report, where I will be managing the 
time on our side, but I did want to rise to comment on some of the 
claims that have been made in the debate so far, especially the claims 
just made by the powerful and passionate chairman of the House 
Committee on the Judiciary.
  I would point out to our colleagues that the conference report, which 
was the product of 3 months of intense negotiation, does contain 
immigration reforms. All of the conferees, to my knowledge, believe 
that immigration reform is necessary; and all of the conferees, and I 
hope all of our colleagues, understand that our goal here is to make 
certain that our immigration system does not enable terrorists to get 
on airplanes or otherwise to harm our citizens. That is why in this 
bill many of the suggestions made by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Sensenbrenner) and many of the provisions in the House bill were 
accepted.
  For example, the bill provides for 10,000 more border guards over 5 
years. Ten thousand. It provides 4,000 more border inspectors over 5 
years. It provides for 40,000 more detention beds over 5 years. These 
are beds that will be used by those who might be deported.
  So our point is that we want the immigration laws to work better. We 
want to make sure that we know who is coming into our country, not just 
at our southern border but also at our northern border. Most of us are 
well aware that attempts to harm our country have come to us across our 
northern border as well as our southern border. Indeed, one such 
attempt was foiled just before the millennium, when a man trying to get 
to Washington State from Canada was, fortunately, intercepted by an 
adroit Customs agent. He was driving a rental car full of bomb material 
intending to bomb LAX, a major international airport surrounded by my 
congressional district.

                              {time}  1715

  So, Mr. Speaker, I get this. Our borders are porous, and we need to 
make them more secure. This bill does that.
  In addition to that, this bill adds to our law enforcement tools, 
addressing other issues with which the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Sensenbrenner) was concerned. We toughen the penalties for terrorist 
hoaxes. We create a new set of penalties for those who would use 
shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down airplanes. We toughen the 
penalties for material support of terrorists, and we add a provision 
which enables us to punish the ``lone wolf'' terrorist, someone acting 
alone, as Timothy McVeigh did, to harm our citizens.
  The bottom line here is this carefully structured, bipartisan, 
bicameral conference report does deal with these issues, as well as the 
chain of command, which many of us felt was adequately protected in 
current law, but which we addressed again to make sure everyone 
understood we were dealing with it. The point I want to make is we took 
these issues on, we came to the best resolution we could. This rule 
permits us to vote finally on what I think is the best possible 
conference report we could have developed under all of the 
circumstances. It deals with the valid concerns of the families who 
lost loved ones on 9-11, and it honors those they lost. I urge support 
of this rule. I will rise later and urge support of the conference 
report.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King).
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I think a lot of Members 
will thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman) for introducing 
the legislation that actually identified the National Intelligence 
Director well before the 9/11 Commission met to deliberate on this 
particular subject matter.
  I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman 
from Illinois (Mr. LaHood). The gentleman from Illinois ticked down 
through the issues which have been successful in our addressing 
terrorists and the fact it has been 3 years since a successful 
terrorist attack in the United States, due in large part to the changes 
illustrated by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood).
  One thing he did not go into in real depth is the Terrorist Threat 
Integration Center, TTIC. That really is in its functionality, the 
function of the National Intelligence Director and the organization 
that puts all 15 agencies under one roof, requires them to work 
together, and there has been no discussion about their effectiveness, 
but there has certainly been a record of that effectiveness. I think we 
have taken steps down that road.
  I would point out when we establish a National Intelligence Director, 
we are creating a formula for groupthink. It is not the opposite. If 
you put someone at the top of an organization and give them hiring and 
firing control, pretty soon they start to carve those square

[[Page 25678]]

pegs into round holes, and they will toe the mark, or they will find 
some folks that will. The people in my office think like I do. The 
people in other Members' offices think like they do because it is top-
down management. It produces groupthink, it does not avoid groupthink. 
Doing something different and expecting it to be better just because it 
is different is not a high standard of logic. It takes more to defend 
this issue and to give this National Intelligence Director this 
control.
  The history of success in intelligence in America and throughout all 
of history has been nonlinear thinking, creative out-of-the-box people 
who broke the mold and got into the minds of the people who they were 
up against. They were outside-of-the-box thinkers who flew those planes 
into us on September 11, and they are out there scheming today. We need 
a creative system to be able to address that.
  With regard to border control, I associate myself with the gentleman 
from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner), and particularly his 
relentless attitude to bring these issues before this country over and 
over until we do get it right.
  Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of the methamphetamine in the State of Iowa 
comes across the Mexican border. How much anthrax does it take to mix 
into some methamphetamine to cause a disease all across America and 
cause that kind of catastrophe?
  To strike out the fence down between San Diego and Tijuana, something 
this Congress has addressed several times, why has the Senate and why 
has the resistant Members of the conference committee not gone back to 
the Senate and said, accept the House changes? These are reasonable 
changes that are good for intelligence and good for immigration and 
border security. Instead, go back and look at the 19 terrorists that 
did attack this country, and I challenge Members to name one of them 
that would not be here today if we were able to pass this bill that is 
before us.
  Mr. Speaker, I do rise in opposition.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, 48 hours ago the departing 
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, gave the 
American public a wakeup call by telling them that their food and water 
supply is vulnerable to terrorist attacks. It is clear that the 9/11 
bill is long overdue because the question is about good human 
intelligence and coordination amongst U.S. intelligence agencies.
  It is important to tell the truth to the American people that the 9/
11 terrorists did not get drivers' licenses illegally, they were legal 
immigrants, they had legal documents. Not having a drivers' license 
would not have stopped 9/11. They came in with legal immigration 
documents.
  The real reason for this bill is to get a Director of National 
Intelligence to be able to give to the American people and all of those 
who provide for homeland security the human intelligence to have us 
thwart terrorists and protect ourselves against attacks by terrorists.
  I would argue that this bill is long overdue, and I thank the 9/11 
families. We owe them our greatest debt of gratitude. Tonight we will 
pass this bill. I thank them so very much. I thank the gentlewoman from 
New York (Mrs. Maloney) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) 
for standing steadfast. I thank members of the Select Committee on 
Homeland Security for understanding the difference for fighting for 
real, comprehensive immigration reform, which we need to do and will do 
in a fair and balanced manner. But what we need to do now is to say to 
you your loss will never be forgotten, we will always be reminded of 
your sacrifices, and tomorrow we will have a bill that will instill and 
install a Director of National Intelligence whose ears will be 
listening. And as they listen, they will be able to find out who is 
coming across the southern and northern borders, who is tampering with 
our water supply, and who is tampering with our food supply.
  The question now is that of getting this bill passed even in the 
lateness of the hour. I am gratified that we did resolve the issue of 
military chain of command, but I knew that was going to be taken care 
of because it was already in the bill, and as to drivers' licenses, we 
do have standards for drivers' licenses because that language is in the 
bill, even so that is a State issue that we can address later. Also we 
cannot address immigration reform piecemeal as was attempted. We must 
do it in a comprehensive manner. So this bill is ready for a vote.
  I ask my colleagues to support this rule, and I ask my colleagues to 
support this bill. My hat is off to those families and my greatest 
sympathy goes to those families who lost loved ones on 9/11, and those 
who lost their lives. Again I say we are sorry, we are sorry. This bill 
must be passed today for the good of America.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Deal).
  Mr. DEAL of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, we are here today because on 
September 11, 2001, 19 men, all of whom either entered our country 
illegally, overstayed their visas or obtained fraudulent visas, boarded 
four airplanes and used them as bombs to kill thousands of our 
citizens. The primary identification document that allowed them to 
board those airplanes were State drivers' licenses. Nothing in this 
bill would prevent those hijackers from using those same drivers' 
licenses to board those same airplanes and to repeat the events of 9/
11.
  If we do everything else to tighten our security and do not close 
this loophole, we have intentionally ignored the event that brings us 
to this day.
  Some will say let us deal with it next year. I ask, Why not now? Why 
not simply be honest with the American people and tell them we just do 
not have the political will to take those drivers' licenses out of the 
hands of would-be terrorists?
  Do we think terrorists are going to play fair? Do we think terrorists 
do not know they will continue to be able to obtain drivers' licenses 
without proving lawful entry into this country?
  Instead of getting tough on terrorists, this bill actually has some 
built-in rewards. Yes, if you illegally enter this country, we cannot 
deport you based on the same evidence that would have denied your entry 
into this country if you asked us for permission to come in. What is 
the reverse logic of that? It is like telling a burglar we are not 
going to open our door and let you in our house, but if you break in, 
we are going to give you free room and board.
  Some say this is a bill that is tough on terrorists, even though the 
death penalty has been removed as a punishment, even if they use an 
atomic weapon or release the smallpox virus. Maybe the logic of that is 
that terrorists do not really fear death, so why subject them to the 
death penalty for their acts. And, if they happen to have qualified for 
Federal benefits, they can still draw their Social Security while they 
are serving their Federal prison term.
  Mr. Speaker, the next time Members are standing in a line with other 
American citizens at the airport as they are going through a body 
search or somebody rifling through their baggage, just hope they do not 
ask you if the associates of Osama bin Laden could still get on an 
airplane using those same fraudulent drivers' licenses, because the 
answer is yes. Do Members really feel more secure?
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Wynn).
  Mr. WYNN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule for the 9/11 Commission 
bill. Let me begin by thanking the leadership on both sides of the 
aisle for their hard work. I want to thank the members of the 9/11 
Commission for their work on a bipartisan basis, and of course I want 
to thank the families from the 9/11 incident for their work as the 
driving force behind this bill.
  On September 11, 30 of my constituents were killed in attacks; 4 died 
on American Airlines Flight Number 77, and 26 died in the Pentagon. The 
term ``national security'' is not an amorphous one for my constituents.

[[Page 25679]]

  In Prince George's County and Montgomery County, the Fourth 
Congressional District, we live and work in the Nation's Capital, a 
prime target for terrorists. This is why I have strongly urged my 
colleagues to pass the 9/11 Commission recommendations since their 
release in July.
  Let me be clear. This conference report is not a panacea, and, yes, 
additional work needs to be done. But the status quo in our 
intelligence infrastructure is unacceptable. I heard one of my 
colleagues say we should not vote for this bill because it would create 
groupthink. Groupthink is what we have had. This bill is designed to 
address that concern and change it.
  The report makes clear that had the United States intelligence 
agencies communicated with each other, they could have connected the 
dots and disrupted the 9/11 attacks. In response, this bill addresses 
the recommendations of the Commission to prevent another attack and 
rightly creates a National Intelligence Director. The position would 
have budget authority to end the power struggle between the 15 
disparate Federal agencies that are now engaged.
  Currently, 80 percent of the intelligence budget falls under the 
Department of Defense, not the Central Intelligence Agency or the other 
13 agencies. As a result, we do not have the level of coordination that 
we should. The National Intelligence Director with authority over 
budget will address this.
  Additionally, this bill bolsters transportation security by directing 
the Department of Homeland Security to develop a national strategy for 
transportation security. The bill adds 10,000 Border Patrol agents and 
400 Customs agents over the next 5 years, as well as testing pilotless 
surveillance planes to safeguard our borders.
  The bill is not a panacea, but let me emphasize, we should not make 
the perfect the enemy of the good. This bill is a good start. I urge 
its passage.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The Chair would ask Members to 
kindly observe the time allotted and the gavel.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Ferguson).
  Mr. FERGUSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in favor of the rule and in favor 
of the intelligence reform legislation that the House will consider in 
a few moments.
  Real reform of the Intelligence Community has been sorely needed, and 
building upon the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and through a 
thorough negotiation within Congress, we have a piece of legislation 
that I believe will go a long way toward making the people of our 
Nation safer. But I stand supporting this legislation knowing that more 
can be done to protect people in high-density, high-threat areas, like 
those in my home State of New Jersey.
  Mr. Speaker, the people of New Jersey deeply know the threat of 
terrorism. We have suffered through terrorist attacks and live daily 
with the possibility of future attacks. New Jersey is the most densely 
populated State in the Nation, and at least a dozen sites within our 
State have been placed on the FBI's National Critical Infrastructure 
List.
  The security of New York City and New Jersey is inextricably 
intertwined. Each year, 212 million vehicles traverse our States' 
tunnels, bridges and ferries, which must be protected by both New 
Jersey and New York.
  Of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's three airports, 
the busiest by far is Newark International Airport.
  Nearly 60 percent of all containerized maritime cargo processed by 
all North Atlantic ports goes through the Port of New York and New 
Jersey, and the vast majority of the cargo flows through New Jersey's 
docks onto our rails, through our tunnels and onto our roads.

                              {time}  1730

  Overall, 450,000 people commute from New Jersey to Lower Manhattan 
every day. And New Jersey and New York's first responders, our fire and 
EMT and police, have had a mutual-aid pact since the 1993 World Trade 
Center bombing, sharing experience and helping in times of need to 
protect our entire metropolitan area.
  States like New Jersey are on the front lines of the fight for 
homeland security. It distresses me to hear that language that would 
have given States like New Jersey a more accurate allocation of 
funding, based on population and threat, was taken out by the bill's 
conferees in the conference committee.
  I am looking forward to working in the next Congress with the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), who has led the fight 
for increased funding for high-threat, high-population areas by 
creating the Urban Area Security Initiative, and the over 170 Members 
that have voted in support of the UASI program earlier this year to 
push for a logical approach to allocating security dollars based on 
threat and population.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).
  Mr. MENENDEZ. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the conference report that the rule 
looks at and I want to focus on what I believe are some misconceptions, 
particularly in the context of immigration provisions. Even though this 
bill is about intelligence and reforming our intelligence process, 
nothing stops the Congress from considering any other provision of law 
necessary to protect the American people. If we want to use it as a 
process to unravel what is trying to be done in intelligence reform, 
that is another issue. The fact of the matter is that this report 
actually has an enormous amount of immigration-related provisions. It 
has over 100 pages of the bill with 43 sections of immigration-related 
provisions in the conference report. If enacted into law, these 43 
sections, 100-plus pages of provisions, would implement all of the 9/11 
Commission's formal immigration-related recommendations.
  On the driver's license issue that is often referred to, all of the 
19 hijackers had documents to enter the country legally in the first 
place. Therefore, stopping them from entering legally is a critical 
issue, and that has been part of previous reforms that have taken 
place. Plus, the conference report establishes tough new Federal 
standards on the issues of State driver's licenses without creating a 
national driver's license and gives States the powers to continue to 
enforce, including insisting on in-person identification to receive a 
driver's license.
  Lastly, on the question of asylum, the comments that are constantly 
made about gaming the asylum system were before the reforms that took 
place. In 1996, an expedited removal system was established that has 
required aliens arriving at a U.S. port of entry without proper 
documentation to be detained and demonstrate a credible fear of 
persecution before they could bring even their asylum claim before an 
immigration judge. As I have said before, if we know a terrorist is in 
our possession, I do not want to deport them and let them try to do 
harm again to the United States. I want to arrest them, I want to 
imprison them, I want to send them to jail; but I do not want to send 
them back to go ahead and have another shot at us.
  And at the same time, I want those people who truly come to the 
United States because we have given asylum to people who are oppressed 
from religious and other entities to have their shot. So it is the 
immigration provisions that were reformed in 1996 and thereafter that 
ensure that people cannot game the asylum provisions in order to do 
harm to the United States.
  Finally, as the Catholic bishops say, if you look at the 100-plus 
pages and the 40 different sections, this is a major, significant 
rewrite of the immigration law as it is in an intelligence bill.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I hear in the Chamber about the 9/11 
families. Our hearts go out to them. But our hearts also go out to the 
men

[[Page 25680]]

and women we lose every day overseas in the military. Those losses are 
also felt. We owe the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) our 
gratitude for making this bill and those people safer.
  I disagree with my colleague that just spoke. The bill without the 
immigration provisions puts this country at great risk. Unfortunately, 
if we do not vote for this bill that has other good provisions, by 
voting against this bill you put this country at great risk. We have a 
pledge from the Speaker, and his word is gold to both sides of the 
aisle, that we will address these issues in January. And for the other 
body, they better be ready for us to camp out at their front door, 
because we are coming. And unless they bring this up, you are going to 
have a mass of people fighting for these immigration issues. It is 
wrong.
  We had in the House a 4-mile section of fence that stops illegals 
from coming across the border. Because of environmental concerns, the 
chairman on the Senate side took that out. The illegals come through 
there like a venturi tube. Go there and look. It is all beaten down. It 
is terrible for the environment. But yet it is an issue for them. And 
the chairman in the other body disregarded that because of environment 
and disregarded the security of this country. That person should have 
never been chairman on the other body to start with and let alone deny 
the gentleman from Virginia in the military on that conference.
  We will put these immigration provisions in, and they will be 
addressed in the next Congress.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The Chair would remind Members 
not to make improper references to Senators.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Schiff).
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, the bill before us has some very important 
reforms of our intelligence agencies, and I support it. Chief among 
them, the establishment of the national intelligence directorate as 
well as the national counterterrorism centers. But while these changes 
have attracted most of our attention, these changes within our 
institutions, as tough as they have been for this Congress, are the 
relatively easy part.
  Among the most important recommendations of the 9/11 Commission was 
to strengthen our efforts at nonproliferation, to try to deal with the 
problem of nuclear material, in particular, arriving in the wrong 
hands. As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden 
have made it a top priority to obtain nuclear material, and some of the 
strongest and most important recommendations of the 9/11 Commission are 
to deal with that very real danger. In fact, as the President and 
Senator Kerry both stated during the first Presidential debate, the 
threat of nuclear terrorism is the number one national security threat 
facing the country.
  In addition to the organizational changes that we have all been 
debating, there are provisions in this legislation that call for the 
establishment of a national counterproliferation center that can attack 
this problem of the proliferation of nuclear material as well as 
chemical and biological material. It will help oversee operational 
efforts to interdict this material and also recommended changes in the 
international legal structure that will better help us deal with the 
A.Q. Khans of the world, to deal with Iran, to deal with North Korea 
and attack this very real danger to our country. My own language 
applying RICO in this area as well as strengthening the dirty bomb 
statutes has also been incorporated into the bill.
  These steps are just a beginning. Many more far-reaching steps also 
have to be taken if we are to deal with this risk of nuclear terrorism.
  The NPT, as we have seen, has served us well for 40 years, but is now 
showing its age. I think Iran is demonstrating that the purest and 
simplest path to the bomb now runs through the NPT, not around it. We 
would do well to pay attention to those recommendations of the 9/11 
Commission that are the tougher steps to deal with the proliferation of 
nuclear material; but this is a good first step, and I support it.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Royce).
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this 
conference report because I strongly believe that all of the 9/11 
Commission recommendations should be in it. The commission itself has 
said that all of its recommendations should be adopted in their 
entirety to ensure success in deterring terrorism. The law that we 
passed establishing the 9/11 Commission directed them to investigate 
all of the failures that led to 9/11, which included significant lapses 
and loopholes in our immigration and border control system. The 
commission made recommendations to fix our immigration and border 
system. We put them in the House bill. It was passed out of this House 
with 68 percent of this body voting in favor. They have now been 
stripped out in the conference report.
  Why are we not adopting all of the commission's recommendations to 
strengthen America's ability to intercept individuals who pose 
catastrophic threats? How quickly we forget that the 9/11 Commission 
found that as many as 15 of the 19 hijackers were, in their words, 
potentially vulnerable to interception by border authorities. So why 
does this bill not address the 9/11 Commission's recommendation for a 
secure identification system? The 19 9/11 hijackers had 63 validly 
issued U.S. driver's licenses between them. What were they using that 
many for? They were moving around the country undetected and plotting 
and planning. In fact, as many as eight of them were even registered to 
vote. They then used those bogus licenses to board U.S. planes.
  Why are we not addressing the commission's recommendations to crack 
down on asylum fraud? The 9/11 Commission cited the Blind Sheik, Omar 
Abdel Rahman, who led a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. He used 
an asylum application to avoid deportation. How about Ramzi Yousef who 
masterminded the first World Trade Center attack while free after 
applying for asylum? It is a fact that terrorists have and continue to 
abuse our asylum laws to stay in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, the removal of these immigration and border security 
provisions that were recommended by the 9/11 Commission was a grave 
mistake. They are central to any legislation designed to prevent future 
terrorist attacks. I urge my colleagues to do the right thing and vote 
this bill down so we can include all of the 9/11 Commission 
recommendations in it and not just the politically convenient ones.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to 
the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).
  Mr. LANGEVIN. I want to thank my colleague for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, before I begin I just wanted to take a minute to 
congratulate the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman), Senator Collins and Senator 
Lieberman for their extraordinary effort in getting us to this point. 
This Nation truly owes all of them a debt of gratitude for the diligent 
effort they have put into reaching this bipartisan compromise.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that we will implement intelligence reform 
before the close of the 108th Congress, and I rise in support of the 
underlying bill. After 9/11, we clearly approached fighting the global 
war on terrorism as we had the Cold War. But it became clear that we 
needed to adapt our intelligence community, law enforcement agencies, 
and military to fight the new global threats. The 9/11 Commission gave 
us a blueprint for that mission, and this legislation will help us to 
implement their vision. Cooperation among agencies and Departments will 
be critical, and this measure shifts the mentality of our intelligence 
community from ``need to know'' to ``need to share.'' It also makes 
significant improvements to homeland security while avoiding some of 
the controversial provisions included in earlier drafts.
  As a member of the Committee on Armed Services, I am pleased that 
this

[[Page 25681]]

bill strikes a careful balance between creating a strong national 
intelligence director and preserving the ability of our men and women 
in uniform to gain access to the intelligence needed to be successful 
on the battlefield.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank all of my colleagues for working in a bipartisan 
fashion to craft a landmark measure that will truly make America safer.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and 
I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the 
underlying bill. The underlying bill is not a solution to our problems, 
but is a huge first step. Much more needs to be done. I would also like 
to commend the Members of the House on both sides of the aisle who 
worked so hard to put forth a really good bill and then fought to keep 
most of it in the final draft. I urge them to come back in January with 
an open mind and finish the work we have started.
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, the success of the 9/11 bill (S. 2845) is a 
great victory for America. It will make America safer by establishing a 
single individual who will be responsible for coordinating our 
intelligence and who will be accountable to Congress and the American 
people. The bill's success also demonstrates that our democratic 
process works and that Americans can come together in a bipartisan way 
to overcome the narrow interests of a few and meet the greatest 
challenge of our age head-on.
  It is fitting that the 9/11 bill is being considered by the House 
today on the 63rd anniversary of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor,a 
day on which 2,400 Americans died. The parallels between 9/11 and Pearl 
Harbor are striking. In each instance there were warning signs before 
the attack, and in each instance our government failed to connect the 
dots.
  Whether at Pearl Harbor or the World Trade Center, surprise is 
everything involved in a government's failure to anticipate 
effectively. The events of 9/11 defined a generation and laid bare our 
nation's lack of preparation and a national strategy to deal with the 
new threat of terrorism.
  Passage of the 9/11 bill cannot by itself defeat the terrorist 
threat. A vote in Congress will not capture Osama bin Laden or stop the 
spread of weapons of mass destruction. But today we have given the U.S. 
Government new tools to deal with a new enemy who, as enemies of old, 
threatens our liberty and way of life.
  Finally, the 9/11 bill was resuscitated on more than one occasion and 
kept alive by the sacrifice and perseverance of the 9/11 families. It 
will ensure that their loved ones did not die in vain.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I 
move the previous question on the resolution.

                              {time}  1745

  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 870, I call 
up the conference report on the Senate bill (S. 2845) to reform the 
intelligence community and the intelligence and intelligence-related 
activities of the United States Government, and for other purposes.
  The Clerk read the title of the Senate bill.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Pursuant to House Resolution 
870, the conference report is considered read.
  (For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of 
earlier today.)
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) 
and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman) each will control 30 
minutes.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I would ask if the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Harman) is opposed to the bill?
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am supportive of the bill.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair understands that both the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. HOEKSTRA) and the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Harman) are in support of the conference report.
  Therefore, pursuant to clause 8(d) of rule XXII, the Chair will 
recognize the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), the gentlewoman 
from California (Ms. Harman) and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Tancredo) for 20 minutes each.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra).


