Congressional Record: June 29, 2006 (House)
Page H4817-H4827
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PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H. RES. 895, SUPPORTING INTELLIGENCE AND
LAW ENFORCEMENT PROGRAMS TO TRACK TERRORISTS AND TERRORIST FINANCES
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I
call up House Resolution 896 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 896
Resolved, That upon the adoption of this resolution it
shall be in order without intervention of any point of order
to consider in
[[Page H4818]]
the House the resolution (H. Res. 895) supporting
intelligence and law enforcement programs to track terrorists
and terrorist finances conducted consistent with Federal law
and with appropriate Congressional consultation and
specifically condemning the disclosure and publication of
classified information that impairs the international fight
against terrorism and needlessly exposes Americans to the
threat of further terror attacks by revealing a crucial
method by which terrorists are traced through their finances.
The resolution shall be considered as read. The previous
question shall be considered as ordered on the resolution and
preamble to final adoption without intervening motion or
demand for division of the question except: (1) one hour of
debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and
ranking minority member of the Committee on Financial
Services; and (2) one motion to recommit which may not
instructions.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Sessions) is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30
minutes to the gentlewoman from New York, Congresswoman Louise
Slaughter, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume.
During consideration of this resolution, all time is yielded for the
purpose of debate only.
This rule provides for 1 hour of debate in the House equally divided
and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the
Committee on Financial Services. It waives all points of order against
consideration of the resolution and, as always, provides the minority
with one motion to recommit, which may not contain instructions.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this rule and its
underlying simple House resolution that allows the House of
Representatives to take a very clear position on our collective
commitment to identifying and tracking terrorist finances and our
condemnation of the disclosure of any information that puts the lives
of American citizens at risk.
Today, throughout the course of the debate, we will hear a great
number of accusations hurled from those Members opposed to this
resolution. It is their right to dissent. That is the basis of our
democracy. However, it needs to be made clear at the outset what this
resolution does and what it does not do. What this resolution does is
simple:
It states that the U.S. House of Representatives supports efforts to
identify, track and pursue suspected foreign terrorists and their
financial supporters by tracking terrorist money flows and uncovering
terrorist networks and that the House finds that the Terrorist
Financing Tracking Program has been conducted in accordance with all
applicable laws, regulations and executive orders, and that the
appropriate safeguards and reviews have been instituted to protect
civil liberties and that Congress was duly informed of this fact.
It also says that the House condemns the unauthorized disclosure of
classified information and expresses concern that disclosure of this
information may endanger the lives of American citizens and our
efforts, and that the House expects the cooperation of all news media
in protecting the lives of Americans and the capacity of the government
to identify, disrupt and capture terrorists by not disclosing
classified intelligence programs such as the Terrorist Finance Tracking
Program.
This resolution does not single out or censure any specific media
outlet for its disclosure of classified information that has put
American lives at risk and made our allies less likely to share
classified data in the future. Nor does it chill first amendment rights
or prevent the news media from performing their constitutionally
protected activities. We will hear these kinds of accusations today
time and time again from the other side, Mr. Speaker, and it is
important to make clear from the outset that they are simply not true.
The basis for the House taking this position is just as clear. We
know that after our country was attacked on September 11, President
Bush launched a full-on campaign against terrorist financing and
authorized the Treasury Department to track the financial supporters of
terrorist groups like al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah to prevent any
further attacks on American citizens either here or abroad.
We know that by following these monetary transfers, the United States
has been able to locate and identify terrorists and their financers,
chart shadowy terrorist networks, and keep funds out of the hands of
these criminals. We also know that data provided by this program helped
to identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted of laundering $200,000
through a Pakistani bank on behalf of al Qaeda. This program also
facilitated the capture of the mastermind of the Bali resort bombing of
2002.
This terror finance-tracking program, better known as the SWIFT
program, has been invaluable in protecting American lives and choking
off the sources of terror funding. It is exactly the kind of limited,
legal and effective program that we need to hunt down and starve
terrorists of the funding that they use to attack American interests
and citizens.
As with any national security program, the administration must be
protective of the sources and methods it uses to execute its mission.
Disclosure of this program has degraded our national security and
injured our efforts to prevent terrorist activity by allowing our
enemies to understand what steps we were taking to stop them. And in a
situation where it is vital to always remain one step ahead of your
enemy, the consequences of showing them our techniques has potentially
devastating and life-threatening consequences.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to speak with one voice
today in recognizing the importance of identifying, tracking and ending
the financing of terror and condemning any actions that would allow the
unauthorized disclosure of information that helps our government to
achieve this end. I urge the adoption of this rule and the underlying
resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
(Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend
her remarks.)
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for all those who will in future years
look back on the vote we take today as a window into the soul of this
Congress, for all those who will see the approval or defeat of this
bill as a testament to how committed this body was to the ideals from
which our Nation draws its strength, for them, let me be very clear. On
this day, the Republican majority shamelessly played politics with our
most cherished principles.
From the very beginning, this resolution and this so-called debate
has been about one thing and one thing only: election politics. Six
months before our midterm elections, Republicans are falling back on
the one play that has worked for them time and time again. They are
sowing fear in the hearts of the American people and labeling any
individual or organization that doesn't take its marching orders from
the White House as a threat to our Nation.
Think of what we have heard from leading Republicans over the past
few days. They have called the disclosure of the SWIFT anti-terrorist
program a ``disgrace.'' They have accused the newspaper that first
wrote about it, the New York Times, of forcing its, quote, arrogant,
elitist, left-wing agenda on the rest of the country.
Mr. Speaker, if all this is true, then I have no choice but to
conclude that our President, President Bush himself, is a disgraceful,
arrogant, left-wing elitist, because it was Mr. Bush who leaked this
story. Mr. Bush, as well as numerous top-ranking members of his
administration, have proudly discussed their efforts to eliminate the
finances of terrorists for 5 years. Not two weeks after September 11,
2001, President Bush told the world the United States had ``launched a
strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network.'' Such
claims have been made time and time again, not just by the President
but by every top Republican official in power.
What is more, no fewer than 20 current and former administration
officials spoke to New York Times reporters about the SWIFT program.
Where do you think the Times heard it? The article that started this
all could not have been written without their active help. What the New
York Times did, as well as the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles
Times, The Washington Post, and newspapers throughout the country
through news services, was to
[[Page H4819]]
publish a story which had, in effect, already been published a thousand
times over by the White House itself and had even been on the Internet.
The end result is a Republican administration intentionally leaking a
story, as they did to Judith Miller of the New York Times who was then
their heroine, both publicly and privately, and then punishing the
newspaper for reporting on its leaks. In such a context, the notion
that one of our newspapers violated our national security last week is
ludicrous on its face.
Think of this degree of Republican hypocrisy and then consider this:
the bill before us claims to stand against leaks. But it comes 6 years
into an administration that has always been willing to leak even the
most sensitive information if it thought it would benefit from it
politically. It is the height of irony to think that when the Bush
administration sought to silence critics of its pre-Iraq war
intelligence claims, it chose to leak the classified identity of a CIA
agent, as well as previously classified components of a national
security estimate to, of all places, the New York Times. But it did so,
and it did so willingly.
Where were the resolutions of protest from the majority during that
scandal? Did we have any expression of outrage over the leaking of a
covert agent who, I am told, not only jeopardized her contacts with the
CIA but the entire intelligence network itself because people would not
trust us anymore? Where were the resolutions of protest about that?
Nowhere.
Where was the outrage when a national security asset, as well as all
of her contacts in the intelligence community, were put into danger?
There was none, because Republicans deemed that was a permissible leak,
and it was profitable.
The Republican outrage we see today stinks to high heaven because the
leak of Valerie Plame's identity last year came from high-up, the
highest ranks of its own White House. And when all the contradictions
inherent in this bill are laid bare, we can see what it is actually all
about.
Republicans need to change the subject of the real debate everyday
people are having in the country. That debate is about the wisdom of
this 3-year, $400 billion war in Iraq that is still claiming American
lives even today. It is about the numerous scandals of its own creation
that the majority is scrambling to explain away. It is about the fact
that Republicans have been entirely unwilling to exercise any form of
meaningful oversight over the programs implemented by Congress and the
White House with disastrous results to our Nation. It is about the very
direction that America will take in the years ahead.
Democrats are eager to debate all of these issues. But Republicans,
as we see today, are interested only in inventing enemies to point
fingers at and turn the public against. And to do so, Mr. Speaker, they
are willing to jeopardize even our most basic and fundamental
principles. They are willing with this bill and with what they have and
will say on the floor today to make it the province of Congress to
dictate to our cherished independent media what it can and cannot
report about and what it can and cannot say.
But blaming the messenger is nothing new in this country, Mr.
Speaker. The first time a newspaper was punished by an elected official
was in 1735 when a New York publisher wrote unflattering things about
the Governor of the New York territory and was put in jail. Only a few
decades later, the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress to
silence those who opposed American involvement in a war with France.
But to today threaten retribution and legal action against virtually
every news organization in this country simply to gain a few points in
the polls? It is a debasement of this Congress and a desecration of our
Nation's ideals.
Mr. Speaker, my friends on the other side of the aisle and in the
White House have a right to be worried about what lies ahead for them,
but what they do not have the right to do is to politicize our national
security. They do not have the right to hypocritically and arbitrarily
decide when the Nation has been endangered by a leak and when a leak is
entirely acceptable. And they most certainly do not have the right to
reshape this Congress into a body concerned with, in truth, little more
than political retribution against an equally arbitrary ``enemies
list.''
The American people expect this majority and this administration to
guard information, not punish newspapers from writing about it after it
has been officially revealed at the highest source of the government.
Think about that for a moment. The President of the United States time
after time after time has bragged on this program and yet pillories the
New York Times and other papers for writing about it.
The citizens of this country understand that at the end of the day,
the job of protecting our national security falls on the shoulders of
our elected officials, not just on journalists whose primary duty is to
objectively report on the world around us. Our citizens expect this
body to do much more than it is doing here today. They expect it to
follow a higher calling. And they are right.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States did
speak about this opportunity that we had as a result of what the
Congress passed the law asking and giving the legal authority to the
President to track financial transactions. The Congress had already
spoken about it as we were debating whether we were going to pass that
law. In fact, the President did as a result of these disclosures of
finding terrorists say that we found financial ends and means by which
terrorists were being supported.
{time} 1315
But I will strongly disagree with the young woman from New York in
her characterization that the President spilled the beans on all of
this. Not true. It was someone going and talking to over 20 people,
revealing intimate details of what the plan was. Not that it existed,
but how it worked, where it was formed, where we gathered information,
how things were done.
And that is a desperate attempt by someone to go and provide the
enemy with information that would allow them to work around those
things that we had established. What we are talking about is classified
information, not the knowledge that something is happening. And
classified information in detail about not just the summary of this,
but in details, is what we are concerned about today.
