Congressional Record Weekly Update

Return to the Congressional Report Weekly.

1A)

1B)

1C)

2A)

2B)

2C)

3A) Short-changing the U.S. Postal Service in Preventing Bioterrorism Through the Mail

SPEECH OF

HON. RUSH D. HOLT

OF NEW JERSEY

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2004

• Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, the discovery of ricin in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, and the resulting closure of all three Senate office buildings, is an unfortunate and disturbing reminder of our mail system's vulnerability to terrorism . As the Representative of the 12th District of New Jersey, my concern on this matter is heightened because of our area's direct experience with the anthrax attacks of 2001. At least one of the anthrax-tainted letters mailed to Capitol Hill was sent from a postal drop box in Princeton, New Jersey and processed at a sorting facility in Hamilton, New Jersey. Anthrax spores were also discovered in my Washington, D.C. office, which resulted in my congressional office--and several others--being relocated for three months.

• I rise today to express my profound disappointment that our federal government seems to have learned very little from these incidents. I am concerned that the United States Postal Service (USPS) has not received adequate funding to protect postal employees and the general public from the risk of bio-terrorism in the Fiscal Year 2005 budget that President Bush delivered to Congress two days ago. Specifically, I am troubled that the USPS was denied emergency preparedness funding in Fiscal Year 2004, and would be denied again in the President's Fiscal Year 2005 budget request. This continued lack of funding leaves the United States Postal Service ill-equipped to defend against bioterrorism.

• A safe postal delivery system is critical not only for our homeland security, but also for our economic security. Only sustained, significant investment in our postal system will ensure that we are prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to bio-terrorism through the mail. I will be writing to President Bush to reconsider this oversight and provide the USPS with funding for this important initiative.

3B) The Day’s Events

   Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, we will be closing very shortly but I want to make a couple of remarks on the events of the day. The highlight of the day for me personally was the joint session we had earlier today with the presentation by President Aznar of Spain. His address to Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives very much captured the essence of what makes Spain and the United States of America strong allies and friends in the much broader defense of liberty.

   For much longer than many other nations and most other nations, Spain has been a part of United States history and indeed we have been a part of Spain's history. As we look back over the time, that history has been one full of discovery for both sides. It has been an experience rich in harmony and discord.

   I was able to talk to the President before as we reviewed that history and after his speech today. It has been a history that has been characterized by wars fought against each other and wars fought alongside each other.

   We have had the opportunity to celebrate together the creation of new democracies. We have celebrated together the defense of existing democracies, of old democracies. Together, as we look back over the last several years, we have faced the gravest threats to the security of free people, and through that togetherness and that partnership we have prevailed, advanced, and progressed.

   In our hour of need, our response to the acts of terrorism, September 11, 2001, acts that the President referred to--he referred to that day as a terrible day, reflecting, as he did today, that the principles that were attacked that day were the principles Spain had and the United States had, both countries have, and those very principles and values were attacked. I believe he used the words ``brutally attacked.'' In our hour of need, the Spanish people showed us a solidarity, a friendship, and a compassion that very much were the medicine for the soul of our Nation.

   Spain--and the President reflects this--has very much been our ally in every sense of the word. It was wonderful for us to be able to welcome him today and to listen to his comments in the Halls of the Capitol of the United States of America.

   For me and many others, in the course of the day, as business has progressed on the floor, we have been centered on the response to the ricin attack in the Dirksen Building now a little over 48 hours ago. I am happy to report that everybody is doing fine. A few hours ago I made an announcement that the postal system and that people in the postal system, both inside our buildings and inside our grounds, but also outside, are doing fine, which is very good news. I say that because it is important to realize that this agent ricin is a deadly agent. It is a life-threatening agent and, through exposure, could have hurt many people.

   As I said earlier but want to reinforce, we are making great progress in the collection of mail and in examining the Senate office buildings. Officials have moved aggressively. They have moved in an almost symphonic fashion to respond to this insult. As I previously announced, the Russell Office Building will open tomorrow at noon, the Hart Office Building will open Friday at 9 a.m., and the Dirksen Office Building, Monday at 7 a.m. Staff have been patient. Staff have been understanding. Staff have adapted to this terrible incident,

   working at home and working wherever they can find a space, sometimes in the hallways. I do want to thank my colleagues and the staff for responding in this fashion.

   I have previously mentioned that every time I go through the list in my own mind, I leave people out, but all the various people who are working together through the Sergeant at Arms' Office, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, especially the Capitol Police, the U.S. Marines who are here with us, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the various law enforcement agencies that have responded, the postal workers, the postal system across the United States of America in what has truly been remarkable when we think of what we have gone through, with anthrax 2 1/2 years ago and a number of other incidents.

   Looking back over the 200-year history of this wonderful celebrated building, probably the most celebrated building in the world, the place has been burned down essentially, has been attacked, has been assaulted again and again, but the institution itself, just like the people who are here, who are working here every day, has responded with a resiliency that is truly remarkable. There is a toughness and an ability to bounce right back.

   We have not missed a step in terms of conducting the Nation's business in spite of the really tragic occurrence of the last several days.

   I will close on this particular issue, again talking about my own staff who responded so admirably. I have my own staff who are in the mailroom, and when they see something is not quite right, they use procedures that they have been trained in and that we have all focused on very much in terms of our procedures. They immediately responded appropriately and handled that operation in an appropriate way with evaluation of the room, notification of the appropriate personnel, and the appropriate response. Without that, people could have been hurt and could have died.

   It is nice to be able to see that and commend the people working in such an environment. Unfortunately, these are the realities we have seen, anthrax 2 1/2 years ago, ricin today, Capitol Police officers assaulted in this building and killed not too long ago. The resiliency is truly remarkable in this great institution.

4A) The Need for Intelligence Reform

   Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. Mr. President, as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during most of the 107th Congress, I worked with colleagues from the House and Senate to accept the responsibility of reviewing the horrific events that struck our Nation's symbols of commerce and security on September 11, 2001, claiming the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans. From New York City and the Pentagon to a field in rural Pennsylvania, 9-11 demonstrated the vulnerabilities of our free society.

   But in my view, and after the careful review of the Intelligence Committees, the most tragic aspect of this day never to be forgotten is that it could have been prevented. Had our intelligence agencies been better organized and more focused on the problem of international terrorism--particularly Osama bin Laden--September 11th would have been prevented.

   I also have concluded that, had the President and the Congress initiated the reforms that our joint inquiry recommended, we might well have avoided the embarrassment of the flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction--or the misleading use of that intelligence--which formed the basis of our war against Iraq.

   Surely, the people of America would be safer today had these reforms been undertaken.

   So today, and in remarks in the next 2 days, I would like to review with my colleagues the conclusions of the House-Senate joint inquiry.

   We have learned that intelligence failures played a central role in the events of 9-11. Let me illustrate some of those failures:

   The Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, was tracking two of the hijackers and knew that they had been to a summit meeting of terrorists in Malaysia in early January of 2000. However, the CIA failed to inform the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS, or Customs officials that these individuals were on their way to the United States. The result is that when they arrived on a commercial airliner in the United States in order to execute their dastardly plan, they were welcomed into our country by unwitting entry agents.

   These same two hijackers were living with an FBI asset, but the informant failed to ask basic questions. Others in the FBI recognized the danger of Islamic extremists using airplanes as weapons of mass destruction, but their warnings were ignored by superiors. Still others failed to understand the legal avenues available to them that may have allowed available investigative techniques to be used to avert the 9-11 plot.

   Current national security strategy demands more accurate intelligence than ever before:

   Terrorists must be found before their strikes. This will require intelligence agents capable of penetrating their cells to provide intelligence early enough to frustrate the terrorists' intentions;

   If preventive or pre-emptive military actions are to be a central part of our national security strategy, to maintain its credibility of those actions with the American people and the world, will require the support of the most credible intelligence;

   If we are to frustrate the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, America must provide an intelligence capability for all of those regions of the world which are suspect.

   Now, as never before, intelligence matters.

   In responding to the events of 9-11, Congress created a joint committee consisting of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. A bipartisan, bicameral panel of this type had never before been formed in the 213 years of the U.S. Congress. Our effort reflected the unique circumstances and the national unity we all felt in the immediate aftermath of 9-11.

   One of the principal reasons for conducting the inquiry in this way was to give our recommendations the maximum credibility, above the usual cries of partisanship that frequently taint the work of congressional committees. The importance of our task cannot be understated. We sought to identify the problems in the intelligence community that allowed the 9-11 attacks to go undetected and propose solutions to those problems.

   In the end, we were successful in identifying the problems because we all understood how much was at stake and that our enemy would not rest while we attempted to fix our problems. We were less successful in securing consideration of the solutions from the intelligence agencies, the White House, and the Congress.

   The fact that we conducted this bipartisan, bicameral inquiry and submitted recommendations creates a new heightened level of congressional responsibility. If the terrorists are successful in another attack in the United States, the American people will demand to know what the institutions of government learned from 9-11, and how the intelligence agencies, the White House, and the Congress used that knowledge to harden the United States against future terrorist attacks. Congress was largely able to avoid accountability for 9-11. Mark my words: There will be no avoidance of responsibility for the next attack.

   There will be no avoiding responsibility for the President. September 11, 2001, was a wake up call--it told us we had severe deficiencies in our intelligence community. If 9-11 was a wake up call, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a report card on how far we have come since 9-11 in correcting the problems in our intelligence community. The grade we received on that report card is F. The President and Congress have failed to initiate the reforms recommended by a series of review panels and our bipartisan, bicameral joint committee of inquiry.

