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The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is the request for unanimous consent to proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar Order No. 317, S. 1324, a bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 1990 and 1991 for intelligence activities community staff, and the Central Intelligence Agency retirement and disability system, and for other purposes?
Mr. MITCHELL. Yes, Mr. President, I renew my request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The bill will be stated by title.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (S.1324) to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 1990 and 1991 for intelligence activities of the United States Government, the intelligence community staff, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the immediate consideration of the bill?
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill, which had been reported from the Committee on Armed Services, without amendment; and which had been reported from the Select Committee on Intelligence, with amendments; as follows:
(The parts of the bill intended to be stricken are shown in italics, and the parts of the bill intended to be inserted are shown in boldface brackets.)
(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 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.
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(1) by redesignating section 236 as section 237; and
(2) by inserting before the heading `Limitation on Number of Retirements,' the following:
(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for survivor benefits under section 224, the benefits provided under this section will not be payable and will be superseded by the benefits provided in section 224.'.
(b) The amendment made by this section shall take effect on November 15, 1982.
`(i) has five years of civilian service credit toward retirement under such subchapter III of chapter 83, title 5, United States Code;
`(ii) has not been designated under section 203 of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees, as amended (50 U.S.C. 403 note), as a participant in the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System;
`(iii) has become disabled during a period of assignment to the performance of duties that are qualifying toward such designation under section 203; and
`(iv) satisfies the requirements for disability retirement under section 8337 of title 5, United States Code--
shall, upon his own application or upon order of the Director, be retired on an annuity computed in accordance with the rules prescribed in such section 231, in lieu of an annuity computed as provided by section 8337 of title 5, United States Code.
`(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, in the case of an officer or employee of the Central Intelligence Agency subject to retirement system coverage under subchapter III of chapter 83, title 5, United States Code, who--
`(i) has at least eighteen months of civilian service credit toward retirement under such subchapter III of chapter 83, title 5, United States Code;
`(ii) has not been designated under section 203 of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees, as amended (50 U.S.C. 403 note), as a participant in the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System;
`(iii) prior to separation or retirement from the Agency, dies during a period of assignment to the performance of duties that are qualifying toward such designation under such section 203; and
`(iv) is survived by a widow or widower, former spouse, and/or a child or children as defined in section 204 and section 232 of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees, who would otherwise be entitled to an annuity under section 8341 of title 5, United States Code--
such widow or widower, former spouse, and/or child or children of such officer or employee shall be entitled to an annuity computed in accordance with such section 232, in lieu of an annuity computed in accordance with section 8341 of title 5, United States Code.
`(c) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an officer or employee of the Central Intelligence Agency subject to retirement system coverage under chapter 84 of title 5, United States Code, who--
`(i) has completed at least eighteen months of civilian service creditable under section 8411 of title 5, United States Code;
`(ii) has not been designated pursuant to section 302(a) of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees, as amended (50 U.S.C. 403 note);
`(iii) has become disabled during a period of assignment to the performance of duties that are qualifying toward such designation pursuant to such section; and
`(iv) satisfies the requirements for disability retirement under subchapter V of chapter 84, title 5, United States Code--
shall, on the officer's or employee's own application or an application by the Director, be retired on an annuity computed as if the officer or employee, prior to becoming disabled, had been designated pursuant to section 302(a) of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees, as amended (50 U.S.C. 403 note), in lieu of the annuity amount that would otherwise be computed under subchapter V of chapter 84 of title 5, United States Code.
`(d) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, in the case of an officer or employee of the Central Intelligence Agency subject to retirement system coverage under chapter 84 of title 5, United States Code, who--
`(i) has at least eighteen months of civilian service creditable under section 8411 of title 5, United States Code;
`(ii) has not been designated pursuant to section 302(a) of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees, as amended (50 U.S.C. 403 note);
`(iii) prior to separation or retirement from the Agency, dies during a period of assignment to the performance of duties that are qualifying toward such designation pursuant to such section; and
`(iv) is survived by a widow or widower, former spouse, and/or child or children as defined in section 8441 of title 5, United States Code, who would be entitled to a lump-sum survivor benefit, a survivor annuity and/or if applicable, a supplementary annuity, under subchapter IV of chapter 84, title 5, United States Code--
the survivor benefit or benefits of such widow or widower, former spouse, and/or child or children shall be computed as if the officer or employee, prior to death, had been designated pursuant to section 302(a) of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964 for Certain Employees, as amended (50 U.S.C. 403 note), in lieu of the benefit amount or amounts that would otherwise be computed pursuant to subchapter IV of chapter 84, title 5, United States Code.
`(e)(1) The annuities provided under subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall be deemed to be annuities under chapter 83 of title 5, United States Code, for purposes of the other provisions of such chapter and other laws (including the Internal Revenue Code of 1986) relating to such annuities, and shall be payable from the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund established under section 8348 of such title.
`(2) The annuities and/or other benefits provided under subsections (c) and (d) of this section shall be deemed to be annuities and/or benefits under chapter 84 of title 5, United States Code, for purposes of the other provisions of such chapter and other laws (including the Internal Revenue Code of 1986) relating to such annuities and/or benefits, and shall be payable from the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund established pursuant to section 8348 of title 5, United States Code.'.
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`2606. Gifts to support the Defense Intelligence College
`(a) The Secretary of Defense is authorized to accept, hold, administer, and use gifts, to include bequests or devises, money, securities, or other property, both real and personal, for the purpose of aiding and facilitating the work of the Defense Intelligence College.
`(b) Gifts of money and proceeds from sales of property received as gifts shall be deposited in the Treasury and shall be available for disbursement upon the order of the Secretary.
`(c) For purposes of Federal income, estate, and gift taxation, gifts accepted by the Secretary under this section shall be considered to be to or for the use of the United States.
`(d) The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe regulations to carry out this section.'.
(b) The table of contents of chapter 155 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end thereof the following:
`2606. Gifts to support the Defense Intelligence College.'.
(a) the National Security Council determines that such increase is essential to the effective functioning of the United States Mission to the Soviet Union; and
(b) the FBI is provided sufficient additional resources to fulfill its responsibilities resulting from the increased number of permanent positions at the Soviet Mission to the United States.
`(1) create an objective and effective office, appropriately accountable to Congress, to initiate and conduct independently, inspections, investigations, and audits relating to programs and operations of the Central Intelligence Agency;
`(2) provide leadership and recommend policies designed to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in the administration of such programs and operations, and to detect fraud and abuse in such programs and operations; and
`(3) provide a means for keeping the Director of Central Intelligence fully and currently informed about problems and deficiencies relating to the administration of such programs and operations, and the necessity for and the progress of corrective actions, and, in the manner prescribed by this section, to ensure the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (hereinafter referred to as `the intelligence committees') are kept similarly informed of significant problems and deficiencies as well as the necessity for and the progress of corrective actions,
there is hereby established in the Central Intelligence Agency an Office of Inspector General.
`(b) Appointment; supervision; removal.--
`(1) There shall be at the head of the Office an Inspector General who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advise and consent of the Senate. This appointment shall be made without regard to political affiliation and shall be solely on the basis of integrity, compliance with the security standards of the Central Intelligence Agency, and prior experience in the field of foreign intelligence. Such appointment shall also be made on the basis of demonstrated ability in accounting, financial analysis, law, management analysis, or public administration.
`(2) The Inspector General shall report directly to and be under the general supervision of the Director of Central Intelligence.
`(3) The Director may prohibit the Inspector General from initiating, carrying out, or completing any audit, inspection, or investigation if he determines that such prohibition is necessary to protect vital national security interests of the United States.
`(4) If the Director exercises any power under subsection (3), above, he shall submit an appropriately classified statement of the reasons for the exercise of such power within seven days to the intelligence committees. The Director shall advise the Inspector General at the time such report is submitted, and, to the extent consistent with the protection of intelligence sources and methods, provide the Inspector General with a copy of any such report. In such cases, the Inspector General may submit such comments to the intelligence committees that he may deem appropriate.
`(5) In accordance with section 535 of title 28, United States Code, the Director of Central Intelligence shall report to the Attorney General any information, allegation, or complaint received from the Inspector General, relating to violations of Federal criminal law (title 18, U.S.C. et seq.) involving any officer or employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, consistent with such guidelines as may be issued by the Attorney General pursuant to subsection 535(b)(2) of title 28, United States Code. A copy of all such reports shall be furnished the Inspector General.
`(6) The Inspector General may be removed from office only by the President. The President shall immediately communicate in writing to the intelligence committees the reasons for any such removal.
`(c) Duties and Responsibilities.--It shall be the duty and responsibility of the Inspector General appointed under this section--
`(1) to provide policy direction for and to conduct, supervise, and coordinate independently, the inspections, investigations, and audits relating to the programs and operations of the Central Intelligence Agency to assure they are conducted efficiently and in accordance with applicable law and regulations;
`(2) to keep the Director fully and currently informed concerning violations of law and regulations, fraud and other serious problems, abuses and deficiencies that may occur in such programs and operations, and to report the progress made in implementing corrective action;
`(3) to take due regard for the protection of intelligence sources and methods in the preparation of all reports issued by the Office of Inspector General, and, to the extent consistent with the purpose and objective of such reports, take such measures as may be appropriate to minimize the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods described in such reports; and
`(4) in the execution of his responsibilities, to comply with generally accepted government auditing standards.
`(d) Semiannual Reports; Immediate reports of Serious or Flagrant Problems; Report of Functional Problems:
`(1) The Inspector General shall not later than June 30 and December 31 of each year, prepare and submit to the Director of Central Intelligence a classified semiannual report summarizing the activities of the Office during the immediately preceding six-month period. Within thirty days, the Director shall transmit such reports to the intelligence committees with any comments he may deem appropriate. Such reports shall, at a minimum, include:
`(i) a description of significant problems, abuses, and deficiencies relating to the administration of programs and operations of the Central Intelligence Agency disclosed by the Office of Inspector General during the reporting period;
`(ii) a description of the recommendations for corrective action made by the Office of Inspector General during the reporting period with respect to significant problems, abuses, or deficiencies identified in subparagraph (i), above;
`(iii) an identification of each significant recommendation described in previous semiannual reports on which corrective action has not been completed;
`(iv) a certification that the Inspector General has had full and direct access to all information relevant to the performance of his functions;
`(v) a description of all cases occurring during the reporting period where the Inspector General could not obtain documentary evidence relevant to any inspection, audit, or investigation due to his lack of authority to subpoena such information; and
`(vi) such recommendations as he may wish to make concerning legislation to promote economy and efficiency in the administration of programs and operations undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency, and to detect fraud and abuse in such programs and operations.
`(2) The Inspector General shall report immediately to the Director of Central Intelligence whenever he becomes aware of particularly serious or flagrant problems, abuses, or deficiencies relating to the administration of programs or operations. The Director shall transmit such report to the intelligence committees within seven calendar days, together with any comments he may deem appropriate.
`(3) In the event that--
`(i) the Inspector General is unable to resolve any differences with the Director of Central Intelligence affecting the execution of his duties or responsibilities;
`(ii) an investigation, inspection or audit carried out by the Inspector General should focus upon the Director or Acting Director; or
`(iii) the Inspector General, after exhausting all possible alternatives, is unable to obtain significant documentary information in the course of an investigation,
the Inspector General shall immediately report such matter to the intelligence committees.
`(e) Authorities of the Inspector General.
`(1) The Inspector General shall have direct and prompt access to the Director, when necessary for any purpose pertaining to the performance of his duties.
`(2) The Inspector General shall have access to any employee or any employee of a contractor of the Central Intelligence Agency whose testimony is needed for the performance of his duties. In addition, he shall have direct access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations or other material which relate to the programs and operations with respect to which the Inspector General has responsibilities under this section. Failure on the part of any employee or contractor to cooperate with the Inspector General shall be grounds for appropriate administrative actions by the Director, to include loss of employment or the termination of an existing contractual relationship.
`(3) The Inspector General is authorized to receive and investigate complaints or information from an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency concerning the existence of an activity constituting a violation of laws, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to the public health and safety. Once such complaint or information has been received--
`(i) The Inspector General shall not disclose the identity of the employee without the consent of the employee, unless the Inspector General determines that such disclosure is unavoidable during the course of the investigation; and
`(ii) No action constituting a reprisal, or threat of reprisal, for making such complaint may be taken by any employee of the Central Intelligence Agency in a position to take such actions, unless the complaint was made or the information was disclosed with the knowledge that it was false or with willful disregard for its truth or falsity.
`(4) The Inspector General shall have authority to administer to or take from any person an oath, affirmation, or affidavit, whenever necessary in the performance of his duties, which oath affirmation, or affidavit when administered or taken by or before an employee of the Office of Inspector General designated by the Inspector General shall have the same force and effect as if administered or taken by or before an officer having a seal;
`(5) The Inspector General shall be provided with appropriate and adequate office space at central and field office locations, together with such equipment, office supplies, maintenance services, and communications facilities and services as may be necessary for the operation of such offices;
`(6) Subject to applicable law and the policies of the Director of Central Intelligence, the Inspector General shall select, appoint and employ such officers and employees as may be necessary to carry out his functions. In making such selections, the Inspector General shall ensure that such officers and employees have the requisite training and experience to enable him to carry out his duties effectively. In this regard, it is the sense of Congress that the Inspector General should create within his organization a career cadre of sufficient size to provide appropriate continuity and objectivity needed for the effective performance of his duties; and
`(7) With the concurrence of the Director of Central Intelligence, the Inspector General may request such information or assistance as may be necessary for carrying out his duties and responsibilities from any federal agency. Upon request of the Inspector General for such information or assistance, the head of the federal agency involved, shall, insofar as is practicable and not in contravention of any existing statutory restriction or regulation of the federal agency concerned, furnish to the Inspector General, or to an authorized designee, such information or assistance.
`(f) Separate Budget Account.--Beginning with fiscal year 1991, and in accordance with procedures to be issued by the Director of Central Intelligence in consultation with the intelligence committees, the Director of Central Intelligence shall include in the National Foreign Intelligence Program budget a separate account for the Office of Inspector General established pursuant to this section.
`(g) Transfer.--There shall be transferred to the Office of Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of that agency referred to as the `Office of Inspector General'. The personnel, assets, liabilities, contracts, property, records, and unexpended balances of appropriations, authorization, allocations, and other funds employed, held, used, arising from, or available to such `Office of Inspector General' are hereby transferred to the Office of Inspector General established pursuant to this section.
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`(a) keep the intelligence committees fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities, other than covert actions, as defined in subsection 503(e), below, which are the responsibility of, are engaged in by, or are carried out for or on behalf of, any department, agency, or entity of the United States Government, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity and significant failures; and
`(b) furnish the intelligence committees any information or material concerning intelligence activities other than covert actions which is within their custody or control, and which is requested by either of the intelligence committees in order to carry out its authorized responsibilities.
`(1) Each finding shall be in writing, unless immediate action by the United States is required and time does not permit the preparation of a written finding, in which case a written record of the President's decision shall be contemporaneously made and shall be reduced to a written finding as soon as possible but in no event more than forty-eight hours after the decision is made;
`(2) A finding may not authorize or sanction covert actions, or any aspect of such activities, which have already occurred;
`(3) Each finding shall specify each and every department, agency, or entity of the United States Government authorized to fund or otherwise participate in any significant way in such activities: Provided, That any employee, contractor, or contract agent of a department, agency, or entity of the United States Government other than the Central Intelligence Agency directed to participate in any way in a covert action shall be subject either to the policies and regulations of the Central Intelligence Agency, or to written policies or regulations adopted by such department, agency, or entity, to govern such participation;
`(4) Each finding shall specify whether it is contemplated that any third party which is not an element of, contractor or contract agent of, the United States Government, or is not otherwise subject to United States Government policies or regulations, will be used to fund or otherwise participate in any significant way in the covert action concerned, or be used to undertake the covert action concerned on behalf of the United States;
`(5) A finding may not authorize any action intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media; and
`(6) a finding may not authorize any action which violates the Constitution of the United States or any statutes of the United States.
`(b) To the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods, or other exceptionally sensitive matters, the Director of Central Intelligence and the heads of all departments, agencies, and other entities of the United States Government involved in a covert action shall--
`(1) keep the intelligence committees fully and currently informed of all covert actions which are the responsibility of, are engaged in by, or are carried out for or on behalf of, any department, agency, or entity of the United States Government, including significant failures; and
`(2) furnish to the intelligence community any information or material concerning covert actions which is in the possession, custody or control of any department, agency, or entity of the United States Government and which is requested by either of the intelligence communities in order to carry out its authorized responsibilities.
`(c)(1) Except as provided by subsections (2) and (3) below, the President shall ensure that any finding approved, or determination made, pursuant to subsection (a), above, shall be reported to the intelligence committees prior to the initiation of the activities authorized.
`(2) On rare occasions when time is of the essence, the President may direct that covert actions be initiated prior to reporting such actions to the intelligence committees. On such occasions, the President shall fully inform the intelligence committees in a timely fashion and shall provide a statement of the reasons for not giving prior notice.
`(3) When the President determines it is essential to meet extraordinary circumstances affecting vital interests of the United States, the President may limit the reporting of findings or determinations pursuant to subsections (1) and (2) of this section, to the chairmen and ranking minority members of the intelligence committees, the Speaker and minority leader of the House of Representatives, and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. In such case, the President shall provide a statement of the reasons for limiting access to such findings or determinations in accordance with this subsection.
`(4) In all cases reported pursuant to subsections (c)(1), (c)(2), and (c)(3), above, a copy of the finding, signed by the President, shall be provided to the chairman of each intelligence committee.
`(d) The President shall ensure that the intelligence committees, or, if applicable, the Members of Congress specified in subsection (c)(3), above, are notified of any significant change in a previously-approved covert action, or any significant undertaking pursuant to a previously-approved finding, in the same manner as findings are reported pursuant to subsection (c), above.
`(e) As used in this section, the term `covert action' means an activity or activities conducted by an element of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad so that the role of the United States Government is not intended to be apparent or acknowledged publicly, but does not include--
`(1) activities the primary purpose of which is to acquire intelligence, traditional counterintelligence activities, traditional activities to improve or maintain the operational security of the United States Government programs, or administrative activities;
`(2) traditional diplomatic or military activities or routine support to such activities;
`(3) traditional law enforcement activities conducted by United States Government law enforcement agencies or routine support to such activities; or
`(4) activities to provide routine support to the overt activities (other than activities described in paragraph (1), (2), or (3)) of other United States Government agencies abroad.'.
Sec. 903. Section 502 of title V of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 414) is redesignated as section 504 of such Act, and is amended by deleting the number `501' in subsection (a)(2) of such section and substituting in lieu thereof `503'; and is further amended by adding the following new subsection (d):
`(d) No funds appropriated for, or otherwise available to, any department, agency, or entity of the United States Government, may be expended, or may be directed to be expended, for any covert action, as defined in subsection 503(e), above, unless and until a Presidential finding required by subsection 503(a), above, has been signed or otherwise issued in accordance with that subsection.'.
Sec. 904. Section 503 of title V of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 415) is redesignated as section 505 of such Act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, in a moment I will make a request in relationship to consideration of this legislation dealing with the application of the Budget Act. We have advised the Budget Committee of this request and it is my understanding that they pose no objections to it.
This waiver is necessitated by section 403 of the bill, which, in effect, provides that the death and disability benefits for CIA employees who are killed or disabled in the course of official duties overseas are calculated at the same rate, regardless of the particular retirement program in which the employee is enrolled.
The CIA reports that only one or two employees are expected to be affected by this provision, resulted in an estimated annual cost to the government of only $10,000 per year.
In view of this negligible cost involved with this provision, and the desirability of treating all CIA employees similarly in such circumstance, the committee feels this additional entitlement is justified and a waiver of possible points of order under the Budget Act is appropriate.
So, Mr. President, at this time, I ask unanimous consent that in regard to the consideration of this bill, the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal years 1990 and 1991, that any points of order under the Budget Act be waived, as they might apply to title IV of the bill as reported by the Select Committee on Intelligence.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered.
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Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, it is an honor for me to present to the Senate the intelligence authorization bill for fiscal years 1990 and 1991. This is indeed the 13th consecutive year, dating back to the creation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1976 that the Senate has had the opportunity to consider an intelligence authorization bill.
Joining me in offering this bill is the distinguished Senator from Maine, the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee. This is Senator Cohen's next-to-the-last-year of service on the Intelligence Committee and I can think of no one who has made a greater contribution to the work of the committee than he has made. He has become extremely knowledgeable in this area during his 7 years of service on the committee and his insights and judgments have enormously benefited all of us on the committee and have been of great benefit to our country. It has been a privilege for me to work with him to fashion what I believe are sensible bipartisan policies and programs in this critical area of national security.
In addition to Senator Cohen, I also specifically want to thank those Members of the Intelligence Committee who also serve on the Armed Services Committee--Senator Nunn, the distinguished chairman of that committee, Senator Warner, the ranking member, and Senator Glenn. Without the interests, contribution and support of these crossover Members, the Intelligence Committee's work would be undoubtedly much more difficult and much less successful.
I should also note that the work of the Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee makes an important contribution to the review of U.S. intelligence activities. As such, I thank Senator Exon and Thurmond, the chairman and ranking member of that subcommittee, for their careful review and continuing support of our efforts.
Mr. President, because of the sensitivity of the matters dealt with in the intelligence authorization bill, I cannot discuss some of the details in open session. However, the committee's recommendations on these matters have been set forth in the classified supplement to the committee's report on S. 1324 which has been available to Members under the provision of Senate Resolution 400 since early September.
U.S. intelligence is clearly in a period of transition. The late 1970's and early 1980's saw dramatic growth in virtually every aspect of the intelligence budget, and we continue to see improvements in our capabilities as the systems and activities supported by past investment come on line. These improved capabilities were designed to meet the intelligence requirements of the 1980's and, as a result of this growth, I believe that U.S. intelligence is stronger today than it was 10 years ago. Obviously, it is important that these capabilities be maintained and we continue to try to strengthen them.
The budgets we are working on today represent the first ones that will be executed in the decade of the 1990's and, like the budgets of the early 1980's, will determine how well U.S. intelligence will be able to do its job in the latter part of this decade. It is clear, however, that with the budgetary environment today, we are dealing with a situation that is markedly different than it was 10 years ago. Resources are more scarce and the Department of Defense cannot be as generous in allocating funds for those new or improved intelligence programs deemed necessary by intelligence program managers. As such, there is an intense competition for resources between those intelligence activities and initiatives aimed at meeting present needs and those aimed at meeting future needs. The choices to be made are difficult ones and very important ones.
Given this situation and understanding that the budgetary picture is probably going to get worse before it gets better, the committee conducted its review consistent with the following broad framework: First, we took into account the tough budget environment. While we continue to believe that national intelligence activities should be assigned a very high priority in the allocation of our national security resources, we also recognized that savings, wherever possible, in intelligence programs should be desirable and should be undertaken.
Second, we wanted to protect our current intelligence capabilities. Specifically, we wanted to assure adequate support of what we considered to be the core intelligence activities; that is, those activities that clearly are central
to the performance of the intelligence mission. We define this category broadly so as to include all types of collection, processing and analysis, as well as counterintelligence and security activities.
I think we have been successful in this goal. None of the potential changes in the budget that we recommend would harm our current capabilities. On the contrary, while I cannot go into detail, I can say that we have removed to correct deficiencies we found in the budget request in this regard, including improvements in our human resource capability in key areas.
Our third goal was to assure adequate investment for the future. We reviewed all intelligence programs against future requirements to insure that imnportant initiatives to address future threats were properly funded. We have recommended accelerating certain initiatives aimed at improving our national technical means capabilities for arms control moitoring and weapons assessments. We have also funded a number of initiatives aimed at improving our capability to monitor nuclear developments in a peaceful nuclear explosion treaty and threshold test ban treaty environment, and thanks to an amendment by Senator Warner, the committee has directed the intelligence community to identify new collection and analytical initiatives to help monitor Soviet compliance with a conventional forces arms agreement, as might be expected in the foreseeable future.
Our fourth goal was to look for ways of making intelligence operations more effective with an eye toward achieving savings. In this regard, we have addressed certain organizational, intelligence processing, and personnel issues, which will lead, in our judgment to more cost effective intelligence operations in the future. Further, we took a hard look at management and administrative costs for potential savings and here too we were successful in identifying prudent areas in which savings could be made.
In conducting the review in this fashion, it should not be implied that we were dissatisfied with the overall quality of the budgets submitted to us by the administration. I have the utmost confidence in our Nation's intelligence leadership
and recognize that they must cope with budgetary and other difficult decisions every day. The budget requests submitted to us by the Director of Central Intelligence, the various intelligence managers in the Department of Defense, and the other departments were sound. In the end, they earned the strong support of both the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees for the overwhelming majority of their budgetary recommendations.
The authorization bill we are considering today is the principal means by which the committee and the Senate annually establish policies and set priorities for the U.S. intelligence community. As usual, it represents the product of long hours of closed hearings and meetings, and of the review of thousands of pages of highly classified documentation. This year's bill comes to the floor by a somewhat different route, however, than previous authorization bills. The committee reported out this bill initially as an original bill on July 15, 1989, and it was sequentially referred to the committees on Armed Services, Judiciary, and Foreign Relations under the provisions of Senate Resolution 400. During the period of sequential referral, there were additional developments which prompted the committee to ask unanimous consent that the bill be returned to it for consideration of additional amendments. This request was granted by the Senate on October 3, 1989.
