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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 254 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 2748.
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Accordingly the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H.R. 2748) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 1990 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the U.S. Government, the Intelligence Community Staff, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes, with Mr. Moody in the Chair.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time.
The CHAIRMAN. Under the rule, the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson] will be recognized for 30 minutes, and the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] will be recognized for 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson].
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 2748, the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 1990. The principal purpose of this bill is to authorize appropriations for all of the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the U.S. Government during fiscal year 1990. As in the past, the actual amounts authorized are contained in a classified schedule of authorization, which is incorporated by reference into H.R. 2748, and which is available to all Members in the Committee offices, along with a classified annex to the Committee's report.
The administration requested a small percentage of real growth for fiscal year 1990 over the amount Congress appropriated for intelligence in fiscal year 1989. The Committee recommends a slightly lower level of funding than that requested by the President. Some proposals have been recommended for deferral or deletion, while a few have been increased. The Committee believes that the recommended authorization is a reasonable balance between needed capabilities and prudent cost.
Members should understand that the Intelligence budget is largely a subset of the Defense budget. Almost all of the Intelligence budget is contained within the Defense budget, both for reasons of security, and because the majority of intelligence activities are conducted by elements of the Department of Defense. Thus, increases and decreases for intelligence are largely changes within the defense budget, and are not direct changes to the Federal budget as a whole.
Mr. Chairman, as it does every year, the Committee has worked very closely with the Committee on Armed Services to produce recommendations for the authorization of appropriations for intelligence-related activities over which the two committees share jurisdiction. The amounts authorized for intelligence-related activities by H.R. 2748 are, therefore, fully consistent with those authorized by H.R. 2461, the fiscal year 1990 Defense authorization bill, which passed the House on July 27. Both committees agreed on these amounts, I want to say that I, and other members of Intelligence Committee, appreciate the advice and cooperation of the members and staff of the Committee on Armed Services in this effort.
Mr. Chairman, in addition to the authorization of appropriations, H.R. 2748, contains a number of legislative provisions.
Of greatest interest to the Members, perhaps, will be provisions relating to Nicaragua.
Section 104 is a provision similar to that enacted in the fiscal year 1987, 1988, and 1989 Intelligence Authorization Acts. It provides that any assistance to the military or paramilitary activities of the Contras by any department or agency of the United States must be explicitly authorized by law for that purpose. No such assistance has been authorized by H.R. 2748.
Of more topical importance is H.R. 2748's restriction on funding connected with the Nicaraguan election to be held in February.
As you know, the administration has said that it will not seek covert aid for the opposition in the Nicaraguan election. H.R. 2748 authorizes no funds whatsoever for covert support to opposition parties or candidates in that election. Furthermore, the classified schedule of authorizations prohibits use of the CIA's reserve for contingencies, for such purpose. The only mechanism left to the administration, should it change its mind, is a reprogramming--that is, an official administration request to take funds appropriated for another purpose and reprogram them for this purpose. However, such a reprogramming would require the approval of four separate congressional committees--the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.
Mr. Chairman, there are several other legislative provisions in H.R. 2748.
Title III contains provisions which make conforming and corrective changes in legislation affording retirement, survivor and death-in-service benefits to former spouses of CIA employees and which establish special retirement annuity computation and portability rules regarding overseas service for certain CIA employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System.
Title IV contains provisions relating to the CIA, including section 401, which exempts the CIA from a provision of law requiring that all Federal agencies procure commercial remote sensing data from the Defense Mapping Agency.
Section 402, which requires the CIA to provide the House and Senate Intelligence Committees with a list of each audit, inspection, or investigation conducted by the CIA inspector general, and to provide the committees with a copy of any report of such audit, inspection, or investigation which the committees request.
Title V contains several provisions relating to intelligence components of the Department of Defense, among others.
Section 501, which authorizes the Secretary of Defense to provide foreign language proficiency pay to civilian employees of the Department of Defense who are proficient in a foreign language the Secretary determines is important for the effective collection, production and dissemination of foreign intelligence and who are serving in an intelligence or intelligence-related position.
Section 502, which authorizes the Secretary of Defense to accept, use and maintain gifts made to further the educational activities of the Defense Intelligence College.
Section 601 makes change to the OPM/FBI demonstration project applicable to the New York FBI office, authorized in the fiscal year 1989 Intelligence Authorization Act, in order to permit the project's cost of living allowance to be provided to all support employees in the FBI's New York office.
Section 703 directs the President to issue financial reporting and disclosure regulations applicable to the members of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Officially, section 704 requires the President to submit a report to Congress by April 1, 1990 setting forth a plan to integrate counternarcotics intelligence activities.
All of these legislative provisions were approved by the Committee without objection from either side of the aisle.
Mr. Chairman, H.R. 2748 enjoys strong bipartisan support within the Committee. It is the product of an excellent working relationship among Members and staff who have carefully assessed the needs of intelligence and bring before the House recommendations that, we believe, are consistent with both our national security needs and with the state of the Nation's finances.
Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], the ranking Republican member of the Committee, for his wise counsel, his help, and his very collegial and cooperative approach to the Committee's business has been enormously helpful.
I also would like to pay tribute to the hard work, dedication, and professionalism of all of the Committee's staff members, and particularly note the contributions of three staff members who have served the committee exceptionally well since its inception in July 1977 and who now go on to other endeavors: Marty Faga, who is now Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space; Duane Andrews, who has been nominated for the post of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence; and Michael O'Neil, who now serves as an assistant to the Speaker of the House. Each has made a major contribution to the successful conducting of this Nation's intelligence activities.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I urge Members to support H.R. 2748. It provides what is needed of America's intelligence agencies, and it strengthens the ability of the House, through its Intelligence Committee, to exercise meaningful oversight of intelligence activities.
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Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to support this bill. My good friend, the distinguished chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has ably summarized the provisions of this legislation. I wish to assure the House that your intelligence committee has comprehensively reviewed the administration's authorization request for the various U.S. intelligence programs, and under the auspices of our program and Budget Authorization Subcommittee, members of the Intelligence Committee heard, during a series of 11 hearings, more than 30 hours of testimony on the programs covered by this authorization bill. After thorough consideration of these programs and further discussions between members of the committee and administration officials on some matters, I believe we have been able to bring a bill to the floor which is basically acceptable to all or nearly all of our committee. In no small part this achievement has been due to the exceptional leadership of Chairman Beilenson. The gentleman from California's conscientious, scrupulously fair and thoughtful approach to our committee's serious responsibilities continues to be a model of professional legislative conduct for all of us who have had the privilege of serving with him. These qualities and his lively good humor have earned him the admiration and respect of every member of the committee, and mine in particular.
Perhaps at this point, it would be appropriate to note also that the work of the committee on the often complex and difficult issues addressed by this bill could not have been so effectively accomplished without the long hours of excellent supporting work by our exceptionally talented staff. Therefore, I would like to specifically recognize the efforts of Tom Latimer, Mike O'Neil, Tom Smeeton, Marty Faga, Duane Andrews, Bob Fitch, Ken Kodama, Virginia Callas, Bernie Raimo, Diane Dornan, Louis Dupart, Steve Nelson, Jeannie McNally, Sharon Curcio, Dee Jackson, Cathy Eberwein, Karen Schindler, Jack Keliher, Bernie Toon, Calvin Humphrey, Dick Giza, Merritt Clark, and Angel Torres. In particular, however, I want to extend my sincere gratitude and warmest wishes to Marty Faga and Duane Andrews, the two most senior members of our Program and Budget Authorization Subcommittee staff. After more than 12 years of exemplary service to our committee, this is the last intelligence authorization bill on which we will have the benefit of their unparallelled expertise and sage advice. Both of these dedicated gentlemen have provided us with scrupulously nonpartisan professional staff support. Regrettably for our committee, their talents and achievements have been widely recognized beyond the attic confines of our committee offices, and both will be assuming senior positions of responsibility in the executive branch. Marty will shortly be sworn in as assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Programs. Duane has been nominated for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence. We are profoundly sorry to be losing them, but we wish them the best good fortune in their new duties.
In addition, I congratulate Mike O'Neil, the committee's chief counsel from its creation and a guiding light in our legislative actions over all of those years. Mike has assumed a new position of responsibility on the Speaker's staff.
Let me now return to the substance of this bill and mention two important aspects of it. First of all, the administration's policy decision, after its lengthy consultations with the congressional leadership, has been not to seek covert aid to the internal political opposition in the forthcoming Nicaraguan elections, but to rely just on the package of overt aid to the election process through the National Endowment for Democracy [NED]. I have the highest respect for NED's capabilities and efforts, and I am a strong supporter of NED programs, which are designed to assist the democratic process rather than provide direct aid to any candidate.
Second, H.R. 2748 calls for the President to submit a report to the Congress by April 1 next year, describing how counternarcotics intelligence activities can be integrated, including coordinating the collection and analysis of intelligence information, ensuring the dissemination of relevant information to the various officials responsible for narcotics policies and activities, and coordinating and controlling all counternarcotics intelligence activities. This report should help to focus our attention better on the degree of progress we are making on this important aspect of our war on drugs and on problem areas where more intensive or imaginative efforts are required. At this point, our committee has concluded that there is no focal point for counternarcotics intelligence. Nevertheless, we believe the Director of Central Intelligence has taken the first step in that direction through the creation of a Counternarcotics Center. Hopefully, such steps will help us develop a better integrated system for assessing the value of counternarcotics intelligence information available, pinpointing the necessary requirements for further collection and analysis, and coordinating the collection, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence information needed to support U.S. counternarcotics activities.
In conclusion, I urge the House to pass H.R. 2748.
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Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes], our distinguished former chairman.
Mr. STOKES. Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak to section 504 of the bill which directs the Secretary of Defense to establish an undergraduate training program at the Defense Intelligence Agency aimed at facilitating the recruitment of women and minorities.
During my tenure on the Intelligence Committee, I became concerned about the minimal representation of women and minorities throughout the intelligence community. I found that they were vastly underrepresented throughout the professional grade structure. Several reasons were offered in explaining this problem. Generally, it was that the intelligence agencies could not compete with the private sector in attracting women and minorities with skills critical to the performances of their mission.
Consequently, in an effort to level the recruitment playing field between the private sector and the intelligence agencies, the fiscal year 1987 Intelligence Authorization Act directed the Director of Central Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to establish an undergraduate training program at the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. To date, this program is viewed with wide approval by both CIA and NSA, and presently has over 80 students participating. While overall success of the program will be judged in future years, both CIA and NSA acknowledge that they expect this program to have a positive effect in eliminating the problem of underrepresentation in the professional grades of women and minorities.
Section 504 establishes a similar program at the Defense Intelligence Agency which is also experiencing difficulty in attracting women and minorities with skills critical to its mission. Not only is DIA not able to compete with the private sector, but they are presently faced with a situation whereby they cannot compete with their colleagues in the intelligence community. This unfortunate circumstance is a result of the undergraduate training program, not being extended to the DIA. Section 504 rectifies this situation, not only as it relates to the private sector, but also within the intelligence community itself. It is expected that the same success experienced by NSA and CIA will occur with the initiation of the undergraduate training program at DIA.
I would like to commend the chairman, Mr. Beilenson, for his leadership in fashioning section 504 of this bill. I think it is going to make a significant difference at DIA.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Shuster], one of the more valuable members of our committee.
Strike `Ohio,' and make it `Pennsylvania.'
Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, Pennsylvania intends to annex Ohio, but, as a matter of intelligence, that is still classified.
(Mr. SHUSTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
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Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I wish we lived in a world where it was not necessary to have intelligence agencies. I wish we lived in a world where we could trust the other governments with which we deal, where we had no need for gathering intelligence and where we had no need, especially, for covert operations against terrorists and dictatorships around the world, but that unfortunately is a world of make-believe.
Mr. Chairman, if we, as Americans and as Members of this body, do not see the world as it is rather than as we wish it were, then we in our country stand to suffer at the hands of tyrants. From the code breakers of World War II, to the Berlin tunnel, to saving Italy from communism, to more recent intelligence successes of which we cannot speak, intelligence has helped secure our country. Intelligence has helped make not only America a better land, but the world a freer and safer place, and yet we see our intelligence agencies denigrated. We see their hands tied. We see them attacked.
What we need, Mr. Chairman, is not only this authorization for funds for intelligence. What we need is a new authorization which embraces our commitment to intelligence necessary to secure and defend our country and the free world. What we need, Mr. Chairman, is a reconfirmation, a recommitment, to the importance of sound, strong intelligence to help secure America.
A very, very immediate case in point is the Panamanian situation. We criticize what happend last week in Panama, and Mr. Chairman, I was prepared as I went into briefings on the Panama situation, I was prepared to be very critical of this administration. Yet I must say that after hearing the facts I came almost reluctantly to the conclusion that the administration made reasonable judgments, perhaps not gutsy judgments, but reasonable judgments based on the facts available to them at the time. Yet who could expect, who could expect this administration or any administration, who could expect the intelligence agencies of our Government to make gutsy decisions when we have lashed them, put them under the whip, tethered them, told them they best not do anything or we will have them in front of a grand jury; we will have them, as a distinguished career CIA agent now is, under indictment. Who could expect them to do anything but become cautious, if indeed not timid?
Yes, there are those on this Hill who recently have said that they have given this President everything he wanted with regard to Panama, and yet we know there are those who have gone to the White House and threatened them, threatened them with exposure for classified information, have said, `You dare not engage in covert operations.'
We cannot have it both ways, Mr. Chairman. We cannot talk out of both sides of our mouth. We had either better decide that we are going to support intelligence necessary for the security of our country, or we should decide that we are simply going to let the bad guys of the world have their way.
So, let us hope that the Panama situation of the last week might be a turning point, that it might be a catharsis, an educational experience for some of us on this Hill. Let us hope that it might make us say that it is time that we recognize that a President, duly elected President, is indeed responsible for foreign policy and that the intelligence agencies of this Government have duly constituted responsibilities. And let us support the effort of our intelligence agencies and of our administration, be they Republican or Democrat. Let us support them as they do the patriotic, yet sometimes dirty, job of securing this country.
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. McCurdy], our distinguished ranking member.
(Mr. McCURDY asked and was given permision to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. McCURDY. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 2748, the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 1990. Section 402 of the bill requires the Director of Central Intelligence to provide the Congressional intelligence oversight committees, at their request, any inspection, investigation, or audit report prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General. I would like to briefly explain this provision to my colleagues.
This provision was arrived at in bipartisan fashion and is the result of an inquiry by the Oversight and Evaluation Subcommittee into the effectiveness of the Agency's Inspector General Office. As chairman of this subcommittee, I worked closely with Congressman Bud Shuster and the members of the subcommittee in drafting this requirement.
During the subcommittee's inquiry, we requested full access to the inspection, investigation, and audit reports prepared by the CIA Inspector General. We did so not to conduct a `fishing expedition,' but to assess the overall quality of these reports and the responsiveness of the Agency in implementing any corrective actions identified in them. After some negotiation, we were granted access to audit and investigation reports. Committee access to investigation reports, however, became a matter of some sensitivity to Director Webster. After a long protracted period of some 4 months of negotiations, we were unable to obtain assurances that full access would be granted.
Director Webster initially ruled that we would have no direct access to these reports. Later, he indicated that committee staff could review selected reports but would not be allowed to take substantive handwritten notes on their content. Finding this situation unacceptable, I met with the Director personally to see if something could be worked out. While staff access to one report was eventually granted, we were unable to obtain assurances that any subsequent access to additional reports would be forthcoming.
Just before marking up the Intelligence authorization bill, I again attempted to reach agreement with CIA Director Webster on full access to these reports and was unable to do so. Mr. Shuster and myself therefore felt it necessary to draft section 402, so that committee access to these important reports would be assured in the future.
Mr. Speaker, I think I speak for all the members of the Oversight and Evaluation Subcommittee when I say that we on the Intelligence Committee have a clear responsibility to the Members of the House in assuring that CIA programs are effectively managed and that the resources we authorize are well spent. The CIA Inspector General is supposed to be on the front line in this area, and we have a legitimate and clear mission to see that he is performing his job. We simply cannot make such an assessment without full access to the product that he produces.
I would stress to my colleagues, as I have to Director Webster, that it is in the best interest of the CIA and his inspector general [IG] to keep the intelligence oversight committees fully informed on specific improvements made as a result of IG inspections. It is his responsibility to ensure that appropriate controls are in place to see that managers entrusted to operate programs and activities at the CIA are accountable--and that the intelligence oversight committees can attest to that accountability. Section 402 of H.R. 2748 takes a solid step in this direction, and I urge its passage.
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Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. McCURDY. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I would point out to my friend that I not only concur with what he says, but I would emphasize that the Intelligence Committee on a unanimous bipartisan vote adopted the gentleman's amendment.
Mr. McCURDY. Mr. Chairman, I certainly thank the gentleman for his sincerity and for his support throughout this process. As one who is a strong supporter of the intelligence community, I believe he agrees with all of us that this is an important addition to the Intelligence Authorization Act.
I thank the chairman again for his leadership and support and urge adoption of the bill.
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Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest], one of the most able and productive members of our committee.
Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this authorization bill and urge its adoption.
This committee has a keen interest in counterintelligence, an interest first sparked by the wave of espionage cases in 1985. Most recently, the Hall, Conrad, and Bloch cases show that we continue to suffer losses that are devastating in every way, including financially.
Some progress is visible, but it has been all too difficult to achieve and sustain movement. In its report this year, for instance, the committee notes continued disarray in Embassy security policy and organization, a full 5 years after massive problems were discovered. We have also requested that DOD focus on apparent security lapses during weapons acquisition, which compromise our technology and allow the Soviets to develop countermeasures well before new U.S. systems are deployed.
Especially with today's budget problems, we cannot tolerate these compromises and the financial burdens they impose. The Moscow Embassy fiasco likely will cost us several hundred million dollars. Recovery from the Walker case probably would cost us billions in premature submarine, antisubmarine, and communications investments. Even if we do not or cannot recover our previous relative security in a case like the Walkers', large prior investments are wasted.
While consciousness and even action has been heightened in some areas, one sometimes despairs over the likelihood of fundamental attitudinal changes. The Director of Central Intelligence has publicly warned that Soviet intelligence activities actually have increased during this period of glasnost, however forthcoming the U.S.S.R. might be in other areas. Yet we are instituting new policies and relations with little or no thought to their long-term counterintelligence implications. This is true in areas such as visas, emigration, cultural and business exchanges, arms control verification policies, numbers of diplomatic officials, and diplomatic travel. Sometimes the bad effects could be tempered with only a little forethought, but these policies often are rushed through with virtually no thought at all, and usually with no organized or detailed input from the counterintelligence community.
There are not enough agents in the whole FBI, much less in the Intelligence Division, to even attempt to cope with the resulting threat. I'd be willing to bet a great deal that we'll soon be asked to pony up large additional funds for partial countermeasures. But as we all know, the well is drying up. It is time for the counterintelligence agencies to unite and become more aggressive in highlighting dangers to the national interest. And, for their part, top policymakers throw on the table new and seemingly innocuous `symbols' adding `momentum' to the United States-Soviet relationship.
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Kastenmeier], who has been a long-time distinguished member of the committee.
(Mr. KASTENMEIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. KASTENMEIER. Mr. Chairman, as a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I want to congratulate the chairman, the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson], for his leadership and, indeed, specifically for his management of the annual authorization bill for the Intelligence agencies. This is the committee's highest priority and this bill is the product of very thoughtful deliberations and an excellent working relationship certainly by Members on both sides of the aisle, including and I should commend as well the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], and certainly the staff, in carefully judging the needs of the Intelligence agencies.
I am somewhat saddened by either the immediate loss or prospective loss of several key staff members who have been with the committee for many years and upon whom we have been very dependent, as they go on presumably to better and higher responsibilities.
I would also like to commend the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. McCurdy] and his counterpart, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Shuster], for their work in bringing some accountability as far as the Central Intelligence Agency is concerned, particularly with reference to audit and review activities of the inspector general's office.
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I think that is extremely important work on their part. I would, however, comment that while this year, for various reasons I think this bill is less controversial in terms of its implications, perhaps because it is not concerned with Iran or Central America or something else which has been controversial over the years, that I think that is an excellent development.
At the same time I think it should be observed that the Intelligence budget is still too overclassified. Granted, we have come a long way from the days when we did not acknowledge the existence of the CIA or its location or even in what Department budget most of the accounts were authorized. However, a lot more information relating to the Intelligence budget should be made available to Members and the public without running the risk of national security.