[Page: S338]

   This failure of the President and the Congress has contributed to yet another intelligence failure.

   What troubles me more than the President's unwillingness to make the necessary changes is his unwillingness to even admit that our Nation has a problem. Just last week, the President responded to questions about the inaccuracies of his statements about Iraq's WMD capability by saying he has ``great confidence in our intelligence community.'' How can he have great confidence in our intelligence community after it has been proven confused before September 11 and completely wrong on the threat posed by Iraq?

   The expected appointment by the President of a commission to review the intelligence on which the war in Iraq was predicated is not an excuse to delay reform of America's intelligence community. Rather, I am concerned that it appears as though the goal is simply to avoid political accountability and embarrassment. America continues to be in a state of denial. A White House aide was quoted over the weekend as saying, ``We cannot afford another one of those''--referring to the public outcry after the misstatement of intelligence in the 2003 State of the Union speech.

   It has now been more than a year since the joint inquiry made its recommendations. This is a good time to review the progress made in implementing those recommendations and to identify critical areas of reform that have not yet been addressed. Unfortunately, this is not going to be a report card that we would like to show to our parents--or to our voters. There has been little accomplished with regard to most of the recommendations.

   The joint inquiry report made nineteen recommendations for reform. Today I would like to discuss those recommendations that fall into the category of specific actions to combat terrorism.

   In speeches on Tuesday and Wednesday, I will deal with those that involve intelligence community reform and those that deal with the FBI and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process.

   Of the nineteen recommendations, there are six that contain specific actions to combat terrorism. Recommendation No. 2 directs ``the National Security Council to expedite their efforts to examine and revamp existing intelligence priorities.'' It further directs the President to ``take action to ensure that clear, consistent, and current priorities are established and enforced throughout the Intelligence Community. Once established, these priorities should be reviewed and updated on at least an annual basis to ensure that the allocation of Intelligence Community resources reflects and effectively addresses the continually evolving threat environment. Finally, the establishment of Intelligence Community priorities, and the justification for such priorities, should be reported to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on an annual basis.''

   It was very clear from the work of the joint inquiry that the intelligence community had not adapted or changed its intelligence priorities to reflect the changing nature of the world. While some modifications had been made since the end of the Cold War, our intelligence priorities remained states like Russia, China, Iran and Iraq. In spite of the fact that George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, had declared war on al-Qaida in 1998, al-Qaida was not at or even near the top of the intelligence priority list on September 11, 2001. Only on September 12, 2001, did al-Qaida become priority number one.

   It was also clear from our investigation that there was no formal process for regularly updating and reviewing intelligence priorities to ensure that they reflected changes in the security environment. Bureaucratic inertia worked to keep old priorities on the list long after they should have dropped down in favor of emerging threats. While George Tenet may have recognized that non-state actors like al-Qaida needed more attention, this was not widely known or accepted throughout the Intelligence Community that he heads. When asked if he was aware that George Tenet had declared war on al-Qaida in 1998, a former director of the National Security Agency, NSA, our Nation's electronic eavesdropping agency, responded that yes, he was aware that George Tenet had said that, but he did not think it applied to him or his organization.

   A formal process that was clearly understood throughout our government would have prevented some of the problems we identified. One example involves the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, a pilotless drone capable of long-duration flight and armed with high resolution cameras and an ability to fire missiles at targets on the ground. The Predator has proven to be one of the most effective intelligence collection assets we have in the war on terror. Unfortunately, it took far too long to build the Predator because of internal disputes in the administration. This type of aircraft was not a priority for the Air Force and its production was therefore delayed several months. The lack of established and accepted intelligence priorities was a major cause of the delay in fielding the Predator.

   This issue of setting new priorities was also raised by the National Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission. This Commission, which issued its final report in February of 2001, included a recommendation that ``the President order the setting of national intelligence priorities through National Security Council guidance to the Director of Central Intelligence.''

   Unfortunately, at the time the Joint Inquiry issued its report almost 2 full years after the Hart-Rudman Commission had made its recommendation sufficient progress had not been made in setting national intelligence priorities. Therefore, we included a recommendation on this point. Our investigation determined that the failure to have clear, consistent and current intelligence priorities that were understood by the entire intelligence community was a significant contributing factor to the failure of intelligence on 9-11.

   Since the joint inquiry issued its report, some progress has been made in establishing a systematic process for establishing intelligence priorities. However, it is not clear that these priorities are being communicated to the domestic intelligence agencies responsible for our security here at home.

   Recommendation No. 3 focuses its directive on the counter terrorism components of the intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security agencies, which will be key in counter terrorism. This recommendation directs the National Security Council to ``prepare, for the President's approval, a U.S. government-wide strategy for combating terrorism, both at home and abroad, including the growing terrorism threat posed by proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and associated technologies.''

   There should be an intelligence component of this strategy that identifies domestic and foreign based threat levels, programs, plans and budgets to address the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other international terrorist groups. The strategy should include specific efforts to improve human intelligence, better utilize technology to analyze and share data, enhance domestic intelligence, maximize the effective use of covert action, which is action taken by the United States Government where the role of the United States is hidden, develop programs to deal with terrorist financing, and facilitate the ability of CIA and military special operations forces to conduct joint operations against terrorist targets.

   The joint inquiry found that there was no commonly agreed-upon approach among the federal agencies for dealing with terrorism. Each agency or department seemed to have its own ideas about fighting terrorism, and they were all independent actors. Success in the war on terror will require a coherent, coordinated effort that can only be accomplished by having everyone work toward a common goal outlined in a national strategy. Prior to 9-11, the CIA was trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to penetrate foreign terrorist organizations and disrupt their operations. Unfortunately at the FBI, fighting the war on terror meant calculating the threat by counting the number of known terrorists, not how many were estimated to have been placed in American communities. The FBI was waiting for acts of terror to occur and then trying to arrest and convict the guilty party.

[Page: S339]

   The need for a national strategy to combat terrorism has been the subject of several other commission reports. The Gilmore Commission, also known as the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, in its second report in December of 2000, recommended that ``the next President should develop and present to the Congress a national strategy for combating terrorism within one year of assuming office.''

   The broad recommendation to develop a national strategy, as well as what should be included as specific components of that strategy, is broadly supported by virtually everyone who has analyzed our intelligence capabilities.

   In addition to the recommendation of the Gilmore Commission calling for a national strategy to combat terrorism, other commissions have made recommendations that are consistent with the full joint inquiry recommendation on developing a national strategy. For instance, the Hart-Rudman Commission, the Gilmore Commission, and the Bremer Commission, also known as the National Commission on Terrorism, in its report of June 2000, all made recommendations calling for improving and intensifying our human intelligence efforts with respect to terrorism.

   We should remember that until the hijackers stood up on those four airplanes and took control, it was as if their plot had been undetected. It was as if their conspiracy represented no violations of American laws or regulations. Good intelligence is our principle line of defense against these types of terrorist plots. Only by penetrating these organizations and by bringing together all available raw intelligence into cohesive analytical products will we ever be able to feel confident that we can avoid future tragedies. That is the only way we will get the timely, accurate intelligence that is required to disrupt sophisticated modern terrorist organizations like al-Qaida. Improving our human intelligence capability must be Job Number One in responding to global terrorists.

   Penetrating these organizations will require a new, more aggressive human intelligence capability. Osama and his cohorts are unlikely to turn up at an embassy cocktail party. We must be capable of getting human sources close to the leaders of these organizations. John Walker Lindh was a misguided California college student who became a member of al-Qaida and even met Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, John Walker Lindh did not work for the CIA.

   The Bremer Commission includes a recommendation to increase funding for technology development to exploit terrorist communications, and devotes an entire section to improving efforts to attack terrorist financing. The Gilmore Commission recommends improving technological applications to enhance analysis and dissemination, as well as improving domestic intelligence collection.

   In response to the good work done by the Gilmore Commission and the recommendation of our Joint Inquiry, a national strategy to combat terrorism was issued by the Bush Administration in February of 2003. It is difficult to understand how a President who claims that defeating terrorism is the principle mission of his presidency took 17 months to produce a strategy to accomplish that mission. And even the strategy that was produced is inadequate

   when it comes to defining the intelligence components of that strategy. Instead, it calls on the intelligence community to review its capabilities and make recommendations for improvement. Why would it take 17 months to task the intelligence community to do such an assessment?

   The strategy that was produced after this long delay does not meet the requirements published in the recommendation of the joint inquiry. The Bush administration's strategy is not so much a strategy as a list of objectives. What is lacking is clear guidance on how we can achieve these objectives. What is also lacking is a level of specificity that will allow all agencies in our government to work towards this common set of priorities and goals through the common strategy.

   Recommendation No. 4 calls for the establishment of a National Intelligence Officer for Terrorism on the National Intelligence Council. The National Intelligence Council works directly for the Director of Central Intelligence and is responsible for providing coordinated analysis of foreign policy issues for the President and other senior policymakers. To date, no such position has been established. The lack of a central coordinator for terrorism analysis has been a continuing shortcoming in the Intelligence Community. While there are some outstanding individuals doing analysis on terrorism in several of the intelligence community's component organizations, there is no single focal point for policymakers to direct analytical requests on terrorism.

   A more recent example of the need for an NIO for Terrorism is the debate over Iraq's connection to al-Qaida. While the CIA consistently reported that they had uncovered no reliable evidence of any links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, others in the government--particularly at the Defense Department and the White House--made repeated statements about a solid link. Implementing this recommendation would give us a point of ultimate accountability.