The committee subsequently considered and approved two additional amendments to the bill, both of substantial consequence. The first is an amendment, originally offered by Senator Specter, to create an independent statutory inspector general for the Central Intelligence Agency. The second is an amendment, offered by Senator Cohen and myself, to add to the bill the noncontroversial portions of a bill reported by the committee 2 years ago, S. 1721, which was previously reported by the committee and approved by the Senate on March 15, 1988 by a vote of 71 to 19. These sections of the bill codify several extremely important procedures under which findings will be issued including such provisions as requiring findings to be in writing and not retroactive.
In addition, Senator Cohen proposed an amendment to require the President to notify the intelligence committees within 48 hours of his authorizing a covert action.
In recent days, Mr. President, the committee was able to reach a compromise with the Bush administration in terms of when covert actions will be reported to the intelligence committees. With this commitment, the 48-hour issue was removed as a source of controversy in the pending legislation.
I am going to ask Senator Cohen later to explain to you the nature and significance of this compromise but suffice it to say the committee believes this agreement should permit the Congress to enact noncontroversial but nonetheless important improvements in the congressional oversight process that was developed last year.
Before I turn to Senator Cohen let me return to the amendment to establish the independent inspector general at the CIA.
This amendment represents a modification of S. 199, introduced by Senator Specter earlier this year. S. 199 was virtually identical to another bill, S. 1818 introduced by Senator Specter during the 100th Congress. Responding in part to the report of the Iran-Contra committees which had recommended the creation of a statutory inspector general at the CIA, the Intelligence Committee held hearings on S. 1818 in 1988 but deferred any action on the bill largely on the basis of a request from Judge Webster, the Director of Central Intelligence who had only been in the position for 8 months at that time. He requested that he be given more time to implement actions to improve the performance of the existing Office of Inspector General.
Since that time the committee has continued to monitor the status of such actions as well as the activities of the office itself. The committee has in fact asked the DCI to institute inspector general inquires into several matters being investigated independently by the committee, giving us an independent basis to assess the performance of the inspector general's Office. While it is true that the committee has asked for and evaluated a relatively small percentage of the total number of reports produced by the CIA inspector general, we do not believe that review of additional reports would alter our overall perception. In general, we assess such performance as uneven. Some investitations and inspections appear to have been thorough and to have been arrived at through objective consideration and to have arrived at objective conclusions. Others have appeared otherwise. I hasten to add the committee does not attribute the shortcomings it perceives to the competence of individuals involved. The committee has ordinarily found them dilligent and earnest, and I would say honest and honorable. Rather, we believe the shortcomings can largely be the attributed to the institutional framework in which the inspector general at the CIA now operates. He is appointed by and reports to the Director and serves at the pleasure of the Director. He is part of the management team at the Agency. Much of his staff is comprised of CIA employees who rotate into the office for a year or two and then are rotated back into the other jobs within the Agency.
While clearly it is important that the inspector general's staff have Agency experience, the committee does not believe that the current structure promotes thorough and objective investigations and inspections.
It is simply very difficult for someone serving a short-term stint in the inspector general's office seeking promotion in the regular course of Agency professional development and other career work within the Agency to have the same kind of approach to these investigative matters as would be the case with a core staff of professionals who are really following a career path within the inspector general service.
We also cannot ignore the experience of other departments and agencies which now have inspector general under the Inspector General Act of 1978. All Cabinet-level departments and agencies in fact including those with responsibility in the national security area have statutory inspector generals except for the CIA. Their experience seems to have been that the status of the inspector general was enhanced and the performance of these offices improved by such legislation.
That is not to say the CIA is like other departments and agencies. It is not. It has a unique and highly sensitive mission, and its Director has unque and extraordinary authorities under the law. Its employees must meet extraordinarily high standards both for security and suitability. By and large, they are unusually capable and devoted Government employees literally willing to risk life and limb for their country and to work under very difficult conditions.
Mr. President, I would simply add that by the very nature
of the work of the Agency, many successes are never known to the American people and many sacrifices and risks of life that are made to serve the national security interests of this country will never be made public. I have never worked with a more extraordinarily capable and dedicated group of individuals. They deserve great credit.
We all have great confidence in the integrity, the honesty, and character of the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as those who serve immediately with him. And this legislation creating a statutory inspector general at the CIA should not be taken as a reflection on either the Director or any of the employees of the Agency.
We are not recommending this initiative because we have evidence that there are problems with CIA personnel that need to be rooted out. These are hard-working, dedicated people of integrity and judgment, as I have said, making a very significant contribution to the Nation's security. With any department or agency, however, there may occasionally be bad apples. This has historically been a rare exception.
The committee favors creation of an independent inspector general not because we sense there is some wrongdoing waiting to be uncovered out there but, rather, because we see it as an important functional area of the Agency's operation that can and should be improved and strengthened. In the end, we believe it will strengthen the Agency and well serve its Director, providing even greater assurance that applicable laws and policies are being followed.
I know some members of the committee are concerned we not place too heavy a burden on CIA employees, that we not so overload the system with inspectors, lawyers, and accountants that we discourage initiative and risktaking. I share that concern. But I do not believe that creating an Office of Inspector General should or will have this effect. We are talking about ensuring compliance with the law and ensuring compliance with applicable policy in the orders of the President. How can an inspector general discourage innovative and creative operations if they are permitted by law and policy? And if they are not permitted by law or policy, we certainly do not want them in the first place.
Thus, with all due respect to those who genuinely share this concern, I do not find it a pervasive reason to reject this proposal.
Mr. President, I think we have produced a sound proposal that prudently takes account of the unique mission and authorities of the Central Intelligence Agency in creating this statutory Office of Inspector General. We could not simply place the CIA under the Inspector General Act of 1978. It would not fit into this framework. We have, however, crafted a bill that adapts those provisions in the Inspector General Act which can be applied to the CIA, consistent with its existing statutory authorities. We believe it will work.
For example, the Director has the final right to decide whether the inspector general may use the services of other Government agencies and contractors under this bill. The Director may also order the cessastion of an investigation or limit its scope for national security reasons, provided that the intelligence committees are advised of the Director's actions.
Before relinquishing the floor to my distinguished colleagues and vice chairman, let me take one moment also to acknowledge Senator Specter's unique contribution as the sponsor and prime mover of the inspector general amendment. He recognized this need, and he has persistently and persuasively advocated this change within the committee, eventually bringing a substantial majority to his position. He has also been sensitive to the uniqueness of the Central Intelligence Agency and changes in the system that needed to be made to make this bill applicable to the special circumstances.
I wish to acknowledge the significant contribution made to this effort by Senator Glenn as both a member of the committee and the distinguished chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee. The Governmental Affairs Committee is, of course, the committee of primary jurisdiction over the Inspector General Act of 1978. With the fortunate circumstance of having Senator Glenn on the Intelligence Committee and also chairing that very important Committee on Governmental Affairs, we were able to ensure that the concerns of that distinguished committee were addressed, and I believe adequately resolved in our action on the bill. We appreciate the tremendous amount of input that we
had from the members of the Governmental Affairs Committee and the members of their staffs as well.
Before I close, Mr. President, let me also summarize the other unclassified provisions of the bill before us.
Title I, indeed, authorizes appropriations for U.S. intelligence activities for fiscal years 1990 and 1991. It also incorporates authorized personnel ceilings for U.S. intelligence agencies for these years.
Title II authorizes appropriations and establishes personnel ceilings for the intelligence community staff for fiscal years 1990 and 1991, the staff which supports the DCI in the execution of his functions as head of the U.S. intelligence community.
Title III authorizes appropriations for the CIA retirement and disability fund for fiscal years 1990 and 1991.
Title IV contains three provisions making adjustments in certain administrative authorities granted the CIA.
Title V contains several provisions relating to the intelligence activities of the Department of Defense, including a 1-year extension of the authority enacted last yeart to pay increased death benefits to defense attaches killed in the line of duty.
Title VI of the bill contains three provisions pertaining to the counterintelligence authorities of the FBI. One of these is particularly significant and that is a provision which makes the FBI responsible for the conduct of all espionage investigations at U.S. diplomatic establishments overseas. The committee has been concerned that in such situations, there has been no U.S. agency expressly in charge. It makes sense to us that we have the FBI, the premier Federal agency in the counterintelligence area, placed in charge of such cases. While we do not intend that the personnel, resources, and authorities of other Federal agencies not be utilized where appropriate in such cases, we believe it will impove the effectiveness of such investigations to place them under FBI supervision.
Title VII of the bill authorizes increases in employee compensation and benefits as may otherwise be authorized by law.
In conclusion, Mr. President, let me simply acknowledge the contributions of all of the members of the committee, as well as our very competent and dedicated staff, to the development of this legislation.
It was a cooperative, productive, and bipartisan effort of which the committee and the Senate, as a whole, can be proud. I urge the adoption of the legislation that is now before us.
Mr. President, I now relinquish the floor so that my colleague, the distinguished vice chairman, for whom I have such admiration, can now make his opening remarks.
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Mr. COHEN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, first let me thank my good friend and colleague from Oklahoma. It is customary that we exchange flatteries on the Senate floor. I recall last year I got up and praised the chairman, and I said, `On no other committee can I recall that I have had such cooperation, such a consensus, and such a fine individual to work with as Senator Boren.' Of course, I failed to look out of the corner of my eye. Senator Nunn, the Senator from Georgia was there, and I serve on the Armed Services Committee with Senator Nunn. He pointed out that he had a similar track record, of course, of cooperation, consensus building, and indeed working in a bipartisan fashion to forge a consensus on defense policy, as well as foreign policy. So with that caveat, let me say once again how pleased and proud I am to have served with Senator Boren, who indeed does try his level best to build a well-considered, bipartisan, common ground among our membership. He truly has been impressive in terms of not only the way he conducts the meetings but in the product we manage to produce.
Senator Boren has highlighted some of the key provisions of our intelligence authorization bill. I wish to focus on one key provision. That has to do with the notice of covert actions. Last year we passed a measure in this Chamber, S. 1721, which mandated a notification of covert actions--prior notification where possible; but in the event that there could not be prior noification, the measure permitted subsequent notification within 48 hours.
That measure passed by a vote of 71 to 19. There was overwhelming support for that provision. That measure stemmed from the controversy that arose during the Iran-Contra investigation. But the issue goes back to 1980, when Congress amended the National Security Act, specifically section 501(b), to provide that the President must give prior notice of covert actions. In the event that some exigency prevented prior notice, however, he was required to provide notification in a timely fashion.
The phrase `timely fashion' was somewhat ambiguous--I must say deliberately so. But it was framed in order to give the President some flexibility so that in the event that time did not permit, he could delay notice for a few days. That was always the working understanding that the committees, the oversight committees on intelligence, had with the President of the United States.
That worked fine. We had no difficulty whatsoever. In fact, during the first 6 years--at least 5 years of the Reagan administration--there was not only timely notice, but actually prior notice. In virtually every case but one, possibly two, that I am aware of, we always had prior notice--except for that situation called the Iran-Contra scandal.
At that time, during the course of the Iran-Contra hearings, the Justice Department made a determination that the language contained in the 1980 amendments gave the President virtually unfettered discretion to withhold notice for a day, a week, a month, or even a year. They concluded that this was the President's prerogative, and further, that it was recognized as such under the 1980 statute.
We simply could not accept that. That is an intolerable interpretation of what was intended by the 1980 amendments. During that time, there was a colloquy between Senator Javits and Senator Huddleston, in terms of what Congress was seeking to do. Basically, Senator Javits indicated that a President may assert a constitutional power to withhold prior notice. Congress might not agree with it, but he recognized that the President might assert that. But he also indicated during that colloquy, during that debate on the amendment itself, that timely notice meant that the President did not have unfettered discretion.
That is correct, we did not
recognize a constitutional power in the President to withhold notice indefinitely or even beyond a few days.
Congress cannot change the President's constitutional authorities. We cannot give him power he does not have. We cannot take away constitutional power he does have. Senator Javits said, `But we are leaving that dispute for another day, specifically reserving both of our positions on this issue, and nothing in this statute should be interpreted as a change in that situation.'
Well, we did reserve the dispute for another day. The dispute occurred during the Iran-Contra investigation. That was the constitutional confrontation, as such. In view of the Justice Department's interpretation that timely notification meant whenever the President wants to give notification, the Iran-Contra Investigating Committee recommended a specific, strict 48-hour rule; prior notice in almost all cases, but definitely within 48 hours after the signing of a finding.
Well, Mr. President, I did not reintroduce that legislation this year. It was passed in the Senate; it was not even taken up in the other House last year, due to a number of difficulties the Speaker of the House encountered at that time.
I believe we have the votes to pass a 48-hour notice provision this year. I do not know what the other Chamber would do with that particular measure, but assuming it would pass there, it is clear that the President is going to veto the measure. I do not believe that we have sufficient votes to override a veto. I decided early in this administration that I would work with the White House to try and find an acceptable compromise, something that would return us to an atmosphere of comity and cooperation, giving some flexibility to the President, but recognizing that Congress has a constitutional authority of its own and constitutional responsibilities of its own.
What we decided was the following, Mr. President: After months of negotiation, President Bush sent a letter to Senator Boren outlining the nature of the controversy that we have encountered over section 510(b), in which he cites the Justice Department's interpretation that a number of factors combine to support the conclusion that timely fashion language should be read to leave the President with unfettered discretion to decide the right moment to provide notification. The President cites that opinion in his letter, dated October 30, 1989, to Senator Boren.
The key paragraph is the following. He said in essence, notwithstanding what I have just said:
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I intend to provide notice in a fashion sensitive to congressional concerns. The statute requires prior notice or, when no prior notice is given, timely notice. I anticipate that in almost all instances, prior notice will be possible. In those rare instances where prior notice is not provided, I anticipate that notice will be provided within a few days. Any withholding beyond this period would be based upon my assertion of the authorities granted this office by the Constitution.
That may seem to be of minor significance to some Members. Let me suggest to my colleagues that it is of major importance to our committee, because the President has gone on record saying that notwithstanding the Justice Department's prior interpretation of section 501(b)--it is going to be his practice to give prior notice in virtually all cases; and in those rare cases where he does not give prior notice, he will provide subsequent notification within a few days. If he is going to defer notice beyond that period of time, it will have to be not by virtue of any power granted him through the 1970 statute or through any implicit authority we gave him to defer notice indefinitely, but rather through his assertion of constitutional power.
Where does that leave us? Precisely where we were in 1980, when Senator Javits recognized there is always going to be a constitutional tug of war. The President believes he has constitutional power that we believe he does not have. That will have to be fought out at a future time, much as we had the Iran-Contra investigation and fought that issue out at that time.
I think it is important to recognize that any President, this President, any future President, who chooses to defer notice beyond a few days does so at his peril. He does so at his peril because, No. 1, it will certainly undermine the confidence that is necessary for the Executive to function effectively with the congressional oversight committees; No. 2, he certainly runs a risk of having another investigation such as we had with the Iran-Contra affair, threatening to virtually unravel the Presidency depending on the nature of the covert activity; and, indeed, on a third point, he runs the risk, or she runs the risk, depending on who is President at that time, of incurring further restrictions on covert actions.
So I think this is an acceptable compromise, it achieves what I was seeking to achieve, that is, to return us to the working relationship the President had with the oversight committees going back to 1980.
There is an amendment I will offer, after several of my colleagues who wish to speak, that will make a minor change in the amendment itself. It is a technical amendment, so I will not take the time right now. I have two more points, however, that I would like the make rather quickly.
I really cannot leave this discussion without a reference to the reason the President asserts that there are circumstances which he might encounter that would require him to defer notice for a length of time. One case cited has been the Canadian Government assistance in the escape of hostages from Tehran. That is always cited as the reason why the President might want to withhold notice, because the Canadians alledgedly said, `If you notify Congress, we will not work with you.'
I have tried to find out where that story came from, and, frankly, I cannot find any documented evidence to support the assertion that the Canadian Government insisted that the President not notify Congress that they were assisting us in a covert activity.
Because of the importance of this matter, we went back and looked at the debates during the passage of the amendment in 1980 and found no reference to any assertion that the Canadian Government had insisted upon such a withholding of notice. The Senate Intelligence Committee had two public hearings within a month of the time the escape was made public in January 1980: One in which the Director of Central Intelligence testified and one in which the Director of Operations testified. And the principal focus of the hearing was to find out why notice was not given to the oversight committees. No mention was made at that time of the Canadian Government making any request, either to the CIA, the State Department, or the President, that Congress not be advised. We are told that the House Intelligence Committee also is lacking in such documentation. But in the absence of documentation, we went back further on our own. We went to Cyrus Vance, who was Secretary of State at that time, and presumably would have known of such a request by the Canadian Government. He has indicated that he is not aware of any request by the Canadian Government to withhold notice to Congress. We also contacted Adm. Stansfield Turner, who was Director of Central Intelligence at that time. He also had no recollection of such a request from the Canadian Government, and the same was true of the then Deputy Director of the CIA, John McMahon. We then turned to the current Director Judge Webster, and also to the former Secretary of Defense, Secretary
Carlucci. We asked them to locate any documentary evidence that they had that a request had been made. Again, there were no documents in any file indicating that the Canadian Government had ever made such a request. Both Mr. Webster and Mr. Carlucci advised us that an oral request may have been made at a lower level with CIA officials during a meeting back in 1979 in CIA headquarters, and the CIA identified four employees who recalled such a meeting. Two of them remembered a verbal request, two did not remember any such request. But what is clear is that apparently no formal request was ever made to the heads of our Government, not to the CIA Director, not to the Secretary of State, and apparently not to the President of the United States.
So, Mr. President, the allegation that somehow the Canadian Government had intruded upon our constitutional process is not borne out by the record.
It may be that President Carter, because lives were at stake, decided that since there were eight committees that he had to report to at that time, he should withhold notice. But the law has been changed. We do not have eight committees now. We have two committees, one in the House and one in the Senate. And as a matter of fact, notice can be limited to the big eight or perhaps only the House leadership and the Senate leadership. But I think it is important to point out that the rationale that is frequently offered for withholding notification to the congressional oversight committees is found lacking.
One final point, Mr. President. We spend a lot of time talking about intelligence capabilities, including the technologies involved, and we devote a considerable amount of time to discussions of covert action--but not nearly enough time is devoted to the subject of counterintelligence.
The committee report in this bill reflects some of our efforts to assess the security of our diplomatic establishments. Over the last year we made a broad, comprehensive review of counterintelligence and security programs. We intend to issue a public report of our findings in the very near future. Let me say that, notwithstanding this breakout of glasnost and democratic reforms that are spreading across Europe, it is important that we not lose sight of the fact that these countries place a high premium on obtaining information about the United States' intentions and capabilities. Espionage has not abated in this country. The United States is still a target and indeed, with the lowering barriers of immigration and the burgeoning of contacts at both the governmental and private levels, the present environment is very conducive to espionage. While we are welcoming improved relationships, we have to be sure that our counterintelligence and security capabilities remain strong. I must tell you I am seriously concerned about the insufficient intention given to FBI resources in particular and the Bureau's ability to cope with a vastly changing landscape. The budget request made by the FBI does not appear to be adequate to meet the need. After the FBI counterintelligence budget is folded into the overall FBI budget, and after the FBI budget is folded into the Justice Department budget, and Justice Department budget is folded into the President's budget, the amount of money reserved for counterintelligence is meager indeed. I am going to ask the committee to carefully review this situation in the coming year. If we find a great disparity in terms of money requested in the President's budget and our counterintelligence needs, I am going to be inclined to recommend that the Congress add funding at its own initiative.
Mr. President, let me conclude my remarks with the simple recommendation to my colleagues that they support this legislation. It has received the broad bipartisan approval of the committee and merits the support of our colleagues.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the President's letter to the committee be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
The White House,
Washington, October 30, 1989.
Hon. David L. Boren,
Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
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Dear Senator Boren: The purpose of this letter is to state how I intend to provide notice to Congress of covert action under section 501 of the National Security Act of 1947, as amended. On December 17, 1986, the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, provided the then Attorney General with an opinion as to the meaning as a matter of law of section 501(b) of the National Security Act. That provision requires the President to `fully inform the intelligence committees in a timely fashion of intelligence operations in foreign countries, other than activities intended solely for obtaining necessary intelligence, for which prior notice was not given. . . .' The opinion, at page 24, stated that `a number of factors combine to support the conclusion that the `timely fashion' language should be read to leave the President with virtually unfettered discretion to choose the right moment for making the required notification.'
I intend to provide notice in a fashion sensitive to congressional concerns. The statute requires prior notice or, when no prior notice is given, timely notice. I anticipate that in almost all instances, prior notice will be possible. In those rare instances where prior notice is not provided, I anticipate that notice will be provided within a few days. Any withholding beyond this period would be based upon my assertion of the authorities granted this office by the Constitution.
I am sending a similar letter to Senator Cohen.
Sincerely,
George Bush.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise today to support the provision in the intelligence authorization bill to create an independent inspector general at the Central Intelligence Agency. In my view, this provision would improve the mechanism within the CIA for insuring adequate oversight of intelligence programs. It elevates the authority of the office of inspector general within the agency; it enhances the office's independence; and it strengthens the office's auditing capabilities. The result, in my view, will be a more objective and effective inspector general.
Here, I might add, the Department of Defense has considerable responsibilities in the field of intelligence and has accepted a comparable structure with an inspector general.
Mr. President, in urging my colleagues to support this provision, I emphasize that the CIA Inspector General Act of 1989 is a prudent and considered piece of legislation. I stress the word `considered,' because, since the mid-1970's, Congress has periodically studied the operations of the CIA's inspector general, and has repeatedly expressed concerns about its independence, capabilities, and effectiveness. Moreover, within the last 2 years, the Intelligence Committee has renewed its interest in the performance of the CIA's inspector general, and
has held three sets of public hearings. It has also held innumerable discussions with leading experts, both in and out of Government, who have had experience with inspector general audits of sensitive national security programs. Members of the committee have discussed the issue at great length both with the DCI and among ourselves. As a result of these deliberations--both past and present--our committee has concluded that we need a stronger, more independent inspector general at the CIA.
I also mentioned that the act is `prudent.' Crafted over the course of 2 years of careful deliberations, it recognizes the sensitive nature of CIA operations. Thus, while some of the authorities of the CIA inspector general are similar to those of other insector generals, others are somewhat different. The act contains the following major provisions:
The inspector general will be independent--appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate;
The inspector general will be under the general supervision of the DCI, but only the President can remove him from office;
The inspector general will be given the necessary operating powers--access to CIA facilities, power to administer oaths, imposition of GAO audit standards, ability to select staff, and ability to determine audits;
Unlike most other inspector generals, the DCI may prohibit the CIA inpector general from conducting an investigation on national security grounds, but the DCI must then report such a decision to the intelligence committees. This is an appropriate limitation on this inspector general's authority and is very similar to the ability of the Secretary of Defense to prohibit DOD inspector general investigations on national security grounds, with reports to appropriate congressional committees.
And finally, in order to address the civil liberty concerns associated with an intelligence agency investigating domestic activities, the CIA inspector general will have no subpoena power. However, the legislation makes clear that failure to cooperate with an inspector general investigation can be grounds for termination of employment or contract.
Mr. President, as the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I believe that no discussion of the issue of an independent inspector general for the CIA is complete without reference to the performance of the inspector general at the Department of Defense. I say this because the same arguments used to oppose an independent inspector general at CIA were used to oppose an independent inspector general at DOD--particularly the argument that certain DOD programs were too sensitive to be audited by an inspector general. Yet, despite the concerns raised, the performance of the DOD inspector general has been universally acclaimed. Information from Defense Department testimony given this past year to Congress has indicated that since its creation in 1982--just 7 years ago--the DOD inspector general resulted in 4,200 management improvements within program offices. This has led to an estimated savings of $9.5 billion. Moreover, its work has led to nearly 1,500 indictments and over 1,100 convictions, with monetary recoveries of nearly $685 million. According to the Defense Department, all of this has been done with no addition security problems for the department. In fact, DOD officials have noted that improved management practices resulting from such inspections have resulted in tightened physical and personnel security procedures in various programs, an outcome that few of us foresaw at the time we debated the DOD inspector general.
Mr. President, before finishing my remarks, I should like to note that the CIA Inspector General Act was reported out of committee by an 11-to-4 vote--a testimony to its strong bipartisan support. I commend Senator Specter for proposing this legislation, and Senator Glenn for the many fine suggestions his Governmental Affairs Committee staff offered to help strengthen the bill. As usual, Senator Boren, our chairman, and Senator Cohen, our vice chairman, provided superb leadership in judiciously directing this important piece of legislation. We owe them all a debt of gratitude.
In concluding, Mr. President, I wish to state that I am a long time friend and supporter of the CIA. In the budget process, I have consistently worked to insure a strong U.S. intelligence capability. In short, I believe that intelligence is the foundation of an effective diplomatic and military policy. At the same time, those of us who oversee our intelligence community have a special responsibility to insure that our intelligence programs are run efficiently, legally, and responsibly. It is with this background of strong support for our intelligence agencies and sincere concern for good government that I support the CIA Inspector General Act. I believe that the provisions as currently crafted strike the proper balance between inadequate oversight and excessive oversight, between the inspector general's need-to-know and the need for security. In the long run, the net effect of this legislation will be to increase the confidence that Congress and the American people have in our intelligence operations.
