[Congressional Record: September 3, 2002 (Senate)]
[Page S8052-S8078]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr03se02-22]
HOMELAND SECURITY ACT OF 2002--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to
proceed under Senator Lieberman's time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
terrorism insurance
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have to believe that the President is not
getting the right information from his staff; otherwise, knowing him, I
cannot believe he would say some of the things he has said recently.
I was running yesterday morning, and on Public Radio I heard a
preview of the speech the President was going to give before a union in
Pennsylvania. And I thought they must have made a mistake. Then, later
in the day, I heard him complete that speech, and he went ahead just as
they had said on Public Radio.
As we consider homeland security and the measures we should take to
defend America, I think it is important we talk about terrorism
insurance. That is the issue I want to talk about. I believe the
President has not received the proper information from his staff.
Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
about a year ago, many American businesses have had trouble purchasing
affordable insurance covering acts of terrorism.
As a consequence, many construction projects and real estate
transactions have been delayed, interrupted, and in some cases
canceled. We are talking about billions of dollars worth of projects
that have been stalled, some terminated, solely because of the lack of
being able to purchase terrorism insurance.
These problems cost many American workers their jobs and prevent
businesses from being as productive as they could be. Clearly, the lack
of affordable terrorism insurance has had a harmful effect on our
Nation's already troubled economy.
I am glad we are back from our break and the President is back from
his vacation. However, as I have indicated, yesterday, the President
made some statements relating to terrorism insurance, about the need
for Congress to move forward on terrorism insurance, that simply were
without any fact.
As millions of students across the country go back to school, I want
them to understand that they must speak the truth. I repeat, I do not
think the President said what he said yesterday based upon full
knowledge of all the information.
The truth, Mr. President, is Senate Democrats--because I have been
here offering the unanimous consent request for months--have been
leading the effort to pass an effective terrorism insurance bill--and
we started on this last year--while Republicans have delayed and
attempted to thwart this important legislation time after time. The
President should know that. The leadership in the Congress of his party
has not allowed us to go forward on this legislation.
One of the statements he made before the union is: I am for hard
hats, not trial lawyers.
This is terrorism insurance. We should move it forward. I am
confident everyone can see through these statements the President made
as being without fact.
I want to remind him and the people who give him advice--give him
good information, good background information so he can speak with the
full knowledge of the facts.
We are eager to pass terrorism insurance. We have done everything
within our power to do that. This would help workers, businesses, and
the Nation's economy.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks last year, our colleagues--
Senators Dodd, Sarbanes, and Schumer--developed a strong bill to help
businesses get the affordable terrorism insurance they badly need.
When we attempted to move this bill last December, the minority
voiced no fundamental disagreement with the bill but argued over the
number of amendments to be offered. This was done in an effort to
prevent us from moving forward on this legislation. So we could not do
it in December. We came right back and started on it. After having had
many private attempts to get this legislation moving, we decided to go
public and try to move it from the floor, right from where I stand.
We tried offering in early spring unanimous consent agreements to
take up the terrorism insurance legislation. Again, there was no
objection to the base text or that the Dodd-Sarbanes-Schumer bill
should be the vehicle we would bring to the floor. They wanted some
amendments. We wanted to treat this as any other legislation. They said
let us agree on the number of amendments. Whatever number we came up
with wasn't appropriate. We could not move it. Finally, they simply
disagreed with bringing up the bill at all.
It is the right of the majority leader to decide which bills are
brought to the floor. If the minority is opposed, they have the right
to offer amendments and attempt to modify the text of the bill. We have
offered to bring the bill up with amendments on each side so everyone
could have the opportunity to make changes.
Nevertheless, the minority continued to object and further prevented
us from passing the terrorism insurance legislation.
In April, the importance of the terrorism insurance legislation was
enunciated by Secretary O'Neill in his testimony before the
Appropriations Committee that the lack of terrorism insurance could
cost America 1 percent of the GDP because major projects would not be
able to get financing.
Finally, we were able to get an agreement that we could bring the
bill to the floor. We passed the legislation. And then came weeks and
weeks of more stalling by the minority. We could not get agreement on
appointing conferees. We attempted and attempted and attempted. First,
they were upset because the ratio was 3 to 2, which is fairly standard.
They said they wanted 4 to 3. So we came back
[[Page S8053]]
and said OK, and they still would not agree.
Finally, we were able to get agreement on the appointment of
conferees. But now nothing is happening in the conference. We cannot do
that alone. So I hope the record is clear. I know we refer to ``the
people downtown''--that is, the government representatives, the
lobbyists who are concerned about this issue, the real estate and hotel
owners, and these special interest groups. They know how we have tried
to move this legislation. I only hope the people who have lost their
jobs and are unable to move forward--these people in Pennsylvania
yesterday who were told we are holding this up--understand that simply
is not the truth.
So I certainly hope this legislation can be completed and we can have
a bill sent to the President. It is the right thing to do. The
legislation is important, and I hope we can do it sooner rather than
later.
I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the
time be charged equally to both sides.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk
will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I yield 15 minutes of my time now to
the Senator from Illinois who, I might say parenthetically, has been an
extraordinarily thoughtful, constructive participant in the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee's consideration of the question of
homeland security and, in that sense, has contributed mightily to the
proposal we will put before the Chamber tonight. I am glad to yield 15
minutes to Senator Durbin.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank Chairman Lieberman for his
leadership on the Governmental Affairs Committee. I think the record
demonstrates that before the President called for the creation of a
Department of Homeland Security, our committee, the Governmental
Affairs Committee of the Senate, under Senator Lieberman's leadership,
proposed a law to create such a Department.
At the time, it is interesting because it was on a partisan roll
call, if I remember correctly, nine Democrats for it, seven Republicans
against it. We argued that a question of this magnitude, a challenge of
this gravity, required a separate Department at that moment in time.
Neither the President nor his loyal followers in the Senate were
prepared to join us in that effort.
So I salute Senator Lieberman for his leadership, and I am happy now
that we have reached the point where we are speaking again, as we
should when it comes to our Nation's defense, in a bipartisan manner. I
hope that as we proceed to the debate on this bill, we can gather
together again that same bipartisan force.
There is nothing that says Congress or the Senate have to agree on
everything and, frankly, if we did, it would probably betray the
principles and values of this Nation. But when it comes to our national
security and defense, particularly the creation of a Department of this
magnitude, I think it is all well and good that when the debate ends,
we do try to find some common ground.
Our Government simply has to change and adapt to the challenge of
international terrorism. A reorganization of this magnitude is not
going to be simple--it is going to take some time--but this Congress is
up to the task. Throughout our history, from 1789 when the first
Congress created the first executive branch Departments of State, War,
and Treasury, to 1988 when the latest Department, the Department of
Veterans Affairs, was created, Congress has worked to make sure the
Government was organized to do the job the American people asked of it.
Protecting our Nation's people is our highest priority. On March 15,
2001, almost 6 months before the attack on September 11, the U.S.
Commission on National Security/21st Century, known by the shorthand
name of the Hart-Rudman Commission, named after its co-chairmen the
distinguished former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, released a
report entitled ``Road Map For National Security: An Imperative For
Change.'' The Commission was, unfortunately, prescient in seeing the
vulnerability of the United States to terrorism. The No. 1
recommendation of the Hart-Rudman Commission was to create a Department
of Homeland Security.
It is worth quoting for the record some of the report that came out
of the Commission. It says, the combination of unconventional weapons
proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end
the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic
attack.
These words were written 6 months before September 11. They went on
in their report to recommend the creation of an independent national
homeland security agency, and they suggested there were some agencies
of Government which naturally would come under the roof and under the
authority of this new Department and quite effectively, or at least
more effectively, defend the United States.
The blueprint they laid out was really the basis for this bill we
have before us, the Senate version, the Governmental Affairs version,
from Senator Lieberman. The backbone of the new Department will be
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with the
Departments guarding our borders and our perimeter. This new Department
everyone sees as a way to protect our country more robustly.
Some have questioned, though, how a new Department and how
reorganizing Government will really make us any safer. Right now there
are more than 45 agencies in the Federal Government with some
responsibility for homeland security. If we look at it, it is just too
diffuse. It cannot be focused. It cannot be coordinated. In the words
of my friend and former House colleague, Gov. Tom Ridge, we are going
to, frankly, not have the force multipliers we need that organization
and coordination will bring.
Some of my colleagues have charged we are moving too quickly. Well, I
happen to agree with the premise that this race to enact this
legislation by September 11 of this year, on the 1-year anniversary of
that terrible disaster, was precipitous. It would have been a miracle
if we had been able to create a bill that quickly which would have
really met the task. It is better for us to take the additional time to
do it right. To meet some self-imposed deadline or some deadline
imposed by the press or our critics does not make a lot of sense when
we are talking about a Department that is going to be facing the
responsibility of protecting America for decades to come.
As a member of the committee, I want to report to our colleagues that
I think our committee has done its job. This does not mean we should
not debate the issue and deliberate on some alternatives and some
modifications. What we have before us is an effort, backed by
bipartisan work for many years under both Republican and Democrat
chairmen. This committee has held 18 hearings since last September 11
setting up this new Department. It is a committee that has held a
series of hearings over the last 4 or 5 years on the issues that are
involved.
I remind my colleagues that this extensive body of work of this
committee and its chairman allowed our committee to report out a bill
on May 22. Once the President decided he wanted a similar Department,
we tried to coordinate his intentions with our own. Realizing that all
wisdom does not reside in one branch of Government or the other, we
have listened to the President's suggestions. I am hopeful he will be
open to our own.
One of the things I included in this as an element that was of
particular personal interest related to the whole question of
information technology. The proposal to restructure 28 agencies into a
new, unified Homeland Security Department poses a complex challenge to
integrate the system's infrastructure of our information technology to
support the new Department's mission.