   The joint inquiry found that there was some confusion as to who to go to with intelligence queries on terrorism, and there was no arbiter within the community to help reconcile various approaches or conflicting analyses of terrorism. We found too much mis-communication and an inability to identify who was responsible with regard to terrorism analysis. There was no individual who could coordinate a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, something that may have helped bring the seriousness of the threat posed by al-Qaida to members of the intelligence community outside of CIA. A National Intelligence Estimate is the highest level of intelligence analysis produced by the intelligence community and represents the best estimate of the entire intelligence community.

   Without the establishment of this position, there is also a lack of outreach to academia and the private sector on terrorism issues, something that is needed in this critical fight. We have national intelligence officers for each geographic region as well as several crosscutting issues, such as conventional military issues, strategic and nuclear programs, and economics and global issues. It is a sign of the continuing lack of organizational restructuring to deal with the terrorist threat that we still have no national intelligence officer for terrorism, yet we have one for economics. This should not be very hard to do, yet one full year after issuing our recommendations it has not been done.

   Recommendation No. 18 of the joint inquiry report calls on Congress and the administration to ensure the full development within the Department of Homeland Security of an effective all-source terrorism information fusion center. This center should have full access to all terrorism related intelligence and data, participate in the intelligence requirements process, and ``integrate intelligence information to identify and assess the nature and scope of terrorist threats to the United States in light of actual and potential vulnerabilities.''

   One example of an intelligence fusion center that functions effectively is the Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West, Florida. This organization fuses intelligence information from a wide variety of sources in a single facility which is jointly manned by military, law enforcement, intelligence and foreign government officials. What makes this organization particularly effective is that it is able to directly control operational activity to respond immediately to the intelligence it gathers. If it identifies a ship traveling toward the United States that it believes is carrying illegal narcotics, it can direct a Coast Guard vessel to intercept and search that ship.

   The failure to bring together all the available intelligence on terrorism and to analyze it in a way that is most useful in preventing attacks was most evident in our inquiry. The FBI had smart agents working in field offices throughout the country who identified troubling trends, such as an unusual interest in flight training among some foreign visitors. Unfortunately, the FBI was not organized in a way that allowed all intelligence on terrorism to go to a central location so that it could

[Page: S340]

be analyzed as a whole. That problem was compounded by the fact that there was little to no information sharing between the FBI, responsible for counter-terrorism within the United States, and the CIA, responsible for foreign intelligence collection outside the United States of America. Too much fell through the cracks.

   This recommendation was directly supported by the legislation, passed by Congress and signed by the President, that established the Department of Homeland Security. That legislation authorized an intelligence component in the new Department to do exactly as was recommended by the joint inquiry, including the requirement that this new intelligence component have full access to available intelligence information. Senators Shelby, Lieberman, and Thompson deserve particular credit for their efforts to ensure that the new Department of Homeland Security have a robust intelligence organization. The intelligence component of the Department of Homeland Security was envisioned to be the one place where our domestic vulnerabilities are evaluated and mapped against all threats to the homeland. The idea was that the threats could come from a variety of sources, not just terrorists, and one agency needed to be responsible for having the entire picture on its radar screen.

   Unfortunately, the administration has chosen to gut the intelligence function at the Department of Homeland Security. The position of director of intelligence for the new department has been vacant for much of the time the department has been in existence. This is indicative of the lack of attention and significance it is given. The staff is totally inadequate for the mission outlined in the legislation that established the department.

   Instead, the administration has chosen to create a new organization at the CIA called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, TTIC. While this new organization may address some of the problems that we have identified, it does not meet the requirements set out in the legislative authorization, nor does it meet the criteria set out in the Joint Inquiry recommendation.

   Finally, I would like to address Recommendation No. 19 of the joint inquiry report. This recommendation calls on ``the intelligence community, and particularly the FBI and CIA, to aggressively address the possibility that foreign governments are providing support to or are involved in terrorist activity targeting the United States and U.S. interests. The FBI and CIA should aggressively and thoroughly pursue related matters developed through this Joint Inquiry that have been referred to them for further investigation.''

   Mr. President, this may be the most important--and at the same time, the most troubling recommendation. Significant evidence of foreign government involvement in the 9-11 attacks was uncovered by the joint inquiry.

   It is incomprehensible why this administration has refused to aggressively pursue the leads that our inquiry developed. One example of the failure to pursue leads that point to foreign government involvement is the refusal of the FBI to aggressively follow the money trail that flowed from officials of a foreign government to at least some of the terrorists. In spite of being provided evidence by our committee, the FBI and the administration refused to use all the law enforcement tools at their disposal to follow the money trail. Why would the administration not use all of its available powers to track this money? In addition, the question of whether other terrorists were getting similar support was not pursued. Therefore the extent of the involvement of the foreign government has never been fully investigated. Recent press reports indicate that there is even more suspicious activity than was known at the time we issued our report.

   Another example of the failure to aggressively pursue the sources of foreign support of terrorism is reported on Page A14 of today's Washington Post. A panel which was established by the United Nations to pursue sources of support of al-Qaida has been disbanded. Our government joined with Russia and Chile to sponsor a resolution at the United Nations that disbanded the panel investigating al-Qaida's financing.

   We are talking about the possible involvement of foreign governments in the 9-11 attacks. If a government was involved in those attacks, we should leave no stone unturned to identify the extent of that involvement and hold those responsible accountable. There should be no sanctuary from justice for those involved with terrorists, no matter who might be embarrassed by such revelations.

   I wish I could be more specific in discussing the involvement of foreign governments in the 9-11 plot. Unfortunately, the administration will not allow me to do so. After 7 months of effort to de-classify the report that we filed on December 20, 2002, the CIA, the FBI and other agencies decided to keep significant portions secret. In particular, there are 27 pages that were virtually completely censored. These are pages 396 through 422 from Part Four of the report, which is entitled, ``Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.''

   This censorship is troubling for a number of reasons. First, it reduces the information available to the public about some of the most important government actions--or to be more accurate, inactions--prior to September 11. Second, it precludes the American people from asking their government legitimate questions, such as:

   Was there a reason that some, but not all, of the terrorists were receiving foreign support while they were in the United States?

   Or is it not more likely that they were all receiving similar support?

   What evidence do we have that the infrastructure of support that existed prior to 9-11 has been dismantled?

   Or is it not more likely that such an infrastructure is still in place for the next generation of terrorists?

   How many trained operatives of al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and other international terrorist organizations are there inside the United States of America?

   What are the skills and capabilities of these operatives?

   What was the scale and skills of Iraqi operatives inside the United States prior to the war in Iraq and at the current date?

   What was the comparative threat to the people of the United States of Iraq and the trained agents of international terrorists placed inside our country?

   Has the number, skill set, funding or ability to avoid disclosure of international terrorist operatives within the United States of America been enhanced by support from foreign governments?

   How professional and aggressive have been the efforts of agencies such as the FBI and the CIA in answering those questions?

   And, how was the information that our government might have had prior to September 11th utilized after September 11th to enhance the security of our homeland and American interests abroad?

   Unfortunately, almost 2 1/2 years after the tragedy, the administration and the Congress--in the main--have not initiated the reforms necessary to reduce the chances of another 9-11. Given the seriousness of that situation, some of what was withheld from this report bordered on the absurd. For examples of the absurdity, some of the information censored from these pages actually appears in other parts of the report. Let me cite three examples.

   First, much of the censored information about Omar al-Bayoumi is available on pages 173-175. Mr. Bayoumi was an employee of the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent based in California. He had extensive contacts with two of the Saudi hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. The same day that Bayoumi picked up the hijackers at a restaurant in Los Angeles, he had attended a prior meeting at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles. Bayoumi co-signed a lease for the two hijackers, paid their first month's rent, hosted a welcome party for them, helped them get driver's licenses and flight school applications. He also introduced them to others who served as their translator and in other support roles.

   Second, much of the censored information about Osama Bassnan, another Saudi national who was a neighbor of the two hijackers in San Diego, which appears on pages 175 through 177.

   Third, much of the information about a San Diego business manager which was censored also appears on pages 179 and 180.

   I would note that the declassified sections of the report point out that, despite public assurances from U.S. officials that Saudi Arabia has cooperated in counter terrorism efforts, the Joint Inquiry received testimony that Saudi officials in fact ``had been uncooperative and often did not act on information implicating Saudi nationals.''

[Page: S341]

   What this indicates is that in the months following the release of our recommendation that the administration ``aggressively'' address the foreign government involvement in 9-11, the Bush administration not only failed to pursue and investigate foreign government involvement, the administration misused the classification process to protect the foreign governments that may have been involved in 9-11. There is no reason for the Bush administration to continue to shield make-believe allies who are supporting, either directly or indirectly, terrorists who want to kill Americans.

   The recommendations we have made here are consistent with recommendations made by other bodies that have been formed to analyze our intelligence structure over the last decade. The political reality is that there is a broad agreement that these reforms need to be made, yet there is institutional resistance that has been too great to overcome.

   Congress has assumed responsibility for reform of the intelligence community. Now is the time to act so that we might receive the appreciation of the American people for reducing the likelihood of another tragedy like 9-11. The consequence of inaction will be legitimate, strong and unavoidable criticism should we be struck again.

   If 9-11 was not a big enough shock wave to overcome the resistance to change, what will it take?

   I ask unanimous consent that The Washington Post article ``U.N. Dissolves Panel Monitoring Al Qaeda'' be printed in the RECORD.

