[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 15933-15939]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      THE CONCEPT OF THE DIRECTION OF LEADERSHIP IN THE HOUSE OF 
                            REPRESENTATIVES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank the Speaker for allowing me to speak tonight. I'm 
back again to talk about issues that are important, I think, to this 
House. They are important to the American people, and they are 
especially important to the concept of leadership in this House of 
Representatives and just where it is going to go.
  I want to go back for a moment before we go into current events and 
talk about some past events, when the Democratic majority took over the 
House of Representatives. In the lead-up prior to that time, we were 
having these speeches made by the presumed new Speaker of the House, 
Ms. Pelosi, about what we could expect from the new Congress. Now, this 
is not the first time I have mentioned this. But let's remind you 
again, to all the Members of this House, this is a quote from Nancy 
Pelosi in 2006: ``The American people voted to restore integrity and 
honesty in Washington, DC, and the Democrats intend to lead the most 
honest, the most open, and most ethical Congress in history.''
  Now, this was the goal that was set up by the Speaker of the House. 
And she has now been serving as the Speaker of the House for two terms. 
And this was her mantra of what this House would stand for. And without 
getting off into the weeds of the internal politics of Rules Committee 
and stuff like that, which bores people to tears, I'm just talking 
about this honest, ethical and open-about-it Congress that we were 
promised.
  In another speech, the Speaker of the House, the then presumed 
Speaker of the House, made the statement that what she was going to do 
was if the Democrats got to be in charge of this House, they were going 
to drain the swamp, that there was this culture of corruption that had 
created a swamp, and that they were going to drain the swamp and expose 
the corruption, and they were going to expose the misdeeds.
  Now, I'm not here to tell you that there were not misdeeds that were 
brought forward. I'm not sure the Democrats had anything to do with 
exposing them. But they certainly came out through the process at that 
period of time. People went to prison, and rightfully so. They broke 
the law. But I will say that the leadership at that time went forward 
with those efforts, and they reached the unfortunate conclusion that 
several people went to prison. Several people had to leave the 
Congress.
  But that doesn't mean because they found issues in the Republican 
Party that those were the only issues that were here. And for the last 
6 or 8 weeks, I have been trying to say, who is going to look at these 
other issues? I'm not accusing anybody. I'm saying that accusations are 
being made by the press. Accusations are being made by other people. 
And they seem to fall on deaf ears. They seem to fall on the deaf ears 
of the leadership of the Democratic majority in this Congress. And they 
seem to fall upon the deaf ears of the so-called Ethics Committee, 
whose job it is to look into these things. And so we keep raising these 
issues wondering what is going on.
  But now I have even more concerns. And these concerns are things that 
I think everybody is going to be concerned about. Because if you woke 
up on Sunday morning and you turned on the television, you saw that 
people are storming the streets of Iran. And people are getting killed 
because of an election. That is a pressure point now in our world that 
is as big a pressure point as Afghanistan or Iraq or any other place 
because it has the potential that nuclear weapons could be involved. We 
don't know exactly where Iran is on their development of their nuclear 
weapons, but we certainly know they are working on it. And they make no 
bones about it.
  So we have got a possible nuclear power where there is a turmoil 
going on, and we are sort of sitting over here being quiet about it. 
And maybe that is the right thing to do. The President seems to be 
taking a position of kind of hands-off. And there certainly is a school 
that believes that is the right thing to do. And I'm not criticizing 
that. But I am saying that that is a thing that every American, and 
certainly every Member of this body, should be concerned about, because 
it could be a world-changing event that comes out of Iran. And it could 
be a world-changing event for the negative.
  So why do I raise this? Well, that very same day, that very same day 
we heard more from our longtime adversary, the North Koreans. I'm 
ashamed to have to say this, but I'm old enough to remember the end of 
the Korean war. I was just a little kid, but I do remember. And we 
never made peace with the North Koreans. We made an armistice. We 
decided that we would time-out, no more war. And they went on their 
side of the 38th parallel, and the South Koreans went on our side of 
the 38th parallel.
  Since that time, one of the great, miraculous transformations of an 
area has taken place in South Korea. And now when you visit South 
Korea, it is a prosperous nation. It has a functioning democratic 
government. And the South Koreans have a lot of bragging rights. They 
have a lot to be proud of.
  Meanwhile, the North Koreans stayed in their same Soviet socialist-
type republic, a communist regime. And, basically, with the exception 
of building a gigantic army, they have accomplished nothing since 1954, 
1956, except to stir up a lot of trouble in that area and to develop 
nuclear weapons and a missile system.
  Now, there are some that think that the North Koreans are just in 
this business to sell these weapons to other people and to give them 
something that they can trade, because they basically are practically 
without trade resources. But others like me fear that the North Koreans 
are just unstable enough that they can use the weapons in this army to 
kick open the doors to the second Korean war, or worse, a regional war.