Let me get away from these high falutin' words, high sounding words,
and get back to the real world where I live, because I am not part of
this computer generation. I struggle with my own computers and e-mail
to try to be up to speed. In the amendment that I adopted, what we are
really saying to the Office of Management and Budget
[[Page S8054]]
is: We want you to have a special person, a special group, assigned the
responsibility to coordinate the architecture of the computers that are
supposed to be cooperating and working together in all of the different
intelligence agencies.
I am sorry to report to the Senate and to the people following this
debate that that does not exist today. In fact, it has been a very low
priority. If we look at the sorry state of affairs of computers at
agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we can certainly
understand the need for this amendment. Currently, each of the agencies
we expect to consolidate has its own separate information technology
budget and program--the Coast Guard, Customs, FEMA, INS, Secret
Service, Transportation Security Administration, and others. Each one
has a unique system that does not necessarily have the capacity to
communicate or coordinate these activities. Frankly, is that not what
this debate is all about, so that all the agencies of the Federal
Government will coordinate their resources, their authority, and their
wisdom into one unified effort to create the force multiplier that
Governor Ridge mentioned?
Because these divergent systems need to be linked, it is important to
ask key questions now to ensure this new Department will help the
agencies brought together and others outside to coordinate their
communication and share information. It is equally important to
establish appropriate links between the Homeland Security Department
and other agencies, such as the CIA, the National Security Agency, the
Department of Defense, the FBI, the State Department, and State and
local officials, which may not be embraced under the Homeland Security
Department's organizational umbrella.
Given the current state of affairs in the Federal information
technology systems reflected in incomprehensible delays in meeting
congressional mandates, I think this is long overdue. I will give two
illustrations of why this is timely.
Six years ago, Congress mandated the Customs Department and INS to
establish a database to record those exiting the United States with
visitor's visas. Those coming into the United States in many instances
need visas to be in the United States, and we thought we should keep
track of those who are leaving so we will know the net number of visa
holders in the United States, which can range in the tens of millions
at any given time.
Six years ago, Congress said to the INS: Keep track of people leaving
with a visa. Six years later, it is still not done. It has not been
accomplished. The inspector general at the Department of Justice tells
us it is years away.
So when Attorney General Ashcroft said, to make America safer, we are
going to take the fingerprints and photographs of all people coming
into the United States on a visa, I am sure people around America were
nodding their heads saying, I guess that is necessary; it is certainly
reasonable. Well, it is technologically impossible today to do it. We
do not have the computer capability to keep track of people leaving the
United States with a visa, let alone the millions coming into the
United States on visas.
So for the Attorney General to make that suggestion is to say that he
is going to go drill for oil on the Moon. It is not going to happen--
not until we come a long way from where we are today.
We also said, incidentally, to the FBI and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service: We notice that they both collect fingerprints.
Can they merge their databases so that law enforcement agencies across
the Federal Government, across the Nation, around the world, will have
access to a common database of fingerprints collected by the United
States? We asked them to do that 3 years ago. It still has not been
done.
So when it comes to information technology, do not delude yourself
into believing we are where we ought to be. We are not. The creation of
this Department and the amendment which Senator Lieberman and others
were happy to accept and said nice things about, I hope will move
forward in achieving that goal.
The enterprise architecture and resulting systems must be designed
for interoperability between many different agencies. I hope we get
this achieved quickly.
I have had a great deal of frustration, even anger, over the lack of
progress we have made since September 11. To have the new person in
charge of information technology from the FBI testify before the
Judiciary Committee saying it will be 2 years before the FBI is up to
speed with their computers is totally unacceptable. Members should not
stand for that one second. To think one can go to any computer store in
any major city in America and buy computers with better capability than
the computers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is shameful. That
exists today; it should change. This bill will be part of the change.
Also, I raise another issue briefly. After the events of September
11, we heard from a number of people--Governor Ridge, Secretary
Thompson of the Department of Health and Human Services--about concern
for our Nation's food supply and its vulnerability to attack. We have
to be mindful and sensitive. I thank Senator Lieberman for including my
language on food safety and security in this legislation, directing the
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to contract with the
National Academy of Sciences to conduct a detailed study to review all
Federal statutes and regulations affecting the safety and security of
the food supply, as well as the current organizational structure of
food safety oversight to figure out if we can do it better. I think we
can. I believed that for a long time. I pushed for better coordination,
better definition, better objectives for food safety. Now, this is a
different level. It is not a question of food that can be contaminated
by natural causes, but food that could be jeopardized and contaminated
by enemies of the United States. It is part of the same consideration
but raises it to a much higher level.
I close by thanking Senator Lieberman for his leadership on this
issue. This reorganization is complicated. Although we are a great
deliberative body, we have to roll up our sleeves and deal with it. We
approach the anniversary of September 11 and know further attacks are
not only possible, but in many instances our open society invites them.
We do not have the luxury of waiting. If there were another attack
since last September 11, this bill would have passed out of here a lot
sooner. Now that we have the time to do it, let's do it and do it
right.
I thank Senator Lieberman for his leadership, and I yield the floor.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Durbin for his
statement and for the contributions he made substantively to the
proposal and for his eloquent advocacy for the urgent necessity to get
together and create a Department of Homeland Security.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time to the Senator from Maine?
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I yield myself as much time as I may
consume from the time of Senator Thompson.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the legislation before
the Senate that will result in the most significant reorganization of
the executive branch in more than 50 years. The creation of a Cabinet-
level Department of Homeland Security is of fundamental importance to
our national security. I believe it is one of the most important pieces
of legislation we will consider during this Congress.
In the year since the terrorist attacks on our Nation, much has been
done to make our country more secure. Congress has approved billions of
dollars to secure our borders, protect critical infrastructure, train
and equip first responders, and better detect and respond to a
bioterrorism attack. Our brave men and women in uniform have been
fighting valiantly in Afghanistan and have succeeded in many of the
goals in the war against terrorism.
The creation of the Department of Homeland Security is another
important step in our efforts to secure our Nation against another
terrorist attack. This sweeping reorganization dwarfs any corporate
merger that you can think of. It involves some 200,000 employees and
nearly $40 billion in budget. The task before the Senate is truly
daunting, and it is important we get the job done right.
[[Page S8055]]
Currently, as many as 100 Federal agencies are responsible for
homeland security. But not one of them has homeland security as its
principal mission. That is the problem with our current organizational
structure. With that many entities responsible, nobody is accountable
and turf battles and bureaucratic disputes are virtually inevitable.
If we are to overcome these problems and create a national security
structure that can defend our Nation, we must unite the current
patchwork of agencies into a single new Department of Homeland
Security. This agency would work to secure our borders, help protect
our ports, our transportation sector, and protect our critical
infrastructure. It would synthesize and analyze homeland security
intelligence from multiple sources, thus lessening the possibility of
intelligence breakdowns or lack of communication. Furthermore, the new
domestic security structure would coordinate Federal communications
regarding threats and preparedness with State and local governments, as
well as with the private sector.
Our efforts to create a new Department of Homeland Security will help
to remedy many of the current weaknesses of the past and thus help to
protect us against future terrorist attacks.
As a member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which held
extensive hearings on the reorganization legislation, I have had the
opportunity to consider a multitude of ideas and concepts regarding the
creation of the new Department. We heard excellent testimony from
Governor Ridge, from the Directors of the FBI and the CIA, and from a
host of other experts. They all shed light on the problems that are
created by our current disorganization in the area of homeland
security. They all shed light on the problems that have impaired our
ability to defend our homeland and on the threats that we now face and
inevitably will face in the future.
During the committee's consideration of this bill, I expressed
concerns that in our effort to create a new Department, we must be
careful to protect the traditional missions, the very important
missions of the agencies that are being assembled into this giant new
department. In particular, I believe the Coast Guard's traditional
functions, such as search and rescue and marine resource protection,
must be protected and maintained.
Since the tragic events of September 11, the Coast Guard's focus has
shifted dramatically to homeland security. I talked with Coast Guard
officers in Portland, ME, who told me the amount of time they are now
spending on port security operations and inspecting foreign vessels
coming into the harbor in Portland. I have no doubt these are very
important missions and that the Coast Guard plays an essential role in
homeland security. And I believe it should play a leading role in the
new Department. However, we know the Coast Guard cannot continue to
focus on homeland security missions without jeopardizing its
traditional focus. I am concerned that if the current resource
allocation is maintained and the Coast Guard continues to perform these
new homeland security responsibilities, its traditional missions will
be sacrificed.
The President's budget goes a long way to try to remedy this problem
by allocating significant new funds for the Coast Guard. But we also
need to make sure the organizational structure in the new Department
also safeguards the Coast Guard's traditional mission.
For example, prior to September 11, port security missions accounted
for approximately 2 percent of the Coast Guard's resources. Immediately
following the terrorist attacks, the Coast Guard deployed 59 percent of
its resources to port security and safety missions. As a result, many
of the aircraft and vessels traditionally used for search and rescue
were far removed from their optimal locations for that function. Even
after the immediate impact of the September 11 attacks subsided, its
impact on the resources of the Coast Guard remained. Indeed, from April
through June of this year, the Coast Guard devoted 9 percent fewer
hours on search and rescue missions than it did in the year before.
Because of the Coast Guard's importance to coastal areas throughout
our Nation, any reduction in its traditional functions is cause for
great concern. Those of us who represent coastal States know how
absolutely vital the mission of the Coast Guard is. Last year alone,
the Coast Guard performed over 39,000 search and rescue missions and
saved more than 4,000 lives. On a typical day, the Coast Guard
interdicts and rescues 14 illegal immigrants, inspects and repairs 135
buoys, helps over 2,500 commercial ships navigate in and out of U.S.
ports, and saves 10 lives. That is on a typical day. In short, the
Coast Guard's traditional missions are of vital importance and they
simply must be preserved.