For example, although the bill authorizes a classified level of expenditures for the Intelligence agencies, there are estimates in the press as to the size of the Intelligence budget. Certainly, Members and the public have a right to know the amount of money being spent by the intelligence agencies, and I am hopeful we are reaching a time, a level of maturity, which will enable us to provide more information and a lot less classification with respect to this budget.
Mr. Chairman, in any event, I am pleased to support the bill and recommend its passage.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Bereuter], one of the more thoughtful and productive Members--Nebraska. My geography is very poor today.
(Mr. BEREUTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Chairman, we were authorized by the same act.
Mr. Chairman, this Member rises in support of H.R. 2748 as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, also, this Member wishes to join with the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] in addressing the importance of counterintelligence, and the need to consider counterintelligence improvements.
The Reagan administration focused on counterintelligence much more than did its predecessors. It now appears that the Bush administration may carry the work further. This certainly is desirable, because progress addressing counterintelligence deficiencies requires high-level attention, initiative, and followthrough.
It is this Member's understanding that the Bush administration will be considering counterintelligence program improvements as a part of a major National Security Review policy paper. This policy initiative is expected to reach the President in the next month or two.
Mr. Chairman, this Member served as a military counterintelligence officer, so I have a particular interest and appreciation for this important and often neglected area of national security. This Member has a special interest in methods to improve training for counterintelligence specialists and is committed to that end.
Presently, counterintelligence responsibilities currently are widely scattered throughout the Government. For instance, in addition to FBI intelligence specialists, there are various counterintelligence contingents within the CIA, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the State Department. Not surprisingly, coordination among the various contingents in their training methods is not as good as it could or should be.
It seems unlikely that each of these agencies will individually have the best possible and effective training program covering security countermeasures and the many types of foreign intelligence threats. Those threats range from human agents to very sophisticated signals intelligence collection techniques.
Cooperative or joint training programs should lift the quality of U.S. counterintelligence and reduce overall training costs. Resulting personal contacts could also help wear down the barriers between agencies, which have hindered information exchanges as well as operations.
Therefore, this Member hopes and requests that training improvements will be among the actions covered by the forthcoming National Security Review. The House Intelligence Committee awaits these executive decisions and recommendations with considerable interest. Our involvement often will be necessary to implement these decisions successfully, particularly if significant budgetary implications are involved, as some anticipate.
In closing, I urge my colleagues to support the passage of H.R. 2748.
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Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Glickman], a valued and hard-working member of our committee.
(Mr. GLICKMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. GLICKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 2748, the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 1990, and commend Chairman Beilenson and the ranking Republican member, Mr. Hyde, for forging a nonpartisan consensus in support of the bill's budget and legislative provisions. There are, I believe, no significant differences among the Intelligence Committee's 19 members on the bill's money provisions. To a large extent, this is due to the integrity and intellectual capability of the chairman, Mr. Beilenson.
The Intelligence Committee's Subcommittee on Program and Budget Authorization, on which I serve, spent many hours conducting thorough hearings on this Nation's many and diverse intelligence activities.
In these hearings and in other deliberations at both the subcommittee and full committee level, we examined the intelligence needs of the United States, analyzed the President's budget request, and kept in mind the fiscal constraints under which the Congress is laboring. The result, contained in the bill before us, is a carefully crafted and well-measured intelligence program that is both protective of the Nation's security interests and fiscally prudent.
The funds authorized in H.R. 2748 support a necessary array of intelligence programs in support of our many national security concerns. None in my opinion is more important to our national security than those programs aimed at the collection, production, and dissemination of economic intelligence.
In the ever-changing and challenging world we live in, the intelligence community must take the lead in collecting accurate information on international banking, financial, manufacturing, trading, and related activities by whatever legitimate means it can employ, and in providing expert and timely analyses of such information to the executive branch and to the Congress. The relevant intelligence agencies have taken some strides in this direction, and I commend them. But they must do more. The quantity of Soviet weapons in the Urals is important but so is the quality of wheat in the Ukraine.
Furthermore, it is imperative that our Government have competent, up to date accurate information on the role of foreign governments, foreign banks and their affiliates in asserting their influence and control in the world economy, and more specifically in the American economy. America's economic security is being challenged and threatened by new forces in the world. A revitalized and unified Europe, a strengthened Japan and Pacific Rim specifically come to mind. These forces will dramatically affect U.S. jobs and economic power. They represent a direct competitive threat to the United States, in a similar sense that the Soviet Union has been a threat to United States as the world changes, our intelligence community must recognize that our national security will be influenced by these economic forces as much as they will be by the Soviet threat and perhaps it is time to reallocate some of our limited intelligence resources to accomplish these objectives.
Our intelligence activities must be based on our foreign policy objectives. My point is that in this changing world, economic issues will dominate our foreign policy agenda, beginning to crowd out the historic East-West agenda of the past 40 years. It's time that our intelligence operations have this modern agenda as well, in order to properly serve American foreign policy.
I look forward to discussing these issues with Director Webster and others during the fiscal year 1991 budget cycle and urge all Members to support this year's bill, H.R. 2748.
Mr. LIVINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GLICKMAN. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
Mr. LIVINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate the gentleman on his statement and tell him I agree with him. I think that our intelligence community really does need to pay attention to the economic circumstances abroad and to do everything in their power to advance the United States' interests. I would just also add to the gentleman's comments that the intelligence community has to be made free to do its job, and I guess that is a certain degree of self-criticism, because I think that sometimes Members of Congress tend to impede the intelligence community in their ability to do that job.
Mr. GLICKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am not exactly sure what the gentleman is referring to. We usually are on the same wavelength on most issues.
Mr. LIVINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield further, the comment was enlarging on the gentleman's comments and not at all intended or directed at what he said but to imply that perhaps in the last couple of weeks there have been events in which the intelligence community has been restricted, and we have suffered because of it.
Mr. GLICKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I cannot speak to that. My point is in this statement that as the world changes, as we face the threat of Japan and Western Europe and the whole slew of forces in the world which challenge American economic superiority and affect the jobs of our people and their living standards, the intelligence community has to be keenly aware and be interested in economic intelligence in the world and not just be focused on the historic East-West relationships which have dominated us for the last 40 years. Those are clearly important and critical, but these other objectives are as important as well.
Mr. LIVINGSTON. The gentleman's statement is well taken.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am informed that the identity of the States of the different Members is no longer classified, so I need not indulge in disinformation.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Frenzel].
(Mr. FRENZEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished ranking member for his cartographical exactitude.
Mr. Chairman, this bill creates, among other things, a new entitlement authority by increasing the retirement accrual rate for employees who have served overseas in the line of duty. It applies to retirees covered by CIA retirement and disability systems as well as NSA and DIE retirees covered in their respective CSRS plans.
None of the agencies, nor the House Select Committee on Intelligence, nor the CBO seem to know the exact number of employees or retirees who will eventually be affected by this legislation.
[TIME: 1450]
I am glad to know in one instance the committee has not leaked this important security information. However, the entitlement will only apply to employees covered by the closed Civil Service Retirement System available to employees hired before January 1, 1984.
Initial outlays are expected to be small. However, they will rise as the number of retiring employees increases. A formal CBO cost estimate has not been made available to me and I believe none is available at all. Analysts are reluctant to render any estimate at this time, and I do not blame them, other than to say it will probably cost less than $1 million in fiscal year 1990.
That, however, puts the bill in violation of section 302 (f)(1) of the budget act which prohibits the creation of new entitlement authority in excess of the respective subcommittees' 302 allocation. Neither of the committees handling this bill had any 302 allocations.
It is, I am told, a wonderful bill. I am not anxious to impede its progress. However, to flaunt the budget act and ignore it in small amounts means that we will eventually do it in larger amounts.
Mr. Chairman, we are indulging in a dangerous precedent by ignoring the budget act on this very small and perhaps insignificant item, and for that reason I am compelled to oppose the bill.
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Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe].
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe] is recognized for up to 8 minutes.
(Mr. WOLPE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. WOLPE. Mr. Chairman, today's floor debate on the intelligence authorization bill is an appropriate moment to focus on a foreign policy issue that has long been neglected by Congress but which is of increasing importance to United States national interests, namely, United States policy toward Angola.
Let me begin by saying: It is an open secret that the United States provides assistance to the UNITA insurgency in Angola.
President Bush, in a letter sent in early January to the UNITA leader Mr. Jonas Savimbi, before President Bush had even taken office, pledged continued U.S. assistance to UNITA. That followed several similarly open statements by President Reagan. On many subsequent occasions, high ranking officials of the administration have publicly referred to U.S. material support of UNITA. Moreover, Mr. Savimbi himself has spoken openly about the levels and nature of U.S. assistance that UNITA receives, most recently in the July 5 issue of Jeune Afrique and in a press conference he held July 5 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
These facts speak for themselves: In practice the U.S. support of UNITA remains covert in name only. It is a reality known to any and all persons concerned with this issue.
Yet astonishingly, Congress currently engages in no open public debate on this most central fact of United States policy toward Angola.
In the almost 4 years that this program has been in existence, Congress has voted only once, 3 years ago, on the Hamilton amendment to the intelligence authorization bill, on anything that concerned U.S. assistance to UNITA. The intelligence authorization bill before us today contains not a single overt statement on Angola. All congressional business in this area has been handled in a closed and secretive manner; the administration faces no significant reporting requirements to Congress on its Angola policy, and all major decisions are reached behind closed doors.
This is an approach that Congress refused to tolerate with respect to United States assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras; it can hardly be tolerated in Angola. So long as it is tolerated, U.S. policy will remain hostage to Jonas Savimbi's personal agenda.
It is especially important to open debate today, given important new developments in southern Africa that pose new challenges to American policy.
The United States-brokered Angola-Namibia accord of 1988 laid the basis for the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola and the transition to independence in Namibia. That has been followed by the Gbadolite summit of last June, when President Mobutu and 17 other African heads of state brought President Dos Santos and Mr. Savimbi into agreement on a cease-fire and negotiations aimed at a national reconciliation.
If current U.S. policy is in fact sound, it will certainly be capable of withstanding public scrutiny and debate in Congress: The proponents of aid to UNITA should join me today in appealing to Congress to reopen debate on United States policy toward Angola.
In the 3 years since Congress last took any stand on this issue, a multitude of things have happened which make it absolutely imperative that Congress systematically reappraise U.S. policy:
First, Cuban forces are on their way out of Angola. Under the term of the United States-brokered Angola-Namibia accord,
50 percent of the Cuban forces will be gone by November 1, two-thirds by April of next year. Further, Soviet military assistance to Angola is dropping significantly
The Cuban presence in Angola, it should be recalled, was the original rationale for United States support of UNITA; that is now a rapidly receding factor.
Second, current U.S. policy is failing.
Rising, unconditional assistance to UNITA has only encouraged Mr. Savimbi to become even more hardline, and to place new obstacles in the way of peace talks.
Following the Gbadolite summit in June, Savimbi rejected proposals for cease-fire protocols, denied that he had agreed to `integration' of UNITA into existing structures in Angola, in direct contradiction of the African heads of state, attacked President Mobutu's mediation efforts, abandoned the peace process, and failed to attend the round of talks scheduled for September 18 in Kinshasa, despite direct urgent appeals from President Bush and Assistant Secretary of State Cohen.
Against the backdrop of these events, the question has to be asked: Is U.S. patience with Savimbi inexhaustible? Does United States assistance to UNITA undercut other diplomatic efforts to encourage both UNITA and the Angolan Government to moderate their demands and reach fair compromises that lay the basis for an enduring, negotiated settlement?
In fact, the harsh truth is that America's Angola policy is now in disarray. Hardline, pro-UNITA forces have pushd the administration to embrace Savimbi's self-serving interpretation of the understandings reached at Gbadolite and to endorse many of Savimbi's maximum bargaining demands. In the meantime, administration officials must scramble to convince Mr. Savimbi and President Mobutu to get the negotiating process back on track. Not surprisingly, the African heads of state involved in the peace process show less and less confidence in U.S. intentions and evenhandedness.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman yield?
Mr. WOLPE. I am pleased to yield to my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from New Mexico.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, let me say I support the thrust of the remarks of my colleague. I have been concerned about the breakdown of negotiations. I think the President acted a little unexpectedly and not in the best interests of the peace process when he spurned President Mobutu and negotiations broke down. He was here in Washington recently and met with a number of Members. I believe he has told President Bush he will resume negotiations with the Angolan Government shortly, I think that is critically important.
I do support the gentleman's thrust that we should have a much closer look at developments there, especially if there is a barrier toward the peaceful settlement in that part of the world. The Cubans are leaving. South Africa is reducing their presence. I think there has got to be pressure to bring both sides to the negotiating table.
Mr. McCURDY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. WOLPE. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?
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Mr. CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson] has 2 minutes remaining.
Mr. WOLPE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to reserve 1 minute of the time.
Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.
Mr. McCURDY. I just want to say to my friend, the gentleman from Michigan, that it is my understanding that Dr. Sivimbi is going to not only meet with President Mobutu, but also has agreed to renewed negotiations. Unfortunately, and I was not there, there was not a clear written statement of agreement in that the Angolan Government did not want to even shake hands in front of the cameras.
It would certainly be easier if there were direct negotiations between UNITA and the Angolan Government and there were not mediators and we had front line states making one statement and other African leaders making others.
But the bottom line is, those Members who would like to see national reconciliation in Angola support negotiations, would like to see negotiations without preconditions, would like to see direct negotiations if possible. We would like to see those negotiations lead to multiparty states and elections. Certainly those Members who believe that bringing democracy to Angola would be a tremendous goal would like to meet with President Santos and others on a basis to further these discussions with Congress as well.
[TIME: 1500]
Mr. WOLPE. I thank the gentleman for his observations. Let me say I certainly hope that the cease-fire will be resumed and the negotiation process will again get under way. The point of what I am trying to raise today, however, is there are elements of American policy, not only in my judgment but in the judgment of most of the African heads of states who are involved in trying to facilitate national reconciliation in Angola, that are counterproductive to that end, to the end of national reconciliation.
The administration has not followed through on its expressed desire to demonstrate a degree of balance and impartiality through steps which would begin to normalize relationships with the Government of Angola. We do not have time to expand upon that. Hopefully we can as we move into discussion under the 5-minute rule.
The administration has not followed through on its expressed desire to demonstrate a degree of balance and impartiality through steps which would begin to normalize relations with the Government of Angola. Instead, there is continued, strained communication with the Government of Angola and no evidence whatsoever of a commitment by the Administration to reward the Government for the withdrawal of Cuban forces under the Angola-Namibia accord, for its extensive macroeconomic reforms, and for its decision to negotiate with UNITA. There is still no United States liaison office in Luanda. Nor has the administration supported Angola's full participation in the IMF and World Bank. This implicitly denies us any serious leverage in our dealings with the Angolan Government.
Fortunately, an important and varied segment of Congress has endorsed the call for a more moderate and balanced approach to Angola. House Concurrent Resolution 203 has 74 cosponsors--15 Republicans, 59 Democrats. This signals a growing dissatisfaction with a U.S. policy held hostage of UNITA.
I would make one final observation: There is a deepening awareness, I think, in this country among some of the strong supporters of Jonas Savimbi, of systematic human rights abuses which ought to give us serious pause about the degree of our commitment there.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Rowland], one of the more thoughtful members of our committee.
(Mr. ROWLAND of Connecticut asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. ROWLAND of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, I rise to join my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee in strong support of this year's intelligence authorization bill. Mr. Chairman, we have held extensive hearings on a number of aspects of funding for the numerous intelligence programs that are funded by this authorization bill. I am pleased to report that it represents an excellent utilization of scarce resources, both financial and personnel. Our Nation's security depends on good intelligence, and this bill assures that the intelligence community remains solid and able to meet the many challenges that it faces in the coming decade.
I would also like to bring to the attention of my colleagues the very successful meeting that we in the intelligence community had with Dr. Savimbi during his visit to Washington just last week.
One issue that we have looked at in depth is the allegation of human rights abuses by UNITA. Without revealing any classified information, we have found no information that substantiated the allegations that have surfaced both in Europe and the United States that Dr. Savimbi has tortured or killed close associates.
Allegations first surfaced that Savimbi had killed a number of colleagues, one of whom was Gen. Anthony Fernandez. Ironically, Fernandez appeared with Dr. Savimbi last week. Another, Tito Chinjungi, the former Washington UNITA representative, categorically denied allegations that he had been tortured by Savimbi. Indeed, Congressmen Drier, McEwen, Burton, and Shumway met with Tito shortly after the allegations surfaced. They found him to be in good health and very indignant that anyone would insinuate that he had been tortured. Finally, there is an often repeated allegation that Dr. Savimbi had several individuals burned at the stake in 1983. This story also has not been substantiated. While many Africans still believe in witches, and burning at the stake has been a punishment accorded suspected witches, UNITA has discouraged such activity and, in fact, has established a village where individuals thought to be witches are protected from being burned or stoned to death.
Among all of these alleagations an important issue has been lost, MPLA human rights violations. The April 1989 African Watch Report on human rights entitled `Angola, Violations of the Laws of War by Both Sides' listed violations committed by the MPLA such as indiscriminate mining of civilian areas, forced conscription and unwarranted attacks on civilians. Perhaps the most damaging accusation is the mining issue. We have already seen in El Salvador and Afghanistan the damage and lost limbs that carelessly, or even worse, knowingly have been caused by mines. The MPLA, following classic Soviet military theory, has placed mines all over the countryside. Their legacy will be untold numbers of lives lost and innocent civilians maimed.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to state that I think the intelligence community and agencies that have been coming before our committee over the past year have done an excellent job in their testimony. I would also like to indicate that as a new member of the committtee, I am greatly impressed with the quality and professionalism and commitment of the staff.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. ROWLAND of Connecticut. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. HYDE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the gentleman a question. In view of the remarks of the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe], does the gentleman not think that with the Cubans on a timetable leaving Angola, with the Soviets decreasing their aid to the Communist Government of Angola, if indeed that is true, that our policy is working and that a reexamination of our policy really is unwarranted? We are on a roll, would you not say, if the statements of the gentleman from Michigan are true.
Mr. ROWLAND of Connecticut. The gentleman is absolutely correct. We have had success, things are changing. There may be stipulations at times where people on different sides of a political issue disagree upon what is happening exactly. Indeed, the results have shown that.
Mr. HYDE. Does the gentleman not think that our policy should be determined in this country rather than by the heads of state of African nations, as the gentleman seemed to suggest, that our policy did not meet with their approval? Does the gentleman not think it should stay in the domestic realm?
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Mr. ROWLAND of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, the ranking member is exactly right.
Mr. HYDE. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Gallo].
(Mr. GALLO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. GALLO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding me this time.
Today the House considers the intelligence authorization for fiscal 1990.
In this bill, there is a provision to expand a demonstration project so that all FBI employees in New York City will receive a cost-of-living increase between 20 and 25 percent.
Mr. Chairman, I fully support the committee's efforts to increase the pay of FBI personnel who serve our country so diligently. I applaud the committee for recognizing the important role that clerical and support personnel play in Government service.
I support a cost-of-living increase for FBI agents in New York City. At the same time, I believe that New Jersey's Federal workers must receive equal treatment.
There are roughly 400 FBI agents and support personnel in northern New Jersey who face the same high housing costs, high property taxes, skyrocketing car insurance premiums, and transportation expenses.
In fact, we are losing many of our agents to New York City for the very reason that they will receive a substantial pay increase.
This concern is not limited to northern New Jersey. Federal workers from the suburbs of Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago are all in need of a locality pay increase to make ends meet in high cost areas.
Clearly, the current situation demonstrates that the time has come for Congress and the White House to carefully consider revising the general Federal pay schedule so it takes into account differences in local costs of living.
That is why I introduced a bill to provide locality pay for all Federal workers in high cost urban and suburban areas.
The fact that my bill has cosponsors from coast to coast demonstrates that the problem has reached crisis proportions throughout the country.
Mr. Chairman, I support today's action, but I urge my colleagues to support a more comprehensive solution, such as my bill H.R. 3319.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston].
(Mr. LIVINGSTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. LIVINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this legislation. Over the last 9 months the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has worked very hard to scrub the proposed budget for the intelligence community.