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Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I want to compliment the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma [Mr. Boren] and the vice chairman of the committee, the distinguished Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen] for bringing before the Senate this authorization measure. In particular, I wish to congratulate the committee for creating a statutory independent inspector general at the Central Intelligence Agency. This provision will make a vital contribution to the integrity of the Agency and help ensure the appropriate oversight role of the Congress, particularly in the wake of the Iran-Contra fiasco.
The CIA will become the 25th department or agency with an Inspector General appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. This group already includes every cabinet department and every major executive agency, except the CIA. While the trend over the last decade has been toward more oversight throughout the Federal Government, the CIA has resisted, and Congress has been reluctant to push for, an independent inspector general. In some ways I can understand why there has been such a reluctance to create an independent watchdog to oversee these important programs; we all realize the extremely sensitive and sometimes dangerous nature of intelligence work. These considerations make it easy to frame this debate in terms of the need to protect sources and to avoid compromising covert foreign operations, but the secrecy surrounding these critical programs is exactly why such an office, within the organization of the CIA, with appropriate safeguards to assure both its independence and the security of the CIA itself, is absolutely necessary.
The current Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. Webster, has stated that an independent inspector general would be counterproductive because agency employees would be less candid with someone they saw as an arm of the Congress. The Director's arguments are not new. All 14 of the agencies covered by the Inspector General Act of 1978 originally opposed the concept of statutory inspectors general. Many of the officials at those agencies used the same argument as Mr. Webster, but once established the offices quickly gained acceptance as a valuable management tool for fighting waste and abuse. According to OMB, the inspector general offices have saved the American taxpayers over $100 billion since 1978. This pattern of opposition followed by acceptance has continued as agencies have been added to the act.
The Defense Department was particularly adamant in its opposition to an independent inspector general. But since its establishment in 1982, the DOD Office of the Inspector General has become a model, and has gained wide respect, both within and outside of DOD, for its integrity and independence. I was pleased to cosponsor Senator Bentsen's amendment in 1982 which created the DOD Office of Inspector General. At the time we hoped to reap considerable benefits from such an office, and we have not been disappointed. Within a year of its inception, the DOD Inspector General's Office had uncovered major problems with the procurement of aircraft engine spare parts. The inspector general has continued to produce substantial savings and has played a key role in uncovering wrongdoing such as the Ill Wind procurement scandal.
Efforts to overhaul and reorganize the existing internal CIA Office of Inspector General have sputtered along for almost 15 years. In 1975 the Rockefeller Commission found that both the staff and the duties of the office were being cut back. The Commission called for strengthening the inspector general reporting requirements. A year later the House Select Committee on Intelligence, headed by Congressman Otis Pike, recommended establishing a powerful, independent inspector general, not only for the CIA, but with jurisdiction over the entire intelligence community. Also in 1976, the Senate Select Committee to Study Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church, found that the internal inspector general at the CIA had been denied access to information which was vital to conducting investigations, and had been blocked from uncovering possible illegal activities. The Committee called for mandatory notification of the Attorney General and the Congress anytime the inspector general suspected illegal activity. In 1987 the Iran-Contra Committee found that the CIA Inspector General did `not appear to have the manpower, resources, or tenacity to acquire key facts uncovered by other investigations.' The National Security Reform Act of 1987, introduced by Senator Spector, would have established an inspector general very similar to the one we are considering today.
Mr. President, we have examined this issue long enough. We do not need to wait for another crisis before we take action. From the revelations of the mid-1970's to the Iran-Contra scandal, we have seen too many instances of manipulation, abuse of the system, and even illegal activity for political gain. We must never return to the days when the CIA spied on U.S. citizens and published instructional manuals on assassination.
Mr. President, this legislation and my remarks are in no way meant as an accusation of the current administration or the current Director. Mr. Webster has worked hard to accommodate congressional concerns about the inspector general's current operation. He has improved the inspector general's access to records and increased the responsibilities assigned to the Office. But Mr. Webster will not be the Director of Central Intelligence forever. Some future Director might not share his desire to have an effective inspector general. Furthermore, despite improvements, Mr. Webster has remained reluctant to provide the Intelligence Committees complete access to reports from the current inspector general. I have an article from the Washington Post, July 14, 1989 titled `CIA Chief Fights Congress on Access to Documents.' The only way to insure continued effectiveness and proper congressisonal oversight is through this legislation creating an independent inspector general.
As the various commissions and committees discovered, it was during the periods of unscrupulous and illegal activities at the CIA that the internal inspector general was either weak and ineffective, or was blocked from uncovering suspect activities. When oversight was needed most, the internal inspector general was powerless. This legislation is an attempt to avoid any repeat of such a situation. I also think that once this office is created it should be included in the current effort to provide a separate appropriation for each of the inspectors general covered by the Inspector General Act. This would give an additional measure of independence to these offices. There have been examples in the past of agencies attempting to blunt the effectiveness of a new inspector general office by not providing adequate resources. Again, I in no way suggest that the current administration would take this approach, but separate funding would prevent any future attempt to circumvent the intent of this legislation by understaffing the inspector general office.
Opponents of this proposal have expressed concern about the security problems an independent inspector general could create. Although security obviously poses a special problem for an independent observer at the CIA, several other agencies in similar situations have successfully overcome this obstacle. Every other part of the national security establishment has an independent inspector general. That includes the Departments of Defense, Energy, Justice, State, and Treasury. Even the very sensitive activities of the National Security Agency are subject to review by the DOD inspector general and the General Accounting Office. Even with the provision before us, the CIA will remain exempt from GAO oversight.
To protect sensitive and classified programs, the Department heads at Defense, Justice, and Treasury are given the authority to restrict or halt an audit or investigation under special circumstances. The Inspector General Act allows such interference if it is necessary to preserve national security, protect U.S. national interests, or prevent the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. When the Secretary of Defense or Treasury, or the Attorney General, uses this power, Congress must be notified within 30 days. Similar procedures will be available to the Director of Central Intelligence, and will provide more than enough protection for sensitive operations.
Mr. President, only a truly independent inspector general with sufficient power to audit, inspect, investigate, and evaluate these important areas of national security can do this job. This person must be independent and therefore should be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The position must be created by law, not subject to administrative fiat. This person should be completely accountable to Congress and the people of the United States to insure that U.S. programs are executed properly and efficiently.
It is perhaps understandable that the CIA and its Director have not supported the creation of such an independent office. Perhaps it is human nature not to want an independent authority looking over your shoulder, but I believe the American people deserve to have such a powerful watchdog monitoring the execution of these critical programs.
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Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I realize the Intelligence Committee negotiated this agreement with the President in good faith, but I do not believe it is enough. Unfortunately, under this agreement the President can basically do what he wants, and only afterward inform the Congress.
During the Iran-Contra affair we witnessed an administration that had little regard for the essence of democratic procedures. I refer to the idea that a popularly elected Congress is responsible for overseeing the conduct of the executive branch.
Three years ago, we saw national security operatives running a secretive, unsupervised foreign policy harmful to U.S. interests.
With good reason, we had openly promised that we would never negotiate with terrorists. And yet unknown to Congress the President's subordinates were selling weapons to Iran.
With good reason, Congress had shut off military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. And yet high-level National Security employees were finding ways to evade the laws this Congress had enacted.
Now we have the President's promise that will give Congress timely notification, in most cases, prior to covert operations. Of course, in those rare cases where time is of the essence, he has discretionary authority to withhold notification until after the fact. And the President has reserved the option not to tell Congress, if he believes the Constitution so warrants.
Let me repeat--the President can claim it is his constitutional prerogative to withhold information from the elected representatives of the people.
I find nothing in the Constitution that says the President has this authority. Our country needs a strong, effective intelligence capability, but only within the proper system of checks and balances designed by the architects of our Constitution. The greatest threat to democracy is not undue restrictions on the conduct of covert operations; it is the insidious and dangerous justification of constitutionally questionable actions for reasons of national security.
In many case, I find nothing in the committee's agreement with the President that would prevent another Iran-Contra fiasco.
Last year the Senate passed S. 1721, requiring the President to notify Congress of all covert operations within 48 hours. I voted for that legislation, as did a majority of my fellow Senators. In fact, the vote was 71-19 in support of that bill. Now we are told a 48-hour reporting provision would result in a Presidential veto, a veto that would likely be sustained. So the alternative is to allow the President a free hand in covert operations, free from congressional interference.
Granted, the idea of an independent inspector general for the Central Intelligence Agency is a step in the right direction. But simply adding another level of bureaucracy to the CIA is not the answer. It does not get to the heart of the problem.
The answer, Mr. President, is to find the correct balance between Presidential authority in foreign policy and intelligence matters, and congressional oversight of those policies. I do not believe the legislation before us will improve accountability on the part of the administration, nor will it create more effective oversight on the part of Congress. For that reason, I plan to vote against S. 1324.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, it is necessary before we proceed with the consideration of further amendments to clarify the situation to make clear that the committee amendments which were adopted when we last reported the bill back to the committee be considered as original text for purposes of further amendment. I will ask unanimous consent at this time that the committee amendments be adopted en bloc and that the bill, as amended, be considered as original text for purposes of further amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the unanimous consent request? The Chair hears none, and it is so ordered.
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Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, despite the best efforts of a few Senators and a handful of dedicated executive branch officials, for a long time counterintelligence has been seriously neglected by most of the U.S. Government. That is why I have been trying for several years to do something to improve American counterintelligence.
Mr. President, the distinguished chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence supports my efforts to improve counterintelligence. Our distinguished colleague, Senator Boren, has taken an important leadership role in this area himself.
Indeed, our distinguished colleague, Senator Boren, has been one of the key leaders of the Senate and of the entire Congress in trying to improve counterintelligence, and the American people owe him a lot of credit for his efforts.
Senator Boren has already in this new fiscal year 1990-91 intelligence authorization bill linked any increase in Soviet diplomatic representation in Washington to an interagency National Security Council decision. This would prevent the State Department from unilaterally bowing to Soviet political pressure to allow an increase in Soviet intelligence officers in the United States.
In addition, such an NSC decision would have to be linked to an increase in the resources of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to maintain counterintelligence surveillance of an increased number of Soviet diplomats.
Afterall, we know that at least one-third of all Soviet diplomats are KGB or GRU intelligence officers. Even a higher percentage are cooptees of Soviet intelligence services. Indeed, all Soviet citizens within the U.S.S.R. or abroad must be considered to be potential Soviet intelligence agents. This Boren initiative is an important addition to the bill.
Moreover, our distinguished colleague, Senator Boren, and his committee, have given the Federal Bureau of Investigation a new role in counterintelligence operations abroad against American diplomatic personnel. These are all important new capabilities for improving American counterintelligence.
Nevertheless, despite these proposed valuable reforms, recent news reports increase my concerns about counterintelligence. But before I turn to current problems, there remain some old counterintelligence problems.
I am reminded that the former United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Mr. Arthur Hartman, sent back a cable from Moscow in 1987 after it was revealed in the press that the new United States Embassy building being constructed by the KGB for the United States in Moscow was riddled with KGB espionage devices and bugs. Mr. Hartman's cable also came at the time of the espionage scandal involving the United States Marine guards at the United States Moscow Embassy.
Mr. President, I think that it is important for us to remember the title of this highly classified State Department cable from Ambassador Hartman. The title of the Hartman cable, which title is unclassified, was: `Counterproductive Counterintelligence.'
Mr. President, as one Senator, I certainly do not believe that counterintelligence is counterproductive. I do not believe that the Senate regards counterintelligence to be counterproductive. Indeed, I do not believe that the American people think that counterintelligence is counterproductive.
However, counterintelligence may seem to be counterproductive to Ambassador Hartman and to the rest of the elitist, accommodationist State Department, and counterproductive even to the equally elitist CIA, which is, of course, the operational arm of the State Department.
After all, I would remind my colleagues that in the late 1970's and early 1980's the State Department twice nominated a certain individual with severe counterintelligence prolems to be Ambassador to two countries.
But the State Department twice also failed to inform the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that this individual had been seriously compromised by the Communist intelligence services in the Communist-bloc country to which he had previously been assigned as the U.S. Ambassador.
Because of our ignorance of the compromise by Communist-bloc intelligence services of this U.S. Ambassador, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations voted twice to give its advice and consent to reconfirm this U.S. Ambassador.
Moreover, Mr. President, the full senate also voted twice to reconfirm this U.S. Ambassador to be the American Ambassador to two other countries.
Mr. President, I would in summary emphasize that the State Department twice deliberately decided not to inform the Foreign Relations Committee or the full Senate that this U.S. Ambassador has been seriously compromised by the intelligence service of the Communist country to which he had previously been posted. It is reasonable to conclude that the State Department covered up this whole affair.
In fact, the Central Intelligence Agency also knew all about this Communist bloc intelligence service compromise of an American Ambassador, and the CIA also covered it up.
In sum, Mr. President, I would re-emphasize that the full Senate voted twice to reconfirm an American Ambassador who was clearly subject to blackmail by the intelligence services of Communist powers, and who could easily have been working, unwittingly or wittingly, for Communist powers.
So the Senate was deceived by the executive branch twice on an important counterintelligence issue, and we did not even find out the truth about our credulity until the real facts were finally published in a book authored by a defector from the Communist-bloc intelligence service.
Mr. President, I believe that this important case is merely the tip of the iceberg of a severe American counterintelligence and security problem in our diplomatic community.
I am reliably informed that the CIA has knowledge that many other U.S. Ambassadors and diplomatic personnel have likewise been compromised by the intelligence services of Communist powers. But all of these other comparable compromises have been similarly covered up.
So we have a serious counterintelligence and security problem with our diplomatic personnel overseas.
Mr. President, subsequent to the Senate's unanimous approval of my 1986 counterintelligence improvement amendment to the intelligence authorization bill, there have been five more probable State Department and CIA espionage cases reported in the media. These reports on the five new Soviet mole cases suggest that the CIA and the State Department should have treated my original amendment more seriously.
Mr. President, I was therefore interested in some of the language in the Intelligence Committee's report on this bill that pertains to shortcomings in counterintelligence and security at our embassies abroad. Referring to the grave deficiencies in embassy security that have come to light in recent years, the Intelligence Committee concludes that those deficiencies have not been rectified, and the State Department has been derelict in failing to implement actions that are indispensable for the protection of U.S. diplomatic facilities. That is strong language.
Mr. President, I must agree; I have seen nothing that would make me quarrel with this language. We have had our Embassy typewriters bugged in Moscow; we've had the Marine Guard espionage cases; we've discovered that our new Embassy building in Moscow and our new consulate building in Leningrad have been thoroughly bugged; and, more recently, we've had the investigation of Felix Bloch who was a senior Foreign Service officer and the deputy chief of mission at our Embassy in Vienna, based upon information that he may have been working for Soviet-bloc intelligence.
Mr. President, there are a total of at least five new State Department and CIA espionage cases reported since my 1986 amendment.
It makes me wonder how many more Soviet spy scandals are out there in the State Department and the CIA that have not been uncovered, and why the State Department and the CIA are not doing more to address these counterintelligence problems.
I know that the Intelligence Committee has been actively involved in trying to improve American counterintelligence, and the Committee has also been doing an admirable job improving embassy security. I
applaud these efforts. But I must ask the distinguished chairman, what more needs to be done to improve counterintelligence and Embassy security?
[Page: S15109]
Mr. BOREN. Let me say that you are correct, the Intelligence Committee has been deeply concerned with what appears to us to have been very slow progress at the State Department and at the CIA in addressing what appear to be critical security problems.
To give you one glaring example, the Intelligence Committee was first notified in 1985 that bugging devices had been found in the new chancery building under construction in Moscow. In 1987, after our own review of the situation, the committee recommended that the structure be demolished to ground level, and that we start again. A year and a half later, after more studies, President Reagan reached the same conclusion. It has taken another year to get a decision out of the Bush administration about what to do with a shell of a building, where construction was halted 4 years ago. Why is this decision so difficult?
Senator Helms is also correct that the Intelligence Committee has made counterintelligence and security problems at diplomatic establishments a focus of its oversight for the last several years. We will, in fact, be issuing a public report on counterintelligence later this year that describes much of our work.
In the meantime, you ask what can be done. I believe it is important for us to obtain the Secretary of State's own assessment of the threat to, and vulnerabilities of, U.S. diplomatic establishments, and that such assessments be supported by the U.S. intelligence community, which in some respects is able to provide a unique source of such information. Moreover, we ought to have a clear picture of precisely what is being done to address these vulnerabilities, and what more needs to be done. The picture is not entirely bleak. The CIA and the State Department have set in motion several initiatives which we believe hold promise for improving the counterintelligence and security posture of our embassies.
Mr. HELMS. Could the distinguished Senator elaborate on some of these initiatives?
Mr. BOREN. Within the limits of classification, I can certainly give you a general idea.
The State Department has established an Office of Counterintelligence Programs within its Bureau of Diplomatic Security which is charged with looking at reports that may indicate possible espionage at U.S. diplomatic establishments, and, as necessary, investigating those reports in the field in cooperation with the FBI. To its credit, the State Department brought in an experienced FBI agent to head this Office, and it seems to be producing results. The Intelligence Committee has been concerned, however, that in the face of budget and personnel pressures, the commitment of the State Department to maintain and support this capability may well wane.
We have been considering whether the budget for this Office should properly be included within the National Foreign Intelligence Program, as are other intelligence elements at the State Department, where it could be integrated with other elements of the U.S. Government involved in counterintelligence activities. In any case, we think there is a compelling need that the status and staffing arrangements for this crucial function be enhanced, whether it stays in the State Department budget or is moved to the intelligence budget.
While our bill would give the FBI overall responsibility for supervising investigations of espionage at all U.S. diplomatic missions, the first critical line of defense will continue to be the State Department's own security officers working under the guidance of the Office of Counterintelligence Programs.
The Department has also considerably enhanced its technical security capabilities in terms of hiring personnel who are able to identify and remedy technical vulnerabilities at diplomatic establishments, as well as involving them in new embassy construction and the security evaluation of new office equipment going into high threat areas. Again, however, the committee fears that these initiatives which are relatively new and are only beginning to show results, could succumb to fiscal limitations.
Secretary Shultz also created a new element within his office of inspector general, shortly before he left office, to do inspections of diplomatic establishments to assess them for compliance with State Department standards. This Office of Security Oversight has been continued by Secretary Baker, who brought in a former head of security at NATO to direct this Office. The committee supports this initiative, but again it is too early to see results. We are aware that the new office has done several inspections and we have received some initial reports, but we have not been able to evaluate for ourselves how well the job is being done. The inspector general has indicated his willingness to cooperte with such an evaluation.
Mr. HELMS. The report also criticizes the failure of the State Department to cooperate with an office established by the Director of Central Intelligence called the Security Evaluation Office, or SEO, which was established as the focal point within the intelligence
community for diplomatic security matters. As I understand it, one purpose of this office was to serve as a place where decisions on security being made by the State Department could be challenged by the intelligence community.
Mr. BOREN. The Senator is correct that the report criticizes the State Department for its failure to cooperate with the SEO, although we also note that the intelligence community bears a share of the blame for failing to meet legitimate State Department concerns. In any case, what happened has happened. We believe that it is time to put aside past differences and get on with the job. It appears to us that there is no real dispute that the responsibility for the security of U.S. diplomatic establishments must rest with the Secretary of State. Nor does there appear to be any dispute that the intelligence community can make a unique contribution to the formulation of such security policies, and, indeed, that the DCI, as head of the U.S. intelligence community, should have an opportunity if he should choose to do so, to weigh-in with the Secretary before final decisions are made. This whole area will be subject to discussion with the House Intelligence Committee in our conference on this bill, and I am hopeful that we can reach an agreement on a clear mandate for SEO as a result.
Mr. HELMS. I am, indeed, glad to hear that some progress is being made on counterintelligence, and that the Intelligence Committee is following these developments so closely. I have, as you know, Mr. Chairman, suggested a number of other initiatives in this area which I set forth in a recent letter to the Intelligence Committee.
Mr. President, I ask unamimous consent that my letter of October 18, 1989, to the distinguished chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Senator Boren, and to the distinguished vice chairman, Senator Cohen, be printed in the Record at the close of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I strongly request that the distinguished chairman and the distinguished vice chairman muster a majority of their committee in order to require the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Secretary of State, to submit to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence all of the reports that are requested in my letter. I would like to read and study these reports when they are submitted, and I am certain that all of my colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee would also like to have these reports.
Mr. President, I ask my distinguished colleague, the chairman, this in all seriousness, but in a spirit of cooperation, because I know that if there is any reluctance or recalcitrance by these executive branch officials to provide these reports so necessary to the Senate's oversight, the Senate may take note, and the reports may wind up being required by law the next time around. After all, protection of American national security requires this, and the American people expect their Senators to protect our national security.
[Page: S15110]
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC, October 18, 1989.
Senator David Boren,
Chairman.
Senator William Cohen,
Vice Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senators: As you know, competitive analysis has been demonstrated by the 1975-1976 A Team-B Team exercise to be beneficial to better intelligence support to protecting our national security. It turns out that the Central Intelligence Agency's benign view of the Soviet military threat in the mid-1970s was far too complacent, but we would never have had available the more accurate warning of the growth of Soviet strategic superiority provided by the B Team had it not been for the exercise of competitive analysis. Contending points of view and varying schools of analysis and interpretation are inevitable in the art of intelligence, and experience has shown that we should encourage competitive analysis.
On September 24, 1986, the Senate unanimously agreed to my amendment to S. 2477, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1987, directing the CIA to conduct competitive analysis on 32 important intelligence issues. One of these issues, numbered 24, was `The possibility that the CIA and the State Department have been penetrated by the KGB at various levels.' The CIA's classified report to the Senate on this topic was received in 1987. It was, however, only a short and cursory paragraph, and it was not the result of competitive analysis.
Since then there have been five probable espionage cases reported in the media which suggest that the CIA and the State Department should have treated my amendment more seriously.
First, the senior foreign service officer Mr. Felix Bloch has been placed on administrative leave by the State Department because he was detected engaging in unreported contacts with Soviet Intelligence and is suspected of espionage. These contacts reportedly even included the passing of a briefcase from Mr. Bloch to a known Soviet Intelligence Officer.
Second, there are recent media reports that the late CIA senior analyst Mr. John Paisley may have been a long-term Soviet mole at the CIA. A recent book has described the details surrounding Mr. Paisley's suspicious death in September, 1978, and the evidence that he might have been recruited during his World War Two Merchant Marine voyages to the Soviet Union to be a long-term Soviet Intelligence mole inside the CIA. Mr. Paisley apparently lied about his wartime visits to the Soviet Union when he entered CIA.
Third, this book also reports that the senior CIA officer Mr. James Speyer Kronthal was a Soviet Intelligence mole inside CIA. Mr. Kronthal apparently committed suicide in 1953, when his treachery was discovered.
Fourth, this book and another recent book have reported the details of the damage caused by the convicted spy Mr. Karl Koecher, a CIA contract employee who was a mole inside the CIA for Soviet/Czech Intelligence.
There is also a fifth probable espionage example that comes from other reports. The State Department's man who supervised the construction of the new U.S. Embassy building in Moscow, which is riddled with Soviet electronic bugging devices for espionage, reportedly was a probable KGB agent. This man has now disappeared, and is believed to be back in the Soviet Union, where he reportedly was promoted by the KGB.
Because the CIA and the State Department did not take my original amendment seriously, and because of the subsequent evidence suggesting serious Soviet Intelligence penetrations of the CIA and the State Department, it is clear that counterintelligence at CIA and the State Department must be strengthened. In accordance with the 1986 Helms amendment, I therefore request that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence require the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Secretary of State to submit reports, utilizing the method of competitive analysis, on the following:
1. The reason why the 1987 CIA report on this topic was only cursory and failed to fulfill the original 1986 Senate directive for a competitive analysis of whether the CIA and the State Department were penetrated by Soviet-block intelligence services.
2. The evidence which would determine whether the senior foreign service officer Felix Floch, the late CIA senior analyst John Paisley, the former CIA contract employee Karl Koecher, the late senior CIA officer James Kronthal, and the former State Department Moscow embassy building supervisor were spies for Soviet-block intelligence services, including any evidence indicating when they may have first begun spying for Soviet-bloc intelligence services.
3. The circumstances of the detection of Mr. Bloch's, Mr. Paisley's, Mr. Koecher's, Mr. Kronthal's, and the State Department
building supervisor's reported dealings with Soviet-bloc intelligence services.
4. The reasons why it took the United States Government an inordinate length of time to suspect Mr. Bloch's, Mr. Paisley's, Mr. Koecher's, Mr. Kronthal's, and the State Department building supervisor's probable espionage dealings with Soviet-bloc intelligence services.
5. The likelihood that there could be similar, though as yet undetected, cases in the State Department and the CIA suggesting the probability of espionage, including a list of all former and current State Department and CIA employees who have had unreported contacts with Soviet-bloc intelligence services, or were involved in false flag entrapments, or were possibly compromised by Soviet-bloc intelligence services.
6. An assessment of the possible damage that Mr. Bloch, Mr. Paisley, Mr. Koecher, Mr. Kronthal, and the State Department building supervisor may have done to United States foreign policy, intelligence, and national security interests by their actions, including an analysis of the damage that they may have done as Soviet-bloc intelligence agents of influence over United States policy.