                             General Leave

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks and include extraneous material on S. 2845.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Michigan?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the conference report 
accompanying S. 2845, the National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. 
This conference report is the product of what may go down in the annals 
of this institution as one of the most difficult and certainly one of 
the most involved conferences ever.
  Just over 7 weeks ago, we began to negotiate a compromise solution of 
two very different bills that were both acting on the recommendations 
of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 
more widely known as the 9/11 Commission. The negotiations have been 
tough, long and sometimes extremely contentious. Now we have nearly 
crossed the finish line. We have a conference report that conferees 
have agreed to, and one that I believe should be enthusiastically 
supported by the Members of the House.
  It has been nearly 55 years since we have made such truly substantive 
improvement to the overall management structure of the Nation's 
Intelligence Community. This bill creates a Director of National 
Intelligence, a Director who has dramatically improved authorities and 
capabilities to manage and coordinate the disparate efforts of the 
various intelligence components of the United States Government.
  The bill also creates a National Counterterrorism Center that will 
coordinate terrorism-related intelligence efforts and provide for 
strategic operational planning of counterterrorism operations.
  Mr. Speaker, the various law enforcement and border security 
provisions in this bill will unquestionably improve domestic security 
against terrorism. The same is also true for the restructuring of the 
Intelligence Community. But I need to caution that these reforms will 
take time to implement and, moreover, for the intended results to be 
seen.
  I am not under the false impression that by themselves, these 
structural changes and enhanced authorities vested in the new Director 
of National Intelligence will ensure perfect knowledge about our 
enemies in the future. Those that would do America harm are clever, 
they are secretive, and the asymmetrical threats that they can both 
imagine and effect require us to be manyfold better at defense than 
they need be on offense.
  Mr. Speaker, before I yield the balance of my time, I want to thank 
the distinguished ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman). She has 
been a very good partner in working through this process. We have not 
always been on the same side of the issues on the work on this bill, 
but we have been steadfast in support of reforming the Intelligence 
Community and making America safer.
  The same can also be said for my colleagues from the Senate, Senators 
Collins and Lieberman. They have been driving factors in getting this 
legislation to a vote. Without them, I do not think we could have done 
this. My whole-hearted congratulations and thanks to them, and also to 
my colleagues on the House Republican Conference.
  It has been a difficult time. As I have said earlier, we did not get 
everything we wanted. I stand with the gentleman

[[Page 25682]]

from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) on many issues he brought forward on 
driver's licenses and immigration and look forward to working with him 
to move those issues in the next Congress. They are needed to more 
fully round out this package of what we need to secure America's 
safety.
  But that should not stop us from taking the steps that we have today. 
These are important steps in restructuring the Intelligence Community, 
in law enforcement, in transportation security and in international 
affairs. We need to move these forward today and then move forward on 
the rest of the issues when we get back here in 2005.
  The staff has worked incredibly hard to make this possible over the 
last 7 weeks. They have worked long hours every day to get this bill to 
where we are today. Without them, this simply could not have been 
possible.
  Mr. Speaker, the conference report on S. 2845 is a good piece of 
legislation. It is necessary. We need to support it, and we need our 
colleagues to vote yes.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to thank the new chairman of the House Permanent 
Select Committee on Intelligence, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Hoekstra), for his nice comments and for his enormous efforts at 
restoring bipartisanship to our committee. He, Senators Collins and 
Lieberman, House conferees on our side, the gentleman from New Jersey 
(Mr. Menendez) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), have 
contributed a great deal, an enormous amount, to the legislation we are 
debating today. It is a good product, it is the right product, and I 
urge all of our colleagues on a bipartisan basis to support it.
  Mr. Speaker, this day, December 7, is a date which will live in 
infamy. So was September 11, 2001. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were the two 
most tragic hours since America became a Nation.
  President Roosevelt launched a clear-eyed investigation of the 
intelligence lapses leading to Pearl Harbor, and since 9/11 we have 
worked hard to understand why critical intelligence about the plans, 
capabilities and whereabouts of the 9/11 hijackers fell through the 
cracks.
  Our intelligence system is broken. We have 15 intelligence agencies 
with different rules, cultures and databases. Our Intelligence 
Community operates on a 1947 business model designed to defeat the 
Soviet Union, which was defeated in 1989. Fifteen years later, the 
enemy is digital, but our organizational structure remains analog.
  This long-overdue legislation will modernize our capabilities, 
integrate our intelligence collection and analysis efforts, unify our 
counterterrorist efforts and promote intelligence sharing. It will 
promote the same jointness in intelligence that has been the hallmark 
of our military's success since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.
  Mr. Speaker, there is not much time, so I will forego describing the 
bill. But in addition to thanking our conferees and the so-called ``big 
four,'' I want to thank others who made this possible. They are the 9/
11 families who were the moral force beneath our wings. I want to say 
to the families that your loved ones are holding a special spot in 
heaven for you and for all that you did for the safety of our country.
  I also want to thank another group of people who are not here. They 
are the men and women who serve in our intelligence agencies and who 
wear the uniform, many of whom are on the front lines at this hour 
risking their lives for our freedom. This legislation is designed to 
give them the capabilities they deserve and need to win the war on 
terrorism. They have our praise, our admiration and our full support. 
Good people need better tools. We are going to provide those tools 
today.
  Mr. Speaker, December 7 will always remind us of the vulnerability of 
our homeland, but once we pass this bill, it will also stand for 
something else. It will stand for our resolve to make our Nation safer. 
And, I might add, it is a fitting birthday tribute to Senator Susan 
Collins, who worked so hard to make this effort possible.
  Mr. Speaker, I also want to clarify two issues that are not stated 
explicitly in this legislation but that were very much on the minds of 
its drafters.
  The first issue deals with the consolidation of power within the DNI 
to protect intelligence sources and methods. Members of the public have 
expressed concern that the increased authority of the Director of 
National Intelligence could be abused to constrict the free flow of 
information that is critical to our duties in the Congress and that the 
authorities under this bill might be used, or abused, to unduly limit 
the flow of information to the State and local governments and to the 
public.
  The sources of this concern are past uses of government secrecy--not 
to protect classified information--but to limit, and occasionally to 
intimidate, current and even former government employees from speaking 
out. These measures have included over-classification and requirements 
that government employees take polygraphs and sign unduly and overly 
broad secrecy and non-disclosure agreements as a condition of access to 
information.
  The purpose of this bill is to facilitate the dissemination of 
information within government. There is no intention on the part of the 
Congress to impair the appropriate and desirable flow of information. 
This bill does not contain any authority for the DNI or the President 
to establish a regime of undue government secrecy. The bill vests the 
DNI with the authority to protect intelligence sources and methods, 
just as the Director of Central Intelligence has exercised that 
authority. There is no new authority to criminalize or suppress the 
lawful and appropriate sharing of information within the government or 
to alter or waive any existing protections of government employees who 
wish to disclose information to Congress or through other lawful 
channels.
  Further, it should be Congress's duty to assure through oversight 
that this information sharing environment is appropriate and complete. 
Congress will track the implementation of the various responsibilities 
assigned under this bill. The creation of the Information Sharing 
Environment and the establishment of the National Intelligence Center 
and the Information Sharing Council provide some of the many 
opportunities for congressional oversight.
  A second issue deals with the creation of national standards for 
driver's licenses. This legislation creates strong minimum Federal 
standards for the issuance of State driver's licenses. We delegate to 
the Department of Homeland Security the task of devising these 
standards, but we make clear that these standards must at least require 
that licenses contain a person's full name, date of birth, gender, 
driver's license number, digital photograph, address, and signature. We 
also stipulate that the regulations shall include procedures to protect 
the privacy rights of individuals who apply for and hold driver's 
licenses. I want to make clear that we also intended to ensure that 
these regulations protect the civil and due process rights of those 
individuals as well.
  This legislation requires that driver's license standards be 
established with a negotiated rulemaking. This rulemaking shall include 
State officials who issue driver's licenses, State elected officials, 
DHS, and interested parties. The words ``interested parties'' are not 
defined, but it is our intent that such parties should include 
organizations with technological and operational expertise in document 
security and organizations that represent the interests of applicants 
for such licenses or identification cards.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.


                announcement by the speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind Members that it is 
not in order to bring the attention of the House to visitors in the 
gallery or to make improper references to Senators, whether positive or 
negative.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a great amount of admiration for the people who 
have worked as hard as they have worked on this bill, for the chairman, 
for the leadership in the House, that has, I know, spent many, many 
hours in discussions with the other body.
  I wish that I could stand on this floor tonight and support this 
bill. I remember during an earlier debate on H.R. 10, the House version 
of the response to the 9/11 Commission report, I was proud as I have 
ever been to be a Member of this body and to see the members of my 
party, especially the Speaker of the House, the whip and the majority 
leader, come to the floor and speak articulately and very, very 
forcefully in support of certain provisions of the

[[Page 25683]]

bill that the other side of the aisle were trying to take out. These 
provisions dealt specifically with trying to increase our border 
security.
  It is intriguing in a way, it is ironic in a way, one thing: We 
established a 9/11 Commission, it did its work, it talked to us about 
what we needed to do.
  We all recognize what happened on that day, on 9/11 2001. When people 
came into this country from other countries, many of them did so 
fraudulently, by providing false documentation, by inaccurately filling 
out their visas, or by coming into the country and after they were here 
overstaying those visas. They were in violation of our immigration 
laws. They were able to take advantage of their position because we did 
not do much, and we still do very little in terms of enforcing those 
laws.
  They were also able to take advantage of another thing in this 
system. They were able to take advantage of the fact that we were 
handing out driver's licenses to people like prizes in a Cracker Jack 
box. The 19 hijackers had accumulated a total of 63 driver's licenses, 
many from Virginia. They used them with great ability to, of course, 
get onto planes, to make life easy for them while they were here.
  This is one thing we know that happened that helped create the 
problem, helped create the event of 9/11. We know that. So we create a 
bill in response to the 9/11 catastrophe, and it is almost 
inconceivable that any bill could then come to this floor without a 
reference to, without an ability, without any desire to actually do 
something about the actual problem that created 9/11. But that is the 
case today.
  To quote the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner), the 
chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, who also recognized the 
flaw, the fatal flaw of this bill, and that is the only way I can 
really describe it, it is a fatal flaw, this is the quote from Chairman 
Sensenbrenner: ``Americans deserve a complete bill so that we can 
prevent another 9/11 from occurring. Border security and immigration 
reform are vital components of our national security efforts, so why 
are they not included in this legislation? The time to address these 
issues is now, not next month, not next year. Hollow promises of future 
considerations are just that, hollow promises. Terrorists have 
exploited vulnerabilities in our asylum system and in the issuance of 
driver's licenses.
  ``This bill fails to include the strong provisions in the House bill 
because my Senate colleagues,'' and I am quoting him here, ``found them 
to be too controversial. That is unfortunate, because their refusal to 
consider these security provisions on their merits will keep Americans 
unnecessarily at risk.''
  Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with his observations, and I would ask 
my colleagues to look carefully at what they are doing here.
  The fact is that this bill has such a gaping loophole and it has such 
a huge, huge flaw that it is better not to pass this bill at all than 
to pass it and create the illusion of security. I do not doubt, as I 
have said, that there are many good parts of the bill. That is not the 
issue. But there is something so vital, something so intrinsic to our 
national security, the issuance of driver's licenses and trying to 
maintain some degree of control over that process, because we know that 
a driver's license in this country is, of course, as close to a 
national I.D. card as we have.

                              {time}  1800

  But when we refuse to address this because of our concern about the 
politics, because it is too controversial to talk about, how can we 
come to this floor, how can anybody come to this floor or in fact stand 
in front of any television or any constituency and say, we are doing 
everything possible to defend the people of this country. How can we 
say this when we know that that is absolutely untrue; when the one 
thing we should be doing in this bill, we are not.
  So because it does not have that provision, I certainly would request 
that my colleagues turn this bill down and ask that it come back in a 
different form, in a more complete form.

                  Sensenbrenner Statement on 9/11 Bill

       Washington, DC.--House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. 
     James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI) issued the following 
     statement regarding legislation responding to the 9/11 
     Commission recommendations:
       ``I am pleased that the chain-of-command issues Chairman 
     Duncan Hunter has raised have been resolved so that our war-
     fighters will not be put at risk. Unfortunately, even with 
     these improvements, the current bill is woefully incomplete 
     and one I cannot support.
       ``Americans deserve a complete bill so that we can prevent 
     another 9/11 from occurring. Border security and immigration 
     reform are vital components of our homeland security efforts, 
     so why are they not included in this legislation? The time to 
     address these issues is now, not next month, not next year. 
     Hollow promises of future consideration are just that--hollow 
     promises.
       ``Terrorists have exploited vulnerabilities in our asylum 
     system and in the issuance of drivers' licenses. This bill 
     fails to include the strong provisions in the House bill 
     because my Senate colleagues found them `too controversial.' 
     That's unfortunate, because their refusal to consider these 
     security provisions on their merits will keep Americans 
     unnecessarily at risk.
       I said two weeks ago that the Senate was hell-bent on 
     ensuring that illegal aliens can receive drivers' licenses, 
     regardless of the security concerns. This Sept. 10th 
     mentality in a post-Sept. 11th world is unwise and among 
     those I intend to rectify next year.''

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Hunter), a conferee on the bill.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for his hard 
work.
  Mr. Speaker, for the House, walking through this conference report 
has been largely a defensive action, if you will, a holding action; and 
I want to compliment all of the great Members of the House who managed 
to hold off what initially was a political stampede that would have 
passed a piece of legislation that would have accrued to the detriment 
of the people who wear the uniform of the United States and, I think, 
to our intelligence apparatus.
  We had to walk back things like opening up the top line, the 
classified top line to the world, letting our adversaries know how much 
we spend on intelligence. We had to walk back this idea that somehow we 
were going to send the money for the combat support agencies around the 
Department of Defense, not allow the Department of Defense to have a 
normal working relationship with its own combat support agencies. In 
fact, it took a letter from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General 
Myers, to the conferees to say the House position is the right 
position, to back off some of those who were stampeding in the wrong 
direction. Ultimately, we had to address this most important issue: 
chain of command.
  Now, interestingly, before this bill was brought up on the other side 
of the Hill, on the Senate side, the President sent a strong message 
saying we must have chain-of-command language to make sure that there 
is no confusion about lines of execution. The authors of the bill on 
the other side did not put that language in. My counterpart, Senator 
John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, then 
saying that he was afraid that this bill did violate and intrude on the 
chain of command, offered an amendment to establish what the 
administration wanted, to establish strong chain-of-command language 
that would ensure that a battlefield commander would have all the 
assets in his area of operation for his combatant commands. Senator 
Warner's language was rejected by the leadership of this bill on the 
Senate side.
  As we got into the conference, the administration sent another 
message. They said, you know, you forgot something. You forgot the 
chain-of-command language. Once again, it was not included. When it 
finally was included, it was accompanied by weasel words which 
basically invalidated the entire section. On several occasions the 
conferees on the other side changed the weasel words, but they still 
had a provision which basically violated the entire section, or 
invalidated the entire section, and left us with nothing.
  So, in the end, 17 days ago when we were asked in the Republican 
conference what we thought about this bill, I and many other people had 
to speak up and point out that this very important chain of command was 
not protected in the conference report and needed to be protected.

[[Page 25684]]

  In the end, on Saturday night, we sent to Senator Collins' staff a 
chain-of-command provision to respect and not abrogate the chain of 
command, citing the statutes that are relevant, to Senator Collins 
through her chief of staff. He said she would get back Monday morning. 
She did get back and approved that section. And we said that when I saw 
that in writing in an amendment to the conference report, I would then 
support the conference. We have gotten that today, and I have signed 
the conference report.
  This bill, now, with these changes, including classifying the top 
line, walking back this wild attempt to remove the Department of 
Defense from its own budget flow to its combat support agencies and, 
finally, this attempt to keep the chain of command in a position where 
it was questionable; having walked back all of those attempts to change 
this bill in a manner that would accrue to the detriment of the men and 
women who wear the uniform of the United States and moving instead to a 
situation in which they are protected, with a solid insulation in the 
chain of command so a combat commander in Afghanistan or Iraq can now 
count on being able to use all of his assets in that theater to protect 
his troops and perform his mission; having done that, this bill, in my 
estimation, is now acceptable, and I am supporting this bill. I am 
going to vote for this bill.
  I agree fully with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) 
and others who think that the driver's license issue is of great 
importance. It is of great importance. We need to get that issue up and 
through as soon as possible.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I welcome the support for this bill from the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), and I would like our colleagues 
to know as one conferee, we all support the chain of command.
  Mr. Speaker, it is now my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), a conferee, and the ranking 
member on the House Committee on Armed Services, a wonderful committee 
on which I served for 6 years.
  Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me 
this time. I rise in strong support of this Intelligence Reform Act.
  Mr. Speaker, we are making history today. This conference report 
represents the most profound government reform to date for meeting the 
unique and daunting security challenges existing in this era of terror. 
This bill fundamentally overhauls the structure of our Nation's 
intelligence community. It represents an important step in the 
improvement of our government's intelligence capabilities while, at the 
same time, preserving our ability to ensure that our own military 
personnel have the intelligence information they need to succeed on the 
battlefield. More broadly, Mr. Speaker, this bill promises to advance 
our abilities in the global fight against terrorism.
  From my vantage point as the ranking member of the Committee on Armed 
Services, this conference includes two important legislative 
achievements. First, it creates and empowers a new Director of National 
Intelligence to set the vision, direction, and priorities for the 
entire intelligence community. Second, it maintains the sanctity of the 
military's chain of command, so that the Secretary of Defense will have 
the necessary authorities to effectively manage intelligence assets and 
resources, particularly technical assets on the battlefield.
  The 9/11 Commission pointed out that our Nation's intelligence 
community has suffered from a failure of imagination, failure to focus, 
and failure at organization. This bill addresses these failures with a 
new organization, new authorities, and management flexibility. In 
addition to the new director, the bill authorizes a National Counter 
Terrorism Center to improve analytic vision and operational planning 
across Departments and at the highest levels of government. Another 
important change is the information-sharing requirements across 
traditional bureaucratic barriers, or what we call stovepipes. Such 
innovation has been suggested for years, and these provisions are long 
overdue.
  Mr. Speaker, opportunities in this body to effect fundamental and 
indeed historical changes are rare. We have such an opportunity today. 
I commend the leaders of this conference, and I strongly support the 
bill before us. It is significant, necessary, and unprecedented; and it 
offers much promise to make our Nation more secure, and I strongly urge 
its adoption.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for her work.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I rise in reluctant, but vociferous, 
opposition to this legislation, fully named the National Intelligence 
Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.
  Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly, but adamantly, oppose this measure 
because it fails to deal effectively with the second heading in the 
legislative title. It is beyond titles and slogans and, instead, 
policies where we must concentrate ourselves. Mr. Speaker, much has 
been made, and I have heard previous speakers speak of the families who 
suffered such great loss on 9/11, speak of what this Nation confronted 
on that fateful day. Yet, perhaps in a triumph of legislative policy 
and the incrementalism so often a part of the system, we are ignoring 
the single best provision to prevent future acts of terror, 
understanding that border security and national security are one and 
the same.
  Good people on both sides of the aisle, well-intentioned people 
rightfully say we need to restructure our national intelligence-
gathering capabilities. I concur. But what we see now, Mr. Speaker, is 
laying a new foundation, building a new wall, but forgetting both a 
front door and a back door and a roof. We are leaving our doors wide 
open.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased and proud to be an Arizonan. I was in 
Nogales at our border crossing not too long ago visiting with our 
friends from the Border Patrol. They told me of an interesting 
apprehension the day before. The gentleman they said was a native of 
Iraq who had claimed to come to the United States in 1978 with a green 
card. It was interesting, though, to hear the Border Patrol personnel 
speak of their detainee, because curiously, the Iraqi who said he had 
come to the United States in 1978 with a green card was much more 
fluent in Spanish than he was in English. We read in accounts of the 
free press that there are those who come from the Middle East, adopt 
Hispanic surnames, and seek to infiltrate. There are some adherents to 
the politically correct who would ignore or diffuse or understate the 
nature of this threat.
  Mr. Speaker, I will not allow the national security of the United 
States to be jeopardized and undermined and placed on the funeral 
parlor of the politically correct. To those who say that it is 
incremental, it is a step in the right direction: well and good. But 
incrementalism in wartime when our national survival may be at stake is 
unacceptable. Either do it right, or do not do it.
  It is sad, but necessary, to reject this bill because it fails to 
deal with preventing terrorist attacks by understanding that border 
security and national security are one and the same.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Cox), my colleague, the chairman of the Select 
Committee on Homeland Security.
  Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I would like at this point to engage my friend, 
the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in a 
brief colloquy to clarify the intention of section 1016 of this bill 
which concerns information-sharing and would create a new Information 
Sharing Environment, or ISE.
  Section 1016(b) requires that the President create an ISE and that he 
``ensure that the ISE provides and facilitates the means for sharing 
terrorism information among all appropriate Federal, State, local, and 
tribal entities, and the private sector, through the use of policy 
guidelines and technologies.'' That is a quotation

[[Page 25685]]

from section 1016(b)(2) at page 66, lines 21 through 25.
  I understand, Mr. Speaker, this section to mean that the Information 
Sharing Environment referred to will serve as a new, interconnected 
environment by which Federal agencies can exchange information with 
each other and with State, local, and private sector officials as their 
statutory mandates may require. Because the Homeland Security Act of 
2002 assigned to the Department of Homeland Security significant 
responsibilities for sharing terrorism-related information with State, 
local, and private sector officials; for example, section 201(d) and 
section 892, I want to make sure that my understanding of the purpose 
of section 1016 is accurate.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. COX. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to confirm that the 
understanding that the gentleman has is correct. The information-
sharing environment will serve as a means by which individual agencies, 
including DHS, can meet their statutory information-sharing mandates. 
It will enable and assist agencies in meeting their information-sharing 
responsibilities.
  In particular, I can confirm that the ISE does not supplant or in any 
way diminish the information-sharing responsibilities of DHS.

                              {time}  1815

  Indeed, DHS will be an interconnected component of the ISE, which 
will facilitate the Department's execution of its statutory mission as 
the primary Federal agency responsible for sharing terrorism-related 
information with State, local and private sector officials and the 
public.
  Mr. COX. I thank the chairman. I would also like to engage my 
colleague, the chairman, in a colloquy on section 1021 which would add 
a new section 119 to the National Security Act of 1947, establishing 
the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC.
  Section 119(d)(1) lists among the primary missions of the NCTC: ``To 
serve as the primary organization in the United States Government for 
analyzing and integrating all intelligence possessed or acquired by the 
United States Government pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism, 
excepting intelligence pertaining exclusively to domestic terrorists 
and domestic counterterrorism.''
  That occurs at page 87, lines 10 through 16.
  Section 119(e)(1) of the National Security Act, as amended, would 
state that the new National Counterterrorist Center, NCTC, ``may, 
consistent with applicable law, at the direction of the President, and 
the guidelines referred to in section 102A(b), receive intelligence 
pertaining exclusively to domestic counterterrorism from any Federal, 
State or local government or other source necessary to fulfill its 
responsibilities and retain and disseminate such intelligence.''
  That occurs at page 88, lines 17 through 24.
  Section 201(d)(1) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 requires the 
Department of Homeland Security ``To assess, receive, and analyze law 
enforcement information, intelligence information, and other 
information from agencies of the Federal Government, State and local 
government agencies (including law enforcement agencies), and private 
sector entities, and to integrate such information in order to (A) 
identify and assess the nature and scope of terrorist threats to the 
homeland; (B) detect and identify threats against the United States; 
and (C) understand such threats in light of the actual and potential 
vulnerabilities of the homeland.''
  And section 201(d)(9) of the Homeland Security Act requires the 
Department of Homeland Security ``To disseminate, as appropriate, 
information analyzed by the Department within the Department, to other 
agencies of the Federal Government with responsibilities relating to 
homeland security, and to agencies of State and local governments with 
private sector entities with such responsibilities in order to assist 
in the deterrence, prevention, preemption of, or response to, terrorist 
attacks against the United States.''
  So, first, I would like to make sure I am correct in understanding 
that it is not the intention of section 119(d) and (e) to have the NCTC 
exercise any aspect of the role that has been assigned to DHS in the 
Homeland Security Act, including specifically DHS's primary 
responsibility for the sharing of terrorism-related information with 
State, local and private sector officials and the public.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I can confirm the chairman's understanding. Neither the 
responsibilities of NCTC for comprehensive counterterrorism analysis, 
nor its responsibility for dissemination of information within the 
Federal Government, will in any way diminish the responsibilities of 
DHS under the Homeland Security Act, or any other legal mandate.
  Mr. COX. I thank my friend, the chairman of the Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence. Could he also confirm my understanding of 
119(e)?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I can confirm that his understanding of 119(e) is also 
accurate.
  Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the conference report on 
the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.
  The House Select Committee on Homeland Security, which I chair, was 
deeply involved in the efforts to put this bill together. The bill 
unfortunately does not contain all of the provisions that I believe it 
should contain--in particular, the Faster and Smarter Funding for First 
Responders Act, which was a major part of the House-passed 9/11 bill. 
But the bill as it is now before us meets the most important test: It 
will make America safer.
  The reform of our intelligence system is an historic and vitally 
necessary step forward. This bill will also ensure that U.S. officials 
on the border have access to the information they need to identify 
suspect and fraudulent identity documents. It will give consular 
offices the technology and training they need to recognize terrorist 
travel patterns and practices--as called for by the 9/11 Commission.
  We also know that a major problem along our borders today is the lack 
of detention space to hold illegal aliens who are awaiting deportation. 
The indefensible policy of ``catch and release'' that this necessitates 
is threatening our national security. The select committee worked with 
my good friend Mr. Bonilla of Texas, and the Judiciary Committee to 
insert into this bill a large increase in the number of detention beds 
to address this problem.
  The bill will also greatly enhance our efforts to improve the 
interoperability of first responder communications. It directs DHS to 
provide technical assistance to our highest-risk areas in order to 
rapidly deploy interoperable communications systems. And it establishes 
a comprehensive program to develop baseline capabilities and standards 
for interoperability nationwide.
  The bill before us also gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the 
flexibility to make multi-year funding commitments for interoperable 
communications projects. This change will encourage the long-term 
planning and local investment that is necessary to get such systems 
into place at the State and local level. I want to thank Mr. Fossella 
and Mr. Stupak for working with the Homeland Security Committee on this 
important reform.
  Finally, this bill will promote mutual aid at the State, local and 
regional levels--another key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.
  I am disappointed that important reforms that were passed by the 
House are not included in this final bill, including standards for 
identification to board airplanes and buy weapons; the creation of an 
Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity within DHS; and first responder 
funding reform to replace pork barrel funding with threat-based 
funding. That legislation will have to be our first order of business 
in the 109th Congress But we owe it to the American people to pass this 
bill now.
  I want to thank Chairman Hoekstra, who chaired this conference under 
challenging circumstances, and his staff for their cooperation and 
assistance. And I want to thank Speaker Hastert and President Rush for 
their personal efforts to ensure passage today of these important 
intelligence and homeland security reforms.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Harman) has 14\1/2\ minutes remaining. The gentleman 
from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) has 7 minutes remaining. The gentleman 
from Colorado

[[Page 25686]]