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

   U.N. Dissolves Panel Monitoring Al Qaeda

   group had criticized security council

(By Colum Lynch)

    United Nations.--The U.N. Security Council quietly dissolved a high-profile independent U.N. panel last month that was established more than 2 1/2 years ago to prevent the al Qaeda terrorist network from financing its war against the United States and its allies, U.S. and U.N. officials said.

    The move comes six weeks after the panel, headed by Michael Chandler of Britain, concluded in a stinging report that a number of Security Council sanctions against al Qaeda had failed to constrain the terrorist network.

    But Security Council members have denied the move was retribution for the panel's conclusions, saying that the quality of the group's work was uneven and that the group had outlived its usefulness.

    The 15-nation council on Friday adopted a new resolution sponsored by the United States, Russia and Chile that would replace Chandler's panel with what they say will be a more professional body. The new panel is expected to keep monitoring the global war against terrorism but would be subject to closer Security Council coordination and oversight.

   The dispute underscores the challenge of managing an international counterterrorism operation through an organization whose 191 members are frequently criticized for failing to cooperate. It also reflects growing frustration among members that sanctions have done little to interrupt the flow of money and arms to al Qaeda.

   Chandler criticized the decision, saying it would undercut the United Nations' capacity to combat al Qaeda. He suggested that his panel's demise was a result of pressure from influential U.N. members who had been singled out in his reports for failing to take adequate measures to combat al Qaeda.

   ``A number of people were uncomfortable with our last report,'' Chandler said. He said that the Security Council was sending the wrong message and that one of the ``key elements'' of a successful counterterrorism strategy is ``a strong independent monitoring group.''

   Chandler's five-member panel--the monitoring group on al Qaeda--was established in July 2001 to ensure compliance with an arms embargo against the Taliban and a freeze on its financial assets for harboring Osma bin Laden. The mission's mandate was expanded after the Taliban fell in January 2002, granting it broad powers to monitor international compliance with a U.N. financial, travel and arms ban.

   Chandler's reports have provided periodic snapshots of the international campaign against terrorism, often highlighting failings in governments' responses to the al Qaeda threat. In August 2002, after a lull in al Qaeda activities, Chandler provided a prescient forecast of the network's resurgence. ``Al Qaeda is by all accounts `fit and well' and poised to strike,'' the report warned. It was followed by deadly strikes in Bali, Indonesia; Casablanca, Morroco; and Saudi Arabia.

   ``The group functioned very well, providing hard-hitting reports to the Security Council which painted a picture of what was really going on,'' said Victor Comras, a former State Department official who helped write the Dec. 2 report.

   ``I am at a loss to understand why the United States is one of the main players in redrafting the new resolution and allowing the monitoring group to lapse,'' he added. ``The United States was the greatest beneficiary of the monitoring group because it gave them a lever to name and shame'' countries that failed to combat terrorists.

   One U.S. official said that last thing the United States wants is to ``muzzle'' the United Nations. But he said that although Chandler's panel was effective ``at getting headlines,'' his propensity for antagonizing member states could ultimately undermine U.S. efforts to harness the United Nation's support in its anti-terror campaign. Chandler's group ``did a good job,'' said James B. Cunningham, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. ``But we are trying to make the committee more effective.''

   Some U.S. and U.N. diplomats said Chandler needlessly alienated potential allies and constituents at the United Nations, including some in the United States. Chandler's 2002 report irked Bush administration officials by casting doubt on the success of the U.S.-led effort to block al Qaeda financing. The Bush administration also challenged the veracity of Chandler's assertion in an earlier report that the Treasury Department had ignored warnings from SunTrust Banks that a key plotter in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had previously transferred large sums of money to an account at a Florida bank branch.

   Chandler infuriated officials from Liechtenstein, Italy and Switzerland with the Dec. 2 report that illustrated how two U.N.-designated terrorist financiers. Youssef Nada and Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, lived, traveled and operated multimillion-dollar businesses in their countries in violation of U.N. sanctions.

   Liechtenstein's U.N. ambassador, Christian Wenaweser, one of Chandler's sharpest critics, complained that the Chandler investigation was shoddy and that he failed to adequately acknowledge his government's role in helping build the case against two alleged terrorist financiers. ``We don't question the usefulness of the monitoring group. Quite the contrary. But they have to have a clear mandate and guidelines on how they should and shouldn't do their work,'' Wenaweser said. ``They didn't bother to verify basic facts; they got some things wrong. Travel dates. Spelling of names. Some of the stuff was silly.''

   Chile's U.N. ambassador, Heraldo Mun 6oz, the U.N. terrorism committee's chairman, said the new eight-member panel--called the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team--would give ``more teeth'' to U.N. anti-terror efforts by strengthening the committee's expertise in finance and border controls, and improving its capacity to analyze terrorist trends.

   ``I would like a monitoring team that is efficient, that is independent and that can closely collaborate with the committee,'' Mun 6oz said.

   Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. Thank you, Mr. President.

   I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.

   The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to speak for up to 20 minutes in morning business.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

4B) David Kay and Weapons of Mass Destruction

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.

   Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I am here to sort of elaborate on David Kay's comments dealing with weapons of mass destruction. He is a chief weapons of mass destruction hunter for the United States and he resigned recently, but he made some very interesting statements regarding Iraq's pursuit of the WMD and the possible deception of Iraqi scientists against Saddam Hussein regarding weapons programs. I think it is important to look at the totality of what David Kay said and not just what some of the political pundits have pulled out of his speech. He said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies did not realize that Iraq scientists had presented ``ambitious but fanciful weapons programs to Saddam Hussein,'' and had them use the money that they were going to use for these things for other purposes.

   At present, we have not found a huge stockpile of WMD. The search continues. However, we know a few facts. According to a recent New York Times story, Dr. Kay also reported ``Iraq attempted to revise its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2000 and 2001, but never got as far towards making a bomb as Iran and Libya did.'' He also said ``Baghdad was actively working to produce a biological weapon, using the poison ricin until the American invasion last March.'' We have all become familiar with this toxin given recent events in the news because of what happened at the Senate office building yesterday.

   Many of this administration's detractors have begun using Kay's statements to bolster their particular points of view regarding weapons of mass destruction and Iraq. But let us not forget that the Clinton administration also declared Iraq had WMD and was actively pursuing those types of programs. Dr. Kay's information then supports the assertion of the Clinton administration that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction programs.

   Saddam Hussein made it clear that he wanted to see the State of Israel and the United States destroyed. He saw himself as a lion standing up to the powerful United States. Although he could not directly attack the United States, it is not unreasonable to conclude that he would transfer weapons of mass destruction, the technology, the weapons themselves and items to a terrorist organization, or to any other rogue nation, to use in a direct attack on our soil; and that is why the President's proposal to look at all of the intelligence activities dealing with weapons of mass destruction, not just in Iraq, but also in other rogue nations, is very important and he is to be commended.

   Dr. Kay said the CIA and other agencies failed to recognize that Iraq had all but abandoned its efforts to produce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons after the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. He also stated that contrary to certain allegations, he was convinced that the analysts were not pressed by the Bush administration to make certain their prewar intelligence reports conformed to a White House agenda on Iraq.

   The allegations that our intelligence agencies failed to detect the supposed deception within the Iraqi Government and its weapons programs goes to the heart of our problem that many of our colleagues have talked about over the years regarding our intelligence ability. We are far too short of human intelligence, the exact kind of intelligence that can provide what is going on in the minds of our adversaries. CIA does not have people on the inside, to the best of our knowledge. Satellite coverage is great, electronic signals and intercepts are vital, but without human assets on the ground, these intelligence items can project an incomplete picture. They cannot tell what the officials are thinking and what the mood is on the street, or alert analysts to the possibility of deceptive tactics within a particular government.

   As a Nation, we must continuously learn from our success and failures. I support President Bush's national security policy and his decision to seek a separate intelligence inquiry. Our credibility is vital if we are to bring more Nations into this fight against terrorism, but we must look at David Kay's statements in their totality.

   Mr. Speaker, I commend President Bush for seeking this commission.

4C) Iraq Intelligence Commission

   Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, the vital interest of our national security is critical to our understanding of the degree to which we can cope with the circumstances involving the intelligence failure we have now experienced over this past year or more. Two important voices have been added to the growing chorus, raising questions about the accuracy and the veracity of the allegations the administration used to take this country to war.

   Just yesterday Secretary Powell made clear the importance of the prewar claims, suggesting that the case for war was much weaker without the allegations of existing stockpiles of weapons. When asked whether he would have recommended an invasion last year if he knew then what he knows now, Secretary Powell said:

   I don't know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world.

   A year ago this week, Secretary Powell made a lengthy presentation to the United Nations Security Council about the grave threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The Secretary of State did not speak of ``weapons of mass destruction-related program activities,'' but of existing stockpiles--existing stockpiles of horrendous weapons and the means to deliver them. In large measure because of the alarming assertions by Secretary Powell and similar claims by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Rice, and many other senior administration officials, a majority of Congress voted to give the President the authority to send troops to wage war against Iraq.

   Late last month, Secretary Powell had something decidedly different to say. For the first time since his U.N. presentation he explicitly acknowledged the strong possibility his claims about Iraq's weapons were untrue, telling reporters on his trip to Georgia:

   ..... what the open question is: how many stocks [the Iraqis] had, if any? And if they had any, where did they go? And if they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand?