Let me take a moment to talk about the Coast Guard's impact and its
importance in my home State of Maine. Each year, the Coast Guard
performs about 300 search and rescue missions in my State. These
missions are literally a matter of life and death. Since October of
1999, 14 commercial fishermen have lost their lives at sea. Commercial
fishing is one of the most dangerous of occupations, and the Coast
Guard every year saves fishermen who get into trouble. How many more
would have died or been injured if the nearest Coast Guard cutter had
not been in port? How many more fishermen or recreational boaters will
lose their lives if the local Coast Guard stations must devote the vast
majority of their time to homeland security functions?
I agree that the Coast Guard must perform homeland security
functions. The role the Coast Guard is playing in securing our ports is
vitally important. But it is also vitally important that it not do so
at the expense of its traditional missions.
To respond to this challenge, Senator Stevens of Alaska and I teamed
up to offer an amendment during the Governmental Affairs Committee
markup of this legislation. We offered a successful amendment to
preserve the traditional functions of the Coast Guard, even as the
agency is moved into the new Department of Homeland Security. I want to
recognize Senator Stevens and thank him for his leadership on this
issue, as well as recognize the support of our colleagues who voted for
our amendment in committee.
Our amendment establishes the right balance between homeland security
functions and the traditional missions of the Coast Guard. It ensures
that the Coast Guard's non-homeland-security functions shall be
maintained after its transfer into the new Department but also provides
for flexibility in the event of a national emergency or an attack on
our Nation.
The amendment also has the Commandant of the Coast Guard report
directly to the Secretary. In the chairman's draft, he would not have
done so. Thus, his role would have been devalued or demoted. Our
amendment, the Stevens-Collins amendment, remedies that problem.
Our amendment will help to protect our coastal communities'
economies, their way of life, and their loved ones, while Americans,
wherever they live, can rest assured that the Coast Guard will perform
its necessary and vital homeland security functions. I believe our
language strikes the right balance.
As we craft this bill, it is also important that we never forget who
is on the front lines in the event of a national emergency. We learned
on September 11 who responds. It is not the response of people in
Washington. The people who are on the front lines are our police
officers, our firefighters, and our emergency medical personnel. That
is why we need to make sure the new Department coordinates its
activities and supports the activities of the local first responders.
I thank Senator Feingold for his leadership in ensuring that the
interests of the first responders are ever in our mind. I worked with
him as well as with Senator Carper on an amendment in committee that
strengthens the role of first responders in homeland security, that
recognizes their contributions.
We offered an amendment to enhance the cooperation and coordination
among State and local first responders. The new Department will be
required to designate an employee to be based in each and every 1 of
the 50 States to be a liaison to State and local governments. I think
that is so important. And it recognizes that this is a joint effort.
Similarly, an amendment Senator Carnahan and I offered will help our
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community fire departments by expanding the current grant program known
as the FIRE Program. As I am sure the Presiding Officer knows, because
he represents a rural State, as I do, the FIRE Program has been so
important in helping a lot of our small, rural fire departments upgrade
their equipment and their training.
The amendment the Senator from Missouri and I offered in committee
would expand the FIRE Program and provide fire departments with the
ability over 3 years to receive maximum grants of $100,000 to hire
personnel. When I talk to my fire chiefs at home, they tell me that not
only do they need help with equipment and training but they need more
firefighters.
For those of us who went to New York City, one of the memories I will
carry with me forever was talking with the fire commissioner and
learning how many firefighters lost their lives on September 11. I will
never forget his telling me that more firefighters died on that day
than in the previous 70 years of the New York City Fire Department. It
is the firefighters, the police officers, the emergency medical
personnel who are always first on the scene. We cannot forget that
these brave individuals will be the first to be called upon if and when
a terrorist attack again occurs.
The New Department of Homeland Security is an essential component of
our response to current and future threats. As the brutal attacks of
September 11 demonstrated, distance from our enemies and the barriers
of oceans no longer guarantee the security of our homeland. The bill we
are considering today is another important step in preserving and
strengthening our homeland security. I believe this legislation will
help to make our Nation more secure, and I am hopeful that we will pass
it quickly after due consideration.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes from the time
controlled by Senator Byrd.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska). Without objection, it
is so ordered.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, we are here today for three major reasons.
The first is the obvious need to restructure our security to confront
new threats that were unanticipated in the cold war. The thought is
that we do need to create a Department of Homeland Security. I support
that. We are also here today because of the groundbreaking work of
Senator Lieberman and colleagues on the Governmental Affairs Committee.
Before this proposal was invoked by the administration, they were
working on it. They were developing through hearings the substance to
make the presentation for which we are here today. But finally, we are
here today because of Senator Byrd's insistence that we consider this
very significant reorganization in the context of our Constitution and
of our responsibility as Members of the Senate to ensure we maintain
the constitutional balance that is the heart of this Government.
It would be ironic indeed that in the name of winning the war on
terror, we lost the very goal we were trying to protect, which is a
constitutional government in which all of us play a significant role--
the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.
I think it is important, as we consider this legislation, to look
carefully and thoughtfully at this proposed reorganization. It is an
extraordinary combination of governmental entities. Approximately
170,000 employees will be combined into this new Department. It will
affect 22 existing agencies. At least 11 full Senate committees have
oversight responsibilities for these existing agencies.
This is an extraordinary moment, and we have to act deliberately,
carefully, and thoughtfully. That is why I think it is so critical that
this debate take place and why it was so important that Senator Byrd
was able to indeed encourage and inspire and in many respects direct
the debate we are having today.
One of the major elements within this organization--there are many,
and I would like to allude to a few--is the treatment of intelligence.
We understood very starkly and very tragically on September 11 that
intelligence is probably the key to successful protection of the United
States, our home. We understood that. And now we have to take that
lesson and apply it.
One of the proposals made by the administration is to create an
intelligence capacity within the new Department of Homeland Security. I
agree with that. I think this new Department has to have an
intelligence capacity. Unfortunately, in terms of the administration's
proposal, I think there are two clear shortcomings. First, they have
established the intelligence capacity in the context of the
infrastructure protection responsibilities of this new Department.
Clearly, intelligence has to go beyond simply protecting our
infrastructure.
As Senator Lieberman indicated previously in some of his comments,
the World Trade Center and other targets were not properly considered
critical infrastructure in the United States. But certainly on
September 11 it was the target of terrorists. I think we have to
disassociate the intelligence aspects of the Department in the very
narrow view of infrastructure protection.
The amendment which Senator Lieberman will propose once we move to
the bill will effectively address the issue and the problems.
There is also another problem; that is, the administration would only
allow this intelligence operation within the new Homeland Security
Department to take data provided by other agencies and analyze it. It
does not give that entity the right to reach out and get raw
intelligence data. I think that has to be a critical responsibility and
a critical authority of this new intelligence division.
Again, the bill that I believe Senator Lieberman will submit at the
conclusion of this debate will have that authority in the Homeland
Security Department. That is critical.
The essence here is to have a place in the Government where--as said
so often because it is so true--all the dots are connected. But you
can't do that and rely on the intelligence products of other agencies.
You can't do that if your focus is restricted to infrastructure
protection.
As a result, I think this is illustrative of some of the problems of
the administration's proposal, and certainly some of the problems of
the House bill. I should point out, as has been pointed out before,
that we are now debating whether the Senate will bring it up for
consideration.
There are other areas that are of concern to me. One has just been
discussed quite articulately by my colleague and friend from Maine,
Senator Collins; that is the Coast Guard. Here is an agency which,
after September 11, has been decisively engaged in port protection.
Port protection by the Coast Guard has gone from a rather minor
operation before September 11 to one of their major operations. We have
all seen that. In my community of Providence, RI, we have the
Narragansett Bay. We have the Port of Providence. For the first time in
my memory--and perhaps since World War II--we are seeing Coast Guard
cutters escorting LNG tankers through the Narragansett Bay while the
whole waterway was shut down by police and the National Guard. That is
a time-consuming operation and one which has been replicated in the 361
ports of the United States. Also adding to that is the Coast Guard's
obligation to patrol about 95,000 miles of coastline.
The problem, though, is, as my colleague from Maine pointed out, that
the Coast Guard has many other responsibilities. She referred to a
typical day. On a typical day, the Coast Guard conducts 109 search and
rescue missions, saves 10 lives, assists 92 boaters in trouble, and
seizes 169 pounds of marijuana and 360 pounds of cocaine worth about
$9.6 million. They intercept illegal immigrants coming into the United
States. They respond to calls with respect to hazardous chemical
spills. They inspect and repair boats. They assist nearly 200,000 tons
of shipping just in the Great Lakes during the winter season alone.
What will happen to these other responsibilities?
I know the committee has dealt with this and has tried to strike a
balance. But it is an area of concern, and it is an area that
illustrates the difficulty of combining all of these agencies with the
mission of homeland security which might trump other legitimate
missions. We have to be careful with
[[Page S8057]]
this. In the course of our debate and discussion, I think we have to
focus on this issue and other issues.
Much can be said in a similar vein about the Immigration and
Naturalization Service. Here you have an agency which has two major
responsibilities: Protect the borders from illegal entry and at the
same time provide assistance to those individuals who are in the United
States legally who want to become citizens or who are here on some type
of temporary protective status and need to be supervised by the United
States. Those are diametrically opposed responsibilities.
We have to ask ourselves the question: If the INS is part of the
Department of Homeland Security, will they emphasize one and de-
emphasize the other? I think, frankly, most people will assume they
will emphasize protecting the borders of the United States. After all,
that is probably the most important issue with respect to homeland
security.
What happens to the literally millions of individuals in the United
States who legitimately need the services of the INS? Already today,
there is a backlog of approximately 5 million cases around the country
in terms of applications to the INS for clarification of status.
Indeed, as the National Immigration Forum noted in their words, ``it is
hard to imagine that a Federal agency whose primary issue is to deter
terrorism will be able to strike and maintain an appropriate balance
between admitting newcomers and deterring security threats.''
