Congressional Record Weekly Update

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1A) In Recognition of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's 50th Anniversary
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and its staff for their outstanding contributions to science and to the security of our Nation throughout the past 50 years.The Laboratory was established in 1952 to help meet an urgent national security need and has made numerous advances to keep the Nation at peace and secure.

Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories developed the nuclear weapons that have deterred world wars. The labs are ensuring the continuing safety, security, and reliability of our Nation's nuclear weapons stockpile in the absence of nuclear testing.

Breakthroughs at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory led to the development of the high-yield warheads that greatly contributed to strategic deterrence throughout the Cold War. The Laboratory has provided technical support to arms control negotiations and treaty implementation, including negotiations and treaties to reduce the size of nuclear arsenals, prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technologies, and limit nuclear weapons testing.

The Laboratory has greatly contributed to efforts of the United States intelligence community to understand nuclear weapons-related activities worldwide, and today is using its capabilities to defend our nation against terrorism. The Laboratory is also a leader in science and has worked on technologies to provide us with long term energy security.

The Laboratory has developed environmental restoration technologies that are being used to rapidly clean up groundwater contamination at Superfund sites and is developing simulation capabilities to better understand changes in the earth's climate. The Laboratory is identifying the source of genetic diseases and developing improved detectors of biological agents.

Livermore scientists produced work that won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1998 and numerous advances in astrophysics. Technology development at the Laboratory has broadly contributed to the Nation's technical prowess and the competitiveness of United States industry, as evidenced by the winning of 85 prestigious R&D 100 awards.

Lastly, the Laboratory contributes broadly to higher education, as well as elementary and secondary educational efforts throughout Northern California and educational outreach directed at minority groups nationwide. On its 50th anniversary, I would like to congratulate the Laboratory, its staff, and former employees for their dedicated service to our Nation, outstanding contributions to national security, a strong tradition of scientific and technical excellence, and continuing efforts to make the world more secure and a better place to live.

1B) Congratulating Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
Mrs. FEINSTEIN submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary:
S. Con. Res. 141

Whereas the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was established in 1952 as part of the University of California Radiation Laboratory to augment the efforts of the Los Alamos National Laboratory to meet an urgent national security need and has since made important advances in nuclear weapons science and technology to keep the Nation at peace and secure;

Whereas advances by the Laboratory in nuclear weapons technology strengthened the ability of NATO to deter aggression in Europe during the Cold War and have ensured the continuing safety, security, and reliability of our Nation's nuclear weapons stockpile in the absence of nuclear testing;

Whereas the Laboratory has provided technical support to arms control negotiations and treaty implementation, including negotiations and treaties to reduce the size of nuclear arsenals, prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technologies, and limit nuclear weapons testing;

Whereas the Laboratory has greatly contributed to efforts of the United States intelligence community to understand nuclear weapons related activities worldwide, as well as to respond to nuclear emergencies through its participation in the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, its development of the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, and its other emergency response capabilities, which are now contributing to the war against terrorism;

Whereas Laboratory researchers have made many scientific advances, including work that won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1998 and numerous advances in astrophysics, such as contributions to understanding supernovas, high resolution mapping of the moon, the search for dark matter in the universe, and the development of advanced technologies to improve the performance of terrestrially-based telescopes;

Whereas technology development of the Laboratory has broadly contributed to the Nation's technical prowess and the competitiveness of United States industry, as evidenced by the winning of 85 prestigious R&D 100 awards, the most by any institution, as well as by very effective long-term partnerships with the computer industry and laser and electro-optics industries;

Whereas the Laboratory has contributed to the development of technologies that offer the promise of providing energy security in the long term, including technology development for coal gasification, significant advances in fusion energy science, and international leadership in inertial confinement fusion research, and construction of large intertial confinement fusion lasers including ongoing work on the National Ignition Facility;

Whereas the Laboratory has developed novel environmental restoration technologies that are being used to rapidly clean up groundwater contamination at Superfund sites and is at the forefront of the development of simulation capabilities to better understand the Earth's climate and how it may change;

Whereas technologies developed at the Laboratory contributed to the Department of Energy's decision to launch its Human Genome Initiative in 1987, which evolved into the international Human Genome Project, the Laboratory participated in the project by mapping and sequencing chromosome 16, and continuing genetics work at the Laboratory is leading to the identification of the source of genetic diseases and to the development of improved detectors of biological agents;

Whereas the Laboratory is a valuable part of the University of California, working cooperatively with its many campuses to further higher education, contributing broadly to elementary and secondary educational efforts throughout Northern California and educational outreach directed at minority groups nationwide; and Whereas the Laboratory has been a national resource for science and technology for 50 years dedicated to serve our Nation: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That Congress, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, congratulates the Laboratory, its staff, and former employees for its dedicated service to our Nation, with its outstanding contributions to national security, its tradition of scientific and technical excellence, and its continuing efforts to make the world more secure and a better place to live.

1C) Detecting Nuclear Materials at US Ports
SA 4592. Mr. SCHUMER (for himself and Mr. WARNER) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA 4471 proposed by Mr. LIEBERMAN to the bill H.R. 5005, to establish the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

On page 103, between lines 12 and 13, insert the following:
(n) RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT GRANTS FOR PORT SECURITY.--
(1) AUTHORITY.--The Secretary of Homeland Security is authorized to award grants to national laboratories, private nonprofit organizations, institutions of higher education, and other entities for the support of research and development of technologies that can be used to secure the ports of the United States.

(2) USE OF FUNDS.--Grants awarded pursuant to paragraph (1) may be used to develop technologies such as--
(A) methods to increase the ability of the Customs Service to inspect merchandise carried on any vessel that will arrive or has arrived at any port or place in the United States;
(B) equipment that accurately detects explosives, or chemical and biological agents that could be used to commit terrorist acts in the United States;
(C) equipment that accurately detects nuclear materials, including scintillation-based detection equipment capable of attachment to spreaders to signal the presence of nuclear materials during the unloading of containers;
(D) improved tags and seals designed for use on shipping containers to track the transportation of the merchandise in such containers, including ``smart sensors'' that are able to track a container throughout its entire supply chain, detect hazardous and radioactive materials within that container, and transmit such information to the appropriate authorities at a remote location;
(E) tools to mitigate the consequences of a terrorist act at a port of the United States, including a network of sensors to predict the dispersion of radiological, chemical, or biological agents that might be intentionally or accidentally released; and
(F) pilot projects that could be implemented within 12 months at 1 of the Nation's 10 largest ports to demonstrate the effectiveness of a system of radiation detection monitors located throughout the port to detect nuclear or radiological material.

(3) APPLICATIONS FOR GRANTS.--Each entity desiring a grant under this subsection shall submit an application to the Secretary of Homeland Security at such time, in such manner, and accompanied by such information as the Secretary may reasonably require.

(4) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.--There is authorized to be appropriated $50,000,000 for each of the fiscal years 2003 through 2007 to carry out the provisions of this subsection.

1D)

2A) Welcoming Madame Chen Wu Sue-Jen
Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am introducing today H. Res. 533, a resolution welcoming Madame Chen Wu Sue-jen of Taiwan to Washington. Madame Chen's visit comes at an important moment in our Nation's relationship with Taiwan and the People's Republic of China, PRC. Although the United States has repeatedly asked Beijing to resolve its difficulties with Taiwan through peaceful means, the Chinese military has placed hundreds of ballistic missiles on the coast of China aimed at Taiwan. To make matters worse China is building more and more of them. The communist authorities portray the peaceful cause of Taiwan independence as a terrorist movement. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taiwan threatens no one. On the contrary Taiwan has been 100 percent supportive of the war against terrorism and generously gave humanitarian support for the new Afghan Government. China on the other hand helped the Taliban build a 14,000 secure telephone line system.

China has also assisted Iraq in building a fiber optic communications network that is used by the Iraqi military. It is clear who supportsterrorism and who does not.

First Lady Chen Wu will be bringing with her a strong message from her husband and the people of Taiwan that Taiwan's cooperation with the United States in the antiterrorism campaign will continue and be strengthened further. This is the sort of mature behavior that the world has come to expect from Taiwan. We hope that Beijing will soon follow in Taiwan's footsteps and become a truly constructive member of the world community. Such a change in behavior will benefit the Chinese and Taiwanese people and the region and the world as a whole. Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to vote for H. Res. 533, and welcome Madame Chen to the United States. I ask that the full text of H. Res. 533 be printed at this point in the RECORD.

Whereas Taiwan's First Lady Chen Wu Sue-jen, wife and political partner to her husband President Chen Shui-bian, has been unwaveringly and courageously striving for justice, human rights, and democracy in Taiwan and has herself held a seat in the Legislative Yuan;

Whereas Taiwan is now a model vibrant democracy an one of the top ten trading partners of the United States;

Whereas supporting democracy, human rights, and free market economies has been a longstanding policy of the United States;

Whereas the Government and people in Taiwan have consistently provided tremendous support and generous contributions to the United States after the terrorist attacks against the United States that occurred on September 11, 2001;

Whereas First Lady Chen Wu was one of the main forces behind Taiwan's charity and humanitarian assistance for the victims of the terrorist attacks;

Whereas First Lady Chen Wu will visit the United States beginning on September 22, 2002, and will bring with her a strong message from her husband and the people of Taiwan that Taiwan's cooperation with the United States in this joint anti-terrorism campaign will continue and be further strengthened;

Whereas First Lady Chen Wu, on behalf of President Chen Shui-bian, visited France in November 2001 to receive the International Human Rights Award; and

Whereas First Lady Chen Wu, confined to a wheelchair due to a tragic traffic accident during a political campaign, is a strong and effective advocate for Taiwan's physically challenged citizens: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives extends its warmest welcome to Taiwan's First Lady Chen Wu Sue-jen during her visit to Washington, D.C., in September 2002.

3A) Equipping WMD Civil Support Teams
SA 4601. Mr. BINGAMAN submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA 4471 proposed by Mr. LIEBERMAN to the bill H.R. 5005, to establish the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows: At the end of subtitle D of title I, add the following:

SEC. 173. NATIONAL GUARD TECHNOLOGY CENTER OF EXCELLENCE. (a) FINDINGS.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams of the National Guard have a mission that differs from the warfighting mission of other units of the National Guard.
(2) The traditional approach of equipping National Guard personnel with equipment used by personnel on full-time military duty is inadequate for civil support team personnel because of the unique mission of the civil support teams.
(3) It is in the national interest that special efforts be undertaken immediately to provide the civil support teams with the technologies needed to support their unique mission.
(4) Some of the technologies needed to support the mission of the civil support teams is available commercially, while other technologies will need to be developed.
(5) The civil support teams also need cost effective, efficient training designed for their unique mission.
(6) National Guard personnel involved in other homeland security missions also require technologies and training in support of such missions.

(b) ESTABLISHMENT.--Not later than one year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, establish a National Guard Technology Center of Excellence (in this section referred to as the ``Center'').

(c) REQUIREMENTS.--(1) The Center shall consist of a consortium of at least one national laboratory, and such universities, non-profit research institutes, and other entities, selected by the Secretary for purposes of the Center.
(2) Each laboratory or entity selected for participation in the Center shall possess significant expertise in the development of technologies for the Federal Government for homeland defense.
(3) Subject to limitations imposed by the Secretary of Defense, the Center shall have ready access to a military installation that supports the National Guard.

(d) MISSION.--The mission of the Center is as follows:
(1) To support the development and procurement of technologies for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams of the National Guard, and other personnel and units of the National Guard engaged in homeland defense, for the purpose of assisting such teams in carrying out their missions.
(2) To support the development and deployment of an improved training curricula to support the Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams of the National Guard.

(e) LEAD ENTITY.--(1) The Secretary shall designate a national laboratory, or one of the other entities, comprising the Center as lead entity of the Center. The laboratory or entity so designated shall have expertise in chemical, biological, and nuclear regimens.
(2) The entity designated under paragraph (1) shall carry out such activities in that capacity as the Secretary shall provide, including service as liaison between the Center and the Department regarding the activities of the Center.

(f) FUNDING.--There are authorized to be appropriated to the Department, for transfer to the entity designated under subsection (e)--
(1) $4,000,000 to carry out the activities described in subsection (d)(1); and
(2) $1,000,000 to carry out the activities described in subsection (d)(2).

3B) First Responder Terrorism Preparedness
SA 4619. Mr. JEFFORDS (for himself and Mr. SMITH of New Hamsphire, and Ms. SNOWE) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA 4471 proposed by Mr. LIEBERMAN to the bill H.R. 5005, to establish the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

    At the end of title I, add the following:

   SEC. 199A. SHORT TITLE.

    This subtitle may be cited as the ``First Responder Terrorism Preparedness Act of 2002''.

   SEC. 199B. FINDINGS AND PURPOSES.

    (a) FINDINGS.--Congress finds that--

    (1) the Federal Government must enhance the ability of first responders to respond to incidents of terrorism, including incidents involving weapons of mass destruction; and

    (2) as a result of the events of September 11, 2001, it is necessary to clarify and consolidate the authority of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to support first responders.

    (b) PURPOSES.--The purposes of this subtitle are--

    (1) to establish within the Federal Emergency Management Agency the Office of National Preparedness;

    (2) to establish a program to provide assistance to enhance the ability of first responders to respond to incidents of terrorism, including incidents involving weapons of mass destruction; and

    (3) to address issues relating to urban search and rescue task forces.

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   SEC. 199C. DEFINITIONS.

    (a) MAJOR DISASTER.--Section 102(2) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122(2)) is amended by inserting ``incident of terrorism,'' after ``drought),''.

    (b) WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION.--Section 602(a) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5196(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following:

    ``(11) WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION.--The term `weapon of mass destruction' has the meaning given the term in section 2302 of title 50, United States Code.''.

   SEC. 199D. ESTABLISHMENT OF OFFICE OF NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS.

    Subtitle A of title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5196 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following:

   ``SEC. 616. OFFICE OF NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS.

    ``(a) IN GENERAL.--There is established in the Federal Emergency Management Agency an office to be known as the `Office of National Preparedness' (referred to in this section as the `Office').

    ``(b) APPOINTMENT OF ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR.--

    ``(1) IN GENERAL.--The Office shall be headed by an Associate Director, who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.

    ``(2) COMPENSATION.--The Associate Director shall be compensated at the annual rate of basic pay prescribed for level IV of the Executive Schedule under section 5315 of title 5, United States Code.

    ``(c) DUTIES.--The Office shall--

    ``(1) lead a coordinated and integrated overall effort to build, exercise, and ensure viable terrorism preparedness and response capability at all levels of government;

    ``(2) establish clearly defined standards and guidelines for Federal, State, tribal, and local government terrorism preparedness and response;

    ``(3) establish and coordinate an integrated capability for Federal, State, tribal, and local governments and emergency responders to plan for and address potential consequences of terrorism;

    ``(4) coordinate provision of Federal terrorism preparedness assistance to State, tribal, and local governments;

    ``(5) establish standards for a national, interoperable emergency communications and warning system;

    ``(6) establish standards for training of first responders (as defined in section 630(a)), and for equipment to be used by first responders, to respond to incidents of terrorism, including incidents involving weapons of mass destruction; and

    ``(7) carry out such other related activities as are approved by the Director.

    ``(d) DESIGNATION OF REGIONAL CONTACTS.--The Associate Director shall designate an officer or employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in each of the 10 regions of the Agency to serve as the Office contact for the States in that region.

    ``(e) USE OF EXISTING RESOURCES.--In carrying out this section, the Associate Director shall--

    ``(1) to the maximum extent practicable, use existing resources, including planning documents, equipment lists, and program inventories; and

    ``(2) consult with and use--

    ``(A) existing Federal interagency boards and committees;

    ``(B) existing government agencies; and

    ``(C) nongovernmental organizations.''.

   SEC. 199E. PREPAREDNESS ASSISTANCE FOR FIRST RESPONDERS.

    (a) IN GENERAL.--Subtitle B of title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5197 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following:

   ``SEC. 630. PREPAREDNESS ASSISTANCE FOR FIRST RESPONDERS.

    ``(a) DEFINITIONS.--In this section:

    ``(1) FIRST RESPONDER.--The term `first responder' means--

    ``(A) fire, emergency medical service, and law enforcement personnel; and

    ``(B) such other personnel as are identified by the Director.

    ``(2) LOCAL ENTITY.--The term `local entity' has the meaning given the term by regulation promulgated by the Director.

    ``(3) PROGRAM.--The term `program' means the program established under subsection (b).

    ``(b) PROGRAM TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE.--

    ``(1) IN GENERAL.--The Director shall establish a program to provide assistance to States to enhance the ability of State and local first responders to respond to incidents of terrorism, including incidents involving weapons of mass destruction.

    ``(2) FEDERAL SHARE.--The Federal share of the costs eligible to be paid using assistance provided under the program shall be not less than 75 percent, as determined by the Director.

    ``(3) FORMS OF ASSISTANCE.--Assistance provided under paragraph (1) may consist of--

    ``(A) grants; and

    ``(B) such other forms of assistance as the Director determines to be appropriate.

    ``(c) USES OF ASSISTANCE.--Assistance provided under subsection (b)--

    ``(1) shall be used--

    ``(A) to purchase, to the maximum extent practicable, interoperable equipment that is necessary to respond to incidents of terrorism, including incidents involving weapons of mass destruction;

    ``(B) to train first responders, consistent with guidelines and standards developed by the Director;

    ``(C) in consultation with the Director, to develop, construct, or upgrade terrorism preparedness training facilities;

    ``(D) to develop, construct, or upgrade emergency operating centers;

    ``(E) to develop preparedness and response plans consistent with Federal, State, and local strategies, as determined by the Director;

    ``(F) to provide systems and equipment to meet communication needs, such as emergency notification systems, interoperable equipment, and secure communication equipment;

    ``(G) to conduct exercises; and

    ``(H) to carry out such other related activities as are approved by the Director; and

    ``(2) shall not be used to provide compensation to first responders (including payment for overtime).

    ``(d) ALLOCATION OF FUNDS.--For each fiscal year, in providing assistance under subsection (b), the Director shall make available--

    ``(1) to each of the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, $3,000,000; and

    ``(2) to each State (other than a State specified in paragraph (1))--

    ``(A) a base amount of $15,000,000; and

    ``(B) a percentage of the total remaining funds made available for the fiscal year based on criteria established by the Director, such as--

    ``(i) population;

    ``(ii) location of vital infrastructure, including--

    ``(I) military installations;

    ``(II) public buildings (as defined in section 13 of the Public Buildings Act of 1959 (40 U.S.C. 612));

    ``(III) nuclear power plants;

    ``(IV) chemical plants; and

    ``(V) national landmarks; and

    ``(iii) proximity to international borders.

    ``(e) PROVISION OF FUNDS TO LOCAL GOVERNMENTS AND LOCAL ENTITIES.--

    ``(1) IN GENERAL.--For each fiscal year, not less than 75 percent of the assistance provided to each State under this section shall be provided to local governments and local entities within the State.

    ``(2) ALLOCATION OF FUNDS.--Under paragraph (1), a State shall allocate assistance to local governments and local entities within the State in accordance with criteria established by the Director, such as the criteria specified in subsection (d)(2)(B).

    ``(3) DEADLINE FOR PROVISION OF FUNDS.--Under paragraph (1), a State shall provide all assistance to local government and local entities not later than 45 days after the date on which the State receives the assistance.

    ``(4) COORDINATION.--Each State shall coordinate with local governments and local entities concerning the use of assistance provided to local governments and local entities under paragraph (1).

    ``(f) ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSES.--

    ``(1) DIRECTOR.--For each fiscal year, the Director may use to pay salaries and other administrative expenses incurred in administering the program not more than the lesser of--

    ``(A) 5 percent of the funds made available to carry out this section for the fiscal year; or

    ``(B)(i) for fiscal year 2003, $75,000,000; and

    ``(ii) for each of fiscal years 2004 through 2006, $50,000,000.

    ``(2) RECIPIENTS OF ASSISTANCE.--For each fiscal year, not more than 10 percent of the funds retained by a State after application of subsection (e) may be used to pay salaries and other administrative expenses incurred in administering the program.

    ``(g) MAINTENANCE OF EXPENDITURES.--The Director may provide assistance to a State under this section only if the State agrees to maintain, and to ensure that each local government that receives funds from the State in accordance with subsection (e) maintains, for the fiscal year for which the assistance is provided, the aggregate expenditures by the State or the local government, respectively, for the uses described in subsection (c)(1) at a level that is at or above the average annual level of those expenditures by the State or local government, respectively, for the 2 fiscal years preceding the fiscal year for which the assistance is provided.

    ``(h) REPORTS.--

    ``(1) ANNUAL REPORT TO THE DIRECTOR.--As a condition of receipt of assistance under this section for a fiscal year, a State shall submit to the Director, not later than 60 days after the end of the fiscal year, a report on the use of the assistance in the fiscal year.

    ``(2) EXERCISE AND REPORT TO CONGRESS.--As a condition of receipt of assistance under this section, not later than 3 years after the date of enactment of this section, a State shall--

    ``(A) conduct an exercise, or participate in a regional exercise, approved by the Director, to measure the progress of the State in enhancing the ability of State and local first responders to respond to incidents of terrorism, including incidents involving weapons of mass destruction; and

    ``(B) submit a report on the results of the exercise to--

    ``(i) the Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate; and

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    ``(ii) the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives.

    ``(i) COORDINATION.--

    ``(1) WITH FEDERAL AGENCIES.--The Director shall, as necessary, coordinate the provision of assistance under this section with activities carried out by--

    ``(A) the Administrator of the United States Fire Administration in connection with the implementation by the Administrator of the assistance to firefighters grant program established under section 33 of the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 (15 U.S.C. 2229) (as added by section 1701(a) of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (114 Stat. 1654, 1654A-360));

    ``(B) the Attorney General, in connection with the implementation of the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Program established under section 1701(a) of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. 3796dd(a)); and

    ``(C) other appropriate Federal agencies.

    ``(2) WITH INDIAN TRIBES.--In providing and using assistance under this section, the Director and the States shall, as appropriate, coordinate with--

    ``(A) Indian tribes (as defined in section 4 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (25 U.S.C. 450b)) and other tribal organizations; and

    ``(B) Native villages (as defined in section 3 of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. 1602)) and other Alaska Native organizations.''.

    (b) COST SHARING FOR EMERGENCY OPERATING CENTERS.--Section 614 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5196c) is amended--

    (1) by inserting ``(other than section 630)'' after ``carry out this title''; and

    (2) by inserting ``(other than section 630)'' after ``under this title''.