7. An assessment of whether the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secretary of State, and the Director of Central Intelligence, should establish a joint Security Evaluation Office. The joint Security Evaluation Office would set personnel and physical security standards for all U.S. embassies abroad. These security standards would apply to all personnel of the State Department and all its agencies, and also to all U.S. Government personnel belonging to all U.S. diplomatic missions abroad. These security standards would also apply to all facilities and buildings of all U.S. diplomatic missions. The joint Security Evaluation Office would also monitor the compliance of the State Department and all U.S. mission personnel and facilities with these security standards.
8. An assessment of whether the CIA Chief of Station at each U.S. embassy should make an annual mission security report on each U.S. mission. This annual mission security report would focus upon any possible security breaches by all U.S. mission country team members and any possible compromises of all country team members by foreign intelligence services. It would include all reports of unauthorized foreign contact by mission personnel, and all reports regarding the implementation of the State Department's non-fraternization policy, issues relating to lifestyle, as well as a report on all attempted foreign intelligence penetrations of the physical security of all mission facilities.
9. An assessment of whether each annual security report on each U.S. mission should be forwarded to the State Department Regional Security Officer, to the FBI representative in each mission (where applicable), and to the joint Security Evaluation Office. The joint Security Evaluation Office would analyze these reports, make enforcement recommendations, and consolidate the reports and enforcement recommendations for submission to the Chief of Diplomatic Security at the State Department. The Chief of Diplomatic Security would submit the consolidated annual mission security report and enforcement recommendations to the Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security and to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State would use his existing statutory authority to administer and enforce the joint Security Evaluation Office security standards.
10. An assessment of whether the Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security should submit the consolidated annual mission security report and enforcement recommendations to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, together with a summary of all enforcement, corrective and disciplinary actions taken.
11. An assessment of whether upon being transferred back to the United States or being posted to any other permanent change of station, all U.S. diplomatic mission country team members at all U.S. embassies should be interviewed on all security issues, including lifestyle, foreign contact reporting, and non-fraternization policy, by State Department diplomatic security officers, and if there is sufficient reason, by the FBI.
I hope that by posing these questions and asking for these competitive analyses and assessments, progress will be made in improving our counter-intelligence. I appreciate the efforts already being made in this area by the SSCI, and I look forward to working with you further toward achieving additional improvements.
Sincerely,
Jesse Helms.
[Page: S15111]
Mr. BOREN. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor to my colleagues on the committee.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I am advised that I should proceed with this technical amendment at this time. I send the amendment to desk and ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen] proposes an amendment numbered 1081.
On page 33, line 19, strike `when time is of the'.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, this is a technical amendment. It was inadvertently left out of the bill as reported. As part of the compromise with the White House on terms of providing covert action to Congress. We agreed the phrase `when time is of the' be deleted, and, through administrative oversight, it was left in the bill as reported by the committee.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
The amendment (No. 1081) was agreed to.
Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I support Senate bill 1324. At this time I would like to make just a few comments about the bill overall, before speaking perhaps at some greater length on the inspector general's provision, since it is anticipated that there will be an effort to strike that provision.
First, I compliment the chairman and the vice chairman of the committee for their outstanding work and their leadership. During the course of the past 3 years, during the chairmanship of the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma [Mr. Boren] and the distinguished Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen], the committee has functioned, I think, at a very professional level. The resources which have been added during the tenure of the current chairman and vice chairman, I think, are very significant.
The issue of HUMINT, short for human intelligence, which was the subject of an amendment which this Senator offered during the course of consideration of the Department of Defense authorization bill, has also been addressed in an effort to strengthen human intelligence to locate terrorists for whom there are a dozen outstanding indictments from Federal courts, and also to locate our hostages in order to at least make a determination whether any rescue is conceivable.
There are many aspects of the legislation which are very, very important, Mr. President, and they involve the strengthening of the intelligence apparatus of the United States.
With respect to the notice provisions, I compliment Senator Cohen for his dilligence in a long battle which he has waged on this issue, and one which I think at this moment has been compromised about as well as it could be.
Following the report on the Iran-Contra affair, the Intelligence Committee labored very long and hard over the issue of notice. We held extensive meetings and markups to try to deal with the problem of the oral findings and the retroactive findings and what the appropriate notice should be.
During the 100th Congress this Senator introduced
legislation, as did Senator Cohen. Senator Cohen's legislation took precedence and was passed by a very wide margin, 71 to 19, and it provided for 48-hour notice after covert activities were undertaken. Regrettably, the House did not act, putting the issue back to square one this year.
This Senator introduced legislation, Senate bill 145, which took most of what I had in the 100th Congress on Senate bill 1818, to try to impose some reporting requirements.
Senator Cohen has already referred to the letter from President Bush dated October 30, 1989, where the President states that he anticipates in almost all instances prior notice will be possible. In those rare instances, instances where prior notice is not provided, I anticipate--that is the President's letter--`notice will be provided within a few days, and then any withholding beyond this period would be based upon my assertion of the authorities granted this office by the Constitution.'
Mr. President, given our confidence in President Bush, this, I do believe, is a satisfactory solution for the moment. I do not believe, however, that it addresses the institutional problem. It would have been the preference of this Senator that we reach an institutional solution, but it really is not possible, given the position of the House and given the position of the administration.
The letter from President Bush has a reference to both section 501(b) of the National Security Act and an opinion from the Assistant Attorney General on December 17, 1986 which, I believe, puts in sharp contradiction the issue involved here.
Section 501(b) of the National Security Act provide that the President has the duty to `fully inform the Intelligence Committees in a timely fashion of intelligence operations in foreign countries'--fully inform in a timely fashion.
The Attorney General then issued an opinion on December 17, 1986, stating that `a number of factors combined to support the conclusion that the timely fashion language should be read to leave the President with virtually unfettered discretion to choose the right moment for making the required notification.
Mr. President, I submit that that defies the plain meaning of the statute and the basic meaning of the English language, and argument is really not necesary on it. I wondered why the President quoted this language in the first paragraph of the letter, where the second paragraph really provided the assurances which, as I have noted, are satisfactory to this President.
I do believe, as Senator Cohen has already stated, that future administrations ought to be on notice, and I hope that the intelligence committees will maintain this vigilance; that it cannot be accepted by the Congress, under our concept of separation of powers and the Constitution of the United States, that where the law of the land requires timely notice, that the Justice Department can render an opinion that it leaves `unfettered discretion' in the Executive and that that path should be followed. It is up to the Intelligence Committee, in the exercise of oversight, to see to it that the law is followed and to it that there is the appropriate oversight.
Mr. President, this brings me to a very brief statement on the provisions of the inspector general bill, which are really crafted in significant measure to correct this gap.
Mr. COHEN. Will the Senator yield just for a point?
Mr. SPECTER. I do.
Mr. COHEN. I should point out for the purpose of the record here, that the letter originally was going to be sent by President Bush to the Attorney General, indicating that notwithstanding the prior interpretation of the previous administration and the previous Attorney General of section 501(b), this was going to be his policy. And so the President included that first paragraph. Basically, the intent was to advise the Attorney General that notwithstanding the prior interpretation, `This is going to be my policy.' So that is the reason why the letter is phrased in the fashion it is.
Mr. SPECTER. Well, I am not totally clear on that yet. Was there a shortage of stationery?
Mr. COHEN. No; the letter was handed to Senator Boren and myself. We suggested it come to the committee rather than the Attorney General. Basically, it is a situation in which the Justice Department, having committed an error, is very reluctant to admit it.
The better procedure would have been to simply have a new interpretation of section 501(b) by a new administration. That, apparently, could not be achieved. So the President did the following, and that is to advise the current Attorney General. He was advising the current Attorney General how he would proceed, notwithstanding what the Justice Department had done in the past.
Mr. SPECTER. Well, the client always has the prerogative to disregard his lawyer's advice. I hope this President will disregard the advice of that Attorney General back in 1986. I am pleased to hear the addition, the supplement, which Senator Cohen has offered, and that is almost a complete answer to the presence of the first paragraph. I would have preferred the second paragraph to be introduced with a `notwithstanding' or something to that effect.
But, as I say and repeat, this Senator has confidence in this administration and in President Bush that we will get the notice.
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Mr. COHEN. If the Senator will yield further, unfortunately, it does put us in the position that each and every succeeding President will have to take a similar pledge, as such, in the absence of legislation. Each President would have to agree with the policy that has now been established by the President.
Mr. SPECTER. Well, I say to the Senator from Maine, I was about to say I regretted to see on the face of this letter in the first paragraph a reference to the Attorney General's opinion because it at least gives the appearance, prior to the Senator's explanation, that there is some substance to the opinion which talks about unfettered discretion. The letter, on its face, absent the explanation of the Senator from Maine, does not signify a retreat from that.
These issues are not really easy issues. The Senator from Maine has labored over them long and hard, and he and I have discussed the matter on a dozen or more occasions.
I would modify what the Senator has just said to this extent; that there is law on the subject. I think timely notice does constitute law.
The 14 months on Iran-Contra, or however long it was, does not constitute timely notice.
Notwithstanding what the Assistant Attorney General said in 1986, timely notice is not equated with unfettered discretion.
It may have to work through the political process as it worked through on the Iran-Contra investigation. I, frankly, hope not. I think the country would be much better off if we had a precise rule and if the group was limited perhaps only to four people, the leadership in both Houses. And where there is talk about not wanting to have the Congress know what the Executive is doing, I understand the separation of powers. But there are quite a few eyes that will see these items in the executive branch.
If we are going to entrust them to Senator Mitchell and Senator Dole and Speaker Foley and Republican Leader Michel; that is pretty top-level assurance. That is at least as good as the delegates of the executive branch, who will see these documents.
That gives a corporate, an institutional review, that is highly valuable. And it takes the review into a new arena. I am not saying there are always yes-men in the administrative branch, but it gives a different perspective. I think the provision of my colleague's bill of 48 hours, which I like second best to mine of 24 hours, would be better for the country.
Mr. COHEN. Let me say to my colleague that he and I share the same opinion.
In fact, if I had the votes it would be a 48-hour notice provision. The fact is we do not have the votes sufficient to override a veto, and that is the reason why we tried to strike this particular compromise to achieve our basic goal: notification to the oversight committees.
I point out that my colleague made a very telling point. While there is a great deal of necessary secrecy that surrounds a covert activity, the truth of the matter is there are many individuals who have notice in the executive branch. In fact, without going into any details, I recall that with respect to one proposed covert activity--a finding was submitted--and we had almost 30 people in the room from the executive branch who had, in my judgment, no business being there.
Yet, to weigh those 30 individuals against the 4 leaders of Congress being notified I thought was a rather preposterous situation to find ourselves in. Certainly, if you weigh the Senate majority and minority leader and two in the House against those who were notified about the sale of weapons to Iran, it puts it in even starker contrast.
Mr. SPECTER. I thank the distinguished vice chairman for those comments. I had started to say the issue on notice, I think, ties into the provision on the inspector general. Both are outgrowths of the experience which we have had over many years, going back to 1976, where it was determined that an inspector general ought to be applied.
Then there were the provisions of timely notice. Then we had the experience of Iran-Contra. It is the experience of this Senator that the absence of a 48-hour provision underscores the necessity for an inspector general. That has been a very carefully crafted provision, which has been worked on in great detail with the leadership of the chairman, Senator Boren, and the vice chairman, Senator Cohen.
With the addition of Senator Glenn bringing to bear his experience from the Governmental Affairs Committee, where they have the responsibility for other inspectors general, it has been very, very carefully crafted. It does not suggest any question of the capability of the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the provision calling for independence bears upon the institutional limitations of any agency of Government.
It has been supported by broad experience across a variety of governmental departments, about the effectiveness of the inspector general. Rather than providing for additional management and oversight by the intelligence committees, it is the view of this Senator that it would really provide for less. Because we would have the knowledge that, once an independent inspector general was present, if he disagreed with the Director, that there would be a requirement of notice to the committees within 7 days. We do not have to look over the shoulders of the CIA or the intelligence unit on a continuing basis. There is someone there who will do the first line of activity.
Our experience has been, regrettably, since 1976, that the structure within the CIA and the inspector general has not been sufficient.
As the chairman, Senator Boren, noted during the course of the past 2 years since this Senator introduced the legislation in the 100th Congress, there has not been the kind of response necessary. That will be detailed when the amendment to strike is put forward, Mr. President. But I do think that these comments are necessary, on the question of notice. They tie in to the overall oversight function.
When we add the independent inspector general to the compromise which has been achieved on notice, it seems to this Senator that in that comprehensive whole, the bill makes good sense.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of Senator Danforth and Senator Murkowski and ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment will be stated.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hollings], for himself, Mr. Danforth, and Mr. Murkowski, proposes an amendment No. 1082.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
Beginning with page 17, strike out line 17 and all that follows through line 4 on page 28.
On page 28, line 5, strike out `TITLE IX' and insert in lieu thereof `TITLE VIII'.
On page 28, line 6, strike out `Sec. 901.' and insert in lieu thereof `Sec. 801.'.
On page 28, line 8, strike out `Sec. 902.' and insert in lieu thereof `Sec. 802.'.
On page 35, line 18, strike out `Sec. 903.' and insert in lieu thereof `Sec. 803.'.
On page 36, line 6, strike out `Sec. 904.' and insert in lieu thereof `Sec. 804.'.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, this strikes title VIII from the bill which provides for an inspector general at the CIA.
Before going into the reasons for our motion to strike the inspector general provision, let me, in the first instance, say, as the Senator from Maine was relating, we are simply not providing enough for counterintelligence. In all candor, we did not even provide as much as we provided last November under President Reagan for our war against drugs.
The truth is, we really cut last November's authorization some $421 million, which caused cuts in the bill. And, speaking as the chairman of the State, Justice, Commerce Subcommittee of Appropriations, I have been dealing with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Border Patrol, the FBI, the
Bureau of Prisons, and particularly the counterintelligence provision.
I welcome the comments of the Senator from Maine and would also support our distinguished chairman, Senator Boren, on his initiative concerning counterintelligence.
With respect to our chairman, Senator Boren, and our vice chairman, Senator Cohen, it is a distinct pleasure, really, to serve on this committee. I started in intelligence work as a member of the Hoover Commission, that is President Herbert Hoover, not J. Edgar Hoover. As a matter of fact, I had the distinction of inspecting and investigating J. Edgar Hoover.
It was in the McCarthy days, back in 1954, when we had all the uproar here in the U.S. Senate and the national Government about spies and security breaches.
President Eisenhower had appointed the Doolittle Commission, which did not fly. And thereupon the President and Congress agreed that President Hoover should take over. I was one of the six under Gen. Mark Clark, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, and several others who worked for a year looking into all U.S. intelligence activities.
Back in the 1950's I handled the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Atomic Energy Agency, the FBI, the State Department intelligence bureau, and all the rest.
Since then, I, necessarily, have kept abreast from time to time. Over the years I have developed a tremendous pride in our intelligence agency, particularly the CIA.
Our Central Intelligence Agency has done an outstanding job. No one can ever really speak for them. They are an unusual organization. They operate strictly on a `need to know' basis. A person in the same office, right in the next cubicle, will never know what the person in the next cubicle will be doing, or what their particular work is. They might join each other for lunch and see each other for social weekends or what have you. But one never really knows what the other is doing if he doesn't have `the need to know.'
Many of them work their entire lifetimes, and their wives and families, never know that they are really working with the CIA. They operate on a continuing basis of trust. And if there is a breach of that trust, I can tell my colleagues it can be disastrous. It can ruin their work. It can even cost them their lives.
The only thanks they get is having done a good job. They will never read of it, they will never see anything about it, other than the fact that they know themselves that they have done a good job. This is the tremendous dedication and patriotism of the individuals who participate in a very, very necessary agency.
Incidentally, I say to the Senator, I did not think anybody would have the audacity to come up and recommend an inspector general in this day and time what has happened to HUD; They have an inspector general there; After what has happened to the Food and Drug Administration; they have an inpector general there; after what has happened in the Defense Department; they have an inspector general there. They also have one at FEMA, but I will not start on that. I did not think anybody would now think there are any problems that could be solved by a different kind of inspector general.
There are 25 agencies, in the Government that have inspector general, all except the U.S. Senate. We do not have one for us. We have election day, which is a healthy tonic, by the way.
The individuals who come into the Central Intelligence Agency do not serve, I say to the Senator, until their first polygraph. I have not succeeded yet in polygraphing the committee staff, but I say in the same breath, I do not have any reason to now. I did before when I started on this a few years ago. But with the committee as presently constituted, I do not know of any leaks by Senators and I do not know of any leaks by staff members. But if you get a job here in the Nation's Capital as a Capitol policeman, after you apply, the first thing they do is give you a polygraph test. Then they send you down to school, and only then you will get a job at the FBI, Secret Service, and all the others. But when you come to the most important chokepoint, the staffs of the two intelligence committees, we do not have polygraphing, but we do with anybody who goes into the CIA.
I took a polygraph last year or the year before, because I did not want to ask the staff to do anything I would not do myself. They take a couple of hours. I flunked it on the first question. They asked me a question, and I started to answer `In my humble opinion.' I flunked that right away. But I took that polygraph test. And every person who comes into the agency takes an initial polygraph when he or she is admitted, takes one 3 years later, and every 5 years thereafter.
If you want to see a crowd whose entire career is based on telling the truth, it is the CIA employees. They will not take a Government pen off the desk even if you tell them, `Go ahead, take it.' In a polygraph test, they will be asked it they have taken anything. There is no fraud or abuse in that context because they are testing each other regularly and their entire career depends upon it.
It may be added, the distinguished chairman of our committee has said that he has never worked with a more dedicated, capable group, and I endorse what Chairman Boren has said. And there is no problem with the Director. We think he is outstanding, I join in Senator Boren's recognition of Director Webster's work in really getting an active organization going again. It had sort of stood down in the last couple of years since Iran-Contra. Bear in mind, Senator Boren did not endorse this IG because of any wrongdoing in the Agency.
This provision is a compromise to mollify the Senator from Pennsylvania and the distinguished chairman of Governmental Affairs. He has IG's coming out of his ears. That is to say, he never met an IG he did not like. He has oversight over all of them in his committee. I would daresay if I was chairman of Governmental Affairs, I would be in a similar position.
The Senator from Pennsylvania has been working on this for quite some time and to
get this bill out, there have been some compromises and a lot of work, as the chairman and ranking member have already pointed out. It is not easy to do this work.
Back to a fundamental point. It is a pleasure to work with Senator Boren and Senator Cohen. They are doing an outstanding job, and I think the Intelligence Committee is doing an outstanding job.
I might add, since I championed my good friend Lt. Col. Oliver North on the Senate floor last week, that I recently had an opportunity to hear him speak. He spoke about the foreign policy of the Government being preempted, and how the power of the President with respect to foreign policy was being eroded by the Congress. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I have to give my friend Ollie a copy of the Constitution, in which we see that foreign policy and all the powers with respect to international affairs, international commerce, and treaties, what have you, are right here in this body. Were it not for the active interest, dedication, and time taken by our Intelligence Committee staff and the members of that committee who are very conscientious and work on these problems, this country would be in a fix. I would much rather rely on the collective judgment of the Congress than the executive branch, although I started some 35 years ago, in the executive branch on the Hoover Commission in the intelligence field.
So I commend the committee; I commend the bill. But I just do not want to ruin an active organization that is needed really to perform some of the most difficult of tasks in the real world in which we live.
To protect this country, we need to have top quality information on an immense variety of subjects. We need to know about Soviet strategic weapons; how to verify arms control treaties. Will Gorbachev survive? What is going to happen in Eastern Europe? How many countries have nuclear weapons an chemical weapons and intercontinental missiles? What will happen to Mexico's economy? Where are the Colombian drug lords? What banks are laundering international drug money? Who in Panama might try to overthrow Noriega and on down the list.
Senator Cohen's observation on Canadian reluctance to cooperate with us during the Tehran rescue effort leads me to comment upon the unique nature of the Central Intelligence Agency. Senator Cohen went down a litany of where was somebody who had evidence to support the allegation that the Government of Canada said they were not going to help with a rescue effort in Tehran back in 1979 or 1978 with President Carter if the Congress was going to be informed. That is no rumor. I do not know anything about Canada. I am not surprised that as the Senator went on a very studied litany, I asked here, there; the next place; I went to that Agency, to that official. The very lack of hard evidence is typical of the way intelligence operates. You do not leave a trail. I am also not a bit surprised that they found two people at CIA working directly on the problem who remembered the Canadian concern.
On this particular score, working with other intelligence agencies, I am concerned about the impact of this provision. I visit, as the chairman of the subcommittee that handles State Department funding, our Embassies abroad. See Agency people from time to time overseas, and if there is one thing they lament, it is the suspicion that friendly foreign intelligence services have about our Intelligence Committees and our operations here in the Congress.
In the last couple of years under Senator Boren and Senator Cohen, I have had the pleasure of saying, `Do not worry about them.' Like they said in the olden days, the only vessel in the world that leaks from the top is the ship of State. The leaks are over in the executive branch, not in the Congress. But there is still that suspicion. It is very difficult to work with other countries' agencies when those agencies are aware that reports are made and that we have an IG who is making a semiannual report to the Director, and then an annual report to the Director.
Then, whenever differences occur between the Director and the differences are forwarderd to politicians in the Congress. And the IG is confirmed by the Senate.
Furthermore, the Director does not have the control over this IG that the Secretary of Defense does. The Secretary of Defense controls his IG. Now, in title 8 of this bill, there is a euphemism or expression that the IG will be `under the general supervision of the Director.' That is not control. If I worked in the Agency, that would wave a red flag. That would say to me, look, this is how you are going to get a higher mark and better advancement and greater success. You might not do intelligence work all that well, but as far as your career is concerned, please that so-and-so IG who is crossing every i and dotting every t. If you do not do anything, you might be better off than to try do anything. And that is bad, bad, bad for an intelligence-gathering organization.
To get information, and to be able to act on the information we do get, we need the most energetic and entrepreneurial intelligence service which patriotism and dedication to duty can buy and trust can maintain. We do not need the CIA to be a group of cautious bureaucrats who avoid the risks that come with taking action, who fill out every form in triplicate. But that is what we are going to create with a Presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed inspector general.
An inspector general created by this bill, Mr. President, would be the third Presidential appointee, Senate confirmed, in the CIA. Only the Director and the principal deputy would out rank him, but the IG would be above the five Deputy Directors, the people who really run the Agency. All of a sudden you have the different departments trying to either gather or monitor or do this or that, and the next thing you know you have an IG over them who is not the Director who is saying do not move; sit still; when in doubt, do nothing; and stay in doubt all the time.
The naysayers, the inquisitors, and the evaluators will have greater weight than do the line managers at CIA, and that is a terrible message. It springs from our post-Vietnam/post-Watergate bad habits, from our aversion to bold action and from our preference for faultfinding over initiative. Sometimes it seems that we would rather prosecute people after a failure than plan for and support success. Certainly we take more pleasure in prosecution. The net result is an aversion to action by the very people who must act if this country is to be warned about those things that threaten us.
A recent issue of Time magazine criticized the paralysis that is overtaking the Government, talking about timid politicians in the Congress and the White House and timid bureaucrats in the executive branch who prefer inaction to the risk of doing something. The regulations we have written and the inspectors we have let loose are the shackles on the sinews of Government. The power of Government is atrophying just at the time that we need the power to attack the great problems that this country faces. A Presidentially appointed IG at CIA will be another link in the chains that tie down our Government and render it passive.
The sponsors said that this provision really springs from the mid-1970's, and I am not surprised at that. The 1970's were the time of the post-Vietnam handwringing, the time when fear of action was raised to an art form, the time when we induced the paralysis of our Government and learned to like it. That era has passed, I hope, and the people today now want a government that can do something. It is simply anachronistic to saddle the CIA of the 1990's with the bureaucratic deadweight of the
1970's.
This provision would weaken the control that the Director of CIA has over the CIA. The independent IG, according to the provision, would be only under the general supervision of the Director, as I have pointed out, not under his control. He issues semiannual reports. The provision generously permits the Director to comment on the reports. Otherwise, this provision makes him little more than a mailbox for the Inspector General. The director does have the authority under this provision to prohibit the IG from investigating a particular matter but then, of course, the Director has to report his prohibition to the Intelligence Committees within 7 days and attach comments. By so doing he has started trouble over on the Hill. Of course, that is 50 percent of problem of those working in the executive branch, whether it is the Defense Department, the White House or anyone else--stay clear of Capitol Hill.
The flow of all these new reports to the Intelligence Committees will result in congressional micromanagement of an agency that ought to be under strong centralized executive branch management. This kind of micromanagement through independent IG's may work in some agencies, but of course it did not do much for those I have already listed.
The sponsors of this provision contend that the current IG system at CIA lacks quality. I do not know how they can know it because the Intelligence Committee--Mr. President, I want to emphasize this--we have only reviewed 11 of the 586 reports which the CIA has filed since 1986. It is like drinking water out of a fire hydrant. Now, they are going to put in a new IG, order more reports, scare the devil out of anybody doing a good job down there, and we are going to get mediocrity and everybody is going to say how smart we are, we have squeaky clean Government, mediocrity at its best.
I could speak at length. I know my distinguished colleagues from Missouri and Alaska want to speak on this. I think, the distinguished minority leader would also like to speak. We have, incidentally, a letter from the President of the United States. I ask unanimous consent his letter be included in the Record. It is dated November 3 to Senator Mitchell, signed by President Bush.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
The White House,
Washington, November 3, 1989.