(Mr. Tancredo) has 11\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Menendez), who heads our Democratic Caucus, a wonderful and 
valued colleague on this issue, and a third of our Democratic 
conferees.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, the question we have before us today is 
not whether this conference report will pass. As Governor Kean, the 
chairman of the 9/11 Commission, said recently, ``The question is 
whether it will pass now or after a second attack.'' Because we know 
the enemy seeks to attack again. We just do not know when and where it 
will occur.
  That is why we as a Congress pledge to do everything possible to make 
sure the tragic events of 9/11 were never repeated. That is why the 
Commission was created to investigate what went wrong. Nothing is more 
important than that mission. In fact, the work on this bill and 
conference report is the most important of the entire 108th Congress.
  This conference report that we have before us today secures America 
against terrorists by making sweeping changes to our homeland security 
and intelligence operations. It addresses the key intelligence failures 
that allowed the 9/11 attacks to succeed. This will be the first 
comprehensive overhaul of our intelligence apparatus since 1947, 
updating it from the Cold War to the war on terror.
  The bill will establish a Director of National Intelligence in charge 
of all of the government's intelligence gathering, analysis and 
counterterrorism operations. It would streamline and unify our 
intelligence-gathering capabilities, foster greater intelligence 
sharing, and end the senseless turf battles that plague the current 
system and that so failed our country on that fateful day.
  It will improve the overall qualities of our intelligence, and, yes, 
it contains numerous and significant immigration-, visa security-, and 
border security-related provisions; over 43 sections, 100 pages, adding 
thousands of additional Border Patrol agents, immigration and Customs 
investigators; new technologies across the border; criminalizing the 
smuggling of immigrants; and establishing tough Federal minimum 
standards for birth certificates and driver's licenses just as the 9/11 
Commission report recommended.
  It is time to honor the memories of all of those who perished on 
September 11, including the 122 of my fellow citizens from my 
congressional district. It is time to secure America. It is time to put 
the turf battles aside. It is time to try to stop using other issues 
for the purposes of derailing the ultimate goal here, which is 
intelligence reform, and it is time to make America secure by voting 
yes on this conference report.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I would say that the only turf that at 
least I am interested in protecting here is the turf of the United 
States of America and the people that live on it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Rohrabacher).
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to S. 2845.
  This is first and foremost, and everyone in the country knows that, 
this is a pro-illegal immigration bill in that the situation with 
illegal immigration will be worse if we pass this bill than it is 
today.
  It is also not a reform bill. It is an illusion. It is a piece of 
illusion legislation. It is designed to make people feel better because 
they perceive something is being done.
  And I would like to thank the largest organization of 9/11 families 
who are opposed to this legislation, the 9/11 Families for American 
Security, who visited Members of Congress to oppose this legislation.
  What this bill does is change the flowchart, trying to make people 
think that is doing something. It adds a level of bureaucracy, a new 
level of bureaucracy, and, yes, creates an intelligence czar. Boy, that 
is going to make everybody feel really good that we have an 
intelligence czar. We had an energy czar. That did us a lot of good. 
And thank goodness America had a drug czar that was appointed years 
ago; otherwise we would be plagued with drug use in America today.
  No, this whole bill is designed to make people feel good rather than 
to do something to hold people accountable for the decisions that they 
made that led up to 9/11. The intelligence czar and the huge staff 
required to support the new intelligence czar is duplicative and will 
be an impediment to getting things done in the Intelligence Community.
  The National Security Council, I worked at the White House for 7 
years, was set up to do exactly this. And had the National Security 
Council during the Clinton administration, and, yes, during the 
beginning of this administration, had been doing their jobs, there 
would not have been a 9/11. So we already have people to do this job of 
the new intelligence czar and his huge bureaucracy.
  9/11 was not due to blocks in the flowchart. 9/11 was the results of 
bad policies in dealing with the Taliban, which I complained about for 
years on the floor of this House, and bad policies in terms of what we 
were doing against al Qaeda during the Clinton years, and, yes, even 
bad policies exemplified by Jamie Gorelick, who signed a Justice 
Department order during the Clinton years that restricted cooperation 
between the FBI and CIA in dealing with terrorist threats. No, that was 
bad policy.
  We do not need to change the flowchart to make people feel good in 
order to hold people accountable for those bad policies.
  Finally, this bill should be defeated because it has gutted the 
provisions in this bill that passed the House that were aimed at 
controlling this massive invasion we have of illegal immigrants into 
our country, and we are not going to have a secure America when we have 
millions and millions of illegal aliens coming here, many of whom can 
be terrorists; and in this bill we no longer have the provisions to 
make sure that we will not be giving ID cards so these illegals can get 
on airplanes and crash them into buildings.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, clearly many in this House feel strongly. I 
hope most of us will vote for this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Reyes), a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence.
  Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and our chairman for 
the hard work they have done along with the other conferees.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this conference report, 
though not without some reservations. I am encouraged by the bill's 
reforms to our Nation's Intelligence Community, reforms that would not 
be before us today without the hard work of the 9/11 Commission and the 
unwavering commitment of the 9/11 families.
  Also, as a member of both the Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence and the Committee on Armed Services, I recognize that 
timely and accurate intelligence is essential for both the President 
and our military forces in the fields. So I am pleased that this 
important issue has been addressed. However, I do have a strong word of 
caution for my colleagues about some of the provisions that we are 
enacting today in the name of homeland security.
  These provisions establishing new investigatory, surveillance, and 
information-sharing authorities carry tremendous potential for abuse. I 
am concerned that these provisions may only be the beginning, and that 
we could be headed down a dangerous path without ensuring the 
appropriate checks and balances.
  Prior to coming to Congress, I served for 26\1/2\ years in the United 
States Border Patrol, from agent to chief, so I know firsthand about 
our efforts to protect our borders and keep America secure. While I 
strongly believe in giving our government and law enforcement the tools 
they need to keep America safe, I also know it is imperative that we 
have an effective system of checks and balances to protect our rights 
as Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, I will vote for this bill because I believe that reforms 
to our Intelligence Community are much needed and long overdue. 
However, as we move forward, I urge my colleagues to be vigilant in 
ensuring that we do

[[Page 25687]]

not undermine the very liberties we are trying to protect from 
terrorists, because it is these liberties that make America the great 
Nation that it is.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite).
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, protecting our Nation 
is one of the most important duties that we have as Members of 
Congress. If we fail this, nothing else really matters.
  The conference report does contain some useful provisions, but it is 
incomplete, making it inadequate and therefore unacceptable. The 
agreement with the Senate gave away so much, and it includes some major 
steps backwards from the House-passed version of the bill and from the 
strides that we have made since 9/11.

                              {time}  1830

  Specifically, the report ignores important suggestions made by the 9/
11 Commission and by many Members of this Chamber regarding immigration 
and the use of illegal identification cards.
  We need to have closed borders with open doors for those who follow 
the law. Our offices are flooded with people asking for assistance 
because they are trying to come here legally.
  The version this House passed prohibited convicted terrorists from 
receiving Federal benefits, and yet the agreement before us here today 
fails to prevent this injustice. Remember, the taxpayers out there are 
going to be paying taxes and some terrorists are going to be getting 
some Federal benefits. That is just unacceptable.
  It has been 3\1/4\ years since the terrorists used illegal 
identification to cross our borders and to attack Americans at home, 
and yet Congress still ignores meaningful immigration reform. We 
authorize some detention beds in here; but guess what, we did not fund 
them.
  There have been so many immigration bills introduced since 9/11 that 
have died and had to be reintroduced again, only to die again. We are 
told that, oh, they will be taken care of next year. I sincerely hope 
that that is the case because this bill is a feel-good bill, 
absolutely. It is like buying a state-of-the-art alarm system, 
installing it in your house, never actually activating it and then you 
do not even bother locking your doors. Your home is not secure. Our 
Nation will not be any more secure under this. We need to secure our 
borders. That is a very important component that is simply missing from 
this bill.
  I cannot support the bill in its current form and because it is so 
inadequate, because it does not address the very important immigration 
issue.
  The problem with the conference report was that it ignored so many of 
the good immigration reform provisions that we had in the House bill. 
This bill is only part of what the 9/11 Commission recommended. I was a 
State senator. As my colleagues know, many of the terrorists came from 
Florida. We said the length of their driver's license expires when 
their visa expires. Guess what. This bill does not mandate it. So the 
10 States that do not even have that provision, they are the States 
that the terrorists are going to go to. That is just plain wrong.
  We do need to have uniformity in driver's licenses. We do need to 
make sure that the person applying for the driver's license, who has a 
visa, that the visa expiration date is the expiration date of the 
identification or the driver's license.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Cunningham), a member from the committee.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the gentlewoman 
from California (Ms. Harman) and the chairman for working on this bill 
and on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Reyes), even though he is an Irish kid, is like a 
brother, and we work very well together. Disagree, but work together.
  Do any of my colleagues have any idea what it is like to watch 
friends die? The 9/11 families do. I do not know how many of my 
colleagues saw Private Ryan. I lost a lot of good friends in combat. 
Anger, rage, disappointment, knowing that many of them did not have to.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) fixed that in this bill. 
It is going to save a lot of lives. To say that this bill is a shadow, 
I do not believe is correct in my opinion. If we look at COSCO, many 
wanted the China Ocean Shipping Company to take over the Long Beach 
shipyard. The gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and I stopped 
that, even though we knew there were spies with the China organization 
taking over Long Beach shipyard, and we were able to work that in a 
bipartisan issue.
  The homeland security, our ports, one of the biggest threats that we 
have is our ports, and that is addressed in this bill.
  Where my dilemma is, is the 9/11 Recommendation No. 16 that was 
denied and stripped out of the bill by the other body. To me that is 
irresponsible, and I would ask the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Hoekstra), the chairman, in a colloquy, is it the gentleman's 
understanding from our leadership that the immigration issues will be 
addressed in the 109th Congress?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, he was in the conference today. I think we 
got a very strong commitment from the leadership that they intend to 
address these issues. I think that will represent the will of the 
members of this conference.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. And that the President will help us in these efforts?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will continue to yield, that is 
absolutely correct.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman; I thank the 
Members on both sides of the aisle.
  If my colleagues vote against this bill, they put this Nation at 
risk. Without the immigration issues, this Nation is at risk.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, it is now my pleasure to yield 1 minute to 
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic leader, my 
predecessor as ranking member on the Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence and someone who knows these issues extremely well.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time 
and commend her for her tremendous leadership, outstanding leadership 
as our ranking member on the Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence, and I commend the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) 
for his leadership, as well as chair of the conference and as chair of 
the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
  I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman). I know 
firsthand of her great work, and we are all very proud of it.
  Mr. Speaker, more than 4 months ago, the 9/11 Commission created by 
Congress to examine the intelligence failures of 9/11 made a critical 
judgment. It concluded that the United States intelligence community 
was not structured properly to counter the threats, including 
terrorism, that our Nation was likely to face in the years to come.
  In response to that judgment, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission 
unanimously issued 41 recommendations to make America safer. The most 
critical of these was the creation of a powerful manager for the 
intelligence community, one with the authority to establish budgets and 
to move money and people between agencies as dictated by changing 
needs.
  The commission's conclusion and this recommendation mirrored a 
similar judgment made 2 years ago by a congressional joint inquiry that 
neither the President nor the Republican Congress acted upon. Thank 
heavens we are acting today.
  Fortunately, the 9/11 Commission's recommendations and the tireless 
advocacy of the 9/11 Commission and the victims' families gave us the 
opportunity to produce a better result today. We are greatly in their 
debt.
  Another significant recommendation was the establishment of a civil 
liberties board. As we protect and defend

[[Page 25688]]

the American people from terrorism, we must also protect and defend the 
Constitution and the civil liberties contained therein. Again, I wish 
the conferees would have agreed to a stronger board, as was contained 
in the Senate bill. Instead, we have to rely on the dedication and 
stature of those appointed to the board to overcome any weaknesses in 
its power.
  Thankfully, the worst of the egregious provisions on immigration and 
law enforcement that were in the House bill have been removed due to 
the firm resolve of a majority of the members of the conference 
committee.
  I, too, would like to engage the distinguished chairman in a 
colloquy. It was not my intention until I heard the colloquy of the 
previous speaker. I would just like to know what it means that in the 
next Congress my colleagues will take up the immigration provisions 
that are not in this bill and will have the cooperation of the 
President. What does that mean? Does that mean we will be revisiting 
the same provisions that were removed from this bill in order to obtain 
passage of it this evening?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Ms. PELOSI. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank her for yielding and appreciate 
the work she has done in putting together this bill.
  What the indications are and what the colloquy I had with my 
colleague indicate are that the provisions that were deleted from the 
bill that we are considering today, the difference between the 
previously House-passed version and what is in the conference report 
are of utmost importance to members of our conference, to the 
leadership and to the President, and that through regular order we will 
pursue moving those agenda items forward in the next Congress.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, so my colleagues removed them. I just want 
to make sure I understand correctly. The egregious, considered by some 
of us, extraneous provisions that were in this bill that were removed 
in order to get the compromise legislation that we have here today will 
be taken up in the next Congress and be moved quickly to what? Pass 
into law?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield, we will go 
through regular order to take many of the provisions that had 
previously passed the House as part of H.R. 10. They will be considered 
again by the House and will move through the regular process, meaning 
that this body will consider the legislation. If this body endorses the 
legislation and the Senate obviously provides complementary 
legislation, we will go through the conference process to see if it is 
possible to make those provisions and move them into law.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's candor. I have 
concerns about his statement, however, because there was a oneness, an 
integrity to this bill which contained many of the recommendations of 
the 9/11 Commission, bipartisan, and unanimously, and the support of 
the United States Senate in a very bipartisan way; and I had hoped that 
what we were introducing today as a compromise was a bill that had, 
again, this oneness and this integrity. I am concerned that a piece of 
it is taken off with a commitment that it may be passed.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield, I think it 
is obvious to us that we went there through the process. Many of the 
provisions that were a vital part of the House bill were not part of 
the base bill in the Senate, or similar items were not part of the base 
bill in the Senate; and so we believe that it is important and there 
will be an opportunity to move through the process with the Senate in 
the next session of Congress.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Hoekstra). Again, I have serious concerns.
  I hope that, again, the Republican leadership will not tarnish this 
achievement today with commitments to vote on ill-advised changes to 
our immigration laws in the next Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that today we must move forward. 
There is one recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that we are not 
considering today, and that is, congressional oversight; that the 
commission also recommended changes in the intelligence oversight 
process in the Congress in addition to the changes in the executive 
branch. Without effective congressional oversight, the reforms put in 
place by this bill will be less successful in protecting the American 
people. I look forward to working with the gentleman from Illinois 
(Speaker Hastert) in a bipartisan way to institute more effective 
congressional oversight.
  Today, again, we must move forward. This bill, although not perfect, 
strengthens the process by which we manage the collection, processing, 
and dissemination of intelligence. In doing so, it reduces the risk to 
the American people. It honors the work of the 9/11 Commission, and I 
hope it will bring some comfort to the families of the victims of the 
9/11 attacks.
  Actually, passage of this bill is a tribute to the 9/11 families. 
They have constantly been an inspiration to us because they turned 
their grief into action. The American people are safer, and we are 
deeply in their debt. We will never forget their loss, and we thank 
them for their courage. We owe them at least that much, and that is to 
make the American people safer. I urge my colleagues to support this 
bill.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Gary G. Miller).
  Mr. GARY G. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong 
opposition to the 9/11 Recommendation Act.
  I want to commend the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) for his 
efforts in the area of oversight that he had. I think he did an 
excellent job, and this bill was improved by his efforts. However, the 
gentleman from Wisconsin's (Mr. Sensenbrenner) issues that he dealt 
with were removed from this bill, and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Sensenbrenner) looked at this House issue and said, how did 9/11 occur? 
How did the perpetrators attack this country, and what can we do in 
this bill to make sure that does not happen again? That language was 
removed, and when we talk to the people back home, these are 
commonsense issues.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) injected language that said 
we are going to expedite construction of the gap of the 14-mile barrier 
in between San Diego and the border of the United States. That language 
was removed; and if we look at that 3-mile gap, it looks like a herd of 
cattle had stampeded through there every day. We cannot tell who came 
into this country illegally, but that was removed.
  The other one struck is any requirement for proof of lawful presence 
in the United States for a driver's license.

                              {time}  1845

  The 9/11 perpetrators came to this country, they obtained driver's 
licenses through a legal fashion in 10 States that make them available, 
and this bill would have said that that will never happen again. The 
only way 9/11 happened and occurred is because these terrorists were 
able to obtain driver's licenses to come and go freely in this country 
and to board planes as they chose. Nothing in this bill will stop that 
from happening.
  The other issue that was struck is license expiration tied to a visa 
expiration. It makes perfect sense that if you have a visa in this 
country, and you get a license while you are here, that your license 
should expire when your visa expires. The same thing happened with the 
9/11 perpetrators. Their visas expired, but their licenses did not, and 
they were thereby allowed to stay in this country.
  They also struck expedited removal of illegal aliens. You can 
implement frivolous lawsuits and stay in this country almost as long as 
you want, even if you are here illegally. This bill originally would 
have eliminated that option. It struck the restriction for a terrorist 
claiming asylum.
  It does not take a brain surgeon to realize if you are a known 
terrorist, trained in an al Qaeda camp and here in this country, we 
cannot deport you.

[[Page 25689]]

You can remain. The language to make sure that did not happen was, 
again, in this bill and was removed from this bill. It struck limiting 
judicial review of orders of deportation. That is common sense and 
should have been in.
  Now, I will try to go through these quickly. It struck complete 
national driver's license standards. You should be here in this country 
legal as a citizen or have a legal right to be here to get a driver's 
license. It also struck an interstate driver's license database. That 
way you could not get multiple driver's licenses throughout multiple 
States like the terrorists did.
  There were very good commonsense laws in this that would have become 
law, and they basically were struck. The one that really does not make 
any sense struck ``terrorists traveling information sharing.'' You have 
a terrorist that travels around, and we cannot even share that 
information by law. That is wrong.
  The things that were removed from this bill warrant a ``no'' vote on 
this bill, and I strongly encourage a ``no'' vote.
  I rise today in strong opposition to the intelligence reform 
conference report. There is no question that everyone in Congress wants 
to protect the country from another terrorist attack. That is why I am 
so appalled that this conference report excludes several House 
provisions strengthening immigration law. We cannot have real 
intelligence reform without addressing flaws in our immigration system.
  I strongly believe that failing to act on important immigration 
reforms is a grave mistake, since these provisions are central to any 
legislation designed to prevent future terrorist attacks. By passing 
this conference report, Congress is looking the other way while 
potential terrorists are allowed to exploit flaws in U.S. immigration 
policy.
  As we work to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, 
how can we ignore the Commission's call for strengthened identification 
standards in this country? The Commission found that it was our 
immigration laws, not those laws aimed at protecting against terrorism, 
that shaped the terrorists' ability to carry out their plot on 9/11. In 
fact, the Commission found that travel documents were as important to 
the terrorists as were their weapons.
  The simple fact is that if the 9/11 terrorists had not been able to 
enter the United States and operate freely--to obtain driver's 
licenses, open bank accounts, rent homes and cars, and board 
airplanes--they would not have been able to commit mass murder on that 
fateful day.
  As long as fraudulent identity documents remain readily available, 
terrorists will be able to use legal loopholes to enter and remain at 
large in the United States.
  It is truly beyond reason that this final conference report would 
remove House-passed provisions to secure driver's licenses. This is in 
direct contradiction to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, 
which urged Congress to set federal standards for state-issued 
licenses. Have we already forgotten that the 19 hijackers on 9/11 had 
63 driver's licenses among them and that most of these were obtained 
through fraudulent means?
  One of the 9/11 hijackers was stopped for a traffic violation a mere 
two days before the terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, the officer was 
unable to detect that the terrorist's visa had expired because his 
driver's license was still valid. The House bill included a requirement 
that driver's license expiration dates coincide with visa expiration 
dates so that law enforcement officers could have the information they 
need to keep us secure. The conference report deleted this important 
House provision.
  In addition, while current law allows for the denial of admission to 
the U.S. on terrorism-related grounds, terrorism cannot be used as a 
basis of deportability from the country. This means that some 
terrorists and their supporters can be kept out of the United States, 
but as soon as they set foot on our shores, we cannot deport them, 
hindering our ability to protect America from terrorists who have 
infiltrated our country. The House bill makes aliens deportable for 
terrorism-related offenses just as they would be denied admission to 
the country in the first place. The conference report excludes this 
critical provision, leaving a gaping hole in our national security.
  The security of our Nation must be our top priority. Great 
intelligence is nothing without a strong national security. The bottom 
line is that this bill fails to prevent those who may be harmful to the 
security of our Nation from operating freely and undetected in the 
United States.
  If the war on terrorism is to be ultimately successful, it is more 
important than ever that we take the necessary steps to strengthen 
security at our borders and provide law enforcement agencies the tools 
they need to identify those individuals who enter or remain in the 
United States illegally.
  This bill is woefully inadequate because it fails to make immigration 
reforms that are absolutely fundamental to ensuring the security of our 
Nation. By passing this conference report without immigration reform, 
we are sending a message to the American people that we still have not 
learned from the tragedy of 9/11 that political correctness must never 
take the place of national security.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Smith).
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I just want to make the point 
that this legislation is a victory for the 9/11 families who lost loved 
ones, heroes, on September 11, 2001. Those family members who were the 
ones who were instrumental in creating the 9/11 Commission in the first 
place and who have been tenacious and persevering in making sure that 
we do the right thing deserve the credit. I want to commend them on 
their great work on this.
  Let me also respond to the previous speaker. By any measure, this 
legislation will improve our Nation's ability to protect against 
terrorism. The 9/11 Commission pointed out so well, and I quote them, 
``Travel documents are as important as weapons.'' In a provision that I 
have long advocated for, and that was put in this legislation by the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), we now have provisions that fortify 
the visa application process and ensure that our consuls abroad have to 
thoroughly interview those who are applying for a nonimmigrant visa and 
meticulously inspect their documents.
  Let me remind my colleagues that those who committed the atrocities 
of 9/11 entered the U.S. legally. They got their visas. They went to 
one of our consuls in Saudi Arabia and, regrettably, the personnel 
there were giving out visas like cotton candy. The terrorists exploited 
a weakness in the system. So they came here legally. They were not 
illegal immigrants. And that point needs to be underscored.
  This legislation with Chairman Hyde's language closes that loophole 
so that terrorist will be stopped before they get their visas. That's a 
critical provision in a bill with many, many new programs and I support 
it.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 2845, the National Intelligence 
Reform Act of 2004. This legislation represents a hard-won victory for 
the family survivors of 9/11 and for all Americans. They have placed 
their hopes in us to make the structural changes necessary to prevent 
another intelligence failure on the scale of September 11th. It is 
fitting and appropriate that we consider this legislation on December 
7th because prior to 9/11, Pearl Harbor represented the largest single 
day loss of human life to an attack on American soil.
  This is, Mr. Speaker, the survivors' bill. If not for the hard work, 
tenacity and dedication of the families of the victims of 9/11--those 
3,000 heroes who lost their lives in that horrific attack--we would not 
be here today.
  Still, there has been much controversy surrounding this bill. Some 
critics charge that this legislation is not really needed; others 
contend that it was developed in a rush and should have been considered 
more thoroughly in committee and subcommittee hearings before being 
brought to the floor. Neither of these criticisms are valid.
  In fact, this legislation is the product of a comprehensive process 
that began over 2 years ago with the appointment of the 9/11 
Commission. I was an early and consistent advocate for the 9/11 
Commission because I believed the families deserved answers and the 
Nation needed a chronicled ``lessons learned'' and a way to move 
forward to make us safer.
  In pursuing its wide-ranging mandate to investigate the facts and 
circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, 
the Commission reviewed more than 2.5 million pages of documents and 
interviewed more than 1,200 individuals in ten countries, including 
nearly every senior U.S. government official from the current and 
previous administrations who had responsibility for topics covered 
under the Commission's mandate. The Commission's recommendations were 
nonpartisan, unanimous, and published to wide acclaim this past summer. 
No less than 13 House committees held more than two dozen hearings on