So I disagree with the gentlewoman from New York. I believe that her
characterization is not only wrong, but it is also aimed at the wrong
people. We had hoped and would still hope that the minority today would
see that what we are talking about is sharing of classified information
and that we believe it is the wrong thing to do.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Oxley), the chairman of the Financial Services Committee.
(Mr. OXLEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for
yielding. And let me say at the outset I appreciate his good work on
the Rules Committee and affording us the opportunity to testify last
evening on this legislation.
I did not introduce this bill, or this resolution, for political
purposes. I have a deep respect for our process and our institution
here. I introduced that resolution to send a signal that a lot of
people in this Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are pretty sick
and tired of people leaking classified information, secret classified
information, and having the media report it with no responsibility, no
accountability whatsoever.
They are endangering our fighting men and women in Iraq and all over
the world. They endanger the very freedoms that we enjoy. And it has
been a continual frustration, whether it was the NSA revelations or the
wire-tapping of al Qaeda suspects who are talking to people or emailing
people in the United States.
This is the third time in a relatively short period of time that this
country has been witness to essentially treasonous behavior on the part
of individuals who leak classified information, clearly against the
law, clearly against the law, and then brazenly reported in the front
pages of major newspapers, aiding and abetting the enemy.
[[Page H4820]]
We are at war, ladies and gentlemen. Now, some of you folks find that
an inconvenient fact, but we are at war. And when the Congress
responded with the PATRIOT Act shortly after 9/11, that was supported
by a broad array of Members on both sides of the aisle and with
editorials in the New York Times and other newspapers telling the
administration they better get on the case and set up ways that we can
intercept terrorist financing.
Part of that legislation came out of my committee. We are pretty
proud of what we did in that antimoney laundering, antiterrorist
funding legislation that we made part of the PATRIOT Act. And guess
what? It has worked. Now, that may drive some of these people crazy in
certain editorial boards. But the fact is this program has worked
effectively and efficiently since it was set up for the first time.
Even the New York Times in their editorial, the editorial board of
the New York Times specifically called on Congress and the
administration to set up programs to intercept and monitor financial
reporting internationally. And this program has worked effectively
well.
The President of the United States was not dumb enough to go out
there and talk about methods and ways that this program worked, as the
gentleman from Texas said. He talked about the program existing. But he
did not say how it worked on a day-to-day basis. And now we have it
spread all over the news media about how this program works. What is
the average terrorist to think?
He is going to find a different way to move his money around, that is
what he is going to do. He is going to change his behavior. So this
resolution was set up to first of all say this is a very effective
program. Let me just go over the four basic points of this resolution.
One, it supports the government's efforts to identify, track, and
pursue terrorists and their financial supporters. Now, if you are
against that, then vote ``no.''
Two, finds that the Treasury Department's Terrorist Financing
Tracking Program has been conducted in accordance with law, with
appropriate safeguards and reviews to protect individual civil
liberties, and in consultation with and oversight by the Congress. If
you don't like that, then vote against it.
Three, condemns the unauthorized disclosure of classified
information. Who among us is not going to agree with that?
Four, calls on the news media organizations to stop disclosing
classified intelligence programs that protect the lives of Americans
and the capability of the government to identify, disrupt and capture
terrorists.
That is what this resolution says. So read the resolution and then
tell me what part of that resolution you don't agree with. And if you
don't agree with it, then by all means vote ``no.''
I would like to close by quoting Mort Kondracke in a recent edition
of Roll Call in his column. He says this: ``Would newspapers in the
midst of World War II have printed the fact that the U.S. has broken
German and Japanese codes, enabling the enemy to secure its
communications, or reveal how and where Nazi spies were being
interrogated?''
Mr. Kondracke goes on to say: ``Nowadays newspapers win Pulitzer
Prizes for such disclosures.'' And then he goes on to say: ``The
situation is very serious; in fact it is dire.'' It is dire. Now, I
don't consider Mort Kondracke to be from the far right. But he has
nailed this basic question that this resolution addresses.
We all, as Members of Congress, have a responsibility to protect this
Nation and its people. And one of the ways we do it is making sure that
we can track terrorist financing and do it and protect civil liberties,
and we are doing just that.
And this resolution confirms that. I ask all of the Members on both
sides of the aisle to support this resolution because this is really at
the heart of a gut-check in this country, whether we are going to allow
for this kind of behavior to take place, leaking classified information
and then having newspapers win a Pulitzer Prize as a result.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 seconds to say I am
sorry this House did not care about the leaking of Valerie Plame to
that extent.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts
(Mr. McGovern).
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, let's be honest. We are here today because
there has not been enough red meat thrown at the Republican base before
the Fourth of July recess. That is why we are here. So just in the nick
of time, we have H. Res. 895.
The rule for this resolution is of course completely closed. Not even
a substitute is made in order. The Republican leadership of this House
does not even make a pretense of being fair and open and democratic any
more. Under their leadership, this House makes the old politburo look
like a New England town meeting. It is disgraceful.
This resolution purports to be about protecting our national
security, about protecting the most sensitive secrets in the Federal
Government. Mr. Speaker, no one in this House supports the disclosure
of classified information that could genuinely endanger the lives of
Americans.
But we all know that is not what is going on here. In reality, it is
an attempt to punish and intimidate the New York Times and other
newspapers for publishing a story about the administration's
surveillance of international financial transactions.
The Times reported on surveillance of transactions to the Society for
Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT.
But as the Boston Globe recently reported, the Bush administration
itself has publicly and repeatedly talked about this issue since
September 11.
Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until
2003, told the Globe: ``There have been public references to SWIFT
before. The White House is overreaching when they say the New York
Times committed a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the
public domain before.''
Further, the Globe notes that a report to the U.N. Security Council
in late 2001 said that SWIFT and other worldwide financial clearing
houses ``are critical to processing international banking transactions
and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to
apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious
transactions. The group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms
by other countries.''
How many times have we heard the Bush administration talking about
the need to monitor and disrupt terrorist financial transactions? How
many times have we heard them bragging about their success in doing so?
Too many to count. So it does not even pass the laugh test when Members
of Congress start using words like ``treason,'' when they start calling
for criminal prosecution against newspapers, when they circulate
ludicrous Dear Colleague letters threatening to revoke the Times
credentials to cover Congress.
Even worse, Mr. Speaker, is the rank hypocrisy exposed by this
resolution. The Bush administration and their Republican allies in
Congress say they are outraged by leaks of sensitive information. Well,
as the ranking member on the Rules Committee pointed out, where was
their outrage when White House officials leaked the name of an
undercover CIA officer in an attempt to smear her husband?
Where was their outrage when White House officials leaked false and
misleading intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in
order to bolster their case for war? Those leaks, I should note, were
made to the same New York Times that has their knickers in a twist
today.
Where was their outrage when General Casey's plan for potential troop
reductions in Iraq suddenly appeared in the Times and in other
newspapers? Now, I assume that given their outrage today, we will never
again see sensitive information attributed to a ``senior administration
official'' or ``a senior House Republican.''
What is really going on here, Mr. Speaker, is that the administration
and their allies have no problems with leaks to the press when those
leaks advance their political agenda. But if a leak contradicts their
agenda, suddenly they call it treason. They suffer from a case of
selective outrage.
[[Page H4821]]
This administration is obsessed with secrecy, with controlling the
flow of information in this country, with shutting out the other
branches of government, with signing statements that make clear they
have no intention of following the law, with bullying their critics
into silence by questioning their patriotism.
Time after time this Congress has acquiesced. For the Republican
leadership, oversight is a four-letter word. Not since Richard Nixon
has it been more important to have an unfettered and free press,
because that is the only check left on the imperial Presidency in
America today.
Mr. Speaker, I am confident that the American people will see through
this. And I urge my colleagues to do the same. Reject this closed rule
and reject this resolution.
[From the Boston Globe, June 28, 2006]
Terrorist Funds-Tracking No Secret, Some S (Binde
(By Bryan Bender)
Washington.--News reports disclosing the Bush
administration's use of a special bank surveillance program
to track terrorist financing spurred outrage in the White
House and on Capitol Hill, but some specialists pointed out
yesterday that the government itself has publicly discussed
its stepped-up efforts to monitor terrorist finances since
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
On Monday, President Bush said it was ``disgraceful'' that
The New York Times and other media outlets reported last week
that the US government was quietly monitoring international
financial transactions handled by an industry-owned
cooperative in Belgium called the Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Communication, or SWIFT, which is
controlled by nearly 8,000 institutions in 20 countries. The
Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street
Journal also reported about the program.
The controversy continued to simmer yesterday when Senator
Jim Bunning, a Republican of Kentucky, accused the Times of
``treason,'' telling reporters in a conference call that it
``scares the devil out of me'' that the media would reveal
such sensitive information. Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas
Republican, requested US intelligence agencies to assess
whether the reports have damaged anti-terrorism operations.
And Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House
Homeland Security Committee, has urged Attorney General
Albetrto Gonzalez to pursue ``possible criminal prosecution''
of the Times, which has reported on other secret government
surveillance programs. The New York Times Co. owns The Boston
Globe.
But a search of public records--government documents posted
on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank
examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed
in September 2001--describe how US authorities have openly
sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001.
That includes getting access to information about terrorist-
linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those
that travel through SWIFT.
``There have peen public references to SWIFT before,'' said
Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official
until 2003. ``The White House is overreaching when they say
[The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on
terror. It has been in the public domain before.''
Victor D. Comrass, a former US diplomat who oversaw efforts
at the United Nations to improve international measures to
combat terror financing, said it was common knowledge that
worldwide financial transactions were being closely monitored
for links to terrorists. ``A lot of people were aware that
this was going on,'' said Comras, one of a half-dozen
financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited
for the task.
``Unless they were pretty dumb, they had to assume'' their
transactions were being monitored, Comras said of terrorist
group. ``We have spent the last four years bragging how
effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing.''
Indeed, a report that Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN
Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of
financial information that the United States had tapped into.
The system, which handles trillions of dollars in worldwide
transactions each day, serves as a main hub for banks and
other financial institutions that move money around the
world. According to The New York Times, SWIFT executives
agreed to give the Treasury Department and the CIA broad
access to its database.
SWIFT and other worldwide financial clearinghouses ``are
critical to processing international banking transactions and
are rich with payment information,'' according to the 33-page
report by the terrorist monitoring group established by the
UN Security Council in late 2001. ``The United States has
begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify
suspicious transactions. The group recommends the adoption
of similar mechanisms by other countries.''
Some worry that the new disclosures will nonetheless hamper
US counter-terrorism efforts.
``I worked this stuff and I can guarantee that [revealing
the SWIFT] information made a difference,'' said Dennis
Lormel, a retired FBI special agent who helped establish the
bureau's Terrorist Financing Operations Section before
leaving government in 2003. ``The disclosure will have an
adverse impact on investigations. It was used in two specific
instances where it helped to track terrorists. We also used
it for lead value.''