   SEC. 199F. PROTECTION OF HEALTH AND SAFETY OF FIRST RESPONDERS.

    Subtitle B of title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5197 et seq.) (as amended by section 199E(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following:

   ``SEC. 631. PROTECTION OF HEALTH AND SAFETY OF FIRST RESPONDERS.

    ``(a) DEFINITIONS.--In this section:

    ``(1) FIRST RESPONDER.--The term `first responder' has the meaning given the term in section 630(a).

    ``(2) HARMFUL SUBSTANCE.--The term `harmful substance' means a substance that the President determines may be harmful to human health.

    ``(3) PROGRAM.--The term `program' means a program described in subsection (b)(1).

    ``(b) PROGRAM.--

    ``(1) IN GENERAL.--If the President determines that 1 or more harmful substances are being, or have been, released in an area that the President has declared to be a major disaster area under this Act, the President shall carry out a program with respect to the area for the protection, assessment, monitoring, and study of the health and safety of first responders.

    ``(2) ACTIVITIES.--A program shall include--

    ``(A) collection and analysis of environmental and exposure data;

    ``(B) development and dissemination of educational materials;

    ``(C) provision of information on releases of a harmful substance;

    ``(D) identification of, performance of baseline health assessments on, taking biological samples from, and establishment of an exposure registry of first responders exposed to a harmful substance;

    ``(E) study of the long-term health impacts of any exposures of first responders to a harmful substance through epidemiological studies; and

    ``(F) provision of assistance to participants in registries and studies under subparagraphs (D) and (E) in determining eligibility for health coverage and identifying appropriate health services.

    ``(3) PARTICIPATION IN REGISTRIES AND STUDIES.--

    ``(A) IN GENERAL.--Participation in any registry or study under subparagraph (D) or (E) of paragraph (2) shall be voluntary.

    ``(B) PROTECTION OF PRIVACY.--The President shall take appropriate measures to protect the privacy of any participant in a registry or study described in subparagraph (A).

    ``(4) COOPERATIVE AGREEMENTS.--The President may carry out a program through a cooperative agreement with a medical or academic institution, or a consortium of such institutions, that is--

    ``(A) located in close proximity to the major disaster area with respect to which the program is carried out; and

    ``(B) experienced in the area of environmental or occupational health and safety, including experience in--

    ``(i) conducting long-term epidemiological studies;

    ``(ii) conducting long-term mental health studies; and

    ``(iii) establishing and maintaining environmental exposure or disease registries.

    ``(c) REPORTS AND RESPONSES TO STUDIES.--

    ``(1) REPORTS.--Not later than 1 year after the date of completion of a study under subsection (b)(2)(E), the President, or the medical or academic institution or consortium of such institutions that entered into the cooperative agreement under subsection (b)(4), shall submit to the Director, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Labor, and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency a report on the study.

    ``(2) CHANGES IN PROCEDURES.--To protect the health and safety of first responders, the President shall make such changes in procedures as the President determines to be necessary based on the findings of a report submitted under paragraph (1).''.

   SEC. 199G. URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE TASK FORCES.

    Subtitle B of title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5197 et seq.) (as amended by section 199F) is amended by adding at the end the following:

   ``SEC. 632. URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE TASK FORCES.

    ``(a) DEFINITIONS.--In this section:

    ``(1) URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE EQUIPMENT.--The term `urban search and rescue equipment' means any equipment that the Director determines to be necessary to respond to a major disaster or emergency declared by the President under this Act.

    ``(2) URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE TASK FORCE.--The term `urban search and rescue task force' means any of the 28 urban search and rescue task forces designated by the Director as of the date of enactment of this section.

    ``(b) ASSISTANCE.--

    ``(1) MANDATORY GRANTS FOR COSTS OF OPERATIONS.--For each fiscal year, of the amounts made available to carry out this section, the Director shall provide to each urban search and rescue task force a grant of not less than $1,500,000 to pay the costs of operations of the urban search and rescue task force (including costs of basic urban search and rescue equipment).

    ``(2) DISCRETIONARY GRANTS.--The Director may provide to any urban search and rescue task force a grant, in such amount as the Director determines to be appropriate, to pay the costs of--

    ``(A) operations in excess of the funds provided under paragraph (1);

    ``(B) urban search and rescue equipment;

    ``(C) equipment necessary for an urban search and rescue task force to operate in an environment contaminated or otherwise affected by a weapon of mass destruction;

    ``(D) training, including training for operating in an environment described in subparagraph (C);

    ``(E) transportation;

    ``(F) expansion of the urban search and rescue task force; and

    ``(G) incident support teams, including costs of conducting appropriate evaluations of the readiness of the urban search and rescue task force.

    ``(3) PRIORITY FOR FUNDING.--The Director shall distribute funding under this subsection so as to ensure that each urban search and rescue task force has the capacity to deploy simultaneously at least 2 teams with all necessary equipment, training, and transportation.

    ``(c) GRANT REQUIREMENTS.--The Director shall establish such requirements as are necessary to provide grants under this section.

    ``(d) ESTABLISHMENT OF ADDITIONAL URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE TASK FORCES.--

    ``(1) IN GENERAL.--Subject to paragraph (2), the Director may establish urban search and rescue task forces in addition to the 28 urban search and rescue task forces in existence on the date of enactment of this section.

    ``(2) REQUIREMENT OF FULL FUNDING OF EXISTING URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE TASK FORCES.--Except in the case of an urban search and rescue task force designated to replace any urban search and rescue task force that withdraws or is otherwise no longer considered to be an urban search and rescue task force designated by the Director, no additional urban search and rescue task forces may be designated or funded until the 28 urban search and rescue task forces are able to deploy simultaneously at least 2 teams with all necessary equipment, training, and transportation.''.

   SEC. 199H. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

    Section 626 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5197e) is amended by striking subsection (a) and inserting the following:

    ``(a) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.--

    ``(1) IN GENERAL.--There are authorized to be appropriated such sums as are necessary to carry out this title (other than sections 630 and 632).

    ``(2) PREPAREDNESS ASSISTANCE FOR FIRST RESPONDERS.--There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out section 630--

    ``(A) $3,340,000,000 for fiscal year 2003; and

    ``(B) $3,458,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2004 through 2006.

    ``(3) URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE TASK FORCES.--

    ``(A) IN GENERAL.--There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out section 632--

    ``(i) $160,000,000 for fiscal year 2003; and

    ``(ii) $42,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2004 through 2006.

    ``(B) AVAILABILITY OF AMOUNTS.--Amounts made available under subparagraph (A) shall remain available until expended.''.

4A) The Department of Veteran's Affairs Emergency Preparedness Act
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 526) providing for the concurrence by the House with an amendment in the amendments of the Senate to H.R. 3253.

   The Clerk read as follows:

   H. Res. 526

    Resolved, That, upon the adoption of this resolution, the House shall be considered to have taken from the Speaker's table the bill H.R. 3253, with the Senate amendments thereto, and to have concurred in the Senate amendment to the title of the bill and to have concurred in the Senate amendment to the text of the bill with the following amendment:

    In lieu of the matter proposed to be inserted by the amendment of the Senate to the text of the bill, insert the following:

   SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Department of Veterans Affairs Emergency Preparedness Act of 2002''.

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   SEC. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF MEDICAL EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS CENTERS AT DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS MEDICAL CENTERS.

    (a) IN GENERAL.--(1) Subchapter II of chapter 73 of title 38, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new section:``§7325. Medical emergency preparedness centers

    ``(a) ESTABLISHMENT OF CENTERS.--(1) The Secretary shall establish four medical emergency preparedness centers in accordance with this section. Each such center shall be established at a Department medical center and shall be staffed by Department employees.

    ``(2) The Under Secretary for Health shall be responsible for supervising the operation of the centers established under this section. The Under Secretary shall provide for ongoing evaluation of the centers and their compliance with the requirements of this section.

    ``(3) The Under Secretary shall carry out the Under Secretary's functions under paragraph (2) in consultation with the Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs with responsibility for operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement functions.

    ``(b) MISSION.--The mission of the centers shall be as follows:

    ``(1) To carry out research on, and to develop methods of detection, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of injuries, diseases, and illnesses arising from the use of chemical, biological, radiological, incendiary or other explosive weapons or devices posing threats to the public health and safety.

    ``(2) To provide education, training, and advice to health care professionals, including health care professionals outside the Veterans Health Administration, through the National Disaster Medical System established pursuant to section 2811(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300hh-11(b)) or through interagency agreements entered into by the Secretary for that purpose.

    ``(3) In the event of a disaster or emergency referred to in section 1785(b) of this title, to provide such laboratory, epidemiological, medical, or other assistance as the Secretary considers appropriate to Federal, State, and local health care agencies and personnel involved in or responding to the disaster or emergency.

    ``(c) SELECTION OF CENTERS.--(1) The Secretary shall select the sites for the centers on the basis of a competitive selection process. The Secretary may not designate a site as a location for a center under this section unless the Secretary makes a finding under paragraph (2) with respect to the proposal for the designation of such site. To the maximum extent practicable, the Secretary shall ensure the geographic dispersal of the sites throughout the United States. Any such center may be a consortium of efforts of more than one medical center.

    ``(2) A finding by the Secretary referred to in paragraph (1) with respect to a proposal for designation of a site as a location of a center under this section is a finding by the Secretary, upon the recommendations of the Under Secretary for Health and the Assistant Secretary with responsibility for operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement functions, that the facility or facilities submitting the proposal have developed (or may reasonably be anticipated to develop) each of the following:

    ``(A) An arrangement with a qualifying medical school and a qualifying school of public health (or a consortium of such schools) under which physicians and other persons in the health field receive education and training through the participating Department medical facilities so as to provide those persons with training in the detection, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of injuries, diseases, and illnesses induced by exposures to chemical and biological substances, radiation, and incendiary or other explosive weapons or devices.

    ``(B) An arrangement with a graduate school specializing in epidemiology under which students receive education and training in epidemiology through the participating Department facilities so as to provide such students with training in the epidemiology of contagious and infectious diseases and chemical and radiation poisoning in an exposed population.

    ``(C) An arrangement under which nursing, social work, counseling, or allied health personnel and students receive training and education in recognizing and caring for conditions associated with exposures to toxins through the participating Department facilities.

    ``(D) The ability to attract scientists who have made significant contributions to the development of innovative approaches to the detection, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of injuries, diseases, and illnesses arising from the use of chemical, biological, radiological, incendiary or other explosive weapons or devices posing threats to the public health and safety.

    ``(3) For purposes of paragraph (2)(A)--

    ``(A) a qualifying medical school is an accredited medical school that provides education and training in toxicology and environmental health hazards and with which one or more of the participating Department medical centers is affiliated; and

    ``(B) a qualifying school of public health is an accredited school of public health that provides education and training in toxicology and environmental health hazards and with which one or more of the participating Department medical centers is affiliated.

    ``(d) RESEARCH ACTIVITIES.--Each center shall conduct research on improved medical preparedness to protect the Nation from threats in the area of that center's expertise. Each center may seek research funds from public and private sources for such purpose.

    ``(e) DISSEMINATION OF RESEARCH PRODUCTS.--(1) The Under Secretary for Health and the Assistant Secretary with responsibility for operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement functions shall ensure that information produced by the research, education and training, and clinical activities of centers established under this section is made available, as appropriate, to health-care providers in the United States. Dissemination of such information shall be made through publications, through programs of continuing medical and related education provided through regional medical education centers under subchapter VI of chapter 74 of this title, and through other means. Such programs of continuing medical education shall receive priority in the award of funding.

    ``(2) The Secretary shall ensure that the work of the centers is conducted in close coordination with other Federal departments and agencies and that research products or other information of the centers shall be coordinated and shared with other Federal departments and agencies.

    ``(f) COORDINATION OF ACTIVITIES.--The Secretary shall take appropriate actions to ensure that the work of each center is carried out--

    ``(1) in close coordination with the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other departments, agencies, and elements of the Government charged with coordination of plans for United States homeland security; and

    ``(2) after taking into consideration applicable recommendations of the working group on the prevention, preparedness, and response to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies established under section 319F(a) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247d-6(a)) or any other joint interagency advisory group or committee designated by the President or the President's designee to coordinate Federal research on weapons of mass destruction.

    ``(g) ASSISTANCE TO OTHER AGENCIES.--The Secretary may provide assistance requested by appropriate Federal, State, and local civil and criminal authorities in investigations, inquiries, and data analyses as necessary to protect the public safety and prevent or obviate biological, chemical, or radiological threats.

    ``(h) DETAIL OF EMPLOYEES FROM OTHER AGENCIES.--Upon approval by the Secretary, the Director of a center may request the temporary assignment or detail to the center, on a nonreimbursable basis, of employees from other departments and agencies of the United States who have expertise that would further the mission of the center. Any such employee may be so assigned or detailed on a nonreimbursable basis pursuant to such a request.

    ``(i) FUNDING.--(1) Amounts appropriated for the activities of the centers under this section shall be appropriated separately from amounts appropriated for the Department for medical care.

    ``(2) In addition to funds appropriated for a fiscal year specifically for the activities of the centers pursuant to paragraph (1), the Under Secretary for Health shall allocate to such centers from other funds appropriated for that fiscal year generally for the Department medical care account and the Department medical and prosthetics research account such amounts as the Under Secretary determines appropriate to carry out the purposes of this section. Any determination by the Under Secretary under the preceding sentence shall be made in consultation with the Assistant Secretary with responsibility for operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement functions.

    ``(3) There are authorized to be appropriated for the centers under this section $20,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2003 through 2007.''.

    (2) The table of sections at the beginning of such chapter is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 7324 the following new item:

   ``7325. Medical emergency preparedness centers.''.

    (b) PEER REVIEW FOR DESIGNATION OF CENTERS.--(1) In order to assist the Secretary of Veterans Affairs and the Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Health in selecting sites for centers under section 7325 of title 38, United States Code, as added by subsection (a), the Under Secretary shall establish a peer review panel to assess the scientific and clinical merit of proposals that are submitted to the Secretary for the designation of such centers. The peer review panel shall be established in consultation with the Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs with responsibility for operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement functions.

    (2) The peer review panel shall include experts in the fields of toxicological research, infectious diseases, radiology, clinical care of patients exposed to such hazards, and other persons as determined appropriate by the Secretary. Members of the panel shall serve as consultants to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    (3) The panel shall review each proposal submitted to the panel by the officials referred to in paragraph (1) and shall submit to

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    (4) The panel shall not be subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C. App.).

   SEC. 3. EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROGRAMS ON MEDICAL RESPONSES TO CONSEQUENCES OF TERRORIST ACTIVITIES.

    (a) IN GENERAL.--(1) Subchapter II of chapter 73 of title 38, United States Code, is amended by adding after section 7325, as added by section 2(a)(1), the following new section:``§7326. Education and training programs on medical response to consequences of terrorist activities

    ``(a) EDUCATION PROGRAM.--The Secretary shall carry out a program to develop and disseminate a series of model education and training programs on the medical responses to the consequences of terrorist activities.

    ``(b) IMPLEMENTING OFFICIAL.--The program shall be carried out through the Under Secretary for Health, in consultation with the Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs with responsibility for operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement functions.

    ``(c) CONTENT OF PROGRAMS.--The education and training programs developed under the program shall be modelled after programs established at the F. Edward Hebért School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and shall include, at a minimum, training for health care professionals in the following:

    ``(1) Recognition of chemical, biological, radiological, incendiary, or other explosive agents, weapons, or devices that may be used in terrorist activities.

    ``(2) Identification of the potential symptoms of exposure to those agents.

    ``(3) Understanding of the potential long-term health consequences, including psychological effects, resulting from exposure to those agents, weapons, or devices.

    ``(4) Emergency treatment for exposure to those agents, weapons, or devices.

    ``(5) An appropriate course of followup treatment, supportive care, and referral.

    ``(6) Actions that can be taken while providing care for exposure to those agents, weapons, or devices to protect against contamination, injury, or other hazards from such exposure.

    ``(7) Information on how to seek consultative support and to report suspected or actual use of those agents.

    ``(d) POTENTIAL TRAINEES.--In designing the education and training programs under this section, the Secretary shall ensure that different programs are designed for health-care professionals in Department medical centers. The programs shall be designed to be disseminated to health professions students, graduate health and medical education trainees, and health practitioners in a variety of fields.

    ``(e) CONSULTATION.--In establishing education and training programs under this section, the Secretary shall consult with appropriate representatives of accrediting, certifying, and coordinating organizations in the field of health professions education.''.

    (2) The table of sections at the beginning of such chapter is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 7325, as added by section 2(a)(2), the following new item:

   ``7326. Education and training programs on medical response to consequences of terrorist activities.''.

    (b) EFFECTIVE DATE.--The Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall implement section 7326 of title 38, United States Code, as added by subsection (a), not later than the end of the 90-day period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.

   SEC. 4. AUTHORITY TO FURNISH HEALTH CARE DURING MAJOR DISASTERS AND MEDICAL EMERGENCIES.

    (a) IN GENERAL.--(1) Subchapter VIII of chapter 17 of title 38, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new section:``§1785. Care and services during certain disasters and emergencies

    ``(a) AUTHORITY TO PROVIDE HOSPITAL CARE AND MEDICAL SERVICES.--During and immediately following a disaster or emergency referred to in subsection (b), the Secretary may furnish hospital care and medical services to individuals responding to, involved in, or otherwise affected by that disaster or emergency.

    ``(b) COVERED DISASTERS AND EMERGENCIES.--A disaster or emergency referred to in this subsection is any disaster or emergency as follows:

    ``(1) A major disaster or emergency declared by the President under the Robert B. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.).

    ``(2) A disaster or emergency in which the National Disaster Medical System established pursuant to section 2811(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300hh-11(b)) is activated by the Secretary of Health and Human Services under paragraph (3)(A) of that section or as otherwise authorized by law.

    ``(c) APPLICABILITY TO ELIGIBLE INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE VETERANS.--The Secretary may furnish care and services under this section to an individual described in subsection (a) who is a veteran without regard to whether that individual is enrolled in the system of patient enrollment under section 1705 of this title.

    ``(d) REIMBURSEMENT FROM OTHER FEDERAL DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.--(1) The cost of any care or services furnished under this section to an officer or employee of a department or agency of the United States other than the Department or to a member of the Armed Forces shall be reimbursed at such rates as may be agreed upon by the Secretary and the head of such department or agency or the Secretary concerned, in the case of a member of the Armed Forces, based on the cost of the care or service furnished.

    ``(2) Amounts received by the Department under this subsection shall be credited to the Medical Care Collections Fund under section 1729A of this title.

    ``(e) REPORT TO CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES.--Within 60 days of the commencement of a disaster or emergency referred to in subsection (b) in which the Secretary furnishes care and services under this section (or as soon thereafter as is practicable), the Secretary shall submit to the Committees on Veterans' Affairs of the Senate and the House of Representatives a report on the Secretary's allocation of facilities and personnel in order to furnish such care and services.

    ``(f) REGULATIONS.--The Secretary shall prescribe regulations governing the exercise of the authority of the Secretary under this section.''.

    (2) The table of sections at the beginning of that chapter is amended by adding at the end the following new item:

   ``1785. Care and services during certain disasters and emergencies.''.

    (b) MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES ON ACTIVE DUTY.--Section 8111A(a) of such title is amended--

    (1) by redesignating paragraph (2) as paragraph (4);

    (2) by designating the second sentence of paragraph (1) as paragraph (3); and

    (3) by inserting between paragraph (1) and paragraph (3), as designated by paragraph (2) of this subsection, the following new paragraph:

    ``(2)(A) During and immediately following a disaster or emergency referred to in subparagraph (B), the Secretary may furnish hospital care and medical services to members of the Armed Forces on active duty responding to or involved in that disaster or emergency.

    ``(B) A disaster or emergency referred to in this subparagraph is any disaster or emergency as follows:

    ``(i) A major disaster or emergency declared by the President under the Robert B. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.).

    ``(ii) A disaster or emergency in which the National Disaster Medical System established pursuant to section 2811(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300hh-11(b)) is activated by the Secretary of Health and Human Services under paragraph (3)(A) of that section or as otherwise authorized by law.''.

   SEC. 5. 10-YEAR EXTENSION OF EXPIRED AUTHORITY.

    Effective September 30, 2002, subsection (d) of section 1722A of title 38, United States Code, is amended by striking ``September 30, 2002'' and inserting ``September 30, 2012''.

   SEC. 6. INCREASE IN NUMBER OF ASSISTANT SECRETARIES OF VETERANS AFFAIRS.

    (a) INCREASE.--Subsection (a) of section 308 of title 38, United States Code, is amended by striking ``six'' in the first sentence and inserting ``seven''.

    (b) FUNCTIONS.--Subsection (b) of such section is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

    ``(11) Operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement functions.''.

    (c) NUMBER OF DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARIES.--Subsection (d)(1) of such section is amended by striking ``18'' and inserting ``19''.

    (d) CONFORMING AMENDMENT.--Section 5315 of title 5, United States Code, is amended by striking ``(6)'' after ``Assistant Secretaries, Department of Veterans Affairs'' and inserting ``(7)''.

   SEC. 7. CODIFICATION OF DUTIES OF SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS RELATING TO EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS.

    (a) IN GENERAL.--(1) Subchapter I of chapter 81 of title 38, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new section:``§8117. Emergency preparedness

    ``(a) READINESS OF DEPARTMENT MEDICAL CENTERS.--(1) The Secretary shall take appropriate actions to provide for the readiness of Department medical centers to protect the patients and staff of such centers from chemical or biological attack or otherwise to respond to such an attack so as to enable such centers to fulfill their obligations as part of the Federal response to public health emergencies.

    ``(2) Actions under paragraph (1) shall include--

    ``(A) the provision of decontamination equipment and personal protection equipment at Department medical centers; and

    ``(B) the provision of training in the use of such equipment to staff of such centers.

    ``(b) SECURITY AT DEPARTMENT MEDICAL AND RESEARCH FACILITIES.--(1) The Secretary shall take appropriate actions to provide for

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    ``(2) In taking actions under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall take into account the results of the evaluation of the security needs at Department medical centers and research facilities required by section 154(b)(1) of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-188; 116 Stat. 631), including the results of such evaluation relating to the following needs:

    ``(A) Needs for the protection of patients and medical staff during emergencies, including a chemical or biological attack or other terrorist attack.

    ``(B) Needs, if any, for screening personnel engaged in research relating to biological pathogens or agents, including work associated with such research.