Hon. George J. Mitchell,
Majority Leader,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
[Page: S15115]
Dear Senator Mitchell: The Intelligence Authorization Bill (S. 1324) has been the subject of intensive negotiations over the past few months. The main issue was timely notification of covert activities. I am very pleased with the outcome on that issue, and the credit goes to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. However, there remains one other major point of contention in S. 1324: the statutory Inspector General for CIA. Before the Senate takes action on the legislation, you should be aware of my strong opposition to that provision.
The establishment of a statutory Inspector General at CIA is unnecessary and could be counterproductive to the effective inspection and investigation process in place at the Agency.
My strong reservations regarding the creation of a statutory Inspector General at CIA are shared by a bipartisan group of members on the Intelligence Committee. I agree with the position of Senators Bradley, Danforth, Hollings, and Murkowski that a statutory Inspector General `would inevitably mean more bureaucracy, more regulation, more outside intervention, when the real need is to make CIA more productive, more skilled and more useful in confronting a variety of difficult national challenges.'
I hope that I can count on your support for a motion to strike the statutory Inspector General provision from the Intelligence Authorization Bill when it comes to floor.
Sincerely,
George Bush.
Mr. HOLLINGS. The President, having been a Director of the Agency himself, and now our Commander in Chief with all the real responsibility, objects very strongly to this particular provision. He supports the work of this Intelligence Committee, he has worked very well with our chairman and ranking member and the members of the committee and he knows the concerns that Senator Specter has. But when you get down to the bottom line, and you try to install a new inspector general over all the deputy directors and start pulling the emphasis on audit rather than action, I think we make a bad mistake.
Those in the agency who live in that `need to know' environment are not going to report to that General, I can tell you that right now, whoever he or she may be. That is just the nature of the game, let us say, the nature of those who work in intelligence. They are just not going up there and start confiding to an outside IG, and that IG is going to be under pressure to be given a full report to show you he is doing an A No. 1 job and he is going to turn around inspecting and inhibiting action and that is going to be a tremendous conflict that we in this Government should not have. It should be prevented. I am delighted to yield the floor.
Mr. DANFORTH. Mr. President, much has been said by the several Senators who have spoken on this bill of the tremendous confidence all of us feel in the Director of Central Intelligence, William Webster. He is an outstanding person. He does have the confidence and the support of members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I think that is a point which has been made very clear by everyone who has spoken so far.
My principal reason for supporting the Senator from South Carolina is this degree of support we all feel for Director Webster. He came into the Central Intelligence Agency as a reformer. He came in in the wake of the Iran-Contra matter, and he was supported to reform the Agency. He was supposed to work closely with Congress.
Mr. President, Bill Webster has worked closely with Congress. He has kept us informed. We have confidence in him.
My view is that we in the Senate, we in the Congress, should attempt to work with Bill Webster, and not work against him. It is because of his strong opposition to the statutory inspector general and I am supporting the Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. President, it is important to understand that we now have an inspector general at the CIA. So the provision that is in the bill before us does not create a new entity. It does not create an inspector general where there is none now. There is an inspector general at the Central Intelligence Agency. The
issue before us is not whether to create an inspector general, but rather, whether to have a statutory inspector general appointed by the President of the United States, confirmed by the Senate, and reporting to the Congress. That is the issue before us.
Bill Webster, the Director of CIA, convinced the Intelligence Committee last year not to go forward with this legislation. The Intelligence Committee was willing to go along with him because he made the point at that time he was putting in place internal reforms for the inspector general. That was his desire--to put in internal reforms. And he has done that. The reforms are now under way. He has kept his word to the Intelligence Committee.
I believe, if we have a Director who keeps his word and is putting in place changes and reforms that he thinks are important, we should give him the benefit of the doubt. We should go along with him. We should not attempt to barge in without even looking at those reforms, without even analyzing the reforms that he has put into place. We should not barge in, shove him aside, and say, `Well, we are through with you,' in effect, `we have our own statutory inspector general that we want to put in place at the CIA.'
Mr. President, it is very interesting that we have a couple of letters from Director Webster, and we also have a letter--as the Senator from South Carolina pointed out--from George Bush strongly opposing the statutory inspector general.
I have to admit to the Senate that I am no expert on the intricacies of intelligence. I am on the committee, but I do not purport to have the touch that somebody who is involved day to day in the intelligence community would have. Here we have the existing Director of the CIA and a past Director of the CIA, who now happens to be the President of the United States, who have both reached the sme conclusion. And the conclusion is to make the inspector general statutory would be counterproductive.
Mr. President, do not ask the Senator from Missouri to explain that. I can only say that the expert opinion of the existing Director and of the past Director, who is now President of the United States, is that it would be counterproductive, that it would make the inspector general less effective rather than more effective if it were statutory.
It is further said that the CIA is an agency which is basically different from the various departments of the executive branch. I believe that is ture. The CIA is, by its nature, different. It is not an organization that carries on its activities in full view of the public.
Senator HOLLINGS pointed out that there are only two officials at the CIA who were subject to Senate confirmation: the Director himself and his deputy, and that is it.
This is not like, for example, HHS, where there are countless people at HHS who are subject to confirmation by the Senate, countless people that we have the responsibility, in effect, for putting in place for giving advice and consent to.
That is not the case in the CIA. If we were to establish a statutory Director or a statutory inspector general, this would create a person prestigiously appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senator who is the inspector general, vying with only two people over there who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate who are line officials. It would create in the CIA what would amount to a parallel organization, a parallel hierarchy so that many of the line officials at the CIA would be junior in the hierarchy to the person who is inspecting them.
The concern is that with this paralled organization the confidence that sources must have in the Agency and the
confidence that foreign countries must have in the agencies would be weakened. They would not be dealing just with one organization. They would be dealing with two parallel organizations which exist side by side with two chains of command.
Mr. President, obviously, the Central Intelligence Agency is important in our country. Clearly, we have in charge of the agency now a person in whom we have great personal confidence. He is in the process of reforming the inspector general's office at the CIA. In my view we should give him a chance. My view is that this is one opportunity when we in Congress should not gum up the works. I am afraid we would be gumming up the works if we created a statutory inspector general.
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Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska [Mr. Murkowski].
Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, let me state at the outset that I believe the intelligence authorization bill on balance is an excellent one. I commend the chairman, Senator Boren, and the vice chairman, Senator Cohen. I think they and their staffs both certainly deserve congratulations. I think the bill represents a continuation of their commitment to a bipartisan process.
We have taken a bite at the personnel costs in a way that protects the taxpayer while preserving the capabilities of America's intelligence agencies.
However, I think there is a basic management principle at stake here: if it is not broke, do not fix it. There is a provision in the bill that I believe is very ill advised, and that is title VIII.
I think it is fair to say that the issue of a statutory inspector general has been debated with the best of intentions within the staff of the Intelligence Committee, but the creation of a statutory inspector general for the CIA may have serious unintended consequences. Supporters of the provision have argued that a Presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed inspector general will strengthen the external oversight of the CIA. I think those are points that have been made by my friend from Pennsylvania and my friend from Ohio.
I believe it may have precisely the opposite effect. We have a situation, Mr. President, where we could very well see
the effectiveness of the CIA curtailed, and as a consequence, I think the provision at this time is premature. Let me briefly enumerate some of the reasons why I support the amendment of my friend from South Carolina, which I believe he will introduce at an appropriate time, to strike title VIII.
First, there already is a CIA inspector general, as noted by my colleagues, appointed by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Judge Webster, the DCI, has asked for time to demonstrate that the present inspector general system with the appropriate modifications can work and can work well. After all, the DCI is the one we hold responsible for the operation of the CIA. He should be the one to put in what he considers a workable system. I think it is fair to say that we would all agree in the year-and-a-half since Judge Webster put in his own system, there has been a clear improvement in performance. It certainly has not been a perfect one but it has been good enough to grant the DCI's request for more time. That is what we have here. It is working. Why change it now?
Second, the Intelligence Committee has looked at only a tiny fraction of all the reports produced by the IG. There has not been the sort of thorough systematic evaluation of the present IG's performance by the committee that would justify, in my opinion, a radical and permanent departure of the sort that we are considering before us today.
Third, the existing inspector general has been responsive to congressional requirements. The Intelligence Committee has had no difficulty in obtaining copies of IG reports, when they haved been requested.
Fourth, I think Judge Webster wants to use the inspector general as an important tool of internal management. By taking the IG out from under his control--that is really what we are doing here--the Congress would take this tool out of the hand of the DCI. And this is particularly true because this bill gives the DCI less authority over the inspector general than the Secretaries of Defense or Treasury have over their individual IG's.
Fifth, the statutory IG will be seen as, to some extent, an alien outsider, within the intelligence community, and that is a rather tight-knit world out of necessity, dealing in intelligence matters. His presence may provide a temptation, so to speak, to develop some kind of an off-the-books operation that would be outside of the security of the IG and everyone else. I do not know, but that is potentially a threat.
Finally, a statutory IG will inevitably mean more bureaucracy. For goodness sakes, ladies and gentlemen, if there is anything we do not need around here, it is more bureaucracy. We need simplification. One of the difficulties in the Intelligence Committees, when we sit down and revisit situations in an oversight capacity is to try to fix responsibility.
There are so many layers upon layers--I do not care how many people the committee brings in. With an exception perhaps on one occasion, I cannot give you an instance where we have been able to identify just who bore the responsibility. That is why I say, Mr. President, the idea of simplification, lessening the bureaucracy is very appealing to this Senator. I think more regulation means more outside intervention, more overhead, when the real need is to make the CIA more productive, more skilled, more useful in confronting a variety of different national challenges in the years ahead.
The effort to establish a statutory authority, reflects a particular management philosophy. You are going to dilute the responsibility of existing CIA management by setting a statutory requirement here. It is like putting a comptroller into an organization and having him in there in an independent capacity or in any number of positions. There are pros and cons to it, but there is a high degree of risk associated with it.
Let us be realistic. If we are dissatisfied with the management of the CIA we will not hold the CIA inspector general responsible. The only person we can reach is Judge Webster, or whoever is in that capacity.
We are talking about more micromanaging. I remind my colleagues again that it is not broken; do not fix it. We know the attitude of our President, who has spoken out urging that this provision in the bill be dropped. I have heard Judge Webster in the committee personally explaining his reasons, and I think they are justifiable.
I do feel that those that are in favor of establishing a statutory inspector general have good points and valid concerns. But, again, I think those of us who believe in clear management responsibility accountability would recognize that this statutory requirement does, in effect, amount to a step backward, because it does not provide clear-out authority--line responsibility--but instead, it interrupts that by creating an inspector general who is confirmed by the Congress, that technically has a responsibility to the President, but who must work within the authority of the Director.
Those are confused signals, Mr. President. They are not as clear as the present system where the Director appoints his own inspector general. So I ask my colleagues, as they reflect on the merits of title VIII, to reflect on whether we want to continue to micromanage yet another area, a very important area, a very different area, very unique area, or if we should wait and determine if indeed there is a need for it.
Mr. President, I feel that a statutory inspector general will weaken the effectiveness of the CIA. As a consequence I urge my colleagues to vote in support of the amendment which will be offered by the Senator from South Carolina. I yield the floor.
Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Glenn].
Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I rise also in very strong support of this provision in the Intelligence Authorization Act of fiscal 1990, establishing an independent, Presidentially appointed statutory inspector general, an IG at the CIA.
I happen to be a member of both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which I chair. I have had a unique vantage point, therefore, to assess both the track record of the existing statutory IG's in the Federal Government, as well as a need for a statutory IG at the CIA. I believe the action called for in this legislation is sorely needed and long overdue.
The Governmental Affairs Committee has primary jurisdiction over the statutory inspectors general established throughout the Federal Government under the Inspector General Act of 1978, and all the amendments thereto.
I would say to my colleagues that the Inspector General Act of 1978 was an experiment. We did not know how it would work out. Some departments had internal IG's, and some did not. We wanted to let it work for a number of years and see whether it did any good or not. And contrary to some of the things said here today, I think the inspector general concept has proven it to be spectacularly successful.
Has it solved all the problems of government? No, certainly far from it. But has it proven functional in rooting out much of the fat, fraud, waste, and abuse? Yes, they have.
We have had numerous hearings on the Governmental Affairs Committee that detailed this, and the inspectors general taken together can point to savings in the billions since the first act was passed back in 1978.
The Senator from South Carolina says, in effect, that the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, namely, me, never saw an IG I did not like. Would I not say that is true? But do I think the concept is working and is it good? Yes, I do.
He also said that we had big problems in HUD. Did the IG get those? We had big problems with DOD and FEMA. Why did the IG not get those? Let me address those briefly before I go on to the rest of my statement because I think we have some interesting stories there.
I say to my good friend from South Carolina that it happened to be the HUD IG that pointed out the problem. He was the first one that came out with the very first report on the HUD scandal. It did not come from the Congress or any oversight committees. It came from the IG at HUD doing the job he was there to do.
I am critical of him for not honking louder than he honked because he should have been much more forceful in pointing out the problems at HUD.
But he submitted them in reports, and if all of us here on the authorizing committees and my own committee had been as on the ball as we should have been in looking at those reports, we would have picked up this HUD situation long before we did.
So it was the HUD IG that first found that fraud.
Let us go on to DOD. He mentioned the IG there. They have had some of the finest reports on cleaning up things over at the Pentagon. They had 4,200 management improvements the DOD Secretary accepted. Hundreds of millions of dollars were returned because of criminal activity that was uncovered by the IG.
Has it solved all the problems at the DOD? No, it has not. But they have certainly done a good job over there.
DOD IG June Gibbs Brown, and I am sorry to see her leave, has done an excellent job.
Who turned up the Wedtech scandal? It was one tiny news report that caused the SBA IG to look into it and pursue it to the point where we knew that it grew into a scandal of enormous fraud and misuse of Government funds and money. It was an SBA IG that picked up the Wedtech scandal and ran with it.
The Senator also mentioned FEMA, and I do not blame him for being unhappy with FEMA. I am surprised FEMA could not have moved in more quickly after Hugo moved through the State of South Carolina. That was a tragedy.
FEMA had some internal problems, and we decided that we need a permanent IG at FEMA. We passed that just last year hoping to correct some of the deficiencies at FEMA, not that it is going to be a panacea and solve all problems. I will note that after we passed the IG act and made FEMA subject to its provisions last year, the President has yet to nominate the IG.
Would that have solved the problems over there? I do not know that it would have. I am very high on the IG concept and I would be glad to go into it chapter and verse and bring stacks of IG reports over here on the floor and go through what the IG's have been doing. The IG act is really one of the unsung heroic acts of Government as far as I am concerned because they have been doing a good job.
Have they been perfect in rooting out all the fraud, fat, waste, and abuse in the Government? No, they have not. But they certainly have done a very good job.
Let me make one other thing very clear before I go on with the remainder of my statement. Much has been made by the last two Senators who have spoken here on behalf of Judge Webster. I have full trust and confidence in Judge Webster. I think he is trying to do an outstanding job. I do not question that at all.
But I would submit at the same time that we are not a Government that places a good person in a high level job without restrictions, advice, or regulations. We are Government of laws, not of individuals.
And I would say to my colleagues, did you have the same confidence level in Judge Webster's precedessor? We know that as a result of the Iran-Contra hearings it was recommended in their report that we have a statutory IG at the CIA.
I have full confidence in Judge Webster, too, and if I were sure he was going to be there the next 20 years I might reassess whether we needed an IG at this particular point. We are trying to set up a system with laws and regulations that will function even when we sometimes get a less than outstanding person in a particular position in government.
In short, the IG concept has worked extremely well at other agencies--including agencies with extremely sensitive national security missions such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy--and there is no good reason that it won't work at the CIA as well.
The Intelligence Committee has carefully considered the unique nature of the CIA's mission in crafting a bill designed to provide more than adequate assurance that the IG's office will act in a manner consistent with the CIA's mission. Therefore, it may be helpful for those who were not members of the Intelligence Committee to know that we carefully evaluated aspects of the generic IG statute before accepting or rejecting specific provisions.
I am pleased that the bill's original sponsor, Senator Specter, and my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee, were willing to accommodate my desire for numerous enhancements of the original legislation in order to bring the bill into greater accord with those aspects of the 1978 Inspector General Act which would enhance the bill's purposes.
Let me just spell out some of those changes that we put in to this bill that bring it into harmony with the Inspector General Act.
The change include:
Requiring notification of the committees where the IG believes problems focus upon the Director of Central Intelligence, or serious problems are found at the Agency.
Would that have prevented some of the difficulties we had in recent years? I do not know. But I know I would feel better about it if we could make certain that we never have some of those things happen again. We have heard the distinguished Senator from South Carolina, my good friend, express his view here on the floor with regard to Ollie North just a couple of nights back about whether we knew everything there was to know about the whole Iran-Contra matter. And I agree with him 100 percent that we still have a lot to learn from that era.
Would this have prevented all that? I do not know. But it might have had an impact.
Additional changes include requiring the IG's access to CIA personnel and contracts; providing for separate budget line for IG's office so he or she cannot be cut off and prevented from doing the job; allowing the IG to hire and fire his own staff, subject to CIA clearance procedures; giving the IG necessary housekeeping powers: For example, access to CIA facilities; power to administer oaths; imposition of GAO audit standards as the basis of the IG work; and allowing the IG to comment on legislation.
Mr. President, these and numerous other changes make the CIA's IG office far more likely to be both effective and objective. Of course, we all recognize that the unique nature of the CIA's sensitive national security mission also requires some changes and accommodations from the standard model of the IG office.
For example, I have no objection to and, in fact, I support, restricting the reporting relationship of the CIA IG to the two intelligence committees of the Congress. Normally, all IG's report both to the relevant authorizing committees in Congress as well as to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Government Operations Committee. I do not think that is necessary in this case. Therefore, I am agreeing to give up what would normally be the jurisdiction of the committee I chair in order to accommodate limitations in dissemination of CIA IG reports, despite the fact that we have appropriately cleared staff members on the Governmental Affairs Committee who have the requisite clearances to handle such secrets.
I am less sanguine, however, about the wisdom of other
departures from the IG act in this legislation which was adopted by the Intelligence Committee. For example:
The IG has not been given subpoena duces tecum power--for documentary evidence--which all other IG's utilize;
The normally straightforward reporting relationship of the IG to the attorney general has been clouded by requirements that criminal referrals only be made pursuant to CIA guidelines; and
The IG will only routinely obtain the assistance of other Federal agencies by checking with the CIA Director in each instance.
He has to check with the Director before he can even go down and ask that FBI to collect some fingerprints, he has to go to the Director.
I believe these things I have mentioned would be additional tools that would provide a meaningful addition to the IG's powers and independence, without threatening CIA sources and methods. Should another Iran-Contra affair occur, these powers would be necessary to permit the IG to uncover whatever inappropriate activity there might or might not be. The events of the 1980's have demonstrated that a statutory CIA IG supplemented with a vigilant congressional oversight mechanism are necessary to detect and prevent off the books operations amongst White House staff and intelligence community personnel.
However, while I have the afore-mentioned reservations about
this legislation, I am convinced that, on balance, this legislation represents a significant improvement over the existing IG structure at the CIA and I urge my colleagues to support the adoption of this bill.
Mr. President, I believe it may be helpful for the Senate to understand this issue in the context of the track record of the other statutory IGs that exist throughout the Federal Government. At this time, 25 statutory inspector general positions have been created by the Congress. With the 1988 amendments to the 1978 Inspector General Act, offices of inspector general have been extended to all of the cabinet departments and major Federal agencies--including those with significant national security responsibilities such as the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the Department of Energy--with the sole exception of the CIA.
It should be no surprise to anyone that there is resistance to a statutory inspector general at the CIA. Most Federal agencies were adamantly opposed to the establishment of a statutory IG for their agency, but most agency heads have rapidly come to appreciate the considerable benefits to be derived from the IG. These statutory IG's have a proven track record of:
First, conducting audits and investigations of Agency programs;
Second, promoting economy and efficiency, and detecting waste, fraud, and abuse within that agency; and
Third, keeping the agency head and Congress fully informed about problems.
An excellent example is provided by the Department of Defense's statutory Inspector General Office which was established in 1982. Clearly, the DOD holds secrets of equal sensitivity and national importance to those in any other agency. Yet to date, there has been no instance where it has been necessary for the Secretary of Defense to shut down any DOD IG audit or investigation, pursuant to the provisions of the law establishing the DOD IG Office.
In other words, Mr. President, when we were establishing the IG to put it into DOD, we heard all these same things about you just cannot have an IG looking at any of these classified materials. So we wrote into that law the authority for the Secretary of Defense to stop an investigation if it was bordering on matters he thought were of such national security concern that the investigation should not continue. Since 1982, there has not been a single case where the Secretary of Defense found it necessary to shut down an audit or an investigation. Nor am I aware of any instance where IG personnel have been criticized for their activities in this regard.
In prepared testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on September 28 of this year, DOD Inspector General June Gibbs Brown stated that since enacting a statutory IG at the Pentagon, that office has issued hard hitting audit, inspection, and other types of oversight reports leading to potential savings and cost avoidance of $9.5 billion--$9.5 billion just in DOD--and has provided leadership within the DOD in vital areas such as audit followup, hotline operations, ethics training, fraud awareness, and improving contractor internal controls. Ms. Brown also testified that the DOD has carried out over 4,200 management improvement recommendations made by the DOD IG since 1982 and action is currently under way on over 1,000 other DOD IG recommendations.
Mr. President, everyone likes to complain about waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government. The Defense Department example I just cited shows that the statutory IG's are in the unique position of not just talking about it but actually being able to do something about it. In this era of growing budgetary constraint when it is increasingly important to more effectively use scarce resources and to learn about problems before they get out of hand, the statutory IG performs a significant public service. The CIA is no exception to this need.
Let me cite a few other examples:
The Department of Defense IG is currently investigating the inadequacy of controls over the use of interagency ordering agreements to bypass DOD procurement regulations. The IG has uncovered Pentagon procurement officers' involvement in laundering--and I do not use that word lightly--millions through the Library of Congress for defense items wholly unrelated to the Library's role in order to avoid competitive bidding.
The State Department IG has reported on his efforts to eliminate visa and passport fraud. According to the IG, the going rate for a visa ranges from $4 to $10,000, and there is no ceiling on passports; the price depends on how desperate a person is to get one. Moreover, the IG has pointed out the problem of the deteriorating condition of the Department of State's 2,000 overseas properties, and the overall shortcomings of the security of U.S. personnel, information, and facilities overseas.
The Energy Department IG recently concluded that the bottom line of the Department's policy for indemnifying management and operating contractors is that `it is a rare event when DOE disallows costs incurred under these * * * contracts,' which account for about two-thirds of the Department's entire budget. Examples of costs which have been paid by DOE include fines, penalties, claims, losses, and damages. The IG has recommended that the Department consider making important changes to the system--such as increasing the number of contractor personnel whose actions could result in corporate liability and identifying items, such as environmental fines and penalties, for which the contractor would be liable.
The NASA IG reported that his review of the aerospace fastener industry found false certification of fasteners, which led to several indictments, convictions, and fines. The IG eventually testified before Congress concerning new legislation in the aerospace fastener industry.
I cite these as just a few examples of the Federal agencies with statutory IG offices that have responsibility for safeguarding sensitive national security missions.
In the time since the creation of these statutory IG offices there have been no allegations that these IG's compromised sensitive national security information or that the existence of the IG office has prevented the agency head from accomplishing his mission.
I note for my colleagues that the Department of Energy's statutory IG Office was established even prior to the 1978 act; the Department of Energy's statutory IG Office was established in 1977; the NASA IG Office was established in 1978; the Department of State's IG Office was established in 1980; and the Department of Defense's IG Office was established in 1982.
So we have a long track record and there have been no allegations that we have any national security problems at all.
Let me now turn to specific issues raised in regard to the legislation before us today. I begin by noting that the performance of the administratively created CIA inspector general has been found wanting since the mid-1970's. In 1976 the forerunner Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate found a series of problems and defects in the CIA Office of Inspector General ranging from lack of objectivity to insufficient authority and independence.
In November 1987, congressional committees investigating the Iran-Contra affair recommended, among other things, the creation of a statutory inspector general for the CIA, stating that the present office at CIA, `appears not to have had the manpower, resources or tenacity to acquire key facts uncovered by the other investigations of the Iran-Contra affair.'
The current CIA inspector general is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Director of Central Intelligence. This arrangement necessarily encourages the CIA IG to maintain a favorable relationship with the Director in order to preserve his job rather than act as a proper, independent, fact-finder and, when necessary, a critic of CIA programs, operations, and personnel.
The obvious conclusion is that the CIA IG will remain reluctant to track unwise and perhaps illegal conduct without the explicit approval of the CIA Director.
In my view this is a very serious institutional flaw in the current Office of Inspector General at the CIA. Had we had an inspector general who did not mind looking into the CIA Director himself, would we know more about some of these events of the past few years? I do not know, but we might have.
Opponents of this legislation may argue that the current IG has the requisite independent streak to do the job correctly. But that is not enough assurance for two reasons. First, as I said before, the current IG can be fired by the DCI at any time. Second, there remains an appearance problem which no single individual can overcome.
In addition, the credibility and performance of the CIA's existing IG office has been harmed by an over reliance upon CIA employees who are rotated into the office as inspectors and investigators who have no previous training or experience in such work, and who must return to positions in other parts of the Agency once their tour with the inspector general is completed. So it is difficult to expect thoroughness and objectivity with these inherent institutional constraints. This has been especially true to the individuals assigned to the position of inspector general, several of whom have been reassigned to a senior position within the CIA after their tour as inspector general.