[[Page 25690]]

the Commission's report and subsequent legislation. In the Committee on 
International Relations, I chaired a critical hearing on visa reform 
and recommendations for enhanced U.S. diplomacy. In the Committee on 
Veterans' Affairs, on which I serve as chair, we held a hearing on 
Emergency Medical Preparedness.
  Today's historic bill addresses and responds to the Commission's 
major recommendations, and will bring much needed reforms to our 
intelligence funding, gathering, sharing, and analytical processes. 
Anyone who questions whether or not these reforms are needed should 
read the Commission's report. It is filled with information--available 
to us at the time--that terrorists were actively plotting against us. 
But instead of our country being on a war footing, the investigations 
were treated as mere law enforcement cases, and information was not 
shared between the FBI and CIA. When Predator unmanned drones captured 
video feed of Osama bin Laden himself in the mountains of Afghanistan, 
the Pentagon and the CIA bickered for months about who should pay for 
upgrading the drones to carry Hellfire missiles. The opportunity to 
take out bin Laden before September 11th was thus squandered by 
bureaucratic infighting.
  Mr. Speaker, on December 7th, 1941 Americans said `never again' will 
we be caught so unprepared for a sneak attack. But it did happen again. 
It happened on September 11th, 2001, and nearly 3,000 men, women, and 
children lost their lives because of it. This legislation will finally 
create a national intelligence director who will have direct authority 
over our intelligence agencies and who will have the power to redirect 
assets and resources as necessary. The position of national 
intelligence director should have been created after Pearl Harbor, but 
J. Edgar Hoover, the powerful FBI director at the time, blocked its 
creation. Later, the Defense Department blocked similar intelligence 
reforms over the next several decades. Indeed, the same fate nearly 
befell this very bill before us today, and it was only the timely and 
persuasive intervention of President Bush which salvaged this historic 
package of reforms from being yet another casualty of perennial agency 
turf battles.
  Further, this bill creates a National Counterterrorism Center with 
the authority to plan intelligence missions and counter-
terrorism operations. The White House has worked with the conferees to 
ensure that neither the Director nor the Counterterrorism Center will 
interfere with the flow of military intelligence to the battlefield and 
the military's need to preserve its chain of command.
  By any measure, the conference report will improve our Nation's 
ability to protect against terrorism. Mr. Speaker, the 9/11 
Commission's report states that for terrorists, ``travel documents are 
as important as weapons.'' In a provision which I have long pushed for, 
this bill will require all aliens applying for a non-immigrant visa to 
completely and accurately respond to any request for information 
contained in the application, in order to prevent the disastrous series 
of events in which the 9/11 terrorists failed to provide the most basic 
of information on their visa applications, yet were still issued visas. 
It is important to remember that the hijackers were not illegal 
immigrants. They had valid visas because they exploited the weaknesses 
of our visa system. With this new legislation, we close those gaps. 
Consular officials must interview, in person, all appplicants for non-
immigration visas unless a special waiver is granted.
  This bill includes provisions targeted at preventing terrorism 
overseas before it reaches our shores. I have been working in this area 
ever since our embassies were first bombed in Africa in 1998 when I 
authored the Embassy Security Act. Under the conference report, it 
directs the State Department to seek international agreements to track 
and curtail terrorist travel through the use of fraudulent documents 
and to establish international standards for travel documents, 
transliteration of names into the Roman alphabet, and common name-based 
watch list systems. Programs to screen threatening individuals before 
they reach the U.S. will put U.S. immigration experts at foreign 
airports.
  In order to address the root causes of anti-American incitement 
overseas which breeds terrorists and sympathizers, the conference 
report will provide scholarships for Muslim students, more funds for 
broadcasting and democracy building programs to the Islamic world, and 
targets aid for strategic countries such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan 
and Pakistan, which were described by the September 11th Commission as 
absolutely vital to the success in the war on terrorism.
  Today's legislation also includes several important, overdue measures 
to bolster our national security here at home. New programs and pilot 
projects to upgrade airport and aviation security include explosives 
detection screening for carry-on baggage, training for foreign air 
marshals, additional screening of airport workers, and blast-resistant 
cargo and baggage containers. We will enhance our border security by 
adding 2,000 full-time border patrol agents, 800 Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement investigators, 150 consular officers per year for 
the next 3 years, and advance the use of new technologies such as 
remotely piloted aircraft to ensure the systematic surveillance of our 
northern and southern borders. Moreover, this bill will grant the FBI 
the authority to conduct surveillance and wiretaps on suspected 
terrorists, even if they have no known ties to any foreign country or 
entity. In other words, if the FBI is aware of a person trying to 
produce anthrax, but he appears to be working alone, they can still 
monitor his activities. For the first time, a Privacy and Civil 
Liberties Oversight Board will be created to ensure that privacy and 
civil liberties concerns are appropriately considered in the 
implementation of laws, regulations and government policies to protect 
our Nation against terrorism.
  This conference report also tightens our Nation's immigration laws to 
close loopholes. For instance, officials will be able to deport any 
alien who has received military training from a designated terrorist 
organization, was well as rendering inadmissible aliens who have 
committed acts of torture, particularly severe violations of religious 
freedom, extrajudicial killing or genocide.
  It is important to note that a crucial reform that the September 11th 
Commission recommended, but which is notably absent from this 
conference report, is to change the first responder grant formula and 
make the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants awarded and 
assessed based on risk and intelligence data.
  The House-passed bill which I cosponsored and voted for (H.R. 10), 
contained an excellent package of reforms to the illogical grant system 
that allocates nearly 40 percent of all of the DHS first responder 
grants strictly on a state minimum basis, rather than risk assessment, 
and divides most of the rest of the funds on a rote population basis 
without any risk-analysis. The H.R. 10 reforms would have benefited 
high-risk, high-population density urban states like New Jersey 
enormously, while at the same time scaling back grants to states like 
Wyoming that have fewer terror risks. It would have truly implemented 
the Commission's recommendation to ensure first responder funding was 
analyzed and prioritized strictly on risk. The state minimums were 
reduced substantially.
  The Senate passed bill and the Menendez substitute were either much 
weaker or put too much money into the state minimums, but still 
represented improvements over current law.
  Incredibly, the final conference report dropped both sets of 
improvements and essentially retains current law. Mr. Speaker, the 
failure to reform the deeply flawed current first responder grant 
program is a major missed opportunity for Congress. I pledge to work 
with similarly-minded colleagues on both sides of the aisle to fix this 
formula in the upcoming 109th Session of Congress.
  While the bill creates general national standards for driver's 
licenses, birth certificates, and social security cards in order to 
prevent the identity fraud that terrorists can exploit, as well as 
improves the physical security of the documents, I remain disappointed 
that the bill does not prohibit the issuance of driver's licenses to 
illegal aliens. The idea of giving driver's licenses to illegal aliens 
is not only unsound, it is just not safe for the country. I will 
continue to push for limitations on the validity of licenses for those 
individuals temporarily in the United States.
  I am pleased that provisions I opposed in the House bill, H.R. 10--to 
expand expedited removal and basically eliminate appeals for asylum--
are not included in the conference report. These provisions would have 
dramatically altered our asylum procedures and would have had an 
extraordinarily harmful effect on true asylum seekers, human 
trafficking victims, women and children who are victims of domestic 
violence, and others seeking protection against persecution. We must 
continue to maintain the delicate balance between ensuring our safety 
and preserving our country as a safe haven for the persecuted and 
oppressed.
  As you know, Mr. Speaker, I have worked hard over the last several 
years with the widows, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children 
and other relatives of the victims of September 11th to help establish 
a meaningful investigation and produce comprehensive reform. Today we 
mark the furthest milestone in this long, difficult journey. And while 
no amount of legislative reform can completely heal their hearts, they 
can take some comfort in knowing that their government has responded 
and Americans will be safer because of their hard work and great 
efforts.

[[Page 25691]]


  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, it is now my pleasure to yield 1\1/2\ 
minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo), my classmate, a 
member of our committee and the ranking member on our Subcommittee on 
Intelligence Policy and National Security.
  Ms. ESHOO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished ranking member and 
the chairman of our committee for the work that they have done 
together. I think the American people are proud.
  This has been a very tough journey to arrive here tonight with a 
conference report to reform the intelligence community of our country. 
And yet we know, and all Americans know, that the status quo is not 
good enough. The status quo has been in place throughout the Cold War 
and post-Cold War. Yet ever since our country was attacked, there is 
not anyone that could say that all systems were running the way they 
should.
  And so with gratitude to the families of the victims, who, as our 
leader said a few moments ago, have inspired us and inspired the 
country, with the President supporting the bill, with the leadership of 
both parties supporting the bill, with the support and the 
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, who did such superb work for 
the people of our country, there is no reason why the House of 
Representatives should not vote in its entirety in support of this bill 
that reforms our intelligence community.
  I think it falls short on oversight, and that should be taken up in 
the new Congress because it is an important, critical role of the 
Congress. But I am very proud to stand with my colleagues and the 
Democrats who introduced an inspirational bill 8 months and 6 days ago 
that mirrored the recommendations of the commission. I urge all my 
colleagues to support this bill.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume 
to make two quick points.
  One is, indeed, most of the people who were here, most of the 
hijackers were here illegally, not legally, because they fraudulently 
produced documents to get their visas. The visas were frauds to begin 
with, making them illegal aliens in this country.
  Secondly, many of them had overstayed their visas or were doing 
something here that was not allowed under the visa, making them illegal 
aliens in this country. So, indeed, they were illegal.
  Thirdly, there are far more members of 9/11 families who oppose this 
bill because the provisions we are talking about here are missing; 
those provisions to secure our borders are missing. Far more oppose 
this bill in its present form than support it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Royce).
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I do not know why we set up a 9/11 Commission 
if we were not going to take their provisions in their entirety.
  When the 9/11 Commission tells us that border security is national 
security; when the commission finds that our border system has two 
systemic weaknesses, a lack of a well-developed counterterrorism 
measure as a part of border security and, to quote them, ``an 
immigration system not able to deliver on its basic commitments when 
they look at the case of Mohammed Atta and others and then find and 
tell us that targeting their travel is at least as powerful a weapon 
against terrorists as targeting their money, and then lays out a plan 
for our U.S. border security to be reformed, and we pick up those 
reforms, put them in the House bill that we pass over to the Senate and 
now find that those very reforms are stripped out, I do not know how we 
back away from that argument. Border security is national security; how 
we acquiesce to those that say no, you cannot touch border security.
  You know, I do not know with certainty that moving around the 
organizational boxes of the intelligence community will make things 
better. It may. But one thing we can be sure of is that the driver's 
license provisions that have been stripped at the insistence of the 
other body would have made a difference. Driver's licenses were the 9/
11 terrorists' license to kill and to kill massively. We know that.
  They had 63 of these driver's licenses between them, for the 19 of 
them. And these identification documents gave these hijackers 
unfettered access to nearly everything they needed to plan and carry 
out their attacks on Washington, D.C. and on New York City. And the 
identification cards also allowed them to remain in the country with 
the appearance of legitimacy long after their visas had expired and 
their presence in the United States became illegal.
  Sixty-eight percent of this body voted for these reforms and 87 
percent of the American people support them. They should be in the 
bill.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Shaw).
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, in listening to this debate, which I have 
followed very closely, and listening to the previous speaker from 
California, I agree with most everything that has been said. However, 
you cannot judge a bill by what is not in it. You judge it by what is 
in it. You cannot win a ball game by designing each play for a 
touchdown. You move the ball down the field. This is just one piece of 
legislation, a very important piece, which is going to come together 
next year, and we are going to complete the work with illegal 
immigration.
  Do not say this bill is not tough on illegal immigration. We are 
putting 2,000 more agents each year on the border under this bill. This 
bill does a lot for us, and all of the other things we have been 
talking about. It is time to move this forward, come back in the next 
Congress and pass the rest of it, which has already passed this House 
by 68 percent, as the gentleman from California said.
  Vote ``yes'' on this most important bill.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to 
applaud the comments of the last Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ruppersberger), another of our committee 
members and an increasingly valuable member of our committee.
  Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Mr. Speaker, first, I want to start out with 
strong praise for the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee 
on Intelligence, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra). He has 
bridged differences among many Members who had reservations about this 
bill, so I thank him for his leadership.
  I also want to thank our leader, the committee's ranking Democrat, 
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman), for her vision and 
tenacity in pursuing intelligence reform. She was the driving force 
behind the introduction of a reform bill back in April, months before 
the 9/11 report was released.
  Now, this is an historic measure. We are doing more than rearranging 
boxes on an organizational chart. We are ensuring that the intelligence 
community has one boss to ensure better communication and 
accountability. I spent close to 18 years in local government, where I 
managed a large county, close to 19,000 employees; and I know that 
workers need to answer to one person who sets policy and manages the 
budget.
  This is critically important to help prevent another terrorist attack 
and to protect our families and communities.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Connecticut (Mr. Shays).
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, we are being told that time is running out to 
pass intelligence reform legislation. The truth is, time ran out on 
September 11. We are on borrowed time.
  Prior to September 11, three commissions, the Bremer Commission, the 
Hart-Rudman Commission, and the Gilmore Commission, all came to 
Congress and said the same thing, that the terrorist threat is real; 
that we need an assessment of this threat, a strategy to address it, 
and a reorganized government to implement that strategy. Sadly, few 
listened then; and, tragically, no one acted.

[[Page 25692]]

  September 11 was the wake-up call from hell that told us that the 
terrorist threat is real; that Cold War doctrines of containment, 
reaction, and mutually assured destruction are totally invalid. And our 
policy now must be to detect and prevent and, on occasion, preempt 
those who wish to do us harm. That requires better intelligence.
  Congress and the administration made significant changes over the 
last 3 years to improve our security, but today we are taking the most 
critical step by reorganizing our intelligence community, creating a 
Director of National Intelligence with budget and personnel authority. 
Thank you to all who have made this possible. We are changing and 
improving transportation. And, yes, while we could do more, we are 
moving forward with immigration reform.
  I believe, I am confident that we can enact stronger immigration 
reforms in the next Congress, and I look forward to working with my 
colleagues to see that this is done. But do not defeat this bill 
because you want greater changes in immigration and lose the changes 
that have to happen on intelligence reform. We will get the job done. 
This is the beginning, the most important step; but we are not 
finished.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Harman) has 6\1/2\ minutes remaining, the gentleman 
from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) has 1 minute remaining, and the gentleman 
from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) has 30 seconds remaining.
  The order of closing is: the gentleman from Colorado, the gentlewoman 
from California, and the gentleman from Michigan.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North 
Carolina (Mr. Watt), a member of the House Committee on the Judiciary 
and an extremely conscientious Member of this House.
  Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, the 9/11 Commission recommended the creation 
of an independent bipartisan board to oversee compliance with civil 
rights and civil liberties, in recognition of the fact that in this 
difficult area of securing America we were going into some very 
uncharted areas.

                              {time}  1900

  We crafted a provision in the Committee on the Judiciary which has 
been substantially watered down in this version of the bill. I simply 
want to submit for the Record a statement that describes that process. 
I intend to vote for the bill, but have some concerns about whether 
this bipartisan board of compliance is independent enough or bipartisan 
enough or is really going to have any authority to do anything to 
safeguard civil liberties and civil rights after we pass this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I include a more detailed description of my concerns for 
the Record.
  Mr. Speaker, because I take the protection of our constitutional 
rights and liberties very seriously, I offered an amendment during the 
Judiciary Committee markup of this bill to establish an independent, 
bipartisan board to oversee compliance with civil rights and liberties 
and the Judiciary Committee bill included a version of the oversight 
board. Since that time, there has been a false comparison between the 
board I recommended and that in the Senate bill to an advisory board 
created by the President by executive order. The President's board is 
not and should not be the guidepost for what satisfies the mandate of 
the 9/11 Commission. The President's board consists of Administration 
insiders with advisory functions.
  Now I know that the Chairman and the Vice Chairman of the 9/11 
Commission have endorsed this conference report and characterize the 
Privacy and Civil Liberties board as independent. I respectfully 
disagree. The board created by this bill may turn out to be worse than 
no board at all. It's members are handpicked by the President and serve 
at his pleasure. That does not create independence. There is no rights 
of the board to obtain by subpoena information needed to perform its 
functions. There is no public reporting requirement. And, there is a 
gaping hole that permits the government to assert a national security 
or law enforcement exception to the Board's access to government 
information that may very well reveal whether the rights of our 
citizens are being violated.
  We all agree that our nation must adjust to confront the terrorist 
threat, but in doing so we cannot undermine the principles for which 
Americans stand. One need not look far to imagine the types of abuses 
that a strong, independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board could 
expose and prevent. Should innocent Americans be held merely on 
suspicion, without the opportunity to consult with counsel, without the 
ability to speak with their family? Should Americans be willing to miss 
graduations, baptisms, weddings, and funerals, because their names are 
erroneously on a no-fly list? If Senator Kennedy, Congressman John 
Lewis and Congressman Young find themselves detained as suspected 
terrorists, who will be next?
  In short, just as we need to make adjustments as we fight terrorism, 
we also need a board with teeth, one that can make sure that fighting 
terrorism is done in a manner that does not change the fundamental 
nature of our society. The 9/11 Commission Report stated:
  We must find ways of reconciling security with liberty, since the 
success of one helps protect the other. The choice between security and 
liberty is a false choice, as nothing is more likely to endanger 
America's liberties than the success of a terrist attack at home. Our 
history has shown us that insecurity threatens liberty. Yet, if our 
liberties are curtailed, we lose the values that we are struggling to 
defend.
  I believe that we have missed the opportunity to say to the world and 
to the terrorists who would harm us that we are prepared to do whatever 
is necessary to detect and prevent further attacks but at the same time 
with equal vigor, we will protect the time-honored values and freedoms 
that makes our nation great.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, the following is from the final report: ``Secure 
identification should begin in the United States. Fraud in 
identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft. At many 
entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding 
aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure 
that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are 
terrorists.'' That is from the report. That is the thing we are 
ignoring completely in this bill designed to respond to the 9/11 
Commission report.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to vote against this bill so it can 
come back here in a form that could make us all proud, and so we would 
be able to go back to our constituents and say we have indeed done 
something to secure this country. This bill does not do that.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, obviously we do not all agree on the best direction in 
which to go. It is clear from this debate that Members on our side and 
Members on the other side of the aisle have some strong feelings 
against the carefully crafted compromise. But carefully crafted it was. 
I can assure Members that 10 weeks and thousands of hours by Members 
and staff went into the language of this conference report.
  There were fights about almost every issue. We worked it out as best 
we could. We worked it out on a bipartisan basis, and as I said at the 
beginning of this debate, I cannot thank enough Senators Collins and 
Lieberman and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) for their 
collaboration, talent, dedication and true grit. This would not have 
happened without them.
  Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of conversation about the House 
bill and what was left out of the conference report. I would point out 
to colleagues that the vote in the House was an extremely close vote. 
To remind, there was an amendment in the nature of a substitute offered 
by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez). The vote on that 
amendment in the nature of a substitute was 203-213; 194 Democrats, 8 
Republicans, and 1 Independent supported the Menendez substitute, which 
was essentially the Senate version of the bill. That means that 96 
Members of the other body, all but 2 who voted, and 203 Members of this 
body, 300 Members, supported essentially the Senate version of the 
bill. We

[[Page 25693]]

could look at that as an overwhelming vote for the Senate language. I 
certainly look at it that way, and the 9/11 Commission said and the 
White House said in many respects that the Senate language was much 
closer to what they intended.
  My point in bringing this up is in reaching the compromise that we 
are voting on now, we need to understand how much was given up on both 
sides. Clearly the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) and those who 
support his position think a lot was given up on his side. Some of the 
language that passed in H.R. 10, very controversial language, was given 
up, to be sure. But a lot of the language in the Senate version of the 
bill was also given up: such as the declassified top line; such as a 
number of the powers that have been talked about for the Privacy and 
Civil Liberties Board; such as full control over reprogramming of 
personnel and budget. A lot of those issues were given up in the effort 
to reach a carefully balanced, bipartisan, bicameral compromise.
  That is what we are voting on today. I would just tell all Members 
that I believe it is not only the best we could do, but it is very 
good. Just to remind, we do address immigration, we do increase border 
protection, we do include Federal standards for State-issued drivers' 
licenses, and we do do something which has not been mentioned, which is 
direct TSA to develop within 6 months new standards for ID documents 
for boarding airplanes. TSA is directed in this bill to handle what we 
all agree is a problem. We do not want terrorists to use fraudulent 
documents or documents based on expired visas to board airplanes, and 
we correct that problem in this bill.
  We also address the chain of command, as the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Hunter) has pointed out. We did not address the border 
fence issue, but I am hopeful that without waiving environmental 
protections, those of us who care about it in California will figure 
out a right and fair solution.
  Finally, let me point out, as many Members have, that this bill is 
supported by the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of 
Defense, the 9/11 Commission, most of the 9/11 families, most of the 
conferees, and overwhelming majorities on a bipartisan basis in each 
House. I urge its adoption. It is the right thing to do. It honors the 
9/11 families, and it makes a point about the 63rd anniversary of the 
Pearl Harbor attacks. We know how to fix these problems. We will do it 
tonight. I urge adoption of the conference report.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I wish I was as eloquent as former 
Member John Kasich when he got up to close a bill, but I want to say a 
lot of people have worked on this bill. I understand some of my 
colleagues are going to vote against this bill because it is very close 
whether many of us would vote against the bill.
  Many of my own constituents want the immigration provisions in there. 
I will look them in the eye and I will say would you give up 8,000 
Border Patrols on our borders to defend us if this bill goes down? 
Would you give up the transportation provisions? One of the biggest 
risks we have is our port security. If a terrorist takes a suitcase 
bomb and puts it in a cargo container on the east or west coast, that 
is a real problem. That would go down.
  Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleagues that if the President has 
promised us we will bring this up, if our leadership and the 9/11 
families will be with us to complete the recommendations that were not 
brought forth in this bill, I ask my colleagues to vote for this bill, 
because if they do not, they will put this country at risk.
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, while I rise in support of this conference 
report, I would like to go on record with a concern that the New York 
City Mayor's office has brought to my attention. Mr. Speaker it is my 
hope that we can work to make sure that New York City's concerns are 
addressed as we implement this legislation.
  New York City had attempted to address concerns regarding vital 
statistics earlier this year in this bill but it appears that in 
conference some matters of importance to New York City have been 
dropped.
  First of all, New York City maintains vital statistical data on its 
own much like Washington, DC and therefore there is a need to treat New 
York City and Washington, DC as States relative to minimum standards 
for birth certificates. While the bill calls for there being grants to 
States, for assistance in meeting federal standard allocation of 
grants, this program is estimated to cost in excess of $400 million 
nationwide, of which New York City needs--which would be dependent on 
many factors, including the costs of modifying legacy computer systems, 
converting birth and death records that may be decades old, and the 
number of records--will be more than $7 million. This funding need is 
not reflected in the bill which calls for these grants to be based on a 
proportion of the birth and death records created by the State. These 
number of records are only a small factor in the formula that needs to 
be developed and should not be the sole factor in funding allotments. 
The formula for such should be developed after consultation with State 
vital statistic offices.
  Furthermore, the section Driver's Licenses and Personal 
Identification Cards--Standards for Acceptance by Federal Agencies--
Minimum Standards will likely require the Electronic Verification of 
Vital Events (EVVE). However, the bill does not provide for 
consultation with State vital statistics offices, or for funding the 
vital statistics systems needed for EVVE.
  Similarly, the section on Social Security Cards and Numbers: Security 
Enhancements requires independent verification of any birth record 
submitted by an individual to SSA for purposes other than enumeration 
at birth. However, it does not provide for systems or funding to vital 
statistics offices. And while this section requires the Commissioner of 
Social Security to undertake improvements to the Enumeration At Birth 
(EAB) program. The Commissioner of Social Security should do this in 
consultation with State vital statistics offices as should the 
Commissioner of Social Security's study to determine the most efficient 
options for ensuring the integrity of the process for enumeration at 
birth.
  Mr. DAVIS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the 
Conference Report for the 9/11 Commission Recommendations 
Implementation Act. This important legislation implements most of the 
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. In addition to reorganizing our 
intelligence agencies, it also institutes reforms in a broad range of 
other national security areas, including border security, aviation 
security, maritime security, emergency responders, public diplomacy, 
and law enforcement.
  While I am pleased that a compromise has been reached, this body 
should have acted long ago. It has been four months since the 9/11 
Commission issued its recommendations. If we are to minimize the 
possibility of another 9/11, we must do a better job of working 
together in a bi-partisan manner. This body represents all Americans--
Republicans and Democrats alike.
  Nevertheless, this long-delayed conference report includes numerous 
provisions to make America safer and more secure. As recommended by the 
9/11 Commission, the conference report creates a strong Director of 
National Intelligence (DNI), who will head the Intelligence community 
and its 15 agencies. The Director will serve as the principal 
intelligence adviser to the President; and direct the implementation of 
the National Intelligence Program. Furthermore, the conference report 
establishes a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) within the Office 
of DNI to coordinate and unify all elements of counterterrorism 
operations planning.
  Lastly, I am happy to see the inclusion of numerous provisions that 
are designed to improve the Nation's aviation, maritime and border 
security and enhance terrorism prevention. The bill will also establish 
an independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board that will be granted 
access to all government agencies to review policies and practices and 
will be led by a Chair and Vice Chair confirmed by the Senate.
  Mr. Speaker, no bill is perfect and perhaps in the future some 
modifications will be necessary. We may also need to address things 
this bill does not include in the future. However, this is the best 
compromise we have at the moment, and time is of the essence.
  I support this legislation.
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support for the 
conference report on H.R. 4548, the Intelligence Authorization Act for 
FY 2005.
  I commend President Bush and the House leadership for their efforts 
to move critical intelligence reform legislation through Congress.