    ``(C) Needs for securing laboratories or other facilities engaged in research relating to biological pathogens or agents.

    ``(c) TRACKING OF PHARMACEUTICALS AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT.--The Secretary shall develop and maintain a centralized system for tracking the current location and availability of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and medical equipment throughout the Department health care system in order to permit the ready identification and utilization of such pharmaceuticals, supplies, and equipment for a variety of purposes, including response to a chemical or biological attack or other terrorist attack.

    ``(d) TRAINING.--The Secretary shall ensure that the Department medical centers, in consultation with the accredited medical school affiliates of such medical centers, develop and implement curricula to train resident physicians and health care personnel in medical matters relating to biological, chemical, or radiological attacks or attacks from an incendiary or other explosive weapon.

    ``(e) PARTICIPATION IN NATIONAL DISASTER MEDICAL SYSTEM.--(1) The Secretary shall establish and maintain a training program to facilitate the participation of the staff of Department medical centers, and of the community partners of such centers, in the National Disaster Medical System established pursuant to section 2811(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300hh-11(b)).

    ``(2) The Secretary shall establish and maintain the training program under paragraph (1) in accordance with the recommendations of the working group on the prevention, preparedness, and response to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies established under section 319F(a) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247d-6(a)).

    ``(3) The Secretary shall establish and maintain the training program under paragraph (1) in consultation with the following:

    ``(A) The Secretary of Defense.

    ``(B) The Secretary of Health and Human Services.

    ``(C) The Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    ``(f) MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING.--(1) With respect to activities conducted by personnel serving at Department medical centers, the Secretary shall develop and maintain various strategies for providing mental health counseling and assistance, including counseling and assistance for post-traumatic stress disorder, following a bioterrorist attack or other public health emergency to the following persons:

    ``(A) Veterans.

    ``(B) Local and community emergency response providers.

    ``(C) Active duty military personnel.

    ``(D) Individuals seeking care at Department medical centers.

    ``(2) The strategies under paragraph (1) shall include the following:

    ``(A) Training and certification of providers of mental health counseling and assistance.

    ``(B) Mechanisms for coordinating the provision of mental health counseling and assistance to emergency response providers referred to in paragraph (1).

    ``(3) The Secretary shall develop and maintain the strategies under paragraph (1) in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the American Red Cross, and the working group referred to in subsection (e)(2).''.

    (2) The table of sections at the beginning of such chapter is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 8116 the following new item:

   ``8117. Emergency preparedness.''.

    (b) REPEAL OF CODIFIED PROVISIONS.--Subsections (a), (b)(2), (c), (d), (e), and (f) of section 154 of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-188; 38 U.S.C. note prec. 8101) are repealed.

    (c) CONFORMING AMENDMENTS.--Subsection (g) of such section is amended--

    (1) in paragraph (1), by inserting ``of section 8117 of title 38, United States Code'' after ``subsection (a)''; and

    (2) in paragraph (2), by striking ``subsections (b) through (f)'' and inserting ``subsection (b)(1) of this section and subsections (b) through (f) of section 8117 of title 38, United States Code''.

   The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Boozman). Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans) each will control 20 minutes.

   The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

   Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

   Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to bring to the floor legislation that I introduced almost a year ago to respond to the diabolical terrorist attacks of September 11 and the anthrax attacks that followed.

   The legislation, H.R. 3253, as amended, the Department of Veterans Affairs Emergency Preparedness Act of 2002, provides the Federal Government with another tool to prevent or, if necessary, respond to future acts of terrorism against the United States. This legislation is designed to mobilize the underappreciated strength of the VA health care infrastructure in defending our Nation against future acts of terrorism.

   Although it may come as a surprise to many, the Department of Veterans Affairs operates our Nation's largest integrated health care network, with over 200,000 health care practitioners, 163 medical centers, more than 800 outpatient clinics, 115 medical research programs, affiliations with over 100 schools of medicine, and a $25 billion annual budget including over $1 billion for research programs.

   The VA health care system must, Madam Speaker, be an integral component of any homeland security strategy. In fact, the VA already does have defined roles in both the National Disaster Medical System and the Federal Response Plan in the event of national emergencies.

   Among the VA's current specialized duties are, one, conducting and evaluating disaster and terrorist attack simulation exercises; second, managing the Nation's stockpile of drugs to counter the effects of chemical and biological poisons; third, maintaining a rapid response team for radioactive releases; and, fourth, training public and private NDMS medical center personnel around the country in properly responding to biological, chemical, or radiological disasters.

   H.R. 3253 was developed in order to apply the existing experience and expertise in the VA's health care research programs as a defensive tool in the war on terrorism.

   Madam Speaker, I know from my own experience with the anthrax attacks last October, which hit my own district and hit it hard in central New Jersey in Hamilton Township, putting thousands of dedicated postal workers and the public as well at risk, that we need to move very quickly, develop new tests and new treatments for anthrax and scores of other biological and dangerous chemical agents and radiological weapons that might be employed by terrorists.

   When anthrax was discovered in the Hamilton Post Office, I was astounded to discover that there were no existing protocols to test, quarantine, or treat victims. The confusion that emanated, the fog, if my colleagues will, that followed the discovery of anthrax made a bad situation even worse. I saw it over and over again, well-intentioned experts from the departments of health, State and Federal, CDC and the like were flying by the seat of their collective pants. Far too many pertinent questions were not answered and were not answered with scientific or any kind of precision.

   It was during that crisis, frankly, that I thought that we needed to develop a new policy that would establish protocols which would try to deal with the details before the unthinkable, which now had become thinkable, actually happened; and that was the genesis of this legislation.

   H.R. 3253, we believe, will marshal some of our Nation's best and brightest scientists in a focused effort to develop new protocols for testing, vaccinating, and treating our citizens who may be victims of biological, chemical, or radiological terrorism.

   Madam Speaker, the House previously approved H.R. 3253, as amended, on May 20. I am very grateful that the Senate passed an amended bill on August 1. The bill before us today represents the compromise language agreed to after discussions and negotiations between the House and the Senate Committees on Veterans' Affairs.

   As amended, H.R. 3253 will authorize the VA to establish four National Medical Preparedness Centers. These centers would undertake research and develop new protocols for detecting, diagnosing, vaccinating, and treating potential victims of terrorism. In particular, the centers would focus on

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   The new centers would conduct direct research and coordinate ongoing and promising new research with affiliated universities and other government agencies. These centers would serve as training resources for thousands of community hospital staffs; hazardous materials, HAZMAT teams; emergency medical technicians, EMTs; and firefighters and police officers, who must be the first medical responders in the event of terrorist attacks.

   The emergency preparedness centers would also be charged with establishing state-of-the-art laboratories to help local health officials detect the presence of dangerous biological and chemical poisons.

   The funding to support these centers would come from the additional funds provided for combating terrorism and would not use or otherwise reduce funding for veterans' health care.

   Under the compromise agreement reached with the Senate, VA's authority to provide emergency medical treatment would be expanded to include first responders, other Federal agencies, veterans not enrolled in the VA health care system, active duty service members, and others receiving VA care in declared domestic emergencies. Reimbursements collected for the cost of care, whether coming from FEMA, the Department of Defense, or an insurance company, would be credited to the VA's Medical Care Collections Fund, the same as in other VA collection efforts.

   In addition, a new Assistant Secretary for preparedness security and law enforcement would be established at the VA.

   Finally, Madam Speaker, the compromise bill would codify in title 38 of the U.S. Code various provisions from Public Law 107-188, the ``Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002,'' that pertain to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

   Madam Speaker, as we pass the 1-year anniversary of 9-11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks, we are all thankful that no additional acts of terror have been carried out against the United States. However, there can be no doubt that serious dangers and threats remain. Our government must remain vigilant in defending and protecting our citizens from every threat, of any kind, and H.R. 3253 is another step towards homeland security. I urge all Members to support this legislation.

• [Begin Insert]

   The House amendment to the Senate amendments to H.R. 3253 reflects a Compromise Agreement that the House and Senate Committees on Veterans' Affairs have reached on H.R. 3253 and S. 2132. H.R. 3253 (hereinafter known as the ``House bill'') passed the House on May 20, 2002. The Senate considered S. 2132 (hereinafter known as the ``Senate bill'') on August 1, 2002. This measure was incorporated in H.R. 3253 as an amendment and passed the Senate by unanimous consent on August 1, 2002.

   The House and Senate Committees on Veterans' Affairs have prepared the following explanations of H.R. 3253, as amended (hereinafter referred to as the ``Compromise Agreement''). Differences between the preparedness provisions contained in the Compromise Agreement and the related provisions of H.R. 3253 and S. 2132 are noted in this document, except for clerical corrections, conforming changes made necessary by the Compromise Agreement, and minor drafting, technical, and clarifying changes.

• [End Insert]

   SHORT TITLE

   CURRENT LAW--Public Law 105-368, the ``Veterans Programs Enhancement Act of 1998,'' charged Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to investigate potential long-term health effects of biological and chemical warfare agents. Under current law, the VA does not possess specific authority to establish centers dedicated to research, education, and training activities related to managing the health consequences of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction.

   HOUSE BILL--Section 1 of H.R. 3253 provides that the short title of the bill is the ``Department of Veterans Affairs Emergency Preparedness Research, Education, and Bio-Terrorism Prevention Act of 2002''.

   SENATE BILL--Section 1 of S. 2132 provides that the short title of the bill is the ``Department of Veterans Affairs Emergency Preparedness Act of 2002''.

   COMPROMISE AGREEMENT--Section 1 of the Compromise Agreement would adopt the Senate language.

   ESTABLISHMENT OF MEDICAL EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS RESEARCH CENTERS AT DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS MEDICAL CENTERS

   CURRENT LAW--No provision.

   HOUSE BILL--Section 2(a) of H.R. 3253 would amend Chapter 73 of title 38, United States Code, by establishing a new section 7325.

   Subsection (a) of section 7325 of title 38, United States Code, would require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish at least four national medical emergency preparedness centers at existing VA medical centers, to be staffed with department employees. The Under Secretary for Health, in consultation with the assistant secretary for operations, preparedness, and security, would be responsible for supervising and evaluating the operation of these centers.

   Proposed section 7325(b) of title 38, United States Code, would define the centers' three-fold mission as follows: (1) to a conduct research and development into ``detection, diagnosis, vaccination, protection, and treatment for chemical, biological and radiological threats;'' (2) to provide education, training, and expert advice to department and community health-care practitioners; and (3) to provide ``contingent rapid response laboratory assistance'' to local health-care authorities during national emergencies. The House bill would specify that at least one center concentrate solely on biological threats, one on chemical threats, and one on radiological threats to public health and safety.

   Proposed section 7325(c) of title 38, United States Code, would define qualifications for center directors, and section 7325(d) would direct the Secretary to designate sites through a competitive selection process. Proposed section 7325(g) would establish a consulting peer-review panel, including experts in relevant fields, to assist the Under Secretary for Health in evaluating the scientific and clinical merits to proposals and offering recommendations concerning site designations for the four centers.

   Paragraph 2 of proposed section 7325(d) of title 38, United States Code, would require that a candidate site demonstrate the ability to attract qualified scientists; develop arrangements with at least one accredited, affiliated school of medicine and school of public health; be affiliated with a graduate program in epidemiology; and offer training and education programs for nursing, social work, counseling, and/or other allied health personnel.

   Subsection (e) of the proposed section 7325 of title 38, United States Code, would authorize to be appropriated $20 million for each of fiscal years 2003-2007, and would authorize the Under Secretary for Health to expend Medical Care funds as appropriate for the support of such centers, in coordination with the assistant secretary with responsibility for operations, preparedness, and security. Subsection (f) of the proposed section 7325 would authorize each center to seek other public or private research funds to fulfill its research mission.

   Proposed section 7325(h) of title 38, United States Code, would require that VA make the centers' findings available to health-care providers in the United States through publications and medical education programs, and that research programs be coordinated and shared with other Federal departments and agencies. The House bill would authorize the Department to assist Federal, State, and local civil and criminal authorities upon request to deal with biological, chemical, or radiological threats. Proposed subsection (j) of section 7325 would authorize details on a non-reimbursable basis of other Federal employees to assist the centers in accomplishing center missions.

   SENATE BILL--Section 101 in the Senate bill would add section 7320A to title 38, United States Code.

   Proposed section 7320A in the Senate bill would establish four centers to carry out research on ``the detection, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of injuries, diseases, and illnesses arising from the use of chemical, biological, radiological, or incendiary or other explosive weapons or devices.'' This section would require that centers provide education and training to VA health-care professionals, and to non-VA professionals at the direction of the Secretary through the National Disaster Medical System (hereinafter ``NDMS'') or other interagency agreements. This section would also authorize the Secretary to provide appropriate ``laboratory, epidemiological, medical, or other assistance'' to Federal, State, and local health-care agencies and personnel involved in or responding to a national emergency. The Senate bill would not assign specific areas of research to single centers.

   The Senate bill would require that the Secretary designate centers after peer review of competitive proposals submitted by existing qualified VA medical centers. The Senate bill would require the same qualifications as the House bill, but would require geographic dispersal ``to the maximum extent practicable.''

   The Senate bill would require the offices responsible for directing research and medical emergency preparedness to administer the centers. This section would require those offices to work in close coordination with the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services, the Office of Homeland Security, and other agencies, interagency working groups, or committees charged with coordinating Federal research into the response to casualties caused by terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction.

   Subsection (e) of proposed section 7320A would require that centers be staffed by VA employees or employees detailed from other Federal agencies, on a non-reimbursable basis.

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   Proposed section (f) section 7320A would authorize the Secretary to provide assistance to Federal, State, and local agencies engaged in investigations or inquiries to protect against threats posed by terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction. Proposed section 7320A(g) would authorize the centers to seek grants from outside sources, and would authorize to be appropriated $20 million for each of fiscal years 2003-2007.

   COMPROMISE AGREEMENT--The Compromise Agreement would incorporate the Senate provisions in proposed section 7325 of title 38, United States Code, authorizing a total of four medical emergency preparedness centers, dispersed geographically to the maximum extent practicable. The Committees intend for VA to select sites based upon the strength of existing resources and scientific merit of the proposals; although regional distribution of these centers would be encouraged, predicted research productivity should be paramount in designating sites.

   The proposed section 7325(a) of title 38, United States Code, would follow the House bill assigning responsibility for operation and supervision of the centers to the Under Secretary for Health, in consultation with the assistant secretary with responsibility for operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement. The Compromise Agreement would not include House language defining qualifications for center directors. The centers would be situated organizationally within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and would report to the Under Secretary for Health. Nevertheless, the research products and educational tools arising from the work of the centers would link directly to the mission and function that the compromise Agreement would assign to the assistant secretary responsible for operations, preparedness, security and law enforcement. Thus, there would be a clearly defined line of accountability and coordination among the centers and the responsible departmental officials. This need is clearly acknowledged in the Compromise Agreement by the requirement to link the Under Secretary's decisions with regard to the operations of the centers to the work of the assistant secretary.

   Proposed section 7325(b)(1) of title 38, United States Code, in the Compromise Agreement would follow the Senate language by substituting ``prevention'' for ``vaccination and protection,'' and adding to the list of potential threats incendiary and other explosive sources. The Committees agree that contingency planning would include an all-hazards approach and acknowledge that strategies for mass casualty management overlap, irrespective of the particular nature of a terrorist attack or source of other mass-casualty disaster. The Compromise Agreement would not require individual centers to be dedicated to specific fields of study. Nevertheless, the Compromise Agreement would allow the Department to pursue multiple approaches to the medical management of mass casualties. In exercising the authority, the Department could designate any, some, or none of the centers as lead agent for developing subject matter expertise in a particular focused research area dealing with bioterrorism.

   Proposed section 7325(b)(2) of title 38, United States Code, would require centers to provide education, training, and advice to health-care professionals within VHA as proposed in both bills, but would follow the Senate language to specify that such training be provided to outside professionals and practitioners through the NDMS as authorized by Public Law 107-188, the ``Public Health Security and bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002,'' or through specific interagency agreements executed for the purpose. The committees intend that VA take steps to ensure that potentially valuable research findings and educational developments in medical emergency preparedness be translated from the centers into clinical practice as quickly as practicable, but that VA accomplish this task through channels established as part of VA's role in existing federal response partnerships and the evolving U.S. national homeland security policy.

   Proposed section 7325(b)(3) of title 38, United States Code, would adapt language from both bills authorizing centers to provide such laboratory, epidemiological, medical, or other assistance as the Secretary considers appropriate to Federal, State, and local health-care agencies and personnel in the event of a disaster or emergency.

   Proposed section 7325(c) of title 38, United States Code, would direct the Secretary to select sites for centers as delineated in language shared by both bills, following the House language that would require proposals for the designation of centers be coordinated between the United Secretary for Health and the assistant secretary for operations, preparedness, and security, and be subject to a scientific peer-review process. The Compromise Agreement would follow House language describing the composition of the peer-review panel, but would replace the term ``bio-hazards management education and training'' with the term ``infectious diseases,'' in describing the types of expertise called for in such peer-review panel participation. The Compromise Agreement would also follow House language requiring that to be qualified, centers would need to develop an arrangement under which nursing, social work, counseling, or allied health personnel would receive training and education from the centers, in addition to other provisions shared by both bills.

   Sections 7325(d) and (e) of title 38, United States Code, would adopt the House language on research activities and dissemination of research products. Section 7325(f) would follow the Senate language requiring that research be coordinated with departments, agencies, and working groups charged with coordinating Federal research into responses to weapons of mass destruction.

   Proposed section 7325(i) of title 38, United States Code, in the Compromise Agreement, would follow House language on the authorization of appropriations to support the efforts of these centers.

   EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROGRAMS ON MEDICAL RESPONSES TO CONSEQUENCES OF TERRORIST ACTIVITIES

   HOUSE BILL--Section 3(a) of the House bill would amend chapter 73 of title 38, United States Code, by adding a new section 7326.

   Section 7326(a), of title 38, United States Code, would require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to develop and disseminate programs to educate and train health-care professionals to respond to the consequences of terrorist activities.

   Proposed section 7326(b), of title 38, United States Code, would designate the Under Secretary for Health, in consultation with the assistance secretary responsible for operations, preparedness and security, as the implementing officials or entity.

   Under section 7326(c), of title 38, United States Code, the education and training programs currently established at the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences would provide baseline national curriculum and clinical protocols for training health-care professionals.

   Section 7326(d), of title 38, United States Code, would require the education and training programs to cover the needs of health-care professionals at every level of learning and in a variety of fields.

   Under section 7326(e), of title 38, United States Code, the Secretary would be required to consult with the accrediting, certifying and coordinating bodies representing the various fields of health professions' education.

   Section 3(b), of the House bill would require the Secretaries to implement this section within 90 days of enactment.

   SENATE BILL--The Senate bill contains no comparable provisions.

   COMPROMISE AGREEMENT--Section 3 of the Compromise Agreement would follow the House language with one amendment requiring that programs be designed for health-care professionals ``in Department medical centers.''

   AUTHORITY TO FURNISH HEALTH CARE DURING MAJOR DISASTERS AND MEDICAL EMERGENCIES

   CURRENT LAW--Section 8111A of title 38, United States Code, authorizes VA to serve as a supportive contingency health-care system to the Department of Defense, requiring VA to furnish hospital care, nursing home care, and medical services to members of the Armed Forces on active duty during and following a period of foreign war. This provision addresses the potential needs of post-deployment forces following an armed conflict abroad, when active-duty military casualties might quickly overwhelm available military treatment facility resources. Under section 1784 of title 38, United States Code, the Secretary is authorized to ``furnish hospital care or medical services as a humanitarian service in emergency cases, but the Secretary shall charge for such care and services at rates prescribed by the Secretary.'' The authority of section 1784 addresses humanitarian care provided by the Department to non-veterans.

   Neither provision authorizes VA to care for active-duty military casualties following a domestic disaster or conflict, a possibility that must be acknowledged following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. In addition, current law does not recognize VA's already considerable commitment to providing emergency care during disasters as part of the Federal Response Plan established under Executive Orders 12148 and 12656.

   HOUSE BILL--The House bill contains no comparable provisions.

   SENATE BILL--Section 301(a) of the Senate bill would add a new section 1785 to title 38, United States Code, to authorize the Secretary to furnish hospital care and medical services to individuals responding to, involved in, or otherwise affected by a declared major disaster or emergency, or following activation of the NDMS. Proposed section 1785(c) of title 38, United States Code, would allow VA to care for veterans during such a disaster without regard to enrollment required under section 1705 of title 38, United States Code. Proposed section 1785(d) of title 38, United States Code, would authorize the Secretary to give higher priority to furnishing care to individuals affected by disasters than to anyone except service-connected veterans and members of the Armed Forces receiving care under section 8111A of title 38, United States Code. Proposed section 1785(e)(1) of title 38, United States Code, would authorize VA to be reimbursed for care furnished to an officer or employee of another Federal department or agency, with amounts credited in the Medical Care Collections Fund to the facility providing care. Under proposed section 1785(f) of title 38, United States Code, the Secretary would be required to report to the House and Senate Committees on Veterans' Affairs the volume of care furnished by VA under these provisions.

   Section 301(b) of the Senate bill would amend title 38 of the United States Code,

[Page: H6277]

   Finally, the Senate bill would amend section 8111A of title 38, United States Code, to authorize the Secretary to furnish hospital care or medical services to members of the Armed Forces on active duty in this country, whose need for care is related to their response to a covered disaster or national emergency.

   COMPROMISE AGREEMENT--Section 4 of the compromise Agreement would follow the Senate language, but would amend it by striking references to priorities for furnishing care. Also, the Compromise Agreement would delete language that would have suspended VA charges for emergency care under section 1784 of title 38, United States Code, during disasters.

   INCREASE IN NUMBER OF ASSISTANT SECRETARIES OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

   CURRENT LAW--Section 308 of title 38, United States Code, currently authorizes six assistant secretaries of the Department of Veterans Affairs and 18 deputy assistant secretaries.

   HOUSE BILL--Section 4 of the House bill would amend section 308 of title 38, United States Code, by increasing the number of authorized assistant secretaries to ``seven'' and would amend subsection (b) of that section by adding ``operations, preparedness, security, and law enforcement functions'' to currently authorized functions.

   SENATE BILL--Section 201 of the Senate bill is identical to section 4 of the House bill. Section 202 of the Senate bill would amend section 308(d)(1) of title 38, United States Code, by increasing the number of authorized deputy assistant secretaries from 18 to 20.