We have made a number of changes, and I believe the legislation we have before us today will provide for a strong intelligence program that will address the areas of critical importance to our Nation.
With respect to my remarks earlier in response to Mr. Glickman, I was simply referring to the Panamanian situation last week, and I have to tell this body that I believe very strongly that we in Congress have to free up the intelligence community to do its job and to do so without congressional over-micromanagement. Or else we cannot be very comfortable when we get up and blame them for not doing their jobs.
I also point out that last week our committee had an opportunity to meet with Dr. Jonas Savimbi, president of UNITA. During that meeting we heard of his explanation of the failure of the peace talks progress in Angola and genuine talks on national reconciliation to begin.
Dr. Savimbi assured us of his desire to meet with President Mobutu of Zaire, and I understand that he will be meeting with President Mobutu very shortly in Europe.
Of course, Mr. Mobutu is the mediator of talks between UNITA and the Marxist-Leninist MPLA.
In addition to that meeting that is going to come about between Dr. Savimbi and President Mobutu, to get the peace talks back on track, hopefully they are going to agree on terms to establish a comprehensive lasting ceasefire.
[TIME: 1510]
Peace talks, however, cannot be successful if the MPLA clings to the past and continues to insist on integration of UNITA into the ranks of MPLA. That is unreasonable, but the MPLA refuses to rewrite the constitution which provides for a one-party state, governed by the MPLA. That is unreasonable. They, likewise, refuse to talk directly to UNITA in these peace negotiations. Of course, that is unreasonable.
Finally, and most importantly, the MPLA refused to hold free internationally supervised elections, in which every Angolan will have the right to cast his vote for the party of his choice. Certainly, that is unreasonable.
In one month, Namibians will vote for the first time in free elections that will lead to their country's independence. The agreements that led to resolution of this problem were achieved through long and patient, but also direct, face-to-face negotiations between arch rivals, South Africa on one side and Cuba and Angola on the other. If the MPLA is sincere about ending its civil war, which led to the deaths of countless innocent civilians, it should sit down and talk with Dr. Savimbi and UNITA in direct negotiations and talk seriously about ending the war.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I neglected, when I introduced the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] to mention that he is one of the most productive and creative members of our committee.
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Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered under the 5-minute rule by titles and each title shall be considered as having been read.
The amendments printed in section 2 of House Resolution 254 are considered as having been adopted and shall be considered as original text for purposes of further amendment under the 5-minute rule.
The Clerk will designate title I.
The text of title I is as follows:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the `Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1990'.
Sec. 101. Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 1990 for the conduct of the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the following elements of the United States Government:
(1) The Central Intelligence Agency.
(2) The Department of Defense.
(3) The Defense Intelligence Agency.
(4) The National Security Agency.
(5) The Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy, and the Department of the Air Force.
(6) The Department of State.
(7) The Department of the Treasury.
(8) The Department of Energy.
(9) The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(10) The Drug Enforcement Administration.
Sec. 102. The amounts authorized to be appropriated under section 101, and the authorized personnel ceilings as of September 30, 1990, for the conduct of the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the elements listed in such section, are those specified in the classified Schedule of Authorizations as amended on September 27, 1989, by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to accompany H.R. 2748 of the One Hundred First Congress. That Schedule of Authorizations shall be made available to the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate and House of Representatives and to the President. The President shall provide for suitable distribution of the schedule, or of appropriate portions of the schedule, within the executive branch.
Sec. 103. The Director of Central Intelligence may authorize employment of civilian personnel in excess of the numbers authorized for fiscal year 1990 under sections 102 and 202 of this Act when he determines that such action is necessary to the performance of important intelligence functions, except that such number may not, for any element of the intelligence community, exceed 2 percent of the number of civilian personnel authorized under such sections for such element. The Director of Central Intelligence shall promptly notify the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives and the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate whenever he exercises the authority granted by this section.
Sec. 104. Funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, or any other agency or entity of the United States may be obligated and expended during fiscal year 1990 to provide funds, materiel, or other assistance to the Nicaraguan democratic resistance to support military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua only as authorized in section 101 and as specified in the classified Schedule of Authorizations referred to in section 102, or pursuant to section 502 of the National Security Act of 1947, or pursuant to any provision of law specifically providing such funds, materiel, or assistance.
The CHAIRMAN. Are there any amendments to title I?
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the bill be printed in the Record and open to amendment at any point.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
The text of the remainder of the bill is as follows:
Sec. 201. There is authorized to be appropriated for the Intelligence Community Staff for fiscal year 1990 the sum of $28,400,000.
Sec. 202. (a) The Intelligence Community Staff is authorized 250 full-time personnel as of September 30, 1990. Such personnel of the Intelligence Community Staff may be permanent employees of the Intelligence Community Staff or personnel detailed from other elements of the United States Government.
(b) During fiscal year 1990, personnel of the Intelligence Community Staff shall be selected so as to provide appropriate representation from elements of the United States Government engaged in intelligence and intelligence-related activities.
(c) During fiscal year 1990, any officer or employee of the United States or a member of the Armed Forces who is detailed to the Intelligence Community Staff from another element of the United States Government shall be detailed on a reimbursable basis, except that any such officer, employee, or member may be detailed on a nonreimbursable basis for a period of less than one year for the performance of temporary functions as required by the Director of Central Intelligence.
Sec. 203. During fiscal year 1990, activities and personnel of the Intelligence Community Staff shall be subject to the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 401 et seq.) and the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 (40 U.S.C. 403a et seq.) in the same manner as activities and personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Sec. 301. There is authorized to be appropriated for the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability Fund for fiscal year 1990 the sum of $154,900,000.
Sec. 302. The Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees is amended--
(1) by redesignating section 236 as section 237; and
(2) by inserting after section 235 the following new section:
`Sec. 236. A participant must complete, within the last two years before any separation from service, except a separation because of death or disability, at least one year of creditable civilian service during which he or she is subject to this title before he or she or his or her survivors are eligible for an annuity under this title based on the separation. If a participant, except a participant separated from the service because of death or disability, fails to meet the service requirement of the preceding sentence, the amounts deducted from his or her pay during the period for which no eligibility is established based on the separation shall be returned to him or her on the separation. Failure to meet this service requirement does not deprive the individual or his or her survivors of annuity rights which attached on a previous separation.'.
Sec. 303. Section 232(b) of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees is amended--
(1) by adding at the end of paragraph (1) thereof the following new sentence; `Payment of death in service benefits for former spouses is also subject to paragraph (4) of this subsection.'; and
(2) by adding after paragraph (3) thereof the following:
`(4) If a former spouse eligible for death in service benefits under provisions of this section is or becomes eligible for survivor benefits under section 224, the benefits provided under this section will not be payable and will be superseded by the benefits provided in section 224.'.
Sec. 304. Section 224(a)(2) of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees is amended by striking out `and also by an amount' and all that follows through `by the United States'.
(b) The amendment made by this section shall be effective as of October 1, 1986.
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Sec. 305. The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 (50 U.S.C. 403a et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following new section:
`Sec. 18. (a) Nothwithstanding any provision of chapter 83 of title 5, United States Code, the annuity under subchapter III of such chapter of an officer or employee of the Central Intelligence Agency who retires on or after October 1, 1989, is not designated under section 203 of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees, and has served abroad as an officer or employee of the Agency on or after January 1, 1987, shall be computed as provided in subsection (b).
`(b)(1) The portion of the annuity relating to such service abroad that is actually performed at any time during the officer's or employees' first ten years of total service shall be computed at the rate and using the percent of average pay specified in section 8339(a)(3) of title 5, United States Code, that is normally applicable only to so much of an employee's total service as exceeds ten years.
`(2) The portion of the annuity relating to service abroad as described in subsection (a) but that is actually performed at any time after the officer's or employee's first ten years of total service shall be computed as provided in section 8339(a)(3) of title 5, United States Code; but, in addition, the officer or employee shall be deemed for annuity computation purposes to have actually performed an equivalent period of service abroad during his or her first ten years of total service, and in calculating the portion of the officer's or employee's annuity for his or her first ten years of total service, the computation rate and percent of average pay specified in paragraph (1) shall also be applied to the period of such deemed or equivalent service abroad.
`(3) The portion of the annuity relating to other service by an officer or employee as described in subsection (a) shall be computed as provided in the provisions of section 8339(a) of title 5, United States Code, that would otherwise be applicable to such service.
`(4) For purposes of this subsection, the term `total service' has the meaning given such term under chapter 83 of title 5, United States Code.
`(c) For purposes of subsections (f) through (m) of section 8339 of title 5, United States Code, an annuity computed under this section shall be deemed to be an annuity computed under subsections (a) and (o) of section 8339 of title 5, United States Code.
`(d) The provisions of subsection (a) of this section shall not apply to an officer or employee of the Central Intelligence Agency who would otherwise be entitled to a greater annuity computed under an otherwise applicable subsection of section 8339 of title 5, United States Code.'.
Sec. 306. The special accrual rates provided by section 303 of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees and by section 18 of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 for computation of the annuity of an individual who has served abroad as an officer or employee of the Central Intelligence Agency shall be used to compute that portion of the annuity of such individual relating to such service abroad whether or not the individual is employed by the Central Intelligence Agency at the time of retirement from Federal service.
Sec. 401. In the performance of its functions, the Central Intelligence Agency may use its funds to procure commercial remote sensing data by whatever means the Agency deems to be appropriate notwithstanding any provision of law directing the procurement of such data through other Government agencies.
Sec. 402. Section 17 of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 (50 U.S.C. 403q) is amended by striking the first period in subsection (c) and inserting in lieu thereof `and listing the title or subject of each inspection, investigation, or audit conducted during the reporting period.', and by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:
`(f) Any report of an inspection, investigation, or audit conducted by the Office of Inspector General which has been requested by either committee.'.
Sec. 501. (a)(1) Chapter 81 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new section:
`1592. Foreign language proficiency: special pay
`(a) The Secretary of Defense may pay special pay under this section to a civilian officer or employee of the Department of Defense who--
`(1) has certified as being proficient in a foreign language identified by the Secretary of Defense as being a language in which proficiency by civilian personnel of the Department is important for the effective collection, production, or dissemination of foreign intelligence information; and
`(2) is serving in a position, or is subject to assignment to a position, in which proficiency in that language facilitates performance of officially assigned intelligence or intelligence-related duties.
`(b) The annual rate of special pay under subsection (a) shall be determined by the Secretary of Defense.
`(c) Special pay under this section may be paid in addition to any compensation authorized under section 1604(b) of this title for which an officer or employee is eligible.'.
(2) The table of sections at the beginning of such chapter is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new item:
`1592. Foreign language proficiency: special pay.'.
(b) Section 1592 of title 10, United States Code, as added by subsection (a), shall take effect on the first day of the first pay period beginning on or after the later of--
(1) October 1, 1989, or
(2) the date of the enactment of this Act.
Sec. 502. (a) Chapter 155 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new section:
`2607. Acceptance of gifts for the Defense Intelligence College
`(a) The Secretary of Defense may accept, hold, administer, and use any gift (including any gift of an interest in real property) made for the purpose of aiding and facilitating the work of the Defense Intelligence College and may pay all necessary expenses in connection with the acceptance of such a gift.
`(b) Subsection (c) of section 2601 of this title applies to property that is accepted under subsection (a) in the same manner that such subsection applies to property that is accepted under subsection (a) of that section.
`(c) In this section, the term `gift' includes a bequest of personal property or a devise or real property.'.
(b) The table of sections at the beginning of that chapter is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new item:
`2607. Acceptance of gifts for the Defense Intelligence School.'.
Sec. 503. (a) Section 1590(e)(1) of title 10, United States Code, is amended by striking out `, during fiscal years 1988 and 1989,'.
(b) Section 1604(e)(1) of such title is amended by striking out `, during fiscal years 1988 and 1989,'.
Sec. 504. (a)(1) Chapter 83 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new section:
`1608. Financial assistance to certain employees in acquisition of critical skills
`(a) The Secretary of Defense shall establish an undergraduate training program with respect to civilian employees of the Defense Intelligence Agency that is similar in purpose, conditions, content, and administration to the program which the Secretary of Defense is authorized to establish under section 16 of the National Security Agency Act of 1959 (50 U.S.C. 402 note) for civilian employees of the National Security Agency.
`(b) Any payments made by the Secretary to carry out the program required to be established by subsection (a) may be made in any fiscal year only to the extent that appropriated funds are available for that purpose.'.
(2) The table of sections at the beginning of that chapter is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new item:
`1608. Financial assistance to certain employees in acquisition of critical skills.'.
Sec. 505. (a) Section 1605(a) of title 10, United States Code, is amended--
(1) by striking out `who are subject to chapter 84 of title 5,' in the last sentence; and
(2) by striking out the period at the end and inserting in lieu thereof `and in section 18 of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949.'.
(b) Section 9(b) of the National Security Agency Act of 1959 (50 U.S.C. 402 note) is amended--
(1) in paragraph (1)(B), by striking `(including special' and all that follows through `note)); and' and inserting in lieu thereof a semicolon;
(2) by striking the period at the end of paragraph (2) and inserting in lieu thereof `; and'; and
(3) by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
`(3) special retirement accrual in the same manner provIded in section 303 of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees (50 U.S.C. 403 note) and in section 18 of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949.'.
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Sec. 601. (a) Section 601(a)(2) of the Intelligence Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 1989 is amended by striking out `who are subject by policy and practice to directed geographical transfer or reassignment'.
(b) The amendment made by this section shall take effect on October 1, 1989.
Sec. 701. Appropriations authorized by this Act for salary, pay, retirement, and other benefits for Federal employees may be increased by such additional or supplemental amounts as may be necessary for increases in such compensation or benefits authorized by law.
Sec. 702. The authorization of appropriations by this Act shall not be deemed to constitute authority for the conduct of any intelligence activity which is not otherwise authorized by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
Sec. 703. (a) The President shall ensure that the provision of classified information to a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, or to a member of any successor board performing the same or similar function, is consistent with the goal of avoiding any conflict of interest involving the use of such information in connection with a business or financial transaction of the member.
(b) In furtherance of the President's responsibilities under subsection (a), the President shall issue regulations regarding--
(1) periodic disclosure of information on the business and financial interests of each member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, including any business or financial relationship of a member with a foreign government, or any entity directed and controlled by a foreign government, or with any corporation or other commercial entity doing business outside the United States; and
(2) the circumstances in which, based on such business or financial interests, a member shall not be provided classified information.
(c) The regulations required by subsection (b) shall take effect not later than March 1, 1990, and shall be provided to the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives at least 30 days prior to such effective date.
Sec. 704. Not later than April 1, 1990, the President shall submit to Congress a report describing how intelligence activities relating to narcotics trafficking can be integrated, including coordinating the collection and analysis of intelligence information, ensuring the dissemination of relevant intelligence information to officials with responsibility for narcotics policy and to agencies of the United States Government responsible for interdiction, eradication, law enforcement, and other counternarcotics activities, and coordinating and controlling all counternarcotics intelligence activities.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Richardson: at the end of the bill, add the following:
`Sec. 705. None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act may be obligated or expended to support military or paramilitary operations by the Noncommunist Cambodian Resistance if, after the date of enactment of this Act, quantities of arms, ammunition or other military equipment are provided by the Noncommunist Cambodian Resistance to the military forces of Democratic Kampuchea (know as the Khmer Rouge) or if the Noncommunist Cambodian Resistance engages in joint military operations with military forces of Democratic Kampuchea.'
Mr. RICHARDSON (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from New Mexico?
There was no objection.
(Mr. RICHARDSON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, the reason that I have this concern is that in this legislation that we are debating today we are authorizing contingencies for the agency. Funds are not restricted. They are used at the discretion of the President, and basically, does not require congressional approval. Therefore, I am offering this amendment, or considering offering this amendment for the possibility that such funds may be used for this purpose. The amendment that I have is directed at the Khmer Rouge, and basically we have had, recently, a breakdown of the peace negotiations between the non-Communist forces, the Khmer Rouge, the various parties involved in the Cambodia dispute.
However, most importantly, the telling cruelty of the Khmer Rouge has been manifested once again. The failure of the peace conference, the Khmer Rouge proved to be once again, the bloc that, once again, disrupted negotiations. They refused to accept language that condemned their past genocide. They refused to be linked to a process of peace.
I am concerned about our policy in that region, and the reason I am raising this matter is to, once again, hope that American policy somehow directly or indirectly does not link up with the Khmer Rouge.
Now, it is my understanding that in the Foreign Affairs authorization bill of last year, there is a provision that the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] offered which reads as follows:
Prohibition on certain assistance to the Khmer Rouge--notwithstanding any other provision of law, none of the funds made available to carry out this section may be obligated or expended for the purpose or with the effect or promoting, sustaining, or augmenting, directly or indirectly, the capacity of the Khmer Rouge or any of its members to conduct military or paramilitary operations in Cambodia or elsewhere in Indochina.
My amendment, basically, says that should there be this eventuality, there would be no military or paramilitary assistance that would go to the Khmer Rouge, through an error of joint military operation by the non-Communist forces or through other factors by which American assistance might in some way be used by the Khmer Rouge, and in that event, link up the United States and those that we are backing with this dreaded community of not just traitors, but killers, that right now are threatening any kind of peace in Cambodia.
I would like, if I could, to ask the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solarz], if in his judgment, the foreign assistance legislation that passed in 1987 covers the intelligence concern that I have raised in this amendment.
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman, my good friend and our valued colleague on the committee, this gentleman is not the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solarz], but he was originally from New York.
However, I appreciate and concur in the gentleman's concerns, as I am sure all Members, both on and off the committee do.
I would say to the gentleman, it is my understanding as well, that the gentleman's amendment is not necessary, that section 908 of the International Security and Development Act of 1985, I believe, already provides that no funds can be used to directly or indirectly promote, sustain, or augment the military or paramilitary capacity of the Khmer Rouge, a broader prohibition than the gentleman's amendment would impose, and accordingly, the amendment of the gentleman, it seems to this gentleman, is not necessary and need not be offered.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, what the gentleman is saying is this amendment that he just read does cover intelligence activities?
Mr. BEILENSON. If the gentleman will continue yielding, that is this gentleman's understanding.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde].
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, we get the States confused and this gentleman gets the names confused, so now that all Members are thoroughly confused, I agree with the gentleman from California that the concern of the gentleman from New Mexico is covered by existing law.
No Member supports the Khmer Rouge directly or indirectly, and it is a matter of considerable concern for our committee and other relevant committees, to see that the Khmer Rouge does not receive any benefit from any programs whatsoever, in view of their record.
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Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, let me add that the reason I spoke of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solarz] is that the gentleman very much wanted to speak on this provision, and regrettably I do not see him.
Mr. Chairman, in the wake of the failure of the Paris Conference on Cambodia, all parties involved in the Cambodian conflict appear increasingly entrenched. The possibility of civil war is greater than ever. The United States must assure that, should United States military assistance be made available to the non-Communist Cambodian resistance, none of this assistance would fall into the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
During its bloody 7-year reign, the Khmer Rouge presided over the murder of over 1 million Cambodians. This was genocide on the greatest scale.
Throughout the Paris conference the Khmer Rouge refused to accept language in the accord condemning their murderous rule. To this day, the Khmer Rouge continues to defend its actions in Cambodia. Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest that the Khmer Rouge's genocidal agenda has been altered in the least.
In the Foreign Assistance Authorization Act, passed on June 29 of this year, there was a recognition of the need to preclude any U.S. assistance from reaching the Khmer Rouge or from assisting its activities.
U.S. policy in the region must be clear. In the wake of the Vietnamese withdrawal, the United States should do all it can to support the Democratic aspirations of the Cambodian people and to prevent the return of the Khmer Rouge--a return to the killing fields.
By precluding any assistance to the non-Communist resistance should the Khmer Rouge benefit the United States is stating firmly that the Khmer Rouge's return to power is unacceptable.
(b) Prohibition on Certain Assistance to the Khmer Rouge: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, none of the funds made available to carry out this section may be obligated or expended for the purpose or with the effect of promoting, sustaining, or augmenting, directly or indirectly, the capacity of the Khmer Rouge or any of its members to conduct military or paramilitary operations in Cambodia or elsewhere in Indochina.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment, in light of the assurances of the Chairman and the ranking member.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from New Mexico?
There was no objection.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Solomon: Page 19. after line 2. insert the following new section:
SEC. 705. RANDOM DRUG TESTING.