[[Page 25694]]

H.R. 4548 includes a comprehensive and wide-ranging package of much-
needed policy and pragmatic changes that dramatically enhance our 
ability to target terrorist threats.
  There are many reasons to support this legislation. One particularly 
important reason relates to the language capabilities. It became 
glaringly evident in the aftermath of 9/11 that we had inadequate 
language skills and translators in the Intelligence Community. It 
turned out that we, as a nation, were desperately short of linguists in 
hard languages such as Arabic, Iranian-Farsi, Afghan-Pashtu, Korean, 
and Chinese. These are languages that take years to master, but they 
are absolutely essential if we expect our Intelligence Community to 
gather critical information.
  Mr. Speaker, we will never find the enemy unless we have personnel 
who speak the languages and understand the culture in lands where 
terrorists hide. Without serious reforms that increase the number of 
intelligence officers who speak the enemy's language, there is no way 
the 9/11 Commission recommendations can be implemented.
  The conference report on H.R. 4548 focuses on methods of increasing 
the talent pool, and instilling a sense of the absolute importance of 
language in gathering foreign intelligence. We provide a comprehensive, 
broad-ranging language and education package that seeks to increase the 
number of language-capable field officers. We provide a plan to 
increase the number of analysts who are fluent in critical languages. 
And, we dramatically increase the number of translators to tackle the 
mountain of untranslated documents.
  Working very closely with the Intelligence Community, the FY05 
Intelligence Authorization Act provides the authority to engage in a 
wide range of educational partnerships and voluntary assistance 
programs to advance language skills in the general population. We 
establish an Intelligence Community outreach program that will help 
identify promising linguists.
  The legislation revitalizes and broadly expands existing language 
education programs. We establish a Civilian Linguist Reserve Corps, 
where individuals fluent in critical languages can be available in the 
event of a crisis. This legislation provides opportunities for first 
generation Americans with language skills to contribute to the global 
war on terrorism.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a much-needed series of reforms that were 
unanimously embraced by the Committee. I congratulate the distinguished 
Chairman of the Committee [Mr. Hoekstra], and the Ranking Democrat [Ms. 
Harman], for maintaining language reform as a Committee priority.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the conference report on H.R. 4548.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the Speaker, Majority 
Leader, Chairman Hunter and Chairman Sensenbrenner for their hard work 
on this important piece of legislation. Unfortunately, I must oppose 
this bill. It contains provisions to reform our intelligence 
procedures, and it includes a provision to help private security 
companies--like Guardsmark, which is headquartered in my district--
access criminal history background about prospective employees who 
guard the nation's critical infrastructure. However, this legislation 
does not contain essential provisions included in the House-passed bill 
to improve our asylum process or driver license procedures. The 9/11 
Commission report found that a number of terrorists abused the asylum 
system, and that once they found a way into the United States they 
often remained in the country by committing immigration fraud. The 
House bill also had a provision that would keep aliens who have 
received military-type training from terrorist organizations from being 
admitted to the United States--unfortunately, this provision was 
stricken from the conference report. This conference report removed the 
provision from the House bill that requires temporary driver's licenses 
to expire when an individual's visa expires. Finally, the conference 
report does not include important provisions that would prevent certain 
states from issuing driver's licenses to individuals who cannot 
demonstrate that they are lawfully present in the United States.
  Mr. LANGEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that we will implement 
intelligence reform before the close of the 108th Congress and rise in 
support of this bill.
  After 9/11, we approached fighting the global war on terrorism as we 
had the Cold War. But it became clear that we needed to adapt our 
intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and military to new 
global threats. The 9/11 Commission gave us a blueprint for that 
mission, and this legislation will help us implement their vision. One 
of the major recommendations reflected in this bill is the creation of 
a strong national intelligence director, who will coordinate the 
activities of our various intelligence agencies. Cooperation among 
agencies and departments will be critical, and this measure shifts the 
mentality of our intelligence community from ``need to know'' to ``need 
to share.''
  The conference report also makes significant improvements in the 
realm of homeland security, including enhanced border patrol efforts, 
implementation of a comprehensive transportation security plan, 
improved passenger and baggage screening programs, and initiatives to 
protect commercial aircraft from unconventional threats such as 
shoulder-fired missiles.
  It also recognizes the need for the U.S. to increase its interaction 
with and understanding of the Muslim world. As the 9/11 Commission so 
eloquently put it: ``We need to defend our ideals abroad vigorously. If 
the U.S. does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic 
world, the extremists will gladly do the job for us.'' By establishing 
new cultural exchange programs and enhancing diplomatic efforts, we can 
work cooperatively with Muslim nations to address mutual problems and 
demonstrate a free and democratic alternative to extremist ideology.
  One noteworthy section of the conference report addresses the need 
for interoperable communications systems among first responders. As a 
member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, I have worked 
closely with law enforcement officers in Rhode Island and throughout 
the nation, and they have all emphasized the importance of being able 
to communicate with each other in the event of an emergency. The 
measure also provides new authority for law enforcement agents to 
combat terrorism, while avoiding some of the controversial provisions 
included in earlier drafts, particularly with regard to immigration. We 
need to have a national discussion on immigration reform, and Congress 
should address such issues in that context instead of slipping divisive 
language into an unrelated measure.
  Finally, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I am 
pleased that this bill strikes a careful balance between creating a 
strong national intelligence director and preserving the ability of our 
men and women in uniform to gain access to the intelligence needed to 
be successful on the battlefield.
  I thank all my colleagues for working in a bipartisan fashion to 
craft a landmark measure that will make America safer, and urge support 
of this legislation.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my support for S. 
2845, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. 
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress and the 
Bush administration have taken strong, decisive action to respond to 
the attacks and to make our country safer from future attacks. This 
legislation is only the latest step taken by Congress and the Bush 
administration to improve our security. I applaud the efforts of my 
colleagues on the conference committee and in the House leadership to 
bring this compromise legislation to the floor.
  As chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and 
Human Resources, I would like to highlight two provisions of the bill 
that address the dangers drug trafficking poses to homeland security. 
The first strengthens and clarifies the role of the Counternarcotics 
Officer at the Department of Homeland Security; the second requires 
that drug enforcement activities be one of the benchmarks for relevant 
employee performance appraisals at DHS. I thank Speaker Dennis Hastert 
and Chairman Tom Davis of the Government Reform Committee for their 
help in securing this language in the bill, which will improve the 
Department's anti-drug efforts.
  As President Bush noted in December 2001, just a few months after the 
9/11 attacks, ``[T]he traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, 
sustaining terrorists . . . terrorists use drug profits to fund their 
cells to commit acts of murder.'' The huge profits created by drug 
trafficking have financed and will continue to finance terrorism 
throughout the world. Recognizing the central importance of stopping 
terrorist financing, the 9/11 Commission reported, ``Vigorous efforts 
to track terrorist financing must remain front and center in U.S. 
counterterrorism efforts. The government has recognized that 
information about terrorist money helps us to understand their 
networks, search them out, and disrupt their operations.''--9/11 
Commission Report, 382.
  The connections between drugs and terrorism are well-documented. In 
testimony before the Subcommittee on February 26, 2004, the State 
Department provided declassified information showing that in 
Afghanistan, for example, two terrorist insurgent groups--the Taliban 
and the Hib-I Islami/Gulbuddin (HIG)--``almost definitely'' are 
financed by drug money, and ``most likely'' are provided with 
logistical support by drug traffickers. Two other groups--Al-Qaeda and 
the Islamic Movement

[[Page 25695]]

of Uzbekistan (IMU)--``probably'' receive at least logistical support 
from drug traffickers, and some reports suggest that they receive funds 
from drug trafficking as well.
  This narco-terrorist connection has existed for a long time in many 
other parts of the world, such as Colombia and Southeast Asia. In fact, 
47 percent of the 36 Foreign Terrorist Organizations designated by the 
Department of State in October 2003 (including three terrorist groups 
that control almost all the international cocaine market) are on record 
with DEA as having ties to the drug trade.
  Strong Department of Homeland Security action against drug 
trafficking is therefore vital to our overall efforts to stop the 
financing of terrorist activities. It was for this reason that Congress 
specifically provided in 2002 that the primary mission of the 
Department included the responsibility to ``monitor connections between 
illegal drug trafficking and terrorism, coordinate efforts to sever 
such connections, and otherwise contribute to efforts to interdict 
illegal drug trafficking''--6 U.S.C. III(b)(1)(G).
  The provisions I proposed will promote two key objectives to deprive 
terrorists of their means of financing their operations: first, 
strengthening the effectiveness of the Department's narcotics 
interdiction efforts; and second, improving coordination and 
cooperation among the Department's subdivisions and between the 
Department and other agencies with counterterrorism missions. As the 9/
11 Commission reported, ``We recommend significant changes in the 
organization of the government. . . . Good people can overcome bad 
structures. They should not have to.''--See
9/11 Commission Report, 399.
  The first provision, Section 7407, replaces the current position of 
``Counternarcotics Officer'' (contained in the original 2002 Act) with 
an Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement, headed by a Director. The 
first Counternarcotics Officer faced great difficulties in carrying out 
the mission Congress asked of him. Unfortunately, the current law gives 
him no authority to hire staff to assist him, and fails to clearly 
define how the Counternarcotics Officer is to carry out his 
responsibilities.
  The bill before us would rectify this problem by:
  Replacing the Counternarcotics Officer with a Director of 
Counternarcotics Enforcement, subject to Senate confirmation and 
reporting directly to the Secretary.
  Assigning specific responsibilities to the new Director, including 
oversight of DHS counterdrug activities and the submission of reports 
to Congress; and
  Authorizing permanent staff assigned to an Office of Counternarcotics 
Enforcement to assist the Director.
  The second provision, Section 7408, ensures that DHS employees 
involved in counternarcotics activities will be evaluated in part on 
the basis of such activities. It is vital that the Department of 
Homeland Security continue to encourage its law enforcement personnel 
to maintain their efforts to stop illegal drug trafficking.
  I do believe that progress is being made. Recently, the Coast Guard, 
the legacy Customs Service, and other Federal agencies, including the 
Department of Defense and DEA, joined together to make a record seizure 
of an estimated total of 27 tons of cocaine found on fishing vessels 
near the Galapagos Islands. These record breaking seizures are an 
excellent example of what can be accomplished if the Department of 
Homeland Security continues to improve intelligence sharing and inter-
agency cooperation.
  Mr. Speaker, we can win the war on terror. And we can take effective 
action against the narco-terrorists who plague our communities and 
destabilize democracies throughout the world by passing this bill.
  Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in opposition to the 
conference report for S. 2845, the ``Intelligence Reform and Terrorism 
Prevention Act of 2004.'' The necessary immigration reform provisions 
in the House-passed intelligence reform bill, H.R. 10, are not included 
in this conference report, leaving critical recommendations of the 9/11 
Commission undone.
  H.R. 10 includes key provisions necessary to securing our Nation, and 
I voted in favor of the bill, along with 282 members of the House. 
Unfortunately, the conference report we will be considering today is 
different from the House passed bill and leaves a hole in the security 
which our citizens demand in a post-9/11 environment. The 9/11 
Commission report exposed how the 19 terrorists who attacked America on 
that terrible day obtained over 60 driver's licenses between them to 
breach our homeland security. Improving document security is a key 
recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, but the conference report 
deletes a key provision that would ban illegal aliens from obtaining a 
driver's license.
  Proponents of this conference report will try to argue that the 
immigration proposals are a peripheral issue that should not be 
addressed in S. 2845. To the contrary, the immigration proposals 
included in the House passed legislation are essential to securing our 
borders from terrorists. This conference report closes the front door 
to terrorists, but leaves a key under the back door mat. Once 
terrorists enter this country, they will continue to have opportunities 
to easily obtain false documentation and travel comfortably within our 
borders. These opportunities will be available because this Congress 
failed to address them when we had the chance.
  If we do not include the necessary immigration provisions in this 
conference report, I can promise you they will not be addressed at all. 
The critics who oppose including immigration reform in this legislation 
have zero interest in advancing true immigration reform. How many times 
do we have to be attacked by terrorists with false documents before we 
enact the reforms necessary to stop them? The 9/11 attacks have taught 
us to be proactive, but Congress is regressing back into a reactive 
state of mind with the passage of this conference report--September 10 
thinking in a post-9/11 world.
  Border security is an essential component of Homeland Security. 
America won't be truly secure until Congress makes the tough policy 
decisions necessary to curb illegal immigration and restore the 
integrity of our borders.
  I want to thank my colleagues who have joined me in opposition to 
this legislation, including House Judiciary Chairman James 
Sensenbrenner, whose leadership has brought this critical issue to the 
attention of the American people and raised the level of debate. I urge 
my colleagues to vote against this well intended, but incomplete, 
conference report.
  Ms. McCARTHY of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 
2845, the 9/11 Implementation Act. In the days immediately following 
the 9/11 attacks, Congress put partisan politics aside and came 
together to find answers and implement change in our way of life to 
protect our homeland from further terrorist attacks. The House and 
Senate convened in New York's Federal Hall for a Special Session of 
Congress one year after the terrorist attacks, sending a strong message 
of gratitude to the world that Americans stand together as one Nation 
unified with their allies in our fight against global terrorism. The 
same bipartisan spirit carried on through the extraordinary two years 
of work by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. On July 22 the Commission 
submitted to the President, Congress and the American people a 
comprehensive assessment of what went wrong leading up to September 11, 
and what needs to be done to prevent future terrorist attacks on our 
homeland. Following the release of the Commission's report I noted, 
``Now that the members of the 9/11 Commission have done their work, we 
in Congress must do ours.'' Since that day I have fully supported 
reforms the Commission recommended, from budget authority for the 
National Intelligence Director to an overhaul of the Congressional 
oversight structure.
  The U.S. Senate came together in a truly bipartisan fashion, in a 96-
2 vote, to pass legislation which implements all 41 of the 
recommendations laid out in the 9/11 Commission Report. I cosponsored 
the companion legislation in the House, but was disappointed when no 
hearings were held on the bill. Instead, this chamber adopted 
legislation that implements only 11 of the Commission's recommendations 
and goes further to impose restrictions on civil liberties not even 
mentioned in the Commission's report.
  I am heartened that a majority of my colleagues in both chambers have 
now come together in a bipartisan spirit to embrace the recommendations 
of the 9/11 Commission and adopted a provision creating the Independent 
Privacy and Civil Liberties Board to protect our privacy and prevent 
government abuse. The Commission Report provides a roadmap for 
implementing progressive changes that will keep Americans safer. In the 
words of President Kennedy, ``There are risks and costs to a program of 
action. But they are far less than the long range risks and costs of 
inaction.''
  Mr. GREEN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased with many 
provisions contained in Senate bill 2845. I certainly support the 
intelligence reorganization provisions, as modified by the additions 
made by Chairman Duncan Hunter. They will strengthen the work of our 
intelligence community, help ensure that actionable intelligence gets 
to the right people, and help make Americans more secure.
  I am also glad to see the ``material support for terrorism'' 
prohibition enhancement provisions included in this bill. Some previous 
versions of these provisions were challenged as being too vague, and 
this legislation cures that problem. This legislation clearly provides 
that ``training,'' ``personnel'' and ``expert advice'' are defined 
broadly without abridging the

[[Page 25696]]

exercise of rights guaranteed under the first amendment.
  Every terrorist act is really the result of a terrorist chain made of 
many links--from those evil figures who pull the trigger or drive the 
rigged truck to those who provide ``material support'' to terrorists. 
This support includes expert advice and other logistical assistance. If 
we are going to be successful in the long run in our fight against 
terrorism, we must attack every link in that chain. As the author of 
this session's primary bill strengthening material support laws, I'm 
proud of the work I've done on this front, and glad to see much of it 
in this bill.
  Unfortunately, despite a lot of hard work by some good people, the 
final version of this bill also falls short in a few key areas. For 
example, the conference report drops the serious penalties we in the 
Hose proposed for some newly created terrorist crimes--even for crimes 
that result in death. The House included a provision that would permit 
the death penalty to be applied for any terrorist crime that causes 
death. This provision was adopted by a vote of 344-72, but the Senate 
conferees refused to include it in the final bill. As a result, we 
would treat these crimes less harshly than we do many other crimes 
outside the terrorist arena . . . a dangerous signal to send to the 
world.
  The conference report also removes other key provisions from the 
House bill such as those:
  Making it more difficult for terrorists and foreign criminals to win 
delays of their removal from the United States;
  Allowing for the deportation of all aliens who have engaged in or 
been affiliated with terrorists activities;
  Making it illegal to traffic in actual authentication features for 
identity documents; and
  Providing for the electronic confirmation by state motor vehicle 
departments of the validity of other states' driver's licenses and 
information.
  It also adds provisions not in the House bill, some of which are 
actually counterproductive to our antiterrorism efforts. One of the 
most egregious examples is a provision that will allow a state to waive 
some of the potential Federal standards for driver's licenses. The
9/11 report states that we need uniform standards for driver's licenses 
if they are going to serve as secure forms of identification. This 
provision goes entirely in the wrong direction. Allowing a state to 
``opt-out'' of such protections creates an obvious loophole for 
terrorists to obtain the very kind of identification documents that the 
9/11 terrorists exploited on that terrible day.
  There are many good provisions in this bill--some of which I helped 
produce. But because this bill falls short in some very important and 
troubling ways, and leaves some vitally important issues unaddressed, I 
must vote no. I hope that by doing so, we will keep the political 
pressure building to tackle some of the crucial work that has been left 
undone.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of this bill 
to implement some of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
  After 9/11, those who lost family members and friends wanted to know 
``why.'' But the Bush administration was scared that an honest answer 
to that question might highlight flaws in its own policies and 
decisions, so it opposed the creation of an independent 9/11 
Commission.
  The families won that hard-fought fight, and the Commission made 
numerous recommendations to reorganize the intelligence community and 
strengthen both the implementation and congressional oversight of 
homeland security.
  Although the Senate put together a bipartisan bill that was true to 
the spirit of the 9/11 Commission recommendations, the House version 
catered to anti-immigration groups' agendas and to Donald Rumsfeld's 
struggle to keep all of his Department's intelligence turf intact.
  I am extremely pleased that the unwavering determination of the 9/11 
family members finally convinced the President and the Speaker to stop 
allowing the voices of the few dissenters to stymie the will of the 
majority of Members and Senators who've wanted to see this legislation 
enacted into law. In particular, I recognize and honor the 
extraordinary efforts to enact this bill by Ms. Carie Lemack, whose 
mother, Framingham MA resident Judy Larocque, was killed aboard 
American Airlines Flight 11. Ms. Lemack is a member of the
9/11 family Steering Committee, and she and others on the Steering 
Committee have worked tirelessly to ensure both the creation of the 9/
11 Commission and the enactment of this bill.
  The legislation before us today takes some important steps to 
implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission:
  It establishes a Director of National Intelligence with appropriate 
budgetary and personnel authority;
  It establishes a National Counterterrorism Center to ensure that all 
elements of counterintelligence operations planning are coordinated;
  It establishes an independent privacy and civil liberties board to 
ensure that concerns are addressed; and
  It takes specific steps to increase border security.
  However, some of the other measures contained in the bill, while 
useful, in my opinion do not go far enough:
  While the Hostettler amendment to facilitate the rendition of certain 
foreign persons to countries that practice torture was stripped from 
the bill in conference, along with other anti-immigrant provisions, 
there is no restriction in the bill that prohibits the secret transfer 
of detainees to other countries where they will likely be tortured in 
the name of the U.S. This practice is in direct violation of the 
Convention Against Torture, a treaty the U.S. has signed, and the 9/11 
Commission specifically called for reforms in this area to ensure the 
humane treatment of captives in the war against terror. I will continue 
to work until my bill to outlaw outsourcing torture, H.R. 4674, is 
passed and I will continue to oppose efforts to move legislation that 
would in any way legitimize the practice of rendition to countries that 
practice torture.
  While the Secretary of Homeland Security is directed in this bill to 
develop a national strategy for transportation security, it should be 
abundantly clear that numerous loopholes in this area should be closed 
immediately: Since almost no cargo placed on passenger airlines is 
subject to screening for explosives, screening passenger baggage and 
patting down travelers provides a false sense of security to those 
flying; The Department has failed to install radiation detectors at all 
ports of entry to ensure that nuclear weapons cannot be smuggled into 
the country; And finally, the Department has continued to allow 
shipments of extremely hazardous materials that could kill thousands of 
people to travel through densely populated areas even when safe 
alternate routes are available. I will continue to work to close all of 
these transportation security loopholes.
  Finally, I am also troubled that we have only had several hours to 
review this legislation. As we learned in recent weeks when a 
Republican staffer inserted an intrusive tax return snooping provision 
into the omnibus appropriations bill that no one knew existed and which 
later had to be removed, waiving the normal 72 hour layover rule for 
conference reports increases the likelihood that provisions that have 
not been thoroughly reviewed and do not reflect the will of the House 
can make their way into final legislation. While we all recognize the 
importance of the 9/11 legislation, it is my hope that in our efforts 
to enact it before we adjourn for the year, that language has not been 
included that will later prove to be ill-advised or carry with it 
unintended consequences.
  I commend the 9/11 families for their heroic efforts to make this 
country more secure. Without them, we would not be standing here voting 
on this landmark legislation today. Today's vote is enormously 
important, but our efforts must not end today. I stand ready to 
continue the fight to ensure that the terrorist attacks of September 
11, 2001 cannot and will not be repeated.
  Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 2845, the House-
Senate agreement on the ``National Intelligence Reform Act.'' As a 
former Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I have 
long believed that making basic changes to the leadership and 
communications ability of our intelligence community could reap huge 
benefits. This bill represents our first real attempt to eliminate some 
of the weaknesses that exist within the intelligence community.
  As we celebrate the passage of this landmark reform, many deserve our 
enormous appreciation. Only by the determination of the
9/11 Commission Members, House and Senate Conferees, and the Family 
Steering Committee do we have a bill before us today. Many Members, 
including myself, believed fully in what they were trying to do. Their 
resolve, combined with the President's willingness to find common 
ground, are the reasons we are able to take these steps to make 
America, and Americans, safer.
  I strongly supported the document on which most of the reform is 
based, the 41 recommendations of the independent and bipartisan 9/11 
Commission. In its final report, the Commission cited the absence of 
strong, centralized leadership for the intelligence community as one of 
the major factors contributing to the structural barriers that 
undermined the

[[Page 25697]]

functioning of our joint intelligence. In response, this bill will link 
intelligence and operational planning in a new National Counter-
terrorism Center, unite the intelligence community under a Director of 
National Intelligence with significant budget authority, and allow 
increased information sharing among decentralized government networks.
  Although these reforms are long overdue, I know the conferees were 
determined to close every loophole and address any and all ``what-
ifs.'' We all share the priority of ensuring that these reforms will 
not jeopardize our brave men and women serving in the armed forces. 
Now, the Director will have the authority to improve the structure and 
methods of our intelligence system, while protecting the vital chain-
of-command between troops in the field and the Department of Defense.
  However, while questions surrounding military intelligence have been 
resolved, significant concerns regarding immigration reform and border 
security remain. Although this bill adds border security agents, 
increases funding for illegal immigration detention facilities, and 
improves visa requirements and aviation security, we must not become 
complacent in our efforts to protect our homeland from terrorist 
infiltrators. For this reason, we must implement an entry and exit 
system that uses biometric identifiers, improve cooperation with 
foreign governments, and monitor foreign visitors by enhancing passport 
and visa requirements. It is also important that we continue to 
strengthen federal standards for driver's licenses, identification 
cards, and birth certificates to prevent terrorists from deceiving 
security with false information. With three million illegal aliens 
slipping across our borders every year, and no reliable system of 
prevention or tracking in place, I firmly believe reforming our 
nation's immigration policies is a key priority for the 109th Congress.
  The threats our country faces will surely continue to evolve. For 
this reason, I hope the intelligence structure, purpose, and strength 
will be subject to continuous scrutiny. We start that process today 
with the reforms contained in the ``National Intelligence Reform Act.'' 
Since Congress first passed the ``National Security Act of 1947,'' at 
least 19 commissions, committees, and panels, created by either the 
executive or legislative branches, have tried and failed to create an 
effective leader with the clout to set common goals for our 
intelligence system. Today, the status quo was exchanged for meaningful 
and effective reform.
  We must now stay true to this course and honor those who were lost on 
September 11, 2001, by continuing to pass legislation that increases 
our security and protects our citizens from those who seek to harm our 
way of life. Although we have made progress today, we must not waiver 
in our commitment to make our nation safe for future generations of 
Americans.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my 
frustration at the increasing disconnect between what the American 
people believe is critical for improving our national security and what 
those inside the Washington Beltway believe, particularly with regard 
to illegal immigration.
  On the floor for our consideration is legislation to enact portions 
of recommendations from the 9-11 Commission. Unfortunately, the bill 
omits significant 9-11 Commission recommendations regarding stricter 
enforcement of immigration laws and securing our borders.
  The 9-11 terrorists exploited our immigration system in order to 
carry out the murder of over three thousand Americans. Yet, today, due 
to opposition of these critical provisions by certain members of the 
U.S. Senate, the legislation before us today is silent on closing these 
immigration loopholes. The 9-11 Commissioners all have publicly called 
for Congress to enact serious immigration reform. The fact that illegal 
immigrants can enter our country and obtain driver licenses and ``game 
the system'' to remain concealed from law enforcement is an affront to 
all Americans and endangers our security.
  Does anyone think that our enemies will cease to look for and exploit 
weaknesses in our defenses? Does anyone think they will not look to 
continue exploiting the loopholes in our immigration laws? Does anyone 
think it makes us safer to keep the status quo?
  Today, is the day we should be passing these reforms, not next year, 
and not after the next terror attack.
  This bill will pass today, but it will do so with significant 
security gaps. I believe it is critical that we address the omissions 
from this bill as soon as possible. We cannot afford to put off these 
critical national security needs.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 
2845, that would implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. 
At long last bipartisanship and the will of the American people are at 
the brink of success here in the House of Representatives. This reform 
is now long overdue and this issue is too important to suffer the petty 
partisan games the House leadership have played with this bill. I only 
hope that our delay does not come at a higher cost than the few bruised 
egos of those unwilling and unable to work in a bipartisan manner the 
way our country's Framers always intended when the national security of 
this great Nation was threatened.
  It should also not be lost on any Member of this Chamber that we are 
here debating this legislation today, December 7, on the anniversary of 
another day of infamy, which like 9/11 forever changed the future 
course of this country and generations of Americans. As we honor and 
discuss those who were lost on 9/11 today, I would like to take a 
moment to also remember those lost today at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and 
the sacrifices made by so many families and Americans since then to 
defend this Nation.
  The recommendations the bipartisan Commission released in July 2004 
will help prevent future terrorist attacks by offering a global 
strategy to dismantle terrorists and their organizations, prevent the 
continued growth of terrorism, and prepare for future terrorist 
attacks. In October, the other body overwhelmingly passed the National 
Intelligence Reform Act, S. 2845, by a vote of 96 to 2. The Bush 
administration, the 9/11 Commission chairmen, and families of many 
September 11 victims fully endorsed the Senate's intelligence 
reorganization bill.
  Unfortunately, there in the House, the People's Chamber, the 
Republican leadership chose a different path, a path that strayed far 
from the 9/11 Commission's recommendations. In yet another example of 
party politics over public interest, the Republican majority drafted a 
609-page intelligence bill, H.R. 10, without any input or support from 
the Democratic leadership, including in it controversial provisions not 
recommended by the Commission on immigration and surveillance, and even 
went as far as to exempt the United States from certain applications of 
the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture. When Democrats put 
forward the bipartisan Senate bill as an amendment during the debate, 
it was defeated along party lines 203-213. Only 8 Republican Members of 
this House voted for the bipartisan bill.
  For over a month, no interest was shown by House leaders in 
negotiating with the bipartisan supporters backed by President Bush and 
the 9/11 families, and the bill languished in the conference committee. 
Finally in November, blowing to public pressure, House Republican 
leaders worked out a compromise with the President and the bipartisan 
supporters of the Senate bill, and many of us thought that finally we 
would see action on this needed reform. However, several Members of the 
Republican House majority refused to accept the compromise and despite 
overwhelming support in the House and no question that the bill would 
pass if brought to the floor, the Speaker refused to allow a vote on 
the bill rather than have it pass with more Democratic support than 
Republican.
  Instead, we waited nearly another entire month, while public pressure 
forced the President to finally personally work to try and convince 
enough Republican holdouts to support the bill, no not that it will 
pass, because there have always been enough votes to pass the bill, but 
to ensure that at the end of the vote there would be more Republican 
yes votes, who hold the majority anyway, than Democratic yes votes
  While we waited for Republicans to be able to say they passed the 
intelligence reform bill themselves without needing any Democratic 
support, another U.S. Consulate office, this time in Jiddah, Saudi 
Arabia was attacked by terrorists, killing five people and wounding 
thirteen others. I fear how many more such attacks our enemies have 
been able to organize while we have delayed enacting intelligence 
reform needed to combat their activities.
  This effort should mark a beginning, not the end, of our efforts to 
protect the American people by strengthening the systems by which we 
collect, process, and disseminate intelligence. However, the price of 
liberty is eternal vigilance, and as this Congress works to balance the 
need for greater security while protecting liberty, I would remind my 
colleagues of the words of one of our nation's greatest founders, 
Benjamin Franklin, who said, ``They that can give up essential liberty 
to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor 
safety.''
  I hope that the Republican leadership will not tarnish this 
achievement today by agreeing to vote in the next Congress on efforts 
that will weaken and undermine Americans' liberties.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I do not support Martial Law rules 
in the House of Representatives under any but the most extreme 
circumstances.