But the White House has also been very public about its
efforts to track the overseas banking transactions of
Americans and other foreign nationals.
Less than two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed an
executive order calling for greater cooperation with foreign
entities to monitor money that might be headed to terrorist
groups. The executive order was posted on the White House
website.
The document called for ``cooperation with, and sharing
information by, United States and foreign financial
institutions as an additional tool to enable the United
States to combat the financing of terrorism.''
Richard Newcomb, the head of the Treasury Department's
Office of Foreign Asset Control at the time, later publicly
credited the president for enabling US law enforcement and
intelligence agencies to nab suspected terrorists, including
followers of ``Hambali,'' Al Qaeda's leader in Southeast
Asia. The New York Times report said Hambali's capture in
2003 came with the aid of information gleaned from SWIFT.
Administration officials have said this week that the
disclosure of such details were particularly damaging to US
security.
Nevertheless, in July 2003--a month before Hambali was
captured--Newcomb told the Senate Government Affairs
Committee in detail about a program initiated after 9/11
between his office and the Pentagon to track Hambali's
financial network in Southeast Asia. The scope of the project
included Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore,
focusing on the finances of Jemaa Islamiyah, the Al Qaeda
group run by Hambali that was responsible for deadly bombings
in Bali in 2002.
He said the operation ``identified the key leaders, fund-
raisers, businessmen, recruiters, companies, charities,
mosques, and schools that were part of [Jamaa Islamiyah]
support network. Thus far, we have imposed sanctions against
two of these key nodes, and are coordinating action against
several others,'' Newcomb told the committee.
Other public documents have also detailed post-9/11 efforts
to follow terrorist money.
The Patriot Act approved by Congress after the attacks
emphasized providing new authorities for the Bush
administration to track and choke off terrorist funds around
the world. One part of the act, dealing specifically with
terrorist money, was described by the Treasury Department as
the most ``significant [anti-money-laundering] law'' since a
1970 law requiring banks to report cash transactions over
$10,000.
That section of the Patriot Act required the Bush
administration to ``adopt regulations to encourage further
cooperation among financial institutions, their regulatory
authorities, and law enforcement authorities'' to track
terrorist-related money laundering.
In testimony before Congress in early 2002, Juan C. Zarate,
deputy assistant Treasury secretary in charge of terrorism
and violent crime, discussed how the global exchange of
information was a key element in choking off their source of
funds.
He cited a special international meeting hosted a month
after the attacks by the International Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network, ``to eliminate existing impediments to
exchanging information'' between financial institutions and
to find solutions to the challenges of tracking terrorist
funds.
Mr. SESSIONS. Well, we just heard it. It's okay to leak classified
information. New York Times, it's okay. Democrat Party, no problem.
That is what the power of the press should be all about. We need them
now more than ever, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I disagree with that.
Mr. McGOVERN. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SESSIONS. Leaking classified information is wrong.
Mr. McGOVERN. That is not what I said.
Mr. SESSIONS. And the----
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The gentleman from Texas
controls the time.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, we are asking for all Members of Congress
to universally say today we believe the leaking of classified
information is wrong. And that is what we are here for today. I am
disappointed that we have Members of this body that say that is what a
free press is all about, to leak classified information.
Mr. McGOVERN. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SESSIONS. It is a real sad day in this House, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr.
Tiahrt).
Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for
yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, this country is witnessing disgraceful and illegal leaks
of classified programs and processes that have successfully protected
this country from attacks since September 11, 2001.
[[Page H4822]]
The evidence is printed in black and white in our own newspapers.
Revealing those classified programs is very damaging to our Nation and
to the safety and security of our citizens. I believe those reports
revealing successful classified tools to combat terrorism will also
cost millions and millions of dollars as well as the loss of safety. It
is simply wrong. It is illegal.
The gentleman from Ohio pointed out that this is not the first time
leaks have occurred.
{time} 1330
It should be the last. It must be stopped now. In fact, Mr. Speaker,
it is my hope that the Department of Justice will convene a grand jury
and provide immunity to the papers, to the editors and to the reporters
if, and only if, they will reveal their government sources, the real
cause of the leaks. Then I hope we will prosecute them, and I hope that
the judge will hold them in contempt if they fail to produce these
sources.
I believe these government leakers are politically motivated. They
are doing it to embarrass this administration, and this is why the
minority wants to protect them. The leakers were not successful, nor
were the papers. They have not embarrassed this administration, but the
leakers have damaged the security and our relationship with our
partners.
Mr. Speaker, Congress needs to send a strong message condemning these
leaks. We must stop the leakers, the government leakers, because they
jeopardize us all.
Mr. Speaker, I hope we pass this rule and we pass this bill and send
a very strong message that we will not tolerate leaks coming from our
government that harm our citizens.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of clarification, I
yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, for the record, I just want to state that
I deeply resent the gentleman from Texas deliberately mischaracterizing
what I said here on the House floor; and let me repeat for him what I
said: That no one in this House supports the disclosure of classified
information that could endanger the lives of Americans.
I would simply say to the gentleman from Texas that the American
people are sick and tired of the smears that have gone on here. We can
have a debate. You don't need to smear or mischaracterize what I said.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5\1/2\ minutes to
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).
Ms. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York for
yielding me this time and for her leadership on our committee.
Mr. Speaker, today we debate a resolution with far-reaching
implications. It affirms the legal authority for the so-called
Terrorist Finance Tracking program. It would also condemn the
unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Finally, it sets the
expectation that news outlets will yield to the government's decision
whether or not to publish stories with classified information.
A vote in favor of this resolution would affirm each of these points:
Assertions about a classified program that cannot be proved or
disproved with the limited information available; assertions that
implicitly threaten the freedom of press enshrined in our Constitution.
Because of the closed rule, Members are prevented from correcting its
inaccuracies. So if the choice is simply an up-or-down vote, the
resolution must be voted down.
Mr. Speaker, it is unclear how the information disclosed by the Wall
Street Journal and New York Times and several other newspapers around
the country differed from what was already in the public record.
As the Boston Globe documented yesterday, anyone with an Internet
connection could have read the President's executive order authorizing
increased efforts to track terrorist financing.
Public testimony to Congress has described how the administration is
actively utilizing wire transfers and other financial transactions to
track terrorists around the globe. As one former U.S. diplomat noted,
``We have spent the last four years bragging how effective we have been
in tracking terrorist financing.''
Tracking financial transactions is a general principle of
counterterrorism. The question should be the specific ways this
administration uses this tool.
The administration's actions have indicated consistently that, in a
time of war, it is above the law. This raises the concern over how well
we as a Nation strike the balance between security and civil liberty
and how we scrutinize the outcome.
This leads to a second, important point. Consultation and oversight
by the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees is required to
check the potential for abuse of power. It is not clear this happened
as the resolution asserts.
Many Members sitting on those panels do not think the limited
information given to them meets the required threshold of consultation.
Without that, this body cannot judge the program's legal basis, nor
ensure a balance is struck between security and civil liberties.
Notwithstanding information already in the public domain, some
government officials may have disclosed classified information about
this program. As a result, the Director of National Intelligence has
begun a classified investigation. Anyone who leaked this information
should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Recent history is not encouraging, however. Three years ago next
month, classified information was deliberately leaked to the press for
political purposes by one or more senior White House officials. The
intelligence community expressed outrage over the disclosure of Valerie
Plame. A network of U.S. intelligence sources developed over the course
of several decades was endangered.
At no time did the House leadership bring a resolution to the floor
condemning the leak. Every effort by Democrats to investigate the
incident was blocked. While the resolution before us references other
past leaks of classified information by name, it remains silent about
this particular incident.
Mr. Speaker, the fundamental challenge facing our Nation in the
aftermath of 9/11 is how to guarantee the security of our citizens
without sacrificing the fundamental principles upon which this great
Nation is founded. Guaranteeing security is about the end goal.
Guaranteeing those fundamental principles is about how we get there. We
cannot allow either principle to erode, and the wisdom of including
both in our Nation's founding document indicates that our greatest
leaders did not see these ideas as contradictory.
My local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, has an editorial of their own
this morning which speaks to this subject, and I will insert the full
text into the record at the end, but it reads in part, ``The first
amendment's durability rests not only on its text but on a long-
standing unwritten bargain between government and the press that both
will do their best to avoid straying over that line.''
I could not agree more. I urge my colleagues to reject this rule and
the underlying resolution.
Editorial: Who's Overreaching?
President Bush has condemned as ``disgraceful'' several
newspapers'' reports about a government program that monitors
international financial transactions. Some congressional
Republicans go further: Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky accused
the New York Times of ``treason'' and Senate Intelligence
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas wants intelligence
agencies to assess the extent of damage to national security.
What's ironic about this is, first, that the news reports,
while they added much detail, merely described a program
that's been no secret to anyone who has followed the
administration's anti-terrorist efforts. And if there's any
investigative tool that most Americans would probably agree
is a proper one, it's tracking suspected terrorist finances.
A major component of that tool has been a Belgium-based
database called SWIFT--Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication--that tracks millions of
financial' transfers, many of them between this country and
others. SWIFT serves as a clearinghouse for financial
institutions worldwide. The president was infuriated because,
he said, disclosure of the program to tap into SWIFT's
database ``does great harm to . . . America'' by tipping off
suspects.
That's debatable.
Amid the hue and cry from the White House and Capitol Hill,
less fevered voices
[[Page H4823]]
tried to put things in perspective. Roger Cressey, a former
U.S. counterterrorism official, said the White House is
``overreaching,'' that the SWIFT program ``has been in the
public domain before.'' And a former U.S. diplomat, Victor
Comras, who was involved at the United Nations in efforts to
combat terrorist financing, told the Boston Globe: ``A lot of
people were aware that this was going on,'' and that ``unless
they [terrorists] were pretty dumb, they had to assume''
their transactions were being monitored.
That makes sense. And so do the frenzied calls to crack
down on the news media, at least in a politically partisan
sense.
Never mind that some members of Congress had been briefed
on the program and that all Americans have known for years
about the Government's efforts to uncover terrorist financial
movements and seize assets.
This issue provides a convenient campaign weapon for
supporters of the Bush administration to use against ``soft-
on-terrorism'' officeholders, especially Democrats, and
against critics in the news media. All of the frothing in
Washington raises the possibility that some in Congress will
seek to muzzle the press with legislation, subpoenas or other
means of intimidation. The long-term effects of such actions
might stifle the free flow of information in a society that
treasures it, but whose current administration not only has
an overdeveloped passion for secrecy but has used that
secrecy to cover an array of abuses, including the abuse of
people in U.S. custody, some of whom turned out to be
innocent.
Such actions have tarnished America's reputation and
subverted its values. They deserve to be held up to the light
of day, no matter how unflattering the result may be to those
now in power.
The line between what's fair to publish and what might hurt
national security is a blurry one. The First Amendment's
durability rests not only on its text, but on a long-standing
unwritten bargain between government and the press that both
will do their best to avoid straying over that line. The
burden is on an administration that has gone much too far in
the name of national security to show that news organizations
have done the same in the name of press freedom. That's not
evident.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Michigan (Mrs. Miller).