   COMPROMISE AGREEMENT--Sections 6(a) and (b) of the Compromise Agreement would follow identical provisions from both bills. Section 6(c) of the Compromise Agreement would increase the number of deputy assistant secretaries from 18 to 19. The Committees urge the Secretary to examine the deployment of existing deputy assistant secretaries to ensure that the Department is properly staffed with deputy assistant secretaries to fulfill its various functions and missions.

   CODIFICATION OF DUTIES OF SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS RELATING TO EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

   CURRENT LAW--Section 154 of Public Law 107-188, the ``Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002,'' enacted on June 12, 2002, mandated a series of responsibilities for the Secretary of Veterans Affairs related to bioterrorism and other emergency preparedness functions.

   HOUSE BILL--The House bill contains no comparable provisions.

   SENATE BILL--The Senate bill contains no comparable provisions.

   COMPROMISE AGREEMENT--The compromise Agreement is intended to codify authorities related to the Secretary's emergency preparedness duties, enacted in Public Law 107-188 into chapter 81 of title 38, United States Code.

   The Compromise Agreement would add a new section 8117 to title 38, United States Code. Proposed section 8117(a) codifies the requirement that the Secretary provide for the readiness of VA medical centers against chemical or biological attacks in order to protect patients and staff and to fulfill other emergency response missions. Proposed section 8117(a)(2) codifies the requirement that these preparations include provision and training in the use of decontamination and personal protection equipment.

   Proposed section 8117(b) of title 38, United States Code, would codify the requirement that the Secretary provide for the security of VA medical and research facilities, taking into account the security evaluation required by section 154(b)(1) of Public Law 107-188.

   Proposed section 8117(c) of title 38, United States Code, would codify the requirement that the Secretary develop and maintain a centralized system for tracking the location and availability of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and medical equipment throughout the VA's health-care system so that these items might be accessed quickly during disasters.

   Proposed section 8117(d) of title 38, United States Code, would codify the requirement that the Secretary ensure that VA medical centers, in consultation with affiliated medical schools, take steps to train resident physicians and other health-care personnel in the potential medical consequences of a terrorist attack.

   Proposed section 8117(e) of title 38, United States Code, would codify the requirement that the Secretary establish and maintain a training program for VA health-care professionals and their community partners in the NDMS, in accordance with recommendations of the bioterrorism preparedness working group established in title 42, United States Code, and in consultation with the other NDMS Federal partners.

   Proposed section 8117(f) of title 38, United States Code, would codify the requirement that the Secretary develop and maintain strategies that would allow VA expert personnel to provide mental health assistance, including counseling and assistance for post-traumatic stress disorder, following a terrorist attack or other public health emergency. Such a strategy would be developed in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the American Red Cross and the bioterrorism preparedness working group established in title 42, United States Code. The Secretary would be responsible for training and coordinating VA providers in the treatment of veterans, emergency responders, active-duty military personnel, or others seeking care at a VA medical center.

   Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

   Mr. EVANS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

   I rise in strong support of the Veterans Affairs Emergency Preparedness Act, as amended. After the tragic events of September 11 last year, our chairman, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), again demonstrated his leadership. Chairman SMITH introduced legislation authorizing an important role for the Department of the VA in our Nation's fight against terrorism. That is the primary purpose of this measure today.

   It provides medical care to millions of veterans each year and conducts groundbreaking health care research, and it also provides educational opportunities to many of our Nation's health care providers.

   The VA is truly an unparalleled national resource. This legislation provides the structure and the authority for the VA to leverage its expertise to combat terrorism. For the VA to achieve this goal, it must have adequate resources.

   Today, the Veterans Affairs does not have enough resources. That is not my judgment, but it is the judgment of the Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery to Veterans established by President Bush. I call on the President to fully fund the VA. I ask him to provide all funding the VA needs to deliver timely, quality care to our veterans, today and tomorrow; provide the resources the VA needs to combat terrorism. And I thank the chairman once again for his leadership.

   Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

   Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Health.

   Mr. MORAN of Kansas. Madam Speaker, since September 11, our Nation has been made to reevaluate every action we undertake. A year after the attacks on New York and in Washington and the plane crash in Pennsylvania, we are still at a heightened state of alert. What we once considered a safe Nation has now become a people concerned about security. The citizens of America are looking now, more than ever, to Congress and to the President for answers.

   The legislation before us, H.R. 3253, would use the assets and expertise of the Department of Veterans Affairs to help protect the people of the United States from terrorists. Our government must be proactive in preparing the United States for future terrorist attacks. As Vice President Cheney cautioned earlier this year, ``The prospects of a future attack against the United States are almost certain.'' We must respond in a timely, effective and comprehensive manner to protect the American people when an attack occurs. This bill would help do just that.

   Under this bill, four geographically separated National Medical Emergency Preparedness centers would be established. Each center would study and work toward solutions to health consequences that arise from exposure to chemical, biological, explosive, and nuclear substances used as weapons of mass destruction.

   The VA is prepared to handle this new and important mission. In addition to its medical care mission to care for millions of American veterans, the veterans health care system is the Nation's largest health care provider of graduate medical education and a major contributor to biomedical and other scientific research. Because of this widely dispersed, integrated health care system, the VA can be, and has been in the past, an essential asset in responding to national emergencies.

   Not only would the four special centers conduct research and develop methods of detection, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment; but they would also be charged with the dissemination of the latest information to other public and private health care providers, to improve the quality of care for patients who may be exposed to deadly chemicals, radiation, or other terrorist weapons of mass destruction.

[Page: H6278]

   This bill would also require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to carry out a program to develop and disseminate model education and training programs on the medical responses to terrorist activities. The VA's infrastructure, which includes affiliation with over 107 medical schools, and other schools of health professions, would enable current and future medical professionals in this country to be knowledgeable and medically competent in the treatment of casualties from terrorist attacks. Our bill provides the VA a formal role in the national disaster medical system and authorizes the VA to treat first responders, active duty forces, firefighters, police officers and members of the general public that may be victims of terrorism or other mass casualty disasters.

   With this bill, the VA health care professionals will be properly armed with information and education on bioterrorism response. Mechanisms will be put in place to study the likely avenues and methods of chemical, biological, and radiological poisoning; and the VA will be part of the rapid response by Federal, State, and local officials in types of emergencies that only a year ago we could scarcely imagine.

   H.R. 3253 is a bipartisan and bicameral compromise; and, Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this effort in America's war on terrorism.

   Mr. EVANS. Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

   Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I just want to begin by thanking my very good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans), for his work on this legislation. We have served together on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs for longer than 20 years; and he as been a true advocate for veterans, and on this legislation, like on the others, has been a great friend and ally as we work in tandem to try to bring good, solid pieces of legislation to the floor. So I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans) for that good work.

   I want to thank Michael Durishin and Susan Edgerton, who are two of his top staffers, who again worked very, very tirelessly with our own staff here on the majority side; and again, these bills, the details of which are very much worked over and vetted, would not happen without that kind of cooperation. So I do want to thank them as well.

   The gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moran), who just spoke, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner), the chairman and the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Health, and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer) also, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, worked on this legislation as well; and I want to thank them.

   I want to thank our own staff, Pat Ryan, Kingston Smith, Jeannie McNally, Peter Dickinson, Kathleen Greve and John Bradley, who all had input into this legislation, and, we have held hearings on it. One of them was one of those day-long hearings. We had four panels. We heard from experts, and again, I think we all were astonished at the lack of response when it came to these capabilities.

   As I alluded to earlier in my comments, I thought when I sat in those meetings in Trenton and Hamilton and Mercer County, where there was this befuddled look on the part of very well-meaning experts in the field about what do we do about anthrax, has it been spread through cross-contamination, what are the risks, how often and how long and to whom should Cipro or Doxycycline be administered.

   There were a million and one questions and very few answers because those questions had not been considered in advance; and that is what this legislation is all about, to establish centers of excellence that seek to find out, if this kind of event happens, what is prescribed, what is the consequence. Just today in The Washington Times, there was an excellent op-ed piece by a doctor who heads up the emergency room physicians, pointing out that the first responders, as they rush in to help in a situation, smallpox, anthrax, sarin, just name it, will not have a clue what it is they need to do to prepare themselves, to protect themselves and preclude contamination.

[Time: 15:15]

   So it is very important that these details be worked out in advance, coordinating with other agencies of the government. The VA has shown in the past it has a unique perspective and an expertise to bring to bear on this.

   Madam Speaker, I also thank our Senate colleagues. Senator Rockefeller worked on this and got legislation passed. It was a very cooperative effort. They added some very meaningful language to the bill, so we ended up with a very good hybrid that will go to the President for signature. I also thank Senator Specter, the ranking member. In addition, I appreciate the efforts of the Senate staff, Bill Tuerk and Kim Lipsky, David Goetz and Bill Cahill, and I especially thank Julie Fischer, who has been Senator Rockefeller's top aide, who worked with the other side of the aisle to craft a good bill. This bill has been endorsed by the administration. Now we will work on getting this bill signed, implemented, and then we will do oversight on its implementation.

• [Begin Insert]

   Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the amended version of H.R. 3253, the Emergency Preparedness Act. As an original co-sponsor of H.r. 3253, I recognize the significant role the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) can play in our quest as a nation to restore a sense of security following the horrific events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent anthrax attacks. This measure would authorize the VA to become a full partner in our defense efforts through the establishment of four ``Medical Emergency Preparedness Centers'' at VA hospitals throughout the nation.

   These centers would be charged with conducting medical research, and developing health care responses for chemical, biological, radiological, incendiary and explosive threats to the public. The centers would also provide education, training, and advice to VA and outside doctors, and other health care professionals on how to diagnose and treat illnesses caused by exposure to chemical, biological and radioactive materials. Especially important is the role the proposed centers would play in providing rapid response assistance and other aid to local health care authorities in the event of a national emergency.

   This legislation recognizes the critical role the VA can play in our homeland security efforts. The VA operates the nation's largest integrated health care network with over 20,000 health care professionals, 163 medical centers, 800 outpatient clinics, 115 medical research centers, and has affiliations with more than 100 medical schools. Several VA facilities have already initiated efforts to serve our country in this effort. For example, the Audie Murphy Memorial Hospital in San Antonio, has developed relationships and shared teaching and research arrangements with various medical school sin Texas and the county hospital system. Audie Murphy also works closely with several military medical missions with expertise in chemical, biological and radiological hazards.

   The collaborative efforts of veterans health care providers, like Audie Murphy Hospital, not only help veterans, but our nation as a whole. Further, it puts the VA in a critical position to attract high level scientists in fields relevant to bio-chemical and radiological threats. I believe that through the development of National Emergency Preparedness Centers, the VA can become an important partner in our nation's homeland defense efforts.

• [End Insert]

   Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

   The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) that the House suspend the rules and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 526.

   The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor thereof) the rules were suspended and the resolution was agreed to.

   A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

END

4B) Establishment of Vaccine Acquisition Council
SA 4606. Mr. HUTCHINSON submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA 4471 proposed by Mr. LIEBERMAN to the bill H.R. 5005, to establish the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

On page 114, between lines 5 and 6, insert the following:
SEC. 140. VACCINE ACQUISITION COUNCIL.

(a) ESTABLISHMENT.--
(1) IN GENERAL.--There is a Vaccine Acquisition Council within the Department of Homeland Security.

(2) COMPOSITION.--The Council shall consist of the following:
(A) Personnel of the Department of Homeland Security designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security.
(B) Representatives of the Department of Defense designated by the Secretary of Defense.
(C) Representatives of the Department of Health and Human Services designated by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
(D) The Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.

(3) CHAIR.--The Secretary of Homeland Security shall designate an officer or employee of the Department of Homeland Security as the Chairperson of the Council.
(b) DUTIES.--The Vaccine Acquisition Council shall have the following duties:
(1) REQUIREMENTS DEFINITION.--To identify the public health requirements of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services and [Page: S8784] the military requirements of the Department of Defense for vaccines to prevent or mitigate the physiological effects of exposure to biological warfare agents.
(2) BUDGET RECOMMENDATIONS.--To make recommendations to the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, and the heads of other agencies of the United States regarding the funding of acquisitions of such vaccines to meet requirements.
(3) LIAISON WITH INDUSTRY.--To serve as a clearinghouse for the communication of information between agencies of the United States and private sector sources of such vaccines.
(4) COORDINATION OF ACQUISITIONS.--To coordinate the acquisition of such vaccines for meeting the requirements of the Department of Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Health and Human Services for the vaccines.
(5) ACQUISITION REFORM.--To make recommendations regarding reforms of acquisition policies and procedures for the acquisition of vaccines so as to simplify and expedite the meeting of requirements of the United States for the vaccines.
(6) SOLUTION OF PRODUCTION OBSTACLES.--To identify obstacles to industry support for the production of such vaccines and to propose solutions for eliminating or minimizing such obstacles.

(c) PERIODIC REPORT.--
(1) REQUIREMENT FOR REPORT.--The Vaccine Acquisition Council shall periodically submit a report on its activities to the Secretary of Homeland Security. The report shall be submitted not less frequently than once each year.
(2) TRANSMISSION TO CONGRESS.--Promptly after receiving a periodic report under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall transmit the report to Congress.

(d) DETAIL OF PERSONNEL.--The Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Health and Human Services may each detail personnel of the Department of Defense and employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, respectively, to the Department of Homeland Security to serve with personnel of the Department of Homeland Security as the staff of the Vaccine Acquisition Council.

(e) INITIAL OPERATION.--The Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that the Vaccine Acquisition Council commences operations within 30 days after the effective date of this division.

SEC. 141. REQUIREMENT FOR GOVERNMENT-OWNED, CONTRACTOR-OPERATED FACILITY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF VACCINES.

(a) DOD CONTRACTOR OPERATED FACILITY.--The Secretary of Defense shall be the executive agent of the Secretary of Homeland Security to design, construct, and contract for the operation of a Government-owned facility for the production of vaccines to meet the military requirements of the Department of Defense to prevent or mitigate the physiological effects of exposure to biological warfare agents.

(b) REQUIREMENT FOR PLAN.--Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Vaccine Acquisition Council of the Department of Homeland Security shall submit to Congress a plan for the construction and operation of a vaccine production facility referred to in subsection (a). The plan shall include the following:
(1) SCHEDULE.--A schedule for the planning, design, and construction of the facility that provides for construction to begin within one year after such date.
(2) BUDGET.--A discussion of how the planning, design, and construction is to be funded to meet that schedule.

4C) Department of Veteran's Affairs Emergency Preparedness
Mr. BUYER. Madam Speaker, today I rise in support of H.R. 3253, as amended, which reflects the House-Senate compromise that was reached. This legislation was originally introduced by Chairman Chris Smith to establish at least four medical emergency preparedness centers at designated VA medical centers. As a cosponsor of this legislation, I want to thank Chairman Smith for his leadership in moving this important legislation towards final passage. I also want to thank Chairman Smith, members, and staff in both chambers for preserving H.R. 3254, the Medical Education for National Defense (MEND) for the 21st Century in the final package. That language is incorporated in Section 3 of H.R. 3253, as amended, and is entitled: Education and Training Programs on Medical Responses to Consequences of Terrorist Activities.

Section 3 of H.R. 3253, as amended, would establish an education program to be carried out through the Department of Veterans Affairs. The education and training curriculum developed under the program shall be modeled upon the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine of the Department of Defense's Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS) core curriculum, which includes a program to teach its students how to diagnose and treat casualties that have been exposed to chemical, biological, or radiological agents.

As a Nation, we must be prepared for the new face of terror that we have been forced to confront in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. What has become all too clear is that our health care providers are not resourced or trained with the proper tools to diagnose and treat casualties in the face of biological, radiological, and chemical weapons .

It is imperative that such a program be disseminated to the Nation's medical professionals and current medical students. This section of the bill takes advantage of the nexus that already exists between the medical education community and the VA. Currently, 107 medical universities are affiliated with a VA medical center. This nexus is already in place and that is what we plan to exploit.

The VA's extensive infrastructure of 163 medical centers, 800 clinics, and satellite broadcast capabilities, will enable the current and future medical professionals in this country to become knowledgeable and medically competent in the treatment of casualties that we all hope will never materialize.

We cannot afford to assume that our country will never again experience a biological, chemical, or radiological attack on the American people. We must, as elected Representatives, act to ensure that if the worst of our fears are realized that the country's medical professionals will be ready and able to deal with these situations.

It is not the intent of this legislation to create new community standards of practice. We must recognize that diseases such as smallpox, botulism, and the plague are not normally treated or recognized in this country. It is extremely important that all of our health care professionals are familiar with and able to diagnose and treat suspected exposure to weapons of mass destruction .

The American Medical Association endorsed H.R. 3254, and the American Association of Medical Colleges has thrown its full support behind this plan. These two organizations know how vital it is to receive this important educational curriculum that addresses the medical aspects of biological chemical and radiological attacks, and they have recognized that the VA is in a unique position to assist with the dissemination of this information to the Nation's medical community.

It is often said that knowledge is power, and in this instance nothing could be more accurate. The knowledge that would result from the implementation of this act is critical. Our medical professionals need to be offered training methods that would enable them to save lives . . . and I can think of no greater power than that. Please, join with me and support final passage of this important piece of legislation.

4D) How Saddam Happened
;Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, yesterday, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I asked a question of the Secretary of Defense. I referred to a Newsweek article that will appear in the September 23, 2002, edition. That article reads as follows. It is not overly lengthy. I shall read it. Beginning on page 35 of Newsweek, here is what the article says:

   America helped make a monster. What to do with him--and what happens after he is gone--has haunted us for a quarter century.

   The article is written by Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas. It reads as follows:

   The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment.

   The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed ``vigorous and confident,'' according to a now declassified State Department cable obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld ``conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad,'' wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries.

   Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions.

   Rumsfeld is not the first American diplomat to wish for the demise of a former ally. After all, before the cold war, the Soviet Union was America's partner against Hitler in World War II. In the real world, as the saying goes, nations have no permanent friends, just permanent interests. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld's long-ago interlude with Saddam is a reminder that today's friend can be tomorrow's mortal threat. As President George W. Bush and his war cabinet ponder Saddam's successor's regime, they would do well to contemplate how and why the last three presidents allowed the Butcher of Baghdad to stay in power so long.

   The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons.

   Let me read that again:

   It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons. But it happened.

   America's past stumbles, while embarrassing, are not an argument for inaction in the future. Saddam probably is the ``grave and gathering danger'' described by President Bush in his speech to the United Nations last week. It may also be true that ``whoever replaces Saddam is not going to be worse,'' as a senior administration official put it to Newsweek. But the story of how America helped create a Frankenstein monster it now wishes to strangle is sobering. It illustrates the power of wishful thinking, as well as the iron law of unintended consequences.

   America did not put Saddam in power. He emerged after two decades of turmoil in the '60s and '70s, as various strongmen tried to gain control of a nation that had been concocted by British imperialists in the 1920s out of three distinct and rival factions, the Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds. But during the cold war, America competed with the Soviets for Saddam's attention and welcomed his war with the religious fanatics of Iran. Having cozied up to Saddam, Washington found it hard to break away--even after going to war with him in 1991. Through years of both tacit and overt support, the West helped create the Saddam of today, giving him time to build deadly arsenals and dominate his people. Successive administrations always worried that if Saddam fell, chaos would follow, rippling through the region and possibly igniting another Middle East war. At times it seemed that Washington was transfixed by Saddam.

   The Bush administration wants to finally break the spell. If the administration's true believers are right, Baghdad, after Saddam falls will look something like Paris after the Germans fled in August 1944. American troops will be cheered as liberators, and democracy will spread forth and push Middle Eastern despotism back into the shadows. Yet if the gloomy predictions of the administration's many critics come true, the Arab street, inflamed by Yankee imperialism, will rise up and replace the shaky but friendly autocrats in the region with Islamic fanatics.

   While the Middle East is unlikely to become a democratic nirvana, the worst-case scenarios, always a staple of the press, are probably also wrong or exaggerated. Assuming that a cornered and doomed Saddam does not kill thousands of Americans in some kind of horrific Gotterdammerung--a scary possibility, one that deeply worries administration officials--the greatest risk of his fall is that one strongman may simply be replaced by another. Saddam's successor may not be a paranoid sadist. But there is no assurance that he will be America's friend or forswear the development of weapons of mass destruction.

   American officials have known that Saddam was a psychopath--

   Get that.

   American officials have known that Saddam was a psychopath ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in the early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took the title of president in 1979 was to videotape a session of his party's congress, during which he personally ordered several members executed on the spot.

   Let me repeat that:

   American officials have known that Saddam was a psychopath ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in the early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took the title of president in 1979 was to videotape--

   Videotape--

   a session of his party's congress, during which he personally ordered several members executed on the spot.

   The message, carefully conveyed to the Arab press, was not that these men were executed for plotting against Saddam, but rather for thinking about plotting against him. From the beginning, U.S. officials worried about Saddam's taste for nasty weaponry; indeed, at their meeting in 1983, Rumsfeld warned that Saddam's use of chemical weapons might ``inhibit'' American assistance. But top officials in the Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate. By going to war with Iran, he could bleed the radical mullahs who had seized control of Iran from the pro-American shah. Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar Sadat, capable of making Iraq into a modern secular state, just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his assassination in 1981.

   But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's ``human wave attacks'' threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand.

   After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of ``dual use'' equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for ``video surveillance applications''; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of ``bacteria/fungi/protozoa'' to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

   The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the

[Page: S8988]

   The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

   Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam's megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam gained the world's attention by threatening ``to burn Israel to the ground.'' At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

   Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:

   Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?

   The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he would review Pentagon records.

   I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns and the concerns of others have grown.

   A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I shall submit for the RECORD, shows very clearly that the United States is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in 1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases.

   According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.

   The Armed Services Committee is requesting information from the Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense on the history of the United States, providing the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. I recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services also be included in that request.

   The American people do not need obfuscation and denial. The American people need the truth. The American people need to know whether the United States is in large part responsible for the very Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which the administration now seeks to destroy.

   We may very well have created the monster that we seek to eliminate. The Senate deserves to know the whole story. The American people deserve answers to the whole story.

   Also yesterday, in the same 6 minutes that I was given in which to ask questions--which was extended by virtue of the kindness of the distinguished Senator from Georgia, Mr. MAX CLELAND, and other members of the committee, so it was perhaps 9 or 10 minutes--there was another interesting question that I asked. Let me read a portion of that transcript from the Armed Services Committee:

   Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings. Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

   Rumsfeld: Certainly not to my knowledge. I have no knowledge of United States companies or government being involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

   There is another excerpt from that question and answer period in which Secretary Rumsfeld and I engaged:

   Byrd: Now, the Washington Post reported this morning [yesterday] that the United States is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. Are we not sending exactly the wrong signal to the world, at exactly the wrong time?