Opponents of this legislation argue that Judge Webster needs to be given sufficient time to bring about additional changes in the CIA IG. However, since the current IG at the CIA serves at the Director's discretion, the office can only be as thorough and objective as the individual DCI wishes it to be.
As I stated before, I believe Director Webster has done a good job at the CIA. I think he is a man of integrity. But both common sense and experience indicate that we must have an institutional check in place to guard against a future DCI who may not live up to Judge Webster's standards. And that check we need against a future DCI who may not live up to Judge Webster's standards is the Presidential control over the hiring and firing of the CIA IG.
Opponents of this legislation have also argued that the creation of a statutory IG would `instill undue risk-aversion in what should be one of our Nation's most entrepreneurial institutions.'
This is a mistaken notion and one I find completely unpersuasive. This legislation can only serve to make the CIA averse to violating U.S. law and policy. Bold and creative intelligence operations that fail to live up to this criteria simply do not merit consideration by our Government.
Finally, the bill's opponents argue a future President may use the IG's existence to deny Congress access to information. While that is an interesting hypothetical, it has absolutely no precedent in Congress's 10 years of experience with the other 25 statutory IG offices.
Mr. President, I am second to no one in my desire for our Nation to have a robust and effective intelligence capability. Intelligence is a force multiplier which helps us to properly use the military forces on which we spend hundreds of billions of dollars. We need that robust and effective intelligence capability.
Congress and the American people have entrusted the CIA with our Nation's secrets and provided this vitally important agency with extraordinarily sweeping power and authority to complete its mission. However, with this enormous power comes enormous potential for abuse.
Increased accountability to the American people through their duly-elected representatives is an essential goal in our democratic system of government. The establishment of an independent IG, which makes appropriate accommodations for the unique security concerns of the CIA as this legislation does, is an indisputable means to that end.
Mr. President, let me address a few other items before I yield the floor.
One of the issues raised is that the IG will stifle an already overly cautious CIA. I believe it was described that `we want someone not to audit but to take action.' I agree with that 100 percent. But I want to see that action taken where we know what is going on, where we know there is not an abuse of power, and where we know our money is being properly spent. So I say the CIA elements are already inspected regularly for compliance with law and agency policy.
The criticism is that by creating a more powerful IG at CIA, we will be overloading him or her with auditors, accountants, and lawyers, and will further stifle what is already an overly-cautious bureaucracy. However, CIA elements are already inspected regularly for compliance with law and agency policy and this is no new function. The objective of the legislation is to ensure this function is performed better, without fear or favor.
How will it stifle initiative to ensure CIA activities are consistent with law and agency policy? Do we, on the other hand, want initiatives that violate law and Agency policy? The IG will still report to the Director. He does not report separately. The IG will report to the Director and operate under his supervision. The DCI will be in a position to ensure the IG function does not interfere with the conduct of operations.
And the DCI is given express authority to prohibit the IG from looking into matters where it would interfere with the outcome, or where the DCI feels we are getting onto thin ice with security matters which should not be released. And the DCI can stop that. All he has to do, then, is tell the committees.
If the committee chooses to pursue the matter further, they can do that. All we are saying is that he cannot just bottle something up where the investigation might involve the Director.
The DCI will also be in a position to influence the size and staffing arrangements for the IG. There is no requirement in the bill for any larger office than what now exists, nor do we contemplate the need for one. There is no evidence we are aware of in all the other agencies that maintain a statutory IG, that it has made Government bureaucrats any more cautious in carrying out their responsibilities.
Another criticism is that there is insufficient evidence that change is needed in the existing system and that the committee has not looked into this adequately.
I would answer that. The Iran-Contra committee found, 2 years ago, that the CIA IG lacked the resources and tenacity to do an adequate job of investigating the CIA's role in the Iran-Contra scandal. The internal report on Iran-Contra that Judge Webster prepared also found shortcomings. That is the Judge's own look at what his own people had prepared for him. The Iran-Contra committee recommended the establishment of an independent, statutory inspector general.
The committee also had access to several recent inspector general reports, some of which were prepared at the committee's request, to the DCI. We do not expect these reports to always be critical. We do, however, expect them to be thorough and objective. This is too often not the case. While we recognize that a change in the status of this office cannot be expected to improve the quality of IG's performance overnight, we believe that in time it certainly will have that effect. We cannot ignore the experience of the Defense and State Departments, whose inspectors general have testified that their operation had been enhanced by their improved status.
Another criticism is that the DCI's control over the CIA will inevitably be weakened by creating an IG appointed by the President for Senate confirmation and that this might make some foreign intelligence services reluctant to cooperate with CIA.
I answer that the bill has been drafted to ensure the DCI wil retain appropriate control over the inspector general, except in extreme limited circumstances. For example, if the DCI himself were the focus of an investigation, all of the IG's reports must be channeled through the DCI. The DCI is also given authority to stop the IG from looking into any matter he chooses, if he finds it necessary, to protect vital national security interests. Such decisions need to be reported to the Intelligence Committees, but nothing prevents the DCI from acting where he believes it is necessary.
The bill requires that the IG must comply with all of the security policies of the DCI so he is not a rogue elephant; he is not running off violating the security policies of the DCI. He or she must comply with all of the security policies of the DCI to protect intelligence information.
Foreign intelligence services cannot reasonably perceive from this bill that this change will have any perceptible effect at all on their working relationship with the CIA. The secretaries of State and Defense have not been heard to complain that they have been weakened by the creation of a statutory IG in their Departments. I believe their Departments have been strengthened because of the actions the IG's have been able to make.
Also, I find it difficult to think that by requiring subcabinet officials to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate we are weakening the Department heads' control over them. We do not believe that is the case with all the Assistant Secretaries and Deputy Assistant Secretaries in the Departments of State or Defense or anywhere else.
There are other criticisms, Mr. President, I will be glad to address. Those are some of the main criticisms that are brought up from time to time. I wanted to address those while I had the floor.
In summary, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation to establish an independent statutory inspector general at CIA and to oppose this amendment to strike the IG provision from the Intelligence Authorization Act, and I urge support for the whole bill.
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Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Chafee].
Mr. CHAFEE. I wonder if the distinguished Senator from Ohio, who just spoke, would help me on a matter. He is chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee. Would this inspector general come before his committee for confirmation proceedings?
Mr. GLENN. No, he would not. We have given that up, as I indicated early in my remarks. We normally would have that as the committee that oversees the whole inspector general operation. We normally have the right to call them, but we have given it up in this instance so we do not involve more people. We do not see that is necessary. We think that the Intelligence Committees, set up in the special nature in which they were set up, have cognizance over this and can exercise that kind of oversight responsibility.
Mr. CHAFEE. I want to thank the chairman. Mr. President, first of all, I want to say I have great respect for the chairman and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee and also for the principal author of this inspector general language. Mr. President, I speak from some background in this area. The first 8 years I was in the Senate I had the privilege of serving on the Intelligence Committee.
What are the key points of this legislation that is before us, this particular amendment, and the underlying cause of it being brought up? The reason that the inspector general is before us is to avoid the errors and the scandals of the Iran-Contra era. That keeps coming up, Iran-Contra, Iran-Contra. It seems to me that is a shroud permanently wrapped around the CIA, just like this Nation could not do anything in foreign policy because of Vietnam. So the Iran-Contra atmosphere is all about this inspector general proposal. I think that is unfortunate, Mr. President. I hope that we can move on. We have a new Director, a Director who everybody here shows great respect for. I think we ought to give him a chance. He has an inspector general.
Some say, oh, the powers of that inspector general are not adequate; he serves in this post, and then he goes back into service in the CIA, so, therefore, he is ineffective.
I think, as I say, we ought not to barge in on this new head of the CIA, the Director of Central Intelligence, at this early stage in his term.
What are the high points of this bill that is before us? The two high points that have been discussed both involve two new monitoring requirements. It is told here that we made tremendous progress; that now we have gotten the President to timely report in the case of new findings. So there is an instance where now the Congress is going to be deeply involved, have a report, no question about it. If the President does not report, then he is losing the support that is necessary to him from the respective committees. So there is a case where there is a monitoring requirement.
What is the other big feature of this bill? It is another monitoring requirement. It is the inspector general. Here we have a new inspector general. He is going to be above the five Deputy Directors. There are only two Presidential appointments currently confirmed by the Senate, the Director and Deputy Director. None of the five other Deputy Directors are confirmed. But now we are going to have the inspector general. He is going to come before us. He has to go through confirmation. It seems to me we spend more time trying to determine whether the CIA is doing something wrong than helping it do its job right, to perform its activities in a better fashion.
As I say, I have great respect for the members of the committee, but I do wish that half as much energy would be placed in helping the CIA perform its duties in a better fashion than increasing the number of watchdogs and the amount of monitoring that goes on in this agency.
I think we have to recognize, Mr. President, whether we like it or not, that the CIA is a different agency from the others. It is not the Department of Transportation; it is not the Energy Department; it is not the Department of Defense. The very purpose of the CIA is to operate in a clandestine manner. That is what it is. It is not in a goldfish bowl. It is not an agency that is to have all its activities spread in the public. By its very nature, it is an agency that relies on originality and, indeed, a sense of the free spirit.
Sometimes I wonder, Mr. President, with the bureaucratic levies that are being imposed on that agency, whether it will ever be able to achieve the great intelligence breakthroughs that occurred, for example, in World War II and, in some instances, since then. Always the attitude seems to be we have to watch over that agency more. `Rogue elephant' is a term that has been used in the past.
So we have two more monitoring requirements: The swift reporting of the findings and this inspector general, without even giving the current Director of the CIA an opportunity to see if he cannot perform in a fashion that meets the approval of the committees. So, Mr. President, I hope that this amendment will be accepted. I ask the distinguished sponsor of the amendment if I might be listed as a cosponsor.
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Mr. HOLLINGS. I ask unanimous consent the Senator be listed as a cosponsor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CHAFEE. I know we are going to vote on this soon. I urge my colleagues to accept this amendment by the distinguished Senator from South Carolina. Subsequently, maybe we will have to go into these inspector general proceedings as is outlined. I do not know. But I do not think it is the way to proceed now. The President, who has had some experience in that agency, a good deal more experience than any of the rest of us have had, is opposed to this idea. We have all seen his letters indicating so.
I thank the Chair.
Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kohl). The Chair recognizes the Senator from New York [Mr. Moynihan].
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, we are going to vote shortly on this amendment, but not before a few further thoughts are offered on the subject.
I rise in opposition, and I rise with a very specific concern, and that is the subject of the involvement of the United States in assassinations and coups to overthrow governments in foreign lands.
Mr. President, I am going to take the liberty in this quiet moment of the afternoon to do something I do not believe I have ever done in 13 years in the Senate. I am going to reread a statement I made on the floor on Wednesday, October 18, 1989, in which I said:
`Mr. President, it happens I was one of a small company assembled in the big southwest corner office of the West Wing of the White House in the early afternoon of November 22, 1963, waiting word from Dallas. In any event, no message came; leastwise, none that I recall. Rather, at one point we all seemed to come to the same realization. John F. Kennedy was dead.' He had been assassinated.
`Within minutes, Hubert Humphrey burst into the room, tears streaming down his fact, grabbing Ralph Dungan by both arms: `What have they done to us?' he asked.'
`We all knew who `they' were. The right wing in Dallas. And yet, later in the day we learned on the radio that an arrest had been made of a man who had been connected with Fair Play For Cuba, a pro-Castro or sympathetic group. `Oh, God, I said to myself. They will kill him, too.' This is a matter of record. I began to plead that the Federal Government must get physical custody of Oswald. Late that evening I went out to Andrews Air Force Base to meet the plane bringing the Cabinet back from its aborted trip to Japan.'
You no doubt recall, Mr. President, that the plane had to turn around halfway across the Pacific. `I pleaded with the members of the Cabinet as they came down that we had to get custody of a man called Oswald.'
`I really worked on this. Dean Joan Konner of the Columbia School of Journalism recalls my coming into her studio at Channel 13 in New York City to plead the case.'
`Assassinations, you see, linger. Societies sicken.'
`I had more than Castro in mind. Obviously, we had tried without success to assassinate him. Had he succeeded in an attempt at revenge? But there was something more, Mr. President. It happened that at the time one also knew that we had been in on the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam.' He was the head of that government at that time. `We did not order it. We certainly did not do it. But we were around. I was not then involved in foreign affairs, but had friends who were. These friends were sick at what we had done. Diem was an innocent man; an ally. We had decided we needed a better one. Get out of the truck; say your prayers. Something like that. I don't even want to look it up. It was enough to read Senator Cohen's words of yesterday:
We have a tendency to take snapshots of today's events and airbrush away unpleasant experiences from our past. But it is important to remember that America reaped no political rewards in the coups that resulted in the deaths of South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem and Chile's Salvador Allende. And many will always wonder whether our own attempts to murder Fidel Castro played a role in the assassination of President John Kennedy.
`And so I have ever since been of the view, not perhaps an exceptional insight, that assassination works both ways. Hence I went a little sick yesterday morning to read on the front page of the New York Times the headline, `CIA Seeks Looser Rules On Killings During Coups.' Will we never learn? How little we know. How little we influence actual events. How vast and menacing our image in the world can become because of such statements.' I was referring to statements made the previous day by Director Webster. `Statements made to please, But, Mr. President, I will restrain myself.' Please what groups I did not and do not know. Nor do I know what specific maneuverings in the executive branch led to Director Webster's statement.
`There is also a matter of law. Not executive orders, but law. To be specific, supreme law. Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution we are busily amending these days: `Treaties shall be the supreme law of the land.'
Article I, section 8, if memory serves, also states `Congress shall have the power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations,' the law of nations being a direct counterpart to international law. Treaties become international law when they are sufficiently widely accepted. I suggest that a ban on assassinations is sufficiently accepted around the world to constitute a norm of international law.
`The issue involved is intervention. Intervention in the internal affairs of another nation is a violation of the United Nations Charter, and the charter of the Organization of American States.' Mr. President, the U.N. Charter, article II, section 4, says:
All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.
This is the heart of the charter, Mr. President: `All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.'
In my statement on October 18 I went on the state: `There is a distinction between intervention and merely attempting to influence events in another nation. That is normal. It is diplomacy. It is desirable. It is the way we learn to get along with one another. But it is another thing to seek to coerce in situations of violence; worst of all is the assassinations.'
Mr. President, here I would like to apologize for any offense I may have unintentionally given. In my statement I then said, `The word is `Arabic,' of course, but the calling is age-old, worldwide and universally despised.' I was not thoughtful enough when I used the phrase `Arabic, of course.' What we mean is only that the word happens to come from the Arab language, has a colorful and historic origin rooted in opposition to the Crusades and has been adopted in other languages, as words are constantly adopted across languages.
I went on the say: `I would further note that the United States is party to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions on the laws of war. Assuming that an internal convulsion rises to the point of international conflict * * * the Geneva Conventions come into play.
At that point, Mr. President, under a set of conventions now so widely adopted as to have the status of law, and of course ratified by the United States with the advice and consent of this Senate, individuals became responsible. Individuals who had never previously been the subject of international law were made such by the Geneva Conventions.
The sequence, Mr. President, was very simple: `The Geneva Conventions codified the judgments made at Nuremberg. Order the murder of a prisoner'--order an assassination--`and you can get yourself hanged.'
Mr. President, at Nuremberg the United States, with Supreme Court Justice Jackson on that tribunal along with eminent British jurists and others, convicted men to be hung by the neck until dead for actions which are now codified in the Geneva Conventions and are law. Individuals are responsible under that law.
And so I ask, where are we moving, and where is the sense of history in the events that have been taking place in Washington in recent weeks? Just Saturday morning I opened the New York Times, and read with great interest the headline `U.S. and Soviets Agree To Back U.N. Agencies.' Something of note took place. For the first time in the 44-year history of the U.N. the United States and the Soviet Union drafted and proposed a joint resolution in the General Assembly. For the first time ever they held a joint press conference to announce this.
I have since spoken to both the Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union and our own Permanent Representative, the distinguished career Foreign Service Officer, Ambassador Pickering, and they agree that this is a large event. The two powers have come together to say they are going to renew their determination to see that the U.N. Charter works and that the international system enables it to work.
They committed themselves again to the principles of the charter.
Mr. President, on the very next column of the same page I then read the following in a dispatch to the Times: `The Bush administration has sent to Congress a looser interpretation of the executive order banning covert involvement in assassinations overseas, William H. Weber, Director of the Central Intelligence, said in a published report.'
That report came from an interview, a luncheon that Judge Webster had with the editors and reporters of the Washington Post.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Times story on the United States-Soviet joint initiative be placed in the Record at this point.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
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United Nations, November 3: In a new sign of their improving relations, the United States and the Soviet Union said today they would work together to strengthen the United Nations and its agencies around the world.
The two countries said they planned to submit a draft resolution to the General Assembly calling for the organization to play a greater role in maintaining peace and fostering international cooperation.
It was the first time in the United Nations' 44-year history--largely a tale of cold war or deadlock between Moscow and Washington--that the two nations have co-sponsored a General Assembly resolution aimed at reinforcing the organization's work, diplomats said.
Even the joint press conference called to introduce the text was the first they have held together at the United Nations.
The resolution, which is likely to win unanimous endorsement, contains no commitments beyond those accepted by Washington and Moscow in signing the United Nations Charter.
But both sides said the draft measure signaled that they want to extend the pledge of cooperation exchanged last month by Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze in Wyoming.
The announcement today was consistent with the Soviet Union's growing support for the United Nations. It also represents the strongest endorsement the Bush Administration has given so far to the organization's role in preserving peace and fighting global problems such as drug trafficking and damage to the environment.
In a joint statement, the United States and the Soviet Union said, `What is most important about this resolution is not its specific language but what it symbolizes as a new beginning at the United Nations--a new spirit of constructive cooperation.'
They added: `We hope it may offer an example to other member states that it is possible to set aside the tendentious polemics that have been too common in the United Nations in the past.'
The two nations pledged to work together through the Security Council to `preserve peace and restore order' in the world.
They said they would also promote `budgetary reform' throughout the United Nations system and eliminate `duplication of effort.'
`Today is the end of confrontation,' the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, Vladimir F. Petrovsky, said at the press conference. `We want a new atmosphere of practical, serious discussion in all bodies of the United Nations.'
The resolution also represents a tactical victory for the United States in its long-running war of words with Moscow at the United Nations, diplomats said.
As part of the agreement, the Soviet Union has ended a three-year struggle to persuade the General Assembly to endorse what it called `a new comprehensive approach to international peace and security.'
Just what such a commitment might entail has never been clear. The United States, its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and some developing countries have opposed the Soviet plan, saying that existing United Nations mechanisms are adequate.
In the course of preparing today's resolution, the Soviet Union told the United States that it hopes to join the organization's Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, and eventually the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, as I noted, the Times article on Judge Webster's comments was passed on an interview he gave to the Post. I therefore turn to the front page, the same day, Saturday last, of the Post, where where one reads the headline: `Administration Alters Assassination Ban.' In a story written by David B. Ottaway, and Don Oberdorfer the Post states that:
CIA Director William H. Webster said yesterday that the Bush administration has given Congress a new legal interpretation of the executive order banning covert U.S. involvement in assassinations that would allow the Central Intelligence Agency to help coup plotters in other countries as long as the death of a political leader is not their explicit goal.
Mr. President, to maintain the contrast with the announcement of the United States-Soviet joint resolution, I ask unanimous consent that the Post article on Judge Webster's comments be printed in the Record at this point.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
CIA Director William H. Webster said yesterday that the Bush administration has given Congress a new legal interpretation of the executive order banning covert U.S. involvement in assassinations that would allow the Central Intelligence Agency to help coup plotters in other countries as long as the death of a political leader is not their explicit goal.
Webster said the still-classified Justice Department opinion issued Oct. 27 recognizes that `you cannot equate violence with assassination.' He indicated that the agency thus could assist an attempt to remove a foreign leader who was then killed accidentally.
`Our job is not to be part of a plan to cause the death of a political figure,' he said, adding that also means `we shouldn't be part of a plan that we know someone else is going to seek to cause the death of a political figure.'
Asked whether this means the ruling does not extend to the killing of a political figure accidentally, Webster replied, `That's the legal guidance.'
In a wide-ranging interview with Washington Post editors and reporters, Webster provided an unusually candid account of his views on a variety of issues ranging from the current situation in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Afghanistan, China and Panama to the plight of the hostages held in Lebanon and the investigaiton into the bombing last December of Pan Am Flight 103.
Apparently seeking to demonstrate that he has gained a mastery of complex foreign policy issues, Webster spoke confidently and in detail on most of those subjects even while seeking to avoid any expression of his own opinions on controversial policy issues. Some senior Bush administration officials have criticized Webster, saying that he has failed to master his subject matter and declined to offer policy advice to the president.
The CIA director made these other points during his 90-minute interview over lunch at The Post:
The administration hopes to locate, seize and bring back to the United States for trial the terrorists responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21, that caused the deaths of all 259 people aboard and 11 others in Lockerbie, Scotland, where is crashed.
Anticipating the possibility of such action, the Justice Department, he said, has created a new term, `rendition,' to describe the act of capturing and bringing back to the United States a criminal suspect. Webster confirmed that the
United States believe it has the legal basis for kidnapping a terrorist in another country even without the knowledge and permission of its government.
The term was contained in a Justice Department legal opinion issued last June and is particularly aimed at allowing the CIA or Federal Bureau of Investigation to seize a terrorist in countries like Lebanon, where there is no longer any rule of law.
The United States faces `a very real possibility' of having to decide to try to save some, but not all, of the eight American hostages being held in Lebanon by Iranian-inspired terrorists. That choice would arise, Webster said, if the United States acquired firm intelligence on the whereabouts of only some of the hostages. He said the decision about what to do in that case would have to be made by higher-ranking officials.
Webster acknowledged that the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies suffer from a serious `intelligence shortfall' about hostages' whereabouts at any given time, a problem complicated by the fact they are not kept all togther.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has consolidated his power and has `running room,' Webster said, but at the same time Gorbachev is under mounting pressure to make good on his promised reforms.
The political change underway in East Germany is `one of the phenomena that is going much faster than anybody could have anticipated' and that when this happens `you might have violence.' He said he found during a recent European trip that West German leaders were `really worried' that the fast pace of change in East Germany would `backfire' on Gorbachev's reform efforts.
Intelligence reports suggest that probably `thousands' of people have been killed in China since the outbreak of the pro-democracy movement last spring and that a serious power struggle is underway in Beijing and is being conducted within the Communist Party's central military commission, of which Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is chairman.
CIA analysts believe that the U.S.-backed Afghan resistance is slowly winning the war against the Soviet-supported regime in Kabul and that the Soviet Union, now providing $300 million a month in military aid, has taken on `a very expensive gamble' in Afghanistan.
The coup attempt in Panama early last month failed mainly because its leaders `planned to do it themselves' without any U.S. assistance and to carry out `an old-fashioned coup where people don't have to get hurt.'
Speaking about the months-long debate between Congress and the CIA over the meaning of the 1976 executive ban on U.S. involvement in assassinations, Webster said he felt the outcome was that `we're back to a basic executive order that says you [the CIA] will not engage in assassination.'
`We now have the extensive opinion from the Department of Justice that gives us an understanding of what the heck that [assassination order] means,' he said.
He said the CIA, in seeking the new interpretation, was not seeking `an invitation for us to engage in more coup plotting . . . but simply, if we are asked to do it, that we be asked to do it under rules that comply with the executive order and are not so unrealistic that we will end up not succeeding.'
Webster said the Justice Department had begun drafting the new interpretation immediately after the failed Panama coup Oct. 3, though he said it would have made no difference to the situation in Panama if the new guidelines had already been in place. Webster said Justice's Office of Legal Counsel under Assistant Attorney General William P. Barr, had pored through `boxes of files' concerning its meaning that had accumulated since the original executive order was issued in 1976.
The Justice Department legal opinion, he said, is `not that complicated' but is `several pages' in length. Barr has already briefed him on the meaning of the interpretation, he added.
Another administration official familiar with the drafting of the new opinion said late yesterday that a team of six Justice Department lawyers and another four from the CIA had searched through 160 boxes of documents from the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations to determine whether the executive order was meant to exclude U.S. involvement in coups where violence and accidental death were possible.
The official said the Justice Department opinion did not constitute a loosening of the rules but rather a clarification of the 1976 executive order.
Asked whether he thought the Senate and House intelligence committees would accept the new interpretation, Webster said there were always `mixed views' among their members about whether the United States `should have anything at all to do with coups.' But he said he felt `the air has been sort of cleared' now and that the various conflicting interpretations of the order that had accumulated since 1976 like `barnacles' removed.
Senate intelligence committee sources said that as of late yesterday afternoon, the committee had not received the Justice Department's new legal opinion, though it was expected imminently. Told Webster's description of it, one source said, `I don't think we're going to have a great deal of trouble with it.'
Regarding the hostages in Lebanon, Webstere was frank about what he called the agency's `intelligence shortfall,' which he said stemmed partly from `the nature of terrorism' and partly from the chaotic conditions in Lebanon.
`Over there, you cross the street and people are wondering what you're doing on their side of the street. It's about the world's worst environment to conduct any kind of intelligence,' he said, adding, `It's hard for our assets, and we do have assets over there, to communicate with us.'