                              {time}  2045

  They have done some things that in the past would have created havoc 
in countries. They fired missiles in the direction of Japan two or 
three times, and shot a couple of them over Japan. Here is a sovereign 
nation having a missile fired over their territory. They don't know 
what that missile is carrying or what it could do to their country if 
it came down. That is as close to

[[Page 15934]]

an aggressive act as I think you can get without hitting somebody.
  And now they have announced to us specifically and to the world in 
general that they are going to test one of their longer-range missiles 
by firing it at Hawaii, a State in this Union. They could just as well 
be firing it at Idaho, or Alaska, or Texas, or Georgia or Maine. A 
sovereign State of this Nation--they have told us that they are going 
to fire a missile in that direction, basically at that State.
  Now they are pompous and blowhards, but we don't know what they are 
really going to do. And we do know that they have tested nuclear 
weapons very recently, so they have nuclear capability.
  Why do I bring these things up in relationship to the atmosphere 
created in this House by the failure of leadership to address issues 
that are part of draining the swamp? It is because I am going to make 
the argument that what has gone on in this House in the conversation 
between our Speaker and the CIA about who is telling the truth and who 
is not has a direct influence on these two Sunday morning news stories 
and others. Because yes, we folks sitting around the breakfast table, 
we get our information about what is going on in the world from the 
press. But you better hope, and having been a trial judge and told 
juries this for 20 years, you better hope that somebody is getting 
better information than what is in the press. And no offense to the 
press, but let's face it; they get it wrong once in awhile. And what we 
depend on is an intelligence system that doesn't get it wrong. We 
depend on an intelligence system that when they come to us and tell us 
that this is what our intelligence tells us, we feel that is fairly 
reliable news. We can't disclose it because it is top secret, but we 
can depend on our intelligence officials to come forward and give us 
information.
  Now we have had this issue of enhanced interrogation of prisoners 
that has been an ongoing issue throughout the election, and now that 
the Democrats are in charge it continues to be, that we are a torturing 
Nation. Some people label it as torture and some people label it as 
enhanced interrogation. Whatever you call it, there was an issue 
whether or not the members of the Intelligence Committee of this House 
were informed about this when they started to do it.
  Now those Members that have had the opportunity to speak have 
indicated, and that which was not top secret, that there were briefings 
on this issue. The Speaker of the House has said they are lying, I was 
never told about these enhanced interrogations. And she has repeated 
that until she realized, which we pointed out on the floor of the 
House, that lying to the United States Congress is a crime. Here is the 
statute: Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever in any 
manner within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or 
judicial branches of the Government of the United States, knowingly and 
willfully falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or 
device a material fact, makes any material, false, fictitious, 
fraudulent statement or representation, or makes or uses any false 
writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false or 
fictitious fraudulent statement or entry, shall be fined under this 
title, imprisoned not more than 5 years if the offense involves 
international or domestic terrorism, as defined in section 2331, 
imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an 
offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, of section 1591, then 
the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more 
than 8 years.
  Without going off on what is in these other sections, what this says, 
under our criminal law of the Federal Government, if you are lying 
about a material fact, and there can be nothing more material than the 
functions of our Intelligence Committee and our intelligence community 
and their relationship and whether or not something happened, and to 
accuse them of being unreliable and lying is accusing them of a crime.
  By this accusation, by saying they didn't tell the truth, they never 
briefed me, she is accusing those people who did that, made that 
statement that we briefed of committing a crime. It may be a crime that 
only puts you in prison for 5 years and gives you a fine, or it could 
carry over to whatever these sections pertain to to carry it up to 8 
years, or it could be as little as, what was the lowest, 4 years? I 
guess 5. Whatever it is, whatever the time, that incarceration for that 
period of time is serious incarceration. This is a serious accusation. 
These are serious contentions by the Speaker when she says: They didn't 
do that, they are lying.
  They are lying to you, they are lying to the Congress, they are lying 
to the press. But most importantly, they are lying to Congress.
  Now that is an issue that we should be concerned about because not 
just we need it resolved, and that is what I keep raising. I have been 
a judge in this country for 20 years, and its purpose is to resolve 
issues. My question is, who is going to resolve this issue? This issue 
needs to be resolved. Why does it need to be resolved? I gave you two 
examples: North Korea and Iran. Two hotspots boiling up. We are getting 
information. We should be, I assume we are getting, information from 
our intelligence community. If they are liars, can we trust them? Can 
we put the security of Hawaii on the shoulders of our intelligence 
community and trust their report as to whether or not there is a 
nuclear warhead on that missile that they have said they are going to 
fire at Hawaii? Can we, after the Speaker's accusations, trust this 
community? That's the question that I think we ought to be asking 
ourselves.
  And once again, the 50th time I have probably said this in the last 6 
weeks, what I am asking for is a place, someone to resolve these 
issues. And I have raised this resolution. The Speaker is the leader. 
She is the leader of this House, and she needs to resolve this issue. 
This is putting a crimp in our intelligence community. If I am an agent 
and I am reporting and I get accused of lying, I face criminal 
prosecution. And intelligence at its best is, like every other human 
endeavor, it has its flaws.
  So once again, failure to show the leadership that it takes to 
resolve issues causes consequences we can't imagine until they look us 
in the face. And that is what I wanted to talk about here tonight. We 
have talked about the issues with Mr. Rangel and the Rangel rule. And 
we have talked about issues of other Members of this Congress: Ms. 
Waters, Mollohan, Murtha, Visclosky, and all those guys. And I have 
talked about those issues and I have said, I don't know whether these 
accusations are true or not, but somebody needs to resolve them. If we 
are draining the swamp, someone needs to resolve those issues. If there 
is a lie going on to Congress and we are draining the swamp, somebody 
needs to drain that part of the swamp that has to do with this lie. 
That is what this is about. That is all I am trying to do. I am raising 
the question for you Members of this House and for the American public 
to think about.
  What about this culture of corruption that obviously seems to be 
here? What about this issue of lying? It needs to be resolved. The 
security of our Nation is at stake.
  I am not here by myself, and I have been talking way too long without 
recognizing a really good friend who has come down here to have a 
friendly visit about some of these issues that are unresolved, Phil 
Gingrey from Georgia, one of my classmates and a good, close personal 
friend. And I yield to Mr. Gingrey.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman 
from Texas, Judge Carter, yielding to me.
  As the gentleman points out, this is a very, very serious time to be 
on the floor speaking to all of our colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle, and Representative Carter and myself and others on our side of 
the aisle, as we bring these concerns to our fellow Members, Madam 
Speaker, it is not something that we do lightly. It is not something 
that we do lightly, and I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle 
understand that.