   Doesn't this damage our credibility in the international community at the very time that we are seeking their support to neutralize the threat of Iraq's biological weapons program? If we supplied, as the Newsweek article said, if we supplied the building blocks for germ and chemical warfare to this madman in the first place, this psychopath, how do we look to the world to be backing away from this effort to control it at this point?

   That question speaks for itself. I ask unanimous consent that the following material be printed in the RECORD at the close of my remarks: The partial transcript from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on September 19; the article from the Washington Post of yesterday, titled ``U.S. Drops Bid to Strengthen Germ Warfare Accord''; the Newsweek article, which I have alluded to already; a letter dated January 6, 1994, requesting information from the Centers for Disease Control and a response to the Honorable Donald W. Riegle, Jr., U.S. Senator, dated June 21, 1995, from David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., Director; a U.S. Senate Hearing Report 103-900, dealing with U.S. exports of biological materials to Iraq to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs which has oversight responsibility for the Export Administration Act, and keeping in mind that the U.S. Department of Commerce approves licenses by that Department for exports; including also the U.S. Senate hearing report in that matter. Included in the approved sales are such items as Bacillus Anthracis, anthrax, Clostridium Botulinum, Histoplasma Capsulatum, which causes a disease superficially resembling tuberculosis that may cause pneumonia; Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria which can cause chronic fatigue, and so on; Clostridium Perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. I believe that completes the list.

   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

   Byrd-Rumsfeld Transcript--Partial Transcript From Senate Armed Services Committee, September 19, 2002

   LEVIN. Senator Byrd?

   BYRD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings.

   Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

   RUMSFELD. Certainly not to my knowledge. I have no knowledge of United States companies or government being involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

   BYRD. Mr. Secretary, let me read to you from the September 23, 2002, Newsweek story. I read this, I read excerpts, because my time is limited.

   ``Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar Sadat, capable of making Iraq into a modern secular state, just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his assassination in 1981. But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982.''

   BYRD. ``Iran's human-wave attacks threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand. After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1982, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments.

   ``Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal: American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq.

   ``Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of, quote, `dual-use,' close quote, equipment and materials from American suppliers.

   ``According to confidential Commerce Department export control documents obtained

[Page: S8989]

   ``According to former officials the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors for use against the effects of chemical weapons but the Pentagon blocked the sale.

   ``The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds. The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops.

   ``When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprit were Saddam's own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were unfazed.

   ``An Iraqi audiotape later captured by the Kurds records Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Ali Chemical, talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. Quote, `Who is going to say anything?' close quote, he asks, `the international community? F-blank them!' exclamation point, close quote.''

   Now can this possibly be true? We already knew that Saddam was dangerous man at the time. I realize that you were not in public office at the time, but you were dispatched to Iraq by President Reagan to talk about the need to improve relations between Iraq and the U.S.

   Let me ask you again: To your knowledge did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

   The Washington Post reported this morning that the United States is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. I'll have a question on that later.

   Let me ask you again: Did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

   RUMSFELD. I have not read the article. As you suggest, I was, for a period in late '83 and early '84, asked by President Reagan to serve as Middle East envoy after the Marines--241 Marines were killed in Beirut.

   As part of my responsibilities I did visit Baghdad. I did meet with Mr. Tariq Aziz. And I did meet with Saddam Hussein and spent some time visiting with them about the war they were engaged in with Iran.

   At the time our concern, of course, was Syria and Syria's role in Lebanon and Lebanon's role in the Middle East and the terrorist acts that were taking place.

   As a private citizen I was assisting only for a period of months. I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it.

   BYRD. You doubt what?

   RUMSFELD. The questions you posed as to whether the United States of America assisted Iraq with the elements that you listed in your reading of Newsweek and that we could conceivably now be reaping what we've sown.

   I think--I doubt both.

   BYRD. Are you surprised that this is what I've said? Are you surprised at this story in Newsweek?

   RUMSFELD. I guess I'm at an age and circumstance in life where I'm no longer surprised about what I hear in the newspapers.

   BYRD. That's not the question, I'm of that age, too. Somewhat older than you, but how about that story I've read?

   RUMSFELD. I see stories all the time that are flat wrong. I just don't know. All I can say . . .

   BYRD. How about this story? This story? How about this story, specifically?

   RUMSFELD. As I say, I have not read it, I listened carefully to what you said and I doubt it.

   BYRD. All right.

   Now the Washington Post reported this morning that the United States is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. Are we not sending exactly the wrong signal to the world, at exactly the wrong time?

   BYRD. Doesn't this damage our credibility in the international community at the very time that we are seeking their support to neutralize the threat of Iraq's biological weapons program? If we supplied, as the Newsweek article said, if we supplied the building blocks for germ and chemical warfare to this madman in the first place, this psychopath, how do we look to the world to be backing away from this effort to control it at this point?

   RUMSFELD. Senator, I think it would be a shame to leave this committee and the people listening with the impression that the United States assisted Iraq with chemical or biological weapons in the 1980s. I just do not believe that's the case.

   BYRD. Well, are you saying that the Newsweek article is inaccurate?

   RUMSFELD. I'm saying precisely what I said, that I didn't read the Newsweek article, but that I doubt it's accurate.

   BYRD. I'll be glad to send you up a copy.

   RUMSFELD. But that I was not in government at that time, except as a special envoy for a period of months. So one ought not to rely on me as the best source as to what happened in that mid-'80s period that you were describing.

   I will say one other thing. On two occasions I believe when you read that article, you mentioned the IAEC, which as I recall is the International Atomic Energy Commission, and mentioned that if some of the things that you were talking about were provided to them, which I found quite confusing to be honest.

   With respect to the Biological Weapons Convention, I was not aware that the United States government had taken a position with respect to it. It's not surprising because it's a matter for the Department of State, not the Department of Defense.

   If in fact they have indicated, as The Washington Post reports, that they are not going to move forward with a--I believe it's an enforcement regime, it's not my place to discuss the administration's position when I don't know what it is.

   But I can tell you, from a personal standpoint, my recollection is that the biological convention never, never was anticipated that there would even be thought of to have an enforcement regime. And that an enforcement regime on something like that, where there are a lot of countries involved who are on the terrorist list who were participants in that convention, that the United States has, over a period of administrations, believed that it would not be a good idea, because the United States would be a net loser from an enforcement regime.

   But that is not the administration's position. I just don't know what the administration's position is.

   LEVIN. We're going to have to leave it there, because you're way over.

   BYRD. This is a very important question.

   LEVIN. It is indeed, and you're over time, I agree with you on the importance, but you're way over time, sir.

   BYRD. I know I'm over time, but are we going to leave this in question out there dangling?

   LEVIN. One last question.

   BYRD. I ask unanimous consent that I may have an additional five minutes.

   LEVIN. No, I'm afraid you can't do that. If you could just do one last--well, wait a minute, ask unanimous consent, I can't stop you from doing that.

   (UNKNOWN). I object.

   (LAUGHTER)

   BYRD. Mr. Chairman?

   LEVIN. Just one last question. Would that be all right so you could wind that up?

   Senator Byrd, if you could just take one additional question.

   BYRD. I've never--I've been in this Congress 50 years. I've never objected to another senator having a few additional minutes.

   Now Mr. Chairman, I think that the secretary should have a copy of this report, this story that--from Newsweek that I've been querying him about. I think he has a right to look at that.

   LEVIN. Could somebody take that out to the secretary?

   BYRD. Now, while that's being given to the secretary, Mr. Secretary, I think we're put into an extremely bad position before the world today if we're going to walk away from an international effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention against germ warfare, advising its allies that the U.S. wants to delay further discussions until 2006. Especially in the light of the Newsweek story; I think we bear some responsibility.

   INHOFE. Mr. Chairman I ask for a point of order.

   LEVIN. Can we just have this be the last question, if you would just go along with us please, Senator Inhofe?

   INHOFE. I'll only say though, in all respect to the Senator from West Virginia, we have a number of senators here. We have a limited time of six minutes each, and we're entitled to have our six minutes. That should be a short questions if it's the last question.

   LEVIN. If we could just make that the last question and answer, I would appreciate it. The chair would appreciate the cooperation of all senators.

   Secretary Rumsfeld, could you answer that question please?

   RUMSFELD. I'll do my best.

   Senator, I just in glancing at this, and I hesitate to do this because I have not read it carefully.

   But it says here that, ``According to confidential Commerce Department export control documents obtained by Newsweek, the shopping list included.'' It did not say that there were deliveries of these things. It said that Iran--Iraq asked for these things. It talks about a shopping list.

   Second, in listing these things, it says that they wanted television cameras for video surveillance applications, chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, the IAEC--and that may very well be the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, which would be--mean that my earlier comment would not be correct, because I thought it was the International Atomic Energy Commission. But this seems to indicate it's the Iraq Commerce Commission.

   BYRD. Mr. Chairman, may I say to my friend from Oklahoma, I'm amazed that he himself wouldn't yield me time for this important question. I would do the same for him.

   Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask .....

[Page: S8990]

   (CLELAND). I yield my five minutes, Senator.

   BYRD. I thank the distinguished Senator.

   Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the secretary--and I don't just like to ask him--I asked him to review Pentagon records to see if the Newsweek article is true or not. Will the secretary do that?

   RUMSFELD. It appears that they're Department of Commerce records, as opposed to Pentagon. But I can certainly ask that the Department of Commerce and, to the extent that it's relevant, the Department of State, look into it and see if we can't determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of some aspects of this. Yes, sir.

   LEVIN. And we go one step further than that. I think the request is that the Defense Department search its records. Will you do that?

   RUMSFELD. We'll be happy to search ours, but this refers to the Commerce Department.

   LEVIN. We will ask the State Department and the Commerce Department to do the same thing.

   RUMSFELD. We'd be happy to.

   LEVIN. And we will also ask the Intelligence Committee to stage a briefing for all of us on that issue, so that Senator Byrd's question.....

   BYRD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman.

   LEVIN. Thank you very much, Senator.

   BYRD. I thank the secretary.

   RUMSFELD. Thank you.

   LEVIN. Senator Byrd, we will ask Senator Graham and Senator Shelby to hold a briefing on that subject, because it is a very important subject.

   BYRD. I thank the chairman.

--

   U.S. Drops Bid To Strengthen Germ Warfare Accord

   The Bush administration has abandoned an international effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention against germ warfare, advising its allies that the United States wants to delay further discussions until 2006. A review conference on new verification measures for the treaty has been scheduled for November.

   Less than a year after a State Department envoy abruptly pulled out of biowarfare negotiations in Geneva, promising that the United States would return with new proposals, the administration has concluded that treaty revisions favored by the European Union and scores of other countries will not work and should not be salvaged, administration officials said yesterday.

   The decision, which has been conveyed to allies in recent weeks, has been greeted with warnings that the move will weaken attempts to curb germ warfare programs at a time when biological weapons are a focus of concern because of the war on terrorism and the administration's threats to launch a military campaign against Iraq. It also comes as the administration, which has angered allies by rejecting a series of multilateral agreements, is appealing to the international community to work with it in forging a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

   The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which has been ratified by the United States and 143 other countries, bans the development, stockpiling and production of germ warfare agents, but has no enforcement mechanism. Negotiations on legally binding measures to enforce compliance have been underway in Geneva for seven years.

   The administration stunned its allies last December by proposing to end the negotiators' mandate, saying that while the treaty needed strengthening, the enforcement protocol under discussion would not deter enemy nations from acquiring or developing biological weapons if they were determined to do so. Negotiators suspended the discussions, saying they would meet again in November when U.S. officials said they would return with creative solutions to address the impasse.

   Instead, U.S. envoys are now telling allies that the administration's position is so different from the views of the leading supporters of the enforcement protocol that a meeting would dissolve into public squabbling and should be avoided, administration officials said. Better, they said, to halt discussions altogether.

   ``It's based on an incorrect approach. Our concern is that it would be fundamentally ineffective,'' a State Department official said. Another administration official said the ``best and least contentious'' approach would be to hold a very brief meeting in November--or even no meeting at all--and talk again when the next review is scheduled four years from now.

   Amy Smithson, a biological and chemical weapons specialist, said the administration is making a mistake by halting collaborative work to strengthen the convention. ``It sounds to me as though they've thrown the baby out with the bath water,'' said Smithson, an analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Center. ``The contradiction between the rhetoric and what the administration is actually doing--the gulf is huge. Not a day goes by when they don't mention the Iraq threat.''

   The Stimson Center is releasing a report today that criticizes the U.S. approach to the convention. Drawn from a review by 10 pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology experts, the document argues that bioweapons inspections can be effective with the right amount of time and the right science and urges the administration to develop stronger measures.

   ``To argue that this wouldn't be a useful remedy would just be a mistake. I think it's because they're looking through the wrong end of the telescope,'' said Matthew Meselson, a Harvard biologist who helped draft a treaty to criminalize biological weapons violations. ``We're denying ourselves useful tools.''

   The administration has focused publicly on a half-dozen countries identified by the State Department as pursuing germ warfare programs. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said the existence of Iraq's bioweapons project is ``beyond dispute.'' The U.S. government also believes Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Libya and Syria are developing such weapons, he said.

   Meselson concurred with the administration's position that a limited enforcement provision for the bioweapons treaty could not provide confidence that countries are staying clean. But he said that a pact establishing standards and verification measures would deter some countries while also helping to build norms of international behavior.

   Bolton, on the other hand, told delegates to last year's review conference that ``the time for `better-than-nothing' protocols is over. We will continue to reject flawed texts like the BWC draft protocol, recommended to us simply because they are the product of lengthy negotiations or arbitrary deadlines, if such texts are not in the best interests of the United States.''

   With only hours to go at the meeting, Bolton stopped U.S. participation in the final negotiations. He said of the resulting one-year delay, ``This gives us time to think creatively on alternatives.''

   In Bolton's view, each country should develop criminal laws against germ warfare activities, develop export controls for dangerous pathogens, establish codes of conduct for scientists and install strict biosafety procedures. The administration has proposed that governments resolve disputes over biowarfare violations among themselves, perhaps through voluntary inspections or by referral to the United Nations secretary general.

   Such an approach is ``at best ineffectual,'' said the specialists gathered by the Stimson Center. At worst, they concluded, the approach could damage U.S. interests because it would not be structured to deliver ``meaningful monitoring.''

   ``If a challenge inspection system is not geared to pursue violators aggressively, then it does not serve U.S. security interests,'' the 65-page report states. The participants strongly favored establishing mandatory standards backed by penalties and ``robust'' inspections, which goes significantly further than the proposed protocol backed by the EU and other nations.

   The State Department Web site has not yet been changed to reflect the change in policy. It says, ``The United States is committed to strengthening the BWC as part of a comprehensive and multidisciplinary strategy for combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism....... We would like to share these ideas with our international partners.''

--

   Partial Transcript From Senate Armed Services Committee, September 19, 2002

   LEVIN. Senator Byrd?

   BYRD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings.

   Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

   RUMSFELD. Certainly not to my knowledge. I have no knowledge of United States companies or government being involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

   BYRD. Mr. Secretary, let me read to you from the September 23, 2002, Newsweek story. I read this, I read excerpts, because my time is limited.

   ``Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar Sadat, capable of making Iraq into a modern secular state, just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his assassination in 1981. But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982.''

   ``Iran's human-wave attacks threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand. After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments.

   ``Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal: American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq.

   ``Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of, quote, `dual-use,' close quote, equipment and materials from American suppliers.

   ``According to confidential Commerce Department export control documents obtained by Newsweek, the shopping list include a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry, presumably to help keep track of political opponents, helicopters to help transport Iraqi officials, television cameras for video surveillance applications, chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, IAEC, and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of the bacteria, fungi, protozoa to the IAEC.

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   ``According to former officials the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors for use against the effects of chemical weapons but the Pentagon blocked the sale.

   ``The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds. The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops.

   ``When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprit were Saddam's own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were unfazed.

   ``An Iraqi audiotape later captured by the Kurds records Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Ali Chemical, talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. Quote, `Who is going to say anything?' close quote, he asks, `the international community? F-blank them!' exclamation point, close quote.''

   Now can this possibly be true? We already knew that Saddam was dangerous man at the time. I realize that you were not in public office at the time, but you were dispatched to Iraq by President Reagan to talk about the need to improve relations between Iraq and the U.S.

   Let me ask you again: To your knowledge did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

   The Washington Post reported this morning that the United is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. I'll have a question on that later.

   Let me ask you again: Did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

   RUMSFELD. I have not read the article. As you suggest, I was, for a period in late `83 and early `84, asked by President Reagan to serve as Middle East envoy after the Marines--241 Marines were killed in Beirut.

   As part of my responsibilities I did visit Baghdad. I did meet with Mr. Tariq Aziz. And I did meet with Saddam Hussein and spent some time visiting with them about the war they were engaged in with Iran.

   At the time our concern, of course, was Syria and Syria's role in Lebanon and Lebanon's role in the Middle East and the terrorist acts that were taking place.

   As a private citizen I was assisting only for a period of months. I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it.

   BYRD. You doubt what?

   RUMSFELD. The questions you posed as to whether the United States of America assisted Iraq with the elements that you listed in your reading of Newsweek and that we could conceivably now be reaping what we've sown.

   I think--I doubt both.

   BYRD. Are you surprised that this is what I've said? Are you surprised at this story in Newsweek?

   RUMSFELD. I guess I'm at an age and circumstance in life where I'm no longer surprised about what I hear in the newspapers.

   BYRD. That's not the question. I'm of that age, too. Somewhat older than you, but how about that story I've read?

   RUMSFELD. I see stories all the time that are flat wrong. I just don't know. All I can say .....

   BYRD. How about this story? This story? How about this story, specifically?

   RUMSFELD. As I say, I have not read it, I listened carefully to what you said and I doubt it.

   BYRD. All right.

   Now the Washington Post reported this morning that the United States is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. Are we not sending exactly the wrong signal to the world, at exactly the wrong time?

   BYRD. Doesn't this damage our credibility in the international community at the very time that we are seeking their support to neutralize the threat of Iraq's biological weapons program? If we supplied, as the Newsweek article said, if we supplied the building blocks for germ and chemical warfare to this madman in the first place, this psychopath, how do we look to the world to be backing away from this effort to control it at this point?

   RUMSFELD. Senator, I think it would be a shame to leave this committee and the people listening with the impression that the United States assisted Iraq with chemical or biological weapons in the 1980s. I just do not believe that's the case.

   BYRD. Well, are you saying that the Newsweek article is inaccurate?

   RUMSFELD. I'm saying precisely what I said, that I didn't read the Newsweek article, but that I doubt its accurate.

   BYRD. I'll be glad to send you up a copy.

   RUMSFELD. But that I was not in government at that time, except as a special envoy for a period of months. So one ought not to rely on me as the best source as to what happened in that mid-'80s period that you were describing.

   I will say one other thing. On two occasions I believe when you read that article, you mentioned the IAEC, which as I recall is the International Atomic Energy Commission, and mentioned that if some of the things that you were talking about were provided to them, which I found quite confusing to be honest.

   With respect to the Biological Weapons Convention, I was not aware that the United States government had taken a position with respect to it. It's not surprising because it's a matter for the Department of State, not the Department of Defense.

   If in fact they have indicated, as The Washington Post reports, that they are not going to move forward with a--I believe it's an enforcement regime, it's not my place to discuss the administration's position when I don't know what it is.

   But I can tell you, from a personal standpoint, my recollection is that the biological convention never, never was anticipated that there would even be thought of to have an enforcement regime. And that an enforcement regime on something like that, where there are a lot of countries involved who are on the terrorist list who were participants in that convention, that the United States has, over a period of administrations, believed that it would not be a good idea, because the United States would be a net loser from an enforcement regime.

   But that is not the administration's position. I just don't know what the administration's position is.

   LEVIN. We're going to have to leave it there, because you're way over.

   BYRD. This is a very important question.

   LEVIN. It is indeed, and you're over time. I agree with you on the importance, but you're way over time, sir.

   BYRD. I know I'm over time, but are we going to leave this in question out there dangling?

   LEVIN. One last question.

   BYRD. I ask unanimous consent that I may have an additional five minutes.

   LEVIN. No, I'm afraid you can't do that. If you could just do one last--well, wait a minute, ask unanimous consent, I can't stop you from doing that.

   (UNKNOWN). I object.

   (Laughter)

   BYRD. Mr. Chairman?

   LEVIN. Just one last question. Would that be all right so you could wind it up?

   Senator Byrd, if you could just take one additional question.

   BYRD. I've never--I've been in this Congress 50 years. I've never objected to another senator having a few additional minutes.

   Now Mr. Chairman, I think that the secretary should have a copy of this report, this story that--from Newsweek that I've been querying him about. I think he has a right to look at that.

   LEVIN. Could somebody take that out to the secretary?

   Byrd. Now, while that's being given to the secretary, Mr. Secretary, I think we're put into an extremely bad position before the world today if we're going to walk away from an international effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention against germ warfare, advising its allies that the U.S. wants to delay further discussions until 2006., Especially in the light of the Newsweek story; I think we bear some responsibility.

   INHOFE. Mr. Chairman I ask for a point of order.

   LEVIN. Can we just have this be the last question, if you would just go along with us please, Senator Inhofe?

   INHOFE. I'll only say though, in all respect to the senator from West Virginia, we have a number of senators here. We have a limited time of six minutes each, and we're entitled to have our six minutes. That should be a short question if it's the last question.

   LEVIN. If we could just make that the last question and answer, I would appreciate it. The chair would appreciate the cooperation of all senators.

   RUMSFELD. I'll do my best.

   Senator, I just in glancing at this, and I hesitate to do this because I have not read it carefully.

   But it says here that, ``According to confidential Commerce Department export control documents obtained by Newsweek, the shopping list included.'' It did not say that there were deliveries of these things. It said that Iran--Iraq asked for these things. It talks about a shopping list.

   Second, in listing these things, it says that they wanted television cameras for video surveillance applications, chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, the IAEC--and that may very well be the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, which would be--mean that my earlier comment would not be correct, because I thought it was the International Atomic Energy Commission. But this seems to indicate it's the Iraq Commerce Commission.

   BYRD. Mr. Chairman, may I say to my friend from Oklahoma, I'm amazed that he himself wouldn't yield me time for this important question. I would do the same for him.

   Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask .....

   (CLELAND). I yield my five minutes, Senator.