Mrs. MILLER of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding.
Mr. Speaker, following the absolutely horrific attacks on our Nation
of 9/11, the news media condemned our government for not connecting the
dots on how we could have prevented those attacks. We have had
government employees who spoke of their inability to gather necessary
information or to share that information with others in government.
The 9/11 Commission stated the need to be more aggressive in
gathering information on those who seek to murder our fellow citizens.
To address this problem, Congress authorized the administration to take
all appropriate measures to track down the terrorists; and the
administration has done so, with the appropriate oversight by our
Intelligence Committees.
But now some in government service who have been entrusted with Top
Secret classified information have repeatedly taken it upon themselves
to illegally leak those secrets; and they have leaked those secrets to
a news media, some of them all too willing to give our playbook to the
enemy, giving them the opportunity to adapt and to evade, the same news
media that had previously condemned our government's inability to
uncover terrorist plots.
By illegally leaking and irresponsibly publishing our secrets, the
lives of our fellow citizens, our fellow Americans and our brave men
and women in uniform who defend our freedom are endangered.
It is certainly disappointing, but not surprising, that my colleagues
on the Democratic side see this issue in light of how it might be used
to their political advantage, rather than wondering how it might
seriously undermine our national security.
I would urge my colleagues to send a very strong message that this
Congress will not stand idly by while loose lips are allowed to cost
innocent lives.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 6 minutes to the
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings).
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member
Slaughter for your extraordinary leadership on not just this subject
but countless subjects dealing with the liberties of American citizens.
Last night in the Rules Committee, Ms. Slaughter said that this was
an historic moment. I could not agree more with that fact.
This does not call for hyperbole or hyperventilation or fancy
rhetorical flourishes. This particular measure has the weight that must
have existed at the time that the Founding Fathers and Mothers of this
country gave birth to the first amendment of the United States
Constitution.
If there had been no reporting in the free press during the period of
the colonies as to what King George and those persons were doing, there
may never have been an American Revolution.
Almost exactly 35 years ago, the eminent Mr. Justice Potter Stewart
in the Pentagon Papers said this: ``In the absence of the governmental
checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the
only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas
of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened
citizenry, in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can
here protect the values of democratic government,'' he wrote.
He continued, ``For this reason, it is perhaps here that a press that
is alert, aware, and free most vitally serves the basic purpose of the
first amendment. For without an informed and free press, there cannot
be an enlightened people.''
I have had the distinct privilege of being the president of an
international organization, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, its parliamentary assembly that Ms. Slaughter
and others are members of as well; and during that period I was the
lead election monitor in places where democracy is trying to find root
but in places where journalists courageously went forward to offer
information that should be offered against those administrations,
Belarus being an example of that, where there is no free press and
where the people cannot rise up, as they did in Ukraine where the press
played a major role.
I believe this administration operates on the premise the best
defense is a good offense. It is never any accountability with them. It
is always somebody else did something. A guy lost his election to one
of our distinguished colleagues from Utah last week. He said the devil
was the reason that he did not have his campaign money. Maybe it is the
devil that makes them do this.
We have flag burning proposals for constitutional amendment. We have
gay marriage proposals for constitutional amendment. Yet when it comes
to the basic freedom and liberty of this country, the press, we are
presented with a resolution that condemns them. That is all it does. It
does not sanction. It condemns them.
It is our opportunity to vent and say little things about The New
York Times. Please add The Washington Times. Please add The Wall Street
Journal. Please add other media entities that have reported along these
lines.
I do not believe in what Fox News says, but I believe, and I do, for
their right to say it.
You know better than to seek to amend the first amendment, and let us
look at this resolution.
{time} 1345
It is factually inaccurate when you say, ``Whereas appropriate
Members of Congress, including the members of the Committee on
Intelligence of the Senate and House of Representatives.'' I am a
member of that committee. You say that they were briefed, and I am here
to tell you that every member of that committee was not briefed on this
particular program.
But I want you to listen to Ben Franklin. I want all of you to listen
to Ben Franklin. He said, ``Those who would give up essential liberty
to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety.''
Find all of the leakers, prosecute them, put them in jail, but let a
free press stand in this Nation.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, last night at the Rules Committee we had
an opportunity to digest a lot of information about this, not only
about the program but also about, theoretically, who knew what, where,
and when. It is my understanding that every single member of the
Intelligence House Committee received an invitation to attend a
briefing. That is not an indication that every single member attended
that open invitation.
I would allow the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, the
gentleman
[[Page H4824]]
from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), 1 minute.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for yielding. I have got the list
of who was briefed, when they were briefed. The first briefing of the
Intelligence Committee goes back to March of 2002, where the chairman
and then the former ranking member of the committee were briefed. I
have the briefing dates for Members, of when members of the committee
were briefed. I have the dates for when the staff was briefed on the
HPSCI Committee.
Staff was briefed as early as March of 2002. Staff was briefed in
2003, 2005, 2005, 2006, 2006, and 2006.
Alcee, these records indicate that you also had the opportunity and
you were at a briefing session on this program.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Is the gentleman referring to the financial
services program, as offered?
Mr. HOEKSTRA. On the financial services program, that is correct.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I would like to see that exact date, and I
am here to tell you that we didn't receive such a briefing. And if you
can tell me that this resolution holds that every member was briefed, I
am here to tell you that that is not true.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman
from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the chairman
of the Financial Services Committee, asked us to say where we disagree
with this resolution. I would be glad to tell you that.
This resolution makes factual assertions that I do not believe any
Member of the House can confidently and honestly make, and certainly
not more than four or five could even pretend.
It says, for example, in the resolved clause that we know, those of
us who would be voting for this, as a fact ``that the program has been
conducted in accordance with all applicable laws, regulations, and
executive orders; that appropriate safeguards have been used and been
instituted to protect individuals' civil liberties.''
I don't believe any Member knows that. Maybe one or two will claim
that. Do Members feel free to vote for things and say they know things
which they don't?
It is also true in the whereases: ``Whereas the terrorist finance
program consists of the appropriate and limited use of transaction
information while maintaining respect for individual privacy.''
That may or may not be the case, but Members here don't know it. And
let me talk about briefings, by the way. I am the senior Democrat on
Financial Services, and I have been for 3\1/2\ years. I was, about a
month ago, asked to a briefing. I was asked to a briefing and told that
this was about to be made public and, therefore, they were going to
brief me. But that if I listened to the briefing, when it was made
public I couldn't talk about it.
Yes, I did not accept that briefing. It was a briefing only because
it was about to be made public, and then I could not talk about it. But
even if I had had the briefing, I do not believe I could in good
conscience say these things.
Now, there are Members here who may have such faith in their
administration that they will claim to say things which I know they
don't know. Yes, faith-based programs are very useful, but I don't
think faith-based resolutions do our job.
So I don't know that these things are wrong, but I disagree with
making factual assertions about the program that may not be correct.
There is another factual assertion that may not be correct. And I
know there has been a lot of concern about the Times. In the Republican
majority's resolution there is an attack on the Times. It doesn't
mention them. Quite sensitively, it doesn't mention the Times, but it
talks about one of the most damaging allegations I have seen about a
leak.
It says, on the bottom of page 2: ``In 1998, disclosure of classified
information regarding efforts to monitor the communication of Osama bin
Laden eliminated a valuable source of intelligence information on al
Qaeda's activities.'' Now, that is a serious accusation to make against
the Times. It is, of course, the Washington Times. Somehow, that
adjective sort of disappeared.
There has been a lot of talk about the New York Times. It is the
Washington Times who is referred to in your own resolution, Mr.
Speaker, as having done a far more damaging specific thing. But the
Washington Post came to the defense of the Washington Times and said,
no, that was already known. Well, that is in controversy.
I am not prepared to vote for the resolution which accuses and
convicts the Washington Times of having foiled our efforts to find
Osama bin Laden when I don't know that as a fact. The Washington Post
says it is unfair to the Washington Times.
You may be prepared, Mr. Speaker, to condemn the Washington Times so
clearly for undermining our efforts to find Osama bin Laden. I am not.
But we are only here partly about the specifics. This is an outrage,
the procedure. I do not understand how Members can hold up their heads
when they advocate this.
Well over half of the Democratic Members saw this resolution for the
first time at 4:15. There was no consultation about the draft. It was
drafted entirely in a partisan way. We looked at it and said, we agree
with some of it and not others. Yes, I think almost all Democrats agree
that we should track the financial doings.
We have a resolution which takes much of the language from the
Republican resolution and says that. It says we are in favor of
tracking things, and we condemn leaks. We think it is wrong for people
to leak. So we would like to have that in there. But we don't want to
have to say, at the same time, that the Bush administration has done
everything perfectly. We don't want to make some of the criticisms of
the media that you make, including this denunciation of the Washington
Times.
We are asking for a chance, in a democracy, to put forward our
resolution where we could make clear that we disagree with some of the
leaking; where we make clear that we think you should track the
financial records of the terrorists; but we do not want to have to say
that we also agree with the administration. That would seem to me a
reasonable choice.
Mr. Speaker, to the discredit of the Republican Party, you have
denied us that choice. This is not democracy, this is plebiscitary
democracy. You demand a ``yes'' or ``no.'' Mubarak and Peron and Hugo
Chavez would be proud of your understanding of the democratic process.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, you know, we do talk about disclosure,
unauthorized disclosure of information. But I fail to see where this
resolution talks about any newspaper where we mention them. We
intentionally chose not to do that because that is not what the
resolution is about today, Mr. Speaker.
Time after time we have heard our Democrat colleagues mention
newspapers by name. That is not what this was about. We are simply
trying to say that we believe that information that is considered
private, sensitive, and that should not be disclosed should not be
done.
It would be very simple for us to understand that the President may
say, you know, we have spies that work for the United States, but if he
disclosed who they were, what they did, how they went about doing their
business, where they were located, who they came into contact with and
their MO about how they did things, that clearly would be something
that would be out of order.
So I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, we intentionally have not tried to
chastise anyone. We are simply saying we believe the unauthorized
disclosure should not be revealed.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr.
McCotter).
Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, once again, the Nation finds itself
engaged in a world war against abject evil. And in the process, it is
always wise to look back to the last world war against abject evil, one
which was led by the greatest Democratic President, one of the greatest
Presidents ever, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
[[Page H4825]]
We must learn not only from the past how to win this struggle but we
must look to the past to see that we do not repeat some of the mistakes
that were made by the government at the time, most notably the
internment of our fellow citizens of Japanese descent in internment
camps.
In that process, I do believe that the press has an invaluable role.
It has an invaluable role as a watchdog of democracy and liberty, and
it has an expressed constitutional right to do so. What this resolution
I believe would help to do, however, is to rectify the current mistake
that is being made in a time of war, whereas classified information is
being broadcast on the basis of potential abuse rather than actual
abuse.