   A few days later, Dr. David Kay, Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq until a couple of weeks ago, told the Armed Services Committee here in the Senate the administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq was, in his words, ``all wrong.'' While several nonpartisan experts have reached similar conclusions about our intelligence and raised concerns about the accuracy of the administration statements on this issue, hearing Secretary Powell and Dr. Kay, two of this Nation's most respected and knowledgeable officials, speak in this manner, has raised some questions at home and abroad about the foundation of the administration's case for going to war against Iraq.

   Given the significance of these questions, a broad, thorough, nonpartisan review of both the intelligence community's assessment of the threats posed by Iraq and the administration's use of this information is essential to restoring the trust of the American public and the international community in this administration and in the intelligence system itself.

   The reason is clear. The most effective means to counterterrorism and the many other national security challenges facing this Nation today is by gaining and maintaining the support of the American people and assembling a international coalition. Accurate, unimpeachable intelligence is one of the most crucial tools the President has at his disposal for rallying the American people and the world. If the President is to successfully convince Americans of the need to send daughters and sons into harm's way and urge our allies to support America's course of action, our intelligence must be seen as absolutely credible and accurate. National security experts of both parties have

   begun to warn that the lack of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the administration's grave predictions in the runup to the war is undermining America's credibility, not only on Iraq but on other national security challenges as well.

   For example, the United States increasingly believes that North Korea has used the last couple of years to create additional nuclear material and weapons. However, officials in South Korea and China have raised questions about these conclusions, in part by pointing to our intelligence community's failures in Iraq. This failure to reach a consensus on the threat posed by North Korea has greatly complicated efforts to effectively confront a nation that already possesses nuclear weapons and has been characterized as the world's greatest weapons proliferator.

   Given these stakes, one would think the President would be the first to demand a full and complete accounting of the accuracy and use of Iraq prewar intelligence. Yet up until this past weekend, the President has stubbornly insisted there was nothing wrong with that intelligence or the alarming assertions that he and senior administration officials made in the days leading up to the start of the war in Iraq. In a remarkable about-face this past week, administration officials said publicly that the President will support the establishment of an independent commission, provided he appoints the commissioners and defines the scope of their work. As in other instances, the administration is apparently seeking to both convince the America public it supports a thorough investigation at the same time it stacks the deck against such an investigation effort ever occurring.

   Although one of the major questions that needs to be addressed is whether senior administration officials exaggerated the nature of the threat to Iraq, the President is attempting to make the case that actions by these officials are best investigated by a commission whose members are appointed by and report to those very officials in the White House.

   There is little reason to believe a commission appointed and controlled by the White House will have the independence and credibility necessary to investigate and bring closure to these crucial issues. Consider this: At the same time the Secretary of State was suggesting that it was an open question whether Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction and the chief weapons

[Page: S389]  GPO's PDF

inspector in Iraq was concluding that Iraq did not have any stockpiles of weapons before the war, Vice President Cheney was on national radio still suggesting that it was just a matter of time until such weapons could be found.

   If the President's senior advisers are still arguing that the prewar intelligence was right, can the American people be certain that commissioners handpicked by the White House to undertake an investigation defined by the White House will follow the facts wherever they lead?

   It would be a shame to have such an important commission start its work under the shadow of such doubt. We can avoid ever having to ask those questions by forming a truly independent commission that can rise above those concerns. I strongly believe the Congress can and should establish a truly independent commission to examine the collection, analysis, dissemination, and use by policymakers of intelligence on Iraq. Twice the Senate has voted to establish just such a commission that would be given access

   to all relevant information, appointed on a bipartisan basis by the congressional leadership of the House and Senate. I voted for this proposal both times.

   Although supporters of this commission fell short both times, I continue to believe that after putting our troops in harm's way we owe it to them to get to the bottom of this question. We owe them a truly independent investigation, conducted in the same way that our Armed Forces carry out their duties every day in Iraq, with honor and with integrity. I fear the process being started by the administration is neither, but it is not too late to establish a commission of which we can all be proud.

   I yield the floor.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator be good enough to yield?

   Mr. DASCHLE. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Massachusetts.

   Mr. KENNEDY. First, I thank the Senator for an excellent statement.

   Earlier today the Armed Services Committee had meant to meet. We were going to have Secretary Rumsfeld up before the committee. I intended to ask him two or three questions on the issue of intelligence, but since the Senator is on his feet now, I am wondering if he would be willing to respond to a question or two and help clear this up in my mind.

   What we have now, as I understand it, is the intelligence agencies saying that they provided the intelligence to the administration and that they were not intimidated. I intended to ask the Secretary whether he was aware of the Defense Intelligence Agency's own intelligence report that stated--and I am quoting. This has been published. It was declassified and published in the news sources--this is the Defense Intelligence Agency:

   ..... there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has--or will--establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.

   That was in September of 2002. Yet a month later, just as Congress was about to vote, the National Intelligence Estimate stated very precisely that:

   Iraq probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric tons of chemical weapon agents--much of it added in the last year.

   I was just wondering, if I can raise this point, here we have the Defense Intense Intelligence Agency giving one report. Then, if we look at the State Department Bureau of Intelligence, this is what the State Department Bureau of Intelligence concluded:

   The activities we have detected do not ..... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider an integrated and comprehensive approach to get nuclear weapons ..... INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.

   The Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence.

   Mr. KYL. Could we have regular order?

   Mr. KENNEDY. Regular order. I believe I have the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may yield for a question but not for a statement.

   Mr. KENNEDY. I am making the predicate. If the Senator from Arizona is not pleased with it, that is his problem.

   The third intelligence report was the Department of Energy disagreed that the famous tubes were for nuclear weapons. The State Department's Intelligence Bureau also concluded that the tubes were ``not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapons program.''

   Finally, Greg Thielmann, retired State Department official, who served as director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs in the Bureau of Intelligence, said last July:

   Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they are provided.

   He said:

   They surveyed the data, and picked out what they liked. The whole thing was bizarre. The Secretary of Defense had this huge Defense Intelligence Agency, and he went around it.

   I just ask, are these the kinds of questions that we hope an independent kind of commission might be helpful to resolve? When the administration's own Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department agency, and the Energy Intelligence Agency came up with similar conclusions as Dr. Kay prior to the time the Senate voted on this issue, don't you think the American people are entitled to know what the facts are, not just the intelligence information made available but how it was used by the administration and by the President?

   Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I appreciate the question, as well as the predicate offered by the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts.

   The answer is yes, I am troubled by one fact that is now undeniable. That fact is, we were given bad information, information that now is much clearer than it was 6 months or 12 months ago, information that many of our colleagues have used repeatedly on which to base decisions fundamental to their interpretation of circumstances and ultimately the vote they cast on the resolution committing this country to a course of action.

   I was troubled by a report I read just this morning that there are many in the intelligence community who are becoming increasingly angered and frustrated that all of this responsibility has been put on their shoulders. The report by one intelligence officer was: ``We did our job. We reported the information. It isn't us.''

   My question is, If it is not the intelligence community, who is responsible? Why did we get bad information? Was it the collection and analysis or was it the use of that information once it was collected and analyzed? We do not know the answer to that today. But we do know our best opportunity for collecting the answers to

   the questions posed by the Senator from Massachusetts is an independent counsel.

   What does it say of the independence of those potential commissioners when someone is suggesting to them, we want you to take this job to investigate us; we want you to have the authority to investigate us, with the implication that the detrimental consequences of an adverse investigation could weigh heavily on the commission itself.

   I don't think there is any doubt about the need for independence, about the need to look at past precedent when we have established commissions of this kind. We need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this commission will have the opportunity to go wherever the facts lead them.

   The way the President and this administration are proposing this investigation be done flies in the face of past precedent, with that cloud that hangs over any investigation that could not be as open, honest, and ultimately successful as it needs to be.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

   Mr. DURBIN. It is my understanding that under the previous unanimous consent I am recognized for 10 minutes.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

4D) U.S. Intelligence

   Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the minority leader, Senator Daschle, as well as my colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, for raising this timely and important question about intelligence. I also salute Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who announced his retirement. His departure will be a great loss to this institution.

[Page: S390]  GPO's PDF

   I was fortunate enough to serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee which Senator Graham chaired, and I still continue that service. He was an extraordinary leader, not just on that committee but when it came to the policies of protecting America. His has been a clarion voice from the beginning that the war on terrorism continues unabated and should continue despite the diversion of Iraq. We still have a war on terrorism, much broader in scope, that has to be considered on a daily basis.

   I come to the floor and want to be careful of the words I say. I do not want to disclose anything I have been told in the Senate Intelligence Committee. That is certainly the policy which should be followed by every member of that committee. We are given a rare opportunity to see the intelligence community and its work from inside. Because we are given that opportunity, we are warned not to share that information. So the points I am about to make relate exclusively to that information which has been made public and declassified. It raises an important issue.

   All of this information points in one direction. What happened to the United States of America prior to the invasion of Iraq relative to weapons of mass destruction of that country represents, in my mind, the greatest failure of intelligence in America since the fall of the Soviet Union. Recall, not that long ago, when our intelligence community and those in charge of national defense and security failed to see the collapse of the Soviet Union, a superpower, our premier enemy for decades, until it actually happened. Despite all of the millions of dollars and thousands of people, we missed it.

   Here we have a similar situation. Prior to our invasion of Iraq, we were told by the intelligence community they had identified--and this is unclassified, declassified information--they had identified 550 suspected sites within Iraq where we would find weapons of mass destruction. And the level of certainty for each of those sites was different, but for a discrete number of those sites the intelligence community told us: We believe that when we go into Iraq and go directly to this location, we will find weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons.