[[Page 25698]]

  Some may have thought the House leadership would learn a lesson from 
the Omnibus Appropriations scandal, where a few Members and staff 
nearly got the power to read any American's tax returns because we did 
not have sufficient time to read the bill. Apparently they did not.
  We could have passed this legislation under regular order before the 
election. We could have approved this legislation under regular order 
before Thanksgiving. But the House leadership has brought us to the 
point where we do not all have the opportunity to read this bill to 
determine what effects it will have on our constituents.
  The rules of the House provide for 72 hours to review legislation 
before it reaches the floor. Like too many other rules to ensure good 
government, this rule has been violated repeatedly by the House 
leadership. They often resort to changing the rules when it pleases 
them. This is a dangerous practice, especially for a bill so important.
  From most accounts, some of which are conflicting, the National 
Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 is a beneficial and important piece of 
legislation. I congratulate all those who contributed so much hard 
work.
  As a veteran of the legislative process, I do not expect perfect 
bills. However, it is not too much to ask for all Members of the House 
of Representatives to have the opportunity to know exactly what they 
are voting on.
  Mr. KENNEDY of Rhode Island. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this 
legislation.
  Earlier this year, in October, I voted to pass H.R. 10, despite 
realizing how that bill violated the bipartisan and unanimous spirit of 
the 9/11 Commission.
  It was a bill crafted solely by the House Republican leadership. H.R. 
10 failed to give sufficient budgetary authority to the National 
Director of Intelligence, and perpetuated fragmented management of our 
national intelligence structure. Barriers to crucial joint intelligence 
were left unaddressed, while controversial extraneous ``poison-pill'' 
provisions were included.
  I supported that flawed legislation then because it was absolutely 
imperative that the process continue to move forward. I was hopeful 
that this bill would be improved in conference and the controversial 
provisions removed, because I was hopeful that the will of the American 
people would be able to make its influence felt even behind the closed 
doors of a conference negotiation.
  The American people have won today, and that victory was spearheaded 
by a group of average, every-day American citizens who tragically know 
all too well the threats to our national security.
  The conference report we have before us today was made possible 
through the steadfast determination of the families of the 9/11 
victims. They stood in candlelight vigil outside the White House, 
evoking the memory of their lost loved ones, demanding action and 
intervention by the President. The President heard them, and the 
country thanks them.
  We all cried and grieved with those families that tragic day 3 years 
ago, and today we will take action in honor of them.
  I applaud the efforts of the conference negotiators who fought for 
the safety and security of all Americans against the forces who wanted 
to protect the status quo. They were willing to compromise where they 
could, but held their ground where they had to.
  We finally have a National Director of Intelligence with sufficient 
budgetary and personnel authority to coordinate our intelligence 
efforts, and a National Counter-Terrorism Center able to unify all 
elements of counter-terrorism intelligence operations planning. To 
protect civil liberties and address privacy concerns, we have an 
independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board empowered to have access 
to information from departments and agencies. Transportation and border 
security are addressed, and the sharing of terrorism threat information 
among Federal, State, local, and tribal entities is improved.
  We have much to praise about what is included in this conference 
report, but also extremely significant is what was kept out.
  Before, the House-passed H.R. 10 sadly included provisions that eased 
restrictions against deportation to countries that practice torture; a 
violation of the Convention Against Torture, an international treaty to 
which this country is a party. I opposed that provision before and I 
applaud the successful efforts of conference negotiators in removing 
these egregious provisions.
  Before, there were sections of legislation that undermined the 
fundamental due process rights of immigrants in the courts. These 
sections would make it harder for refugees fleeing religious and 
political persecution and for victims of sex trafficking to seek asylum 
in the United States. These sections did nothing to make America safer 
and were in direct contravention of the 9/11 Commissions 
recommendations that urge our nations immigration system should send a 
message of welcome, tolerance, and justice. Those provisions are now 
removed.
  Certainly, there are remaining immigration issues that deserve 
continued debate and discussion, but they should not be used to delay 
or derail such crucial legislation.
  In waging the war against radical Islamic totalitarianism, we have 
taken an important step towards making victory ours. But the work 
before us must continue.
  The battle against terror rightly must involve the improved 
coordination of intelligence. Also, efforts to secure our ports, 
railways, chemical plants, and airliners to keep us safe at home.
  Homeland security rightfully begins at home, but cannot end at our 
shores. Our soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors, intelligence analysts 
and operatives, F.B.I. agents, and law enforcement agents can only do 
such much. Fundamentally, what we must win is the battle of ideas.
  In winning the struggle against radical Islamic totalitarianism, the 
9/11 Commission and many others urge our nation to offer an example of 
moral leadership in the world, to treat people humanely, to abide by 
the rule of law.
  The people of the Muslim world must never be misled about what this 
country believes in, what it fights for, and what it defends. Public 
diplomacy that repair our relations and image, funding international 
education to counter the rise of hateful madrassas, and protecting the 
rights of women must be part of our efforts.
  Committing the necessary resources to help the economic development 
and political democratization of the Middle East must be part of the 
equation. To combat the rise of radical Islamic totalitarianism, 
foreign aid and nation-building can no longer be avoided.
  Today, as we commit ourselves to strengthening our intelligence 
agencies and protecting our homeland, let us be ready tomorrow and the 
days ahead to continue the remaining work before us.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of the 
conference report on S. 2845, the National Intelligence Reform Act. 
Included in this legislation are important reforms that will ensure 
better coordination among national intelligence agencies, and protect 
our Nation against future threats while preserving the military's 
access to critical intelligence in the field. While I believe it is 
essential that we adopt this measure and reduce the risk to our Nation, 
I do so reluctantly because we could have done much more in that 
regard. Unfortunately, conferees in the other body insisted on 
stripping many critical provisions that would crack down on terrorists 
who enter and remain in this country illegally.
  I was pleased to join 282 of my colleagues and vote in support of the 
House version of 9-11 reforms, H.R. 10, in early October. That bill 
included many critical reforms aimed at addressing intelligence 
coordination and oversight, and it also included critical tools to 
close the immigration loopholes that terrorists can use to attack us at 
home. The 9-11 commissioners specifically cited these loopholes and 
recommend we close them. These immigration recommendations are also 
important reforms we should have addressed in the conference report. 
The House bill included provisions for expedited removal of potential 
terrorists, asylum restrictions, national drivers licenses standards 
and improved traveler screening at ports and borders.
  Despite the absence of these critical provisions, I believe we must 
move this bill forward because it does take a critical first step 
toward making America safer. Through the creation of a National 
Intelligence Director and the National Counter Terrorism Center, this 
measure will ensure better coordination of intelligence across the 
government, while protecting the timely flow of intelligence to our 
troops.
  Likewise, I am pleased we were able to include measures to strengthen 
our ongoing efforts to eliminate illegal border crossings. This 
legislation adds 10,000 new border patrol agents to intercept illegal 
immigrants and potential terrorists as well as 4,000 new immigration 
enforcement investigators to track illegal immigrants down within our 
borders. These agents are badly needed and will immediately improve 
illegal immigrant interdiction and interception operations. 
Additionally, this measure authorizes 40,000 more detention beds for 
suspected terrorists and illegal immigrants. Much better that we enact 
these improvements now than wait.
  Despite the positive steps we are taking here today, our job is not 
done until we address comprehensive immigration reforms. I intend on 
making immigration reform a priority next Congress. President Bush 
pledged yesterday to bring up immigration reform early next year; 
leadership has given me their word that they are committed to doing the 
same. I remain committed to fighting for passage of

[[Page 25699]]

these sorely needed immigration reforms with my colleagues early in the 
next Congress, and I will not rest until we have completed that job.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, the bill to implement the 9/11 Commission's 
unanimous recommendations, while flawed, is an important first step 
towards comprehensive intelligence reform.
  Passing this bill, however, does not let Congress off the hook. We 
must be vigilant of how this legislation is implemented by an 
administration that has a tendency to disregard civil liberties all too 
quickly.
  Specifically, I'm disturbed by provisions relating to pretrial 
detention of terrorist suspects. While everything must be done to 
minimize the flight risk of terror suspects, under this legislation, 
the government will not need to prove that the suspect is a flight risk 
before detainment.
  The 9/11 Commission concluded that intelligence opportunities were 
missed before the terrible tragedies of September 11, 2001, not because 
law enforcement did not have adequate surveillance powers, but because 
of a misreading of existing surveillance laws. This bill still includes 
provisions that allow non-citizens to come under federal wiretaps even 
if they are not connected to a foreign government.
  I'm concerned that we not forget the balance between information 
sharing within the intelligence community and privacy safeguards for 
sensitive data.
  We must return in the 109th Congress and be prepared, when necessary, 
to intervene to ensure that law enforcement has the tools to secure our 
homeland but at the same time holds American civil liberties sacred.
  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this historic bipartisan 
legislation and of all the work this House has done to bring it to the 
floor today. This was by no means an easy task we set out to achieve 
when we received the 9/11 Commission report this past summer and set to 
work holding hearings during the August recess.
  The Financial Services Committee's contributions to S. 2845 continues 
some of the most important work it, and the Congress, has ever done. 
Work that began in the tense hours and days after the tragic attacks on 
September 11, 2001, and continues today in the efforts on this House to 
synthesize the 9/11 Commission report into momentous legislation.
  It is a testament to the work of the Financial Services Committee 
that the 9/11 Commission report cited with approval Title III of the 
USA PATRIOT Act, and said that on anti-terror financing and anti-money 
laundering the various elements of the government are doing a good job.
  The Commission also urged Congress, law enforcement, and the 
intelligence community not to become complacent and to engage in 
ongoing and rigorous examinations of the financial system. I believe 
this legislation rises to meet that challenge.
  The Financial Services Committee has once again come together to 
create bipartisan legislation aimed at disrupting the financing of 
terrorism and strengthening the country's anti-money laundering laws.
  The package that the Committee assembled centers on four broad 
themes: (1) additional finding for the fight against terrorist 
financing; (2) new tools for the government to combat terrorist 
financing schemes; (3) improved international cooperation and 
coordination on anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing 
initiatives; and (4) enhanced preparedness of the financial services 
sector in case of another large-scale terrorist attack.
  Among the key provisions in S. 2845 that reflect the contributions by 
the Financial Services Committee are the following:
  Technical amendments to the anti-terror finance title of the USA 
PATRIOT Act, which was largely drafted in the Financial Services 
Committee;
  An authorization for additional funding for Treasury's Financial 
Crimes Enforcement Network, which serves as the Federal government's 
financial intelligence unit and plays a critical role in the collection 
and analysis of data on suspicious financial activity;
  A reauthorization of the national anti-money laundering strategy, 
along with grants to State and local law-enforcement agencies to 
investigate the financing of terror and other financial crimes;
  A provision that allows the SEC to take action in an ``emergency'' to 
maintain or restore fair and orderly securities markets, ensure 
``prompt, accurate and safe'' transaction settlement, and prevent 
disruptions of markets or market activities. The Secretary of the 
Treasury is given comparable authority over markets for government 
securities;
  An authorization for the Secretary of the Treasury to produce 
currency and other security documents at the request of foreign 
governments;
  A directive to the Secretary of Treasury to prescribe regulations 
requiring the reporting to FINCEN of certain cross border transmittals 
of funds relevant to the Department of Treasury's anti money laundering 
and anti terrorist financing efforts;
  A restriction on federal examiners of financial institutions, for one 
year upon leaving the federal government, from accepting compensation 
for employment from a financial institution which the examiner had 
responsibility for examining;
  A requirement for better coordination and building of international 
coalitions;
  A Sense of Congress that the Secretary of the Treasury should 
continue to promote the dissemination of international anti-money 
laundering and counter-terrorist financing;
  A requirement that the Secretary of Treasury convene an inter-agency 
council to develop policies to be pursued by the United States 
regarding the development of common international anti-money laundering 
and counter-terrorist financing standards;
  A provision that enhances the delegation authority for the Secretary 
of the Treasury to appoint a Fiscal Assistant Secretary in the absence 
or inability to serve of the current Fiscal Assistant Secretary;
  A Sense of Congress that insurance and credit rating firms should 
consider a firm's ``compliance with standards for private sector 
disaster and emergency preparedness'' when assessing the firm's 
insurability and creditworthiness. This is consistent with the 9/11 
Commission Report, which made the identical recommendation.
  I want to especially thank the Members of the Financial Services 
Committee that were instrumental in bringing the success of this 
legislation. I would especially like to recognize Financial 
Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee Chairman Spencer Bachus 
(AL), Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairwoman Sue Kelly 
(NY), Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade, and Technology 
Vice Chair Judy Biggert (IL), Ranking Member Barney Frank (MA), and 
Committee Member Luis Gutierrez. I also want to thank our counterparts 
in the other body for there help in resolving our issues quickly.
  In sum, Mr. Speaker the Financial Services Committee's contribution 
to S. 2845 makes needed changes that respond directly to the 9/11 
Commission's call for a continuous examination of the U.S. financial 
system to identify loopholes capable of being exploited by al Qaeda and 
other terrorist organizations, and to close down those gaps.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the 
Conference Report on the 9/11 Commission recommendations.
  The conference report, which implements the core recommendations of 
the 9/11 Commission, is essential to bolster our nation's security in 
the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The report:
  Establishes a Director of National Intelligence to coordinate all 
national intelligence efforts;
  Establishes a National Counterterrorism Center to unify all elements 
of counterterrorism intelligence operations planning;
  Establishes an independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board within 
the Executive Office of the President that would ensure that privacy 
and civil liberties concerns are properly considered;
  Establishes an Information Sharing Environment to facilitate the 
sharing of terrorism information among all appropriate Federal, State, 
local, tribal, and private sector entities, through the use of policy 
guidelines and technologies;
  Requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop and implement 
a national strategy for transportation security--including aviation, 
air cargo and maritime security measures;
  Requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop a plan to 
improve border security--including the use of advanced technologies to 
secure the northern border, and remotely piloted aircraft to secure the 
Southwest border;
  Requires federal agencies to establish minimum standards for driver's 
licenses and ID necessary to board domestic commercial aircraft and 
gain access to federal facilities.
  This is a strong bill that will make Cleveland, OH, and our country 
safer and more secure. I strongly support the bill today, and I 
supported it on November 20, 2004, when the House and Senate conferees 
reached an agreement on this landmark legislation. This bill should 
have been ready for the President's signature then, but unfortunately 
the Republican leadership played politics and delayed passage until a 
majority of Republicans supported the bill--even though the conference 
report had strong Democratic support and would have passed on November 
20.

[[Page 25700]]

  But, today, this important legislation will pass. We, Democrats, 
fought for this conference report to reach the floor for a vote before 
this 108th Congress came to a close, and we succeeded. It is time to 
make our country safer. It is time to overhaul our intelligence 
agencies in order to prevent another 9/11 attack. It is time to pass 
this bill in honor of the 9/11 victims and their families. Vote ``yes'' 
on this vital legislation.
  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the conference 
report on the National Security Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. I must 
admit that when I arrived this morning, I was dubious that this measure 
would actually make it to the floor. That it did is due to the 
incredibly hard work of the conferees and the staff from both the House 
and the Senate, as well as the tireless advocacy efforts of the 
families of 9/11, and I thank each one of them for their service to 
America.
  There are many laudable provisions in this bill, Mr. Speaker, 
including most of the principal recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. 
I'm very pleased that the conferees were apparently able to agree that 
the proposed Director of National Intelligence will have meaningful 
budget and personnel authorities to help reshape our intelligence 
community to meet existing and emerging threats. I'm also pleased that 
another key 9/11 Commission recommendation, the creation of a National 
Counter Terrorism Center, will also come pass.
  Also of note in this bill is its requirement that our intelligence, 
law enforcement, and homeland security agencies achieve a greater level 
of information sharing, and that this process will include Federal, 
State, local and tribal entities, as well as the private sector. If 
there is one lesson that both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 
attacks on America on 9/11 should have driven home is that information 
sharing among the elements of our government is paramount if we are to 
prevent surprise attacks. I hope these new provisions will be effective 
in breaking down the barriers to information sharing that figured so 
prominently in both of these national tragedies.
  I'm also gratified that this bill includes a Privacy and Civil 
Liberties Board to help safeguard the freedoms that make our nation the 
greatest on earth. This Board will conduct oversight of executive 
branch policies to ensure that the privacy and civil liberties of our 
citizens are protected, and I hope that it will serve as an effective 
watchdog in that role.
  Make no mistake about it: The next Mohammad Atta will not present 
himself for biometric or other screening at an existing border crossing 
point. Future al Qaeda operatives will almost certainly attempt to slip 
across the border at a weak or undefended point, carrying with them the 
false identity documents necessary to blend in and execute another 
attack against our citizens. We must do whatever is necessary to guard 
our borders, and I want to thank my colleague, the ranking member of 
the Homeland Security Committee, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner, 
for all of his hard work in this area, and to wish him well in his 
future endeavors.
  There are some things in this bill that trouble me, Mr. Speaker. I'm 
concerned about the sweeping FISA authorities that are added in this 
bill, particularly those aimed at alleged ``lone wolf'' terrorists and 
the apparently sweeping definition of what ``providing material 
support'' to terrorists that is permitted in this bill. I realize that 
each of these clauses has sunset provisions, but as we've seen with the 
Patriot Act, such sweeping authorities can be used against innocent 
citizens. I will monitor the implementation of these provisions very 
closely, as I hope all of my colleagues will, and if evidence of abuse 
surfaces, I hope they will join me in modifying these provisions as 
necessary.
  Mr. Speaker, one key 9/11 Commission recommendation that did not make 
its way into this bill is the need to reform congressional oversight of 
the intelligence community. The bill before us also includes new 
provisions for expanded ``red teaming'' within the intelligence 
community, and I hope that this provision will sharpen analytical 
products coming out of the intelligence community. But we need to face 
facts, Mr. Speaker: Our own house is not in order when it comes to 
conducting effective oversight of the intelligence community. I intend 
to revisit this issue in the coming Congress, and I hope my colleagues 
will join me in that effort.
  Despite the concerns I've raised above, Mr. Speaker, this is a good 
compromise that will help to protect our country in the years ahead. 
I'm also confident that this compromise addresses the concerns that 
some in this body and elsewhere have raised that this reorganization of 
the intelligence community would somehow endanger our troops in Iraq 
and Afghanistan by constraining their access to real-time intelligence. 
This bill was held up for weeks by Members who claimed it would deny 
good intelligence to our soldiers in the field. Clearly, this 
compromise bill does not do that, and if anything, the provisions 
contained in this bill will only strengthen and rationalize the 
collection and dissemination of intelligence to both policymakers and 
warfighters. A bureaucratic turf fight is a better description of the 
disagreement, and that is no reason to hold up this bill.
  Again, I thank the conferees and the staff for their Herculean effort 
to bring us a bill we can collectively support, but above all I thank 
the families of 9/11. Simply put, this would not have happened without 
their relentless effort, and they are patriots in the truest sense of 
the word. I intend to vote for this measure, I urge my colleagues to do 
the same.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, nearly two months ago this House 
passed a bill that failed to address many of the 9/11 Commission's 
recommendations, while including objectional provisions regarding 
immigration, civil liberties, and other issues. While the Senate was 
able to reach agreement on a bill that reflected the views of both 
parties, the Commission, and the 9/11 families, House leaders did not 
work in a similarly bipartisan way to reach agreement on the best way 
to implement the recommendations.
  I voted for the House bill because I believe we need intelligence 
reform. I hoped that with the President supporting the Senate bill and 
every Republican in the Senate voting for it, the House Republicans' 
misguided criticisms of the bill wouldn't carry much weight in 
conference.
  So I am very pleased that the conference report we are voting on 
today more closely reflects the Senate bill. And I am encouraged that 
during this last week of the 108th Congress, we have come together to 
put country before politics--and to send legislation to the President 
that will make America safer.
  Mr. KIND. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the conference 
report for H.R. 10, legislation to reform our country's intelligence 
agencies. I support this report so, as a country, we can move forward 
quickly to give the President a completed bill to sign. The security of 
the people of western Wisconsin is of an utmost priority, and I am 
supporting this measure to make changes necessary to protect our 
homeland.
  On September 11, 2001, our Nation was brutally attacked, and several 
thousand of our citizens were killed. Our country was shocked and 
dismayed, but we were far from defeated. The resolve of our Nation is 
strong, and we stood up to the challenge and struck back.
  After the attacks on that fateful day in September, many questions 
about our homeland security were raised. I supported and worked for a 
comprehensive Homeland Security bill that created the Homeland Security 
Department and cabinet level secretary. The creation of the Homeland 
Security Department was an important first step for our country to 
ensure the security of its citizens. But there remained many unanswered 
questions about our Nation's intelligence failures before September 11, 
which is why I supported the creation of the independent bipartisan 9/
11 Commission.
  On July 22, 2004, the 9/11 Commission provided a full and complete 
report to Congress and the American public. I praise the Commission for 
its excellent work, leadership, patriotism, and service to our country. 
We owe it to the families of the victims of 9/11 and to the citizens of 
our country to use this report to make certain this type of attack 
never happens again; I fully support the unanimous and bipartisan 
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
  While I had several concerns with many of the provisions included 
H.R. 10, I decided to support passage of this legislation back in 
October. I supported H.R. 10 because when the safety of our country is 
at hand we need to be able to cross the aisle and work with our 
colleagues to protect our country. After passage, however, I was glad 
to see the conference committee move to more closely align the 
conference report with the 9/11 Commission's 41 recommendations and the 
Senate passed bill. Over the past several weeks, we have had several 
opportunities to pass this very important legislation, but the House 
leadership has been working towards passing the bill with the support 
of the majority.
  I support this conference report for several reasons. First and 
foremost, the families of the 9/11 victims and the 9/11 Commission 
supports this conference report and have worked hard to ensure the 
legislation improves the safety for our country. In addition, the 
conference report contains not only major reforms of the intelligence 
community, but significant measures to improve aviation and border 
security and emergency preparedness and response. This bill implements 
a substantial portion of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations; I am 
happy that the conference report