Webster said the CIA was `pretty much' convinced Lt. Col. William R. Higgins had died long before Lebanese terrorists produced last July 31 a videotape of his body hanging from a rope and that there was some intelligence indicating he may have been killed in early July 1988 at the time the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian jetliner over the Persian Gulf.
soviet union and east europe: gorbachev's in control, but time is shortening
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Gorbachev has consolidated his political power, but is under growing pressure to show economic results from his perestroika reform program, Webster sid.
The CIA director, who took pains to say he did not wish to participate in the recent public debate within the administration about Gorbachev's prospects, said `there is a lot of pressure on Gorbachev to make the reforms visible' to the Soviet citizen and consumer.
`The time he has to make things happen is shortening,' said Webster, not only because of the economy but also because of conflicts between nationalities in the Soviet Union and the implications of events in Eastern Europe.
Webster was asked about an intelligence estimate that reportedly said Gobachev could be expected to stay in office for at least two more years. Webester said there were varying opinions about Gobachev's staying power, but that the two-year minimum was `a kind of working number.' He added, `I don't regard it as significant. . . . It doesn't say he will drop out in two years. It says he's got running room.'
The degree of Soviet tolerance of independent actions in Eastern Europe, and especially East Germany, was another topic for the CIA director.
What impressed Webster about East Germany--and political leaders he saw during a recent trip to Western Europe--is `the pace of change [which] had reached the point that people were beginning to worry.'
A key issue, said Webster, is what will the Soviet Union do about the situation in East Germany. `So far, it doens't seem they are prepared to do very much.'
Regarding the Soviet Union's own efforts at economic reform, Webester said the process of shifting the emphasis in the Soviet economy from military production to consumer goods is proving to be difficult and time consuming. The CIA chief estimate it will take two years to make major shifts from military production, and another two yers for consumers to begin to see results.
Gorbachev, who has shaken up the Communist Party Politburo and Central Committee and sponsored a process of contested elections and open parliamentary debate, is under `no imminent political pressure,' in Webser's opinion.
Webster said, `It is a widely held view in the [Central Intelligence] Agency that every day [Gorbachev] remains in office and pushes his program, it reduces the likelihood that there will be significant changes in that program if he should go out of office.'
Many also think, he went on to say, that if Soviet conservatives should succeed in reversing Gorbachev's politicies, `it would be nastier . . . it would require more violence and more repression than has been required' in the past several years.
`Nobody has written Gobachev off by a long shot,' said Webster, in a statement that appeared in contrast with some gloomy assessments heard from soviet experts and some in the intelligence agencies. `His definable opposition is shrinking,' Webster said.
Gorbachev's recent attempts to crack down on some elements of the Soviet press are controversial in Moscow and the United States. Webster mentioned them in passing from another angle, calling Gorbachev's recently revealed sensitivity to the Soviet press `the only indication we have that he is human.'
On the political situation in East Germany, where some 5,000 were reported yesterday to have fled to the West German Embassy in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Webster said, `It is going much faster than anyone might have anticipated.'
An apparent reason for the continuing flight of refugees, he said, is that the people of East Germany do not appear to be sure yet that the new communist leader, Egon Krenz, has seriously changed to a path of reform.
`Lurking here is a very important issue, reunification,' observed Webster. `It has to be discussed. It's there,' he said of the `German question, which has suddenly returned to active debate after decades of being mostly dormant.
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A power struggle is underway for military control of China between senior leader Deng and another aged veteran of the 1949 revolution, Yang Shangkun, according to Webster.
The struggle is being fought out, Webster said, in the Communist Party's Central Military Commission, which makes policy for the armed forces and which is believed to have directed the military crackdown on dissenters last June in Tiananmen Square in Beijing and elsewhere in China.
Deng, 85, is chairman of the military commission, his only remaining official post. Yang, 82, is vice chairman and secretary general of the military commission as well as president of China, a largely ceremonial post. Though they have been comrades for decades, Deng and Yang are reported to have very different ideas. Deng has been the leading advocate of reformist economic policies and, until recently, tolerated a substantial degree of independent political thinking. Yang is reputed to be more conservative in every way, though his precise views on most issues are unknown.
In the power struggle, Webster said, Deng is reported to be supporting the new Communist Party general secretary, Jiang Zemin, as chairman of the military commission. But Webster said the party chief, who was hand-picked by Deng following the June crackdown, `has no constituency of his own' within the Chinese leadership.
Webster said it did not appear likely that there would be another violent eruption as in last summer's events, but that, `I think there is a lot of potential for change inside [the leadership] at this point.'
The Soviet Union continues to provide massive military supplies to the beleaguered Afghan government army under President Najibullah but the mujaheddin rebels `are winning' the war, Webster said. He acknowledged that the rebels' advance is not rapid, however. `Maybe it seems glacial to some,' he said.
The CIA director said the Soviet Union continues to provide supplies and equipment worth $300 million monthly, in a `gamble [that] is very expensive.' Over 1,000 surface-to-surface Scud missiles, which the U.S. says cost $1 million each, have been fired since Soviet troops completed their withdrawal early this year, Webster said.
He said the Soviets were surprised that Najibullah was able to survive against the rebel assault after all Soviet troops had been withdrawn. So was the CIA--which, according to government sources, first had predicted that the Soviets would not withdraw from Afghanistan and then predicted that the Soviet-backed regime would quickly fall.
The failure of the rebels to win any dramatic victories has led to descriptions of the Afghan war as a stalemate. But according to Webster, the rebels are `fighting actively and aggressively on a number of fronts,' forcing the Soviet-backed forces to spread themselves thin in self-defense. The Afghan government army, Webster said, has been reduced from 150,000 troops to 120,000 by deaths and desertion.
Though the Najibullah government remains in power in Kabul, said Webster, the rebels control about 85 percent of the territory, leaving the government effectively in charge of only a band of cities linked by a U-shaped road. He said the mujaheddin continue to besiege the garrison town of Khost near the Pakistani border, with the Afghan government parachuting men and supplies into combat with the rebels. Khost, he said, might be the first major government-held town to fall.
Regarding the investigation into the mid-air bombing that killed all 259 people aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 more on the ground in Scotland, Webster said the U.S. government is still not at the point where it could issue indictments and arrest warrants for anyone.
Webster praised the combined efforts of investigators from four nations to track down the terrorists responsible but said there had been `too much discussion' in the news media about their work.
`It makes it very difficult to lay traps and find new evidence when people start reading about themselves. And it makes countries and [security] services defensive. Right now the name of the game is for the bomb not to have been put on board in their country,' he said. He added that by using the term `lay traps,' he meant surveillance of suspects.
There have been a recent spate of reports that the bomb that destroyed the Boeing 747 was contained in a suitcase that was placed aboard the plane after it arrived in Frankfurt, West Germany, from Malta. Some sources believe the news leaks to have been the result of British intelligence officials angry at lack of cooperation from West German security officials.
`The assumption is: `If it turns out to have been on board in my country, we will be accused of not having prevented it,' when the effort really ought to be how did it happen? Who did it? Where?' Webster added.
Asked whether the goal is to apprehend those responsible and bring them back to the United States for trial, the CIA director replied, `That's correct.'
Webster said the Pan Am incident had helped the Justice Department to focus on the problem of establishing a legal basis for the capture and return of suspects in the bombing and that `they fashioned a new name, `rendition.'
Webster said such a seizure of a terrorist suspect in another country by U.S. authorities was accepted by American courts which `do not much care how the defendant happened to come into America.'
`So it isn't an issue of whether they can be tried or not. The issue has become one of international relations, respect for sovereignty, politics,' he said.
`It seems to me that you have a different set of circumstances in a country like Lebanon which has no capacity to provide law enforcement or assistance than going to another neighbor such as Sweden or someplace and lifting somebody out of there,' he said.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the new interpretation of the ban on assassinations does not say that assassination cannot be an `implicit goal' or an anticipated effect. The new ruling only states that assassination must not be `their explicit goal,' as if coups take place according to written agreements. We will do this, we will not do that; signed, codified.
Mr. Webster said the still classified Justice Department opinion issued October 27 recognizes that `you cannot equate violence with assassination.'
Mr. President, I can only read this--and I shall be happy to hear other interpretations--to indicate that violence is all right if it does not explicitly extend to assassination. The United States can be involved in the support of violent actions in other countries.
The UN Charter states that all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of a state. I think it is pretty obvious that to change a government by violence or force is certainly interfering in the territorial integrity and political independence of a state.
Judge Webster--and it is Judge Webster, a former U.S. district judge--said that our job is to refuse to become involved in a plan to cause the death of a political figure. He states that we should not be part of a plan if we know with certainty that someone else is going to seek to assassinate or execute a political figure. But he adds that the ruling does not extend to killing a political figure accidentally. Judge Webster states that this is the legal guidance he has received. We are sorry, you are dead. We had not known that was part of the plan; it was not explicit.
Mr. President, we are now openly announcing to the world that it is all right for our Government to be involved, to use its resources to overthrow other governments, and hope that there are no accidental deaths in the process.
There is something in international law called reciprocity. What is conceded to you by one country, you concede to that same country in return. Mr. Pesident, am I to understand that the United States believes it is all right for other goverments to seek to ovethrow the Government of the United States, as long as they do not explicitly intend the death of the President of the United States? Would that extent to the Vice President, or is it just to heads of state? Would it extend to any set of individuals?
Mr. President, two centuries ago such a statement by an official of the American government would have caused an outrage. We said in our Constitution--and we did, sir, in the debates that took place in the Congess under the Articles of the Confederation--that the United States would adhere to international law. We took that position in the Continental Congress prior to the Articles of Confederation. I think probably the phrase would have been `law of nations.' The term international law came later, in the 19th century. We said, `You can look to us as a country which will abide by the law of nations.' A responsible official should not say otherwise.
President Bush went to the United Nations on September 25, and he told the General Assembly, `The founders of this historic institution believed that it was here that the nations of the world might come to agree that law, not force, shall govern.' Yet now we are adopting a code which only prohibits the explicit intention to murder a head of state.
Judge Webster went on to make this extraordinary statement, and I am reading now from the Washington Post:
`The coup attempt in Panama early last month failed mainly because its leaders'--the article is quoting Mr. Webster--`planned to do it themselves, without any U.S. assistance, and to carry out * * *' Mr. President I ask your indulgence. Listen to this carefully. These men in Panama planned to carry out the coup without U.S. assistance--a mistake, says Judge Webster. The further mistake was that they planned to carry out `an old-fashioned coup, where people do not have to get hurt.'
I see that the distinguished leaders of the Intelligence, Committee are on the floor. Do they wax nostalgic, as the Director of CIA evidently does, for those old-fashioned coups?
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Mr. COHEN. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOYNIHAM. I will not be long. Mr. President, when I was a youth, a while ago, it was a practice for young men to yearn for an old-fashioned girl, presumably untainted by the snares and delusions of modern life: lipstick, rouge, whatever. Today we long for old-fashioned coups, where only
inconsequential people die. The mind reels.
I say simply, sir, that we cannot have it both ways. We cannot have the President of the United States go to the General Assembly and say that the United Nations was founded because Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Harry S Truman believed that it was there that the nations of the world might come to agree that law, not force, shall govern and, at the same time, openly assist violent coups. We seem to be saying that law not force shall govern--an excepting when we use force. What do we really think, Mr. President?
I do not think a government can simultaneously have two such ideas in its mind, without raising the question of duplicity, imbecility, weakness of mind or just plain weakness of character. Are we a government that believes and states openly that we are for old-fashioned coups, that it was a mistake to try to overthrow the government in Panama without our assistance? This is an elemental violation of law, a violation of treaty law, our law. Nuremberg was our law. It was said at the time, courageously by professors of international law, that Nuremberg had been victor's law. Therefore, we said let us make it treaty law. Let us draw up these conventions and have each of us commit ourselves to abiding by them.
We once believed in these principles, sir. If we do not believe in them any longer, the question arises: What do we believe? Do we truly reject the Charter and the Geneva Conventions? Do we think that there is an exception clause for the United States. All other countries are bound, but not we?
I will tell you, sir, it did not feel that way on November 22, 1963, in the White House, when we knew our President was dead--so very recently after our Government was involved in the death of another President.
This is not why we wrote those clauses into our Constitution.
I see that the distinguished vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee is on the floor. At this point I would rather hear from him than continue my own remarks. If he would allow me just the opportunity to say that he has been courageous on these matters. He has been forthright.
I am also happy to report to the Senate that this afternoon the House-Senate conference on the State Department Authorization bill adopted the amendment which I offered in committee about soliciting and diverting funds, making it a crime under title 18 of the United States Code to seek, under specific circumstances, to avoid prohibitions made by this Congress, the first legislation we shall have out of the Iran-Contra affair.
Yet even as we deal with that last crisis of Government we find the Director of Central Intelligence is openly discussing the use of force in international affairs. Supporting the very conduct we have said we are against when others engage in it. How many speeches have we heard about such conduct on this floor when others have done it? Now we propose to do it ourselves.
I think we need an inspector general, and if we read the press correctly, that inspector general may not only perform audits. He may find himself involved in issues of crime, the type of crimes for which we have in the past adjudged that the punishment was death. I did not know how lost the intelligence community was, how oblivious to the idea of international law it had become. It is eminently law abiding and has respect for the domestic legislation of this country. But the intelligence community does not seem to have absorbed that other fact of our history, a fact which goes back to the beginnings of our history, to the Articles of Confederation and before, much less the Constitution: international law is part of our law.
I speak, sir, as someone who served on the Intelligence Committee for 8 years. I have received the Central Intelligence Agency's medallion for service an award they give sparingly.
I tell you this, sir, I would not have accepted it from a Director who asserted that the United States had the right to violate the Geneva conventions, article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and the rule of conduct of all civilized nations. If we are not a civilized Nation, what are we? And what are we becoming?
Mr. President, I see that the distinguished vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee is on the floor.
Mr. KERREY. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am happy to yield for a question, and then I will yield the floor to the Senator from Maine.
Mr. KERREY. I am inquiring of the Senator, as a consequence of a personal interest I expressed earlier in a private conversation, that this proposed policy is one that I find to be an extremely dangerous one.
I share the Senator's belief that the United States of America ought to project its values first and foremost. I am personally concerned and felt it deeply when I see the director of the Central Intelligence Agency saying that violence and assassination are not equivalent, and that if someone were to accidently die during a coup attempt, that would be an acceptable thing to have happened. Having participated in the carrying out of the Phoenix program at one time, I know how easy it is to cross the line and say, well, yes, general so and so accidently died while we were driving him to the base. He fell out of the car while we were going back to the base and/or some other thing.
Once, it seems to me, we have projected a standard, we are willing to accept an assassination if it is accidentally, it seems to me we are projecting to the world a value that is at odds with our most precious values.
I am curious. I have heard the Senator's previous speech and heard pieces of this speech. Is that the principal objection that the Senator from New York is offering to this particular policy.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Senator for his remarks.
The Senator from Nebraska is one of the Members of this body who shed blood in this Nation's wars and has done so honorably and been honored for it. No one has more of a right to stand on this floor and ask: what are we becoming? What have we come to?
He speaks of morality. I would simply speak of law. Are we a Nation of laws? If we are, then these laws apply to our activities abroad as well as to our activities at home. That is what our Constitution says. It is our own commitment made in treaties which we negotiated and drafted.
Sir, I think the inspector general will have work to do. I hope he will not, but maybe he will. I would like the record to say, if the committee's proposal is accepted, that part of his responsibility is to see that the laws of nations are observed as well as the laws of the United States, because they are the same. Treaties are the supreme law of this land and they extend to the inspector general's domain as much as any statute enacted here. Treaties are in fact statutes enacted here.
Beyond that I would say simply to the gallant and honored Senator from Nebraska, I do not know what we are coming to when such things can be said and have so little response.
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Mr. KERREY. I appreciate the Senator's response. I appreciate his indulgence as well as that of the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Oklahoma. Obviously they have spent an awful lot of time on this. I do not question at all their judgment.
I feel very strongly that the language used by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is language that should not be policy of the United States. We should not have our political leaders saying that assassination and violence are not equivalent. They are equivalent.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. At the very least, if we say it is right for us to do it to others, it is right if it is done to us. We did not think it was very funny the afternoon we learned John F. Kennedy was dead.
Mr. KERREY. I agree, it should not be our policy.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that two further items be printed in the Record at this point. The first is a letter I received after my earlier statement on this issue from Edward E. Rice. Mr. Rice was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the time of the Diem coup. He states eloquently that he recalls `with particular vividness that we did good neither for ourselves nor for Vietnam by encouraging the Vietnamese who carried it out. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
The second item is from the Times of November 1, 1989. It reports that Iran is adopting a law to allow it to seize United States citizens and bring them to Iran to stand trial. The Iranian Parliament acted in response to a Department of Justice opinion stating that the United States may seize persons abroad and bring them to the United States for trial.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Tiburon, CA, October 23, 1989.
Hon. Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Moynihan: Permit me to express gratification that you have raised your voice, both on behalf of reason and with passion, against proposals to loosen the rules against United States participation in assassinations. I refer, of course, to your Op-ed piece in the October 20 New York Times.
Having been Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs when the coup against Diem was mounted, I recall with particular vividness that we did good neither for ourselves nor for Vietnam by encouraging the Vietnamese who carried it out.
Indeed, on the basis of my experience as a Foreign Service Officer I long ago concluded that our close involvement in the internal affairs of other governments in general, and our use of so-called covert operations in particular, have done our interests little good and much harm. Moreover, that conclusion has been strongly confirmed by my research, subsequent to retirement, of cases in which I had not been personally involved--research done in preparing the manuscript of my recent book `Wars of the Third Kind: Conflict in Underdeveloped Countries.'
Sincerely,
Edward E. Rice.
Tehran, Iran, October 21: Parliament approved a bill today allowing Iran to arrest any American anywhere who offends it.
The Chief Justice, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, said the bill, approved by 150 members of the 270-seat Parliament, responded to the `bullying nature' of the United States.
He referred specifically to a Justice Department ruling that United States Government agents could pursue and apprehend terrorists abroad without the permission of foreign governments, which he called `the worst kind of terrorism and kidnapping.'
The bill must be approved by the Council of Guardians, 12 religious leaders and exports on Islamic law who decide constitutional questions.
A statement today from the Revolutionary Guards Corps said tens of thousands of its members would lead demonstrators Saturday outside the former United States Embassy to mark Nov. 4, 1979, `this great day' when militants overran it and seized Americans as hostages.
Mr. COHEN. I would like to take a few moments to offer a comment on this particular subject.
First, let me commend my colleague from New York, who is a noted historian, or I should say a historian of some note, and it is important that we have a sense of history in this institution. I believe it was the poet Auden who said that in history a moment held too long burns the hand. Unfortunately, there are not too many who want to hold history that long, perhaps because of its incendiary affect.
I was struck by some of the comments that had been offered here in opposition to the inspector general provision. I would like to address myself to that in a moment. I first would like to turn to the subject matter addressed by my colleague from New York about the need for us to look back.
It is important that we discuss this sort of nostalgic sense of the Central Intelligence Agency, the sort of swashbuckling view one holds of an unshackled CIA, as if Errol Flynn was in the background of some individual's mind. I would like to go back to the time of the assassination of Jack Kennedy and look at the report that was filed some 10 or 15 years later by a congressional committee, the Senate committee investigating the assassination plots of the CIA. There is some interesting language in this report. It is dated November 18, 1975 and reads at page 281--and it has a statement by President Ford who said:
I am opposed to political assassination. This administration has not and will not use such means as instruments of national policy.'
And then the report goes on to quote from Richard Goodwin, who served with President Kennedy, and he is paraphrasing Kennedy, who reportedly said,`We can't get into that kind of thing, or we would all be targets.'
Then we have a statement from the Director of Central Intelligence, Bill Colby, and then finally Richard Helms--the subject of an important book written by Thomas Power, The Man Who Kept The Secret. There is a statement here from Richard Helms. He said:
As a result of my experiences through the years, when I became Director I had made up my mind that this option * * * of killing foreign leaders, was something that I did not want to happen on my watch. My reasons for this were these:
There are not only moral reasons but there are also some other rather practical reasons.
And he goes on to talk about how it is impossible in a demoractic system to keep this a secret. The truth will come out. Someone will talk. Someone will talk to a Congressman, a Senator, or to a member of the press. The truth will come out.
But, in addition to the truth getting out, he said there is another consideration:
If you are going to try by this kind of means to remove a foreign leader, then who is going to take his place running that country, and are you essentially better off as a matter of practice when it is over than you were before?
And he goes on to give an example, President Diem being one, with him having been, I think he used the word here, `eliminated' from the scene. After Diem was eliminated from the scene, we had a revolving door of prime ministers.
In other words, the whole exercise turned out to be to the disadvantage of the United States. `I don't think it is a viable option in the United States of America these days.'
Then Chairman Church, at that point, posed a question to which there was an answer. Finally, Church said:
And finally, if we were to reserve to ourselves the prerogative to assassinate foreign leaders, we may invite reciprocal action from foreign governments who assume that if it's our prerogative to do so, it is their prerogative as well, and that is another danger that we at least invite with this kind of action, wouldn't you agree?
And Mr. Helms said, `Yes, sir.'
So there is no disagreement from all of our past DCI's--from Helms to Colby to Turner, I assume up until the present, that this is not and should not be the policy of the United States.
And what does this have to do with the inspector general? Well, it has a lot to do with the inspector general. We have moved from the discussion of the inspector general to the Attorney General because you are also getting involved in a Justice Department interpretation of what bans on assassinations really mean.
But I say this in the context of what is before the Senate tonight, the motion to strike the provision dealing with the inspector general.
I listened with some care and attentiveness to my colleague from Rhode Island, who is not on the floor at this moment. I must say, I was troubled by at least the implications of what was said by my good friend. He spoke again with some sense of nostalgia about the past: What have we done to the CIA; where are the good old days--as if they really were the good old days.
If you start talking about the good old days, I would talk about Operation Mongoose. The Senator from Nebraska talked about the Phoenix program. And how about ZR/RIFLE and QJ/WIN, the hired assassins? We can start digging through the good old days and find they really were not quite as good as we would like to imagine in this romantic notion that we now seem to hold of the past.
The suggestion was made that this is somehow a product of that Iran-Contra thing, and someone asked, `When are we going to give it up?' When do we give Iran-Contra up, as if it were simply a passing moment in our history.
Well, the Senator from South Carolina and I were on a plane one time when we first learned about this, coming back from the Far East. We had a pretty good idea what had taken place at that time. It was not just some passing moment inour history, some momentary diversion. Iran-Contra was a very significant event in our history, and there were some lessons to learn from it.
So we should not just say, `Oh, this Iran-Contra thing is coming back to paralyze us once more.' We had the potential for having a government within a government, of selling U.S. assets and taking the windfall profits to set up a secret account to run other covert actions with no accountability, no trail, no trace, off the shelf, no records, so that no one would know. The Congress would not know. Maybe the President would not know. That is what was involved in Iran-Contra, not some Iran-Contra thing that is passed a couple of years ago, with nothing to trouble us with today.
We nearly saw the unraveling of a Presidency as a result of that. It was significant and we ought not to sweep it into the dustbin of history as if it were nothing.
There was reference made to timely notice. Here goes Congress again getting into this timely notice thing. Well, this timely notice thing was passed back in 1980. Timely notice was put into law as a result of congressional concern about foreign policy actions being taken without any notice whatsoever to the Congress of the United States.
Again, it was suggested that Congress is getting deeply involved in these matters. I hope so. I hope so. I want to be deeply involved in these matters. I think we have acted responsibly. I think we have saved the agency from time to time from some very unwise actions because we were to deeply involved.
And it was also said, `I hope you guys are trying to do something as much to help the agency as you are to investigate the agency.' The implication is that Congress is micromanaging, that we are Lilliputians tying up this giant Gulliver, interfering with the capability of the Central Intelligence Agency, somehow destroying the very agency itself.
I would ask the Director of the CIA to respond to that; ask the Agency whether or not there has been a substantial increase in their staff; ask them whether they have seen a massive increase in their funding; ask them whether they have seen a substantial increase in their technical capabilities; and ask them, indeed, whether they, as a result of congressional action, have managed to avoid some of the activities which otherwise would have caused them great stress.
Those who diminish the significance of the Iran-Contra affair do not
understand it. The agency was not involved in that. That is precisely why the scandal occurred. It was an attempt by the Director and others to circumvent the agency, to take it out of the agency, to put it in the White House, where there could be no congressional scrutiny. There are no inspectors general down there, and no congressional oversight of the NSC.
It was not the agency that got involved in Iran-Contra. It was the White House. It was because the agency was required by law to provide timely notice, to notify the Hill if we are involved in covert actions. That is why they were not, for the most part, involved in the Iran-Contra scandal.
I do not impute this to my colleague who is offering this amendment. That is not what he has been saying. But those who criticize the committee for having supported the inclusion of the inspector general provision, I think misunderstand what the committee is seeking to do. It is not seeking to hinder or to hurt the Central Intelligence Agency but to strengthen not only our oversight but indeed their own accountability.
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Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I had waited until I thought most of the argument would have been concluded on the inspector general issue before speaking in favor of this provision as I authored it in the committee.
I believe that this afternoon's debate has been a compliment and tribute to the U.S. Senate. The contribution made by the distinguished Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan, has been very profound. When he spoke of the events of the assassination of President Kennedy as they bore on this subject, he brought more of a panoramic sweep to the kind of issue that we are discussing.