I think that we must further that debate and come back to the
realization that potential abuse is a very nebulous standard and which,
fortunately, was not applied in World War II to classified information,
or there would have been no Manhattan Project.
Further, I think it is also wise to look back at the relationship
between the government and the press at the time of World War II.
President Roosevelt was fond of bringing reporters into his office, and
he would engage in off-the-record conversations with them so that they
were aware that he trusted them and that then he could reciprocate that
trust to the reporters.
At one point, some of the off-the-record briefing appeared in a
column in a paper. At the next meeting of the assembled press in the
Oval Office, Franklin Roosevelt gave that reporter a gift. It was an
iron cross.
Mr. Speaker, I urge that we support this rule, this resolution, and
that we all continue to encourage the debate where the differentiation
between potential abuse and actual abuse and the Nation's interest in
the defense of our citizens' lives is ever remembered.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield for a unanimous consent request
to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).
(Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I wish to state for the record my objection
to the Republicans' refusal to be indignant about the outing of a spy
by the administration.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield for a unanimous consent request to the
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).
(Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to
revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to
the rule and this measure.
Mr. Speaker, today the House will vote on a resolution that is
allegedly intended to reaffirm Congress's support for stemming the flow
of money to terrorists. I support efforts by this Administration to cut
the financial supply lines to terrorists.
But the resolution before us today is really just an open-faced
attack on America's free press for telling the American people what its
government is doing.
After 9/11, the Bush Administration announced that one of the ways it
would go after terrorists was by cutting off their funding sources. A
major part of this effort has been monitoring suspect international
financial transactions.
I believe that, at the time, this was the correct decision. We can
and must do everything we legally can to protect the country from those
who wish to bring us harm.
The Administration's efforts to monitor financial transactions have
been a frequent topic of public discussion: By members of the
Administration; in open, on the record Congressional testimony; and in
the United Nations.
However, to date, I am not aware of any harsh recriminations from the
President or Republicans in Congress as a result of any of these
discussions over the last few years.
But now that the program has been discussed in the New York Times and
other newspapers, the radical right wing Republican enemies of a free
press in America have come out swinging--again.
Congress had a choice when the NY Times reported on the SWIFT
program. It could have announced hearings on the effectiveness of the
SWIFT program and on the impact of public reporting on the SWIFT
program. But it did not do that.
This extremist Congress instead has chosen a different, but very
familiar, path--a partisan political attack for which it has become
famous.
The Bush Administration and this republican-controlled Congress
represent the most partisan and most anti-free press Republican party
this nation has seen since the days of Richard Nixon and his infamous
`enemies list.'
The fact remains that this president and this Republican Congress
wants to manipulate the press to its advantage through the use of
covert propaganda and through lying about intelligence and other
matters, but it wants to curb the press's role in communicating to the
American people information about the actions of its government.
That sounds more like the Soviet Union before the wall came down than
the America that I know and love and whose freedom, and free press, is
so revered around the world.
The fact is that the party in control of this Congress is out of gas
when it comes to leading, they are out of gas when it comes to big bold
new ideas to re-energize America.
They have resorted, nearly every day now, to their tired old whipping
posts, including the free press, in a desperate effort to hold on to
their power, an awesome power that they have failed to use to help
America.
As this bill's sponsor, Mr. Oxley, so wisely stated earlier, we do
need accountability in Government.
The President promised to hold those accountable in his
Administration involved in leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent
to the press. He has yet to do that. Instead he and his rubberstamp
Congress choose to go after leaked information only when it suits their
political agenda.
We have yet to hold anyone accountable for the falsified intelligence
about Weapons of Mass Destruction. Instead we get the rubberstamp
Congress's version of a weapon of Mass Distraction just in time for the
November elections.
This Congress has not held anyone accountable for pulling military
resources away from Afghanistan to prepare for the unjustified war and
occupation of Iraq, which allowed Osama bin Laden to escape capture.
If only the Administration and its Republican allies in Congress were
as aggressive in attacking Osama bin Laden as they are when attacking
the press, we might be safer as a nation.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 2
minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Feeney).
Mr. FEENEY. I thank my friend from Texas, and I do want to make a few
points here today.
One thing you have to give my Democratic friends credit for is their
consistency on the war on terror. They have been consistently mad. They
were mad we didn't do more surveillance-wise before 9/11 to stop that
attack; and they have been mad that we have done too much surveillance
since 9/11, which has helped successfully stop another attack,
including attacks in Toronto and New York most recently.
But I rise here today to talk about the resolution itself. What this
resolution does basically is to tell you, if you operate a flight
school and you have reason to believe that the people learning to fly
planes want to fly planes into American buildings to kill Americans,
you shouldn't warn your students that they may be under surveillance.
You should tell the FBI.
This resolution sends a message to all the people that operate hotels
that if you are having people stay with you, paying you rent, and you
have reason to believe they are putting together an attack on American
civilians, you shouldn't warn them that they may be under surveillance.
You should tell the FBI.
If you are a chemistry professor and you have reason to believe that
a student is putting together weapons of mass destruction, like
biological or chemical weapons, you shouldn't warn your student that
they may be subject to surveillance. You should tell the FBI.
If you are an American banker and you have reason to believe that
your client is depositing money to fund terrorist activities, you
shouldn't warn your client that the American Government may be watching
you. You should tell the FBI.
And, yes, it does tell American newspapers that if you are loyal, you
should not deliberately give sensitive and secret information to the
entire world of people that want to do us harm.
Finally, it says to every employee of the United States Government
that if you deliberately leak sensitive information that you have
access to that you may have committed treason and you may be a traitor.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve.
[[Page H4826]]
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 2
minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).
{time} 1400
Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I think it would be instructive for all of
our colleagues to let me read briefly the synopsis of this resolution:
Supporting intelligence and law enforcement programs to track
terrorists and terrorist finances conducted consistent with Federal law
and with appropriate Congressional consultation, as we heard from
Chairman Hoekstra a minute ago, and specifically condemning the
disclosure and publication of classified information that impairs the
international fight against terrorism and needlessly exposes Americans
to the threat of further terror attacks by revealing a crucial method
by which terrorists are traced through their finances.
Mr. Speaker, we heard a little while ago from the gentleman, the very
intelligent gentleman from Massachusetts, that resolved number 2 he had
some concerns about. Resolved number 2 basically says, finds that the
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has been conducted in accordance
with all applicable law, regulations and executive orders, that
appropriate safeguards and reviews have been instituted to protect
individuals' civil liberties.
He is concerned about that. I grant him that concern. I am not
concerned about it. I am sure if he votes against this rule or against
the resolution, he can explain this to the people of Massachusetts.
Mr. Speaker, I can explain also my support to the people in the 11th
District of Georgia because, mainly, of resolved number 4, and this is
it. It expects the cooperation of all news media organizations in
protecting the lives of Americans and the capability of the government
to identify, disrupt and capture terrorists by not disclosing
classified intelligence programs leaked to them, such as the Terrorist
Finance Tracking Program.
I don't care who it is, Mr. Chairman, of what political party or who
they work for. If they are leaking information and putting our men and
women who are doing the fighting and dying for us, putting their lives
in danger, then we need to out them and prosecute them. The media, and
we are not naming names with regard to whether it is The Washington
Post or New York Times, needs to show some responsibility.
Support the rule and the underlying resolution.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire if my colleague has more
requests for time?
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, we are through with all of our speakers
that we might have. We will then wait for the gentlewoman from New York
to close, and then we will do so.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I will be asking Members to vote ``no''
on the previous question so that I can amend the rule to allow the
House to consider a resolution introduced by Financial Services Ranking
Member Barney Frank instead of the press-bashing resolution made in
order under this rule.
I ask unanimous consent to print the text of the amendment and a
description immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from New York?
There was no objection.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, the Frank substitute resolution expresses
Congress' support for intelligence and law enforcement programs that
track terrorists and terrorist finances and are conducted consistent
with Federal law and with appropriate Congressional consultation.
Vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can consider this
resolution instead of H. Res. 896. Again, vote ``no'' on the previous
question.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield all time remaining
to the Chairman of the Rules Committee, the gentleman from California
(Mr. Dreier).
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, the day after President Bush gave his
stirring address right here to a joint session of Congress on September
20, 2001, The New York Times editorialized, and I quote, what promises
to be a long and painful fight against a ruthless enemy.
Mr. Speaker, this was true then, and it remains true today. So it
goes without saying that any information and any intelligence exposed
to the enemy directly hinders our prosecution of the war and directly
threatens the safety of Americans. By relying on illegal leaks of
classified information to publish the details of our government's
program to track terrorist financing, some of our country's biggest
newspapers, led by The New York Times, have imposed their
interpretation of the, quote-unquote, public interest on a public whom
I am confident to say would much rather be safe than be all-knowing.
Let us be clear, those very newspapers that spilled barrels of ink
about the government not connecting the dots before September 11, 2001,
are now making it much harder to collect, much less connect, the dots
today.
Mr. Speaker, by all accounts, this was a legal, effective and narrow
program that nabbed high-value terrorists. There were no reported
abuses by the program, and there was no compelling reason to publish
it, which is cause for serious concern. If officials leak information
on programs such as this and newspapers print it, what won't be leaked
and what won't be printed?
The case was made to newspapers by Democrats, Republicans, and people
inside and outside of the administration that publication of this story
would expose a critical program.
Our former colleague, Lee Hamilton, and his cochairman of the 9/11
Commission, Tom Kean, were very clear. They were among those people who
made the case. Mr. Kean said in an interview with Byron York, there are
a number of programs which we are using to try to disrupt terrorist
activities, and you never know which one is going to be successful. We
knew that this one already had been.
Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely critical that we send this very strong
message that this behavior cannot continue.
The material previously referred to by Ms. Slaughter is as follows:
Previous Question for H. Res. 896, Rule for H. Res. 895:
Supporting intelligence and law enforcement programs to track
terrorists and terrorist finances conducted consistent with
Federal law and with appropriate Congressional consultation
and specifically condemning the disclosure and publication of
classified information that impairs the international fight
against terrorism and needlessly exposes Americans to the
threat of further terror attacks by revealing a crucial
method by which terrorists are traced through their finance.
Strike all after the resolved clause and insert in lieu
thereof the following:
Resolved, That upon the adoption of this resolution it
shall be in order without intervention of any point of order
to consider in the House the resolution (H. Res. 900)
supporting intelligence and law enforcement programs to track
terrorists and terrorist finances conducted consistent with
Federal law and with appropriate congressional consultation.
The resolution shall be considered as read. The previous
question shall be considered as ordered on the resolution and
preamble to final adoption without intervening motion or
demand for division of the question except: (1) one hour of
debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and
ranking minority member of the Committee on Financial
Services; and (2) one motion to recommit which may not be
instructions.
____
The Vote on the Previous Question: What It Really Means
This vote, the vote on whether to order the previous
question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote.