   So I asked Dr. Kay--and others have as well--after you had completed your investigation, after you had looked at those sites, what did you find? And the answer was: Nothing, nothing whatever.

   We accumulated this information; we said, through our intelligence sources, we have 550 known locations; and we were wrong in every instance.

   How can that be? How can the intelligence community have missed it?

   The second element, the unmanned aerial vehicles, flying over locations, mapping different things, viewing different locations, prepared, if necessary, to fire on hostile situations--these unmanned aerial vehicles were identified by the intelligence community and the administration as a threat not only to the Middle East but to the United States of America. We were told these unmanned aerial vehicles would be used to deliver chemical and biological weapons against the United States of America.

   I can state now in published reports we know that the UAVs were not designed for this purpose. We missed it completely. Sadly, I can say there is additional information which has not been disclosed which also casts doubt on that conclusion.

   Why is it important? Because Members of the Senate were called to the White House, asked to vote for the use-of-force resolution, and told that the reason for the necessity of an invasion was the unmanned aerial vehicles and their threat to the United States of America. They were given partial information--in fact, misleading information--about the danger associated with the unmanned aerial vehicles.

   All of this raises serious questions, questions Senator Daschle and others have addressed. This is what it comes down to: This should not be a matter of either the Democrats in the Senate or the Republicans in the Senate protecting their President. I will say this: If an open, honest, independent investigation finds anything was done wrong under the Clinton administration leading up to this intelligence failure, so be it. If they find anything wrong in this intelligence operation under President George W. Bush was responsible for this breakdown, so be it.

   The American people deserve an honest answer. They are more concerned about the safety and security of America than they are about the political safety and security of any President. And that is exactly the way it should be.

   Now, more than ever, intelligence is critical. Since 9/11 we understand the war on terrorism and its success by the United States depends on solid intelligence, acted on responsibly by political leaders. We need to ask these hard questions, and we need the panel of an independent commission that will come up with the answers.

   Senator JON CORZINE, my colleague from New Jersey, has been proposing this independent commission for months. I have supported it. Many have resisted it, saying we do not need it. Well, thank goodness, after Dr. Kay's report, even the White House has conceded we need this independent commission. I think, frankly, we need it now more than ever.

   We need sound and solid intelligence gathering. We need it to be evaluated in a proper fashion, and we need the political leaders in America to deal with it in a responsible way. We must ask the hard questions, whether this has been done leading up to the invasion of Iraq, and continuing with our war against al-Qaida and terrorism elements all across the United States of America and around the world.

   Mrs. BOXER. Will my friend yield for a question?

   Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield to the Senator from California.

   Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Senator very much for his clear, as usual, laying out of this issue. I want to pick up on the word ``independent,'' ``independent commission.''

   Does my friend agree that to get to an independent commission, all the members should not be appointed by the administration that has just been part of this error?

   Mr. DURBIN. I say to the Senator from California, it is important that this be viewed as a nonpartisan effort. In order for that to occur, we either need to find those people who are beyond reproach from the political side or make certain there is an appointment on both sides, Democrats and Republicans working together.

   Why in the world would we allow this commission to go forward under the shadow of suspicion that it has a partisan agenda? We do not need that. As a country, we do not need that. Once and for all, we need to turn to men and women who have served this country, and served it in terms of our national defense, and who have no political agenda, who are really focused on the defense of our country.

   Mrs. BOXER. I would agree with that because otherwise I do not think the American people will trust the commission. If the commission were to be appointed by, say, the majority leader of the Senate--certain Members--and then the Democratic leader of the Senate, that is another example. We could get a couple from the House Democrats, House Republicans, and then the President, and not an artificial

   date: By the way, you can't come back and talk to us until 2005 after the election. The American people are very wise.

   So I am really glad the President, as you said, has come around to say we need to take a look at this. But I think the way he is approaching this does not pass the smell test for a lot of my folks back home.

   Mr. DURBIN. I say to the Senator from California, there is another element, and that is this matter involving former Ambassador Joe Wilson, and his wife, who was serving this country in an intelligence capacity and whose identity was disclosed to columnist Robert Novak as part of political retribution.

   I can tell you, having spoken to people who have given their lives to the intelligence community, and risked their lives for America on a regular basis, they were angry and demoralized by this leak from the White House.

   I think in order to get the proper answers to the important questions about the role of the intelligence community, we should try to make it as nonpartisan as possible, try to bring in the professionals who are viewed by both political parties as people of respect and people who ask the right questions, so the intelligence community will come forward with honest and objective answers.

[Page: S391]  GPO's PDF

   The bottom line is not who wins this political battle in the hearts and minds of the American people. The bottom line is, who will win in terms of America's national security and defense. We need sound and solid intelligence now more than ever. The President's admission last week that there was a failure of intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq has really called on all of us to rise above party.

   I think the Senator from California and the Senator from South Dakota are moving in the right direction toward an independent, bipartisan, and nonpartisan approach. I hope we do get this done quickly.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

   Under the previous order, there are 10 minutes allocated to the majority.

   Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the majority be given an extra 5 minutes in morning business; 5 minutes for Senator Kyl, 5 minutes for Senator Lott, 5 minutes for Senator Chambliss.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

   Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I express my appreciation to the assistant minority leader for that request.

4E) Intelligence Investigation

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I think we need to respond to some of what has been said here this morning because the implication is very disturbing. It is not just that some of the intelligence of the United States--and by the way, all of the other intelligence agencies around the world might not have been totally accurate--but that somebody might have been misleading us. That is the charge. That is the implication. It leads to this notion we could not trust the President to look into what might have been wrong with the intelligence, that there is a ``shadow of suspicion'' here.

   Well, the shadow of suspicion is being cast by our colleagues on the other side by the innuendo that is throughout the comments they have been making here this morning and that we have read elsewhere. I think that is a very bad thing. Especially when our troops are fighting abroad trying to win this war on terror, to suggest that not

   only is the intelligence we are gathering not entirely accurate but that there were deliberate attempts by people in the administration to mislead the American people, and to mislead the Congress, that, I think, is what is very disturbing.

   What are some of the strains of that? I heard one of them on the radio this morning: Well, Vice President Cheney went down to the CIA and talked to them. He must have been trying to intimidate them to come up with some preordained conclusion to sort of cook the books a little bit.

   There is no evidence of that whatsoever. David Kay has discounted that as a possibility. Nobody from the intelligence agencies, under questioning, has suggested that was the case.

   Indeed, the question is, if the Vice President had not gone down to the intelligence agencies and asked the tough questions of the CIA people, and said, are you sure you are correct about this, then our friends on the other side would be complaining the administration did not even bother to doublecheck the information. So when politics are involved, you cannot win. But I do not think we should allow these suspicions from the political side of things to dictate the kind of action we take.

   Another question: Secretary Powell went to the CIA. I think he spent something like 3 days with them, with these people going over and over and over the evidence, saying: Are you absolutely certain of this? And remember, before he made his presentation to the United Nations, he took some of the material out, some of the material he did not think was verifiable, that they could not nail down well enough. He wanted to make sure what he took to the United Nations was solid.

   The Vice President and the Secretary of State are not the only people who have been involved. We have intelligence from other countries, such as the Israelis, the British. We have the United Nations itself, and the inspectors who came back with their reports.

   At the end of the day, the reason why the international community passed resolutions asking for Saddam Hussein to comply with his commitment to come clean on what he had was because the whole world thought he had these weapons of mass destruction.

   Now, since then, we have not been able to find everything. We have found some things. But one of the things we have not found are the chemical artillery shell warheads. We thought those were going to be used against our troops. Every day the war occurred, we were briefed on the so-called red line, the point at which we thought the Iraqis were going to shoot artillery shells with chemical weapons at our troops. Our troops had to put on all the heavy equipment in order to try to fight through that if, in fact, the attack occurred, and there was some surprise when it did not occur. We had to, of course, bomb the warehouses we thought it was in. We bombed the artillery pieces. We sent millions of leaflets to the commanders saying: Don't you dare fire chemical weapons at our troops or we will take you before the criminal court when this is all done. We disrupted their command and control, and we thought that is what prevented them from firing those artillery shells. But the point is, we thought they had them. We thought they were going to be used against our troops.

   This was not a matter of the President or the Vice President or anybody in the administration trying to mislead anybody. Maybe the intelligence was not entirely accurate, but I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in conducting this debate, to try to do it from the higher plain, not from the suspicion that the President of the United States is trying to deliberately mislead the American people, but to acknowledge maybe there was something wrong with part of our intelligence and that is worth looking into.

   That is precisely what the President has said he wants to have done because obviously he is just as concerned about this as anybody else is. It is for that reason he has asked for an investigation into the intelligence to find out whether it was correct, if it wasn't, why not, and what can we do about that in the future.

   I urge my colleagues, in conducting this debate, let's do so from a higher plain than one in which we sow the seeds of politics and blame and suspicion, as has been done around here. We can conduct this debate on a much higher plain than that.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I believe I have 5 minutes under the unanimous consent agreement.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

   Mr. LOTT. I thank Senator Kyl and Senator Reid for making sure we have this time. I, too, think we need to sober up a little bit and look at the facts of what is involved.

   First, it is an election year. Politics will come into play in everything we do. I don't mean that necessarily critically of us or either side. It is a fact. I suspect that it is having a hand in what we are seeing now.

   Secondly, the fact is, we do have some problems with our intelligence community. It is not new. It didn't come up over the last 10 months or the last 10 years. It probably goes back to the mid-1970s when we had the Pike and the Church commissions that forced changes in the intelligence community from which we have never quite recovered. That is when we started getting away from human intelligence and relying on satellites and computers and technology. That is a big problem.