[[Page 15935]]

  We have all grown up with the little sayings, the aphorisms or adages 
that you hear from your parents, or maybe at school or church, things 
like, If you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw rocks. I 
remember my dad told me one time a story about Huey Long, the governor 
of Louisiana. I don't know whether it was in a reelection campaign or 
maybe even his first campaign for governor, he had a critic, maybe even 
an opponent in that race, a General Hugh Johnson, and General Hugh 
Johnson was awfully critical of Governor Huey Long and accused him of 
corruption and that sort of thing. Huey Long said to General Hugh 
Johnson something to the effect that, Don't criticize a speck in my eye 
if you have a plank in your own. In fact, Madam Speaker, that may be in 
Proverbs in the Bible as well. Maybe that is where Governor Huey Long 
got that from. But the point is you are reluctant, aren't we, we are 
reluctant to bring criticism against our colleagues knowing that we are 
not perfect. No one, indeed, is; except the one true Savior.
  So it is a very serious thing when we come and express concern on the 
House floor about the action of our colleagues. But yet we are here 
tonight. We are obviously here tonight, and we are speaking about that. 
Judge Carter, Madam Speaker, started off talking about the seriousness 
of the consequences of our integrity or lack of integrity as he talked 
about what happened years ago, and I remember it, too, in regard to the 
Korean Conflict, and then brought us into current time and talked about 
what is going on in North Korea now and what is going on in Iran.
  The intelligence that we receive about things that are really bad 
things occurring across the globe has got to be wisdom, and it has got 
to be honest. You can't modify those two terms and say it is 
conventional wisdom or it is relative honesty. Wisdom and honesty don't 
have modifiers. It is either wisdom or it is not. It is either honest 
and truthful or it is not.
  So as Judge Carter talks about this situation with our distinguished 
Speaker of the House of Representatives in regard to whether or not 
what she said about the CIA was honest and truthful, or whether the CIA 
was honest and truthful in regard to their response, in fact John 
Podesta, I think, basically said, Look, the CIA spoke the truth.