A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote
against the Republican majority agenda and a vote to allow
the opposition, at least for the moment, to offer an
alternative plan. It is a vote about what the House should be
debating.
Mr. Clarence Cannon's Precedents of the House of
Representatives, (VI, 308-311) describes the vote on the
previous question on the rule as ``a motion to direct or
control the consideration of the subject before the House
being made by the Member in charge.'' To defeat the previous
question is to give the opposition a chance to decide the
subject before the House. Cannon cites the Speaker's ruling
of January 13, 1920, to the effect that ``the refusal of the
House to sustain the demand for the previous question passes
the control of the resolution to the opposition'' in order to
offer an amendment. On March 15, 1909, a member of the
majority party offered a rule resolution. The House defeated
the previous question and a member of the opposition rose to
a parliamentary inquiry, asking who was entitled to
recognition. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-Illinois) said:
``The previous question having been refused,
[[Page H4827]]
the gentleman from New York, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had asked
the gentleman to yield to him for an amendment, is entitled
to the first recognition.''
Because the vote today may look bad for the Republican
majority they will say ``the vote on the previous question is
simply a vote on whether to proceed to an immediate vote on
adopting the resolution * * * [and] has no substantive
legislative or policy implications whatsoever.'' But that is
not what they have always said. Listen to the Republican
Leadership Manual on the Legislative Process in the United
States House of Representatives, (6th edition, page 135).
Here's how the Republicans describe the previous question
vote in their own manual: Although it is generally not
possible to amend the rule because the majority Member
controlling the time will not yield for the purpose of
offering an amendment, the same result may be achieved by
voting down the previous question on the rule * * * When the
motion for the previous question is defeated, control of the
time passes to the Member who led the opposition to ordering
the previous question. That Member, because he then controls
the time, may offer an amendment to the rule, or yield for
the purpose of amendment.''
Deschler's Procedure in the U.S. House of Representatives,
the subchapter titled ``Amending Special Rules'' states: ``a
refusal to order the previous question on such a rule [a
special rule reported from the Committee on Rules] opens the
resolution to amendment and further debate.'' (Chapter 21,
section 21.2) Section 21.3 continues: Upon rejection of the
motion for the previous question on a resolution reported
from the Committee on Rules, control shifts to the Member
leading the opposition to the previous question, who may
offer a proper amendment or motion and who controls the time
for debate thereon.''
Clearly, the vote on the previous question on a rule does
have substantive policy implications. It is one of the only
available tools for those who oppose the Republican
majority's agenda to offer an alternative plan.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I move the previous question on the
resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous
question.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this question will be postponed.
____________________
Congressional Record: June 29, 2006 (House)
Page H4875-H4890
SUPPORTING INTELLIGENCE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PROGRAMS TO TRACK
TERRORISTS AND TERRORIST FINANCES
Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 896, I call up
the resolution (H. Res. 895) supporting intelligence and law
enforcement programs to track terrorists and terrorist finances
conducted consistent with Federal law and with appropriate
Congressional consultation and specifically condemning the disclosure
and publication of classified information that impairs the
international fight against terrorism and needlessly exposes Americans
to the threat of further terror attacks by revealing a crucial method
by which terrorists are traced through their finances, and ask for its
immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
The text of the resolution is as follows:
H. Res. 895
Whereas the United States is currently engaged in a global
war on terrorism to prevent future attacks against American
civilian and military interests at home and abroad;
Whereas intelligence programs are essential to gathering
critical information necessary for identifying, disrupting,
and capturing terrorists before they carry out further
attacks;
Whereas there is a national security imperative for
maintaining the secrecy of our intelligence capabilities from
our potential enemies;
Whereas effective intelligence depends on cooperation with
foreign governments and individuals who trust the United
States to protect their confidences;
Whereas the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of
the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction found
that ``the scope of damage done to our collection
capabilities from media disclosures of classified information
is well documented. Hundreds of serious press leaks have
significantly impaired U.S. capabilities against our hardest
targets'';
Whereas the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive
intelligence information inflicts significant damage to
United States activities in the global war on terrorism by
assisting terrorists in developing countermeasures to evade
United States intelligence capabilities, costs the United
States taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost
capabilities, and ultimately endangers American lives;
Whereas the 1998 disclosure of classified information
regarding efforts to monitor the communications of Usama bin
Laden eliminated a valuable source of intelligence
information on al Qaeda's activities, an example of the
significant damage caused by unauthorized disclosures;
Whereas following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,
Congress passed the USA PATRIOT ACT, which included anti-
terrorist financing provisions that bolster Federal
Government and law enforcement capabilities to find and
disrupt the financiers of terrorist organizations;
Whereas following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,
the President, with the support of Congress, directed the
Federal Government to use all appropriate measures to
identify, track, and pursue not only those persons who commit
terrorist acts here and abroad, but also those who provide
financial or other support for terrorist activity;
Whereas consistent with this directive, the United States
Government initiated a lawfully classified Terrorist Finance
Tracking Program and the Secretary of the Treasury issued
lawful subpoenas to gather information on suspected
international terrorists through bank transaction
information;
Whereas under the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, the
United States Government only reviews information as part of
specific terrorism investigations and based on intelligence
that leads to targeted searches, such as searches of a
specific individual or entity;
Whereas the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is firmly
rooted in sound legal authority based on Executive Orders and
statutory mandates, including the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act of 1977 and the United Nations
Participation Act;
Whereas the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program consists of
the appropriate and limited use of transaction information
while maintaining respect for individual privacy;
Whereas the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has rigorous
safeguards and protocols to protect privacy in that record
searches must identify a terrorism-related basis, and
regular, independent audits of the program have confirmed
that the United States Government has consistently observed
the established safeguards and protocols;
Whereas appropriate Members of Congress, including the
members of the Committees on Intelligence of the Senate and
House of Representatives, have been briefed on the Terrorist
Finance Tracking Program and have conducted oversight of the
Program;
Whereas the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has
successfully provided vital intelligence in support of the
global war on terrorism, including information leading to the
capture of Hambali, the Operations Chief of Jemaah Islamiyah,
an al Qaeda affiliate, who masterminded the 2002 nightclub
bombing in Indonesia that killed over 200 people;
Whereas the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has helped
authorities uncover terrorist financiers worldwide and find
Uzair Paracha, an al Qaeda money launderer operating in the
United States;
Whereas Congress has authorized the Secretary of the
Treasury to explore the implementation of systems to review
all cross-border wire transactions;
Whereas the bipartisan 9/11 Commission recommended that
``Vigorous efforts to track terrorist financing must remain
front and center in U.S. counterterrorism efforts'';
Whereas persons in positions of trust and responsibility
granted access to highly sensitive intelligence programs
violated their solemn obligations not to disclose classified
information and made unauthorized disclosures regarding the
program;
Whereas at some point before June 23, 2006, classified
information regarding the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
was illegally and improperly disclosed to members of the news
media;
[[Page H4876]]
Whereas beginning on June 23, 2006, certain media
organizations knowingly published details about a classified
program that the United States Government had legally and
with appropriate safeguards used to track the financing of
terrorism, including specific intelligence gathering methods;
Whereas the Administration, Members of Congress, and the
bipartisan chairmen of the 9/11 Commission requested that
media organizations not disclose details of the Terrorist
Finance Tracking Program so that terrorists would not shift
their financing to channels in the international financial
system that are less easily observed by intelligence
agencies;
Whereas the disclosure of the Terrorist Finance Tracking
Program has unnecessarily complicated efforts by the United
States Government to prosecute the war on terror and may have
placed the lives of Americans in danger both at home and in
many regions of the world, including active-duty armed forces
in Iraq and Afghanistan;
Whereas persons who have access to classified information,
or who have classified information passed onto them, have a
responsibility to the people of the United States not to
endanger the populace through their exercise of the right to
freedom of speech; and
Whereas Federal statutes criminalize the unauthorized
disclosure and publication of sensitive intelligence
information, regardless of the source: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) supports efforts to identify, track, and pursue
suspected foreign terrorists and their financial supporters
by tracking terrorist money flows and uncovering terrorist
networks here and abroad, including through the use of the
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program;
(2) finds that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has
been conducted in accordance with all applicable laws,
regulations, and Executive Orders, that appropriate
safeguards and reviews have been instituted to protect
individual civil liberties, and that Congress has been
appropriately informed and consulted for the duration of the
Program and will continue its oversight of the Program;
(3) condemns the unauthorized disclosure of classified
information by those persons responsible and expresses
concern that the disclosure may endanger the lives of
American citizens, including members of the Armed Forces, as
well as individuals and organizations that support United
States efforts; and
(4) expects the cooperation of all news media organizations
in protecting the lives of Americans and the capability of
the government to identify, disrupt, and capture terrorists
by not disclosing classified intelligence programs such as
the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.
{time} 1715
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 896, the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley) and the gentleman from Massachusetts
(Mr. Frank) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 6 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, today I am proud to present to the House for our
consideration H. Res. 895, a resolution that expresses the sense of the
House supporting intelligence and law enforcement programs that track
terrorists and terrorist financing. Additionally, the resolution finds
that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was conducted lawfully and
with all due protections of civil liberties. The resolution condemns
the unauthorized disclosure of classified information and states that
the House expects the cooperation of news media organizations in these
matters.
Mr. Speaker, this is a resolution that every Member can and should
support. We are at war. Thanks to the great job being done by our
members of the U.S. military and law enforcement, Americans feel safe
to go about their daily lives, but we are still in fact at war. We
depend on classified programs and classified information in order to
successfully prosecute that war.
While there is the physical war that is being fought, of course
another critical front in this war is terrorist financing, and that is
where we focus our debate today. It is critical, because where
terrorists place and spend their money is one of the best indicators
about where the terrorists are located, who they are, and where they
may strike again.
The editors at the New York Times would do well to reread the
editorial they published on September 24 about 2 weeks after September
11, 2001. In part, it reads: ``The Bush administration is preparing new
laws to help track terrorists through their money laundering activity
and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known
terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the
recruitment of specialized investigators, and greater cooperation with
foreign banking authorities.'' The editorial concludes, ``If America is
going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all
fronts, including the financial one.''
All of that activity that was recommended by the New York Times so
soon after 9/11 was taking place and was being done with an
extraordinary amount of international financial cooperation by the U.S.
Treasury and its Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. The program was
being conducted in accordance with current U.S. and international law,
with executive orders, with outside audits, and with all proper care
being given to individual liberty. I need to add that it was also being
conducted with significant success.
And part of that success was because this Congress passed the PATRIOT
Act and our committee stepped forward with antimoney-laundering
provisions that became a part of that PATRIOT Act, so important on the
war against terror.
However, the recent front-page story in the aforementioned New York
Times cut the legs out from under this program. Now the terrorists are
well informed of the details of our methods and will find other ways to
move money outside of the formal financial system. Now the terrorists
will be driven further underground, and we will have to invest further
years of work to uncover these new methods.