   We can go back and point to things we didn't know or information we should have had back in the 1980s and 1990s that we didn't have. For us to take a look at our intelligence community and ask questions about why they have not done some things or they have gotten some things wrong is perfectly legitimate. The most important question should be, what are we going to do about it? Instead of pointing the finger of blame, trying to put some scalp on the wall and say: We nailed somebody because this information may not have been completely accurate, we should ask: What did we know? Did we need to know more? Were there inaccuracies? If so, what were they, and what are we going to do about it? Do we need to completely reconstruct our intelligence community?

[Page: S392]  GPO's PDF

Do we need to make some changes at the head of some of these agencies? I don't know yet. But that should be our approach because we are going to need our intelligence community. We need it this very day.

   Senator Kyl was making the point. Our troops are in the field today all over the world, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are working with the intelligence community today to try to make sure they know what is going on and what is happening, what the threats are. We don't want to undermine them. At the same time, if we are going to make improvements or changes, the sooner we can do it, the better.

   The other thing is, what did we know. It is almost as if there were no weapons of mass destruction. We knew they had weapons of mass destruction--chemical, biological. They tried to get nuclear capability. We know they killed their own people. They used chemical weapons on the Iranians. I was talking to a constituent this morning who was in Bazra back in the early 1990s, who talked about how simple it was to produce chlorine gas. Yet if you looked at the plant, you could be told, this is just a plastics plant. But it is very simple to make chlorine gas. It is very toxic, and that was what was used, I believe, against the Iranians. So we know they had these weapons of mass destruction.

   Did they dismantle them, destroy them? Where did they destroy them? Why did Saddam Hussein give out bad information? Was he being lied to? Yes. Was he lying to the world community? Yes. There are all kinds of problems or questions such as that.

   Did they move these weapons to Syria, Iran? We know they had them. That is a fact. We still don't know exactly what happened to them, and that is a danger.

   What are we going to do about it? Let's become a government of commissions. It is really easy. Pass it off to a commission--the base-closure procedure, the 9/11 investigation, Social Security, intelligence. Let the Congress just say: We know nothing; we see nothing; we hear nothing. Let's let somebody else do it.

   By the way, I have watched these commissions. Just because you have Republicans and Democrats, are you going to call them independent? How about an independent commission set up by the President that might have people who weren't clearly Republican or Democrat? How about experts on intelligence, people who have been at the CIA and the FBI, people who are not identified in the political area? If you want a real independent commission, that might be the way to do it.

   I have another question: Why don't we do our own work? What do we have the intelligence committee for? The more I am on there, the more I think maybe we should not have it the way it is presently constituted. We are not going to wait for the Senate Intelligence Committee to put out its report. We are not going to wait on the House, bipartisan, Select Intelligence Committee to put out its report. No, we are going to rush pellmell and create a commission before we even see the report.

   I suspect the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee is going to be more aggressive than a lot of people might think. I think we are going to ask a lot of legitimate questions. How about letting the Iraqi survey team, the group that is out there still looking, do their work. But, no, it is a political year. We are going to use this to question all kinds of people.

   The President got information on which he relied. The Senate got information it relied on. If there was inaccurate information, we ought to find out why and determine what we are going to do about it. We need to back off a little bit because we are dealing with people's lives. How we act in the intelligence area is going to be very important in the next few months.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

   Mr. CHAMBLISS. I thank the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Mississippi for including me in this time because this is the most critical issue, obviously, facing not just the administration but the American public today. It is an issue which has already been adequately addressed, but it is not a new issue.

   The fact of failures within the intelligence community is not something newly discovered. We knew following 9/11 that there were deficiencies within our intelligence community that probably allowed September 11 to happen. What have we done since that time?

   As the Senator from Mississippi said: It was time to step up to the plate after 9/11, fix the problems. That is what we did in a bipartisan way, and we have done that since that point in time.

   Now we are moving into an election year, and we are seeing sniping for political reasons and not solving problems for the right reasons. The problem continues to be out there, the problem of deficiencies within the intelligence community. It is not new. It is the same problem. It is a little bit different area.

   We, as Members of this body and as Members of the House of Representatives, have an obligation to the American people to find out what went wrong. But let's not politicize it. Let's figure out what was wrong. By the way, when you look at the deficiencies in our intelligence community and you try to point the finger at them, you can't stop there. If you are going to point it at our intelligence community, what about the French intelligence community that believed exactly the same thing as our intel community? What about the German community, the British community? Every intelligence agency in the world had the same information and the same facts that we had.

   Our President was presented with the facts that every other head of state was presented, but it was the Americans who were the target of the bad guys around the world. It was the Americans who were the victims on September 11 and were the potential victims thereafter. Our President exercised good, sound judgment based upon the information that he had and based upon the information that every other head of state had.

   We can talk about the fact that we ought not to politicize the commission but we have, in fact, politicized the issue. There is a major, fundamental difference in trying to say that intelligence was faulty and at the same time trying to intimate that this administration exercised misleading acts. That is something entirely different, and that is an issue that we can debate long and hard. But it is simply not a fact substantiated by any of the evidence. Whereas the fact that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction had been substantiated time and time again since 1992, as the Senator from Mississippi delineated. It has been substantiated by intelligence communities from every other country in the world up until the time the Iraqi conflict began. There was no misleading on the part of this administration based upon the facts with which they were presented.

   Let me address one item in particular that the Senator from Illinois stated. He and I both serve on the Intelligence Committee. This issue relative to the UAVs and the possible--I emphasize ``possible''--use by Saddam Hussein of UAVs to distribute biological weapons being an issue:

   He knows good and well that we received information that indicated it was a possibility. We don't know for sure that was their intention, but we know good and well that it was a possibility.

   So we could go down the line item by item with each of the statements that have been made. I will go back and conclude with what the Senator from Mississippi said. We can argue and take 10 minutes on each side to discuss this, but what the American people expect is leadership. What this administration is exhibiting is leadership. This body ought to do the same. We ought to exercise leadership to the American people because that is what we were sent here to do. We could come together and say we know what happened; now let's find the answer; let's figure out what the solution is to the problem at hand within our intelligence community in a bipartisan way, and nobody disputes that is the way we ought to act.

   I say what we need to do is quit debating the issue and move forward now with finding out what the problem was, and let's do what is in the best interest of the American people, and that is continue to work hard to make America a safe place.

[Page: S393]  GPO's PDF

   I yield the floor.

4F) Intelligence Operations

   Mr. CORZINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak on an issue about which I have spoken a number of times and which I passionately believe needs to be addressed--frankly, it is one that is well past the maturation stage where it should have been addressed--and that is an independent look at our intelligence operations, particularly as they relate to the pre-Iraqi invasion and how conclusions were drawn, so that can speak to the American people about the facts we had.

   It is an issue which I think is essential to the national security of the American people. If we don't learn from our mistakes, we are bound to make those mistakes again. It is high time we have gotten around to it.

   In the past few days, the administration and the world have come to understand and acknowledge on a broad basis the colossal intelligence failures that led us to war, a war that may have led to good ends, but the Nation clearly didn't come to those conclusions on the basis of the information we now seem to be discovering.

   There is a question about means to an end that I think is pretty simple in the kinds of discussions I think all of us have in the families and in the communities in which we live. I don't think we want to get into a position where means justify ends when they don't relate to them. I just point that out as some of this discussion has evolved.

   On January 8, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the lack of connection between Iraq and al-Qaida, stating;

   I've not seen a smoking gun, concrete evidence about that connection.

   We were told something different.

   Then the President, in his latest State of the Union Address, referred only to weapons of mass destruction and related program activities, whatever that is--a far cry from the active nuclear program and stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons warned of in his last State of the Union Message in 2003.

   It was last week's testimony from David Kay, the man responsible for the weapons search in Iraq, that finally brought this matter to maturity and captured the attention of the Nation, the administration, and the world, and that has really changed the whole context of this debate and discussion.

   Dr. Kay, a man who told us last fall that Iraq's nuclear programs were only at the most rudimentary level, told the Senate Armed Services Committee there was no evidence of stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.

   David Kay has made an important recommendation--one that I think has been obvious for a number of months--that an independent inquiry be established so that the American people, so that the allies of the United States and those who would work with us, so that all of us who are involved in policymaking know we have the facts that allow us to make good decisions so that we are not committing the lives of our men and women in our military to efforts that are based on false premises, whether those are intentional or unintentional.

   We need to have the right answers, and that recommendation apparently has now led--some might say forced--the President to announce he will name a panel to look at the intelligence issues related to Iraq.

   I welcome the President's reversal on this critical need, and I suspect we will

[Page: S528]

see a reversal of support for that

   concept among my colleagues, about which there have been some healthy debates in the last months.

   This is about the Nation's national security, make no mistake. We need to understand on a collection basis, on an analysis basis, and, yes, on a use basis, just exactly how we got to the kinds of conclusions we did. The means need to be understood so that we can connect them with the end, so that we don't make the same mistakes again and again.

   I have serious concerns, however, at least from early reports about what the details of the President's plan for this commission will be, that the response is inadequate--I think seriously inadequate. This needs to be an independent commission.

   How do we get to an independent commission? How do we make certain that the judgments we get are not designed or at least limited to only a mission defined by those we are actually looking at? And second, will that commission be allowed to explore the use of intelligence, or the misuse, if you will?