The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency shall require random drug testing of officers and employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.
(Mr. SOLOMON. asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Chairman, let me say I will not read those prepared remarks, but I would like to say this amendment is one in a series that I am offering to all department authorization bills which does require random drug testing of all Federal employees. I do so, without passing anything on the CIA, because the CIA most certainly has an excellent program whereby they can identify illegal drug users, and that program does work very effectively. However, to be fair to all the other Federal employees, if we are going to include some, we must include all. That is what my amendment would do.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman yield?
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman has produced a very good amendment. It is consistent with the amendment he has offered to other agencies, and the Republican side is prepared to accept the amendment.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his support.
To finalize my remarks, Mr. Chairman, we all know interdiction is important, if we are to stop the terrible drug war.
[TIME: 1520]
We know that education of the American people is terribly important. We know that rehabilitation of drug addicts is terribly important. But all these things that we can do will not help unless we stop the demand of the 20 million-plus Americans using illegal drugs. Therefore, I think the American Government has the obligation to set the example.
We already have in the military the fact that 8 years ago 27 percent of the All-Volunteer military admitted to using illegal drugs. Today, because of a random testing program extensively used throughout the military, that figure has dropped to 4.5 percent. That is an 82 percent drop. Think what we could do to the demand for drugs in this country if we could reduce the demand to 82 percent of all the American people. We could win the war on drugs, and the Members can be of help today by agreeing to this amendment.
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, let me respond breifly to the gentleman's remarks and to the amendment which he has proffered to the Committee of the Whole. I feel it is incumbent upon those of us who oversee the CIA to respond at least briefly before we accede, as we shall, to the gentleman's amendment.
Let me say that I was a little disturbed by the gentleman's amendment--not a lot, but a little. On the one hand, it does deal with what I am sure we all consider to be the most immediate threat to national security these days, which is the drug problem. On the other hand, by mandating what may be an unnecessary and redundant program, it probably does not make as much sense as it might when applied to other agencies of the Government.
Mr. Chairman, this is basically why this gentleman has asked to be recognized: Members should know that the CIA already maintains an active drug awareness and prevention program, and is actively committed to preventing and detecting drug use among CIA employees.
The CIA's drug detection program includes background investigations of all applicants, specifically focussing on whether applicants may use or abuse drugs or alcohol. Applicants are also given medical examinations that screen urine and blood samples. Pyschological assessments are made of applicants to determine behavior that could indicate abuse of drugs or alcohol. Finally, every applicant is given a polygraph examination to determine whether the applicant has abused drugs or alcohol.
The CIA's program for a drug-free workplace does not end with the acceptance of an applicant for employment. The agency continues to be vigilant against drug abuse among its employees. Current agency policy requires that new employees be subject to reinvestigation after 3 years. This reinvestigation includes another medical examination and another polygraph examination that specifically covers substance abuse during the time of employment at the agency. Agency employees are also subject to periodic routine reinvestigations. A specific issue polygraph examination and/or a fitness-for-duty medical examination may be conducted at any time if there are any indications of drug abuse.
So the gentleman suggests that there may be a point of diminishing returns. The gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] has concluded presumably that that point has not been reached at the CIA, and I will not quarrel with his conclusion at this time. With some ambivalence, therefore, and with the understanding that the Director of Central Intelligence would be free to fashion a reasonable program to meet what he determines may be the scope of the problem, I will not oppose the gentleman's amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] for offering the amendment, but I did want to take this opportunity to make clear to the membership that the agency already takes this problem very seriously, and it has had in effect for some time, I think, quite a substantial program directed toward those ends.
Mr. Chairman, we accept the amendment.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon].
The amendment was agreed to.
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Mrs. KENNELLY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I ask the forbearance of the Members. I was in another meeting, and as a member of the Intelligence Committee, I was not able to get here for general debate on the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 1990. I am just here now to say that having been a part of the considerations and having been a part of the committee, I want to put on record my thanks and my regard for our chairman, the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson], and our ranking member, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde].
We have had a difficult year in this first session of the 101st Congress. However, I believe, and I think others believe, that within the Select Committee on Intelligence of the House we have had a very good year. We have had some rather difficult times previously, especially due to the Iran-Contra affair. I think every Member has made every effort on both sides of the aisle to put these things behind us. We have seen a coming together, and we have seen an attitude of responsibility and attempts definitely to work together.
So, Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say to our committee chairman that I support the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 1990, and I look forward to carrying out the pieces of this act, knowing in fact that this is the type of committee where we do have bipartisanship and where we leave our difficulties at the door whenever possible.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Traficant: Page 19, after line 2, insert the following new section:
SEC. 705. BUY-AMERICAN REQUIREMENT.
(a) Determination by the Director: If the Director, with the concurrence of the United States Trade Representative and the Secretary of Commerce, determines that the public interest so requires, the Director is authorized to award to a domestic firm a contract that, under the use of competitive procedures, would be awarded to a foreign firm, if--
(1) the final product of the domestic firm will be completely assembled in the United States;
(2) when completely assembled, not less than 50 percent of the final product of the domestic firm will be domestically produced; and
(3) the difference between the bids submitted by the foreign and domestic firms is not more than 6 percent.
In determining under this subsection whether the public interest so requires, the Director shall take into account United States international obligations and trade relations.
(b) Limited Application: This section shall not apply to the extent to which--
(1) such applicability would not be in the public interest;
(2) compelling national security considerations require otherwise; or
(3) the United States Trade Representative determines that such an award would be in violation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or an international agreement to which the United States is a party.
(c) Limitation: This section shall apply only to contracts for which--
(1) amounts are authorized by this Act (including the amendments made by this Act) to be made available; and
(2) solicitations for bids are issued after the date of the enactment of this Act.
(d) Report to Congress: The Director shall report to the Congress on contracts covered under this section and entered into with foreign entities in fiscal years 1990 and 1991 and shall report to the Congress on the number of contracts that meet the requirements of subsection (a) but which are determined by the United States Trade Representative to be in violation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or an international agreement to which the United States is a party. The Director shall also report to the Congress on the number of contracts covered under this Act (including the amendments made by this Act) and awarded based upon the parameters of this section.
(e) Definitions: For purposes of this section--
(1) Director: The term `Director' means the Director of Central Intelligence.
(2) Domestic firm: The term `domestic firm' means a business entity that is incorporated in the United States and that conducts business operations in the United States.
(3) Foreign firm: The term `foreign firm' means a business entity not described in paragraph (2).
Mr. TRAFICANT (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio?
There was no objection.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I will start this out by commending the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson] and the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] of Xelienople, PA.
I want to take off before I explain my amendment and pick up on the words of the gentleman form Kansas [Mr. Glickman] in the House earlier. I would hope that our intelligence network would begin to focus on what the American people consider to be our greatest threat. In a national poll, the American people rated Japan a greater threat to our national security than either the Soviet Union or communism. They fear the economic intrusion, the investments of a great foreign power. They are very concerned about what Congress's efforts would be to not only analyze but abate that tremendous invasion. So I would say, before I explain my amendment, that when we keep shouting about `the big bad bear' down here, I think we had better start looking at the big Rising Sun and the shadow that is beginning to be cast all over this country.
I lost another 3,000 jobs just today when the van plants in Ohio closed. I would like to ask some Member of the House what the exact cost of a General Motors van is inside Korea or what tariffs and duties and taxes, there are on a General Motors van in Japan.
So, Mr. Chairman, I will not belabor the debate further. I have offered a standard `buy America' amendment. It has been approved to most authorization bills, and I would hope that the Committee would find favor with it and approve it.
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Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the chairman of the committee.
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, the committee has had an opportunity, I would say to the gentleman and to other Members, to examine the gentleman's amendment. We note among other things that the amendment includes an exemption for compelling national security considerations, which I take it will resolve any serious problems the agency or others might have with it.
With that understanding, Mr. Chairman, we on this side of the aisle at least have no serious objections to the amendment and can accept it.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson]. We think the gentleman has produced a good amendment, and we are happy to accept it on this side.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's acceptance of the amendment, and let me say that my comments earlier about Pennsylvania were made just to try to get the gentleman's attention. I say to the gentleman this: `We wish you were in our region, Mr. Hyde. We know where you are from.'
Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.
Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
In reading the gentleman's amendment, in subparagraph (A), may I interpret that to mean that the Director must have the approval of the USTR and the Secretary of Commerce to go forward under the amendment with his `buy America' award?
Mr. TRAFICANT. No; I do not particularly feel it is compelling unless it would be an issue that might require another section of the amendment, that national security section, to be on consideration.
Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Chairman, I would ask, will the gentleman take a look at the language? It says, `If the Director, with the concurrence of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Secretary of Commerce determines * * *.'
My interpretation of that language would be that if he does not have the concurrence, then he is not authorized to award that contract under the special conditions.
[TIME: 1530]
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, as the amendment is drafted, it would appear that, but would not be the intent of the amendment to limit the hands of the Director, and I would like to make that clarification here, and I ask unanimous consent to have that placed into the amendment.
Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the right to object.
The CHAIRMAN. Would the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] state the language that he wishes to have inserted in the amendment?
Mr. TRAFICANT. `If the director with the concurrence of the United States Trade Representative and Secretary of Commerce determines that the public interest to requires'; that the language I would like to have changed where the director can make that determination and without such concurrence.
The CHAIRMAN. Does the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] wish to strike `with the concurrence of the United States Trade Representative and the Secretary of Commerce'?
Mr. TRAFICANT. Only if, in fact, that section is being considered and opposed by the gentleman. If the language in its current form would be acceptable.
Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.
Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Chairman, I tell the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] that the language, as it is written, is acceptable to me, because it requires the concurrence.
If the gentleman seeks unanimous consent, I will certainly object to a change.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I certainly withdraw my unanimous-consent request to make such change.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant].
The amendment was agreed to.
Mr. WOLPE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
(Mr. WOLPE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. WOLPE. Mr. Chairman, I take this time to make a few concluding remarks about the subject of American policy toward Angola, and to respond to some of the commentary that occurred in the course of general debate with respect to the human rights dimension of American policy.
The issue of human rights, as it relates to our Angolan policy, is an important one, not because the Angolan Government has not itself been engaged in very serious violations of fundamental human rights, but because the entire case that has been painted in support of our policy of giving assistance to Mr. Savimbi has been based upon the characterization of him as an individual who shared and embraced American democratic values and basic human rights commitments. It is my concern that much of that characterization has been based upon myth and upon very substantial public relations efforts in this country that bears little relationship to the reality, and I do not think it makes sense for American policy to continue to be guided on the basis of myth.
I have spoken for a number of years to my colleagues about authoritarianism in Angola, as well as authoritarianism in other African states. The point that I have tried to make with respect to Angola is that the authoritarianism of the MPLA government is not a unique fact; authoritarianism is alive and well also in Jonas Savimbi's UNITA. In fact, until almost the moment he began to receive American assistance in 1986, Mr. Savimbi was publicly on record as favoring the Chinese socialist model and believing that, and I quote, `there was no fundamental ideological conflict between the two parties,' MPLA and UNITA.
It is most significant that, in the past several months, independent human rights organizations and some prominent former supporters of UNITA, groups that have no brief whatsoever for the MPLA government in Angola, have made detailed revelations of the lack of democracy and respect for human rights in UNITA.
Among these revelations, the most recent is an article that appeared in the National Review of August 18, hardly an apologist for the Angolan Government. It was written by the journal's roving correspondent, Radek Sikorski. Sikorski, who perceives UNITA as representing a major political constituency in Angola and a movement with significant military and organizational achievements, nevertheless concluded after a lengthy personal visit to Jamba, and I quote:
Let us have no illusions. Savimbi cannot bear men of independent thought around him, and, instead of sharing our wariness of autocratic power, his officers accord him the reverence due to a traditional despotic African chief. `UNITA, c'est moi,' Savimbi can say with more reason than Louis XIV could ever have dreamt of for France * * * The last UNITA Congress in 1986 was a farce.
Mr. Sikorski continues:
Allegations of human rights abuses within UNITA are too persistent and come from sources too well placed to ignore.
Finally, in passages which I would strongly commend to some of my colleagues who have been approached by UNITA's $2 million per year lobby, the author says:
To begin with, UNITA officers, including top leaders, are compulsive liars. Lying is so pervasive one comes to think that many UNITA officers have not assimilated the concept of integrity or understood the dangers of forefeiting trust.
In the end, Radeski portrays both MPLA and UNITA as `two ramshackle totalitarianisms' while expressing hope that a compromise between them `might create some space in which the Angolan people would have room to breathe.'
There is other recent evidence of human rights violations by UNITA.
Mr. Chairman, I would refer, first of all, to the Human Rights Watch investigation of `Violations of the Laws of War by Both Sides' in Angola, and again I make the point in full acknowledgment that there have been human rights violations on both sides, and I would also note that we do not use American tax dollars to support that side. We do send American tax dollars to Mr. Savimbi, and that Human Rights Watch contains several highly disturbing conclusions:
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(a) That UNITA indiscriminately deploys land mines against civilians;
(b) That UNITA has taken hundreds of foreigners hostage;
(c) That UNITA has captured thousands of civilians and conscripted them as combatants or unpaid agricultural labor;
(d) That UNITA has indiscriminately and deliberately attacked and killed civilians in government-controlled areas, and attacked and killed civilians in government-controlled areas, and attacked medical facilities and burned civilian homes; and
(e) That UNITA has deliberately attempted to starve civilians;
(2) British journalist Fred Bridgland wrote a very supportive biography of Jonas Savimbi whose cover featured statements by Ronald Reagan, Senator Robert Dole and Jeanne Kirkpatrick. He and his book were presented to Congress two years ago by the UNITA lobby. No Western journalist has followed UNITA as long or is thought to have had such good access to UNITA as Bridgland. Yet on March 12, 1989 Bridgland wrote in the London Daily Telegraph that his own argument `that UNITA Offered Angola some sort of democratic future * * * began to look pretty thin'. The day before he told British TV, that he believed 80 to 90 percent of what UNITA dissidents Sousa Jamba and Chingunji have been saying about extensive UNITA political repression. Even the State Department characterizes UNITA `as it exists in the bush today as a basically authoritarian movement'.
(3) The main allegations that have been made by Fred Bridgland, the UNITA dissidents in London and Lisbon, as well as other journalists and professors, follow:
(a) Bridgland writes that `Numerous UNITA officials have `disappeared',' and that `According to sources, few Western governments doubt that the men are dead, probably executed'. Among the most prominent mentioned by Bridgeland and others are (1) Jorge Sangumba, former Foreign Secretary of UNITA, (2) Antonio Vakulukuta, an ethnic leader who has been reported to have been beated to death, (3) Waldemar Pires Chindondo, former Chief of Staff, and (4) Jonatao Chingunji, former UNITA leader said by his grandson Dino Chingunji and by `reliable sources' who have spoken to Amnesty International to have been beaten to death along with his wife. In most cases these disappearances followed reports of Savimbi perceiving these individuals as a political threat. According to the State Department, `Jorge Sangumba dropped out of sight in 1982, Antonio Vakulukuta in 1986; evidence about their fate is inconclusive. We have no independent information on the fate of Janatao Chingunji'.
(b) Other prominent UNITA officials are also reported to have been demoted, detained and even tortured under orders from Savimbi. The most recent case is that of Tito Chingunji, a close friend of Bridgland's who was dismissed as Foreign Secretary last November. According to Bridgland, who visited Jamba in late December, Chingunji looked `extremely nervous' and `From sources I do trust very much, I've heard that there was a kind of trial, and that four very senior members of the UNITA Politburo demanded of Tito that he confess to crimes of witchcraft and plotting to overthrow Savimbi. People who were there have told me privately that they heard screams. And I think one can only draw one's own conclusions from that kind of description'. In addition, former members of the UNITA youth organization and office in Lisbon have said that Wilson dos Santos, a prominent leader who accompanied Savimbi to the U.S. in 1986 has been demoted and cannot interact freely with others in Jamba.
(c) According to Bridgland, `The theme of witchcraft runs through the whole UNITA tragedy, unspoken to outsiders but a reality in
the lives of people. Allegations of witchcraft can easily be made against people who are politically `difficult'--just as they were in medieval Europe.' Specifically, he writes that `Amnesty International has the names of at least 12 people burned to death on public bonfires at Jamba, the UNITA headquarters, in September 1983 * * *. One woman, Aurora Katalayo, was thrown into the flames carrying her child; she was the widow of former UNITA interior minister Mr. Mateus Katalayo, executed the previous year. According to Amnesty, one entire family was consumed on the bonfires--Mr. Joao Kalitanui, his wife Isabel, their three children aged seven to sixteen, and a twelve year old niece'. This account is supported by Ermelindo Kanjungu, a UNITA dissident in Lisbon whose father is said to be Savimbi's office manager, who told Portugal's press last year that he personally witnessed the burning and that it was directed by Savimi. Amnesty International included the case in its Annnual Report last year.
(d) UNITA dissidents in Lisbon last year revealed a secret `Practical Guide to the Cadre', a set of lessons taught to a small number of leading UNITA cadres at the Command Kapessi Kafundanga Study Center in Jamba. A leading academic authority on Africa recently wrote that the guide's authenticity had been confirmed by a high UNITA representative. This guide emphasizes a Soviet-style `democratic centralism' for Angola, and stresses the preeminent role of the political police and the secret goal of overthrowing the MPLA Government rather than sharing power with it. The followng quotes give the flavor of this Marxist-Leninist style document.
`Democratic centralism means that the top decides and the base carries out the orders through the cadres', `The grand bourgeoisie is the class that oppresses the other classes in society. It is the class that is involved with international imperialism', `The idea of reconciliation is part of our tactical position. But it does not form part of our strategy, because it is not possible'.
At this point, I would like to insert into the Record a House Subcommittee on Africa staff analysis of UNITA's response to some of these allegations:
UNITA: Bridgland has written a letter to the N.Y. Times saying that its reporting on the alleged abuses by UNITA attributes opinions to him that he does not share.
Response: Bridgland's letter covers minor inaccuracies and do not touch the major areas of political executions, witchburning and lack of democracy that he raised in both his own March 12th London Telegraph article and his appearance on British TV the previous evening.
UNITA: Tito Chingunji is alive and well as Deputy Secretary-General of the Party. He has met privately with Western politicians, carried a pistol, and publicly denied allegations about his status.
Response: Concern about Chingungi voiced by Bridgland who recently saw him at Jamba as well as his nephew must be taken seriously. Under Savimbi's control in the isolated Jamba headquarters, he cannot be expected to speak freely. In Government circles it is generally recognized that he has been demoted and is believed to be a threat by Savimbi.
UNITA: With regard to charges of political executions, Dinho Chingunji's grandfather and his wife died of natural causes, and the dates of their deaths are being established. Vakulukuta died of an uncontrolled hemhorrage from his nose en route to a hospital. Jorge Sangumba is alive and working somewhere in the north. General Vinama, known as Chendo, died in a freak accident falling under the wheels of his truck after climbing back into it. Col. Waldemar (Chindondo) is alive and commanding the northern forces.
Response: UNITA has not produced any of the people alleged to have been killed. Assertions that four died of natural causes cannot simply be accepted given the range of testimony to the contrary. Certainly the causes of death mentioned by UNITA seem extremely unusual.
UNITA: The alleged witch burnings never took place. We have never heard of Joao Kalitangue and his family. Aurora Katalaio and her husband had died in an MPLA attack before their alleged `burning'.
Response: Amnesty International states the case of Aurora Katalyo, one of at least 12 people who were burned to death at a public bonfire in Jamba in September 1983 was considered sure enough for inclusion in the organization's annual report last October. This is based on eyewitness testimony.
UNITA: Wilson dos Santos is currently director of the National Press and head of the Television and Video Department, and a member of the Central Committee and Political Bureau.
Response: This is a clear demotion from his previous leadership role as a key UNITA diplomat. Until he can leave Jamba and speak freely--and without fears for his family--UNITA's explanation cannot simply be accepted. In this respect the case is like Tito Chingunji's.
UNITA: All of these charges are part of an MPLA disinformation campaign.
Response: The charges are coming from UNITA supporters, members, and Amnesty International. UNITA supporters critical of the organization have made clear they are also opposed to similar practices by the MPLA Government.
UNITA: Bridgland received an unauthorized $4,000 from Tito Chingunji. This taints his case.
Response: Bridgland has, through his literary agent, denied that he received any unauthorized funds.