Unfortunately, a one-day story in the New York Times can ruin years
of careful work by those who work to map terrorist networks and the
flow of terrorist money. Obviously, the editors of the New York Times
are more concerned about their sagging circulation rates and about
damaging the Bush administration than they are about disrupting
terrorist financing.
For those who may think we are overreacting, all you have to do is go
back just a few days to the arrest of the seven terrorist suspects in
Miami. That cell was looking to gain funding from al Qaeda to attack
American targets. While law enforcement successfully broke that cell in
plenty of time, we need to know about financial transactions like those
while the attacks are in the planning stage.
In a recent column, Morton Kondracke asked the question: ``Would
newspapers in the midst of World War II have printed the fact that the
U.S. had broken German and Japanese codes, enabling the enemy to secure
its communications? Or would they have revealed how and where Nazi
spies were being interrogated? Nowadays, newspapers win Pulitzer Prizes
for such disclosures.''
In the same column, Kondracke says: ``But the fundamental problem
infecting much of Congress, the media, and the political class,
especially those left of center, is that they are consumed with
loathing for President Bush and all his works and are prepared to do
anything to undermine him, even if it makes the country less safe.''
Continuing to quote Kondracke: ``Everyone in Congress and the CIA
should see the movie `United 93' as a reminder of what we are up
against. Muslim fanatics will not only try to destroy the Capitol, but
also explode a nuclear bomb, if they can.''
Kondracke goes on: ``And people should heed the warning delivered by
Princeton University Professor Bernard Lewis. Lewis cast the struggle
with Islamic extremism in World War II terms. `It is 1937,' he said,
`and we seem to be more in the mode of Chamberlain at Munich rather
than Churchill.'''
Kondracke, again quoting Lewis: ``Osama bin Laden and other would-be
Hitlers,'' he said, ``consider the United States an effete, degenerate,
pampered enemy incapable of real resistance. It's part of the pattern
that we fight among ourselves as much as against our enemies. This is
more than serious. It's dire.''
These are the words of a well-respected journalist. A profound
statement from Kondracke, but right on point.
Another respected voice on the issue is Michael Barone. On
USNews.com, Michael Barone recently said: ``Why do they hate us? Why
does the New York Times print stories that put America more at risk of
attack? They say that these surveillance programs are subject to abuse,
but give no reason to believe that this concern is anything but
[[Page H4877]]
theoretical. We have a press that is at war with an administration
while our country is at war against merciless enemies. The Times is
acting like an adolescent kicking the shins of its parents, hoping to
make them hurt, while confident of remaining safe under their roof.''
Nobody could have said it better than Michael Barone and Morton
Kondracke.
Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious issue. That is why the Congress
is debating this resolution. I ask this resolution be supported
strongly on a bipartisan basis.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, people who want things to be done in a bipartisan manner
should not engage in extreme partisanship at the outset. The resolution
that is before us was drafted entirely by Republicans with no input
from any Democrat, from the Intelligence Committee, from the Financial
Services Committee, or anywhere else, and presented to us a little over
24 hours ago. We then asked for the right to offer amendments, or at
least a substitute resolution. It was denied.
I find it extraordinary that repeatedly in the interest and in the
name of democracy the majority degrades democracy. How can it be
justified that no alternative can be offered? How can it be justified
that no amendment can be offered?
Let me say again: We are telling the Shiia majority in Iraq that in
their parliament they ought to make an effort to include the Sunni;
that it is not simply the majority doing everything, but you work with
the minority. You then give, Mr. Speaker, through your party, the
opposite example by not allowing even a resolution to be offered for us
to be voted on.
We have an alternative that is supported by a very large majority of
our caucus. And now let me talk about that resolution, because let us
be clear about what is not at issue today.
We have agreement that the method of tracking terrorists through
their financial dealings is a good thing. The Democratic resolution,
which the majority refuses to allow to be considered in their abusive
use of their majority, says explicitly that we support efforts to
identify and track terrorists and their financial supporters. So if it
isn't unanimous, it is the fault of the majority by doing it so
divisively.
We also in our resolution deplore the unauthorized disclosure of
classified information. But we talk not simply about people who might
print it, but the people in the administration who might release it.
Earlier today someone said, well, what would happen if you gave out the
name of spies? Well, ask the people in this administration who gave out
the name of Valerie Plame. We hope that something will be done.
Here is the difference between the two resolutions: the Republican
resolution, drafted entirely by them and withheld from us until its
publication, agrees that we should track terrorist financing. So does
the Democratic resolution. Theirs, however, includes a number of
factual statements that I do not believe we yet have a basis for
making.
Now, in some cases, some of those factual statements are about things
that turn out, we think, not to have been true. For example, on page 3
of their resolution they have reference to a prior incident in which
the Washington Times was accused of having disclosed classified
information regarding efforts to monitor the communication of Osama bin
Laden.
They don't mention the Washington Times because they like the
Washington Times. They mention the New York Times. Times, they are a
changing. If it is the New York Times, they don't like it, and they
criticize it. If it is the Washington Times, they talk about a far more
serious allegation about the Washington Times, that it gave away to
Osama bin Laden how we knew where he was, but they don't mention them.
But now it turns out they may very well have been inaccurate about
that, and I plan to submit an article from The Washington Post that
defends the Washington Times.
But here is the problem we have: we want to say in our resolution,
and we hoped it could have been unanimous, that we support this kind of
tracking; that we don't want things to be disclosed. But what we are
not prepared to say, and, frankly, nobody here is intellectually
prepared to say it, people may say it on faith, but here is what they
want to say: we find that the program has been conducted in accordance
with all applicable laws, regulations, and executive orders; that
appropriate safeguards and reviews have been instituted to protect
individual civil liberties, and that Congress has been appropriately
informed.
I think that the part about our being informed is very inaccurate,
and I don't know the answer to the other. What you have done is to
hijack the virtually unanimous support for tracking terrorist financing
into an endorsement of the way the Bush administration has conducted
itself. That is how it became partisan.
Why should this House vote now to say that the program has been
conducted with all the safeguards, et cetera, et cetera? We don't know
that. Members don't know that. Members on the other side are entitled
to take it on faith. I know faith-based resolutions are very important
to them, but I don't think as Members of the House of Representatives
we ought to be asked to vote, the most solemn thing you do in a
democracy as a representative, on factual statements when people cannot
know whether they are true.
Again, I want to go back and say, how can you justify, in the name of
democracy, denying us a chance to even present an alternative
resolution supporting this program?
[From the Washington Post, Dec. 22, 2005]
File the Bin Laden Phone Leak Under `Urban Myths'
(By Glenn Kessler)
President Bush asserted this week that the news media
published a U.S. government leak in 1998 about Osama bin
Laden's use of a satellite phone, alerting the al Qaeda
leader to government monitoring and prompting him to abandon
the device.
The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable
intelligence operation was first reported by a best-selling
book, validated by the Sept. 11 commission and then repeated
by the president.
But it appears fa be an urban myth.
The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite
phone had already been reported in 1996--and the source of
the information was another government, the Taliban, which
ruled Afghanistan at the time.
The second time a news organization reported on the
satellite phone, the source was bin Laden himself.
Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could
have persuaded bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in
August 1998. A day earlier, the United States had fired
dozens of cruise missiles at his training camps, missing him
by hours.
Bush made his assertion at a news conference Monday, in
which he defended his authorization of warrantless monitoring
of communications between some U.S. citizens and suspected
terrorists overseas. He fumed that ``the fact that we were
following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type
of telephone made it into the press as the result of a
leak.'' He berated the media for ``revealing sources, methods
and what we use the information for'' and thus helping ``the
enemy'' change its operations.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday that the
president was referring to an article that appeared in the
Washington Times on Aug. 21, 1998, the day after the cruise
missile attack, which was launched in retaliation for the
bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa two weeks earlier.
The Sept. 11 commission also cited the article as ``a leak''
that prompted bin Laden to stop using his satellite phone,
though it noted that he had added more bodyguards and began
moving his sleeping place ``frequently and unpredictably''
after the missile attack.
Two former Clinton administration officials first fingered
the Times article in a 2002 book, ``The Age of Sacred
Terror.'' Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon wrote that after
the ``unabashed right-wing newspaper'' published the story,
bin Laden ``stopped using the satellite phone instantly'' and
``the United States lost its best chance to find him.''
The article, a profile of bin Laden, buried the information
about his satellite phone in the 21st paragraph. It never
said that the United States was listening in on bin Laden, as
the president alleged. The writer, Martin Sieff, said
yesterday that the information about the phone was ``already
in the public domain'' when he wrote the story.
A search of media databases shows that Time magazine had
first reported on Dec. 16, 1996, that bin Laden ``uses
satellite phones to contact fellow Islamic militants in
Europe, the Middle East and Africa.'' Taliban officials
provided the information, with one official--security chief
Mulla Abdul Mannan Niazi--telling Time, ``He's in high
spirits.''
The day before the Washington Times article was published--
and the day of the attacks--CNN producer Peter Bergen
appeared
[[Page H4878]]
on the network to talk about an interview he had with bin
Laden in 1997.
``He communicates by satellite phone, even though
Afghanistan in some levels is back in the Middle Ages and a
country that barely functions,'' Bergen said.
Bergen noted that as early as 1997, bin Laden's men were
very concerned about electronic surveillance. ``They scanned
us electronically,'' he said, because they were worried that
anyone meeting with bin Laden ``might have some tracking
device from some intelligence agency.'' In 1996, the Chechen
insurgent leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed by a Russian
missile that locked in to his satellite phone signal.
That same day, CBS reported that bin Laden used a satellite
phone to give a television interview. USA Today ran a profile
of bin Laden on the same day as the Washington Times's
article, quoting a former U.S. official about his ``fondness
for his cell phone.''
It was not until Sept. 7, 1998--after bin Laden apparently
stopped using his phone--that a newspaper reported that the
United States had intercepted his phone calls and obtained
his voiceprint. U.S. authorities ``used their communications
intercept capacity to pick up calls placed by bin Laden on
his Inmarsat satellite phone, despite his apparent use of
electronic `scramblers,' '' the Los Angeles Times reported.
Officials could not explain yesterday why they focused on
the Washington Times story when other news organizations at
the same time reported on the satellite phone--and that the
information was not particularly newsworthy.
``You got me,'' said Benjamin, who was director for
counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff at
the time. ``That was the understanding in the White House and
the intelligence community. The story ran and the lights went
out.''
Lee H. Hamilton, vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission,
gave a speech in October in which he said the leak ``was
terribly damaging.'' Yesterday, he said the commission relied
on the testimony of three ``very responsible, very senior
intelligence officers,'' who he said ``linked the Times story
to the cessation of the use of the phone.'' He said they
described it as a very serious leak.
But Hamilton said he did not recall any discussion about
other news outlets' reports. ``I cannot conceive we would
have singled out the Washington Times if we knew about all of
the reporting,'' he said.