   BYRD. I thank the distinguished senator.

   Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the secretary--and I don't just like to ask him--I ask him to review Pentagon records to see if the Newsweek article is true or not. Will the secretary do that?

   RUMSFELD. It appears that they're Department of Commerce records, as opposed to Pentagon. But I can certainly ask that the

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   LEVIN. And we go one step future than that. I think the request is that the Defense Department search its records. Will you do that?

   RUMSFELD. We'll be happy to search ours, but this refers to the Commerce Department.

   LEVIN. We will ask the State Department and the Commerce Department to do the same thing.

   RUMSFELD. We'd be happy to.

   LEVIN. And we will also ask the Intelligence Committee to stage a briefing for all of us on that issue, so that Senator Byrd's question .....

   BYRD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman.

   LEVIN. Thank you very much, Senator.

   BYRD. I thank the secretary.

   RUMSFELD. Thank you.

   LEVIN. Senator Byrd, we will ask Senator Graham and Senator Shelby to hold a briefing on that subject, because it is a very important subject.

   BYRD. I thank the chairman.

--

   How Saddam Happened

   The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment.

   The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed ``vigorous and confident,'' according to a new declassified State Department cable obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld ``conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad,'' wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries.

   Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions.

   FORMER ALLIES

   Rumsfeld is not the first American diplomat to wish for the demise of a former ally. After all, before the cold war, the Soviet Union was America's partner against Hitler in World War II. In the real world, as the saying goes, nations have no permanent friends, just permanent interests. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld's long-ago interlude with Saddam is a reminder that today's friend can be tomorrow's mortal threat. As President George W. Bush and his war cabinet ponder Saddam's successor's regime, they would do well to contemplate how and why the last three presidents allowed the Butcher of Baghdad to stay in power so long.

   The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons. But it happened.

   America's past stumbles, while embarrassing, are not an argument for inaction in the future. Saddam probably is the ``grave and gathering danger'' described by President Bush in his speech to the United Nations last week. It may also be true that ``whoever replaces Saddam is not going to be worse,'' as a senior administration official put it to Newsweek. But the story of how America helped create a Frankenstein monster it now wishes to strangle is sobering. It illustrates the power of wishful thinking, as well as the iron law of unintended consequences.

   TRANSFIXED BY SADDAM

   America did not put Saddam in power. He emerged after two decades of turmoil in the '60s and '70s, as various strongmen tried to gain control of a nation that had been concocted by British imperialists in the 1920s out of three distinct and rival factions, the Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds. But during the cold war, America competed with the Soviets for Saddam's attention and welcomed his war with the religious fanatics of Iran. Having cozied up to Saddam, Washington.......

   While the Middle East is unlikely to become a democratic nirvana, the worst-case scenarios, always a staple of the press, are probably also wrong or exaggerated. Assuming that a cornered and doomed Saddam does not kill thousands of Americans in some kind of horrific Go 4tterda 4mmerung--a scary possibility, one that deeply worries administration officials--the greatest risk of his fall is that one strongman may simply be replaced by another. Saddam's successor may not be a paranoid sadist. But there is no assurance that he will be America's friend or forswear the development of weapons of mass destruction.

   A TASTE FOR NASTY WEAPONS

   American officials have known that Saddam was a psychopath ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in the early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took the title of president in 1979 was to videotape a session of his party's congress, during which he personally ordered several members executed on the spot. The message, carefully conveyed to the Arab press, was not that these men were executed for plotting against Saddam, but rather for thinking about plotting against him. From the beginning, U.S. officials worried about Saddam's taste for nasty weaponry; indeed, at their meeting in 1983, Rumsfeld warned that Saddam's use of chemical weapons might ``inhibit'' American assistance. But top officials in the Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate. By going to war with Iran, he could bleed the radical mullahs who had seized control of Iran from the pro-American shah. Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar Sadat, capable of making Iran into a modern secular state, just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his assassination in 1981.

   But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's ``human wave attacks'' threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand. After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of ``dual use'' equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by Newsweek, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for ``video surveillance applications''; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of ``bacteria/fungi/protozoa'' to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacteria cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

   ``WHO IS GOING TO SAY ANYTHING?''

   The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the Kurds, records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Ali Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. ``Who is going to say anything?'' he asks. ``The international community? F--k them!''

   The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

   Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam's megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy

[Page: S8993]

   AMBIVALENT ABOUT SADDAM'S FATE

   Some American diplomats suggest that Saddam might have gotten away with invading Kuwait if he had not been quite so greedy. ``If he had pulled back to the Mutla Ridge [overlooking Kuwait City], he'd still be there today,'' one ex-ambassador told Newsweek. And even though President George H.W. Bush compared Saddam to Hitler and sent a half-million-man Army to drive him from Kuwait, Washington remained ambivalent about Saddam's fate. It was widely assumed by policymakers that Saddam would collapse after his defeat in Desert Storm, done in by him humiliated officer corps or overthrown by the revolt of a restive minority population. But Washington did not want to push very hard to topple Saddam. The gulf war, Bush I administration officials pointed out, had been fought to liberate Kuwait, not oust Saddam. ``I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit--we would still be there,'' wrote the American commander in Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, in his memoirs. America's allies in the region, most prominently Saudi Arabia, feared that a post-Saddam Iraq would splinter and destabilize the region. The Shiites in the south might bond with their fellow religionists in Iran, strengthening the Shiite mullahs, and threatening the Saudi border. In the north, the Kurds were agitating to break off parts of Iraq and Turkey to create a Kurdistan. So Saddam was allowed to keep his tanks and helicopters--which he used to crush both Shiite and Kurdish rebellions.

   The Bush administration played down Saddam's darkness after the gulf war. Pentagon bureaucrats compiled dossiers to support a war-crimes prosecution of Saddam, especially for his sordid treatment of POWs. They documented police stations and ``sports facilities'' where Saddam's henchmen used acid baths and electric drills on their victims. One document suggested that torture should be ``artistic.'' But top Defense Department officials stamped the report secret. One Bush administration official subsequently told The Washington Post, ``Some people were concerned that if we released it during the [1992 presidential] campaign, people would say, `Why don't you bring this guy to justice?' '' (Defense Department aides say politics played no part in the report.)

   The Clinton administration was no more aggressive toward Saddam. In 1993, Saddam apparently hired some Kuwaiti liquor smugglers to try to assassinate former president Bush as he took a victory lap through the region. According to one former U.S. ambassador, the new administration was less than eager to see an open-and-shut case against Saddam, for fear that it would demand aggressive retaliation. When American intelligence continued to point to Saddam's role, the Clintonites lobbed a few cruise missiles into Baghdad. The attack reportedly killed one of Saddam's mistresses, but left the dictator defiant.

   CLINTON-ERA COVERT ACTIONS

   The American intelligence community, under orders from President Bill Clinton, did mount covert actions aimed at toppling Saddam in the 1990s, but by most accounts they were badly organized and halfhearted. In the north, CIA operatives supported a Kurdish rebellion against Saddam in 1995. According to the CIA's man on the scene, former case officer Robert Baer, Clinton administration officials back in Washington ``pulled the plug'' on the operation just as it was gathering momentum. The reasons have long remained murky, but according to Baer, Washington was never sure that Saddam's successor would be an improvement, or that Iraq wouldn't simply collapse into chaos. ``The question we could never answer,'' Baer told Newsweek, ``was, `After Saddam goes, then what?' '' A coup attempt by Iraqi Army officers fizzled the next year. Saddam brutally rolled up the plotters. The CIA operatives pulled out, rescuing everyone they could, and sending them to Guam.

   Meanwhile, Saddam was playing cat-and-mouse with weapons of mass destruction. As part of the settlement imposed by America and its allies at the end of the gulf war, Saddam was supposed to get rid of his existing stockpiles of chem-bio weapons, and to allow in inspectors to make sure none were being hidden or secretly manufactured. The U.N. inspectors did shut down his efforts to build a nuclear weapon. But Saddam continued to secretly work on his germ- and chemical-warfare program. When the inspectors first suspected what Saddam was trying to hide in 1995, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, suddenly fled Iraq to Jordan. Kamel had overseen Saddam's chem-bio program, and his defection forced the revelation of some of the secret locations of Saddam's deadly labs. That evidence is the heart of the ``white paper'' used last week by President Bush to support his argument that Iraq has been defying U.N. resolutions for the past decade. (Kamel had the bad judgment to return to Iraq, where he was promptly executed, along with various family members.)

   By now aware of the scale of Saddam's efforts to deceive, the U.N. arms inspectors were unable to certify that Saddam was no longer making weapons of mass destruction. Without this guarantee, the United Nations was unwilling to lift the economic sanctions imposed after the gulf war. Saddam continued to play ``cheat and retreat'' with--the inspectors, forcing a showdown in December 1998. The United Nations pulled out its inspectors, and the United States and Britain launched Operation Desert Fox, four days of bombing that was supposed to teach Saddam a lesson and force his compliance.

   Saddam thumbed his nose. The United States and its allies, in effect, shrugged and walked away. While the U.N. sanctions regime gradually eroded, allowing Saddam to trade easily on the black market, he was free to brew all the chem-bio weapons he wanted. Making a nuclear weapon is harder, and intelligence officials still believe he is a few years away from even regaining the capacity to manufacture enriched uranium to build his own bomb. If he can steal or buy ready-made fissile material, say from the Russian mafia, he could probably make a nuclear weapon in a matter of months, though it would be so large that delivery would pose a challenge.

   LASHING OUT?

   As the Bush administration prepares to oust Saddam, one way or another, senior administration officials are very worried that Saddam will try to use his WMD arsenal Intelligence experts have warned that Saddam may be ``flushing'' his small, easy-to-conceal biological agents, trying to get them out of the country before an American invasion. A vial of bugs or toxins that could kill thousands could fit in a suitcase--or a diplomatic pouch. There are any number of grim end-game scenarios. Saddam could try blackmail, threatening to unleash smallpox or some other grotesque virus in an American city if U.S. forces invaded. Or, like a cornered dog, he could lash out in a final spasm of violence, raining chemical weapons down on U.S. troops, handing out his bioweapons to terrorists. ``That's the single biggest worry in all this,'' says a senior administration official. ``We are spending a lot of time on this,'' said another top official.

   Some administration critics have said, in effect, let sleeping dogs lie. Don't provoke Saddam by threatening his life; there is no evidence that he has the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction. Countered White House national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, ``Do we wait until he's better at it?'' Several administration officials indicated that an intense effort is underway, covert as well as overt, to warn Saddam's lieutenants to save themselves by breaking from the dictator before it's too late. ``Don't be the fool who follows the last order'' is the way one senior administration official puts it.

   The risk is that some will choose to go down with Saddam, knowing that they stand to be hanged by an angry mob after the dictator falls. It is unclear what kind of justice would follow his fall, aside from summary hangings from the nearest lamppost.

   POST-SADDAM IRAQ

   The Bush administration is determined not to ``overthrow one strongman only to install another,'' a senior administration official told Newsweek. This official said that the president has made clear that he wants to press for democratic institutions, government accountability and the rule of law in post-Saddam Iraq. But no one really knows how that can be achieved. Bush's advisers are counting on the Iraqis themselves to resist a return to despotism. ``People subject to horrible tryanny have strong antibodies to anyone who wants to put them back under tyranny,'' says a senior administration official. But as another official acknowledged, ``a substantial American commitment'' to Iraq is inevitable.

   At what cost? And who pays? Will other nations chip in money and men? It is not clear how many occupation troops will be required to maintain order, or for how long. Much depends on the manner of Saddam's exit: whether the Iraqis drive him out themselves, or rely heavily on U.S. power. Administration officials shy away from timeables and specifies but say they have to be prepared for all contingencies. ``As General Eisenhower said, `Every plan gets thrown out on the first day of battle. Plans are useless. Planning is everything','' said Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I, Lewis (Scooter) Libby.

   It is far from clear that America will be able to control the next leader of Iraq, even if he is not as diabolical as Saddam. Any leader of Iraq will look around him and see that Israel and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and that Iran may soon. Just as England and France opted to build their own bombs in the cold war, and not depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, the next president of Iraq may want to have his own bomb. ``He may want to, but he can't be allowed to,'' says a Bush official. But what is to guarantee that a newly rich Iraqi strongman won't buy one with his nation's vast oil wealth? In some ways, Iraq is to the Middle East as Germany was to Europe in the 20th century, too large, too militaristic and too competent to coexit peacebly with neighbors. It took two world wars and millions of lives to solve ``the German problem.'' Getting rid of Saddam may be essential to creating a stable, democratic

[Page: S8994]

--

   Per our previous conversation, after reviewing the available licensing records of the Bureau of Export Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, related to biological materials exported to the government of Iraq, additional information identifying the genus species, and strain or origin (if known) of the following viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa for which export licenses were granted is requested.

   Date License Approved, Consignee, and Material information:

02/08/85, Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, Ustilago
02/22/85 (2 each), Ministry of Higher Education, Fungi Histoplasma
07/11/85 (2 each), Middle and Near East Regional A, Fungi Histoplasma
10/02/85 (46 each), Ministry of Higher Education, Bacteria
10/08/85 (10 each), Ministry of Higher Education, Bacteria, Clostridium, Francisella
03/21/86 (18 each), Agriculture and Water Resources, Fungi, Alysidium, Aspergillus, Hypopichia
03/21/86 (21 each), Agriculture and Water Resources, Fungi, Actinormucor, Aspergillus, Rhizopus, Rhizomucor, Talaromyces, Fusarium, Penicillium, Tricyoderma
02/04/87 (11 each), State Company for Drug Indust, Bacteria Bacillus, Bacillus, Escherichia, Staphylococcus, Klebsiella, Salmonella, Pseudomonas
08/17/87 (2 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, Bacteria, Escherichia
03/24/88 (3 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, Bacteria, Escherichia
04/22/88, Sera and Vaccine Institute, Bacteria, Salmonella (Class I), Clostridium (Class II), Brucella (Class III), Corynebacterium (II), Vibrio (Class III)
05/05/88 (1 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, Bacteria, Escherichia
08/16/88, Ministry of Trade, Bacteria, (12 each) Bacillus (Class III), (6 each) Bacillus (Class II), (6 each) Bacillus (Class III), (9 each) Clostridium (Class 10)
11/07/88 (2 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, Bacteria, Escherichia (Class I)
12/19/88 (3 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, Bacteria Escherichia (Class I)

   The above listing includes only those material for which export licenses were granted from January 1, 1985, until the present. A number of requests were returned without action. If any information is available as to the specific materials requested by the consignee in these cases, it may also prove useful. A listing of materials for which export licenses were approved between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 1984 follows. I understand that record may no longer be available for these items, however, if any specific information is available which identifies these materials please forward it as well.

   Data License Approved, Consignee, and Material Information

08/14/80 (20 each), Ministry of Health for College, Bacteria/Fungi, not further identified
09/11/80 (45 each), University of Baghdad, Bacteria/Fungi/Protozoa, Virus/Viroids (15 each), not further identified
03/17/82 (1 each), University of Mosul, Bacteria/Fungi/Protozoa
04/09/82 (6 each), General Establishment/Drugs, Pseudomonas, Salmonella, Aspergillus
04/09/82 (6 each), General Establishment/Drugs, Pseudomonas, Salmonella, Aspergillus
07/30/82 (3 each), State Co for Drug Industries, Bacillus
08/08/84 (2 each), Ministry of Health for College, Bacteria Corynebacterium
11/30/84 (59 each), College of Medicine, Aspergillus, Epidermophyton, Microsporum, Penicillium, Trichophyton, Alternaria, Neisseria, Clostridium, Bacteroides, Escherichia

   I understand that information for those items exported prior to January 1, 1985 may be unavailable. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding this request at 202-224-4822.

   HEADLINE: Ustilago nuda (Jensen) Rostrup, ATCC 34718. TEXT: CBS 118.19. H. Kniep. USDA permit PPQ-526 required. Growth Conditions: Medium 336 24C. Shipped: Test tube. Price Code: W.

   HEADLINE: Histoplasma capsulatum var. farciminosum, ATCC 32136. TEXT: A.A. Padhye CDC Disagnostic 76-066816 (Histoplasma farciminosum). CBS 176.57. Class III pathogen, requests must carry signed statement assuming all risks and responsibilities for lab handling. Growth Conditions: Medium 337 25C. Shipped: Test tube. Price Code: W.

                                                                         

AMERICAN TYPE CULTURE COLLECTION, CUSTOMER ACTIVITY DETAIL REPORT, FROM: 01/01/85 TO: 12/31/93; FOR: ALL CUSTOMERS, FOR COUNTRY: IRAQ

Inv. #	Date	ATCC #	Description	Batch #	Quantity	Price
Cust #: 015408 Customer Name: UNIV OF BAGHDAD
010072	05/02/86	000000000010	BACILLUS ANTHRACIS	8-20-82	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000000082	BACILLUS SUBTILIS	6-20-84	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000003502	CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM TYPE A	7-7-81	3	163.20
010072	05/02/86	000000003624	CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS	10-85SV	2	20.40
010072	05/02/86	000000006051	BACILLUS SUBTILIS	12-6-84	2	20.40
010072	05/02/86	000000006223	FRANCISELLA TULARENSIS VAR. TULARENSIS	5-14-79	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000009441	CLOSTRIDIUM TETANI	3-84	3	163.20
010072	05/02/86	000000009564	CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM TYPE E	3-29-79	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000010779	CLOSTRIDIUM TETANI	4-24-84S	3	30.60
010072	05/02/86	000000012916	CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS	8-14-80	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000013124	CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS	7-84SV	3	30.60
010072	05/02/86	000000014185	BACILLUS ANTHRACIS	1-14-80	3	163.20
010072	05/02/86	000000014578	BACILLUS ANTHRACIS	1-6-78	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000014581	BACILLUS MEGATERIUM	4-18-85	2	20.40
010072	05/02/86	000000014945	BACILLUS MEGATERIUM	6-21-81	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000017855	CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM TYPE E	6-21-71	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000019213	BACILLUS MEGATERIUM	3-84	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000019397	CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM TYPE A	8-18-81	3	163.20
010072	05/02/86	000000023450	BRUCELLA ABORTUS BIOTYPE 3	8-2-84	3	163.20
010072	05/02/86	000000023455	BRUCELLA ABORTUS BIOTYPE 9	2-5-68	3	163.20
010072	05/02/86	000000023456	BRUCELLA MELITENSIS BIOTYPE 1	3-8-78	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000023458	BRUCELLA MELITENSIS BIOTYPE 3	1-29-68	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000025763	CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM TYPE A	8-83	2	108.80
010072	05/02/86	000000035415	CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM TYPE F	2-24-84	2	108.80
						297.12
010072	05/02/86	FREIGHT				0.00
010072	05/02/86	TAX
010072	05/02/86		Total Invoice		58	2,813.12
			Total for: UNIV OF BAGHDAD		58	2,813.12
Cust #: 016124 Customer Name: STATE CO FOR DRUG INDUST.
AC377	08/31/87	000000002601	SACCHAROMYCES CEREVISIAE	8-28-80	1	12.00
AC377	08/31/87	000000006539	SALMONELLA CHOLERAESUIS SUBSP. CHOLERAESUIS	6-86S	1	12.00
AC377	08/31/87	000000006633	BACILLUS SUBTILIS	10-85	2	128.00
AC377	08/31/87	000000010031	KLEBSIELLA PNEUMONIAE SUBSP. PNEUMONIAE	8-13-80	1	64.00
AC377	08/31/87	000000010536	ESCHERICHIA COLI	4-9-80	1	64.00
AC377	08/31/87	000000011778	BACILLUS CEREUS	5-85SV	2	24.00
AC377	08/31/87	000000012228	STAPHYLOCOCCUS EPIDERMIDIS	11-86S	1	12.00
AC377	08/31/87	000000014884	BACILLUS PUMILUS	9-8-80	2	128.00

   AC1507, 04/26/88, Total Invoice

   AC1616, 07/11/88, 0000000035-X, COMMUNICATION FEES, 35-X.

   AC1616, 07/11/88, 000000011303, ESCHERICHIA COLI, 4-87S.

   AC1616, 07/11/88, 000000037349, PTIBO542 PLASMID IN AGROBACTERIUM TUMEFACIENS, 6-14-85.

   AC1616, 07/11/88, 000000045031, CAULIFLOWER MOSAIC CAULIMOVIRUS CLONE, 5-28-85.

   AC1616, 07/11/88, FREIGHT.

   AC1616, 07/11/88, TAX.

   062876, 10/12/87, Total Invoice

   AC1507, 04/26/88, 0000000035-X, COMMUNICATION FEES.

   AC1507, 04/26/88, 000000057236, HU LAMBDA 4X-8 PHAGE LYSATE.

   AC1507, 04/26/88, 000000057240, HU LAMBDA 14 PHAGE LYSATE.

   AC1507, 04/26/88, 000000057242, HU LAMBDA 15 PHAGE LYSATE.

   AC1507, 04/26/88, FREIGHT.

   AC1507, 04/26/88, TAX.

   AC489, 08/31/87, 000000023846, ESCHERICHIA COLI, 7-29-83.

   AC489, 08/31/87, 000000033694, ESCHERICHIA COLI, 7-29-83.

[Page: S8995]

   AC489, 08/31/87, FREIGHT.

   AC489, 08/31/87, MINIMUM.

   CUST #: 022913, Customer Name: TECHNICAL & SCIENTIFIC

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000000240, BACILLUS ANTHRACIS, 5-14-63.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000000938, BACILLUS ANTHRACIS, 1963.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000003629, CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS, 10-23-85.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000008009, CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS, 3-30-84.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000008705, BACILLUS ANTHRACIS, 6-27-62.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000009014, BRUCELLA ABORTUS, 5-11-66.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000010388, CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS, 6-1-73.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000011966, BACILLUS ANTHRACIS, 5-5-70.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000025763, CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM TYPE A, 7-86.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000033018, BACILLUS CEREUS, 4-83.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, 000000033019, BACILLUS CEREUS, 3-88.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, DISCOUNT.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, FREIGHT.

   AC2658, 09/29/88, TAX.

   AC3352, 01/17/89, Total Invoice

   AC1639, 01/31/89, 0000000035-X, COMMUNICATION FEES, 35-X.

   AC1639, 01/31/89, 000000057056, PHPT31 PLASMID IN ESCHERICHIA COLI JM83, 3-88.

   AC1639, 01/31/89, 000000057212, P LAMBDA 500 PLASMID IN ESCHERICHIA COLI, 88-09.

   AC1639, 01/31/89, FREIGHT.