I am also inserting some very relevant articles by Fred Bridgland and Radek Sikorski, including the latter's exchanging letters with a UNITA representative.
Feted in the White House by President Reagan, honoured by black American churches, on dining terms with South Africa's President Botha and allowed access to Britain by Mrs. Thatcher's Government, Dr. Jonas Savimbi, leader of the Angolan rebel group, UNITA, has been the darling of the Right.
But now the West's game-plan for Southern Africa is threatened by new allegations of serious human rights abuses against Dr. Savimbi.
He has been seen as a heroic figure, fighting Angola's Soviet and Cuban imposed Marxist dictatorship which threatened the whole of the region. Savimbi may now have become a fallen idol.
The charges, including the burning to death of women as witches and the beating to death of a former UNITA foreign secretary, have alarmed Washington and Pretoria where Dr. Savimbi has been treated as a key ally.
Others, including this correspondent in a biography of the 54-year-old guerrilla leader, argued that UNITA offered Angolans some sort of democratic future that begins to look pretty thin unless he can prove the allegations are lies.
The main charges were made last night on Channel 4's The World This Week by UNITA defectors seeking political asylum in Britain. Their move followed the alleged detention and torture by UNITA last year of Mr. Pedro `Tito' Chingunji, the movement's Washington-based foreign secretary.
One defector, Mr. Sousa Jamba, a writer who last year won the Shiva Naipaul prize for literature, told The Sunday Telegraph `I am one of many UNITA members who have kept quiet until now about killings inside the movement in the interests of the wider struggle against Cuban and Soviet domination.
`There are others who would like us to say nothing until the MPLA [Angola's Marxist government] and UNITA are around the table in Luanda with Cubans sailing in shiploads to Havana each day. But Tito's arrest has stretched our loyalty beyond breaking point: if we wait others may die.'
The story of another defector, Mr. Dinho Chingunji, Tito's nephew, is perhaps the most nightmarish. He argues that Tito's life is in grave danger because seven Chingunji family members have already been murdered over the years as Dr. Savimbi began to see them as a threat.
Dinho alleged that his grandparents (Tito's parents) were beaten to death on Dr. Savimbi's orders. Amnesty International said it has evidence from three reliable sources that Jonatao, 69 and Violeta, 60, were clubbed by rifle butts, kicked and then run over by a truck.
In the mid-sixties when UNITA began fighting the colonial Portuguese, Dr. Savimbi led the guerrillas in the bush while Jonatao organised the clandestine movement in the towns.
Four of Jonatao's sons died between 1970 and 1976 while fighting with Dr. Savimbi. Two, David `Samwimbila' Chingunji and Samuel `Kafundanga' Chingunji, are now outshone only by Dr. Savimbi in the homage paid in UNITA song and poem.
But Dinho Chingunji alleges that at least three of the four brothers and possibly all of them were killed on Dr. Savimbi's orders. He says his own father, Kafundanga, UNITA's first military chief-of-staff, was poisoned in 1974.
After moving to the bush in 1976, as the MPLA established itself as the civil power in Angola, Jonatao began to have suspicions about his sons' deaths. When he challenged the UNITA leader on this matter and on his cavalier attitude toward women, Dr. Savimbi accused Violeta of practising witchcraft and ordered the old couple's deaths.
The theme of witchcraft runs through the whole UNITA tragedy, unspoken to outsiders but a reality in the lives of the people. Allegations of witchcraft can easily be made against people who are politically `difficult'--just as they were in medieval Europe. And when another Chingunji sibling, this time a daughter, Shika, was executed in 1983 she was first accused of being a witch, according to Dinho.
Amnesty International has the names of at least 12 people burned to death on public bonfires at Jamba, the UNITA headquarters, in September 1983. Mr. Jamba said his young nieces and nephews were part of the crowd ordered to witness the spectacle.
One woman, Aurora Katalayo, was thrown into the flames carrying her child: she was the widow of former UNITA interior minister, Mr. Mateus Katalayo, executed the previous year. According to Amnesty, one entire family was consumed on the bonfires--Mr. Joao Kalitangui, his wife Isabel, their three children aged seven to 16, and a 12-year old niece.
Numerous UNITA officials have `disappeared'. According to sources, few Western governments doubt that the men are dead, probably executed. Among the most prominent was former UNITA foreign secretary, Mr. Jorge Sangumba. He was recalled to Angola from overseas in 1978 and has not been seen since. UNITA has consistently stated that Mr. Sangumba is alive.
`In fact, Sangumba was beaten to death by Savimbi's secret police in 1979,' said Mr. Jamba, formerly a UNITA political commissar. `Savimbi has been able to convince journalists and others that he is alive.'
Mr. Jamba said that Mr. Sangumba was popular on his return to Jamba, and some people began suggesting that he should be acting president in Dr. Savimbi's absence. That was probably the reason for his downfall.
But he made a slip when he bedded an under-age beauty and a commission convicted him of corrupting a minor. After Mr. Sangumba's subsequent execution, Mr. Jamba says he was thrown into an unmarked grave and all copies of a small book he had written Know Your Party, were confiscated and burnt.
Among other UNITA leaders believed by Western governments--and confirmed by Dinho Chingunji and Mr. Jamba--to have been executed are Mr. Waldemar Pires Chindondo, a former chief-of-staff, and Mr. Antonio Vakulukuta, leader of the once powerful Kwanyama tribal faction in UNITA. According to International Red Cross reports, Mr. Vakulukuta died a lingering `Bikostyle' death after suffering severe beatings.
The UNITA defectors allege that Tito Chingunji too was accused of witchcraft when he flew into Jamba from Washington last November for a conference on the implications of the New York Accords, which provide for the phased withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and South African forces from neighbouring Namibia starting in three weeks.
The `evidence' was a white surplice and two candlesticks found in the luggage of Chingunji, a devout Christian.
`I warned Tito that Savimbi would `get' him just like the rest of the family,' said Dinho. `But Tito believed he had done such a good job in Washington that Savimbi could not move against him.
I met Dr. Savimbi on December 21, immediately after his return from Pretoria where he had been told by President Botha that all South Africian aid to UNITA was being cutoff.
I told Dr. Savimbi I had made the journey because many people were puzzled by Tito's apparent demotion. He exploded and shouted: `You have come here to insult me, and I have never accepted to be insulted by anyone. Do you think you can still come to Africa to patronise us? I am so insulted by what you have said that maybe you should just get out of here. . . .'
During a further two hours of loud admonitions, Dr. Savimbi at one point held his palm outwards and said there was no blood on his hands and said he was not responsible for the killings of Tito's relatives. This struck me as strange, since I had not raised the question.
US weapons supplies now enable UNITA to maintain leverage on the MPLA, but Congress is sensitive about covert arms supplies and human rights abuses. It could therefore turn awkward if the allegations are reinforced. But UNITA is tough and resourceful, and even without American help it could turn Angola without Cuba into a new Beirut.
The United States and the Soviet Union, with their new found understanding on Africa, might therefore decide to hit heads together and allow elements in both the MPLA and UNITA who are sick of war to come together at the negotiating table.
[Page: H7024]
`If it were bigger, I would only be attacking the rearguard, but this one we will destroy completely,' Colonel Diogenes Implacavel told me without taking his binoculars off a convoy coming down the road.
Implacavel is UNITA's commander of the Bie front in central Angola. In front of us stretched a channa, a wide clearing overgown by tall, yellow grass and bisected by the strategic Huambo-Bie highway, the highway that would have to be under firm MPLA control were the Soviet-backed regime ever to launch a new offense against UNITA. Twenty-one trucks loaded with food, ammunition, and soldiers, escorted by two Soviet BTR armored cars, drove along at the pace of two files of infantry walking beside the convoy. Five hundred and fifty UNITA guerrillas armed with American- and South African-supplied assault rifles, mortars, anti-tank rockets, and anti-craft missiles waited in a long line along the southern edge of the road. The assault squad was to open up only when the entire convoy came level with the ambush.
Winter days are short here, so by 3 p.m. the sun was already low, painting the channa in mellow orange. I was stealing toward the brow of a hillock overlooking the clearing when a single burst of automatic fire resounded along the road and a few bullets whined quietly over our heads--enemy bullets. Had we been spotted? Was our plan going awry already?
I made to crawl forward to the top of the hillock but at the same instant severl powerful hands closed on my legs like steel clamps. Our UNITA minders were being obsessively overprotective of our safety. Over the cacophony of machine-gun fire, the tinny noise of field radios, and platoon commanders yelling hectic orders, came the shrill curses of my colleague, an American girl-photographer, who lay under a pile of our UNITA commandos protecting her from the hazards of battle with such zest that she emerged with a hand broken in two places, a sprained ankle, and serious bruises. Next she was waving her camera like an overhead slingshot, and they threw her on the ground again.
Our escort eventually mastered their initial panic and we went forward. The grass in the channa was on fire--the smoke so thick as to dim the sun--and we jumped through walls of burning undergrowth, running on the charred ground. The heat was so intense I feared my boots would melt.
The enemy infantry had run to the other edge of the bush and was firing at us with light machine guns. We soon learned what had happened. The soldiers in the convoy had spotted UNITA guerrillas hiding in the grass and opened fire. Both BTRs survived our attack--one escaped on the road to Bie and the other found cover in a stream depression and turned its heavy machine gun at us. Like a pneumatic drill, its thumping silenced the lesser noise.
Another hundred yards toward the highway and I made out in the thick smoke the contours of a truck which had been hit and which the guerrillas were looting with gusto. `The BTR is shooting, let's get out of here,' one guerrilla shouted. `Never mind, let's get the sausages,' the other yelled, motioning toward the Brazilian IFA truck, from which dozens of big white tins had spilled onto the asphalt. Having eaten only rice and canned bully beef for several weeks, we noted the contents of the truck with the joy of highway robbers. Bent double under fire, the guerrillas ran forward for their supper.
Suddenly, four men emerged through a wall of fire and smoke clutching the corners of a blanket weighted down by a heavy object, which turned out to be our first casualty. Blood spurted forth from the man's chest, and a mask of dust and smoke smeared with sweat gave his face an ashy, deathly pallor. His companions, their dark faces streaming with sweat, their bodies twisted under the load, tried to run, but tripped in lumps of grass. Even so, the rocking of the blanket when his comrades dragged him along the rough ground seemed to give him no more pain.
We inched forward, screaming and jostling with our minders, dodging bursts of bullets, passing groups of guerrillas emerging from the smoke with loot on their heads. When the smoke cleared on the high ground where the asphalt ran, three more dead trucks emerged, bits of their cargo stewn along behind them like guts. One was blazing, and the ammunition inside it exploded with the sound of nails being hammered into a tin. These were small caliber bullets piercing the sideplates of the truck and flying off in all directions. The gas tank burst in an orange fireball. Would the heavy shells go off next?
`Come back, come back, don't die for a picture!' our minders shouted in desperation.
A few corpses lay along the other side of the road--one fat as a Sumo wrestler. They wore Korean-made olive and brown camouflage clothes--enemy uniforms. I don't know how, but they already stank of death. The putrid smell of excrement mingled with that of burning diesel fuel and rubber. UNITA men ran up to them under direct fire and grabbed their guns.
The BTR was invisible in the clouds of smoke on the other side of the road, but its heavy machine gun was sweeping the road with a hail of bullets. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man flip over onto the asphalt not thirty yards away. Slowly it dawned on me that this was not the way one throws oneself down for cover. Soon his raving and moaning confirmed that he had been hit.
`The MiGs will bomb! The BTR is coming! They're counterattacking!' our minders were running away into the bush. The racket of machine-gun was indeed growing and the bullets flew lower and denser over our heads. The enemy got a couple of mortars going, and soon the bursts of shells around us and the screams of our wounded announced that they had found their range. We retreated, since if the enemy retook the high ground of the road we would have been trapped in the kilometer of open space between the road and the bush, in which they would have had a clear field of fire.
It was getting dark by the time a long train of UNITA guerrillas walked down the bush path carrying their booty on their heads. Merry cries proclaimed that eight Kalashnikovs and four new light machine guns were also captured. An old suitcase grabbed from the burning IFA revealed the personnel files of a local party organization. Implacavel's radio reports spoke of nine trucks destroyed in all. (I saw four.) Belatedly, he was sparkling with ideas on what he should have done for a complete victory. Had a minefield been laid down the northern side of the road, the enemy, not we, would have been trapped. Our losses were five wounded and one dead. The man who had lost consciousness from the chest wound, and who I thought had no chance, was to recover, but the medic died.
Suddenly, everybody became merry and spoke of the fight as if it had been a schoolboy prank. As tension eased with each step away from the highway we all became unnaturally hilarious. My story of how I kicked one of my minders in the midst of burning grass was welcomed by a roar of laughter as if this was the best anecdote in the world. We were all glad to be alive and now compensated for any sign of fear we may have shown half an hour before. The festive mood continued into the night, as the smell of spices and the sizzling of sausages roasted over fires hovered above our bush camp.
The ambush was to have been an operation in a larger plan--a lure for the 55th brigade garrisoning the nearby town of Chinguar on the Benguela railway. If the enemy sent a relief force to secure the highway. UNITA was to attack weakened Chinguar itself. I wondered what use Impacavel would make of the captured party personnel files. But two days later everything changed. On June 22 UNITA's President Jonas Savimbi shook hands with his MPLA counterpart, Eduardo dos Santos, and the following day the radio announced that UNITA and MPLA delegations were negotiating face to face for the first time in 14 years. A ceasefire was coming into effect at midnight on June 24. We had seen what everybody hoped would be the last battle of the war.
Though it did not go according to plan, the ambush was a success, confirming that UNITA can readily sabotage its enemy's supply routes. The very fact that even in the heart of the country MPLA personnel will travel only in armed convoys which take many days to cover a couple of hundred kilometers testifies to UNITA's stamina. Although the MPLA occupies most cities--including all the provincial capitals--if the fighting resumed UNITA could expect to make gains on the ground once the Cubans withdraw from southern Angola in November. At the very least, UNITA's sixty thousand fighters could, if need be, deny the MPLA a secure grip on the countryside for another 14 years. UNITA cannot be eliminated, and this is surely why the MPLA is negotiating. What an achievement this represents one can appreciate only by looking back to 1975 and 1976 when the Cubans, with Soviet rockets and gunships, pushed Savimbi back into the bush, where he completed his long march with only a few dozen followers.
Today he holds vast stretches of territory in which his troops and trucks can travel in safety. Known to the Portuguese as the `end of the world,' Unitaland in southern Angola is perhaps the most impressive guerrilla zone anywhere. Where ten years ago elephants and gazelles roamed virgin bush, today vast logistics bases sprawl, with broad avenues, electricity, and some of the best repair shops in Africa. UNITA doctors and paramedics can successfully perform advanced surgery; UNITA's intelligence service can chart dozens of enemy moves every day; while dozens of UNITA bush schools, though usually with only a blackboard and an enthusiastic teacher for assets, turn out graduates with more determination for self-improvement and greater academic qualifications than most American high schools do.
Moreover, slick press releases from UNITA's PR agents, quoting its leaders' earnest statements, promise that this is only the beginning. UNITA says it aspires to nothing less than making Angola the first democratic, free-market country on the continent. With its vast mineral resources, fertile soil, mild climate, and a leadership apparently committed to civilized values, is Angola about to turn into the success story Africa so badly needs?
To justify its $15-plus million of aid per year, the White House has accepted UNITA's ideals at face value. Though still shunned in European capitals, Savimbi has been feted in Washington as Africa's premier freedom-fighter--the pictures of his meeting with Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George Shultz in January 1986 adorn every hut in Unitaland. It is largely thanks to U.S. Stingers and TOWs that UNITA is such a formidable force.
However, not all my observations during three months in the bush square with UNITA's high ideals. To begin with, UNITA officers, including top leaders, are compulsive liars--and it's not the innocent bragging one hears in every war zone, but a means of control. Whether it is the whereabouts of Savimbi or of a company commander, instead of pleading honest ignorance or the secrecy of war, UNITA men will lie through their teeth. Traveling with UNITA is like touring a showpiece Soviet collective farm. Everything is perfect, if the guides are to be believed, but if one tries to find out for oneself, going beyond the established program, armed guards will physically stop one `for protection,' even when the enemy is five hundred miles away.
Battles and troop movements staged for the camera (on one occasion Colonel Implacavel set up an entire artillery position to deceive me: the mortars had only two or three rounds each; real ones would have had at least six); bogus facilities such as the medical center in Jamba where, for the benefit of visitors' cameras, cripples engage in physiotherapy (although according to my companion, a former nurse's aide, the exercises had nothing to do with the injuries for which the men were supposedly being treated); soldiers and officials briefed on how to lie most plausibly--the full list of UNITA Potemkin villages would be too long to quote. Whether concerning the pettiest of details or the weightiest of policy matters, there is a great difference between UNITA's claims of high ideals, openness, and efficiency, and the reality of deceit, manipulation, and sloth. Lying is so pervasive one comes to think that many UNITA officers have not assimilated the concept of integrity or understood the dangers of forefeiting trust.
More seriously still, UNITA's structure and ideology are not as unambiguously democratic and pro-Western as an interview with Savimbi might suggest. Reading Savimbi's articles in the Salisbury Review or the Wall Street Journal with titles such as `Don't Sacrifice Angola on the Altar of Socialism,' in which he propounds exemplary promarket ideals, one would think that the vast expanses of Unitaland are an oasis of free enterprise and commercial bustle. Yet in fact Unitaland is--uniquely among war zones I have visited--a currencyless war economy whose extreme centralization would impress a Ligachev or a Honecker. What kind of commercial spirit can have survived in UNITA ranks after 14 years in which the currency of the country has literally been banned (which, among other things, obviously restricts freedom of movement)?
In the beginning, there was Savimbi's word, and the word became UNITA. Savimbi stares from photographs on almost every wall. Savimbi slogans adorn every hut. Judging by the content of dozens of UNITA rallies and entertainment programs, Angola has only one noted poet and one lyricist--Jonas Savimbi. Savimbi salutes, Savimbi handshakes, even Savimbi-prescribed burial rites--through the force of his personality he has created an organization whose members think and act in unanimous imitation of the leader. Every quarter of an hour UNITA's `Voice of the Black Cockerel' radio station comes on with Mendelssohn's Wedding March followed by a triumphant citation: `Long live UNITA's great leader, the staunchest patriot, the inspired commander, the scourge of the Cubans and Russians, our beloved president, Comrade Doctor Jonas Malheiro Savimbi.' Even his doctorate is an exaggeration--he completed two years of medical studies in Lisbon and then gained a first degree from the University of Lausanne.
Savimbi enjoys extraordinary powers for a democrat. The Mao caps of UNITA troops are not the only idea Savimbi brought from his training at the Nanking Military Academy. UNITA's structure is overtly Lenninist, based on the same concept of democratic centralism--with a Congress, a Central Committee, and a Politburo nominally in charge of the party--but these institutions are mere appendages to Savimbi's personal rule. The last UNITA Congress, in 1986, was a farce in which 15,000 people agreed on everything unanimously and elected Savimbi by delirious acclamation--like the Supreme Soviet in the bad old days. Indeed, Savimbi can hire and fire Central Committee members at will like no Soviet leader since Stalin. Members of tribes other than Savimbi's Ovimbundu do hold high rank in UNITA, but real power rests with Savimbi's own clan within the Ovimbundu, his kinsmen from around Andulo in central Angola. In fact, UNITA is nepo-leninist, to coin a phrase. Savimbi has appointed to positions of real power members of his own family, either by blood or by marriage. General Ben Ben (the deputy chief of staff), General Bock (the chief of operations), and Colonel Pena (the secretary of economic planning)--UNITA's inner circle--are all Savimbi's nephews. `UNITA, c'est moi,' Savimbi can say with more reason than Louis XIV could ever have dreamt of for France.
Allegations of human-rights abuses within UNITA are too persistent and come from sources too well placed to ignore. Savimbi's former interpreter, Sousa Jamba, and Dinhu Chingunji, the son of UNITA's first chief of staff, allege that Savimbi has over the years eliminated many of his rivals, most gruesomely in September 1983, when 13 people are said to have been burnt alive in Jamba. Witchcraft rather than accusations of revisionism allegedly provides the excuse, a ploy that is said to do down well with the illiterate and still-superstitious peasants. UNITA by evasion refused my proposal to investigate and refute the accusations. The burnings supposedly took place a hundred yards from the quarters where foreign visitors are lodged. It would have been impossible for them to have happened unnoticed by anyone staying there during the relevant period. I suggested that UNITA give me a list of any such visitors; I would then contact them after I left Angola, and ask them whether they had observed anything. The UNITA Politburo members I talked to didn't say the lists weren't available--they just never produced them.