[[Page 25701]]

includes a strong National Intelligence Director as well as the 
essential authorities necessary for the National Intelligence 
Director's success. It also creates a strong National Counterterrorism 
Center and an independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board.
  The 9/11 report also addresses foreign policy and public diplomacy, 
something we cannot deal with in this legislation before us today. One 
of the most important chapters in the 9/11 Report was chapter 12, which 
offered a global strategy to work with the Arab and Muslim worlds. If 
we follow the recommendations in this chapter, and focus our energies 
on improving our economic and political ties to this part of the world, 
it will not only improve the image of the United States of America, but 
it will help reduce future terrorist attacks on our country.
  Once again, I would like to thank the members of 9/11 Commission for 
their patriotism and hard work to help safeguard our country. I would 
also like to recognize the tireless work that the families of the 
victims of 9/11 have put into creating the Commission on the attacks, 
and, secondly, that legislation was brought to the floor for 
deliberation. Finally, I would like to thank the conferees for all 
their hard work on this essential legislation. I encourage my 
colleagues join me in supporting this long-overdue, critical 
legislation. This legislation is a crucial step toward making our 
country safer from terrorism.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, it is a relief to finally pass this 
important legislation to make America safer. The bill moves our 
national security and intelligence coordination efforts forward and 
paves the way for future counterterrorism measures.
  I am concerned by some of the limits placed on the powers of the 
National Intelligence Director and would like to have seen stronger 
safeguards for individual civil liberties. I am pleased to see that the 
most egregious immigration provisions were removed by the Conference 
Committee.
  While it is unfortunate that it took two months to pass this bill, 
the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill two months ago that 
had the support of the 9/11 Commission, families of the 9/11 victims, 
and President Bush. That legislation could have been passed 
immediately. Instead, we almost didn't get a bill at all.
  The challenge now will be to focus our efforts on the greatest threat 
to America today: terrorism. My commitment is to work to make the new 
structure a success and to not allow the quagmire in Iraq to divert us 
from the essential task dealing with terrorism.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, tonight we vote on the final version of the 
Intelligence Reform bill. It's appropriate that we do so today, 
December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. We hope that this legislation will help 
prevent future attacks on our homeland. I will vote for final passage, 
because this bill contains much needed reform of our intelligence 
community. But more can be done to protect America.
  This conference report is supposed to codify the recommendations of 
the 9/11 Commission, and insofar as intelligence is concerned, it does. 
But the 9/11 Commission's charter required it to create a full account 
of the circumstances of the 9/11 attacks and formulate recommendations 
for guarding against future terrorist threats. This includes 
immigration and asylum reform, border protection and identification 
security. The Commission's recommendations and staff report contained 
repeated and explicit references to immigration, border, asylum and 
identification problems of which the 9/11 hijackers took advantage and 
which need to be solved.
  I thought that the House version of the Commission's recommendations, 
H.R. 10, properly attempted to meet these goals. Yet here we are today, 
debating a conference report that contains hardly any of the strong 
Title III measures that were passed by the People's House. This is 
incredibly disappointing. While the final version of this legislation 
adds to our border security personnel, tightens up our visa application 
process, and sets up some identification standards, the fact remains 
that we need to do much more.
  We can have all the intelligence in the world, but if we can't 
protect our own borders or prevent terrorists from coming into our 
country, then we're just stupid. I support this bill because it reforms 
our intelligence, but also because the administration and leadership 
have promised to pursue additional reforms in immigration and border 
security.
  Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Immigration Reform Caucus, I intend 
to make sure that these promises are kept. I also look forward to 
working as soon as possible in the 109th Congress on legislation 
dealing with serious immigration reform, improving our asylum laws, 
border control, and identification security. Now more than ever, our 
immigration policies have national security ramifications. I will not 
rest until we fix our laws to meet these challenges.
  Mr. LANGEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that we will implement 
intelligence reform before the close of the 108th Congress and rise in 
support of the underlying bill.
  After 9/11, we approached fighting the global war on terrorism as we 
had the Cold War. But it became clear that we needed to adapt our 
intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and military to new 
global threats. The 9/11 Commission gave us a blueprint for that 
mission, and this legislation will help us implement their vision. 
Cooperation among agencies and departments will be critical, and this 
measure shifts the mentality of our intelligence community from ``need 
to know'' to ``need to share.'' It also makes significant improvements 
to homeland security, while avoiding some of the controversial 
provisions included in earlier drafts.
  As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I am pleased that 
this bill strikes a careful balance between creating a strong national 
intelligence director and preserving the ability of our men and women 
in uniform to gain access to the intelligence needed to be successful 
on the battlefield. I thank all my colleagues for working in a 
bipartisan fashion to craft a landmark measure that will make America 
safer.
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this 
legislation.
  I am deeply gratified that today, Congress has put aside turf wars 
and partisanship and taken this critical step forward for our national 
security. Over 3 years after 9/11, intelligence reform has been sorely 
overdue. Today, we got it done.
  But before we congratulate ourselves, members of Congress should 
recognize the debt of gratitude we owe the 9/11 families. Our 
government failed all of us on 9/11, but most of all the victims and 
their families. For 3 years, the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 
demanded answers. They demanded accountability.
  While many in Washington delayed, the families pressed Congress to 
find out what went wrong, and fix the problems. Today, their 
impassioned, tireless work has resulted in concrete reforms: a national 
intelligence director with the authority to coordinate our intelligence 
efforts and set clear priorities; a National Counter-Terrorism Center 
to increase our coordinated approach to anticipating future threats; a 
Civil Liberties Oversight Board to help us strike the balance between 
freedom and security.
  And many other critical steps to improve our security: development of 
biometric identification technology for travelers; enhanced training of 
federal air marshals; substantial increases in the number of border 
patrol agents and immigration investigators; development of air defense 
systems; upgrades in air cargo screening; expansion of watch lists to 
passengers and crew of vessels docking in US ports and; a comprehensive 
plan for transportation security that anticipates the full range of 
possible attacks.
  Many of the 9/11 families live in Massachusetts and traveled to 
Washington to lobby Congress and hold vigils. Because of their 
dedication, America will be more alert and better prepared to prevent 
future tragedies.
  Today, Congress should also credit the 9/11 Commissioners, whose 
thoroughness, independence, and candor forced our nation to confront 
glaring weaknesses in our defenses.
  We live in a time when partisan politics degrades nearly every 
important issue. It's remarkable that the 9/11 Commissioners were able 
to check their politics at the door, and unanimously agree on 41 
concrete recommendations to present to Congress.
  The Commission's work is a landmark achievement. It's a model for 
bipartisan cooperation that Congress must continue to follow.
  Congress has taken the first steps toward making America smarter and 
more alert. But intelligence reform cannot be the end of our 
government's response to September 11. We have only begun to meet the 
challenge of securing the American homeland against all enemies.
  With the same urgency and unity, we must move forward to secure the 
world's nuclear materials. Today's legislation takes the first steps 
toward creating a national director of nonproliferation efforts. We 
cannot rest until the world's most dangerous materials are permanently 
secured.
  We must move forward to secure our cities, ports, airports, roads, 
bridges, and rail lines. Today's legislation directs government 
agencies and the private sector to develop comprehensive plans to 
anticipate and respond to attacks. We must ensure that local officials, 
first responders, and hospitals have the resources they need to execute 
on those plans.

[[Page 25702]]

  And finally, we must continue moving forward in hunting down and 
destroying the terrorists who attacked America three years ago. By 
improving our intelligence, with this legislation we are one step 
closer to bringing justice to those who murdered 3,000 of our fellow 
citizens.
  I urge my colleagues' support for this landmark legislation.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, the following provides a summary and the 
legislative intent of the provisions included in the conference report 
on S. 2845, the National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, that are 
within the jurisdiction of the House Committee on International 
Relations and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
  As a member of the conference on S. 2845, and Chairman of the House 
Committee on International Relations, it is appropriate to provide 
guidance to those who will be responsible for faithfully executing this 
important statute. The inclusion in the conference report of several 
provisions of interest to the International Relations Committee 
reflects our work to implement the recommendations of the Final Report 
of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 
July 2004, hereafter referred to as the 9/11 Commission.
  As a practical matter, I consulted with Mr. Lantos, the Ranking 
Democratic Member of the House Committee on International Relations 
(who was not a member of the Conference Committee), Senator Collins, 
Senator Lieberman and, through them, with Senator Lugar on these 
provisions included in the legislation. We reached agreement on the 
text of those provisions, and following is further elaboration of the 
most significant provisions that shall be considered to have the effect 
of a statement of managers.

       Sec. 7102--Terrorist Sanctuaries. This section transforms 
     the broad recommendations of the 9/11 Commission into action. 
     The 9/11 Commission stated, ``The U.S. Government must 
     identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist 
     sanctuaries. For each, it should have a realistic strategy to 
     keep possible terrorists insecure and on the run, using all 
     elements of national power.'' (Pg. 367) In response, this 
     section provides a comprehensive statement articulating the 
     sense of Congress that U.S. policy should have such a focus 
     or mandate. It establishes reporting requirements to enable 
     the Congress to monitor patterns relating to terrorist 
     sanctuaries and to assess successes or setbacks in our 
     efforts, in order to correct any deficiencies that may exist.
       Further, this section amends the Export Administration Act 
     (EAA) to add terrorist sanctuaries to determinations relating 
     to states that ``repeatedly provided support for acts of 
     international terrorism.'' It is in keeping with the 
     underlying criteria in the Export Administration Act which 
     says that, when imposing, expanding or extending export 
     controls under the EAA, the President ``shall consider the 
     compatibility of the proposed controls with the foreign 
     policy objectives of the United States, including the effort 
     to counter international terrorism, and shall consider the 
     foreign policy consequences of not imposing controls.''
       This section merely updates U.S. law to reflect the post-9/
     11 world. It provides legislative authority to the goals 
     outlined in the National Security Strategy for Combating 
     Terrorism to deny sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to 
     terrorists, and to choke off the lifeblood of terrorist 
     groups from their access to territory, funds, equipment, 
     training, technology, and unimpeded transit.
       Through the definition of ``terrorist sanctuary,'' the 
     section seeks to encompass a broad range of activities 
     including training, financing (which includes fundraising), 
     recruitment, and the use of a nation-state territory as a 
     transit point for terrorists, funds, or equipment.
       Governments of terrorist sanctuaries are knowledgeable 
     about the recurring use of their territory for terrorist 
     purposes and are ignoring or tolerating such activity. Their 
     failure and unwillingness to take action against such use of 
     their territory contributes to the spread of global terrorism 
     and, in turn, augments the threat to U.S. national security 
     and interests.
       This provision seeks to serve as an inducement for 
     cooperation with U.S. counterterrorism efforts, as well as a 
     deterrent to keep governments from allowing their territories 
     to be used as terrorist sanctuaries.
       Asked about this provision, 9/11 Commission Co-Chair Lee 
     Hamilton said, during an August 24, 2004 hearing of the House 
     International Relations Committee, ``There must be a strategy 
     developed in dealing with wherever these sanctuaries are; 
     economic sanctions, of whatever kind, would certainly be one 
     of those tools to deny those sanctuaries.''
       Sec. 7104--Assistance for Afghanistan. This section is 
     largely derived from Sections 4061--4070 (Subtitle D of Title 
     IV) of H.R. 10 as passed by the House of Representatives (the 
     House amendment), and Section 1004 of the Senate bill.
       Sec. 7104(a)--Short Title. Sets out a short title for this 
     section; derived from the House amendment.
       Sec. 7104(b)--Coordination of Assistance. Derived from 
     section 1004 of the Senate bill, this subsection sets out 
     Congressional findings, consistent with the Commission's 
     Final Report, relative to the United States assistance 
     program for Afghanistan and related topics. Expresses the 
     sense of Congress on actions to be taken.
       Sec. 7104(c)--Coordinator for Assistance. This section's 
     findings note that the 9/11 Commission criticized American 
     assistance to Afghanistan as overly divided among specific 
     programs and note that the flexible funding mechanisms put in 
     place by the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act of 2002 have not 
     been used to date.
       The provision requires the appointment of a powerful 
     coordinator for assistance to Afghanistan. This coordinator 
     would have powers similar to those used effectively by such 
     persons as Deputy Secretary Armitage when he served in a 
     similar role with respect to the Former Soviet Union and 
     Eastern Europe. The coordinator would be a locus of 
     responsibility, as contemplated by the Afghanistan Freedom 
     Support Act, but the intent of which was frustrated when no 
     government-wide coordinator was appointed.
       This provision was derived from section 4062 of the House 
     amendment. The Senate bill contained no comparable provision.
       Sec. 7104(d)--Assistance Plan: International Coordination. 
     The coordinator would submit the Administration's plan, or 
     program, for assistance to Afghanistan in the form of a 
     program plan. The plan should be submitted as early as 
     possible after the beginning of the fiscal year or after the 
     enactment of the relevant appropriations acts, whichever is 
     later, and certainly before a significant portion of the 
     year's appropriations are obligated. The plan should indicate 
     its relation to the Administration's long-term strategy for 
     Afghanistan.
       The coordinator would work with the international community 
     and the Afghan government to ensure that assistance to 
     Afghanistan is implemented coherently and efficiently. The 
     coordinator would, in general, work through the Secretary of 
     the Treasury and the United States Executive Directors at the 
     international financial institutions (as defined in Sec. 
     1701(C)(2) of the International Financial Institutions Act 
     (22 U.S.C. 262r(C)(2)) in order to effectuate his or her 
     responsibilities with respect to international financial 
     institutions.
       This provision was derived from section 4062 of the House 
     amendment. The Senate bill contained no comparable provision.
       See. 7104(e)--General Provisions Relating to the 
     Afghanistan Freedom Support Act (AFSA) of 2002.
       (1)(A) and (2) These provisions set out a general 
     declaration of policy reaffirming the commitment of Congress 
     to the authorities of the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act of 
     2002 and establishes some key policies underlying the bill--
     the commitment of the United States to its undertaking in 
     April 2004 when it supported a development program of 
     Afghanistan, the forthcoming parliamentary elections, and the 
     necessity for additional nations to step forward and shoulder 
     additional economic and military burdens.
       (1)(B) This subparagraph broadens an inappropriately 
     narrowed ``notwithstanding'' provision from the Afghanistan 
     Freedom Support Act of 2002 which had the effect of limiting 
     certain flexible authorities for the implementation of Title 
     I of the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act of 2002. It is 
     consistent with the flexibility recommended by the 9/11 
     Commission. The only ``notwithstanding'' authority currently 
     applicable to Title I of AFSA relates to the Brooke 
     Amendment.
       (3) The Conference agreement, in a provision similar to the 
     House amendment, permits reports to Congress required under 
     the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act to contain a classified 
     annex.
       (4) This paragraph amends AFSA to require the President to 
     prepare and submit to Congress a long-term strategy for 
     United States policy toward Afghanistan, as well as an annual 
     statement of progress made in executing that plan and of 
     changes to it.
       These provisions were derived from section 4063 of the 
     House amendment. The Senate bill contained no comparable 
     provisions.
       Sec. 7104(f)--Education, Rule of Law, and Related Issues. 
     Derived from section 4064 of the House Amendment, this 
     subsection updates the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act (AFSA) 
     of 2002 with respect to programs to help courts, prosecutors, 
     and others in reflecting the information gathered by Congress 
     in the course of its oversight of conditions in Afghanistan, 
     as the situation in Afghanistan has evolved since late 2002. 
     Provisions emphasizing the need to assist Afghanistan with 
     respect to aiding democratic political parties, renovating 
     and otherwise supporting secondary schools and universities, 
     improving the physical infrastructure of the justice system, 
     and providing for professional education for Afghanistan's 
     officials have been added in the conference process. The 
     section of AFSA (Sec. 103(A)(5)) in which all of these 
     provisions are found is restated and re-enacted in its 
     revised form for the sake of clarity. The Senate bill 
     contained no comparable provision.
       Sec. 7104(g)--Monitoring of Assistance for Afghanistan. 
     This subsection provides that

[[Page 25703]]

     the Secretary of State shall provide an annual report to the 
     Congress describing assistance to Iraq, including a report on 
     activities and their funding sources by agency, program, and 
     fiscal year, obligations incurred, the participation of each 
     government agency, and any other information the Secretary 
     considers necessary to fully inform the Congress on 
     assistance to Iraq. This report would become a responsibility 
     of the coordinator provided for in section 104 of AFSA. All 
     government agencies involved in assistance to Afghanistan 
     shall provide the Secretary information the Secretary 
     reasonably requires to prepare and submit this report.
       Sec. 7104(h)--United States Policy to Support of 
     Disarmament of Private Militias and Expansion of 
     International Peacekeeping and Security Operations in 
     Afghanistan. This subsection is derived from Section 4066 of 
     the House amendment. The Senate bill contained no comparable 
     provision.
       This subsection, in paragraph (1), establishes that it 
     shall be United States policy to take immediate steps to 
     provide active support for the disarmament, demobilization, 
     and reintegration of armed soldiers, particularly child 
     soldiers, in Afghanistan, in close consultation with the 
     President of Afghanistan. ``Active support'' does not 
     necessarily mean the deployment of military assets, but all 
     appropriate means to help the Government of Afghanistan rid 
     the country of private militias should be considered. The 
     semi-annual report provided under section 206 of AFSA is to 
     contain a report on activities taken pursuant to this 
     subsection.
       Paragraph (2) of the subsection addresses the need to 
     increase the area in which security is provided by 
     international security forces in Afghanistan. To that end, it 
     is established that it is the policy of the United States to 
     make every effort to support the expansion of international 
     peacekeeping and security operations within Afghanistan. The 
     purpose of that expansion is to allow international security 
     forces to undertake vital tasks related to promoting 
     security, such as disarming warlords, militias, and 
     irregulars, and disrupting opium production. Moreover, a 
     force spread over a larger area might safeguard highways in 
     order to allow the free flow of commerce and to allow 
     material assistance to the people of Afghanistan, and aid 
     personnel in Afghanistan, to move more freely.
       Sec. 7104(i)--Efforts to Expand International Peacekeeping 
     and Security Operations in Afghanistan. Subsection (i), 
     derived from section 4067 of the House amendment, addresses 
     the issue of encouraging and enabling additional countries to 
     participate in international peacekeeping and security 
     operations in Afghanistan. (This is not to be confused with 
     subparagraph (h)(2), which addresses the issue of helping 
     those forces within Afghanistan to expand their reach.) 
     Subsection (i) provides that the President shall encourage, 
     and, as authorized by law, enable other countries to actively 
     participate in expanded international peacekeeping and 
     security operations in Afghanistan, especially through the 
     provision of military personnel for extended periods of time. 
     It also provides for semi-annual reports to the Congress on 
     the President's efforts in this regard, which may be 
     submitted with the reports required by AFSA section 206(c). 
     The Senate bill contained no comparable provision.
       Sec. 7104(j)--Provisions Relating to Counternarcotics 
     Efforts in Afghanistan. Subsection (j), derived from section 
     4068 of the House amendment, amends AFSA to provide 
     assistance for a variety of non-military measures to disrupt 
     the opium trade, such as technical assistance, credit, and 
     farm-to-market facilities for alternative crops, and training 
     for counternarcotics police. The Senate bill contained no 
     comparable provision.
       A second section to be added to AFSA expresses the sense of 
     Congress that the President should make the substantial 
     reduction of illegal drug production and trafficking in 
     Afghanistan a priority in the Global War on Terrorism; that 
     the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretary 
     of State and the heads of other appropriate Federal agencies, 
     should expand cooperation with the Government of Afghanistan 
     and international organizations involved in counter-drug 
     activities to assist in providing a secure environment for 
     counter-drug personnel in Afghanistan; and that the United 
     States, in conjunction with the Government of Afghanistan and 
     coalition partners, should undertake additional efforts to 
     reduce illegal drug trafficking and related activities that 
     provide financial support for terrorist organizations. The 
     provision also requires a joint report to Congress from the 
     Secretaries of Defense and State within 120 days of the date 
     of enactment that describes the progress made toward 
     substantially reducing poppy cultivation and heroin 
     production capabilities in Afghanistan, and the extent to 
     which profits from illegal drug activity in Afghanistan are 
     used to financially support terrorist organizations and 
     groups seeking to undermine the Government of Afghanistan.
       This provision makes needed changes in the Afghanistan 
     Freedom Support Act to update it from late 2002.
       Since the fall of the Taliban, there has been a tremendous 
     resurgence of narcotics cultivation and trafficking in 
     Afghanistan. Money made dealing in narcotics has flowed to 
     the neo-Taliban and to al-Qaeda terrorists. Those criminals 
     seek to kill members of Afghanistan's army, of our Armed 
     Forces, and of our Coalition. Unchecked, they will destroy 
     Afghanistan's economy and environment, its nascent 
     government, and Afghan society itself. Today, half of the 
     economic activity in Afghanistan is based on narcotics.
       If the narcotics trade is not suppressed, Afghanistan will 
     become a narco-state that will once again become a sanctuary 
     for terrorists: the United States and its allies will have 
     gained little if anything for the valiant efforts of those 
     who struggled on America's behalf in this difficult theater 
     of war.
       Sec. 7104(k)--Additional Amendments to the Afghanistan 
     Freedom Support Act of 2002. This subsection, derived from 
     section 4069 of the House amendment, makes a technical change 
     in AFSA to reflect the change in the name of an Afghan 
     institution and extends AFSA's main reporting provision 
     through 2010. The Senate bill contained no comparable 
     provision.
       Sec. 7104(1)--Repeal of Prohibition of Assistance. Section 
     620D of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 bans aid to 
     Afghanistan. This section repeals that provision of law, 
     which has outlived its usefulness. This law is no longer 
     needed, given the efforts of the American-led Coalition and 
     the Afghan people. This subsection is derived from section 
     4070 of the House amendment. The Senate bill contained no 
     comparable provision.
       Sec. 7104(m)--Authorization of Appropriations. This 
     subsection amends the AFSA to authorize the appropriation of 
     such sums as may be necessary for each of FY05 and FY06.
       The Senate bill, in section 1004(c), provided for the 
     appropriation to the President, for each of the Fiscal Years 
     2005 through 2009, ``such sums as may be necessary to provide 
     assistance for Afghanistan, unless otherwise authorized by 
     Congress,'' for development assistance, children's health 
     programs, economic assistance, international narcotics and 
     law enforcement, nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, demining 
     and related programs, international military education and 
     training, foreign military financing program grants, and 
     peacekeeping operations. Assistance provided by the President 
     under this subsection ``shall be consistent with the 
     Afghanistan Freedom Support Act of 2002,'' and shall be 
     provided with reference to the ``Securing Afghanistan's 
     Future'' document published by the Government of Afghanistan.
       Sec. 7109--Public Diplomacy Responsibilities of the 
     Department of State. This section amends the State Department 
     Basic Authorities Act to provide a description of the 
     Secretary of State's public diplomacy responsibilities. It 
     also directs the Secretary of State to make every effort to 
     coordinate public diplomacy activities of federal agencies 
     subject to the direction of the President. As the foreign 
     policy agency for the United States, the State Department 
     should also take the lead role in U.S. international public 
     diplomacy.
       The provision states that the Secretary of State shall 
     coordinate with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to 
     develop a comprehensive strategy and measurable objectives 
     for public diplomacy.
       Although this section is designed to ensure the highest 
     level of attention by our foreign policy agencies to public 
     diplomacy needs and objectives, it does not provide new 
     authority to the Secretary of State over the programs of the 
     BBG. The role of the BBG as a firewall against political 
     interference in the content of the broadcasts remains 
     unchanged, as does the independence of the agency.
       Numerous studies of U.S. public diplomacy provide 
     recommendations to improve the current system and strategic 
     direction at the State Department. This provision seeks to 
     support the State Department and others involved in public 
     diplomacy by establishing a clear set of responsibilities.
       Sec. 7110--Public Diplomacy Training. This section seeks to 
     enhance the quality and depth of public diplomacy 
     capabilities within the State Department. The findings 
     emphasize the recruitment by the Foreign Service of 
     individuals with expertise and professional experience in 
     public diplomacy, and enhanced training in the range of 
     public diplomacy activities. The findings also emphasize the 
     role which chiefs of mission should assume in designing and 
     carrying out public diplomacy strategies.
       This section encourages the State Department to be more 
     creative in its recruitment strategies in the area of public 
     diplomacy. To meet a serious foreign language gap, the 
     section requires the Secretary of State to provide special 
     consideration for individuals with such language abilities, 
     and sets a goal to increase the number of Foreign Service 
     officers proficient in languages spoken in predominately 
     Muslim countries.
       In addition, a change is made in the precepts for promotion 
     in the Foreign Service so as to reward the willingness and 
     ability of officers to participate in public outreach efforts 
     related to their jobs as well as other aspects of public 
     diplomacy. Expressing and explaining U.S. policies and the 
     breadth of American values is an important element of the 
     professional skills necessary for Foreign Service officers. 
     It should be recognized within the promotion precepts.

[[Page 25704]]

       Sec. 7111--Promoting Democracy and Human Rights at 
     International Organizations.
       Sec. 7111(a)--Support and Expansion of Democracy Caucus. 
     Derived from section 4032 of the House amendment, this 
     subsection calls on the President to continue to strongly 
     support and seek to expand the work of the nascent Democracy 
     Caucus at the United Nations and the United Nations Human 
     Rights Commission; and to seek to establish a Democracy 
     Caucus at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament and at 
     other broad-based international organizations. The purpose of 
     the Caucus is to forge common positions, revise outmoded 
     systems of membership selection and regional voting, and 
     establish a rotational leadership agreement.
       Sec. 7111(b)--Leadership and Membership of International 
     Organizations. This subsection, derived from section 4033 of 
     the House amendment, urges the President, acting through the 
     Secretary of State, to use United States influence and vote 
     to: (1) reform criteria for membership and leadership 
     positions within all United Nations bodies and other 
     international institutions so as to exclude countries which 
     violate the principles of the specific organization; (2) make 
     it the policy of the United Nations and other international 
     organizations and multilateral institutions in which the 
     United States is a member that a member country may not stand 
     in nominations for membership or significant leadership 
     positions if the member country is subject to sanctions 
     imposed by the United Nations Security Council; and (3) 
     ensure that no country stand in nomination for membership or 
     in rotation for significant leadership positions in such 
     organizations, or for membership on the United Nations 
     Security Council, if it has been determined by the Secretary 
     of State that a member country has repeatedly provided 
     support for acts of international terrorism.
       Sec. 7111(c)--Increased Training for Multilateral 
     Diplomacy. This subsection, derived from section 4034 of the 
     House amendment, states that it shall be the policy of the 
     United States that training courses should be established for 
     Foreign Service officers and civil service employees for the 
     State Department, including appropriate chiefs of mission, on 
     the conduct of multilateral diplomacy. It specifies that the 
     Secretary of State shall ensure that multilateral diplomacy 
     training is provided at various stages of the careers of 
     members of the service, including as part of their training 
     upon entry into the service; and for officers, including 
     chiefs of mission, who are assigned to United States missions 
     representing the United States to international organizations 
     and other multilateral institutions or who are assigned in 
     Washington, D.C., to positions that have as their primary 
     responsibility formulation of policy towards such 
     organizations and institutions or towards participation in 
     broad based multilateral negotiations of international 
     instruments, receive specialized training in multilateral 
     diplomacy prior to the beginning of service for such 
     assignment or, if receiving such training is not practical at 
     the time, within the first year of the beginning of such 
     assignment. It also directs the Secretary of State to ensure 
     that employees of the Department of State who are members of 
     the civil service and who are assigned to international 
     organizations or multilateral institutions also receive 
     multilateral diplomacy training.
       Sec. 7112--Pilot Program to Provide Grants to American-
     sponsored Schools in Predominately Muslim Countries to 
     Provide Scholarships. This section authorizes the Secretary 
     of State to initiate a scholarship program for grade school 
     kids in predominately Muslim countries to attend American-
     sponsored schools. The Office of Overseas Schools assists 
     many schools overseas, therefore this grant program would 
     operate through this office. The purpose of the provision is 
     to complement other U.S. Government efforts to broaden the 
     understanding of American values and support a wider use of 
     English. Numerous studies of U.S. public diplomacy point to 
     the need for creative, measurable programs. This trial 
     scholarship program provides a new option for American 
     outreach efforts.
       The provision allows the Secretary of State to start a 
     pilot program to provide full or partial scholarships to 
     children of low and middle-income families to encourage them 
     to attend an American-style school. The pilot program is 
     intended to determine whether such a scholarship program can 
     be more broadly used in the region and whether such a program 
     is supported by the participating parties: the American-
     sponsored schools, the families, the State Department, and 
     the Congress.
       Sec. 7118--Designation of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. 
     This section amends section 219 of the Immigration and 
     Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189) by making two principal 
     changes to the current law regarding the designation of 
     foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). First, it would 
     replace the requirement to formally re-designate FTOs every 
     two years with a procedure allowing these groups to petition 
     the Secretary of State at two-year intervals to have their 
     designation revoked. It would also require the Secretary of 
     State to review the designation of each FTO every five years. 
     Second, section 7118 would establish a new procedure for 
     handling the situation in which a terrorist organization 
     changes its name or uses new aliases. This provision allows 
     the government to amend the underlying administrative record 
     instead of re-creating a voluminous document every time this 
     occurs. A group will be able to appeal these additional 
     designations.
       Under existing law, the U.S. government must devote 
     significant amounts of its counter-terrorist resources to the 
     time-consuming and burdensome FTO re-designation effort. 
     Section 7118 changes the re-designation process to allow the 
     State Department and other government agencies to focus more 
     of their scarce resources on responding to new terrorist 
     threats or tracking and analyzing newer groups that emerge on 
     the horizon.
       Sec. 7120--Case-Zablocki Act Requirements. The 9/11 
     Commission report states that of all the recommendations, 
     strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most 
     difficult and important. Recently, the House Committee on 
     International Relations learned that, due to numerous 
     management failures within the Department of State, over 600 
     classified and unclassified international agreements dating 
     back to 1997, had not been transmitted to Congress, as 
     required by the Case-Zablocki Act.
       This failure by the Department of State covers a variety of 
     sensitive international agreements, including intelligence 
     and military cooperation agreements. The full knowledge of 
     these agreements by the Congress is not only required by 
     United States law, but is also critical to the ability of 
     Congress to execute Constitutional oversight 
     responsibilities. This strikes at the heart of the 
     relationship between the two branches of government, severely 
     inhibiting our ability to carry out effective foreign policy 
     objectives to prevent foreign terrorist operations. Although 
     the Department of State is working to immediately address 
     these management shortcomings and produce the remaining 
     outstanding international agreements to Congress as soon a 
     possible, this has reached crisis proportion which demands 
     immediate Congressional attention and oversight.
       In 1972, the Case-Zablocki Act (1 U.S.C. 112a and 112b) was 
     passed as a result of the Executive Branch's failure to 
     adequately inform Congress of the international executive 
     agreements entered into by the President and other officials 
     on behalf of the United States. At that time, the Symington 
     Subcommittee on National Commitments uncovered contemporary 
     examples of secret agreements entered into without adequate 
     reference to Congress. The provisions of the Yalta Agreement 
     at the end of World War II were also not publicly disclosed 
     for three years, or published until some time later. These 
     actions prompted great Congressional and public discourse and 
     controversy. Congress stated that each incident in which such 
     secret agreements become known creates tensions and 
     irritations between the Congress and the Executive Branch 
     which severely inhibit carrying out an effective foreign 
     policy. (House Report 92-1301.)
       Currently, the Case-Zablocki Act requires that the 
     Secretary of State publish an annual report of all treaties 
     and international agreements to which the United States 
     became a party during each calendar year, unless the 
     publication would be contrary to the national interest of the 
     United States. It further requires the transmission to 
     Congress any international agreement, other than a treaty, no 
     later than 60 days, with classified agreements transmitted 
     under a secrecy agreement.
       The Conferees support the tightening of the Case-Zablocki 
     reporting requirement in an effort to conduct more rigorous 
     congressional oversight over the Executive Branch. 
     Specifically, it clarifies the types of agreements subject to 
     Congressional transmittal and further requires the State 
     Department to compile an annual classified index containing 
     all executive agreements acted upon during the past year by 
     country. Not only does it require the transmission of any 
     bilateral or multilateral counterterrorism agreement, it 
     requires the notification of any agreement the United States 
     enters into with a country designated by the U.S. government 
     as being a state sponsor of terrorism. Last, it requires the 
     expedited publishing of agreements, when possible.
       Therefore, this section makes it clear that Congress is 
     concerned about not being fully informed regarding 
     international agreements entered into by the Executive ranch, 
     particularly sensitive agreements. While the Secretary of 
     State has discretion over determining the which agreements 
     are considered significant enough to be reported to Congress, 
     Congress considers certain agreements of such import that it 
     desires to be notified during contemplation of, and as soon 
     as practicable after, signing the agreement, although by 
     strict interpretation of Case-Zablocki, notification would 
     not have to be made until after the agreement was entered 
     into force. However, many of the agreements do not enter into 
     force for years after they are signed. Congress wants to be 
     informed about the significant agreements prior to that time. 
     In general, these types of agreements would consist of any 
     agreement which would: (1) significantly broaden our 
     commitments with another country (regardless of