                              {time}  2100

  The consequences, Madam Speaker, are so serious to this Nation, and 
indeed, to the world, that it is important. If you ask any citizen of 
this country and you say, ``Who do you think you depend on most to tell 
the truth, would it be the Speaker of the House or the Director of the 
Central Intelligence Agency?'' I'm not sure how most people would 
respond, Madam Speaker. I'm not sure how I would respond. You expect 
both of them, at that level of government, to be honest and truthful.
  So it is disturbing to me as a Member of the House of 
Representatives, it's disturbing to me as a citizen of this country, as 
a dad, as a granddad, as a husband, as a father, to find out that maybe 
the Central Intelligence Agency is not telling the truth. And even 
worse than that, Madam Speaker, that possibly there is a pattern of the 
Central Intelligence Agency not telling the truth. That is just about 
as frightening a concept as you can possibly imagine.
  What can we rely on? Should we have done what we did in Operation 
Enduring Freedom in regard to taking out al Qaeda and the Taliban and 
that regime change back in 2001, 2002 before Representative Carter and 
I became Members of the Congress?
  You know, it's a very, very disturbing thing, and that's why we're 
here tonight. And again, it is painful, but I'm not standing up here, 
Madam Speaker, I'm not standing up here saying that our Speaker, the 
Speaker, the first female Speaker in the history of this body who is 
now serving her third year as Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
I'm not saying that she was dishonest. I just simply am here to say we 
need to know, the American people need to know. And if the CIA lied 
once, even, but certainly if there was a pattern of giving misleading 
information to members of the Select Committees on Intelligence, then 
we've got some serious problems, Madam Speaker, we have some serious 
problems, and something needs to be done about that and needs to be 
done right now. Because, as Judge Carter was saying, these things that 
are going on in Iran, in North Korea, and in other parts of the world, 
this can't wait. If we've got a problem, we need to solve this right 
now. So that's why we're here tonight.
  And again, I appreciate my colleague from Texas for doing this gutsy 
thing because he's not perfect, Madam Speaker, and I'm not perfect. And 
again, I may have a little speck in my eye, you know, and the house I 
live in may have too much glass in it, but on the other hand, if we see 
things, and again, I'm not suggesting anybody--certainly not suggesting 
that our Speaker, the Speaker was lying, but if there's a problem, it 
needs to be brought forward for the betterment of this body. We owe 
that to the American people. We owe that to the American people.
  Unfortunately, Madam Speaker, it seems that our House Committee on 
Standards of Official Conduct, the Ethics Committee, has been 
dysfunctional since the day I came here 7 years ago. I'm in my fourth 
term, Madam Speaker, and that body has been dysfunctional since the day 
I came here. It's supposed to be bipartisan. You have five members of 
each party, and yet we seem to be just sweeping things under the rug 
and not addressing problems like we should.
  I'm going to yield back to the gentleman who controls the time here 
in just a second, but the point is just exactly what he said at the 
outset, Madam Speaker. I remember it so painfully well, because back in 
2006, when we Republicans still were in the majority, I mean, every 
day, every evening during Special Order hours the then minority party, 
the Democrats, just pounded, pounded over and over again what they 
called a ``culture of corruption.'' And we did, on our side of the 
aisle, Madam Speaker, have a few Members--thank God not many, but three 
or four. That is too many, of course. One is too many--that were not 
conducting themselves in the manner that this House demands, that the 
sanctity of this House demands.
  And by campaigning on that, along with, of course, the unpopularity 
of a prolonged conflict in Iraq and too much spending, absolutely too 
much spending, but of course it seems like a penny ante compared to 
what's going on now, but it caused us to lose our majority status, 
Madam Speaker, and it's painful. It's painful to find ourselves in this 
situation and to think that, Madam Speaker, and the Democratic minority 
at the time talked about, Ladies and gentlemen of the United States, 
you give us an opportunity, you let us control, and we will drain the 
swamp. We will end this culture of corruption.
  And here again, I am mighty disappointed. We're not seeing any end to 
the culture of corruption, and it seems like more and more is being 
swept under the rug. And it shouldn't happen on either side of the 
aisle, and so that is why we're here. Again, it's painful, and we're 
not trying to hurt anybody. We're just trying to help the American 
people.
  And I yield back to my colleague from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. And I thank my friend.
  Let me say first, not being a Biblical scholar, but that's from The 
Sermon on the Mount. Jesus talks about trying to get the cinder out of 
your neighbor's eye before you take the plank out of your eye. And 
that's fine.
  I know that most everybody thinks this is a very contentious place, 
and so when people start talking about these things, they think, oh, 
it's that same old stuff. I want you to know that the announced date of 
the firing of that rocket by North Korea is Independence Day, July 4. 
That is the day they say they are going to shoot a rocket at Hawaii.
  Now, I'm assuming that the White House and the Select Committees on 
Intelligence of the House and Senate are very, very interested in 
knowing

[[Page 15936]]