The man who could provide conclusive evidence of what has happened, Brigadier Tito Chingunji, who was UNITA's representative in Washington and helped to get Savimbi into the White House, is said to have been tortured and held in Jamba against his will. (In a letter to a friend in Britain he inserted the phrase, `Doctor Savimbi protects me day and night.') Chingunji's nephew alleges that almost the entire family has been wiped out in Savimbi's vendetta (as a highly educated member of a traditional chief family in the Ovimbundu tribe, Chingunji was a potential rival to Savimbi), and Tito himself was lured back to Jamba only because UNITA held his wife. Members of the UNITA Politiburo repeatedly evaded my requests to see him. The CIA officer on the spot through what the allegations were sufficiently grave to confront Savimbi, after which the officer was withdrawn from Jamba, with the United States apparently bowing to Savimbi's ultimatum. The two defectors and a journalist who revealed the allegations in the Western press have received repeated death threats.
Savimbi has ended up by believing his own propaganda and accepting the cult he has nurtured as a confirmation of his messianic mission. He cannot bear men of independent thought around him, and, instead of sharing our wariness of autocratic power, his officers accord him the reverence due to a traditional despotic African chief.
In short, ideology is something Savimbi can choose like the fashion of his soldiers' uniforms--patterned to please whoever provides the cloth. As one of his wittier slogans proclaims, `Weapons for the liberation of our country don't smell.' I use Communist parallels in writing about him with reason: Savimbi was a Communist agitator in his early years in Lisbon, the Communist Party spirited him out of Portugal, he was trained in China, and, UNITA defectors assert, he remains an unrepentant Maoist.
Has he deceived us all these years? Perhaps, perhaps not. He may have undergone a genuine conversion. But what is real is not whatever ideology Savimbi may choose to embrace but his autocratic grip on the people within his domain, a power which he has for a long time used for good, but which he has an unlimited license to use for evil.
It is hard to criticize people who have resisted colonial and Communist oppression for so long, especially for one who set off for Angola as their sympathizer. It is just that after Lenin, Khomeini, and Ortega, we know that not every opponent of oppression is a freedom-fighter.
By right, Savimbi should have been independent Angola's first president, and had he not been cheated in 1975 he might have become one of Africa's most remarkable statesmen. He had the potential of rising above the common run of presidents-for-life, excellencies, and operatic emperors. If fair elections were held in Angola today Savimbi would almost certainly win. Somehow, though, one wonders whether Savimbi, with his depotic instincts, would have the patience for constitutional niceties. Would he ever relinquish power thereafter?
None of the above goes to say that we have no good geostrategic grounds to back UNITA, or even that UNITA is not by far the lesser evil for Angola. The MPLA is in a league of its own when it comes to doctrinaire policies, collectivist mismanagement, and mindless propaganda. Though under the Portuguese Angola exported coffee, fish, and other food, under the MPLA it spends scarce hard currency on imports--Moroccan sardines, for example, while Soviet trawlers ransack Angola's coastal waters. The Angolan economy, which grew at an impressive rate of 7 per cent per annum in the Sixties, has sunk into oblivion, partly because of the war, and partly because blanket nationalization chased away the technicians needed to run the country's industry. The recent interrogation of General Ochoa in Havana has revealed as much about the Angolan economy as about the probity of Castro's officers: blackmarketeering, smuggling, and extortion flourish in MPLA-run Angola. With 150 new cases of cholera every week, Luanda is hardly a paradise. Party hacks are the only thing in oversupply. Luanda National Radio sounds like Tirana on a bad day--during the ceasefire negotiations, the lying was so thick it was hard to believe Luanda was speaking of the same events as the BBC and VOA. MPLA officers tell their soldiers, in all seriousness, that if captured by UNITA they may fall into the cluches of its fearsome allies, a vicious white tribe called `Americans,' who will cook and eat them.
Now a compromise between UNITA and the MPLA may be in the offing--and indeed a compromise between these two ramshackle totalitarianisms might create some space in which the Angolan people would have room to breathe. That may well be the nearest approach to freedom and democracy that current African social realities permit.
But more is at stake in this conflict than merely the future politics of Angola. Brezhnev began sending Soviet weapons and advisors to Angola with a view to consolidating this mineral-rich country as a bridgehead to the rest of southern Africa. Preventing this was the logic behind the U.S. support for the South African invasion of Angola in 1975 and the resumption of U.S. aid to UNITA under President Reagan. This logic still holds true.
We may keep Savimbi afloat to deny Angola to our enemies. We may work for UNITA to gain a permanent place in the regional balance of power. We can certainly admire Savimbi's energy, charisma, and craftiness. But let us have no illusions.
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Radek Sikorski's article, `The Mystique of Savimbi' [Aug. 18], contradicts all firsthand reports on UNITA by prominent journalists, U.S. congressmen and senators, and European members of parliament. Does one man alone hold the truth? Or is he so motivated by personal biases and prejudice that he reports only what he wants to believe? The answer is obvious.
Sikorski spent several weeks with UNITA in a combat situation. The journey was dangerous and he was not always at liberty to pursue his own course. A professional journalist would have understood the limitations of a war environment and maintained his focus on the real issue: the struggle for democracty and human dignity.
It is true that pictures of President Savimbi are persistent throughout Free Angola, for he is our president; and symbolizes the hope for a free and democratic Angola. It is true that UNITA society operates without money or a market, but we are living in a transitory war situation. UNITA's liberated area is not a recognized state that can have money of its own, and we don't want it to be a second Angola. Of course we would welcome Mr. Sikorski's advice on how to run our economy under those circumstances.
Sikorski says Jamba is a stage; it is not real. Tell that to the hundreds of children who reside in Jamba's orphanage, or the thousands of children who have been educated in Jamba's schools, or the many Angolans who have been treated in the hospital, or have participated in political meetings. Mr. Sikorski makes a number of points that need to be reiterated. If they are understood, his baseless assertions evaporate without a trace. He wrote that since UNITA's near defeat in 1976:
The MPLA, despite sixty thousand Cuban troops, is in negotiation with UNITA because we cannot be eliminated militarily;
The UNITA liberated area, the Freeland of Angola, is the most impressive guerrilla zone in the world;
UNITA schools produce students . . . with more determination for self improvement and greater academic qualifications than most American high schools';
UNITA's minuscule number of doctors and scores of health paraprofessionals, many of whom are trained in the Freeland, `successfully perform advanced surgery';
UNITA technicians, many trained in the Freeland, operate some of the best repair facilities in Africa;
President Savimbi would have been Angola's first president if the Cuban intervention hadn't usurped the scheduled elections, and `if fair elections were held in Angola today, Savimbi would almost certainly win.'
Mr. Sikorski has been taken for a ride by a few malcontents with tangential relationships to UNITA or to Dr. Savimbi. Dinko Chingunji is part of an illustrious UNITA family. The center for training political mobilizers is named after his father, Samuel Chingunji. His uncle David Chingunji is a celebrated UNITA martyr. Dinho, in contrast, has spent almost no time in Angola. He was raised in Zambia and spent two months in Free Angola en route to studies in Great Britain.
Tito Chingunji, Dinho's uncle, is the UNITA deputy secretary general and a ranking party member. When wild rumors began to circulate based on allegations linking President Savimbi to witchcraft. Tito held an international press conference to refute changes of his execution. He also met with Republican Representative Dan Burton, who confirmed his well-being. In fact, UNITA is trying hard to eradicate witchcraft through a balanced program of education and protection of those accused by fellow villagers.
Sikorski's linking of Dr. Savimbi to Communism would be laughable if it wasn't so pernicious. President Savimbi distributed Communist-authored anti-colonial leaflets in Portugal during his student days and escaped via the Communist underground for one reason and one reason only; the Communist led the anti-colonial struggle in Portugal and had the only escape route to the outside. Even a thorough democrat like Portuguese Prime Minister Mario Soares cooperated with them at that time.
If Sikorski's point is taken to its illogical conclusion, President Savimbi is a proponent of apartheid because geopolitical considerations led to a pragmatic relationship with South Africa.
Democracy means elections in Angola. Dr. Savimbi and UNITA have fought for elections. Dr. Savimbi is prepared to run on his record against any MPLA leader and let the Angolan people choose without foreign interference.
Jardo Muekalia,
UNITA Chief Representative to the U.S.
[Page: H7027]
Mr. Muekalia may accuse me of bids till the cows come home, even while in the same breath he reiterates my praise of UNITA's genuine achievements.
A lie is a lie is a lie. During my ten weeks with UNITA hardly a day passed on which I was not lied to about something--large or small. UNITA has set up elaborate schemes to deceive journalists, both in Jamba and beyond. Fortunately, my companion throughout the journey--a veteran American war photographer--can confirm my account of UNITA's manipulation and deceit. Neither am I the first to air reservations about UNITA. The best authority on the organization, the author of a sympathetic and acclaimed biography of Savimbi, is now being subjected to crude UNITA threats of physical violence--all for voicing concern. For democrats, UNITA's leaders are somewhat graceless in dealing with criticism.
Savimbi learned Communist techniques of organization and control not only in his early days in Lisbon but primarily during his training in guerrilla war at the Nanking Military Academy in China, still under Mao; and anyone who cares to take a look at UNITA's structure and modus operandi will see that he learned his lessons well. It is classic Marxist-Leninist structure with not a vestige of democratic procedures. Unlimited power sooner or later results in abuses.
The point is not whether UNITA can run a repair shop or an orphanage--such things exist in Iran, China, and the Soviet Union, too--but whether its commitment to democracy is genuine or a hoax. The fact that UNITA demands elections proves little; the Ovimbundus--UNITA's main supporters--are Angola's largest tribe. Uncle Ho also demanded elections in the knowledge of assured success, but do we want any more of his kind of democrats?
I find it very interesting to note that Mr. Muekalia does not challenge my assertion that Jonas Savimbi's title of `Doctor' is also bogus.
Since Mr. Muekalia solicits my advice, I'll give it; come clean on the wrongs you have inflicted, punish the guilty, abandon UNITA's Leninist structure, establish checks against misuse of power, embrace Christianity for real if that is what you want, encourage your people to participate in the decisions that affect them, abandon the corrupting personality cult of Savimbi, teach your men to speak the truth; in short, practice what you preach, and I'll be the first to laud UNITA's undoubted achievements, and the first to argue that the West should step up its assistance to it. Meanwhile, don't think you're immune from scrutiny by conservatives just because we have enemies in common: RS
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe] has expired.
Mr. WOLPE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent for additional time.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I would like to just say that we know the views of the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe] on Angola, and I would just like to assert my reasons for objecting, if I may.
I know the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe] has a great deal to say on this subject. His views are fairly well known, and I do not want to foreclose the gentleman from talking, but a discussion on Angola could be endless. There are people on our side who radically disagree with the gentleman, and we could go on and on.
Mr. Chairman, it is 20 minutes to 4. People do have planes to catch and have made plans to leave, and I just beg the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe] to be brief. I will not object to another extension.
Mr. Chairman, I just hope the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe] does not want to turn this into a special order.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Chairman, I object.
The CHAIRMAN. Objection is heard.
Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words simply to respond to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe], my good friend.
Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe] talks about the myths of human rights, yet we were told that Savimbi was involved in assassination, that he assassinated Tony Fernandez. We met with Tony Fernandez here 2 weeks ago. We were told that under the violation of human rights Savimbi tortured Tito Chingunji. We met with him here a few weeks ago, and he denied it all.
So, Mr. Chairman, if we want to talk about myths, where are the myths?
It seems to me that the bottom line is Dr. Savimbi has said time and time again that he will abide by fair and free elections in Angola, and, if he loses, he will step down.
So, Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe], Why don't they ask their Marxist friends to embrace the same principle of free and fair elections?
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that all debate on the Angolan matter be concluded at 10 minutes to 4. We could do 10 minutes on this and then hopefully finish our business.
[TIME: 1540]
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Illinois?
Mr. WOLPE. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the right to object on the grounds that probably there is no issue that ought to be discussed more fully than the subject of Angola, since it is the one subject that is not the subject of public debate.
I have no problem, I say to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] in trying to establish some reasonable time limit.
Mr. HYDE. That is all I want.
Mr. WOLPE. But I would argue that 10 minutes more is too brief a time. This is a subject that does merit some discussion.
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Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, it does, but special orders are available and they can go on until midnight.
Mr. WOLPE. That is correct, but what is occurring is occurring within the context of this legislation. I think it is an appropriate point to raise these issues in the context of the Intelligence authorization.
The CHAIRMAN. The debate will now return to normal order.
There is before the Committee, without objection, an agreement to debate this matter until 3:50 p.m.
The time will be divided equally between the managers on each side. The gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson] will control 5 minutes and the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] will control 5 minutes.
There was no objection.
The CHAIRMAN. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson].
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Wolpe].
Mr. WOLPE. I would like to direct some questions about United States policy toward Angola to Mr. Beilenson, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
It seems to me that Mr. Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, has frequently been at odds with United States support for the African-sponsored peace talks on Angola. On August 26 he announced he was suspending UNITA's participation in the talks for at least a month. He has repeatedly and publicly criticized the performance of the African-appointed mediator, President Mobutu of Zaire, and suggested that further talks would be futile unless Mobutu stepped out of the negotiating process. Most recently, he rejected personal requests by President Bush and Assistant Secretary of State Cohen that he attend the September 18 peace talks in Kinshasa, Zaire.
Is the gentleman as concerned as I am by Mr. Savimbi's actions?
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I would say to the gentleman in general, yes, this gentleman is.
Mr. WOLPE. Should we continue to tolerate Mr. Savimbi's lack of cooperation with the African peace effort? Should we provide him with a blank check of American support even if he continues to withold such cooperation, to attack Mobutu, and boycott negotiations?
Mr. BEILENSON. I suppose the gentleman is asking a rehetorical question. This gentleman's personal response is that he agrees with what he believes to be many of the gentleman's own feelings, what the gentleman's own feelings appear to be.
Mr. WOLPE. I think we can all agree with President Bush's statement last week that we would ultimately like to see free and fair elections in Angola--as we would like to see in the rest of Africa and the rest of the world. But administration officials have repeatedly told Congress that our near-term goal is a compromise political solution. At his confirmation hearing in the other body, Secretary of State Baker defined the U.S. objective of `national reconciliation' as `the emergence of a government that reconciles the competing views of the present government and the movement that Dr. Savimbi represents in a manner that is satisfactory to both.' And at his confirmation hearing, Assistant Secretary Cohen reinforced this point, declaring, `We do not have the blueprint for ending the civil war between the Angolan people.'
Does the gentleman agree with these administration statements of our policy objectives in Angola and their implication that we should not line up behind either the Angolan Government's or UNITA's maximum demands and recipes for how to ultimately achieve democracy, but rather seek to further a genuine national reconciliation of opposing viewpoints?
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, the answer from this gentleman is yes. This gentleman thinks that is in fact a good summary of what our policy is, or should be.
Now that the Cuban troops are departing from Angola--half we now believe will be gone by November 1 and two-thirds we hope by next April, it seems clear to most of us that our major interest there is in encouraging a peaceful political solution to this tragic conflict. In light of recent developments in Angola and past statements by administration officials, I think it is critical that our policy be strongly supportive of a compromise political solution.
Mr. WOLPE. As the gentleman knows, we are the only Western country that does not recognize Angola and we were the only country in the world that voted against their admission to the International Monetary Fund. I am very pleased that the gentleman has joined with over 70 of our Democratic and Republican colleagues in cosponsoring House Concurrent Resolution 203 which calls upon the administration to reciprocate such constructive Angolan actions as Cuban troops withdrawal, macroeconomic reforms, and entering into negotiations with UNITA by taking steps to begin normalizing relations with Angola through the establishment of a United States liaison office in Luanda, support of Angola's full participation in the IMF and World Bank, and delivery of humanitarian assistance to all Angolans. It is not a logical aspect of an evenhanded United States policy toward Angola and UNITA for the United States to have normal relations with both groups?
Mr. BEILENSON. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, again I say this gentleman agrees. In fact, he feels that by embarking upon a more normal relationship with the Angolan Government it seems likely that we might increase, rather than decrease, our leverage in furtherance of a peaceful political solution that maximizes the chances for future democratization.
Mr. WOLPE. In light of our discussion, I say to the committe chairman, can the gentleman assure our colleagues that the gentleman and his committee will be closely monitoring the situation in Angola in the coming weeks and months, and that the gentleman will revisit the key policy issues in the near future?
Mr. BEILENSON. I can assure the gentleman that this gentleman shares the concerns that he has expressed and that I shall continue to follow and monitor the situation closely.
Mr. WOLPE. Well, let me express my appreciation to the committee chairman for those responses and for the gentleman's continuing concern with respect to our policy.
I do believe that American national interests are going to be compromised if we cannot respond to what is in fact new developments that clearly are being manifested in southern Africa. I think we all want to see reconciliation. We all want to see an end to the terrible conflict that has produced so much bloodshed within that region. I hope that we can collectively work our way through to a reassessment of American policy. In that regard I am inserting in the Record some useful background material on recent developments and U.S. policy.
African efforts to encourage a compromise political solution to the long and bloody conflict in Angola (100,000 dead, 50,000 amputees, 400,000 refugees, 600,000 internally displaced) culminated in the June 22nd Gbadolite Summit Meeting. There, eighteen African Heads of State and two representatives of Heads of State gathered, under the Chairmanship of President Kaunda of Zambia, and President Mobutu of Zaire mediated between President Dos Santos of Angola and UNITA Leader Jonas Savimbi. According to the September 19 Kinshasa Communique issued by the core group of eight African leaders.
`At the end of the Gbadolite Summit the Heads of State gathered there took note--after the President of the meeting His Excellency Dr. Kenneth David Kaunda, President of Zambia, read before the gathering the main points of the peace plan--of Mr. Savimbi's acceptance of the points contained in the plan, after which President Eduardo dos Santos shook his hand as a symbol of fraternity and reconciliation between sons of the same motherland.'
Statements by President Mobutu, President Pereira of Cape Verde, President Bongo of Gabon, and President Chissano of Mozambique also confirmed that Savimbi had accepted in front of the African leaders the Gbadolite peace plan.
The Gbadolite agreement had two parts. First there was a public declaration that, `on the basis of the peace plan presented by the Government of the People's Republic of Angola and the proposals made by the Head of State of the Republic of Zaire in his mediation efforts, the following principles were agreed upon by all the Angolan brothers':
`The desire of all sons and daughters of Angola to end the war and to proclaim national integration before the whole world.'
`The cessation of all hostilities as well as the proclamation of a cease-fire to come into force at midnight on 24 June.'
`The establishment of a committee charged with drawing up the modalities for implementing this plan, which is aimed at national reconciliation, under the mediation of the President of the Republic of Zaire'
Second, as declarations by the eight African leaders at the subsequent Harare and Kinshasa summits showed, there was also an unpublished accord (presumably to give Dos Santos and Savimbi time to inform their constituencies). This agreement included:
`Respect of the Constitution and the Principal Laws' of Angola;
`Cessation of all foreign interference in the internal affairs' of Angola;
`Integration of UNITA elements in the institutions of the People's Republic of Angola'; and
`Acceptance of Jonas Savimbi's temporary and voluntary retirement.'
Within hours of the Gbadolite summit, the major elements of the unpublished accord were mentioned publicly by several of the African leaders. President Mobutu, Savimbi's foremost African supporter, told the press on June 23rd: `As mediator, I have reached the point of integrating UNITA into all the structures of the Angolan State--Government, Army, Administration, and all others'. The same day President Bongo commented:
`The main terms of the agreements that we reached were: the cessation of hostilities on Saturday at midnight; and the total integration of all the former assets of the UNITA within the Angolan Government, the Army, and in the Administration. In short, everything that concerns the situation of the country is to be reabsorbed. It was also decided to put an end to foreign interference. Lastly, we worked out the conditions for this reconciliation process.'
Similar statements were made by Presidents Kaunda, Chissano and Pereira. However, one point in the agreement remained unclear: the exact nature of the `temporary and voluntary retirement' of Savimbi. Kaunda and Dos Santos indicated that Savimbi would leave Angola and go into exile, but Mobutu denied this and it was not confirmed by anyone else.