We see that these contradictions are replete throughout the
reorganization. I again think a careful, thorough, and complete
deliberation should be attendant to the consideration of this
legislation.
I would like to mention just briefly a final area, an area which I
think will come back again and again; that is, the administration's
proposal--and the proposal in the House of Representatives--to put up
severe barriers to the right of Federal employees to organize
collectively and to exercise their rights; and, also, the protection
for the Civil Service.
We have to be very conscious of this and ask the very fundamental
question: Why are we attempting to undercut provisions for which no
one, I think, has seriously made the case they have interfered with our
ability to conduct the war on terror, to conduct intelligence
operations?
As you probably realize, President Kennedy, 40 years ago, under
executive order, gave Federal employees the right to organize in
collective bargaining units. President Nixon expanded those rights in
1969. In 1978, the Civil Service Reform Act codified most of these
executive orders.
Throughout the course of our history, these responsibilities have
also given the President the authority to make exemptions for national
security. And they have made those exemptions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 10 minutes.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional
minute.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I yield one additional minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REED. I thank the Senator.
Over the course of our history, certainly in the 40 years, since
these rights became established by executive order, there have always
been appropriate exemptions in which the President could, for national
security reasons, exempt individual employees or groups of employees
from these rights. Our Presidents have done that. As a result, we have
a situation in which I think a classic statement applies: If it is not
broke, why are we trying to fix it? And it is not broken.
Again, in my final few moments, I heard from my colleague from
Maine--and I have heard it again and again--those firefighters
struggling up the stairs of the World Trade Center were union
employees. No one checked with their bargaining agent before going up
those stairs. In fact, I don't think they even checked with some of
their captains and battalion commanders. They went up those upstairs
because it was their job and their duty and their lives. And many of
them paid with their lives.
It is that spirit that emanates from those firefighters that
encourages and embraces all dedicated civil servants in our Federal
Government. I think to pursue this initiative is really, in a way, a
slap at them, an insult to what they bring each and every day to their
jobs, to their tasks, to their duty.
So I hope we adopt provisions, which I believe the Lieberman bill
has, which recognize the right to organize, the right for civil service
protections, and also flexibility, for management, by the President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, how much time does the distinguished Senator
from South Carolina wish to have?
Mr. HOLLINGS. Thirty minutes.
Mr. BYRD. I ask the Senator, could you make it 20? Could we try for
20 to start with?
Mr. HOLLINGS: I will try to start with 20.
Mr. BYRD. I certainly want to be considerate with this Senator, this
very senior Member of the body. And I am glad that he is a Member at
this time.
Let's say 20 minutes at this point. My time is limited, but let's
start with that and see how we come out.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, right quickly, the distinguished Senator
from Rhode Island was talking about the firemen running up those steps.
It brings to mind 4 years ago the creation of the Office of Domestic
Preparedness by this Congress.
We were confronting terrorism long before 9/11. Mr. President,
144,000 individuals have been through schools in Nevada, New Mexico,
Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. There are five big schools there to
train the first responders. And that training has been really salutary
in the sense that in the state of New York we have had over 17,000
first responders who were trained in the ODP program. So I say to the
Senator, many who rushed up those steps had received the training and
were responding in accordance with the foreseeability that we had in
the congressional branch with respect to terrorism.
I jump right quickly, with my time limited, to the hearings that we
had. We hear so much about Hart-Rudman. We had hearings in the Senate,
not just deciding on Hart-Rudman, that large bureaucracy, but, on the
contrary, after 3 days of hearings in the State-Justice-Commerce
Subcommittee of Appropriations we came down with a further beefing up
of the Office of Domestic Preparedness. At the present time, ODP has a
budget of $1.2 billion. We already have at the desk, unanimously
approved by the Appropriations Committee and ready for debate, an
increase of $1 billion, some $2.2 billion.
In short, we were on the floor of the Senate on 9/11 debating
terrorism. I emphasize that because they go right to the point and say
they don't believe in domestic security.
We have been working on domestic security since immediately after 9/
11. I got together--and I must tell this story because it has already
passed me with respect to the gun crowd--but be that as it may, I sat
down with the El Al chief pilot from Israel who flew over from Tel Aviv
and sat down and talked with us, myself and about four other Senators.
At that seating, he emphasized the security of the cockpit door
because I asked him: Sir, how is it that El Al, the airline most
subject to be under the gun, where the terrorists do not even wait now,
for example, to get to a plane--they shoot up the ticket counter like
they did out in Los Angeles--that you have not had a hijacking in 30
years?
He said: There is one way to prevent hijackings. Secure the cockpit
door, and never open that door in flight.
Let me emphasize, he said: My wife can be assaulted in the cabin. I
would go straight to the ground, and law enforcement would meet me
there.
In flight, you do not want to give responsibility to the pilots for
law and order. You give the pilots the responsibility for flying the
plane. If they have the responsibility, with a gun, for law and order,
then they have made a bad mistake because the pilots cannot prevent a
plane from being hijacked. The enemy is not a single hijacker. There
are teams of terrorists, suicidal terrorists, who do not mind losing
their lives. And, yes, you can stop one or two, maybe, but the next
three will take that plane over, and you will have a 9/11.
[[Page S8058]]
I think our responsibility in this particular debate is--in addition
to going up to New York on Friday, in addition to having the debate
here, and a whole day turned over on next Wednesday, which I commend--
but the main thing is for us to act and assume the responsibility that
a 9/11 never happens again.
Once you secure that door--Delta Airlines has gone along with it,
JetBlue is going along with it, but we are still debating it.
We immediately moved for airline security. We passed it 100-0 in a
bipartisan bill. You see in the morning paper it is not turf. This
Senate voted to put the Transportation Security Administration in the
Justice Department. I was not trying to hold it because I am chairman
of the Transportation Committee. I have commerce, science, and
transportation. I was not trying to hold it in my committee. I voted to
put it in Justice and defended this position on the House side arguing
that Justice would get it up and going.
Instead I got a bureaucrat who was more interested in the logo and
his office equipment and did not even talk to the airline managers. We
confirmed--the pressure was on--before Christmas.
We voted without the committee confirming this particular gentlemen.
We just reported it out and we had a vote on it without any debate
whatsoever. But now we are behind the curve and we have Admiral Malloy
over there, and I think he is a great man, and I think we can do a lot
of repairing and we are going to be realistic about what we can
accomplish. There is no use arguing about what kind of terminal dates
and everything else. We live in the real world and we must work
together.
We put in rail security, we put in seaport security before Christmas
of last year. You don't find the administration pressuring the House to
get going to pass it. They are still fussing about fees and taxes over
there. They don't want to pay for it. It is domestic politics,
reelection, not seaport security.
So there we are. We can go down the list of all the work we have done
on it, and here comes this bill and what does it do? It organizes every
entity that did not fail, like the Coast Guard, FEMA, and the
Agriculture Department and everything else, and ignores the ones that
did fail. 9/11 was an intelligence failure, and you will not get that
out of the Select Committee on Intelligence that is investigating
between the House and Senate because the entities of this
administration--I am not saying the President knew anything will not be
embarrassed. I am sure if the President knew anything he would have put
measures in place to avoid it. But I can tell you here and now that the
committee that is investigating is not going to speak out about the
intelligence failure because it would reflect, if you please, poorly on
the President's management of their FBI, their CIA, their National
Security Agency.
I have been on the Intelligence Committee. In fact, I started in this
work in 1954 on the Hoover Commission. The same problem we had almost
50 years ago with the FBI talking to the CIA, and the CIA talking to
the FBI, persists today. I have gotten together with Bob Mueller, and
he is a good man. He has hired some CIA officials. Last year before
Thanksgiving, we gave him $750 million to clean up his computerization.
He reorganized the Department and instituted a Department of Domestic
Intelligence and now is talking, I understand, to George Tenet, the
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA failed on 9/11. We already had the blowing up of the World
Trade Towers almost 10 years ago. But the CIA said we didn't know a
plane could be used. They did not know a plane could be used? They had
the direct record in 1994.
In 1994, they had the Islamic group that was going to blow up the
Eiffel Tower. Then, in 1995, they were working on a case out there in
the Philippines where they uncovered a plan to blow up 12 planes at one
time. The documents revealed that the terrorists, who had links to al
Qaida, planned to ram a plane into the CIA building itself. But now
they say they had no idea you could fly a plane into a building. Then
al-Qaida blew up our embassies and blew up the USS Cole. They knew.
Right to the point, they had warned about this crowd so much so that
the President actually had on his desk on September 10--the day
before--a plan to attack Afghanistan. We had the intelligence. We just
were not paying attention. The FBI also failed. There isn't any
question about that. We know about the flight schools in Arizona. Agent
Williams sent notice saying: There is something wrong. These people of
Mideastern descent are trying to learn how to fly. We believe they are
connected to fundamentalist groups, something's not right to me.
That word never did get up to the head of the FBI or the President of
the United States. That was an intelligence failure. But we had the
woman--Agent Coleen Rowley, I think her name was. When they arrested
Moussaoui in Minnesota, they became so exercised she wrote a memo that:
Look, this fellow doesn't want to learn how to take-off or land. He
only wants to learn how to fly. We need to investigate him further. But
the Minnesota field office was denied permission for a warrant.
Why should we investigate him further? Because he was training to run
a plane into the World Trade Towers. That is the record. I am not on
any Intelligence Committee. I am not giving you any security
information. If you want any kind of information along that line, there
is a wonderful article that appeared in Time magazine on May 27, 2002.
I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From Time Magazine, May 27, 2002]
How the U.S. Missed the Clues
(By Michael Elliott)
None of this is pretty. In the immediate aftermath of the
Sept. 11 attacks, members of the American political
establishment stood together, determined to fight the war
against terrorism, supporting those in military uniform and
the buttoned-down bureaucrats whose job it was to make sure
that something so awful would not happen again. Everyone--
inside the Bush Administration as well as outside it--knew
there had been massive failures of intelligence in the period
before the attacks. But after Sept. 11, the Administration
earned a reputation for steely-eyed competence, and its
political opponents couched their legitimate criticism in
language politer than that to which Washington is accustomed.