accurate information about what's going to be on the nose of that 
rocket when it's fired because, quite frankly, if you want to restart 
the Korean War, how spectacular could it be that they will have an 
armed missile fired at one of our States and then invade across the 
38th parallel. It could be disastrous.
  Now, that's not my imagination working. It's happened before. I mean, 
the invasion took place. That's what started the Korean War. They've 
got one of the largest armies in the world. They're saying that they 
have canceled the armistice. Now, under technical rules of war, 
canceling an armistice reinstates the war. We're not treating it that 
way because regular rules of war kind of have been changed, not by 
what's written in the books but by usage. So we never really called it 
a war. We called it a conflict and so forth, like we've done in so many 
other things we do. But the reality is they said the armistice is off, 
which means that we should be technically back fighting. They said 
they're going to fire a missile on our Independence Day, the 4th of 
July.
  Now, why do I bring that up? Because by my watch, this is the 23rd 
day of June. We've got to be able to trust our Intelligence Committee 
and our intelligence community in, what? That's the next 10 days. In 
the next 10 days we have to be able to have that confidence in them. 
And we've already got the third person in line for the Presidency of 
the United States telling this body that the intelligence community 
lied about what they said about a briefing.
  Now, you know what? I'll even give you the way it could be handled. I 
mean, this place is full of things that go on that are very confusing. 
It could be: I made a mistake. I didn't understand the briefing. Yeah, 
I heard it, but I didn't realize what he was saying. There's lots of 
things to be said. But to sit here with this--it's trying to just go 
away. The President isn't talking about it anymore so it will just go 
away. But it's not going to go away if, on the 4th of July and the 
missile is on its way, we have the decision to make, do we take it 
down, shoot down that missile as it heads towards Hawaii, which it 
probably can't get there, but if it can, do we shoot it down or do we 
let it fall in the ocean and take our chances? Or do we let it fall on 
one of the islands in Hawaii and take our chances? Or what are we going 
to do?
  Intelligence community, how safe do you think that launch is? They 
give us the facts. Now, the meeting is behind closed doors and somebody 
says, Well, yeah, they tell us it's got a nuclear warhead on it. But 
they lied to Pelosi. Are they lying to us? Do we want that? Is that 
good governance of this country?
  And the reason you have to raise this issue is because there's so 
much politics that's involved around this. It's all about politics as 
well as what really happened. And at this point, with somebody 
announcing on the 4th of July they're firing a long-range missile, 
you've got to put politics aside at that point in time and say, Trust 
the community. They don't lie, because they're usually going to tell us 
what is happening with that missile. That's my whole thinking of this 
deal.
  And the truth is, what I've been trying to talk about since day one 
of this conversation I've had when I brought up the Rangel rule and all 
these other things, is that if we, as Members of this House, have 
questions that we think need to be resolved, we have only one place to 
go, and that's to our colleagues in this House and say, These issues 
need to be resolved.
  If there is nothing to them, we need to find out there's nothing to 
them, but they need to be resolved. And if you're draining the swamp, 
that means you're going to address issues as they come up. If something 
stinks over in this part of the swamp, you drain that swamp and find 
out what's stinking. That's what she meant when she said ``draining the 
swamp.''
  Now, we pointed out parts of the swamp which our colleagues on the 
other side seem to be dwelling in right now, by accusation only, by 
press accusation. Let's clear those people's names. If there's nothing 
in that swamp, let's drain it. Let's find out. And that's the 
responsibility of the leadership of the majority and that's the 
responsibility of the Ethics Committee, and that's why we keep talking 
about those ethical issues.
  Unfortunately, there may be more. We have to be prepared to do what 
we promised the American people, and the first thing we need to address 
is this issue of whether or not the community was lying to the American 
people.
  I see we are joined by my good friend and loyal stalwart who always 
shows up when he sees me all by myself with Phil on the floor, my 
friend Steve King from Iowa.
  I will yield to you whatever time you would like to have, Mr. King.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas for yielding and for 
also organizing this Special Order, and the gentleman doctor from 
Georgia as well, who has been persistent and relentless here standing 
up for truth, justice, and the American way, and fiscal responsibility, 
constitutionality.
  And as I'm reading The Washington Post language, the statement that 
came from our Speaker on November 8, 2006, ``The American people voted 
to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats 
intend to lead the most honest, the most ethical, and the most, 
perhaps, moral Congress in history.'' And ``the most honest, most open, 
and most ethical Congress in history'' is that language.
  I heard that constant drub of criticism that was coming here for 
several years. The 30s group came down here to the floor almost every 
night and made those kind of allegations. And I was looking at people 
over on this side of the aisle that were clearly committed to this 
cause and people that I would trust with everything I have, working 
hard, struggling to represent the American people. They took that kind 
of criticism, and some of the American people bought that kind of 
promise.

                              {time}  2115

  But today they know different. Today they know this Congress doesn't 
meet that standard.
  The other statement here on National Public Radio: ``Under strong 
attack from Republicans, House Speaker Pelosi accused the CIA and Bush 
administration of misleading her about waterboarding detainees in the 
war on terrorism.''
  Again: ``They mislead us all the time. I was fighting the war in Iraq 
at that point too, you know.''
  Not really. Not really, Mr. Speaker. Here's what I remember. I 
remember when Speaker Pelosi grasped the gavel up here in January of 
2007, and from that point in that Congress, she led at least 45 votes 
here on the floor of the House of Representatives that were designed to 
either unfund, underfund, or undermine our troops. And that's all a 
matter of record. It's all on a spreadsheet in my office, and I can lay 
it all into this Congressional Record, and actually I probably put it 
all into the Congressional Record at one point or another. But this 
isn't fighting the war in Iraq. She was fighting against the war in 
Iraq. And the goal was to get our troops out of there, declare defeat, 
and bring disgrace down upon the Bush administration for whatever that 
motive might be. But it was clear in the rhetoric that came that it 
wasn't in support of victory in Iraq, but every move, all 45 votes, as 
a matter of Congressional Record, undermined our troops.
  And yet President Bush issued the surge order, and the surge strategy 
has clearly been a success. I traveled to Iraq with the gentleman from 
Texas, and I recall some real hot days over there. And I can remember 
that there was a time when we couldn't go to places like Ramadi or 
Fallujah because they were too dangerous, and I can remember coming 
back 6 months later and going shopping in Ramadi. And I can remember 
coming back a little later and meeting with the mayor of Fallujah, who 
declared Fallujah to be a city of peace. This all happened because of 
the nobility and the sacrifice and the courage and the bravery and the 
dedication of our U.S. military.
  And you cannot talk about our military without talking about the 
Commander in Chief, and it was President