The upshot of the African peace effort then was a political compromise in which neither side realized its maximum demands. However, many important details remained to be negotiated and one point--Savimbi's temporary retirement--needed to be ultimately clarified. UNITA gained legitimacy as an organization which had the
right to negotiate its members `integration' into the Angolan political structure. This could be achieved in various ways (President Pereira related, `Savimbi proposed the word `participation' instead of integration but it was understood that it should be the Angolans who would discuss the rest among themselves'). But, together with the principle of respect for the existing Constitution and principal laws, `integration' clearly fell short of UNITA's long-standing demand for the dissolution of the Angolan Government, its replacement by a new Government of National Unity, and subsequent elections for a legislature to write a new Constitution. On the other hand, the Angolan Government gained an immediate cease-fire with the UNITA guerillas, recognition of the integrity of its regime as a starting point for political negotiations, and Savimbi's temporary political withdrawal (already offered by UNITA in the context of it own peace plan). However, it gave up its previous refusal to negotiate a political solution with UNITA by accepting the Mobutu mediation scheme, and sacrificed its previous emphasis upon individual amnesty and as the path to national reconciliation.
[Page: H7029]
While neither the Angolan Government nor UNITA has complied fully with the African mediation effort--for example, neither is currently observing the cease-fire--the overwhelming preponderance of attacks upon the Gbadolite agreement and the African mediation effort have come from UNITA. These may be grouped under four categories:
(1) UNITA's Rejection of the Cessation of Hostilities by 24 June: UNITA carried out a major sabotage of the Luanda electrical power system on June 29th. On July 25th, it reportedly shot down an Angolan military transport plane with a missile, resulting in 40 deaths. (All this during a period when UNITA was accusing Angola of nothing more than moving supplies). At the July 19-22 negotiations in Kinshasa, UNITA did not accept Mobutu's proposal for observation and implementation of the cease-fire though Angola did. On August 10th, Savimbi insisted, against the published Gbadolite agreement, on tying agreement on a cease-fire to political agreements: UNITA negotiators were to `discuss not only the cease-fire but the political schedule * * * what kinds of incentives to give to the guerillas to stop fighting. The insistence of the present mediator, President Mobutu, and the MPLA to discuss only the cease-fire is incomplete.' On August 24th, UNITA rejected the eight African leaders' Harare communique spelling out the unpublished part of the Gbadolite agreement and started, `War has resumed.' On August 26th, UNITA suspended all peace negotiations, including those on the cease-fire, for a month, but offered a month-long `truce' in which it would not `carry out any offensive' though its `armed forces are ready wherever they are attacked.'
(2) UNITA`s Rejection of the Key Concept of `Integration.' Following an initial interview of Mozambique in which he did not
quarrel with a reporter's description of the upcoming process of `reintegration into Angolan society,' Savimbi subsequently changed course. On June 25th he told a press conference in Jamba that `The heads of state approved the agenda that we presented 14 years ago on restoring peace and national reconciliation by forming a Government of National Unity'. On August 10th he told the Portuguese press, `There was no integration', and emphasized the importance of a `Government of National Unity'.
(3) UNITA's Rejection of the African Mediation Effort Led By Mobutu: On August 9th, Mobutu declared he was `surprised and astonished' by reported press statements by Savimbi disavowing the Gbadolite agreement and questioning Mobutu's role. Savimbi publicly criticized Mobutu's conduct of the negotiations on August 10th. On August 24th, UNITA rejected the Harare communique `violently', `question(ed) the role of Gbadolite and its chairman', and said `It does not accept that Africa should decide on the leadership of African countries, wherever they may be'. On September 17th, the New York Times reported Savimbi saying that Mobutu was `not neutral' and suggesting that further talks would be futile unless he stepped out of the negotiating process.
(4) UNITA's Walkout From the Negotiations: On August 26th, UNITA announced the suspension of its participation in the committee established by the Gbadolite summit to implement national reconciliation until its Congress in late September. (However, the next day he announced he would be attending a peace conference in Kinshasa in September.) On September 17th, he told the New York Times that he would not attend the September 18 Kinshasa meeting with the eight African leaders because the two sides were too far apart to have meaningful talks. At this time, he rejected an urgent request from President Bush and Secretary Baker and direct pleas by Assistant Secretary Herman Cohen, to attend the talks.
At first, the U.S. supported the Gbadolite summit as a `significant breakthrough' in which both sides made major concessions. It also stressed that this was an African, rather than U.S. success. A `senior official' commented publicly, `The most important thing is that you have African leaders talking to their own brethren about how to solve a problem without American aircraft, without a British mediator, without people from the outside'.
Asked to project the eventual political outcome in Angola, Assistant Secretary Cohen responded in terms that were not inconsistent with the concepts of `integration' and `temporary and voluntary retirement' (CNN-7/18):
themselves. We are not prescribing * * * I think it will be a typical African situation, probably a one party government, with a Parliament. But the two parties, UNITA and the MPLA, will probably merge into something new.'
He also noted the prospective temporary retirement (but not exile) of Savimbi:
`What they are talking about is a transitional period of one year or 18 months where Jonas Savimbi will not be part of the Government. He has already volunteered to do that.'
At the same time, Cohen made an effort to have the U.S. reverse its previous lone vote against Angola's admission to the IMF at the upcoming July 18 IMF Executive Board Meeting--in order to obtain more influence with Luanda in support of a political settlement.
Subsequently, U.S. policy changed. Following a letter on the IMF issue by Senator DeConcini and four other Senators, the U.S. maintained its negative vote at the IMF Executive Board meeting. On August 23rd, State Department press guidance criticized the Harare communique: `It appears that the summit's reiteration of what had been agreed to at Gbadolite includes some elements to which, in fact, UNITA may not have agreed'. (As shown in the earlier discussion of the Gbadolite Agreement and as implied by Cohen's earlier remarks, this statement is not a fair reflection of the facts.) There were indications of private support for Savimbi's effort to link effective implementation of the cease-fire to progress in political negotiations--also contrary to the Gbadolite agreement. Finally, and most importantly, the U.S. issued a press statement on the day of the Kinshasa summit, September 18, strongly supporting Savimbi's perspective on Gbadolite:
`The United States strongly supports UNITA and its goals of national reconciliation followed by free and fair elections. The U.S. does not accept the concepts of `exile', `amnesty', or `intergration'. Political issues must be settled at the negotiating table.'
Shortly afterward, Mobutu called upon `those who are closely or remotely concerned by the Angola problem * * * to stop any interference likely to hamper the restoration of peace in Angola.
The only remaining U.S. differences with Savimbi are that the U.S. continues to support Mobutu as mediator and attempted in vain to get Savimbi to go to the Kinshasa summit.
[Page: H7030]
In the eyes of the Reaganite right, Jonas Savimbi was a freedom fighter. His trips to Washington were media-charged whirlwinds of White House visits and cozy sessions with the congressional hard-liners who delivered money--$50 million this year--to aid his guerrillas fighting the Marxist regime in Angola. But as he toured the capital last week, there were signs of fading ardor. Reports of brutal reprisals against rivals and dissidents inside the National Union for the Total Indpendence of Angola (UNITA) have weakened his hand. Some officials blamed him for the breakdown of a cease-fire negotiated in June by Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko. His liberal critics wondered if underwriting old anticommunist warriors like Savimbi has become dangerously anachronistic in the age of Gorbachev.
Changes in the calculus of the region's politics may make Savimbi expendable. Washington's chief geopolitical concern in the onetime Portuguese colony--the 50,000 Cuban troops stationed there--will soon be history. They are leaving under the terms of the U.S.-brokered Namibian independence accord. There is also a hardening consensus that the country's 14-year civil war has become a bloody stalemate (an estimated more than 200,000 dead) serving no one's interests. The aim now is to get Savimbi and the Marxist government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos to end the conflict `on any terms acceptable to both sides,' one American official in Johannesburg says.
Savimbi's credibility has been damaged by the collapse of the cease-fire arranged by Mobutu in Gbadolite, Zaire, in June. While dos Santos and Savimbi shook hands on the accord, it was broken by both sides within days. Savimbi claims he never agreed to the terms the Zairian leader announced, which included an 18-month `retirement' for the rebel leader himself and integration of his UNITA guerrillas into the Angolan government. Questions about Savimbi's own conduct have eroded American conservative support. An Aug. 18 piece in William F. Buckley's National Review, for example, describes the alleged torture and killing of UNITA dissidents, some through public burnings. The article asserts that his Maoist training and repressive style make him no friend of the West. `I don't think Jonas Savimbi is a saint,' says conservative Republican Congressman John Kasich, who has signed a letter inviting dos Santos to visit the United States.
Savimbi dismisses any notion that his support is slipping. `The people who sent the letter [to dos Santos] never supported UNITA in the past,' he said last week. But his detractors may be gaining a foothold. Last month Democratic Congressman Howard Wolpe, chairman of the House Africa subcommittee, introduced a nonbinding resolution calling on President Bush to begin normalizing relations with Angola by opening a U.S. liaison office in Luanda and sending reconstruction aid. The measure's 64 sponsors include 15 Republicans, once a political impossibility. Publicly, the White House remains solidly behind Savimbi. But it wants him back at the bargaining table with Mobutu to reestablish the cease-fire. Both met with Bush separately last week, and Savimbi promised that the problems would be ironed out. If negotiations get back on track, Congress is likely to continue arming Savimbi. If not, he may find a much chillier reception on his next visit to Washington.
Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Sept. 15: The Angolan guerrilla leader, Jonas Savimbi, said tonight that he was suspending negotiations to end his country's long civil war because the two sides remain too far apart to have meaningful talks.
Face-to-face negotiations between Mr. Savimbi and President Eduardo dos Santos of Angola had been scheduled to resume on Sept. 18 in Kinshasa, Zaire.
But the rebel leader said he has decided not to attend the meeting, which would be the second time the two sides have formally help peace talks.
In an interview here, Mr. Savimbi was especially critical of President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, the mediator of the talks, whom he accused of grossly distorting the terms of the cease-fire agreement reached by 18 African heads of Government on June 22 in Gbadolite, Zaire.
`He's not neutral,' Mr. Savimbi said of the Zairian President, and suggested that further talks would be futile unless Mr. Mobutu stepped out of the negotiating process.
Mr. Savimbi spoke for 40 minutes at a residence of the Ivory Coast's President, Felix Houphoue˙AE4t-Boigny. African diplomats here said that Mr. Savimbi had hoped that he would replace Mr. Mobutu as mediator.
The rebel leader's comments are significant because for several years Zaire has provided the Angolan guerrillas with substantial assistance, its territory serving as a shipment corridor for some of the equipment sent by the United States to be used against Angola's Marxist Government.
Mr. Savimbi also said he met today with Herman J. Cohen, the Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, who urged him to attend the Kinshasa talks.
The Angolan delegate to the United Nations, Manuel Pacavira, accused Mr. Savimbi of bad faith and said he did not really want to bring the war to an end.
`We are tired of Mr. Savimbi's songs. The Kinshasa meeting will take place, with or without him.' Mr. Pacavira said in a telephone interview. He added that Angola had full confidence in Mr. Mobutu as mediator.
The impasse here appears to boil down to a complete difference in opinion on what was accomplished at the Gbadoilte meeting. The peace talks have taken on added urgency for both sides because of the coming independent of Namibia, also known as South-West Africa, a territory that has been administered by South Africa and which has been used a supply base for Mr. Savimbi's in southeastern Angola.
A peace accord signed in December by South Africa, Angola, Cuba and the United States includes a pledge by the South Africans to end their support for the rebels. The accord also provides independence for Namibia and a phased withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. Western and African diplomats say that if the peace talks between the rebel forces and the Luanda Government collapse, full-scale fighting could resume, jeopardizing the December accord.
Mr. Savimbi said in the interview that fighting had, in fact, intensified. He estimated that in the last two weeks about 1,000 Government troops had been killed and as well as about 300 of his own soldiers. Angolan officials have disputed these figures, and there is no way to verify them.
Angolan officials, skeptical about Mr. Savimbi's vow not to continue negotiating, said they thought that he was stalling in an attempt to replenish his supplies and perhaps prepare for a military push at a later date.
In other matters, the rebel leader reintegrated his contention that he never consented to go into exile or to let his forces be absorbed into the Angolan Army, as Mr. Mobutu and other African leaders contended at a meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, late last month.
Asked about Mr. dos Santos' contention that he agreed at Gbadolite to accept some form of exile--external or internal, at least for a transitional period of national reconciliation--Mr. Savimbi said: `He's lying, and if anybody told him I said that, they're lying.'
Huambo, Angola, Aug. 20: It was shortly past midnight the other night when mortar shell ripped through the roof of Felismina Castiho's adobe hut. Shrapnel from the explosion tore a hole in her right thigh. Her parents sleeping in a room next door, were killed.
The 6-year-old girl is one of dozens of civilians treated for serious wounds since June, when a cease-fire was called in Angola's 14-year civil war, said Dr. Adriana Francisco Goncalves, acting medical director of the regional hospital here.
The cease-fire agreement was reached on June 24 in a meeting between President Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi. But judging from the wounded and crippled crowding this hospital and daily Angolan press reports of attacks, the truce never became fully effective.
`Our professionals have not seen a cease-fire' Dr. Goncalves said. `The number of wounded coming in have been continuous before and after the agreement. On some days, it's one, two, or three. On others we see 10 or 15 multiple-trauma cases.'
In a recent interview in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Tony D. Fernandes, foreign minister of the rebel group, the Union for the Total Independence of Angola, denied that the rebels were waging a campaign of terror. He called such accusations `lies' meant to turn American public opinion against their effort.
The United States has given the guerrilla group, which goes by the name Unita, $15 million a year in aid in the last several years, and Washington has vowed to continue to do so despite the cease-fire.
On the night that Felismina was wounded in what was evidently a rebel attack, the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., the New York-based director of the United Church of Christ's Commission on Racial Justice, was asleep about a quarter of a mile away. He was with a group of American physicians and other medical workers here examining conditions in Angola's central plateau.
`It happened about 12:15 in the morning,' Mr. Chavis said as he led a tour of the still smoldering hut where Felismina and her parents, Jose and Lucia, lived.
`A loud explosion shook the building in the room I was sleeping in,' he said. `I got up and looked out the window and saw rockets exploding.
`The first rocket and rifle barrage lasted about 20 minutes. After a half hour lull, the shootout continued for another 15 minutes.
`It was a full moon. The night was bright, so whoever was shooting knew they were shooting over a civilian part of Huambo.'
Besides Huambo, other towns that have been hit hard by guerrilla attacks include Kuito and Chinguar, towns east of here. `The main objective is Luanda,' said Pedro de Castro Van-Dunem, Angola's Foreign Minister. `We've lost a battalion--about 200 military, about 300 civilians and about 600 wounded; about 100 trucks have also been destroyed.'
Mr. Van-Dunem also blamed the rebels for shooting down a civilian airplane, reportedly killing 43 passengers. Unita has denied responsibility for the downing.
Mr. Savimbi's guerrillas exert de facto control over much of the countryside around Huambo, a once-thriving agriculture and rail center.
Today, Huambo is a bleak, tattered city, full of shuttered shops and abandoned farms and fields. Many residents, fearing guerrilla ambushes and land mines, rarely venture far outside the city limits.
One of the few who routinely did was Juliana Alcina, a Government information official. On June 26, two days after the cease-fire began, Miss Alcina was traveling with a group of nurses who were giving polio vaccinations in a nearby village.
They arrived without incident, but on the return trip their truck hit a land mine. The six nurses were killed. The explosion fractured Miss Alcina's back and mangled her right leg.
She said she believed that the land mine had recently been installed, buried by guerrilla forces in the brief period that the group spent in the village. `We had been over the same place, over the same road three times,' in the weeks preceding the explosion, she said. `And we never had a problem with mines.'
`Unita did this to me' she whispered.
Nearly every day the Angola Journal, the state-controlled newspaper, prints on its front page a tally of Unita attacks culled from official Government reports. At 5:00 A.M. on July 18, for example, the paper reported that guerrillas attacked Cingues, a village in Bie Province, killing 60 civilians and kidnapping 29.
On Aug. 12, the Journal reported that `bandits' attacked Cafunfo, a village in the northeastern province of Lunda-Norte, killing nine civilians and wounding four.
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Three months after a much-heralded start on peace talks for Angola, the Bush administration strategy is failing badly and the process is still not underway.
The administration has relied on Zairian President Mobuto Sese Seko to mediate an `African solution' to the Angolan civil war. But the two warring parties have not yet even sat down together in the same negotiating room.
Jonas Savimbi, the U.S.-backed Angolan rebel leader, has publicly rejected Mobutu as mediator, and U.S. efforts to get Savimbi to the latest proposed round of talks last Monday in Zaire proved fruitless.
Meanwhile, a cease-fire declared June 24 is floundering amid accusations of multiple violations by both sides.
`I don't know what the next step is myself,' a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.
`That whole initiative is in trouble,' said the director-general of South Africa's Foreign Ministry, Niel Van Heerden, at a press briefing Tuesday, `We are virtually back to square one.'
It is unclear what this means for the U.S.-brokered accord of last December that provides for the withdrawal of 50,000 Cuban troops from Angola and independence elections for South African-ruled Namibia.
But both South African and U.S. officials said Cuba is so far adhering strictly to the timetable for phased withdrawal of its troops. In addition, Havana has given no indication that it might renege on its pullout commitment even if the civil war resumes, according to these officials.
Congressional and other American backers of Savimbi are blaming the administration for the failure to achieve any progress in the national reconciliation talks.
`The State Department has remained strangely silent' about the peace process, said 13 senators in a Sept. 12 letter to Secretary of State James A. Baker III. They urged Baker to become personally involved in the process.
The United States has considerable influence with both sides. It is Savimbi's main outside supporter now, with a covert aid program of $40 million to $50 million. It also can offer the Angolan government diplomatic recognition and U.S. technology, both of which it ardently seeks, in return for a compromise.
But the Bush administration, seemingly anxious to avoid high-profile and risky diplomacy, has not shown any interest in mediating the talks. Instead, it has deliberately promoted Mobutu as the Angolan peacemaker.
At first, this strategy seemed possible. The Zairian leader started with a major diplomatic coup on the eve of a visit to Washington, getting Savimbi and Angolan President Eduardo Jose dos Santos to shake hands and agree to a cease-fire at a meeting June 22 in Gbadolite, Zaire.
Mobutu even got 17 other African heads of state to witness and bless the historic meeting between the two adversaries, who have been locked in a devastating civil war since Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975.
But Mobutu never succeeded in getting an Angolan delegation in the same room with one from Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
The senior U.S. official said the Angolan delegation `refuses to sit at the same table with these `bandits,' as they call them [UNITA members],' and Mobutu has never gone beyond `contact talks' carried out indirectly by Zairian officials shuttling between the two parties.
Meanwhile, Mobutu began associating himself in August with the Angolan government's view of what was allegedly agreed to at Gbadolite, which Savimbi has hotly contested.
At an Aug. 22 meeting of eight African leaders in Harare, Zimbabwe, Mobutu signed a declaration that upheld the Angolan government position: Savimbi's followers are simply to be `integrated' into existing Angolan institutions while Savimbi is to go into `temporary and voluntary retirement' in exile.
Savimbi, on the other hand, is demanding elections, a transitional government, the creation of a multiparty system and sweeping changes in Angola's Marxist-Leninist constitution. He also refuses to go into exile.
Mobutu's apparent acceptance of the Angolan government view so infuriated Savimbi that he announced he would not attend the next planned round of talks in Kinshasa Sept. 18.
Assistant Secretary of State Herman J. Cohen rushed to the region last week in a futile effort to convince Savimbi to show up. The State Department issued a statement saying it `strongly supports UNITA and its goal of national reconciliation followed by fair and free elections.' It also rejected the Angolan government's `concepts of exile [for Savimbi], amnesty and integration [for his followers].'
The statement did not change Savimbi's mind but it did infuriate the Angolan government. Angola's ambassador to the United Nations, Manuel Pedro Pacavira, said Thursday that the U.S. demands amounted `almost to a declaration of war.'
`Our government will not make concessions that would take its people to suicide. It will not accept the demand for the creation of a government of transition. It will not revise its constitution because of foreign pressure and to satisfy the ambitions of a small group [UNITA],' he said in an interview here.