That was then. In the past month, a series of disclosures
have cast doubt on the most basic abilities of the national-
security establishment. The Administration has looked
alternately shifty and defensive; Democrats--some of them
presidential candidates-in-waiting--have postured on
motormouth TV. And the nation has been forced into a period
of painful second-guessing, asking whether Sept. 11 could
have been prevented. In August, it turns out, the President
was briefed by the CIA on the possibility that al-Qaeda, the
terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden, might use
hijacked airliners to win concessions from the U.S. Sources
tell TIME that the briefing, which was first reported by CBS
News, was in response to a request by Bush for detailed
information on the kind of threat posed by al-Qaeda, not to
American interests overseas--which had long preoccupied the
spooks--but at home. During the period in which the brief was
prepared, says a senior intelligence official, the CIA came
to the conclusion that ``al-Qaeda was determined to attack
the U.S.'' After the strike came, White House sources
concede, the Administration made a conscious decision not to
disclose the August briefing, hoping that it would be
discussed ``in context''--and months later--when
congressional investigations into the attacks eventually got
under way. And that wasn't the only embarrassing paper kept
under wraps. Earlier this month, the Associated Press
reported new details from a July 2001 memo by an FBI agent in
Pheonix, Ariz., who presciently noted a pattern of Arab men
signing up at flight schools. The agent, Kenneth Williams,
42, has spent 11 years working in an FBI antiterrorism task
force. He recommended an investigation to determine whether
al-Qaeda operatives were training at the schools. He was
ignored, and after the existence of the memo became known,
the FBI insisted that even if it had been acted upon, it
would not have led to the detention of the Sept. 11
hijackers. (Only one of them, Hani Hanjour, had trained in
Arizona, and did so before Williams focused on flight
school.) But sources tell TIME that at least one of the men
Williams had under watch--a Muslim who has now left the
U.S.--did indeed have al-Qaeda links. And Williams identified
a second pair of suspected Islamic radicals now living in the
U.S. as resident aliens, the sources say. They are currently
under FBI surveillance. As if those missed signals weren't
enough, last week it was also disclosed that in August, when
the U.S. detained Zacarias
Moussaoui--a man the French government knew was associated
with Islamic extremists and who apparently wanted to learn to
fly
[[Page S8059]]
jumbo jets but not land them, and has since been charged with
complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks--the FBI told nobody in
the White House's Counterterrorism Security Group. But the
CSG, which comes under the aegis of National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice, is supposed to coordinate the government's
response to terrorist threats.
At high levels of government, the awful possibility is
dawning that things could have been different. ``If we'd had
access to Moussaoui, if we'd had access to the Phoenix memo,
could we have broken up the plot?'' asks a White House
official who works on counterterrorism. Then he answers his
own question: ``We would have taken action, and there's at
least a distinct possibility that we may at the very least
have delayed it.'' Bush was outraged at the suggestion that
he might have been warned about impending strikes and failed
to act. To ward off Democratic criticism, Vice President Dick
Cheney warned against trying to ``seek political advantage''
from the new revelations; such commentary, he said, ``is
thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national
leaders in a time of war.'' He should have saved his breath;
the blame game is under way, long before the lessons of all
that happened last summer have been absorbed. And one thing
we now know: there plenty of blame to go around.
George W. Bush, they say, is a quick study, and last summer
he needed to be. Threats and warnings of possible terrorist
outrages against American interests were howling into
Washington like a dirty blizzard. Fighting terrorism hadn't
been a top priority in the early months of the
Administration; cutting taxes, building a missile shield and
other agenda had crowded it out. Bush's national-security
aides had been warned during the transition that there was an
al-Qaeda presence in the U.S., but in the first months of the
Administration, says one official, a sense of urgency was
lacking: ``They were new to this stuff.''
By the time Bush left for a month's vacation on his ranch
in Crawford, Texas, on Aug. 4, that mood had changed. Where
the President goes, the responsibilities of office follow,
and so, each morning, Bush sat in the ranch office and
received the CIA's Presidential Daily Brief. The bried--or
PDB, in Langley-speak--is the CIA's chance to mainline its
priorities into the President's thinking. Each day, the PDB
is winnowed to a few pages; when the President is in
Washington, one of two ``briefers''--agency up-and-comers who
flesh out the written text--gets to work at 2 a.m. to bone up
on background material. The brief itself is delivered at 8
a.m. in front of the President's national-security team.
(Sometimes CIA Director George Tenet delivers it himself.)
One briefer had moved to Texas for the vacation, and the PDB
was transmitted to Crawford over a secure system. At the
briefing on Monday, Aug. 6--a day when the Texas heat would
reach 100 [degrees]--Bush received a 1\1/2\-page document,
which, according to Rice, was an ``analytic report'' on al-
Qaeda. Included was a mention that al-Qaeda might be tempted
to hijack airliners, perhaps so that they might use hostages
to secure the release of an al-Qaeda leader or sympathizer.
Rice was not present but discussed the briefing with Bush
immediately after it had ended, as she always does.
They had mush to talk about. Throughout the summer, top
officials had become convinced, with a growing sense of
foreboding, that a major operation by al-Qaeda was in the
works. For many in the loop, it seemed likely that any attack
would be aimed at Americans overseas. But sources tell TIME
that the Aug. 6 briefing had a very different focus; it was
explicitly concerned with terrorism in the homeland. The Aug.
6 briefing had been put together, says one official, because
the President had told Tenet, ``Give me a sense of what al-
Qaeda can do inside the U.S.'' At a press conference last
week, Rice said the brief concentrated on the history and
methods of al-Qaeda. Since much of the material in it was a
rehash of intelligence dating to 1997 and '98, it is doubtful
that it was much use in answering Bush's question.
According to Rice, there was just a sentence or two on
hijacking--and the passage did not address the possibility
that a hijacked plane would ever be flown into a building.
That was the first of four crucial mistakes made last summer.
Administration officials insisted all last week that turning
a plane into a suicide bomb was something that nobody had
contemplated. But that just isn't so. In 1995, authorities in
the Philippines scuppered a plan--masterminded by Ramzi
Yousef, who had also plotted the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing--for mass hijackings of American planes over the
Pacific. Evidence developed during the investigation of
Yousef and his partner, Abdul Hakim Murad, uncovered a plan
to crash a plane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. And as
long ago as 1994, in an incident that is well known among
terrorism experts, French authorities foiled a plot by the
Algerian Armed Islamic Group to fly an airliner into the
Eiffel Tower. ``Since 1994,'' says a French investigator into
al-Qaeda cases, ``we should all have been viewing kamikaze
acts as a possibility for all terrorist hijackings.'' But if
Rice's account is accurate, nobody significant in the Bush
Administration did.
There might have been more discussion of the risks of
hijackings in the President's briefing if its writers had
known about the Phoenix memo. But they hadn't seen it, nor
had anyone in the CIA or the White House. Yet Senator Richard
Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence
Committee, calls the memo, which is said to contain detailed
descriptions of named suspects, ``one of the most explosive
documents I've seen in eight years.'' The memo, on which the
Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed last November, has
now become the focus of a huge political row in Washington.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee--including
Republican Arlen Specter, who had an angry exchange over the
memo with FBI Director Robert Mueller on Saturday--are
desperate to see it, and may yet subpoena it. ``The fact that
the Phoenix memo died on Somebody's desk takes your breath
away,'' says Senator Richard Durbin, a Democratic committee
member from Illinois. ``They just shuffled it off.''
Agent Williams wrote the memo on July 5, detailing his
suspicions about some Arabs he had been watching, who he
thought were Islamic radicals. Several of the men had
enrolled at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott,
Ariz. Williams posited that bin Laden's followers might be
trying to infiltrate the civil-aviation system as pilots,
security guards or other personnel, and he recommended a
national program to track suspicious flight-school students.
The memo was sent to the counterterrorism division at FBI
headquarters in Washington and to two field offices,
including the counterterrorism section in New York, which has
had long experience in al-Qaeda investigations.
That experience counted for nothing. In all three offices,
the memo was pretty much ignored, disappearing into the black
hole of bureaucratic hell that is the FBI. That was the
second key mistake. Sources tell TIME that the memo was never
forwarded--not even to the level of Mike Rolince, chief of
the international-terrorism section. ``The thing fell into
the laps of people who were grossly overtaxed,'' says a
senior FBI official. The G-men claim to have been swamped by
tips about coming al-Qaeda operations. But Williams was onto
something. The flight students he was tracking were
supporters of radical Islamic groups. Some of them, sources
say, are believed to be connected to Hamas and Hizballah,
terrorist organizations based in the Middle East, while at
least one other--who has left the U.S.--had links to al-
Qaeda. Another pair mentioned in the memo, neither of whom
attended flight school, are the ones under FBI surveillance--
which, sources say, is the reason Mueller won't make the memo
public.
However fevered the analysis of the Williams memo is now,
it didn't get much attention when it was written. Last July,
FBI headquarters wasn't concentrating on an attack within the
U.S. ``Nobody was looking domestically,'' says a recently
retired FBI official. ``We didn't think they had the people
to mount an operation here.''
That was the third huge mistake--and a somewhat baffling
conclusion to draw, given the evidence at hand. In spring of
2001, Ahmed Ressam, the ``millennium bomber,'' was on trial
in Los Angeles, charged with being part of a plot to bomb Los
Angeles International Airport and other locations at the end
of 1999. In her press conference last week, Rice conceded
that in 2001 the FBI ``was involved in a number of
investigations of potential al-Qaeda personnel operating in
the United States.''