[[Page 25705]]

     duration of agreement); (2) concern co-production of weapons 
     systems, transfers of defense equipment, cooperative 
     research, development and testing of weapons systems; (3) 
     grant access to foreign military facilities, installations, 
     or bases; (4) involve the deployment of the U.S. military 
     forces; or (5) involve covert intelligence operations. 
     Similarly, Congress expects that significant political 
     undertakings should not be disguised as non-binding 
     agreements in order to avoid Case-Zablocki's reporting 
     requirements.
       Effective foreign policy is not created in a vacuum whereby 
     individually-requested briefings on narrowly-selected topics 
     of interest will adequately explain the depth necessary for 
     making important legislative decisions on how to fund the 
     executive branch's foreign policy programs. Foreign policy is 
     best conducted through a prolonged process of sharing 
     objectives and information which leads to informed discussion 
     and context, ultimately concluding in Congress' support of 
     the President's initiatives.
       In order to strictly enforce this provision, no funding may 
     be made available during 2005-2007 for any international 
     agreement if Congress is not notified pursuant to statute.
       Sec. 7202--Establishment of Human Smuggling and Trafficking 
     Center. The 9/11 Commission Report found that terrorist 
     travel and facilitation issues should be further studied and 
     emphasized in order to confront terrorists at their weakest 
     points, when they travel.
       The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security 
     and the Attorney General currently exchange information on 
     human smuggling and trafficking through the interagency Human 
     Smuggling and Trafficking Center (``The Center''). This 
     section would specifically establish The Center and codify 
     The Center's responsibilities.
       The Center will increase integration and overall 
     effectiveness in the U.S. Government's enforcement and other 
     response efforts, and work with other governments to address 
     the separate but related issues of alien smuggling, 
     trafficking in persons, and smuggler support of clandestine 
     terrorist travel. Migrant smuggling, clandestine terrorist 
     travel and trafficking in persons are transnational issues 
     that threaten national security.
       The Center will continue to provide a mechanism to bring 
     together all appropriate U.S. agency representatives from 
     policy, law enforcement, intelligence and diplomatic areas to 
     work together on a full-time basis to achieve increased 
     effectiveness and to convert intelligence into effective law 
     enforcement and other action.
       The Center shall be supported by signatories to the 
     original Memorandum of Understanding (in existence on October 
     1, 2004), which shall provide appropriate personnel, 
     resources, and funding to the Center. All other appropriate 
     U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies are encouraged 
     to support The Center and its mission.
       Participating agencies shall utilize The Center to: (1) 
     facilitate broad dissemination of all-source information by 
     serving as an information fusion center and clearinghouse; 
     (2) prepare strategic assessments; (3) identify issues for 
     interagency coordination or attention; (4) coordinate select 
     initiatives and provide support; and (5) conduct related 
     activities. The Center shall be governed by an inter-agency 
     steering group in such a manner as agreed upon by the 
     participating agencies.
       All relevant U.S. agencies shall disseminate the 
     information to the front-line personnel as appropriate.
       Sec. 7203--Responsibilities and Functions of Consular 
     Officers. This section consists of four parts aimed at 
     increasing the resources of the Department of State's Bureau 
     of Consular Affairs and improving the training and operation 
     of U.S. consular officers in detecting fraudulent documents 
     and preventing the entry of terrorists.
       Subsection (a) increases the number of consular officers 
     from 65 (FY04 and FY05) to 150 per year for FY06-FY09. Since 
     the 9/11 attacks, consular officers have changed their policy 
     and now are required to interview almost all visa applicants 
     between the ages of 14 and 80.
       Subsection (b) places limitations on the use of foreign 
     nationals to screen both immigrant visa and nonimmigrant visa 
     applications by stating that all such applications shall be 
     reviewed and adjudicated by a U.S. consular officer. This 
     provision does not preclude the assistance of foreign 
     nationals in the review of visa applications. However, it 
     assures that a U.S. Government official is involved in the 
     decision on such applications.
       Subsection (c) requires that the training program for 
     consular officers include training in detecting fraudulent 
     documents and working directly with Department of Homeland 
     Security immigration inspectors at ports of entry.
       Subsection (d) requires the Secretary of State to conduct a 
     survey to determine which consular posts have the greatest 
     frequency of presentation of fraudulent documents. An anti-
     fraud specialist employed by the Department of State must be 
     assigned to each such post unless the Department of Homeland 
     Security has already assigned a person to the post who has 
     both sufficient experience training and experience in the 
     detection of fraudulent documents. This provision will 
     provide consulates with expertise in the detection of 
     fraudulent travel documents and other papers that are 
     submitted by visa applicants as part of their immigrant visa 
     or nonimmigrant visa applications.
       Sec. 7204--International Agreements to Track and Curtail 
     Terrorist Travel Through the Use of Fraudulently Obtained 
     Documents. This section calls upon the President to lead 
     efforts to reach international agreements to track and stop 
     international travel by terrorists through the use of lost, 
     stolen or falsified documents. Section 7204 states that one 
     agreement should require the establishment of a system to 
     share information on lost, stolen and fraudulent passports, 
     the establishment of a real time verification system of 
     passports with issuing authorities, the sharing of this 
     information by governments with officials at ports of entry, 
     and that parties to the agreement criminalize the production 
     or use of fraudulent travel documents.
       In addition, Section 7204 calls upon the United States to 
     continue to support efforts at the International Civil 
     Aviation Organization to strengthen the security features of 
     passports and other travel documents.
       Sec. 7205--International Standards for Transliteration of 
     Names into the Roman Alphabet for International Travel 
     Documents and Name-based Watch List System. This section is a 
     sense of Congress that the President should seek to enter 
     into an international agreement to modernize and improve 
     standards for the translation of names into the Roman 
     alphabet in order to ensure one common spelling for such 
     names for international travel documents and name-based watch 
     list systems.
       Section 7205 is a direct result of findings of the 9/11 
     Commission. In its Report, the Commission found that the 
     current lack of a single convention for transliterating 
     Arabic names enabled the 19 hijackers to vary the spelling of 
     their names to defeat name-based watch list systems and 
     confuse any potential efforts to locate them. While the 
     introduction of biometric identifiers may lessen this 
     problem, that process will take many years, and a name-based 
     watch list system will always be useful. Therefore, a 
     standardized way of translating names into the Roman alphabet 
     should be a top priority.
       Sec. 7206--Immigration Security Initiative. This section 
     expands the Immigration Security Initiative, which is a 
     Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-operated program that 
     assists and trains airline personnel at foreign airports in 
     identifying fraudulent travel documents. Currently, the 
     Immigration Security Initiative is operating in two foreign 
     airports. Section 7206 expands the program to include at 
     least 50 additional foreign airports by December 31, 2006.
       This section authorizes $25,000,000 in FY 05, $40,000,000 
     in FY 06, and $40,000,000 in FY 07 to carry out the expansion 
     of this program.
       The program's objective is to identify and stop passengers, 
     including potential terrorists, who seek to enter the United 
     States using fraudulent documents. Stopping terrorists at 
     foreign airports provides another line of defense in the U.S. 
     Government's border security strategy. Further, as we saw 
     with the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, preventing terrorists 
     from even boarding a flight can forestall a terrorist attack.
       Sec. 7209--Biometric Entry and Exit Data System. This 
     section states that, consistent with the 9/11 Commission 
     Report, Congress calls on the Secretary of the Department of 
     Homeland Security to develop a plan to accelerate the full 
     implementation of an automated entry and exit data system at 
     U.S. ports of entry as required by existing law. The 
     Secretary of Homeland Security must report to Congress on the 
     plan no later than 180 days after the enactment of this 
     legislation. Section 7209 requires the Secretary of Homeland 
     Security to integrate the biometric entry and exit data 
     system with other databases maintained by the United States 
     Citizenship and Immigration Services that contain information 
     on aliens. This section also calls for the Secretary of 
     Homeland Security to implement a plan to expedite the 
     processing of registered travelers at ports of entry.
       Section 7209 also contains specific requirements and goals 
     with respect to the entry-exit system, as well as additional 
     reporting requirements on the part of the Department of 
     Homeland Security and the Department of State.
       Sec. 7211--Exchange of Terrorist Information and Increased 
     Pre-Inspection at Foreign Airports. This section expands the 
     pre-inspection program to at least 25 additional foreign 
     airports. The additional locations should be operational by 
     January 1, 2008. The pre-inspection program allows Department 
     of Homeland Security immigration and customs inspectors to 
     screen passengers at airports located outside the United 
     States instead of inspecting them when they arrive at U.S. 
     airports. This program is currently operating in eight 
     airports in Canada, four in the Caribbean nations, and at 
     airports in Shannon and Dublin, Ireland.
       In addition, the selection criteria for pre-inspection 
     locations is based on reducing the number of aliens who 
     arrive to the United States who are inadmissible. Section 
     7211 changes the selection criteria for pre-inspection 
     locations to include the objective of preventing the entry of 
     potential terrorists and facilitate the travel of admissible 
     aliens.

[[Page 25706]]

       Section 7211 requires the Secretary of Homeland Security 
     and the Secretary of State to submit a report to Congress on 
     the progress being made in establishing these locations no 
     later than June 30, 2006. Section 7211 also contains findings 
     with respect to the exchange of terrorist information and 
     pre-inspection at foreign airports. Subsection (c) of section 
     7211 requires a report regarding the exchange of terrorist 
     information.
       The pre-inspection program allows U.S. Government officials 
     to conduct a thorough screening outside the United States. 
     Not only is this an important tool for preventing the entry 
     of inadmissible aliens, but the pre-inspection program can 
     also help prevent terrorists from boarding flights bound for 
     our country.
       Sec. 7217--Increase in Penalties for Fraud and Related 
     Activity. This section amends section 1028 of Title 18 to 
     increase penalties for the possession and transfer of 
     fraudulent government identification documents that are used 
     to further an international terrorist attack. Specifically, 
     it increases the maximum term of imprisonment for the 
     production, use or transfer of fraudulent government 
     documents from 25 years to 30 years if the crime involving 
     fraudulent government documents was used to facilitate an act 
     of 14 international terrorism.
       Sec. 7218--Study on Allegedly Lost or Stolen Passports. 
     This section requires the Secretaries of State and Homeland 
     Security to jointly conduct a study on the feasibility of 
     establishing a system, in coordination with other countries, 
     so that border and visa issuance officials will have access 
     to real-time information on newly-issued passports to persons 
     who alleged that their previous passports were lost or 
     stolen. If developed, the system studied in Section 7218 will 
     assist consular officers and immigration inspectors in 
     preventing the movement of terrorists who obtain new 
     passports to hide indicators of travel to certain countries. 
     This study must be completed by May 31, 2005.
       The 9/11 Commission found that three of the 9/11 hijackers, 
     including Mohammed Atta, obtained new passports prior to 
     seeking visas to enter the U.S., possibly to eliminate 
     evidence regarding their previous travel. Each claimed that 
     his old passport had been lost.
       Sec. 7219--Establishment of Visa and Passport Security 
     Program in the Department of State. This section establishes 
     a Visa and Passport Security Program within the Bureau of 
     Diplomatic Security of the Department of State. The Assistant 
     Secretary for Diplomatic Security will designate an 
     individual, who has experience in the investigation and 
     prosecution of visa and passport fraud, to be in charge of 
     this Program.
       Section 7219 will require the Assistant Secretary of 
     Diplomatic Security, in coordination with officials of the 
     Bureau of Consular Affairs, the Coordinator of 
     Counterterrorism, the National Counterterrorism Center and 
     the Department of Homeland Security, to develop a strategic 
     plan to target and disrupt individuals and organizations that 
     are involved in document fraud. The objective of the Visa and 
     Passport Security Program is to increase awareness within the 
     Department of State regarding document fraud crimes and their 
     links to terrorism.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, the 9-11 Commission 
reached across the partisan divide and came up with a unanimous 
agreement. Ten members, five Democrats and five Republicans, held 
countless hearings and issued a well-written report with well-reasoned 
recommendations.
  To the disappointment of partisans, the Commission refused to divert 
itself with election-year political considerations, declining to cast 
blame on this Administration or its predecessors. The Senate, almost 
evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, followed the 
Commission's example by taking up a bipartisan bill, authored by 
Senators McCain, Lieberman and Collins.
  Today, at last, the House has seen fit to follow this fine example. 
The product we have before us is the product of extensive negotiations, 
that included all parties Democrats and Republicans.
  My Democratic colleagues on the conference deserve credit for their 
determination and hard work. I want to offer praise for the work of 
Ranking Member Harman and her staff. They have been steadfast.
  I want to offer particular praise across the aisle to my Republican 
colleagues who have worked so hard on this bill: my colleague from 
Michigan, Chairman Hoekstra, Mr. Shays and the Speaker of the House and 
his Chief of Staff.
  Like any product of compromise, this bill falls far short of what any 
of us would consider perfect. Some of my Republican colleagues wanted 
extraneous immigration provisions that would penalize victims of 
torture and asylum seekers. Those are not in this bill. Others did not 
want a board to oversee violations of privacy and civil liberties. That 
is in the bill, albeit in significantly weakened form.
  I did not want any additions to the Patriot Act. One provision, on 
material support for alleged terrorist organizations, is in the bill. 
Like other provisions of the Patriot Act, it sunsets in two years.
  For both sides, there will be time for oversight of the provisions 
they did not want. I predict the next Congress will see a substantial 
debate about the Patriot Act, what should be renewed in it and what 
should be allowed to expire.
  But today, we have a product that keeps faith with the 9-11 
Commission and the 9-11 families that worked so hard to make this 
legislation happen.
  First and foremost, this bill represents a truly comprehensive 9-11 
reform bill. Second, the approach outlined in the substitute has been 
endorsed by members of the 9-11 Commission and the family members of 
the 9-11 victims. Third, the substitute includes strong budgetary 
authority for the newly created National Intelligence Director, and 
targets terrorist traveling, as recommended by the 9-11 Commission.
  The choice today is clear. We can either choose the status quo--a 
broken system of competing intelligence bottlenecks or a positive and 
promising reform. I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill. Our 
number one priority is to protect the American people and this bill is 
a step in the right direction.
  Mr. BACA. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation.
  It has been over 3 years since the September 11 attacks on America. 
The American people cannot wait any longer for intelligence reform.
  I voted against the original version of this bill, because although 
it made strides to protect our Homeland, it failed to protect our civil 
liberties.
  I am pleased that the version of the bill before us today has fixed 
these problems. We now have comprehensive intelligence reform that 
protects our homeland and our constitutional rights.
  If House Republicans wish to discuss immigration reform, I welcome 
that debate. But that is not the task that was laid out for us by the 
9/11 Commission.
  I am also pleased to say that this bill includes language I 
introduced in the Financial Services Committee to encourage private 
sector anti-terrorism preparedness. The private sector controls 85 
percent of the critical infrastructure in this country.
  On 9/11 it became clear that the private sector is one of the first 
lines of defense in preventing and responding to terrorist attacks. 
There are steps businesses can take to protect office buildings against 
terrorist attacks, to ensure that escape procedures are in place and to 
speed up recovery and communications.
  By encouraging private sector preparedness, we are taking a giant 
step towards making America safer.
  Mr. Speaker, today we have a choice. We can either pass this bill, or 
we can choose to do nothing. If we do nothing, our country will be left 
with the same intelligence system that failed us on September 11. The 
same intelligence system that allowed terrorists to live in our country 
unnoticed for months, plotting an attack on Americans. This is 
unacceptable. We cannot allow another September 11 to occur.
  We must pass this legislation today. We owe it to the families of the 
9/11 victims, we owe it to America, and we owe it to ourselves.
  My only regret about this legislation is that it has taken us 3 years 
to pass it.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). All time for debate has 
expired.
  Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the conference 
report.
  There was no objection.


                Motion to Recommit Offered by Mr. Hoyer

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is the gentleman opposed to the conference 
report?
  Mr. HOYER. At the present time I am, Mr. Speaker.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion to 
recommit.
  The Clerk read as follows:

  Mr. Hoyer moves to recommit the conference report on the bill S. 2845 
to the committee of conference.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The motion is not debatable.
  Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion to 
recommit.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to recommit.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the noes appeared to have it.

[[Page 25707]]




                             Recorded Vote

  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
  A recorded vote was rejected.
  So the motion to recommit was rejected.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the conference report.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.


                             Recorded Vote

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
  A recorded vote was ordered.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 336, 
noes 75, not voting 22, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 544]

                               AYES--336

     Ackerman
     Akin
     Alexander
     Allen
     Andrews
     Baca
     Baird
     Baker
     Baldwin
     Bass
     Beauprez
     Becerra
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Biggert
     Bilirakis
     Bishop (GA)
     Bishop (NY)
     Blumenauer
     Blunt
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bonner
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Bradley (NH)
     Brady (PA)
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (OH)
     Brown (SC)
     Brown, Corrine
     Burns
     Burton (IN)
     Butterfield
     Buyer
     Cantor
     Capito
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardin
     Cardoza
     Carson (IN)
     Carson (OK)
     Carter
     Castle
     Chandler
     Chocola
     Clay
     Clyburn
     Cole
     Conyers
     Cooper
     Costello
     Cox
     Cramer
     Crenshaw
     Crowley
     Cummings
     Cunningham
     Davis (CA)
     Davis (IL)
     Davis (TN)
     Davis, Tom
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Deutsch
     Diaz-Balart, L.
     Diaz-Balart, M.
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Doggett
     Doolittle
     Doyle
     Dreier
     Dunn
     Edwards
     Ehlers
     Emanuel
     Emerson
     Engel
     English
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Farr
     Ferguson
     Filner
     Foley
     Ford
     Fossella
     Frank (MA)
     Franks (AZ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Frost
     Garrett (NJ)
     Gephardt
     Gerlach
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Gonzalez
     Goodlatte
     Granger
     Graves
     Green (TX)
     Greenwood
     Grijalva
     Gutierrez
     Hall
     Harman
     Harris
     Hart
     Hastert
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hensarling
     Herger
     Herseth
     Hill
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hobson
     Hoeffel
     Hoekstra
     Holden
     Holt
     Honda
     Hooley (OR)
     Hoyer
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hyde
     Inslee
     Isakson
     Israel
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jefferson
     John
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Keller
     Kelly
     Kennedy (MN)
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     Kind
     King (NY)
     Kirk
     Kleczka
     Kline
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     Lampson
     Langevin
     Lantos
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Leach
     Lee
     Levin
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (GA)
     Linder
     LoBiondo
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Lynch
     Majette
     Maloney
     Markey
     Marshall
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McCotter
     McCrery
     McGovern
     McHugh
     McIntyre
     McKeon
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Menendez
     Mica
     Michaud
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller (FL)
     Miller (MI)
     Miller (NC)
     Miller, George
     Moore
     Moran (KS)
     Moran (VA)
     Murphy
     Musgrave
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal (MA)
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Nunes
     Nussle
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Osborne
     Owens
     Oxley
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Pearce
     Pelosi
     Pence
     Peterson (MN)
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Pickering
     Platts
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Portman
     Price (NC)
     Pryce (OH)
     Putnam
     Quinn
     Ramstad
     Rangel
     Regula
     Renzi
     Reyes
     Reynolds
     Rodriguez
     Rogers (AL)
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Ross
     Rothman
     Roybal-Allard
     Ruppersberger
     Rush
     Ryan (OH)
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Sanchez, Linda T.
     Sanchez, Loretta
     Sanders
     Sandlin
     Saxton
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Schrock
     Scott (GA)
     Scott (VA)
     Serrano
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sherman
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Shuster
     Simmons
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Solis
     Souder
     Spratt
     Stark
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stupak
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Thornberry
     Tiahrt
     Tiberi
     Tierney
     Toomey
     Towns
     Turner (OH)
     Turner (TX)
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Upton
     Van Hollen
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Vitter
     Walden (OR)
     Walsh
     Waters
     Watson
     Watt
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     Wexler
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson (NM)
     Wilson (SC)
     Wolf
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Wynn
     Young (FL)

                                NOES--75

     Aderholt
     Bachus
     Barrett (SC)
     Bartlett (MD)
     Barton (TX)
     Bishop (UT)
     Blackburn
     Bono
     Boozman
     Brown-Waite, Ginny
     Burgess
     Calvert
     Camp
     Chabot
     Coble
     Collins
     Crane
     Cubin
     Culberson
     Davis, Jo Ann
     Deal (GA)
     Duncan
     Everett
     Feeney
     Flake
     Forbes
     Gallegly
     Gingrey
     Goode
     Gordon
     Green (WI)
     Gutknecht
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Hostettler
     Issa
     Istook
     Jenkins
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     King (IA)
     Kingston
     Kucinich
     LaHood
     Lewis (KY)
     Lucas (OK)
     Manzullo
     McDermott
     McInnis
     Miller, Gary
     Mollohan
     Murtha
     Myrick
     Neugebauer
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Ose
     Otter
     Paul
     Pitts
     Pombo
     Radanovich
     Rehberg
     Rohrabacher
     Royce
     Sabo
     Sensenbrenner
     Simpson
     Smith (TX)
     Sullivan
     Sweeney
     Tancredo
     Taylor (NC)
     Wamp
     Weldon (FL)

                             NOT VOTING--22

     Abercrombie
     Ballenger
     Bell
     Boehlert
     Boswell
     Burr
     Cannon
     Case
     Davis (AL)
     Davis (FL)
     Dooley (CA)
     Fattah
     Hastings (FL)
     Houghton
     Jones (OH)
     Lipinski
     Lucas (KY)
     Norwood
     Payne
     Rahall
     Smith (MI)
     Young (AK)


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson) (during the vote). Members are 
advised 2 minutes remain in this vote.

                              {time}  1938

  Mrs. CAPPS changed her vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
  So the conference report was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  Stated for:
  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent for consideration of 
the Conference Report on S. 2845, the 9/11 Implementation Act. I have 
been a strong supporter of this legislation, and had I been present, I 
would have voted in favor of the bill.

                          ____________________