A White House official said last night the administration
was confident that press reports changed bin Laden's
behavior. CIA spokesman Tom Crispell declined to comment,
saying the question involves intelligence sources and
methods.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the gentleman from
Alabama (Mr. Bachus) for 5 minutes.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Resolution
895 by Chairman Oxley. I commend Chairman Oxley as the primary sponsor
and author of the USA PATRIOT Act. He has been committed to combating
terrorist financing, and I want to commend him for his tireless efforts
in bringing this resolution to the floor.
We are at war against a savage and relentless enemy. While Americans
have a long-established right to know about the actions of their
government, when we are at war, when there is a national security
concern, there is also a well-founded historical precedent for
conducting covert actions out of the media spotlight.
Now, there can be alternatives, as the gentleman from Massachusetts
said, but there can be no alternatives to a strong national defense.
There can be no alternatives to a strong national security. And the
judges of what those are and how to conduct those should not be left to
the New York Times. They are for this body to determine.
Following the death of Zarqawi, an internal al Qaeda memo was
recovered from his hideout. It explicitly states that al Qaeda's
efforts have been hurt by tightening the resistance's financial
outlets. This statement serves as concrete evidence, concrete evidence
that programs such as the administration's Terrorist Finance Tracking
Program are both necessary and effective.
Remember, the 9/11 Commission was critical of the government's
failure to track the sources of terrorist financing prior to the
September 11 attack. However, in its final report, the commission
applauded the government-wide effort to combat terrorist financing
after 9/11 for making significant strides in using terrorist finance as
an intelligence tool.
They were talking about this program. This program was an important
stride.
{time} 1730
Indeed, the program paid big dividends, including the arrest of the
mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing, a violent bombing that killed 202
innocent people. In fact, he was convicted based on information from
this program, a program The New York Times made a determination to
expose.
There is no doubt that America and our allies in the war on terror
are safer today because of this program, which is exactly the sort of
protection that Americans want and expect from their government.
Some question or debate whether al Qaeda knew about this valuable
program. Do they know about it now? Do they know the details? The
answer to the question is, yes, no doubt about it.
How do they know? Because they put it on the front page of the
newspaper. Not just any paper, but the largest newspaper in the biggest
city in the United States.
Who are they? They are the editors and publishers of The New York
Times. If you are al Qaeda, the appropriate response to this
publication is thank you. If you are indifferent, the answer is so
what. But if you are an American citizen endangered by terrorists, the
insensitivity, the arrogance, the irresponsibility of this paper and
its publication, then the appropriate response is anger and outrage and
this resolution.
Now, due to their irresponsible actions, this vital intelligence-
gathering program is virtually defunct. No longer would terrorists
conduct their financial business with the Swift cooperative. Sadly, no
longer will we be able to track their actions. This clearly hampers,
clearly hampers, our Nation's ability to conduct the war on terror.
Hopefully, our intelligence agencies will devise other means to
effectively monitor our enemies. It won't be easy. They will have to
start over. We won't be restricting their financial operations as well
as we did before this publication. But at least I would hope that if we
do fashion a new program that it will not be reported by the media
outlets who want to get a scoop ahead of national security.
Let me close by thanking the chairman.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Resolution 895, which
is sponsored by Chairman Oxley, expressing our support for the
Administration's efforts to track terrorist financing through the U.S.
Treasury Department's Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. Chairman
Oxley--one of the primary authors and sponsors of the terrorist
financing provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act--has been committed to
combating terrorist financing, and I want to commend the Chairman for
his tireless efforts and for bringing this resolution to the floor
today.
We are at war with a savage and relentless enemy. While Americans
have a long-established right to know about the actions of their
government, when we are at war and when there is an overriding national
security concern, there is also a well-founded historical precedent for
conducting covert actions out of the media spotlight.
Following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an internal al-Qaeda
memo was recovered from the terrorist's hideout. It explicitly states
that al Qaeda's efforts have been hurt ``by tightening the resistance's
financial outlets.'' This statement serves as concrete evidence that
programs such as the Administration's Terrorist Finance Tracking
Program are both necessary and effective.
Remember, the 9/11 Commission was critical of the government for its
failure to track the sources of terrorist financing prior to the
September 11th attacks. However, in its final report, the Commission's
Public Discourse Project applauded the government-wide effort to combat
terrorist financing after 9/11 for making ``significant strides in
using terrorism finance as an intelligence tool.'' This program was one
such important stride.
Indeed, the program paid big dividends, including the arrest of the
mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing, a bombing in which 202 innocent
people were killed. In fact, he was convicted based on information from
this program.
There is no doubt that America and our allies in the war on terror
are safer today because of this program, which is exactly the sort of
protection that Americans want and expect from their government to
prevent further terrorist attacks.
Some question or debate whether al-Qaeda knows about this valuable
program. Do they know about it? Do they know the details? The answer to
the questions is ``yes.'' No doubt about it. How do we know that?
Because they put it on the front page of the newspaper. Not just any
paper, but the largest newspaper in the biggest city of the United
States.
[[Page H4879]]
Who are they? The editor and publisher of that very paper.
If you are al-Qaeda, the appropriate response is, ``thank you.''
If you are indifferent, the answer is, ``so what?''
If you are an American citizen endangered by the insensitivity,
arrogance and irresponsibility of this newspaper, the appropriate
response is anger and outrage!
Now, due to their irresponsible actions, this vital intelligence
gathering program is virtually defunct. No longer will terrorists
conduct their financial business with the Swift cooperative, and sadly
no longer will we be able to track their actions. This result clearly
hampers our nation's ability to conduct the War on Terror.
Hopefully, our intelligence agencies will devise other means of
effectively monitoring our enemies and restricting their financial
operations at least until that program, too, is reported by media
outlets that place getting a scoop ahead of national security.
Outrageous conduct such as that exhibited in the disclosure of this
legal, effective program cannot be allowed to escape just condemnation.
Therefore, this resolution.
Let me close by again thanking this Administration and Chairman Oxley
for their efforts in combating terrorist financing. Their dedication
and vigilance with regard to these issues have made our nation and the
world a safer place.
I urge my colleagues to support House Resolution 895.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the
leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, as we approach the Fourth of July, that
wonderful holiday where we celebrate America's Declaration of
Independence, we must recall that our Founding Fathers understood and
placed in our founding documents the important balance between liberty
and security.
In that spirit, at the outset, let me reiterate that we all,
Democrats and Republicans alike, support two principles. First, we
support effective tools to fight terrorism, including the tracking of
terrorist financing here and abroad under all applicable laws. Second,
no one here condones disclosure of information that harms our vital
national interest and makes locating terrorists and terrorist networks
and disrupting their plans more difficult.
These basic principles and their frames, liberty and security, are
contained in a balanced way in the substitute resolution offered by the
distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank). Mr. Frank's
resolution should have been permitted by the rule to be considered
today.
But, again, in this closed Congress that we are in, we cannot
consider alternatives. We can't even have a motion to recommit. I don't
know what is so good about that as we go into the Fourth of July. But
let us talk about the Republican resolution.
The Republican resolution before us today is quite clearly a document
for political purposes. It makes sweeping and dubious conclusions on
the facts and legality of the financial transaction surveillance
program, unsupported by any fact-finding or oversight, and based upon
representations by the President.
In a free society, we all have our roles and responsibilities. As
public officials, we must safeguard our lawful intelligence activities,
many of which have been conducted in secret. We respect that.
Our media, of course, have their public responsibilities. A free
press is centered on reporting on the workings of government and on
being alert, aware and free. They have an obligation to be responsible
about their reporting of national security and to balance any reporting
with the harm of disclosure.
Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration lacks credibility when it comes
to complaining about leaks. The administration's record, and that of
this Republican Congress, are marked by selective disclosures of
classified information and selective expressions of displeasure over
leaks.
When the identity of an undercover CIA officer was disclosed by high-
ranking members of the administration in the White House, as part of a
smear campaign against a critic of the Iraq war, the President did not
fire any of the leakers. In fact, one of them was actually promoted. As
Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has told us, this disclosure could cause
severe damage and irreparable harm to our national security.
Similarly, it was recently revealed that President Bush himself was
alleged to have authorized for political purposes the selective leaking
of intelligence information in a National Security Estimate.
Where was the outrage and the oversight from this Republican
Congress? Nowhere to be seen. Repeatedly, this Republican Congress has
spurned resolutions of inquiry and neglected congressional oversight
responsibility to get to the bottom of leaks by the Bush
administration.
So let us take this resolution for what it is. It is a campaign
document. The Republican resolution contains a number of statements
that simply cannot be factually confirmed and are not the result of
congressional fact-finding or rigorous congressional oversight. The
Republican resolution also contains a number of statements regarding
the legality of the program and the safeguards it claims protects
individual rights.
Let me just read what that is. This resolution finds that the
Terrorist Financed Tracking Program has been conducted in accordance
with all applicable laws, regulations, and Executive Orders, that
appropriate safeguards and reviews have been instituted to protect
individual civil liberties, and that Congress has been appropriately
informed and consulted for the duration of the Program and will
continue its oversight of the Program.
Continue its oversight of the program? There has never been any
oversight of the program. The fact is, because there has never been any
oversight of the program, there isn't one person in this body who will
vote on this resolution who can attest to this statement. You are
asking us to vote on something that we absolutely cannot attest to. Not
any one of you can attest to this as a fact, because it isn't a fact.
So let us just go to where we began, to our founders, liberty and
security. As I said before, when the identity of an undercover CIA
officer was disclosed by high-ranking members of the administration as
part of a smear tactic, nothing was done. Nothing was done by this
Congress in terms of oversight. Nothing has been done.
The Frank substitute does not contain any of these unsupported
conclusions. The Frank substitute is a resolution that is balanced and
accurate and should command the support of all Members.
I intend to vote against this resolution. I wish that we could have
the chance to vote for Mr. Frank's resolution. I think that would have
been in keeping with the intentions of our Founding Fathers.
But let us keep in mind their constant admonition that in order to
have security, we must have freedom. In order to have freedom, we must
have security. We must have balance. This resolution does not.
Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Chair be
authorized to reduce to 5 minutes the minimum time for electronic
voting, if ordered, on passage of H.R. 4761.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). Is there objection to the
request of the gentleman from Ohio?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Reserving the right to object.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman is recognized on his
reservation.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I reserve the right to object. We are
being asked to move this very quickly, I guess, because of the baseball
game.
If we could get the right to get a vote on our substitute, I wouldn't
object. But as long as we aren't even being allowed to have a vote on
our substitute, I don't know why we should be asked to hurry up the
proceedings.
I would ask the gentleman if we could get unanimous consent now, in
addition to this, to allow us to present our substitute. If we could
get unanimous consent for that, then I would have no objection to this.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Does the gentleman object?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I will object now.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Objection is heard.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I ask unanimous consent that the House
allow us to present our substitute for a vote.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of th