But investigators had some reasons for being preoccupied
with attacks and threats outside the U.S. Al-Qaeda's most
notorious blows against American interests had taken place in
Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the sites of the 1998 embassy
bombings, and in Yemen, where the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in
October 2002. And in the first half of last year, the CSG
monitored information suggesting the likelihood of another
attack overseas. In June 2001, the State Department issued a
worldwide caution warning American citizens of possible
attacks. That month, says a recently retired senior FBI
official, ``we were constantly worried that something was
going to happen. Our best guesstimate was something in
Southeast Asia.'' A French investigator involved in al-Qaeda
cases confirms the thought. ``The prevailing logic from
around 1998,'' he says, ``was that al-Qaeda and bin Laden had
very openly designated America as its prime target--but it
was a target that it preferred to attack outside the U.S.''
By July the level of noise about terrorism from
intelligence sources around the world was deafening. The CSG,
then chaired by Richard Clarke, a Clinton Administration
holdover who was consumed with terrorist threats to the point
of obsession, was meeting almost every day. A specific threat
was received on the life of Bush, who was due to visit Genoa,
Italy, for a G-8 summit that month. Roland Jacquard, a
leading French expert on terrorism, says that when Russian
and Western intelligence agencies compared notes before the
summit, they were stunned to find they all had information
indicating that a strike was in the offing. When the Genoa
summit passed without incident, says a French official,
attention turned to the possibility of attacks on U.S. bases
in Belgium and Turkey. Then, at the end of July, Djamel
Beghal, a Franco-Algerian al-Qaeda associate, was picked up
in Dubai on his way from Afghanistan back to Europe. Beghal
started talking and implicated a network of al-Qaeda
operatives in Europe, who, he said, were planning to blow up
the American embassy in Paris. (Beghal, who has since been
extradited to France, has said his confession was coerced.)
``We shared everything we knew with the Americans,'' says a
French justice official.
[[Page S8060]]
They may have shared too much. At least in France,
investigators now acknowledge that Al-Qaeda may have been
involved in a massive feint to Europe while the real attack
was always planned for the U.S. ``People were convinced that
Europe remained the theater for Islamic terrorists,'' says
Jacquard. ``It's anyone's guess whether that was a technique
to get people looking in the wrong place. But that's what
happened.''
By the beginning of August, the President had made his
request for a briefing on domestic threats. One of them was
about to be uncovered. And therein lay the fourth mistake. On
Aug. 16, Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota for an
immigration violation, just a day after the staff at the
flight school where he was training told the FBI of their
suspicions about him. The Minnesotans weren't alone; when
American officials checked with their French counterparts,
they discovered that Moussaoui had long been suspected of
mixing in extremist circles. (The Zelig of modern terrorism,
Moussaoui has been associated with al-Qaeda networks
everywhere from London to Malaysia.) The FBI started urgently
investigating Moussaoui's past; agents in Minneapolis sought
a national-security warrant to search his computer files but
were turned down by lawyers at FBI headquarters who said they
didn't have sufficient evidence that he belonged to a
terrorist group. Immediately after Moussaoui's arrest, agents
twice visited the Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla.,
where he had studied before heading to Minnesota; two of the
Sept. 11 hijackers had visited Norman in July 2000. The
FBI did inform the CIA of Moussaoui's arrest, and the CIA
ran checks on him while asking foreign intelligence
services for information. But neither the FBI nor the CIA
ever informed the counterterrorism group in the White
House. ``Do you think,'' says a White House antiterrorism
official, ``that if Dick Clarke had known that the FBI had
in custody a foreigner who couldn't speak English, who was
trying to fly a plane in midair, he wouldn't have done
something?''
Since at least two of the four failures--those involving
Moussaoui and the Phoenix memo--can be laid at the door of
the FBI, the bureau is feeling the heat. ``The FBI has a long
pattern of not sharing information with others,'' says a
former Clinton Administration official. ``Now it's not even
sharing the information with itself.'' Mueller, who knew
about the Phoenix memo shortly after Sept. 11, plainly did
not anticipate the criticism it would engender. Since it
became public, officials have defensively pointed out that if
the bureau had tried to track down all Muslim flight-school
attendees, it would have been accused of racial profiling.
White House officials defend Mueller; he is ``tenacious about
changing things,'' says one, who admits, ``You can't change a
culture that's 60 years in the making overnight.'' But on
Capitol Hill the bureau is running out of friends. ``I have
no doubt that the FBI needs reform,'' said Senate Republican
leader Trent Lott last week.
Yet when the blame gets assigned, as it will now that a
joint congressional investigation into Sept. 11 is getting
down to work, the FBI won't monopolize it. The ugly truth is
that nine months after huge weaknesses in the national
security system were revealed, they remain unaddressed. In
Washington, says a senior Clinton Administration official,
``information just moves through stovepipes,'' never getting
pooled by different agencies until it is too late. The
intelligence services were built to fight the cold war, not
an enemy that flits from Afghan caves to apartments in
London. The division between domestic and international
security made sense when the former was concerned with what
criminals did and the latter with foreign countries. But some
criminals are now as powerful as countries, and some
countries are run by criminals.
Nine months ago, the appointment of Tom Ridge as Homeland
Security czar was billed as the shake-up Washington needed.
So far, he has been more of a mild foot stamp than an
earthquake. Instead of real reform, the Administration has
resorted to its usual mode: attempting to control warring
satrapies from the White House. The remarkable aspect of last
week's events in Washington was the unintended revelation
that Rice is the true manager of counterterrorism policy. In
the past, the National Security Council got into trouble when
it adopted an operational role rather than one of analysis
(think Oliver North), and for Bush this identification of one
of his closest advisers with the operational failures of
counterterrorism policy could yet be politically troubling.
Among his supporters, however, the President still rides
high. Bush's simple, passionate argument--that he would never
have sat idly if he had known what was coming on Sept. 11--
helped stiffen spines. Republicans pointed out that members
of congressional intelligence committees get the same
information the President receives in his PDB and yet had not
made a fuss about the Aug. 6 briefing. That claim was
disputed; Tom Daschle, the Democrat's leader in the Senate,
insisted the Senate and the Administration did not have
``identical information'' about al-Qaeda threats.
In a sense, the spat over who got what version of which
memo epitomizes Washington at its worst. The capital at its
best would appreciate that the most important question isn't
what Bush (or anyone else) knew before Sept. 11; it is what
the Administration and Congress have and have not done to fix
a broken system. But November and the midterm elections, you
may have noticed, are only six months away. Washington is
reverting to form.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Time magazine got into it very thoroughly--much more so
than the committee that has been leaking. I was disappointed Sunday
when I heard my distinguished colleague from Tennessee say: No, he
would not take a polygraph test.
I am an old trial lawyer. You are not going to convict my client on a
polygraph test. We used it in the Hoover Commission 50 years ago, and
it is an indicator. I wanted to make sure the staff on the Intelligence
Committee--as I found out, I had been doubledealed by the CIA and was
told: I cannot give you that information, Senator, because your staff
does not have the appropriate clearance.
Before you serve here as a Capitol policeman, you have to take a
polygraph, and also before you serve in the FBI, CIA, and Secret
Service--go down the list--but not the staff of the Senate Intelligence
Committee.
So I learned that in a war you never ask your man to do something you
do not do yourself first. So I went over to take a polygraph test. To
the very first question, I started off my answer ``in my humble
opinion'' and the needle went right off the chart. I flunked. It took 2
hours and they gave me a chance again, and after that 2-hour test, I
passed it and came back and I still brought it up that as a member of
the Intelligence Committee, they do not have the appropriate clearance.
If they want to know where the leaks are, go to the committees.
Mr. President, the National Security Agency failed. They had all
kinds of warnings about al-Qaida. They had Arabic friends over there.
They got the word on September 10 in Arabic that ``the match is about
to begin,'' but they didn't translate the Arabic into English until
September 12.
Now comes the National Security Council. It is interesting that in
1947 we had the same problem of coordination--instituting not only the
CIA, but the 1947 National Security Council that the function of the
Council shall be to advise the President with respect to the
integration--that is joining--of domestic, foreign, and military
policies relating to the national security, so as to enable the
military services and the other Departments and Agencies of Government
to cooperate more effectively in matters involving national security.
If you don't have a President right at the catbird seat pointing to
them and saying you either talk and coordinate with each other or else
you are out, it is not going to be done. You can pass all the bills you
want in the U.S. Congress. You are just passing another entity for
finger-pointing. They need correlation again and again.
Here is exactly what the President said in the National Security
Presidential directive he made. I had a copy of it here. It is with
respect to ordering the bush National Security Council. Incidentally,
what I am saying I had said to him at the Cabinet table over 2 months
ago. But on February 13--I ask unanimous consent that this National
Security Presidential directive of February 13, 2001, be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
National Security Presidential Directives--NSPDs, the White House,
Washington, February 13, 2001
Memorandum for
The Vice President
The Secretary of State
The Secretary of the Treasury
The Secretary of Defense
The Attorney General
The Secretary of Agriculture
The Secretary of Commerce
The Secretary of Health and Human Services
The Secretary of Transportation
The Secretary of Energy
Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency
Director of the Office of Management and Budget
United States Trade Representative
Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers
Director, National Drug Control Policy
Chief of Staff to the President
Director of Central Intelligence
Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Assistant to the President for Economic Policy
Counsel to the President
Chief of Staff and Assistant to the Vice President for
National Security Affairs
[[Page S8061]]
Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy
Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
Chairman, Council on Environmental Quality
Chairman, Export-Import Bank
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard
Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Director, Peace Corps
Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
President, Overseas Private Investment Corporation
Chairman, Federal Communications Commission
Commissioner, U.S. Customs Service
Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Archivist of the United States
Director, Information Security Oversight Office
Subject: Organization of the National Security Council System
This document is the first in a series of National Security
Presidential Directives. National Security Presidential
Directives shall replace both Presidential Decision
Directives and Presidential Review Directives as an
instrument for communicating presidential decisions about the
national security policies of the United States.