   I haven't seen the details. I don't think any of us have. We are reading press reports. But if they are true, it would give the appearance that we don't want to have a commission that is going to deal with the fundamental crux of a lot of these questions. Quite obviously, if we don't deal with the crux of the questions, then are we going to get results that create credibility with the American people, with this body, with the world, on whom we need to count to do things as we go forward? Are we going to get to those kinds of conclusions?

   If that is not the case, then I don't think we are headed in the right direction. I am very afraid we are moving into something that may satisfy a call for a commission to investigate our intelligence, but not yet at the fundamental problems that led us to this particular decision in Iraq, but also can be and may have well been replicated in other areas.

   I actually think the President is right to talk about it in a broader context. It is just an issue of, sequentially, which one do we look at first. Even by the inspection on the ground, we are told that 15 percent of the issues haven't been examined on the ground in Iraq. We need to deal with where our men and women are being killed now, as opposed to putting off and putting together all of these various issues.

   We have what some people might say is a tactical issue with respect to Iraq and a strategic problem with our intelligence operations in a more general context. Fine, we should look at a broader scope of issues to get to the restructuring of our intelligence operations, but we need to deal with the reality of, how did our intelligence serve us so poorly, how were the conclusions so far off the mark? Was there a problem with collection? Was there a problem with analysis? Or was there a problem in selectivity and use of the intelligence provided?

   As I said, it was last summer when I first offered legislation to establish an independent commission. I think we ought to get to a truly bipartisan, independent commission, one that is not unlike what we see with the 9/11 Commission, headed by the former Governor of New Jersey, a Republican, who is doing, in my view, an incredible service to our Nation. It is a diligent, independent, bipartisan approach to find out the facts that led to that tragedy with which all of us live each and every day,

   whether it is in your local hometown, like it is the case in mine, or whether it is in the broader context of the Nation.

   Given the fact that we have had Presidential claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Africa, which could not be justified or substantiated by intelligence, is enough to ask the question whether intelligence was properly used. It clearly was not, because the President himself has denied that that should have been in the State of the Union.

   So how did that intelligence get misused? How did that come about? Similarly, with regard to the aluminum tube issue, on which a whole host of folks have spoken out both publicly, and I have read some things privately, that call into question whether that was ever a viable concept for intelligence to be used as one of the justifications for entering into this conflict.

   How can that happen? We need to have certainty and independence in judging how we got to the collection, the analysis, and the use of the intelligence. I think that is important if we are going to go forward with certainty and credibility with regard to our efforts in using our intelligence for proper and effective policy formulation in the years ahead. We need it so we can speak to the world with credibility, and it will not take place, in my view, if we do not have that independent commission.

   So I want to reemphasize the point that use of the information is also very important. We have seen time after time, and opinion after opinion, of a number of people, outside of the David Kay remarks, that much of the use has actually been disputed within the intelligence community. I cite in particular an officer from the State Department, Gregg Thielmann--and I will try to get his particular title--who has made the assertion that we are basically operating under faith-based interpretations of a lot of information. He goes back and cites the Nigeria uranium and the use of aluminum tubes, disputes about stockpiles that were reported, and many elements of different perspectives with regard to the intelligence that was available to policymakers.

   How did we get such a one-sided view? I think some people would argue it might be misuse. Some may argue it is selectivity. I think we need an independent commission so we can get to the bottom of these. I think we need to understand how the administration could make public statements that contradicted some of the analysis or failed to incorporate the balance that was actually involved in the communities' reports. Why did these reports Congress mandated under the very resolution that granted the President the authority to go to war include some of those unsubstantiated claims I talked about? Were members of the intelligence community pressured to produce analyses that conformed to the administration policies? They even set up an extra body within the Defense Department to derive points of view that would be used in the Defense Department independent of traditional agencies that are involved in the intelligence. Did the administration officials seek to bypass that normal process by cherry-picking?

   I think all of these questions are real and they are ones that need to be independently analyzed. There are plenty of outside experts. I think a lot of people have heard about the Carnegie Endowment study that reported last week, and I quote:

   Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic

   missile programs.

   They may not have all of the information. That is why we need a commission to straighten this out and to give us all confidence that we can go forward.

   I spoke about Mr. Thielmann, who was the former director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs in the State Department. He is incredibly offended by the difference between the information he saw and presented to the Secretary of State, as the one who is responsible for collating that, and what he has seen stated in the public. So how did those kinds of differences come to pass? Why are we dealing with such discrepancies?

   The commission I proposed would be established by law independent of any executive orders to change its mission, change its role, change its scope. Its members would be selected by the leadership of both parties, balanced, kind of like the 9/11 Commission which I think people would argue as being very independent and is on the right track; receive an independent budget so there would not be issues about how thoroughly they might be able to pursue particular avenues of research; and would be directed to examine every aspect of this critical problem; obviously all elements of the collection, all elements of the analysis, and all elements of use from top to bottom, from our intelligence operatives to the White House.

   By the way, in my view, Congress looks to provide the checks and balances that are expected through our constitutional offices.

   I think this commission should be thorough and we need an end result

[Page: S529]

that gives us all confidence that when we make decisions that send 120,000, 130,000 or 150,000 of our men and women into battle that they are fighting a war based on information that was intended to give pure advice as best understood. I do not think the looking back--20/20 hindsight is always better, but looking back, one has to question whether the claims that Saddam Hussein posed a dire and immediate threat to the United States were real. It is important that we have a full examination, particularly when there were other alternatives that would not have necessarily cost American lives, such as continued pursuit of U.N. inspections which were claimed to have been ineffective, further diplomacy pointless, when in fact apparently all of those efforts at U.N. inspections and other things had actually been successful. There has been a huge failure, one that is very real in the lives of the families who have given up their sons and daughters, and I think one that morally requires we have an independent, bipartisan commission that gets to answers independently of any of us who have been involved in the decisionmaking, because if we do not have that I think we are going to always have questions of credibility as we go forward.

   So I hope we can work together. I certainly intend to offer either on a stand-alone basis or in an amendment format an additional opportunity to support a truly independent and bipartisan commission that can get to the bottom of something I think is fundamental to the national security of this Nation, and make sure all of our sons and daughters are fighting wars and protecting America with the kind of information that is there for the best interests of us executing our policies, not for the best execution of our political desires.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.

   Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I want to answer some of the concerns raised by my colleague from New Jersey. Basically what he is describing is the Intelligence Committee. For 8 months, our staffs have interviewed over 200 people. They have gone through thousands of pages of documents. We have investigated all of the charges and all of the concerns that have been raised.

   There will be a preliminary report provided to the members of the Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Starting afresh with another congressional commission is not warranted. The report of the Intelligence Committee has not been seen.

   There are certain things that we know we have seen supported. I believe everybody believes David Kay is credible. When he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28 this year, he said: I think the world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein. I have said I actually think this may be one of the cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought. I think when we have the complete record you are going to discover that after 1998 it became a regime that was totally corrupt, individuals were out for their own protection. In a world where we know others are seeking WMD, the likelihood at some point in the future of a seller and buyer meeting up would have made that a far more dangerous country than even we anticipated with what may turn out not to be a fully accurate estimate.

   There is no question about it not being a fully accurate estimate. This is one of the areas where I think all of us would agree, we did not have as good intelligence as we should have. We didn't have as good intelligence in the 1990s, when we should have. And President Clinton, on February 17, 1998, said:

   If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

   Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a day later, said:

   Iraq is a long way from here but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the present greatest security threat we face.

   Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser, said on that same day:

   He will use those weapons of mass destruction again as he has 10 times since 1983.

   All of the people who are making these statements have access to the intelligence information that we as Senators get. We realize, based on what David Kay stated, that we badly underestimated the ballistic missile capability. As a matter of fact, Senator Graham of Florida was prescient in a letter he wrote. In a letter dated December 5, 2001, signed by many others, he said:

   There is no doubt Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons program. Reports indicate biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to prewar status. In addition Saddam continues to redefine ``delivery system'' and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop long range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.

   That one was right on the mark because that is what we found.

   What are the needs? Obviously, when there are not people who speak Arabic, when we do not have unofficial agents in the country, we are missing out on one of the important elements of a good intelligence program. But, you know something. It is not just Iraq. We didn't know how far Libya was along until Muammar Qadhafi, not wanting to be pulled out of a spider hole by an American soldier standing over him with a grenade, decided he would come clean. We were unaware of how far Iran has gone. And, clearly, prior to the first gulf war, we did not know just how far advanced Saddam Hussein's programs were.

   We also know--and David Kay was clear about this--that we cannot account for weapons of mass destruction that he had. There didn't have to be a large stockpile. A suitcase full of anthrax or ricin, or even a handful, can be a great terrorist weapon, and we will be lucky if we find that small amount, particularly after you look at the lengthy program of denial, deception, and destruction in which he engaged.

   There is a lot of intelligence that was lacking with respect to Saddam Hussein. We have to do a better job. The purpose of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of five or six committees already investigating it, is to find out not only what we lacked but also to recommend changes because the one area on which we would agree is that we have to have a better system of intelligence. What we learn is going to put us on that track.

   I know the staff has worked hard. I am looking forward to

   the report. I will be surprised if it does not confirm what David Kay says and lay out some recommendations. The President has a responsibility as well. We have an oversight responsibility. If he wants people to look at it, to tell him how to improve it: Good luck. Go ahead. But we have the Iraqi Survey Group, internal investigations, and I believe probably the best investigation is what the Senate Intelligence Committee has done.

   I apologize. I know my colleague from Illinois wants to speak so I will yield the floor.

   Mr. CORZINE. Will the Senator from Missouri be willing to take a question with regard to