[[Page 15937]]

Bush who gave the order. And now we have reached this point where we 
have achieved as a Nation a definable victory in Iraq. And it's 
definable in a lot of ways, but it wasn't because of this quote that 
we're reading here about the Speaker fighting the war in Iraq at that 
point too, you know. No. She was fighting against it here on this 
floor, and it's a matter of record, and that point can't be allowed to 
pass.
  So what has been achieved is a definable victory that's there. The 
ethnosectarian deaths have dropped 98 percent from their top. The 
civilian deaths have dropped 90 percent. Our American casualties there 
over the last year, and my data will be brought up to date on the 30th 
of this month, but as of the last day of June last year, and I pray to 
God that we don't have any more casualties there for all time, but the 
roughly accidental deaths in Iraq to Americans are roughly equivalent 
to those deaths that are hostile deaths, categorized as hostile deaths.
  Now, that is a very good statistic if you are looking at war zone 
statistics. If you are at as great a risk from getting killed in a 
rollover of your Humvee as you are by the enemy, there has been a lot 
of progress that's been made there; a lot of progress made in the local 
governments with free elections. They've had a number of free elections 
and ratified a constitution. The last election they had was at least as 
peaceful as our last election and probably at least as legitimate as 
our last election as well. I think there is a lot to be celebrated in 
Iraq in the Middle East.
  And I didn't mean to divert from the subject matter, but I think we 
should raise up to the CIA subject and ask what about the national 
security of the United States of America when the Speaker of the House 
declares those who are briefing her up in the secure room on the fourth 
floor to be a group of felonious liars that have continually, according 
to her, misled the Congress of the United States of America and lied to 
the Speaker of the House. And why would the Speaker go back up and be 
briefed again by people that she declared to be liars, and how could 
anyone separate the CIA from the other 14 members of the intelligence 
community? Would anyone actually go brief the Speaker after they had 
been declared to be a liar, summarily declared to be a liar, with no 
evidence, with no proof, simply an allegation?
  Now, in this country if you believe that someone is not telling the 
truth, you don't raise that subject. You just accept what they say 
without challenging them unless you can prove they're wrong. That's the 
way it is in a Western Christiandom, as Winston Churchill declared 
Western Civilization. And I believe it's rooted in the Book of John 
when Christ stood before the high priest Caiaphas and Caiaphas said, 
Did you really do those things? Did you really preach these things? And 
Jesus said, Ask them. They were there. This all happened openly. And 
the guard struck Jesus for his insolent answer, supposedly. And Jesus 
said, If I speak wrongly, then you must prove the wrong, but if I speak 
rightly, why do you strike me?
  If someone speaks wrongly, the one who challenges their integrity has 
the responsibility to prove they're wrong. Jesus said that to the high 
priest. The least we could do is ask the same standard of our Speaker 
to prove the wrong of the CIA.
  And this will not go away. We cannot tolerate a situation where 
there's a mistrust between the highest levels of intelligence-gathering 
services in the United States of America that gather the intelligence 
information, that direct our military, our overt and our covert 
operations, and that go in and preempt terrorist strikes against 
Americans and other free people in the world and to have them 
intimidated by an allegation of telling a lie, which would be a felony, 
and there's a specific section in the code punishable by 8 years in the 
Federal penitentiary if a member of the intelligence community should 
lie to the United States Congress. And there it is: title XVIII, U.S. 
Code 1001, 8 years in the penitentiary for that. It's very specific.
  So this has got to stop. It's got to be resolved. And this Congress 
has got to bring it to a head.
  I appreciate the gentleman from Texas for having this Special Order 
and raising these issues, an opportunity to echo this out to the 
American people.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend.
  Now I yield again to my friend from Georgia. He seems like he has 
something he wants to say.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Of course I appreciate the gentleman's 
yielding, and once again I appreciate his having the courage, as well 
as the courage of my colleague from Iowa, Representative Steve King, to 
come to the floor and to talk about issues like this. As I said earlier 
in my remarks, it's very painful, very hard to do, but it is something 
that has to be done.
  If the CIA, as I said before, if they are lying to someone who is 
third in line to the President, the Speaker of the House, and there's a 
pattern of that lying, we have got some serious problems. And it would 
seem to me that something of this magnitude would rise to the level of 
an Iran Contra issue or, indeed, a Watergate issue where you absolutely 
have to know who's lying, who knew what and when and who's telling the 
truth and who is not telling the truth. And we all know the 
consequences of those actions.
  Again, I'm not suggesting, Mr. Speaker, that our Speaker, the 
Speaker, has lied. In my earlier remarks this evening, I misstated 
something. I said John Podesta. John Podesta is not the Director of the 
CIA. That's Leon Panetta. So we all have senior moments. I'm maybe a 
little older than the Speaker. I certainly look older. She's a very 
attractive Speaker, as we all know. But she could have had a senior 
moment in regard to this.
  And, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, don't you know that after this 
happened and she said that, don't you know that there was a meeting of 
the powers that be with the Speaker and with the CIA, with the Director 
of the CIA, and information was presented which would have shown that 
she either misspoke or didn't misspeak. And if she misspoke, how 
simple, Mr. Speaker, how simple it would have been to just say, ladies 
and gentlemen, not of the Congress, not of the House of 
Representatives, but more importantly ladies and gentlemen of the 
country, I was wrong about that. I didn't deliberately lie. I was just 
wrong about that. I didn't remember. I didn't remember that briefing. 
Or the opposite, that the CIA was wrong and didn't inform. And that 
puts the issue to rest.
  Mr. Speaker, that's all our minority leader, the gentleman from Ohio, 
John Boehner, the respected leader of the Republican House conference, 
that's all he said that should be done. Let's get to the bottom of this 
thing, put it to rest, and tell the truth. The truth will always serve 
you well, and the truth is not painful.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, I don't want to keep belaboring this 
issue, but I think somebody ought to be thinking about it before they 
light the first firecracker on the 4th of July, that we have a country 
that has basically said as far as they are concerned they're back at 
war with us, telling us they're going to fire a missile at one of our 
50 States and they're going to do it on the 4th of July.
  Now, let's assume that we are going to get some intelligence on that. 
Let's start off with them saying it doesn't carry a warhead, let it go 
forward. And then the man that's going to have to make the decision is 
going to be the President of the United States. This is not a decision 
you do by committee. That's why we have an executive branch. He will 
collect that data, and then the question is do we shoot it down. We're 
pretty sure it doesn't carry a nuclear missile. But somewhere in the 
back of his mind he says, wait a minute. Wait a minute. They lied to 
Nancy Pelosi. How do I know they haven't done their work and they're 
telling me this to feel good about it? Maybe there is a missile on 
board. Or he thinks, I don't know what to do because I don't know 
whether I can trust my intelligence.
  But he knows that the firing of our missile, which, by the way, 
according to my friend Trent Franks, we have got missiles that can take 
this thing