National security includes the defense of the United States
of America, protection of our constitutional system of
government, and the advancement of United States interest
around the globe. National security also depends on America's
opportunity to prosper in the world economy. The National
Security Act of 1947, as amended, established the National
Security Council to advise the President with respect to the
integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies
relating to national security. That remains its purpose. The
NSC shall advise and assist me in integrating all aspects of
national security policy as it affects the United States--
domestic, foreign, military, intelligence, and economics (in
conjunction with the National Economic Council (NEC)). The
National Security Council system is a process to coordinate
executive departments and agencies in the effective
development and implementation of those national security
policies.
The National Security Council (NSC) shall have as its
regular attendees (both statutory and non-statutory) the
President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the
Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and the
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The
Director of Central Intelligence and the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, as statutory advisors to the NSC,
shall also attend NSC meetings. The Chief of Staff to the
President and the Assistant to the President for Economic
Policy are invited to attend any NSC meeting. The Counsel to
the President shall be consulted regarding the agenda of NSC
meetings, and shall attend any meetings when, in consultation
with the Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs, he deems it appropriate. The Attorney General and
the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall be
invited to attend meetings pertaining to their
responsibilities. For the Attorney General, this includes
both those matters within the Justice Department's
jurisdiction and those matters implicating the Attorney
General's responsibility under 28 U.S.C. 511 to give his
advice and opinion on questions of law when required by the
President. The heads of other executive departments and
agencies, as well as other senior officials, shall be invited
to attend meetings of the NSC when appropriate.
The NSC shall meet at my direction. When I am absent from a
meeting of the NSC, at my direction the Vice President may
preside. The Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs shall be responsible, at my direction and in
consultation with the other regular attendees of the NSC, for
determining the agenda, ensuring that necessary papers are
prepared, and recording NSC actions and Presidential
decisions. When international economic issues are on the
agenda of the NSC, the Assistant to the President for Nation
Security Affairs and the Assistant to the President for
Economic Policy shall perform these tasks in concert.
The NSC Principals Committee (NSC/PC) will continue to be
the senior interagency forum for consideration of policy
issues affecting national security, as it has since 1989. The
NSC/PC shall have as its regular attendees the Secretary of
State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of
Defense, the Chief of Staff to the President, and the
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (who
shall serve as chair). The Director of Central Intelligence
and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall attend
where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and
expertise are to be discussed. The Attorney General and
the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall
be invited to attend meetings pertaining to their
responsibilities. For the Attorney General, this includes
both those matters within the Justice Department's
jurisdiction and those matters implicating the Attorney
General's responsibility under 28 U.S.C. 511 to give his
advice and opinion on questions of law when required by
the President. The Counsel to the President shall be
consulted regarding the agenda of NSC/PC meetings, and
shall attend any meeting when, in consultation with the
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs,
he deems it appropriate. When international economic
issues are on the agenda of the NSC/PC, the Committee's
regular attendees will include the Secretary of Commerce,
the United States Trade Representative, the Assistant to
the President for Economic Policy (who shall serve as
chair for agenda items that principally pertain to
international economics), and, when the issues pertain to
her responsibilities, the Secretary of Agriculture. The
Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser to the Vice
President shall attend all meetings of the NSC/PC, as
shall the Assistant to the President and Deputy National
Security Advisor (who shall serve as Executive Secretary
of the NSC/PC). Other heads of departments and agencies,
along with additional senior officials, shall be invited
where appropriate.
The NSC/PC shall meet at the call of the Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs in consultation with
the regular attendees of the NSC/PC. The Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs shall determine the
agenda in consultation with the foregoing, and ensure that
necessary papers are prepared. When international economic
issues are on the agenda of the NSC/PC, the Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs and the Assistant to
the President for Economic Policy shall perform these tasks
in concert.
The NSC Deputies Committee (NSC/DC) will also continue to
serve as the senior sub-Cabinet interagency forum for
consideration of policy issues affecting national security.
The NSC/DC can prescribe and review the work of the NSC
interagency groups discussed later in this directive. The
NSC/DC shall also help ensure that issues being brought
before the NSC/PC or the NSC have been properly analyzed and
prepared for decision. The NSC/DC shall have as its regular
members the Deputy Secretary of State or Under Secretary of
the Treasury or Under Secretary of the Treasury for
International Affairs, the Deputy Secretary of Defense or
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Deputy Attorney
General, the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and
Budget, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, the Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Deputy Chief of
Staff to the President for Policy, the Chief of Staff and
National Security Adviser to the Vice President, the Deputy
Assistant to the President for International Economic
Affairs, and the Assistant to the President and Deputy
National Security Advisor (who shall serve as chair). When
international economic issues are on the agenda, the NSC/DC's
regular membership will include the Deputy Secretary of
Commerce, A Deputy United States Trade Representative, and,
when the issues pertain to his responsibilities, the Deputy
Secretary of Agriculture, and the NSC/DC shall be chaired by
the Deputy Assistant to the President for International
Economic Affairs for agenda items that principally pertain to
international economics. Other senior officials shall be
invited where appropriate.
The NSC/DC shall meet at the call of its chair, in
consultation with the other regular members of the NSC/DC.
Any regular member of the NSC/DC may also request a meeting
of the Committee for prompt crisis management. For all
meetings the chair shall determine the agenda in consultation
with the foregoing, and ensure that necessary papers are
prepared.
The Vice President and I may attend any and all meetings of
any entity established by or under this directive.
Management of the development and implementation of
national security policies by multiple agencies of the United
States Government shall usually be accomplished by the NSC
Policy Coordination Committees (NSC/PCCs). The NSC/PCCs shall
be the main day-to-day fora for interagency coordination of
national security policy. They shall provide policy analysis
for consideration by the more senior committees of the NSC
system and ensure timely responses to decisions made by the
President. Each NSC/PCC shall include representatives from
the executive departments, offices, and agencies represented
in the NSC/DC.
Six NSC/PCCs are hereby established for the following
regions: Europe and Eurasia, Western Hemisphere, East Asia,
South Asia, Near East and North Africa, and Africa. Each of
the NSC/PCCs shall be chaired by an official of Under
Secretary or Assistant Secretary rank to be designated by the
Secretary of State.
Eleven NSC/PCCs are hereby also established for the
following functional topics, each to be chaired by a person
of Under Secretary or Assistant Secretary rank designated by
the indicated authority:
Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations (by
the Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs);
International Development and Humanitarian Assistance (by
the Secretary of State);
Global Environment (by the Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs and the Assistant to the President
for Economic Policy in concert);
International Finance (by the Secretary of the Treasury);
Transnational Economic Issues (by the Assistant to the
President for Economic Policy);
Counter-Terrorism and National Preparedness (by the
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs);
[[Page S8062]]
Defense Strategy, Force Structure, and Planning (by the
Secretary of Defense);
Arms Control (by the Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs);
Proliferation, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense
(by the Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs);
Intelligence and Counterintelligence (by the Assistant to
the President for National Security Affairs); and
Records Access and Information Security (by the Assistant
to the President for National Security Affairs).
The Trade Policy Review Group (TPRG) will continue to
function as an interagency coordinator of trade policy.
Issues considered within the TPRG, as with the PCCs, will
flow through the NSC and/or NEC process as appropriate.
Each NSC/PCC shall also have an Executive Secretary from
the staff of the NSC, to be designated by the Assistant to
the President for National Security Affairs. The Executive
Secretary shall assist the Chairman in scheduling the
meetings of the NSC/PCC, determining the agenda, recording
the actions taken and tasks assigned, and ensuring timely
responses to the central policymaking committees of the NSC
system. The Chairman of each NSC/PCC, in consultation with
the Executive Secretary, may invite representatives of other
executive departments and agencies to attend meetings of the
NSC/PCC where appropriate.
The Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs, at my direction and in consultation with the Vice
President and the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and
Defense, may establish additional NSC/PCCs as appropriate.
The Chairman of each NSC/PCC, with the agreements of the
Executive Secretary, may establish subordinate working groups
to assist the PCC in the performance of its duties.
The existing system of Interagency Working Groups is
abolished.
The oversight of ongoing operations assigned in PDD/NSC-56
to Executive Committees of the Deputies Committee will be
performed by the appropriate regional NSC/PCCs, which may
create subordinate working groups to provide coordination for
ongoing operations.
The Counter-Terrorism Security Group, Critical
Infrastructure Coordination Group, Weapons of Mass
Destruction Preparedness, Consequences Management and
Protection Group, and the interagency working group on
Enduring Constitutional Government are reconstituted as
various forms of NSC/PCC on Counter-Terrorism and National
Preparedness.
The duties assigned in PDD/NSC-75 to the National
Counterintelligence Policy Group will be performed in the
NSC/PCC on Intelligence and Counterintelligence, meeting with
appropriate attendees.
The duties assigned to the Security Policy Board and other
entities established in PDD/NSC-29 will be transferred to
various NSC/PCCs, depending on the particular security
problem being addressed.
The duties assigned in PDD/NSC-41 to the Standing Committee
on Nonproliferation will be transferred to the PCC on
Proliferation, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense.
The duties assigned in PDD/NSC-36 to the Interagency
Working Group for Intelligence Priorities will be transferred
to the PCC on Intelligence and Counterintelligence.
The duties of the Human Rights Treaties Interagency Working
Group established in E.O. 13107 are transferred to the PCC on
Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations.
The Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group
established in E.O. 13110 shall be reconstituted, under the
terms of that order and until its work ends in January
2002, as a Working Group of the NSC/PCC for Records Access
and Information Security.