   AC1639, 01/31/89, TAX.

--

   DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION,

   Atlanta, GA, June 21, 1995.
Hon. DONALD W. RIEGLE, Jr.,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.

   DEAR SENATOR RIEGLE: In 1993, at your request, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) forwarded to your office a listing of all biological materials, including viruses, retroviruses, bacteria, and fungi, which CDC provided to the government of Iraq from October 1, 1984, through October 13, 1993. Recently, in the course of reviewing our shipping records for a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a private citizen, we identified an additional shipment, on May 21, 1985, that was not included on the list that was provided to your office. Following this discovery, we conducted a thorough review of all of our shipping records and are confident that we have now included a listing of all shipments. A corrected list is enclosed (Note: the new information is italicized).

   These additional materials were hand-carried by Dr. Mohammad Mahoud to Iraq after he had spent three months training in a CDC laboratory. Most of the materials were non-infectious diagnostic reagents for detecting evidence of infections to mosquito-borne viruses. Only two of the materials are on the Commodity Control List, i.e., Yersinin Pestis (the agent of plague) and dengue virus. (the strain of plague bacillus was non-virulent, and CDC is currently petitioning the Department of Commerce to remove this particular variant from the list of controlled materials).

   We regret that our earlier list was incomplete and appreciate your understanding.

   Sincerely,

   David Satcher,
Director.

   Enclosure. (Copy unclear)

   CDC Shipments to Iraq October 1, 1984 through Present

   4/26/85--MINISTER OF HEALTH, MINISTRY OF HEALTH, BAGHDAD, IRAQ

   8 Vials antigen and antisera, (R. rickettsii and R. typhi) to diagnose rickettsial infections (non-infectious).

   5/21/85--DR. MAHAMMAD IMAD, AL-DEAN M. MAHMUD, DEPT. OF MICROBIOLOGY, COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF BASRAH, BASRAH, IRAQ

   Etiologic Agents:--lyophilized arbovirus seed;

   West Nile Fever Virus, Lyophilized cultures of avirulant yersinia pestis and Y. pseudotuberculosis ((strain r);

   0.5 m1 Bhania Virus (Iq 690);

   0.5 m1 Dongua Virus type 2 (New Guinea C);

   0.5 m1 Dongua Virus type 3 (H-97);

   0.5 m1 Hazara Virus (Pak IC 280);

   0.5 m1 Kemeroud Virus (rio);

   0.5 m1 Langat Virus (TP 21);

   0.5 m1 Sandfly Fever/Naples Virus (original);

   0.5 m1 Sandfly Fever/Sicilian Virus (original);

   0.5 m1 Sindbis Virus (Egar 339);

   0.5 m1 Tahyna Virus (Bardos 92);

   0.5 m1 Thgoto Virus (II A).

   Diagnostic Reagents and Associated Materials:

   2. vials each Y. pestis FA (+ & -) conjugates;

   2 vials Y. pestis Fraction 1 antigen;

   10 vials Y. pestis bacteriophage impregnated paper strips;

   5 plague-infected mouse tissue smears (fixed);

   Various protocols for diagnostic bacteriology tests;

   23 X 0.5 m1 Bhanja (Ig 690) antigen;

   22 X 0.5 m1 Dengue Type 2 (New Guinea C) antigen;

   22 X 0.5 ml Dengue type 3 (H-69) antigen;

   22 X 0.5 ml Hazara (Pak IC 290) antigen;

   22 X 0.5 ml Kemarovo (Rio) antigen;

   22 X 0.5 ml Langat (IF 21) antigen,

   24 X 0.5 ml Sandfly Fever/Naples (original) antigen;

   24 X 0.5 ml Sandfly Fever/Sicilian (original) antigen;

   Diagnostic Reagents and Associated Materials:

   2 vials each Y. pestis PA (+6-) conjugates;

   2 vials Y. pestis Fraction 2 antigen;

   10 vials Y. pestis bacteriophage impregnated paper stripe;

   5 plague-infected mouse tissue smears (fixed);

   Various protocols for diagnostic bacteriology tests;

   23 X 0.5 ml Bhanja (Ig 690) antigen;

   22 X 0.5 ml Dengue Type 2 (New Guinea C) antigen;

   22 X 0.5 ml Dengue Type 3 (H-67) antigen;

   22 X 0.5 ml Hazara (Pak IC 280) antigen;

   23 X 0.5 ml Kemorovo (Rio) antigen;

   21 X 0.5 ml Langat (TP 21) antigen;

   24 X 0.5 ml Sandfly Fever/Maples (original) antigen;

   24 X 0.5 ml Sandfly Fever/Sicilian (original) antigen;

   23 X 0.5 ml Sindbis (EgAr 339) antigen;

   23 X 0.5 ml Tahyna (Bardos 92) antigen;

   20 X 0.5 ml Thogoto (II A) antigen;

   23 X 0.5 ml Bhanja (Ig 690) antigen;

   21 X 0.5 ml West Nile (Eg 101) antigen;

   20 X 0.5 ml Normal SMB antigen;

   10 X 0.5 ml Normal SML antigen;

   5 X 1.0 ml Bhanja (Ig 690) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml Dengue Type 2 (New Guinea C) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml Dengue Type 3 (H-87) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml Hazara (Pak IC 280) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml Xemerovo (Rio) antibody;

   5 X 2.0 ml Langat (TP 21) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml Sandfly Fever/Naples (original) antibody;

   5 X 2.0 ml Sandfly Fever/Sicilian (original) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml Sindbis (EgAr 339) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml Tahyna (Bardos 92) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml Thogoto (II A) antibody;

   5 X 1.0 ml West Nile (Eg 101) antibody;

   3 X 1.0 ml Normal MHIAF (SMB) antibody;

   3 X 1.0 ml Normal MHIAF (SML) antibody;

   1.0 ml A polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml AIYA, etc. polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml B polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml BUN polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml BWA polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml C-1 polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml C-2 polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml CAL polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml CAP polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml CON polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml GMA polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml KEM polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml PAL polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml PAT polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml PHL polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml ORF polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml Rabies, etc. polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml STM polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml TCR polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml VSV polyvalent grouping fluid;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 1;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 2;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 3;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 4;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 5;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 6;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 7;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 8;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 9;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 10;

   1.0 ml polyvalent 12;

   1.0 ml Group B1 reagent;

   1.0 ml Bluetongue reagent;

   4 X 0.5 ml Dengue 1-4 set monoclonal antibodies;

   1.0 ml St. Louis Enc. (MSI-7) monoclonal antibody;

   1.0 ml Western Eq. Enc. (McMillian) monoclonal antibody.

   6/26/85--

   Dr. Mohammed S. Khidar, University of Baghdad, College of Medicine, Department of Microbiology, Baghdad, Iraq 3 yeast cultures Candida sp. (etiologic).

   3/10/86

   Dr. Rowil Shawil Georgis, M.B.CH.B.D.F.H., Officers City Al-Muthanna, Quartret 710, Street 13, Close 69, House 28/I, Baghdad, Iraq. 1 vial Botulinum Toxiod # A-2 (non-infectious).

   4/21/56--DR. ROWIL SHAWIL GEORGIS, N.B. CIR. D.D.F.H., OFFICERS CITY AL-MUTHANA, QUARTRET 710, STREET 13, CLOSE 69, HOUSE 23/R, BAGHDAD, IRAQ

   1 vial Botulinum toxin (non-infections).

   7/21/88--DR. FAQID ALFARHOOD, MAHELA 887, ZIKAK 54, HOUSE 97, HAY ALJIHAD, KERK, BAGHDAD, IRAQ

   teaching supplies (non-infectious); CDC procedures manuals.

   7/27/88--DR. FAGID ALFARHOOD, MAHELA 887, ZIKAK 54, HOUSE 97, HAY ALJIHAD, KERK, BAGHDAD, IRAQ

   teaching supplies (non-infectious); CDC procedure manuals.

   11/28/89--DR. NADEAL T. AL HADITHI, UNIVERSITY OF BASRAH, COLLEGE OF SCIENCE, DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY, BASRAH, IRAQ

   5.0 mls Enterococcus faecalis;

   5.0 mls Enterococcus faccium;

   5.0 mls Enterococcus avium;

   5.0 mls Enterococcus raffinosus;

   5.0 mls Enterococcus gallinarum;

[Page: S8996]

   5.0 mls Enterococcus durans;

   5.0 mls Enterococcus hirac;

   5.0 mls Streptococcus bovis (cciologic).

   From U.S. Senate Hearing Report 103-900

   U.S. EXPORTS OF BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS TO IRAQ

   The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs has oversight responsibility for the Export Administration Act. Pursuant to the Act, Committee staff contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce and requested information on the export of biological materials during the years prior to the Gulf War. After receiving this information, we contacted a principal supplier of these materials to determine what, if any, materials were exported to Iraq which might have contributed to an offensive or defensive biological warfare program. Records available from the supplier for the period from 1985 until the present show that during this time, pathogenic (meaning ``disease producing''), toxigenic (meaning ``poisonous''), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Records prior to 1985 were not available, according to the supplier. These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction. According to the Department of Defense's own Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, released in April 1992:

   ``By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq had developed biological weapons. It's advanced and aggressive biological warfare program was the most advanced in the Arab world. The program probably began late in the 1970's and concentrated on the development of two agents, botulinum toxin and anthrax bacteria. ..... Large scale production of these agents began in 1989 at four facilities near Baghdad. Delivery means for biological agents ranged from simple aerial bombs and artillery rockets to surface-to-surface missiles.''

   Included in the approved sales are the following biological materials (which have been considered by various nations for use in war), with their associated disease symptoms:

   Bacillus Anthracis: anthrax is a disease-producing bacteria identified by the Department of Defense in the The Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress, as being a major component in the Iraqi biological warfare program.

   Anthrax is an often-fatal infectious disease due to ingestion of spores. It begins abruptly with high fever, difficulty in breathing, and chest pain. The disease eventually results in septicemia (blood poisoning), and the mortality is high. Once septicemia is advanced, antibiotic therapy may prove useless, probably because the exotoxins remain, despite the death of the bacteria.

   Clostridium Botulinum: a baterial source of botulinum toxin, which causes vomiting, constipation, thirst, general weakness, headache, fever, dizziness, double vision, dilation of the pupils and paralysis of the muscles involving swallowing. It is often fatal.

   Histoplasma Capsulatum: causes a disease superficially resembling tuberculosis that may cause pneumonia, enlargement of the liver and spleen, anemia, an influenza-like illness and an acute inflammatory skin disease marked by tender red modules, usually on the shins. Reactivated infection usually involves the lungs, the brain, spinal membranes, heart, peritoneum, and the adrenals.

   Brucella Melitensis: a bacterial which can cause chronic fatigue, loss of appetite, profuse sweating when at rest, pain in joints and muscles, insomnia, nausea, and damage to major organs.

   Clostridium Perfringens: a highly toxic bacteria which causes gas gangrene. The bacteria produce toxins that move along muscle bundles in the body killing cells and producing necrotic tissue that is then favorable for further growth of the bacteria itself. Eventually, these toxins and bacteria enter the bloodstream and cause systemic illness.

   In addition, several shipments of Escherichia Coli (E.Coli) and genetic materials, as well as human and bacterial DNA, were shipped directly to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.

   The following is a detailed listing of biological materials, provided by the American Type Culture Collection, which were exported to agencies of the government of Iraq pursuant to the issuance of an export licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department:

   Date: February 8, 1985

   Sent to: Iraq Atomic Energy Agency

   Materials Shipped: Ustilago nuda (Jensen) Rostrup.

   Date: February 22, 1985

   Sent to: Ministry of Higher Education

   Materials Shipped: Histoplasma capsulanum var. farciminosum (ATCC 32136). Class III pathogen.

   Date: July 11, 1985.

   Sent to: Middle And Near East Regional A.

   Materials Shipped: Histoplasma capsulatum var. farciminosum (ATCC 32136). Class III pathogen.

   Date: May 2, 1986.

   Sent to: Ministry of Higher Education.

   Materials Shipped: 1. Bacillus Anthracis Cohn (ATCC 10). Batch #08-20-82 (2 each). Class III pathogen.

   2. Bacillus Subtitlis (Ehrenberg) Cohn (ATCC 82). Batch #06-20-84 (2 each).

   3. Clostridium botulinum Type A (ATCC 3502). Batch #07-07-81 (3 each). Class III Pathogen.

   4. Clostridium perfringens (Weillon and Zuber) Hauduroy, et al (ATCC 3624). Batch #10-85SV (2 each).

   5. Bacillus subtilis (ATCC 6051). Batch #12-06-84 (2 each).

   6. Francisella tularensis, var. tularensis Olsufiev (ATCC 6223) Batch #05-14-79 (2 each). Avirulent, suitable for preparations of diagnostic antigens.

   7. Clostridium tetani (ATCC 9441). Batch #03-84 (3 each). Highly toxigenic.

   8. Clostridium botulinum Type E (ATCC 9564). Batch #03-02-79 (2 each). Class III pathogen.

   9. Clostridium tetani (ATCC 10779). Batch #04-24-84S (3 each).

   10. Clostridium perfringens (ATCC 12916). Batch #08-14-80 (2 each). Agglutinating type 2.

   11. Clostridium perfringens (ATCC 13124). Batch #07-84SV (3 each). Type A, alpha-toxigenic, produces lechitinase C.J. Appl.

   12. Bacillus Anthracis (ATCC 14185). Batch #01-14-80 (3 each). G.G. Wright (Fort Dertick) V770-NP1-R. Bovine anthrax, Class III pathogen.

   13. Bacillus Anthracis (ATCC 14578). Batch #01-06-78 (2 each). Class III pathogen.

   14. Bacillus megaterium (ATCC 14581). Batch #04-18-85 (2 each).

   15. Bacillus megaterium (ATCC 14945). Batch #06-21-81 (2 each).

   16. Clostridium botulinum Type E (ATCC 17855. Batch #06-21-71. Class III pathogen.

   17. Bacillus megaterium (ATCC 19213). Batch #3-84 (2 each).

   18. Clostridium botulinum Type A (ATCC 19397). Batch #08-18-81 (2 each). Class III pathogen.

   19. Brucella abortus Biotype 3 (ATCC 23450). Batch #08-02-84 (3 each). Class III pathogen.

   20. Brucella abortus Biotype 9 (ATCC 23455). Batch #02-05-68 (3 each). Class III pathogen.

   21. Brucella melitensis Biotype 1 (ATCC 23456). Batch #03-08-78 (2 each). Class III pathogen.

   22. Brucella melitensis Biotype 3 (ATCC 23458. Batch #01-29-68 (2 each). Class III pathogen.

   23. Clostridium botulinum Type A (ATCC 25763. Batch #8-83 (2 each). Class III pathogen.

   24. Clostridium botulinum Type F (ATCC 35415). Batch #02-02-84 (2 each). Class III pathogen.

   Date: August 31, 1987.

   Sent to: State Company for Drug Industries.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. Saccharomyces cerevesia (ATCC 2601). Batch #08-28-08 (1 each).

   2. Salmonella choleraesuis subsp. choleraesuis Serotype typhia (ATCC 6539). Batch #06-86S (1 each).

   3. Bacillus subtillus (ATCC 6633). Batch# 10-85 (2 each).

   4. Klebsiella pneumoniae subsp. pneumoniae (ATCC 10031). Batch# 08-13-80 (1 each).

   5. Escherichia coli (ATCC 10536). Batch# 04-09-80 (1 each).

   6. Bacillus cereus (11778). Batch# 05-85SV (2 each).

   7. Staphylococcus epidermidis (ATCC 12228). Batch# 11-86s (1 each).

   8. Bacillus pumilus (ATCC 14884). Batch# 09-08-90 (2 each).

   Date: July 11, 1988.

   Sent to: Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. Escherichia coli (ATCC 11303). Batch# 04-87S. Phage host.

   2. Cauliflower Mosaic Caulimovirus (ATCC 45031). Batch# 06-14-85. Plant virus.

   3. Plasmid in Agrobacterium Tumefaciens (ATCC 37349). (Ti plasmid for co-cultivation with plant integration vectors in E Coli). Batch# 05-28-85.

   Date: April 26, 1988.

   Sent to: Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.

   Materials Shipped:

   Hulambda4x-8, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT). Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57236) Phage vector; Suggested host: E.coli.

   2. Hulambdal 14-8, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT). Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57240) Phage vector; Suggest host: E.coli.

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   3. Hulambda 15, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT). Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57242) Phage vector; Suggested host: E.coli.

   Date: August 31, 1987.

   Sent to: Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. Escherichia coli (ATCC 23846). Batch# 07-29-83 (1 each).

   2. Escherichia coli (ATCC 33694). Batch# 05-87 (1 each).

   Date: September 29, 1988.

   Sent to: Ministry of Trade.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. Bacillus anthracis (ATCC 240). Batch# 05-14-63 (3 each). Class III pathogen.

   2. Bacillus anthracis (ATCC 938). Batch# 1963 (3 each). Class III pathogen.

   3. Clostridium perfringens (ATCC 3629). Batch# 10-23-85 (3 each).

   4. Clostridium perfringens (ATCC 8009). Batch# 03-30-84 (3 each).

   5. Bacillus anthracis (ATCC 8705). Batch# 06-27-62 (3 each). Class III pathogen.

   6. Brucella abortus (ATCC 9014). Batch# 05-11-66 (3 each). Class III pathogen.

   7. Clostridium perfringens (ATCC 10388). Batch# 06-01-73 (3 each).

   8. Bacillus anthracis (ATCC 11966). Batch# 05-05-70 (3 each). Class III pathogen.

   9. Clostridium botulinum Type A. Batch# 07-86 (3 each). Class III pathogen.

   10. Bacillus cereus (ATCC 33018). Batch# 04-83 (3 each).

   11. Bacillus ceres (ATCC 33019). Batch# 03-88 (3 each).

   Date: January 31, 1989.

   Sent to: Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. PHPT31, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT). Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57057)

   2. plambda500, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase pseudogene (HPRT). Chromosome(s): 5 p14-p13 (ATCC 57212).

   Date: January 17, 1989

   Sent to: Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. Hulambda4x-8, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT). Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57237) Phage vector; Suggested host: E. coli.

   2. Hulambda14, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT). Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57240) Cloned from human lymphoblast. Phage vector; Suggested host: E. coli.

   3. Hulambda15, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT). Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57241) Phage vector; Suggested host: E. coli.

   Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control has compiled a listing of biological materials shipped to Iraq prior to the Gulf War. The listing covers the period from October 1, 1984 (when the CDC began keeping records) through October 13, 1993. The following materials with biological warfare significance were shipped to Iraq during this period:

   Date: November 28, 1989.

   Sent to: University of Basrah, College of Science, Department of Biology.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. Enterococcus faecalis.

   2. Enterococcus faecium.

   3. Enterococcus avium.

   4. Enterococcus raffinosus.

   5. Enterococcus gallinarium.

   6. Enterococcus durans.

   7. Enterococcus hirae.

   8. Streptococcus bovis (etiologic).

   Date: April 21, 1986.

   Sent to: Officers City Al-Muthanna, Quartret 710, Street 13, Close 69 House 28/I, Baghdad, Iraq.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. 1 vial botulinum toxoid (non-infectious).

   Date: March 10, 1986.

   Sent to: Officers City Al-Muthanna, Quartret 710, Street 13, Close 69 House 28/I, Baghdad, Iraq.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. 1 vial botulinum toxoid #A2 (non-infectious).

   Date: June 25, 1985.

   Sent to: University of Baghdad, College of Medicine, Department of Microbiology.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. 3 yeast cultures (etiologic) Candida sp.

   Date: May 21, 1985.

   Sent to: Basrah, Iraq.

   Materials Shipped:

   1. Lyophilized arbovirus seed (etiologic).

   2. West Nile Fever Virus.

   Date: April 26, 1985.

   Sent to: Minister of Health, Ministry of Health, Baghdad, Iraq.

   Materials Shipped:

   1.8 vials antigen and antisera (r. rickettsii and r. typhi) to diagnose rickettsial infections (non-infectious).

   UNSCOM BIOLOGICAL WARFARE INSPECTIONS

   UNSCOM inspections uncovered evidence that the government of Iraq was conducting research on pathogen enhancement on the following biological warfare-related materials: bacillus anthracis; clostridium botulinum; clostridium perfirgens; brucella abortis; brucella melentensis; francisella tularensis; and clostridium tetani.

   In addition, the UNSCOM inspections revealed that biological warfare-related stimulant research was being conducted on the following materials: bacillus subtillus; bacillus ceres; and bacillus megatillus.

   UNSCOM reported to Committee staff that a biological warfare inspection (BW3) was conducted at the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission in 1993. This suggests that the Iraqi government may have been experimenting with the materials cited above (E. coli and rDNA) in an effort to create genetically altered microorganisms (novel biological warfare agents). Committee staff plans to interview the BW3 team leader, Col. David Franz of the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in the near future. This phase of the investigation continues.

   BIOLOGICAL WARFARE DEFENSE

   The following section, describing the types, dissemination, and defensive measures against biological agents, is quoted verbatim from a United States Marine Corps Institute document, Nuclear and Chemical Operations, MCI 7711B, used in the Command and Staff College's nonresident program. It is clear from this document that the Department of Defense recognizes both the threat and U.S. vulnerability to biological weapons. This document also outlines the Department's understanding of what actions should be taken in the event that a biological weapon has been or is suspected to have been employed.

   ``Biological agents cannot be detected by the human senses. A person could become a casualty before he is aware he has been exposed to a biological agent. An aerosol or mist of biological agent is borne in the air. These agents can silently and effectively attack man, animals, plants, and in some cases, materiel. Agents can be tailored for a specific type of target.

   Methods of using antipersonnel agents undoubtedly vary so that no uniform pattern of employment or operation is evident. It is likely that agents will be used in combinations so that the disease symptoms will confuse diagnosis and interfere with proper treatment. It is also probable that biological agents would be used in heavy concentrations to insure a high percentage of infection in the target area. The use of such concentrations could result in the breakdown of individual immunity because the large number of micro-organisms entering the body could overwhelm the natural body defenses.