[[Page 15938]]

down. So let's assume we execute one of those and we bring it down. And 
the North Koreans say, that's it, act of war, and here they come 
swarming across the 38th parallel into South Korea and they are 
marching that 80 miles to Seoul. And we get accused of starting a war. 
Or worst case scenario say, well, we can't trust the intelligence, 
don't shoot it down, and it hits the big island of Hawaii and goes 
boom. And now we're in it, and it's nuclear or maybe less than nuclear. 
Who knows. The point of this conversation is intelligence matters.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. CARTER. I yield.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. I thank the gentleman.
  We were just before the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, submitting an 
amendment to the Defense Authorization Act of 2010, our National 
Defense Authorization Act, something like $525 billion. But $1.2 
billion, as the gentleman from Texas was alluding to, was cut from the 
missile defense program. It was cut from the missile defense program at 
a time when Kim Jong Il is firing missiles and testing nuclear weapons, 
violating the nuclear test ban treaty. And our intelligence is telling 
us, as the gentleman from Texas just said, that these ballistic 
missiles that they're testing could reach Hawaii. Well, we are getting 
that information, Mr. Speaker, not necessarily from the CIA but from 
all of our intelligence agencies. Heck, there are 16 of them, and most 
of them are within the Department of Defense. The Defense Intelligence 
Agency is an example.
  And, of course, we have a National Intelligence Director, which was 
insisted upon by the 9/11 Commission and the families of the victims. 
So, you know, it seems now to me, Mr. Speaker, that we are kind of 
getting a little loosey-goosey about all this stuff and thinking gosh, 
you know, the Speaker of the House said that the CIA lies. You can't 
trust them. So maybe that's why we are so ready to cut missile defense. 
We don't believe the intelligence.
  Mr. CARTER. All the time she says they lie. All the time. It's not 
just this instance. Her statement was they lie to us all the time.
  Mr. King.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.
  You've raised a scenario here that disturbs me a great deal about 
what happens to the indecision when you don't trust your intelligence 
community because of an allegation that's made by the person that's 
third in line from the President of the United States. This isn't 
somebody sitting on a street corner somewhere. This is the person third 
in line to the President of the United States. The indecision that 
could come because of the doubt that's been planted, and every day that 
goes by there's no doubt because it's not resolved.
  Let me submit another way that this hurts America's security beyond 
this point that you made, Judge, about the indecision that could allow 
a missile to land and hit the United States or to do an early strike, 
because we don't really know. But here's another scenario.