The U.S. position now, as explained by the senior U.S. official, is that both sides should accept a new cease-fire followed by face-to-face `open-ended negotiations with no preconditions and no non-negotiable demands.' Mobutu, he said, still has the full backing of the administration to serve as mediator.
But the Zairian leader's current approach seems certain to be rebuffed by Savimbi again. Mobutu is supposed to draw up a declaration--basically along the lines of the Angolan government's approach, which is embraced now by eight African leaders--and then get Savimbi to sign on, according to both Pacavira and the U.S. official.
It is not clear how Mobutu will do this. But Zaire is now the main conduit for U.S. and other arms flowing to Savimbi, giving Mobutu considerable leverage if he decides to use it.
The Voice of America has begun monitoring its broadcasts to Angola following reports that a secret, CIA-financed radio station operated by U.S.-backed anti-Marxist rebels has been interfering with VOA programs.
According to one report, the rebel station, known as the Voice of the Black Cockerel, used its powerful transmitter to block 12 minutes of an Aug. 18 VOA broadcast that included four minutes of a speech by Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos to the Angolan National Assembly.
Another report said the rebel station, which uses two of the same shortwave frequencies as VOA, also has cut in early on VOA broadcasts to make it appear that its programs are part of those from VOA.
Jardo Muekalia, a spokesman here for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which runs the station, denied the reports.
`That's not true. Nobody there is trying to override VOA broadcasts,' Muekalia said. But there `might have been some kind of coincidence' occasionally between VOA and Black Cockerel broadcasts.
Muekalia said UNITA has complained to the State Department about recent reports carried by VOA from an Angolan, William Tonet, who has been working for the U.S. radio station in Luanda since April.
`The VOA shouldn't be a resounding box of the . . . government in Luanda,' Muekalia said. He charged that Tonet had indulged in pro-government commentary that would be taken by Angolan listeners as evidence the United States was favoring the Marxist Luanda government rather than UNITA because the VOA is regarded there as a U.S. government operation.
A State Department spokesman said the UNITA complaint was being investigated but noted that the Angolan government and the rebel group have periodically complained about VOA's alleged bias in favor of the other side.
This is the first instance, however, of allegations that UNITA has been using its powerful radio station to block VOA broadcasts. The CIA reportedly helped set up Black Cockerel in 1986 when the Reagan administration began a covert program of military and other assitance to UNITA.
A spokesman for the United States Information Agency (USIA), which oversees VOA, said the agency is unsure whether there was sustained interference by the UNITA station on Aug. 18 but is investigating.
`We're going to monitor VOA programs closely for the next few weeks to see if anything is happening at all,' said Joseph D. O'Connell, deputy director of USIA's office of public liaison.
VOA also has started monitoring Black Cockerel to see whether it is deliberately interfering with VOA broadcasts into Angola, according to VOA sources.
UNITA officials say the Black Cockerel radio station is based in southeastern Angola, but Angolan government officials believe it also has a transmitter in neighboring Zaire's southern Shaba Province.
Muekalia said it has powerful signal, covering all of central and western Africa as far north as Morocco and capable of being heard as far away as the East Coast of the United States.
VOA Deputy Director Robert T. Coonrod said allegations of UNITA interference with VOA broadcasting involved two frequencies: 9700 kilohertz, on which VOA sends Portuguese-language programs, and at 7130 kilohertz, for programs in French. The VOA transmitter is in Greenville N.C.
Black Cockerel also uses the 9700 frequency and one at 7135 kilohertz, which is so close to VOA's 7130 as to be indistinguishable, for its twice-daily programs.
O'Connell said there was no coordination between VOA and Black Cockerel on Black Cockerel's use of those two frequencies and said UNITA's secret station did not fall under the international board that registers stations and assigns times and frequencies.
Black Cockerel broadcast at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Angolan time. The VOA programs are heard in Angola at 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Luanda government officials and several U.S. sources said Black Cockerel's 7 p.m. program has on several occasions simply blended into the ending of the 6:30 p.m. VOA broadcast.
One VOA official said there were instance where `they come up before we go off' but thta it was unclear whether this was deliberate.
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Washington: Despite great progress toward peace in southwestern Africa, the Bush Administration is reportedly seeking a substantial increase in covert military aid to Unita insurgents in Angola. Congress should resist.
The Administration has contended that militarily strengthening Unita, or the Union for the Total Independence of Angola, would advance a process of `national reconciliation.'
In fact, additional military aid would only slow recent movement toward a compromise in Angola's civil war. Moreover, an escalation in military aid would cast doubt on the Administration's sincerity about defusing regional conflicts with Moscow.
The regional peace accord--under which Cuban troops are withdrawing from Angola, South African forces are departing from Angola and neighboring Namibia, and South Africa is ending its military support for Unita insurgents in Angola--has not threatened Unita's military position. South Africa has extended a golden handshake of up to three years of military supplies to Unita. As a result, the loss of Cuban support may well be more troubling to the Angolan Government than the loss of South African support will be to Unita.
Moreover, both sides are growing more conciliatory as external support declines, following the signing of the accord. The Angolan Government is prepared to talk to Unita (though not to its controversial president, Jonas Savimbi). It has also convened a regional conference to discuss ways to secure internal peace.
Unita has proposed a cease-fire and indicated that Mr. Savimbi would be prepared to step aside during peace negotiations and refrain from participating in the government for two years. New external aid could jeopardize these diplomatic achievements by reinforcing hardliners on both sides.
During the regional peace negotiations, Moscow openly urged the Angolan Government to find a formula for national reconciliation that would achieve an enduring political solution. For the U.S. now to ratchet up the violence in Angola would complicate the Kremlin's efforts to wind down an expensive military supply relationship.
Of course, some diehard adherents of the Reagan Doctrine of supporting anti-Communist forces throughout the world believe that the United States should have only one agenda in Angola. That's to put Mr. Savimbi, a.k.a. the `freedom fighter,' into power.
The myth of Jonas Savimbi as an apostle of freedom is propagated by a nearly $2 million-a-year public relations operation led by the well-connected lobbying firm of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly.
Yet, reality keeps intruding upon the Savimbi myth. An impressive study by Human Rights Watch has documented Unita's indiscriminate use of land mines against civilians and its policies of forced labor and conscription. And even Mr. Savimbi's sympathetic biographer, British journalist Fred Bridgland, has become disillusioned. Recently, Mr. Bridgland presented new evidence that Mr. Savimbi executed his political opponents.
With the Cubans now leaving Angola, it is harder than ever to justify continued U.S. involvement. At the very least, Congress should resist the short-sighted military strategy proposed by the Administration and the Unita lobby. It should insist, as it did with contra aid in Central America, on a diplomatic framework to achieve American objectives.
Such a framework should be devised in concert with the Soviet Union and key regional states. It should aim toward the following: reducing military aid to both sides and encouraging a cease-fire; negotiations leading to a national reconciliation that gives Unita's constituency a meaningful share of power; incentives, including international economic assistance, for achieving a political solution; and signaling South Africa that it will be punished if it abandons its commitments in Angola under the regional peace accord.
We can escalate the war in Angola, thereby extending a conflict that has already cost 200,000 lives, jeopardizing our newly won credibility with the black-ruled states of Southern Africa and inviting reciprocal escalation from Moscow. Or we can take the diplomatic path, building upon one of the Reagan Administration's most notable foreign policy achievements.
The right choice is as obvious as it is crucial.
Q: Let's move on to Angola. As you well know a cease fire . . . Jonas Savimbi of the rebel forces and President Dos Santos, shook hands on a cease fire agreement, on the 24th of June--I think it was. Now both sides have been saying the cease fire was violated. What is your information as far as the cease fire is concerned right now?
A: It's not perfect. Angola is an extremely large country and we have a guerilla war going on, and it's not easy to call off the fighting all over the place. But there's another element into that. That is the requirement that they get into political discussions. I believe the negotiations will resume in Kinshasa tomorrow and once the political discussions get serious I'm quite persuaded that the cease fire will hold.
Q: There was a lot of speculation before your trip (to Africa, including Luanda), that you would be recognizing the marxist Angolan government of president Dos Santos. What is the position of the US right now?
A: Our position has been consistent from the Carter administration. We will not have normal diplomatic relations or recognize the government of Angola until there is national reconciliation. That is, the end of the negotiating process. We want to improve our dialogue with the MPLA Government and we will be doing that. But actual diplomatic relations must await an outcome of the negotiating process.
* * * * *
Q: For natioinal reconciliation, will Jonas Savimbi remain in Angola, or will he have to go into exile?
A: The agreement at the Gbadolite Summit, a couple of weeks ago said that in an eventual Government of national unity, Jonas Savimbi would be part of it in a very high position. What they are talking about is a transitional period of one year or 18 months where Jonas Savimbi will not be part of the Government. He has already volunteered to do that. But an eventual Government of national unity will include Jonas Savimbi. Everyone's agreed on that.
Q: Give us some sort of a scenario what that Government might look like * * *
A: That's gonna have to be negotiated among the Africans themselves. We are not prescribing * * * I think it will be a typical African situation, probably a one party government, with a Parliament. But the two parties, UNITA and the MPLA, will probably merge into something new.
Q: What role do you see Jonas Savimbi playing * * *?
A: I think he has to play a major role in any Angolan government, because he represents at least 40 per cent of the Angolan people, and maybe more. So he's going to have to have a high post. The only way the government and the country can stay together is if he brings his people along into it. He has already conceded that the President of Angola will be the current president, President Dos Santos. So he's not looking to take over that job. But he would have to have something very big, such as Prime Minister, I think.
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The world may think that the civil war in Angola is winding down. We read news reports that a cease-fire is in place and that negotiations are under way between the warring parties. We are told that compromise is in the air, that peace is just around the corner.
The people of Angola know better. While the world watches the historic effort to hold fair elections and achieve genuine independence for Angola's neighbor to the south, Namibia, it ignores the mayhem that continues just across the border to the north. Angolans are still being killed and maimed by some of the most brutal, indiscriminate violence in the world today. And the United States supplies the weaponry that allows that violence to continue.
I have just returned from a trip to Angola. Part of our purpose was to provide humanitarian assistance to victims of the war. We found evidence that the U.S.-supported insurgency (UNITA) continues to use our arms to terrorize the civilian population of Angola.
As I stood at the bedside of six-year-old Felismina Essenge hours after her legs had been mangled, her parents wiped out and her home distroyed by UNITA shelling, I heard her cry, `Mama, it hurts.' If the American people could have been there to see that little girl's crippled body and hear her tormented whimpers, our policy of giving guns, rockets and land mines to UNITA would be instantly ended.
Americans should be clear about what we are doing in Angola. It is a conscious policy of UNITA to target civilians, to lay waste to the countryside, to destroy the economic infrastructure and to make Angola ungovernable. We supply the weapons that make UNITA's attacks on innocent civilians possible.
Why is it that our government consistently relies on that inane, destructive, unimaginative and evil solution? Just because the Soviet Union backs President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and his MPLA government, the United States is not required, robot-like, to support Jonas Savimbi of UNITA.
Jonas Savimbi is hardly the democrat his supporters portray. On the contrary, he has reportedly ordered the murder of hundreds of political dissenters and is said to have burned entire families as `witches' in bonfires at public rallies.
Ironically, American-owned oil companies have continued to do business in Angola throughout the war, their facilities protected by Cuban mercenaries from the attacks of U.S.-supported guerrillas.
Now that the Cuban troops are being withdrawn, our only interest in Angola should be humanitarian, to bring this brutal conflict to a speedy end. Continuing to supply weapons to UNITA does not advance that objective. We should call an immediate halt to our policy of providing support to UNITA.
Presently, aid to UNITA fails under the auspices of the Senate Intelligence Committee which protects its supporters from the scrutiny of public debate but does not excuse them from the terrible moral responsiblity of sending $40 million worth of military equipment to Angola; this, incredibly, at the same time as the two warring factions had finally reached across the table and agreed to a cease-fire.
We have now replaced the Soviet Union as the leading supplier of weapons to the Third World. This policy does not make friends for America. It only creates victims and adversaries and fosters anti-American feelings among people who would otherwise be our friends.
Ethel Kennedy.
McLean.
A serious hitch has developed in the process that was meant to convert Angola's June cease-fire into a negotiation to end that brutalized country's 14-year war. Talks on a political settlement have yet to begin. Indeed, the MPLA government and the UNITA rebels cannot even agree on the factual matter of what commitments they undertook at the African summit where peace was supposedly nailed down. Though Cuba and South Africa are withdrawing from the conflict under terms of the broad American-brokered Namibia-Angola accord of last December, the Soviet Union continues its massive supply and the United States its modest supply of government and guerrillas, respectively. Some fighting has resumed, and talk of more is in the air.
The Angolan war has long had its own attentive and, of course, divided public here, and so it is no surprise to find both Angolan sides now appealing to the United States to change its policy. The MPLA government, desperate for the expected political and economic benefits, urges Americans to cut off rebel Jonas Savimbi and resume normal ties now that its Cuban protectors are going home. Mr. Savimbi, who has assiduously cultivated American conservatives, has been in Washington this week arguing essentially for an extra measure of American support that would spare him the considerable uncertainties of reliance on the mediation of African governments.
Both Angolan parties are heading down the wrong track. The MPLA government's effort to induce President Bush to jettison the rebels runs smack up against a politically solid administration commitment to see reconciliation through. The rebels' attempt to make Washington their permanent guarantor overlooks 1) the administration's proper reluctance to be engaged in a conflict now becoming more tribal than anything else and 2) the American national interest in relations with an Angolan government that, by removing the Cubans, is meeting the basic American condition for restoring ties.
The unacknowledged common purpose of the Angolans is to draw in the United States in a way that will spare them the rigors of compromise with each other. This is not a burden that Washington should be lifting from their shoulders. Quite the contrary. The original design of American diplomacy in Angola was to remove the foreign combatants--Cuba and South Africa--and then to involve other African countries in fashioning a framework of Angolan compromise. The design was sound then, and it remains so, notwithstanding the current hitch.
President Bush did well to push the Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi back to the negotiating table. But it remains to be seen whether Mr. Savimbi is prepared to bargain on the basis of the African-sponsored framework for settling Angola's 14-year civil war. He needs to understand that continued U.S. help will be politically impossible if he misses this chance to negotiate.
The chance arises from a June agreement between Mr. Savimbi and Angola's President, Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Brought together by President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and observed by 17 other African heads of state, the two Angolan rivals parted with a handshake.
The deal consisted of a cease-fire and agreement to negotiate a settlement. However, the cease-fire never took hold. Mr. Savimbi, despite a written plea from Mr. Bush and a visit from Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen, refused to attend a Sept. 18 meeting at which a cease-fire accord was to be signed. And having agreed to an ill-defined `temporary retirement,' Mr. Savimbi now talks about running in presidential elections.
Meanwhile the U.S. has continued to send food, arms, medicine and clothing to Mr. Savimbi's Unita rebels. But that aid, delivered through Zaire, was jeopardized by Mr. Savimbi's balky behavior. An angry Mr. Mobutu reportedly ordered supply lines cut.
Mr. Savimbi, the darling of some on the American right, forget that a substantial minority in Congress has never been happy about aiding Unita. That minority could easily become a majority if he spurns this chance for a settlement.
More important, America's purpose in Angola should not be to support one tribe or faction over another, but to rid Angola of 50,000 Cuban troops and to reduce Soviet influence. Thanks to last year's Namibia settlement, the Cubans are already leaving. Moscow, which would like to rid itself of the financial burden of Angola, might be willing to back an eventual agreement.
Seldom in the past 14 years has there been a better opportunity to silence the guns that cause Angola so much misery. Washington is right to insist that Mr. Savimbi not spoil that chance.
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton].
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
As the ranking Republican member on the Africa Subcommittee, I find it difficult week in, week out, year in, year out, to understand why the chairman of that subcommittee who just spoke and was involved in a colloquy continues to focus attention on those who are fighting for freedom and to try to get us to cut off aid to those people who are fighting for freedom in Southern Africa, when he ignores the atrocities that are taking place in countries like Ethiopia. Very rarely on this floor do we hear the gentleman from Michigan complain about the hundreds of thousands, and yes, millions of people who are dying of starvation in Ethiopia because Mengistu, the Communist leader, will not let food that we are sending over and paying to send over there get to the people who are starving in those areas. The gentleman never talks about that, but let a guy fight for freedom against the Communist government, like the Angolan government, the MPLA, and he is down here ranting and raving, day in and day out, telling us that we should not help those people fighting for freedom.
Under Ronald Reagan it was called the Reagan doctrine, saying to go help people fighting for freedom around the world in places like Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan, and we did that; but this gentleman has been opposed to every one of those freedom fighter groups from day one.
Now, the gentleman talks about Dr. Savimbi not living up to these agreements. Let us look at the facts.
There was a meeting held in Gbadolite in Zaire and Dr. Savimbi went to that meeting in Gbadolite along with the presidents of many of the other countries in Southern Africa and he sat down and tried to negotiate a peace settlement, national reconciliation and free elections.
Well, after that there was a meeting in a place called Harrare, Zimbabwe. Now, Dr. Savimbi or his people were not invited to that meeting, but the other presidents were, and at that meeting they came out with a communique that said that Dr. Savimbi had agreed to go into exile, that Dr. Savimbi would let his forces who had been fighting for 14 years in the jungles of Angola, he would let his forces be folded into the Communist MPLA forces. That does not make sense. Why would he agree to that? He had been fighting them for 14 years. He finally fought them to the conference table.
And yet this gentleman would like for us to believe that he agreed to that in Botalitay because of this communique which came out of Harrare, when he was not even there.
Further, they said that he was going to adopt the Communist constitution, or accept the Communist constitution of the MPLA in Angola.
I submit to my colleagues that that was information that at the very least was misunderstood. I certainly do not believe that Dr. Savimbi after fighting the Portuguese for 15 years and the Communists for 14 years would go along with caving in when he was on the verge of getting what he wanted, free and fair elections and national reconciliation.
Now, my colleague says that we should normalize relations with Angola under the Communist government.
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I was in Luanda, Angola, earlier this year, and I can tell the Members that the people live under oppression. The infrastructure of that country is going straight to hell. The streets do not work. There are holes everywhere. There is not even running water at the parliament or at the airport. The people are suffering.
The reason they want to normalize relations with the United States is to get our money, to get our hard currency, to get our investment, so they can go on with their tyrannical regime.
The fact of the matter is, my friends, that we should not normalize relations with Angola until there are free and fair elections, until there is true freedom in that country, until the tyrant dos Santos and the Communist leadership agree to sit down and have true national reconciliation and democracy in that country. No matter what my colleague says, the facts do not bear out what he has been telling us. That is, that Dr. Savimbi is a man that we cannot deal with, that he is a man who is not really for freedom and democracy, when in fact we know that he is.
Last week I introduced Dr. Savimbi at a major rally in Washington, DC, and I can tell the Members that those who know him, those who have come to know him, those who have visited him at his headquarters in Jamba in southern Angola know this is a man who is a patriot, a man who wants freedom and democracy, a man who really cares about his fellow man in Angola, and one that we should support. President Reagan was right to support him, President Bush has been right to support him, and this Congress should continue aid to him and not listen to the machinations of the gentleman from Michigan.
The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments?
If not, under the rule, the Committee rises.
Accordingly the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore [Mr. Montgomery] having assumed the chair, Mr. Moody, Chairman of the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2748) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 1990 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the U.S. Government, the intelligence community staff, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes, pursuant to House Resolution 254, he reported the bill back to the House with sundry amendments adopted by the Committee of the Whole.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the rule, the previous question is ordered.
The amendments printed in section 2 of House Resolution 254 are considered to have been adopted.
Is a separate vote demanded on any of the remaining amendments? If not, the Chair will put them en gros.
The amendments were agreed to.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the bill.
The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, and was read the third time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the bill.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 369, nays 31, not voting 32, as follows:
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The Clerk announced the following pairs:
On this vote:
Mr. Nelson for, with Mr. Murphy of Pennsylvania against.
Mr. Anthony for, with Mr. Dymally against.
Mr. Dixon for, with Mrs. Collins of Illinois against.
Messrs. BATES, OWENS of New York, DORGAN of North Dakota, DOUGLAS, and COX changed their vote from `yea' to `nay.'
Mr. LEHMAN of Florida and Mr. ROBERT F. (BOB) SMITH changed their vote from `nay' to `yea.'
So the bill was passed.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
END