Except for those established by statute, other existing NSC
interagency groups, ad hoc bodies, and executive committees
are also abolished as of March 1, 2001, unless they are
specifically reestablished as subordinate working groups
within the new NSC system as of that date. Cabinet officers,
the heads of other executive agencies, and the directors of
offices within the Executive Office of the President shall
advise the Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs of those specific NSC interagency groups chaired by
their respective departments or agencies that are either
mandated by statute or are otherwise of sufficient importance
and vitality as to warrant being reestablished. In each case
the Cabinet officer, agency head, or office director should
describe the scope of the activities proposed for or now
carried out by the interagency group, the relevant statutory
mandate if any, and the particular NSC/PCC that should
coordinate this work. The Trade Promotion Coordinating
Committee established in E.O. 12870 shall continue its work,
however, in the manner specified in that order. As to those
committees expressly established in the National Security
Act, the NSC/PC and/or NSC/DC shall serve as those committees
and perform the functions assigned to those committees by the
Act.
To further clarify responsibilities and effective
accountability within the NSC system, those positions
relating to foreign policy that are designated as special
presidential emissaries, special envoys for the President,
senior advisors to the President and the Secretary of State,
and special advisors to the President and the Secretary of
State are also abolished as of March 1, 2001, unless they are
specifically redesignated or reestablished by the Secretary
of State as positions in that Department.
This Directive shall supersede all other existing
presidential guidance on the organization of the National
Security Council system. With regard to application of this
document to economic matters, this document shall be
interpreted in concert with any Executive Order governing the
National Economic Council and with presidential decision
documents signed hereafter that implement either this
directive or that Executive Order.
[signed: George W. Bush]
Mr. HOLLINGS. You will find in there that 11 functional coordinating
committees within the council itself, chaired by the National Security
Council. Among them are committees on counterterrorism and national
preparedness, chaired by Condoleezza Rice, to Advisor to the President
for National Security Affairs. You have another committee on
counterproliferation and homeland defense, which the President of the
United States thought was necessary in February of last year, chaired
by Condoleezza Rice. There is another one on intelligence and
counterintelligence, again chaired by Condoleezza Rice.
Later we see President's National Security Advisor on the TV saying:
We did not get anything specific. In fairness to her, she is an expert
in foreign policy. She used to instruct a course, I understand, at
Stanford. She has never served in law enforcement or counterterrorism.
But it is time to get real. This bill does not directly deal with the
entities that failed. It is about running around, like my Navy friend
used to say, ``when in danger, when in doubt, run in circles scream and
shout.''
The administration propose this big bureaucracy. I have 110,000 of
them already at DOT. I have been working on transportation security of
the airlines, the rails, and the seaports. How are you going to get a
department full of midlevel personnel in charge if you cannot get the
Executive level, the Presidential level, engaged in active management.
I told the President of the United States: Mr. President, I want you to
get hourly reports on the homeland security intelligence as you receive
those hourly political reports from Carl Rove. He knows what is going
on politically in this country. I want him to know what is going on
intelligence-wise with respect to homeland security, but we do not have
that.
What we have is another finger-pointing agency. As Harry Truman said:
The buck stops here. He is the one who brought in the 1947 initiative
to reorganize for national security. He did not mind assuming that
responsibility.
Mr. President, do you think if you were President that you would
depend on the Department of Homeland Security for your intelligence
analysis? No, no, that is not going to ever happen. One, that
Department is only going to be fed what the President says to feed
them. The FBI is not going to tell them everything. The CIA is not
going to tell them everything. It is a culture. We have to break down
that culture, but the only place we know they are not afraid to tell is
the National Security Council of the President of the United States.
The Secretary of the Homeland Defense Department would not even know
what to ask for. They do not have any kind of intelligence collection.
They do not have the authority or resources to do that. They would
create another analysis department, but it will not function properly
unless it is fused. There has to be a fusion, an integration, as they
said in 1947, of domestic and foreign intelligence so they know where
to act. We have read in the newspapers where they are getting their
money for terrorism, outfitting Canada and so on.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
My time is limited, so I will close with the idea that, we can pass
this bill ipso facto, word for word--either bill--this afternoon, and 4
or 5 years from now after they have had a chance to organize, we can
have another 9-11. We are not going to prevent it with this particular
measure.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I yield 5 additional minutes to the Senator.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HOLLINGS. That is all right, Mr. President. I will yield the time
back and come back in on the debate. This is
[[Page S8063]]
only a motion to proceed. I work with them. I can tell you the
resistance of the FBI talking to the CIA--that is not in this bill--but
we have to have a President get them together and make sure information
is fused. There is a resistance. We have had meetings on port security.
I cannot get the FBI to attend those meetings. I am going to get on Bob
Mueller about that because I have his appropriation, but they do not
want to get together. They are looking for crime. They are not looking
for prevention. They want to catch somebody. When crimes are committed
they are called into action. While we hope crimes are never committed,
the FBI serves the nation by responding when crimes are committed. We
must work to prevent terrorist attacks. That is the new culture, the
new role to be taken on.
The President has to play the game of President, be the chief
executive. Mr. President, I say to Senator Byrd, in his mind, does he
think he would depend on the Department of Domestic Security for making
a decision? He is not going to depend on that Department or any other,
except for the National Security Council.
There is no substitute for the CIA being on the Council or for the
FBI being on the Council, the Attorney General, or the Secretary of
Homeland Security. Put him on the National Security Council. Let's
begin to emphasize the domestic side of foreign policy and
international threats.
That is what has to be done, and it has to be done at the White
House. You cannot run all over the country fundraising; you have to go
to work. That is one fault with this particular President. I cannot put
him to work. I see him out with flags, military people, policemen,
firemen, and others. Carl Rove has him. I would like to get hold of
him, and we could get this Government going. He has to go to work and
bring them in and say: I want to make sure I know what I am doing. And
this Department does not help him know what he is doing.
I yield the floor.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, how much time does the Senator from New York
wish?
Mrs. CLINTON. Ten minutes.
Mr. BYRD. I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from New
York, Mrs. Clinton.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. I rise to join
Senator Byrd in speaking about our homeland security needs. Our
colleague from South Carolina always teaches me something whenever I
have the pleasure and privilege of hearing him speak in this Chamber.
New Yorkers particularly owe Senator Byrd a great debt of gratitude
because he and his very worthy staff have done a tremendous amount of
work to help New York recover and rebuild from the tragedy of September
11.
As we appear today in this Chamber, I cannot help but remark that
Senator Byrd has been focused on homeland security from the moment I
first spoke with him on September 12 around 7 a.m. after we knew the
full extent of the damage, and I was going up to see what had happened
in New York for myself. He has been extremely understanding and also
very knowledgeable about what it was going to take to make us more
secure.
I also thank Senator Lieberman for his tremendous efforts in trying
to craft legislation that will make us safer. We are not just doing
this for a political exercise or just to reorganize for the sake of
reorganizing, but we know there are serious issues to be addressed,
some of which Senator Hollings spoke about.
I do support the idea of a Homeland Security Department, but I come
today to recognize the seriousness of the issues that should be
addressed while we are trying to determine what it is we need to do to
make our Government more prepared.
There are a number of issues, and my colleagues have raised quite a
few of them, but I want to focus on one particular aspect of our
homeland security, and that is the resources that our frontline
firefighters, police officers, and emergency responders need to be the
soldiers to defend our homeland security. Just as we support our men
and women in uniform who are doing a very important job extremely well,
from Afghanistan to the Middle East to the Far East, we have to do the
same for our local homeland defenders.
I have been disappointed in the disconnect between rhetoric and
resources from the administration. We certainly have had many heartfelt
and moving moments where words have captured our feelings.
When it comes to providing the resources that our police, our
firefighters, and our emergency responders need, I think the
administration has fallen short. That was certainly clear over the
August recess when the President chose not to sign the emergency
designation for the $5.1 billion supplemental appropriations bill,
which included $2.5 billion for improving our homeland security.
That number did not come out of thin air. It was the result of
hearings, testimony, and evidence presented by people on the front
lines. A number of people from New York who were in our police
department and our fire department, who had been there on September 11,
who understood what we needed to be well prepared, came down to set
forth a very clear agenda that they hoped the Federal Government would
help them meet.
The supplemental appropriations bill, for example, would have given
our first responders $100 million so that police and firefighters would
have communications systems that could talk to each other. We found
out, tragically, on September 11 that we did not have that, and New
York is not alone in not having what is called interoperability between
the police and firefighter radio systems.
There would have been $150 million in additional FIRE Act grant
funding to help fire departments improve their emergency preparedness,
and there would have been $90 million to track the long-term health
care of those who responded at Ground Zero, not just so we fulfill our
obligation to take care of these brave men and women but also so we can
be better prepared to take care of all of our first responders.
I am not alone in thinking the President's refusal to sign the
emergency designation was a terrible mistake. The International
Association of Firefighters has voiced its concern in very clear,
unmistakable language. I know they are particularly passionate about
this issue because they lost so many of their colleagues.
In his August 20 letter to President Bush, the International
Association of Firefighters general president, Harold Schaitberger, had
this to say:
I would be dishonest if I did not convey our anger, concern
and growing doubt about your commitment to us . . . No one,
not even the President, has the right to pontificate about
his or her commitment and respect for firefighters while
ignoring our legitimate needs.
With all due respect, support entails more than kind words.
The President said he was exercising fiscal discipline by not making
the emergency designation and said that this was, in his view, wasteful
congressional spending; that $5 billion was not an emergency even if it
went to the kind of emergency needs and services that we know we are
lacking.
I have to respectfully disagree. I think we do face an emergency. We
are rushing through this legislation because clearly we think we face
an emergency. But the real emergency is not in Washington to reorganize
a huge Government department. The real emergency is in the police
stations and the firehouses and the emergency rooms of America. That is
why I am concerned that when the Congress goes through the kind of
process it did to arrive at a need for $5.1 billion and it is totally
disregarded, then why on Earth would we want to give up congressional
oversight and authority in setting the agenda to protect our country?
I believe it is imperative we do everything we can in setting up this
Department to get the money to where it needs to go. We have to get the
dollars where the responsi |
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