                              {time}  2130

  This cloud has been cast over the intelligence community, and it 
echoes over the top of our entire defense network that's there. There 
are people in this Capitol that work to please the Speaker, and many of 
them are staff.
  And these are staff that are on committee. They are the Speaker's 
staff. They are in a position to write these bills in the middle of the 
night that get dropped on us about the time that the rooster crows in 
the morning. And then we are to figure out what's in them and what's 
not in them on a closed rule or a modified closed rule, and the Rules 
Committee deciding the debate now is in the Rules Committee.
  And so we don't even get any debate here on the floor on the $1.2 
billion, an opportunity to put people on the record--we may not, I 
think we probably will not, at least get that vote, but to put people 
on record and find out what this Congress thinks the collective wisdom 
of the American people is to be reflected here. And we can see the 
funding for the defense intelligence all the way across the board 
systematically and summarily undermined and reduced by staff people who 
are protected because we can't even offer the amendments here on floor, 
who are seeking to please the Speaker because she has made a comment 
into the record.
  And how do you fix that lack of trust? It undermines the resources, I 
believe, going into the intelligence community that's there, and it 
causes others to look more critically upon the intelligence group all 
together with the CIA and others, which undermines the support of the 
public, undermines the support of Congress and undermines the resources 
that they will have to use.
  And if we have people whose lives are out there on the line every 
day, and we do, they have got to be questioning themselves as to why do 
they do this. Do they really want to put themselves up for this kind of 
scrutiny, this kind of allegation. And if I were Leon Panetta, and if I 
was seeking to send somebody up here to brief the Speaker, I don't 
think you would ask for volunteers, because I don't think you would get 
any.
  I think that has to be a direct order from the CIA. If you like your 
job, brief the Speaker. You might have it when you are done.
  Mr. CARTER. As much as we don't want to get off process, so everybody 
is clear, let's put it this way: If you are listening to what we are 
talking about here today and you would like for us to have this 
addressed by the Members of the House, it takes the ability under the 
rules to raise the issue. And if we have what they call a closed rule 
or a modified closed rule, where only certain agreed-to amendments to a 
bill can come forward, we hate to talk about process, but that's how we 
are prevented from asking the questions that I would hope that many of 
the people that might be watching this would say somebody ought to ask 
the whole House about this.
  Do we need that missile defense Mr. Gingrey mentioned? I kind of 
think we do. I would like my Member of Congress to do something about 
that. Maybe they might even go to the trouble to write their Member of 
Congress and say I would like to see you vote on this, vote in favor of 
it. But how are they going to see it if we are closed off from even 
offering it on this beloved floor, which is, of course, this sacred 
people's House. And that's why we think the rules ought to be open.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Just briefly, that is exactly right, that 
people in these 435 congressional districts, Republican or Democrat, 
they need to know how their Member would vote on an issue such as that, 
something that important to this country in this time, they need an 
opportunity to hear that debate on this floor. You know, up or down, 
they need to know how their Member votes, and the point made by the 
gentleman from Texas is absolutely on target, and I just wanted to 
emphasize that.
  Mr. CARTER. I think most everybody understands that these bills that 
come before this Congress have sometimes a thousand, well you saw the 
one John Boehner dropped on the floor--it's about that thick.
  I mean, they have got thousands of pages of things in them. So how 
you vote on a bill doesn't necessarily tell you what's in the weeds, 
like a couple of million dollars for missile defense, a couple billion 
dollars for missile defense. It doesn't tell you that. And if it's not 
discussed, you don't know and there is not any way we can tell you.
  That's why the openness of this House is so important, why an open 
rule is so important.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I think I am 
watching the clock tick down here, and I will just conclude in a couple 
of minutes.
  But as I said, I just came from the Rules Committee. And there is 
really not room in there for a tripod and a camera and not really room 
for the press to operate the way they need to, and there is not room 
there for staff to come and make sure they are there to run the errands 
we need.

[[Page 15939]]

  I know the gentleman from Georgia knows this very well. He served on 
the Rules Committee. It occurs to me that if the debate is where the 
rules will take place in this Congress, let's move the Rules Committee 
down to the floor of the House of Representatives. And let's elect the 
members of the Rules Committee from the full House and let's make sure 
they are equally represented between Republicans and Democrats and put 
the C-SPAN cameras on them and have an opportunity to have a full-
throated debate on every amendment that would be offered to the Rules 
Committee as if this were actually the full House.
  Because they are functioning, with the function of the House of 
Representatives in the Rules Committee, we have got to turn the 
sunlight on what's going on up there. Either that, or we are going to 
have to go back to the open rule process that has been the long-
standing tradition here in the United States Congress. This is 
unprecedented to see the systematic destruction of deliberative 
democracy taking place up there on the third floor out of sight of the 
public eye.
  Mr. CARTER. Well, we have raised a lot of issues, we have talked 
about a lot of things. I think we expressed our personal concern about 
this issue of the veracity of our CIA and whether or not they have been 
lying to the Congress and to the Speaker of the House, the third most 
powerful person and the most important person in line for the 
presidency.
  These are issues, as the ethics issues we have raised previously, 
issues that have places they could be resolved, either in the 
leadership of this House or the Ethics Committee, they need to be 
resolved, Madam Speaker. We need these issues resolved, and I would 
finalize this argument by saying, especially this intelligence issue, 
before the world blows up in our face.
  I want to thank our colleagues for being here with us and for helping 
me with this today. And I really value their opinions, and I appreciate 
them expressing it.
  Now, we will yield back the balance of our time, Mr. Speaker.

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