   Types of biological agents

   Different antipersonnel agents require varying periods of time before they take effect, and the periods of time for which they will incapacitate a person also vary. Most of the diseases having antipersonnel employment potential are found among group of diseases that are naturally transmitted between animals and man. Mankind is highly vulnerable to them since he has little contact with animals in today's urban society. The micro-organisms of possible use in warfare are found in four naturally occurring groups--the fungi, bacteria, ricketisiae, and viruses.

   a. Fungi. Fungi occur in many forms and are found almost everywhere. They range in size from a single cell, such as yeast, to multicellular forms, such as mushrooms and puffballs. Their greatest employment potential is against plants, although some forms cause disease in man. A fungus causes the disease coccidioidomycosis in man. Other common infections caused by Fungi include ringworm and ``athletes foot.''

   b. Bacteria. Bacteria comprise a large and varied group of organisms. They occur in varying shapes, such as rods, spheres, and spirals, but they are all one-celled plants. Some bacteria can assume a resistant structure called a spore, which enables them to resist adverse environmental conditions. Others may produce poisonous substances called toxins. Examples of human disease caused by bacteria are anthrax, brucellosis, tularemia, staphylococcus, and streptococcus.

   c. Rickettsiae. Rickettsiae organisms have the physical appearances of bacteria and the growth characteristics of viruses. Members of this group must have living tissue for growth and reproduction, whereas most fungi and bacteria can be grown on artificial material. Another characteristic of rickettsiae is that most diseases caused by this group are transmitted by the bite of an insect, such as the mosquito, mite, or tick. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Q fever, and typhus are diseases of mankind caused by rickettsiae.

   d. Virus. The smallest living things known to mankind are virsuses. Viruses are so small that an electron microscope is required to see them. Viruses cannot be grown in the absence of living tissue. Diseases which are caused by viruses cannot normally be treated with antibiotics. Viruses cause yellow fever, rabies, and poliomyelitis.

   Dissemination of biological agents

   a. Aerosol. Biological agents may be disseminated on, or over, the target by many means, such as aircraft, missiles, and explosive munitions. These devices produce a biological aerosol, and, if antipersonnel biological agents are ever used, they will probably be disseminated in the form of biological mists or aerosols. This method of dissemination would be extremely effective because the micro-organisms would be drawn into the lungs as a person breathes, and there they would be rapidly absorbed into the blood stream. The hours from dusk until dawn appear to be the best time for dissemination of biological agents. The weather conditions are most favorable for these agents at night, since sunlight will destroy many of them. In field trials, using harmless biological aerosols, area coverages of thousands of square miles have been accomplished. The aerosol particles were carried for long distances by air currents. (emphasis added)

   b. Living Hosts. Personnel may be infected by disease carrying vectors, such as insects, rats, or other animals. Mosquitos may

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   c. Food and Water Contamination. Biological agents could also be delivered to target personnel by placing the agent in food and water supplies (sabotage). This type of attack would probably be directed against small targets, such as industrial complexes, headquarters, or specific individuals. The methods of delivering the attack are many and varied.

   Defensive Measures

   The United States carries out research aimed at improved means of detection of biological agents and treatment and immunization of personnel. Both of these are essential to biological defense.

   a. Before an Attack. The inability of the individual to detect a biological attack is perhaps the greatest problem. Contributing factors are the delay experienced before the onset of symptoms and the time required to identify specific agents. Without an adequate means of detection, complete defensive measures may not be taken since an attack must first be detected before you can defend against it. Diseases caused by biological agents do not appear until a few days to weeks after contact with the agent. Personnel are protected against biological agents in aerosol form by the protective mask. Ordinary clothing protects the skin from contamination by biological agents. Other means of protection include immunizations; quarantining contaminated areas; cleanliness of the body, clothing, and living quarters; stringent rodent and pest control; proper care of cuts and wounds; and education of troops to eat and drink only from approved sources.

   b. After an Attack: After a biological agent attack has occurred, it will be necessary to identify the agent used in the attack so that proper medical treatment may be given to exposed personnel. To perform this identification, it is necessary to collect samples or objects from the contaminated area and send them to a laboratory or suitable facility for processing. Samples may be taken from the air, from contaminated surfaces, or from contaminated water. After the sample is taken, laboratory time will be required to identify the suspected biological agent. The length of time for identification is being significantly shortened through the use of new medical and laboratory techniques. Proper defensive actions taken during a biological attack depend upon the rapid detection of the attack. Biological defense is continuous. You must always be prepared for the employment of these weapons. (emphasis added)

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and I thank all Members.

END

5A) What is Saddam Hiding
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, since the end of the Persian Gulf War, Iraq has violated U.N. sanctions and resolutions 16 times. Sixteen times they have thumbed their nose at the United Nations and their resolutions. Now, I commend President Bush on addressing these issues with the United Nations last Thursday. It is time to enforce all United Nations resolutions, and it is time to put weapons inspectors back in Iraq with unfettered access. This hard line must be taken.

Iraq cannot be given another decade to comply. All U.N. resolutions must be enforced, and this cannot be negotiable. Mr. Speaker, if Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction , then what are they afraid of? If Iraq complied with the United Nations' resolutions, sanctions would be lifted; and they could make $120 billion a year in their oil sales; but Saddam Hussein has foregone $120 billion a year to hide something. We must have U.N. inspectors inside Iraq, and they must have complete access to see everything to see just what Saddam Hussein is hiding from the rest of the world.

Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, Saddam Hussein has said he will let weapons inspectors into Iraq and the United Nations; and the world community says, all right. He is agreeing and he is cooperating. Well, we have been down that road before. Saddam Hussein years ago promised unfettered inspections. However, when the inspectors got there, they were told, not now, not at night, not in the palaces, not in certain locations, not where we do not want you to go. President Bush laid out a compelling argument to the United Nations on the need for forcible inspections; and if that does not change the attitude of Saddam Hussein, then that regime must go. They are in violation of the United Nations Council. They have violated numerous articles, and they need to be brought to bear the responsibility that the United Nations has in this effort. Now, if we are going to continue to pay dues to this organization, we better expect and demand, as the President suggested, that they play a vital role and a meaningful role in world affairs. If they are going to just sit there and gather in New York for cocktails and coffee, then what is the point of spending millions and billions of dollars to keep the organization alive? Saddam Hussein is a menace. He has proven it so. Let us fight with the President.

5B) Opposing Efforts to Launch an Illegitimate First Strike
Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I stand today in opposition to the President's efforts to launch an illegitimate first strike against Iraq. The President's war fervor threatens the lives of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, ignores international law, undermines our fight against terrorism, and may make average Americans less safe. Yet, the President presses for an invasion.

It is true that Saddam Hussein is a dictator. He is a bad man, and the world would be better off without him. But the world will also be better off if the United States works within the scope of international institutions instead of launching an unprovoked first strike against Iraq. America's greatest asset is our moral authority, not our military power. Attacking a sovereign country unprovoked forfeits that authority completely.

It is true that Saddam has repeatedly violated United Nations resolutions, but it is also true that only the United Nations has the authority to enforce those resolutions. Furthermore, none of those resolutions call for regime change in Iraq, an often-stated goal of the President's. On top of all of that, a first strike invasion of Iraq could actually undermine America's vital interests in the Mideast and around the world. It is unfortunate but true that Iraq's neighbors mistrust the United States even more than they mistrust Saddam Hussein.

Invading Iraq could have drastic repercussions by energizing extremists looking to overthrow governments across the Mideast. Such an outcome is even more likely if Saddam Hussein responds to an invasion by retaliating against Israel. If he succeeds in killing Israelis and polarizing the Mideast, what then?

The President claims Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are more than can be justified for aggression. In America, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. Those weapons programs are frightening, but policy must be based on fact, not fear. It is believed that Saddam's nuclear weapons program was 95 percent destroyed by 1998, when the U.N. inspection teams pulled out. There is no reason to think that a new round of weapons inspectors will not be just as effective. Meanwhile, President Bush has sent a message of his own by backing out of the ABM treaty, refusing to sign the Kyoto treaty, refusing to be a party to the mine ban treaty, withdrawing the U.S.' signature to the International Criminal Court treaty, and embracing the use of mini nukes.

Is it any wonder that other nations hesitate to support a first strike invasion when we in the United States ignore the same international standards that we accuse Saddam Hussein of disregarding? We must take a long, hard look at our own policies to ensure that we do not violate the same rules we expect others to follow.

As a Nation, it is our responsibility to live up to our own democratic ideals. We owe it to our children to exercise the full range of diplomatic options in Iraq so we can prevent a war that will cost thousands of lives while at the same time giving a boost to our real enemies: The terrorists who planned September 11.

War represents a failure of civilization. It is a last resort. America's strength is our commitment to moral action, and a government based on the rule of law. That law must never be silent, and our sensibilities must never be intimidated.

5C) US Should Work Through UN Regarding Iraq
Statement in Support of H. Con. Res 473:
H. Con. Res. 473. Concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the importance of the United States working through the United Nations to assure Iraq's compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions and advance peace and security in the Persian Gulf region; to the Committee on International Relations.

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in support of America leading a strong and sustained diplomatic effort with our partners in the international community to confront Saddam Hussein.

I am proud to join my colleague and friend Barbara Lee--among many others--in introducing a resolution expressing the sense of Congress that the U.S. work through the United Nations to assure Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions regarding weapons of mass destruction rather than pursue a unilateral military attack.

Last week, President Bush finally listened to the wise counsel of the American people and engaged the United Nations on Iraq's failure to comply with its resolutions. While I applaud the President's effort to reach out to our partners in the United Nations, he seriously undermined the cause of diplomacy by threatening unilateral action if the UN did not meet America's demands for military action. I urge the President to heed his own words and allow the United Nations to live up to its responsibility to hold Iraq accountable without forcing hostile military action that threatens America and the world.

I strongly question the President's assertion that immediate military action is necessary. The evidence of an imminent threat from Iraq is not there. The Administration's so-called secret briefings have provided Congress with paltry information they could have as easily read in the New York Times. Our intelligence agencies will have to provide something more compelling than generalized claims that Iraq could have some nuclear capability in six months to seven years. They don't even know if Iraq even has the capability of striking the United States with any weapon at this time.

Without concrete evidence, I do not want our President to run off willy-nilly and risk the lives of America's young men and women. Especially, when the President has not shown the resolve to seek the evidence to justify such action or to pursue a peaceful solution to the situation.

The President has also ignored the track record of past weapons inspectors in Iraq. Between 1991 and 1998, they were successful in destroying large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. He has dismissed Iraq's offer to allow weapons inspectors back into Iraq unconditionally. Even worse are the statements from the Administration that the United States should attack Iraq, even if Saddam Hussein were proven to be compliant with existing UN resolutions. As reported by today's Washington Post, the Administration is even trying to suppress the scientific analysis of government experts who refute their claims that equipment sought by Iraq would provide the capability of producing nuclear weapons.

Am I to believe that the President has made waging war with Iraq a foregone conclusion? I think Americans deserve more serious consideration on the part of our President before we plunge our nation into war and risk the lives of their loved ones.

Should the President compel Congress to go to war, the United States risks setting an international precedent that the mere suspicion that a nation may soon possess weapons of mass destruction is reason enough to preemptively attack them or force a regime change. Who are we to attack next? Iran? North Korea? China?

If we should remove Saddam Hussein from power, we must consider the consequences. Secretary Rumsfeld has said it is up to the Iraqi people to confront the challenges of a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. This would likely ignite a civil war between the Shiites, the Kurds, the Turks, and other ethnic groups that make up that nation. Do we want these warring groups to gain access to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, should they exist? Is it worth risking the stability of the Middle East or the world?

Given the need for an extended U.S. presence there, would our invasion be worth the price at home? It would likely cost over $60 billion to deploy our troops and sustain a force of up to 100,000 U.S. troops in one year alone. These troops would likely have to stay for up to 5-10 years as part of an international peacekeeping force. Rebuilding a war torn Iraq would also likely cost roughly $50-100 billion.

With deficit spending already running at over $150 billion this year, these military costs would create a monumental budget crisis when we've yet to secure basic domestic priorities like a prescription drug benefit or shoring up the solvency of Social Security.

Finally, by acting with the tepid support of the international community, protracted U.S. involvement in Iraq could threaten the support we have gotten from Middle East countries in our war on terrorism. It could easily ignite long-standing discontent among the Arab people that would only fuel a more aggressive terrorist offensive here in the United States.

For these reasons, I believe we must proceed wholeheartedly with responsible and sustained diplomacy. I am proud to sponsor BARBARA LEE's resolution that underscores the value and necessity of this effort. The President must lead the United Nations to fulfill its mission without unnecessary bloodshed. I urge my colleagues to join with us to provide him this mandate.

5D) Draft Joint Resolution on Authorizing Force in Iraq
DRAFT JOINT RESOLUTION TO AUTHORIZE THE USE OF U.S. ARMED FORCES AGAINST IRAQ -- (Senate - September 19, 2002)

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   Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I am going to briefly turn to another matter, and that is the recognition that today OPEC announced they were not going to increase the production of oil from the OPEC nations. What does this mean? It simply means that as we look at going into a showdown with Iraq, the Mideast nations that control oil--basically OPEC--are not going to increase production. That means to the American consumer a continuation of high gasoline prices, high oil prices, perhaps well beyond $30 a barrel.

   We have seen the development of that cartel over a period of time. It initiated a program that said, in effect, if the price fell below $22 a barrel, they would reduce supply to stabilize the price. They wanted a price structure of $22 to $28. That puts a tremendous burden on the structure of our society and our economy.

   It is rather revealing to recognize that as we continue to address our situation with Iraq, we also continue to import oil from Iraq. I think currently we are importing about 600,000 barrels from Iraq each day.

   We have delivered from the White House to the Speaker, majority leader, minority leader, as well as the House minority leader, a transmittal, which is the consequences of discussions with the President, identifying a suggested form of resolution with respect to Iraq. I ask unanimous consent this be printed in the RECORD.

   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

   THE WHITE HOUSE,

   Washington, September 19, 2002.
Hon. J. DENNIS HASTERT,
Speaker of the House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.

Hon. THOMAS A. DASCHLE,
Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.

Hon. TRENT LOTT,
Minority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.

Hon. Richard A. Gephardt,
Minority Leader, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.

   DEAR SPEAKER HASTERT, LEADER DASCHLE, LEADER LOTT, AND LEADER GEPHARDT, As a follow-up to your discussion yesterday morning with the President, we enclose a suggested form of resolution with respect to Iraq. We stand ready to meet with you or your staffs to discuss our proposal.

   As the President indicated to you, it is our hope that we can reach early agreement on the proposal at the leadership level to allow you to proceed to consider the resolution in your respective chambers as soon as possible.

   Sincerely,

--

   Joint Resolution To Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq

   Whereas Congress in 1998 concluded that Iraq was then in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations and thereby threatened the vital interests of the United States and international peace and security, stated the reasons for that conclusion, and urged the President to take appropriate action to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations (Public Law 105-235);

   Whereas Iraq remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations, thereby continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States and international peace and security;

   Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population, including the Kurdish peoples, thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

   Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;

   Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

   Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

   Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;

   Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 underscored the gravity of the threat that Iraq will transfer weapons of mass destruction to international terrorist organizations;

   Whereas the United States has the inherent right, as acknowledged in the United Nations Charter, to use force in order to defend itself;

   Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the high risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify the use of force by the United States in order to defend itself;

   Whereas Iraq is in material breach of its disarmament and other obligations under United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, to cease repression of its civilian population that threatens international peace and security under United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and to cease threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq under United Nations Security Council Resolution 949, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes use of all necessary means to compel Iraq to comply with these ``subsequent relevant resolutions;''

   Whereas Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) has authorized the President to use the Armed Forces of the United States to achieve full implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677, pursuant to Security Council Resolution 678;

   Whereas Congress in section 1095 of Public Law 102-190 has stated that it ``supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq (Public Law 102-1),'' that Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and ``constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region,'' and that Congress ``supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of Resolution 688'';

   Whereas Congress in the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) has expressed its sense that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;

   Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and

   Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to use force in order to defend the national security interests of the United States: Now, therefore, be it

   Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

   SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

   This joint resolution may be cited as the ``Further Resolution on Iraq''.

   SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

   The President is authorized to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce the United Nations Security Council Resolutions referenced above, defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region.

   Mr. MURKOWSKI. This contains a number of ``whereas's.'' It is transmitted by the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs and the Counsel to the President. At the conclusion of the resolution that is going to be before this body is a joint resolution cited as ``Further Resolution on Iraq.'' I will read the ``resolved'' portion:

   The President is authorized to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolutions referenced above, defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region.

   We undoubtedly will be addressing this issue in the very near future. I encourage my colleagues to recognize the significance of what this obligation means to each and every Member of the Senate. We know Saddam Hussein is unpredictable. We know he is dangerous. We know he has weapons of mass destruction. We know he has used those weapons--certainly chemical warfare--on his own people.

   I had an opportunity several years ago, with a small group of Senators, to visit Baghdad. Later we had an opportunity to meet with Saddam Hussein. His ruthlessness was apparent at that time.

   To reflect a little bit on that particular time, there was at issue an allegation that Iraq was importing a delivery capability consisting of a huge cannon-type device that had been intercepted in the docks of London. This was going to have the capability of delivering a projectile farther than any projectile had ever been delivered by conventional methods, as opposed to a missile-type system.

   There was allegedly a triggering device also found on the docks of London.

   When we confronted Saddam Hussein, he advised us these were parts for his refinery, these were technical developments by the Baghdad Institute of Technology. This was prior to the Persian Gulf war.

   My point is, he has been misleading, if you will, the Western World for an extended period of time and continues to do so. The announcement he made that he would welcome U.N. inspectors is a guise. He will not allow U.N. inspectors to have free rein in his country, and we will clearly see this as we continue the process of evaluating our position.

   But we have an opportunity now to fish or cut bait. We are going to have this resolution before us. I encourage each and every Member of the Senate to review it in detail and recognize the insecurity of our Nation oil supply. Currently, we are importing somewhere close to 60 percent of our oil, primarily from the Mideast. We have the capability of reducing that dependence here at home. It is an issue in my State. ANWR has been debated in this Chamber. It has been supported by the House but not the Senate.

   The technology that we have to develop this area is evident. To suggest we can do it safely is something that most people with an objective view would recognize clearly. The reserves are as much as we would import from Saddam Hussein in 40 years or from Saudi Arabia in 30 years.

   This matter is in the conference. It is being discussed. It will be determined by the conference as to what the disposition will be. But I encourage Members to recognize that we have an opportunity to take a position that would affirmatively reduce our dependence on imported oil and send a

   very strong message to the Mideast that we intend to reduce that dependence.

   Recognize that we do have an alternative. I think in future times, as we address our continued vulnerability and dependence on the Mideast, we are going to have to assert ourselves to find some relief. That relief partially might be in the joining together of Canada, Mexico, the United States, Alaska, and Russia as an offset to our dependence on imported oil from the Mideast. While we do not have the depth of reserves, we have substantial reserves collectively. The idea of an energy group made up of those nations could clearly send a message to the Mideast that we will not be held hostage by policies of the cartel which are designated to simply maintain high prices for oil by continuing to keep the availability of oil at a minimum.

   As this matter comes before the Senate for further discussion and consideration, as well as the conference, I urge my colleagues to keep an open mind and recognize that, again, we are going to have to vote not on what is necessarily the litany of America's environmental community but what is right for America. To suggest we should not have these jobs in the United States as if we do not have the technical capability to open up this area safely is not fraught with any degree of accuracy but it is simply misleading arguments that environmental groups continue to use to generate revenue in dollars.

   I encourage each Member to recognize the obligation that we have. That obligation is do what is right for America. What is right for America is to produce more energy and and to produce clean energy here at home.

   One of the inconsistencies we have is that nobody seems to really care where they get the oil as long as they get it. They do not concern themselves with whether it comes from a scorched Earth, lack of any environmental oversight a field in Iraq, or from fields in Saudi Arabia, or from the rain forests of Colombia. They only care if they get it.

   As I have said time and time again, the world will continue to depend on oil, because that is what the world moves on. We have no other alternative.

   Some people suggest we have alternatives, but hot air is not going to move us in an out of Washington, DC, although occassionally there is quite a bit of it here.

   I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CARPER). Without objection, it is so ordered.

5E) Success in Iraq
Mr. VOINOVICH. Mr. President, I submit for the Congressional Record the following statement on Iraq, which I released following the President's remarks to the United Nations one week ago today. I ask unanimous consent that my statement be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows: Mr. VOINOVICH. President Bush's speech today before the United Nations outlined well Saddam Hussein's sustained history of defiance of UN resolutions and the will of the international community. He left no doubt in any reasonable person's mind that Iraq is a threat to the stability of the Middle East, is a danger to his own people, and is fundamentally hostile to the basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness upon which our nation is founded. Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and his defiance of the world community and his continued pursuit of weapons of mass destruction show that he has no intention of changing his ways.

The President's simple recitation of Iraq's defiance and broken promises was convincing and persuasive. No interpretation was required. The President said it best: ``By breaking every pledge by his deceptions and his cruelties, Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself.''

The President's challenge, therefore, isn't making the case against Iraq, but building the support for action to force Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions calling for it to cease its support of terrorist groups, cease the production of weapons of mass destruction and allow international weapons inspections. Generating this support among the American people, Congress and our international partners is critical if any effort to deal with the Iraqi threat is to be successful. As governor of Ohio and commander-in-chief of the Ohio National Guard during the Persian Gulf War, I saw firsthand how the unequivocal support that existed for our campaign to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait made it so much easier for our soldiers to leave home for an overseas mission. Ohioans supported our military mission and they supported our troops. There was no doubt about Saddam Hussein's guilt or his need to be stopped. This type of support is important if we are to ultimately succeed in stopping the Iraqi threat.

With his speech today, President Bush has started to build this base of support. I applaud his decision to go before the world community at the United Nations and to challenge the body to stand behind its resolutions, live up to its charter and be a force for peace and the preservation of human rights. The President's meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair last weekend and his recent series of conversations with world leaders are the right beginning. It must be built upon and strengthened. Our allies must be consulted, probed for advice, and engaged in the process, not just lectured, if we are to succeed. The President also must reach out to our emerging allies in the Middle East who, since 9-11, have begun to cooperate in the war on terrorism.

There is still much work to do as we consider options for confronting the looming threat presented by Iraq's ongoing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction . It is clear that we cannot sit idly by and allow Saddam Hussein to move forward in his work to acquire these deadly capabilities. As we examine possible courses of action I'm confident the President is going to take every necessary step to continue to make his case to Congress and to the American people, and to consult with our allies as well as the countries in the region with whom we have emerging, important relationships. We owe it to those at home and abroad that we seek to protect from Saddam Hussein and his weapons to be diligent in the building of consensus so that our efforts to handle the Iraqi threat can be successful and conclusive.

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