It is because of the experience that this Senator had as one of the lawyers who worked on the Warren Commission staff and one of the members of the Intelligence Committee now for the past 5 years that I have authored and pressed this issue, because I do not believe that you can control from the outside, either before the fact or during the fact or after the fact; and that to have effective oversight requires someone within the agency, like an inspector general who knows the CIA, who can observe it on a day-in-and-day-out basis. He is appointed by the President--certainly the Director of the CIA has a hand in it--and if the inspector general has a disagreement with CIA Director, obviously, before it is brought before the Intelligence Committee, it is discussed with the CIA Director.
But, when the Warren Commission investigated the assassination of President Kennedy, we found much more than could be comprehended in an investigation. We looked into the physical evidence, as to what happened to President Kennedy on the day of the assassination, and that was relatively direct. We had bullet holes, wounds of entry and exit, and trajectory. When the Commission looked at the role of the FBI and the CIA, it was much more complicated in terms of what had happened.
When the Intelligence Committee looks at the activities of the CIA--we work very hard in the Intelligence Committee behind closed doors--there is no covereage by C-SPAN or C-SPAN-II. And when the comment was made earlier today by the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island, Senator Chafee, that if we spent half as much time helping the CIA as we do trying to oversee them--believe me, we spend more than half our time trying to help the CIA.
But it is not possible for the Intelligence Committee to get inside the CIA, as an inspector general could. We do not wish to micromanage the CIA, and we would have to do less if there were to be an independent inspector general who would be looking after the issues day in and day out. And only in the rare occurrence where there was a disagreement would the inspector general come to the Intelligence Committee.
The Department of Defense has had an inspector general for 7 years and that inspector general deals with a great many secrets. There has never been a problem.
The Secretary of Defense, according to information provided by this Senator, has never had to intervene on an investigation conducted by the inspector general of the Department of Defense.
We come to this point in 1989 because of the considered judgment of the committee that we need this action taken. And it is not based merely on Iran-Contra. And it is not based merely upon the action of the 1970's.
The distinguished Senator from South Carolina talks about not responding to the 1970's. Well, Mr. President, the 1970's were important. In 1976 the forerunner of the Intelligence Committee found a series of problems and defects in the CIA office of inspector general ranging from lack of objectivity to insufficient authority and to lack of independence.
Two years later, in 1978, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence considered creation of a permanent position of inspector general to the CIA with more authority, objectivity, and reporting requirements.
Then we come to Iran-Contra and the expression has been heard on the floor of the Senate `Why look back at Iran-Contra? Why focus on Iran-Contra? Let us move ahead.'
Well, Iran-Contra was a major event in the life of this country and we have not corrected the systemic problems of Iran-Contra. We discussed that earlier today with the problem of notice.
We have a President in whom we have confidence and we have accepted his representation that he will answer the questions and tell us about covert activities. And we have a Director of CIA in whom there is confidence.
But, Mr. President, we do not come to this issue in 1989 without having given the Director of Central Intelligence 2 years to correct the problems which were identified in 1987. The distinguished Senator from Alaska [Mr. Murkowski] says: `If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
Well, it is `broke.' And there are specific examples where there is a need for change. The distinguished Senator from Missouri [Mr. Danforth] said, `Do not barge in, without looking at reforms. Give the Director the benefit of the doubt.'
The same argument was made by the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Chafee] `Do not barge in so early.'
Mr. President, there were major matters which the Intelligence Committee looked at in the last 2 years where we were totally dissatisfied with what has been going on. There will be, in due course, a motion made to table the amendment to strike the IG provision with respect to the CIA. We had discussed the possibility of a closed session if the motion to table is defeated. I think we may need to call for a closed session to discuss a good many issues which we cannot talk about in an open session. But I think it is appropriate to make a comment in very general terms about a major investigation which was referred by the Intelligence Committee to the CIA.
When the inspector general made his report, the Intelligence Committee found that the CIA inspector general's investigation and subsequent report were flawed and misleading and were contradicted by information in the possession of the inspector general's staff at the time the report was prepared. The Intelligence Committee staff concluded that the IG report was not thorough and was not encompassing of needed reform.
I will not go into any detail on that matter at this time because it would be inappropriate at this session.
I might say the Director of the CIA responded to the comments of the Intelligence Committee, having referred the matter to his own Office of General Counsel, in what I think is fair to say was a very defensive and insufficient matter.
There was a concession by the Director of the CIA that the inspector general erred. The IG's report was an incomplete discussion in certain material effects. He defended it. And I offer this is true, in terms of what he replied. He said `I have yet to see an investigation which could not have been done better the second time around.'
Well, that is true. But the issue was the first time around: Was the investigation done in the way which passed minimal standards? Mr. President, I suggest it was not.
Those Senators who were not on the committee, who have not had an opportunity to see the details, may want to see them before the vote on the tabling motion.
There was a second major investigation on the use of certain funds to pay for some legal expenses. The important matter was given to the supervision of only one investigator. The conclusion was that it was poorly investigated. It failed to trace the CIA's decision process in approving the actions taken. It was, simply stated, palpably defective.
It is on the basis of this 2-year history that the committee has come to the conclusion that this kind of action is necessary, action which is backed by the chairman and by the vice chairman who have very detailed experience in intelligence matters, as do the rest of us, but to a lesser extent. Realizing the need for the secrecy of the CIA; an inspector general provision is backed by the chairman of the Armed Sevices Committee, Senator Nunn, and the ranking Republican, Senator Warner, who understand the issues of secrecy and of defense. By a wide margin, Senators on the Intelligence Committee voted in agreement with the position which we have taken here.
Mr. President, we have had a very illuminating discussion and historical perspective as to what has happened over the years. When Senator Cohen quotes President Ford as being opposed to assassinations, I can understand a special sensitivity that President Ford would have. He served as a commissioner on the Warren Commission.
I was there as one of the young lawyers when President Ford, then Congressman Ford, was present with Chief Justice Warren in the Dallas jail when Ruby's deposition was taken. That was a striking moment in American history, in the middle of a jail cell. A man under a death sentence for murder could not read a note and the Chief Justice of the United States handed him his glasses so he could read a note which was passed to him. But those of us who participated in that inquiry were traumatized and shocked. It was an experience no one could ever forget.
When Senator Moynihan comments about his experience in hearing of the report of President Kennedy's assassination--well, I will not talk further about my own responsibilities in the field, but some of the documents I had to read were absolutely chilling, in terms of the events of the day. I refer only to the personal issue, not to any Government secrets.
Mr. President, I think a very strong case was made during the course of our committee hearings for this inspector general provision. The inspector general functions day in and day out, not necessarily on matters of overwhelming international importance, but on matters of day in and day out activity that we think would enhance the operation of the CIA.
It has enhanced the operation, Mr. President, of the 25 agencies which have inspectors general. When the distinguished Senator from South Carolina enumerated the long list of problems about HUD, DOD, and FEMA, they were all answered in chapter and verse by Senator Glenn, who has had a lot of experience with inspectors general, as to how those are really success stories when you take a close look at them. So I urge my colleagues, Mr. President, to support a tabling motion when that it appropriate.
Mr. President, I support S. 1324, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1990. Senators Boren and Cohen and other committee members have labored long and hand on this bill to ensure the availability of resources not only for the country's immediate intelligence needs, but also for those long-term requirements which will enhance our confidence that future strategic and conventional arms control treaties can be monitored and verified. That is the type of vision that all should emulate. Certainly some day we will be grateful for their persistence and fortitude in directing these investments.
I also want to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to the chairman and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee for their cooperation and assistance on two areas of great concern to this Senator. However, before I do, I would like to comment briefly on that portion of the intelligence authorization bill which enhances congressional oversight of covert action. Senator Cohen has labored long and hard to improve the congressional oversight of covert actions. He deserves special credit for his preparation of comprehensive and concise legislation contained in this authorization bill and for his efforts with the past and current administrations to achieve mutually agreeable legislative language.
But, I remain concerned that the administration has chosen to reassert the contention that it has a constitutional prerogative in withholding notification from the Congress on foreign policy programs which it may implement covertly. I equally regret that the administration did not categorically reject the opinion provided by the Assistant Attorney General on December 17, 1986. That opinion holds that `a number of factors combine to support the conclusion that the reporting of covert action `in a timely fashion' language should be read to leave the President with virtually unfettered discretion to choose the right moment for making the required notification.' Mr. President, I suggest that the door is still ajar for another Iran-Contra issue. I trust it will not be with this administration--which seeks to assure us of its sensitivity to congressional concerns--or even the next. But in time, another administration may interpret the law and the Constitution as justification for conducting a dubious or illegal operation and withholding notification to the intelligence committees. None of us should be happy with this and its potential for generating a crisis of credibility and for weaking the Constitution. Therefore, I remain committed to the need for the prior reporting of all covert actions or, in extremely sensitive programs, the informing of the intelligence committees or the congressional leadership within 24 or 48 hours after the initiation of such covert actions.
In regard to hostages of terrorism, I raised my deep concern before this body on August 2 about the state of our human intelligence capability to locate American hostages who are being held in Lebanon. On that date, I requested that Secretary of Defense Cheney and Director of Central Intelligence Bill Webster provide to the Intelligence and Armed Service Committees a report not only of their efforts, but also of any additional resources that they may require in terms of funds and personnel to prevent the taking of hostages and to secure the release of those already in captivity. On September 2, they responded. Later, in a closed Intelligence Committee hearing, Director Webster outlined his needs in more detail.
In my State alone, my constituents and I have experienced a sense of helplessness and frustration as we watched the wrenching anguish suffered by the Cicippio family as Hizballah terrorists threatened Joe Cicippio with imminent death. Mr. President, I would suggest that a little of each of us is being held hostage, but never to the depth or degree that only a hostage or his family can understand.
In the wake of this concern, Senators Boren and Cohen readily responded to this call for more resources to enhance our capability to locate hostage takers and hostages.
Next, I want to thank Senators Boren and Cohen for their support for my initiatives on the CIA inspector general provision. When I first introduced legislation in the 100th Congress calling for an independent inspector general for the Central Intelligency Agency, the need was little understood. Shortly thereafter, the congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra matter, of which Senators Boren and Cohen were members, recognized that need. In its final report the Iran-Contra Committee found that CIA's `Office of Inspector General appears not to have had the manpower, resources or tenacity to acquire key facts uncovered by the other investigations.' It also recommended that a system be developed so that the CIA has an independent statutory inspector general confirmed by the Senate.
However, this is not the first time that the Congress has highlighted the need for a statutory inspector general for the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1976, the forerunner Select Intelligence Committees on the Senate and House--the so-called Church and Pike committees--found a series of problems with CIA's Office of Inspector General ranging from a lack of objectivity to insufficient authority and independence.
At that time the Congress did not enact legislation to create an independent inspector general for CIA to allow the Director of Central Intelligence time to make internal reforms. Now this, I would suggest, is the crux of the problem. In 1976, the CIA initiated internal reforms in its Office of Inspector General, but those reforms did not go far enough in permanently enhancing the authority and independence of the inspector general. In my view, if a statutory inspector general for the CIA were created a decade ago, the country may have spared itself the grief of the Iran-Contra affair.
As we have learned from the experiences of the 1978 Inspector General Act, no agency head wants his inspector general to be independent and certainly not by statute. What we are dealing with, Mr. President, is an institutional issue. Unless we enact legislation to make the position of CIA's inspector general a truly authoritative and independent one, we are bound to repeat the errors of the past.
Senator Boren deserves special credit. Without prejudging my proposed inspector general legislation, he believed that, as a minimum, it merited a thorough review. On November 13 and December 16, 1987 and again on March 1, 1988, he scheduled hearings and received testimony from a number of witnesses including Director Webster, Comptroller General Bowsher, and the statutory inspectors general from the Departments of State and Defense.
Recently, Senator Boren facilitated a late evening markup during which members painstakingly walked through the legislation and reviewed or amended it line by line and word by word to ensure that in creating an inspector general, we were enhancing that office and our congressional oversight responsibility and not
impeding the CIA and its director in their authorities, functions and responsibilities. Without the leadership of Senator Boren, this legislation could not have happened. I would also like to extend by appreciation to two other people.
During the markup of the CIA inspector general bill, Senator Glenn, as a member of the Intelligence Committee and as chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, offered insight and amendments to make the inspector general legislation more effective. His experience in overseeing the statutory inspectors general of the Departments and agencies of the Federal Government proved invaluable to this Senator and to the committee.
I would also like to extend my thanks to the Intelligence Committee's General Counsel Britt Snider and my committee liaison Charles Battaglia, for their guidance and management skills in reconciling the many differences which surfaced prior to and during the markup.
Finally, Mr. President, I would like to say a few words about the inspector general section of the authorization bill itself. It would probably be more appropriate to start by saying what it is not. It is not a rebuke of the integrity or leadership of the Director of the CIA or his current inspector general. Nor is the requirement for a statutory inspector general a signal by the committee that it has lost confidence in the ability of the CIA to perform its many missions. Far from it. I have visited with many CIA people around the world and will say with all candor that they are dedicated, highly competent and hardworking Americans who believe very much as I do in the Constitution and laws of the United States.
But there have been aberrations where individuals have strayed from law, policies or programs or where policies or programs have been unclear or even flawed. There must be a mechanism within the agency not only to identify these aberrations, but also to ensure their correction at an early stage. As Senator Boren has noted and as other Federal department and agency heads have discovered, in the final analysis an independent inspector general will strengthen the Central Intelligence Agency, serve well its Director and enhance its credibility with the Congress and the American public.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hollings].
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Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I am a little surprised, I am pleasantly surprised, because I enjoyed the comments of our distinguished colleague from New York. I understand the Senator from Pennsylvania is a good trial lawyer and he has latched on to the assassination argument as brought forth by the Senator from New York.
The truth of the matter is that if you find the word `assassination' in the consideration of the inspector general amendment, I will jump off the Capitol dome. I never heard it. It is not in the record. I invite every Senator to go look. We never mentioned it. We never discussed it. It was not a problem, and no one was talking about it. This bill was marked up in September. Back then when we discussed this, assassination was not raised. If you are going to assume what they are now inferring, that President Bush wants to assassinate somebody, or Director Webster wants to assassinate somebody, an inspector general is not going to stop it.
Yes, the distinguished Senator from New York is great on history, and the Senator from Maine says it is good to remember history, but our distinguished colleague from New York, who is so colorful, makes us forget a lot of history. And what we forget is that when they had the assassination of Diem, and Allende, and the attempts on Castro, and the litany that we have listened to, we did not have an Intelligence Committee. That is why we got the Intelligence Committees, so there could be no attempt or interference or any dealing whatsoever with any kind of assassination that the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would not know about in this Government of ours.
Yes, I praise the Intelligence Committee's role and their work, and the distinguished Senator was seated on the committee. Do not come now and say we need an inspector general to prevent a violation of the executive order.
The Senator from Maine says remember Iran-Contra. I am going to remember it for you. He is right. He and I were returning from the Far East. What really happened, and I do not guess they were listening too closely during the debate on Colonel North's pension, they only caught what my good friend Mrs. McGrory wrote about on the Maryknoll runs. We spoke about it the other evening. It was not exactly all recounted in the Record. I did not have anybody to interpret this Geechee language of mine, and when I said Ghorbanifar and several other names, it did not appear when I read the Record the next morning. Be that as it may, what really occurred was that we did not want, and certainly I did not, and noboby else wanted, to impeach President Ronald Reagan.
We were into a heck of a situation. We wanted him to tell the truth that the Iran-Contra deal was all his own doing. It was No. 1 on his agenda and program and thought. He was constantly calling them the freedom fighters, referring to the great dedication that they had, constantly having his good friend, Oliver North, not fired. He was let go. When they called him fired, President Reagan said, oh, no, that fellow was a hero. He knew Colonel North had done what he was asked to do. Two hundred talks in one year in the White House, and when we get all that and had a difference of opinion within the Congress, we had a difference of opinion within the Senate, very sharp, very sharp on the House side, but the speaker had the authority and the speaker mandated these riders, the Boland amendments. If they ever controlled, there would have been five of them. It was obvious what was going on. We do not need an inspector general or an Intelligence Committee to tell us now it is five past 6 o'clock. Everybody knew it was obvious what was going on.
They were meeting down in Miami with Calero. We were providing funds, a little restriction here, a little restriction there. They spelled it out to me as a restriction and they could not do anything. On the Defense Approrpriations Subcommittee when we went to markup, I said we cannot accept
this. The White House crowd said, do not worry about it, the President will sign it. He should have vetoed it. I hope the Moynihan amendment will require him hereafter to act with responsibility and quit playing games. He played a game with the Congress; the Congress played a game with him. And the CIA was not in it; the Director was. And other agencies and individuals were in it: The Defense Department, with 12 shipments of over 5,000 tons; the State Department, 6 ambassadors, 2 under secretaries, the Sultan of Brunei. Yes, I mentioned Ghdrbanifar because Ollie said he did not trust him and he asked the National Security Agency to tap his line and get those conversations. We did not need an inspector general for that. We did not even need an Intelligence Committee for that. We needed to stand up here and tell everybody what was going on. You can go right on down the list of the participants in it, and that is why the President called him a hero. If that is the best the Iran-Contra Committee can come up with, just one little lieutenant colonel and a recommendation for an inspector general, they ought to be ashamed of themselves because the CIA was following executive orders.
So now the so-called rogue elephant is going to be turned into a white elephant. You are going to have an inspector general sitting over there, and I know how to succeed in intelligence work: Do nothing. Everybody is going to praise themselves because we stopped an article about assassination that has nothing to do with this amendment.
This provision section 8 we are striking, we discussed it many times; we discussed it over a year. I can tell you honestly and candidly, I never heard the Senator from Pennsylvania or the Senator from Ohio mention the word assassination. In fact, the Senator from Ohio said if Webster was going to be staying there for 30 years, he would think twice about opposing my amendment. That is exactly what he said. He was satisfied with Webster. But then he said. That the Director is out there with no other advice, no other direction, and that is not the case, because we have the Intelligence Committees that are left out of the history of the distinguished Senator from New York. We put in Intelligence Committees and we work like the Dickens on them. We do not need a little nitpicking inspector general report.
As old Al Smith said, let the record speak. If the distinguished Senator from Ohio thought the inspector general was working well and saved $100 billion since 1978, how about the $360 billion--$360 billion with this HUD scandal, the FSLIC scandal and everything else that is going on, that is what we have to pay for, $360 billion. He said that the HUD inspector general did not have a loud enough honk. If he had squeaked, the then chairman of the Banking Committee, the Golden Fleece Award Senator, would have given a Golden Fleece out in a second. He is the one who used the fellow who squeaked, and so forth, over in the Defense Department on the SST and everything else. You did not need a loud honk for former Senator Proxmire to get it. It not only did not have a loud enough honk, it did not work. It is not working in FEMA; it is not working in the Defense Department. All these inspector general's running around. They think they can solve the problem because I identified it.
We have a Senate that will not stand up and a Congress that will not stand up and say exactly what is going on. When the Iran-Contra affair broke, they danced around the fire. We tried to hold it in the Intelligence Committee. I opposed the Iran-Contra Committee because I knew we could handle it quietly. No, everybody wanted to get on TV. So they all got on. They kept adding on--the House, the Senate, a bipartisan thing--and it turned into a partisan fracas with nothing out of it. Millions of dollars, over $50 million and special prosecutors running around. I truly believe, as I understand it, that Poindexter will finally get the President's records, if he had any, I do not know. If I had been the judge, I certainly would have gotten the man, the commander in chief, who ran the program in the North trial. I hope they reverse that decision and they will not be running around calling an outstanding marine a felon. That is a disgrace.
As to the shredding of documents, they would give him a machine and tell him they want him to grind up to protect your sources and intelligence work, that is normal in intelligence.
Why not go stand up and say you are supposed to shred things. He learned something from Rosemary Woods.
And the money they say he got there, he did that to defend himself. He could not go down to the FBI and get security; they were out after him. And his classmates at Annapolis are now furnishing him security but we are running around here proud, we got a felon and we got a recommendation for an IG.
Well, it ought to be stricken from the bill and we ought to do our jobs rather than trying to put it off on the lack of law or timely notice, and all of those other things. We did not get into timely notice with an IG. We did not get into assassination with an IG but that has been the argument this afternoon. We got into it when we said `It was not broke; do not fix it'; 11 of 586, that is what the committee thinks of IG reports. They ought to be ashamed of themselves to come out as a committee and say look, we received 586 IG reports and looked at only 11.
What a wonderful cover, calling for an IG in this environment.
What is going to really happen is you have the IG is going to be reporting one thing to the director and then the intelligence committee is going to set up as as referee and if you got a job down at the CIA you better stick with the IG if you want to hold on to your job. And then when we do not know anything, with other countries being so restrictive, then you have mediocrity. You will not have the intelligence on which to work. You will ruin a good agency with this provision.
I agree with Dick Helms and all the other heads of the CIA. If anyone thought assassinations had a productive effect, they are wrong. They do not work. We have the order out. President Bush has put the order out that there shall not be any assassinations, and that has nothing to do with this particular IG provision the IG would never know about it, if there were going to be one. And if it were, I do not see how it could happen without the Intelligence Committee's knowing it.
I can tell you that will never happen with these Intelligence Committees in the House and the Senate so do not come around with a timely notice and an eloquent talk on assassinations and harken back to President Kennedy's assassination in a time when we did not even have intelligence committees. Do not say, `Let us now have an IG. If we had an IG back there then, Kennedy would not have been assassinated. Now Webster wants to assassinate, now Bush wants to assassinate.'
What kind of nonsense is this on the floor of the Senate this afternoon. They can all be alarmed and everything else and get up on that high pedestal of being against assassination. Well, they have to crowd me off that pedestal too, because I am up there. We are all against assassinations. That was not in the amendment.
The Senator from Pennsylvania knows it. The Senator from Ohio knows that. We were discussing the general operation down there. We got into this IG and I never heard the word assassination ever mentioned. I hope that we will not table the amendment, that we will sustain a good Director down there who is working on doing his job and doing some real intelligence-gathering and not just publicly say, `Do not deal with this crowd or with this CIA agent or tell him anything because they have an IG that reports to a committee that is going to expose your information because there is going to be a dispute about it `because from then on they will just close off all sources.'
As it is right now, in the Mideast we do not have any sources. Nobody trusts us. And very few do down in Central America and all these other places.
So we have done a great job this afternoon mismatching some history on assassinations, and I daresay the Warren Commission, the distinguished Senator served on, did not make the findings that are apparently made this afternoon by the distinguished Senator from New York. He might be right. That was not the Warren Commission finding. And let us get to the botton line.
We did not have in the sixties and early seventies an Intelligence Committee in the Senate and an Intelligence Committee over in the House that was overseeing. We have those now. They are working. The responsibility ought to be left to us. They ought to fix it on us and let us work with the Director and Deputy Director and, for heaven's sake, do not put an IG over the five Assistant Directors who are really running the Agency who are not confirmed at all by the Director but by the Senate and a political appointee to be cross-examined up here: Are you going to report this? Are you going to report that? Are you going to report all? At the time he stands up for his confirmation hearing he will be filling out forms that we have given him at the examination for his particular hearing so everything is done right and intelligence is done wrong.
Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina. I think the work that the Intelligence Committee has done on the IG bill, sponsored by Senator Specter and supported by the chairman and the ranking member, is a good bill. In the last Congress I supported the efforts of the Senator from Pennsylvania to institute an IG at the CIA. I do not know what is the basis for the fear of having an independent inspector general review what is going on in the Central Intelligence Agency. What is the worry? Is there something we do not want anybody to know about except maybe the Intelligence Committees?
We saw clearly that there have been Directors who do not tell the Intelligence Committees everything and have even come up to Capitol Hill and fabricated their answers as they were asked questions. And that was former Director Casey. I happened to have just gone on the Intelligence Committee when the Iran-Contra scandal broke. Director Casey came to the committee and he did not tell us the truth. It disturbed me immensely, which, for me, only underscored the need to have an inspector general.
What about all of the programs, which the Senator from South Carolina knows them better than I do, all of the programs that the Agency is involved in? For us not to have an inspector general to review those programs is just irresponsible.
Here we have an opportunity to do what we did in the Defense Department, and I cannot remember in how many other agencies, but well over a dozen other agencies. I recall so well when we were on the floor debating the bill to create an inspector general for the Defense Department, which was supported by Senator Goldwater, who was the chairman of the Armed Services Committee at the time. The Secretary of
Defense, Mr. Weinberger, opposed it. They did not want it. But we passed it. We passed it because Senator Goldwater stood on this floor and said, What are we afraid of? We need somebody to look at what is going on in the Defense Department. In my judgment, the DOD IG has produced some very interesting audits and some very interesting reports, and even prosecutions and convictions.
I am not suggesting there is anything criminally wrong with what is going on in the CIA, but I am suggesting that we ought to place the same standards as we do on the Defense Department or any other department where there is an inspector general on the CIA. IG work and work well. It is beyond me why we are fearful of doing what the Intelligence Committee has reviewed very carefully. This was not something we just willy-nilly went out and did. We reviewed the CIA's programs; how they would be affected.
I want to make it very clear, that this, legislation is not meant to cast aspersions on the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. We not, in fact, want to leave some message that we do not trust the good gentleman, Mr. Webster. That is not the case at all. We are talking about institutionalizing a very careful, responsible audit approach for this Agency.
Mr. President, the time to establish an independent inspector general at the Central Intelligence Agency is long past. To those who say a legislatively mandated inspector general would jeopardize the CIA's sensitive missions which depend on airtight security for success, I reply that the CIA cannot afford to be without an independent IG, whose very independence will help guarantee the efficiency and integrity of operations undertaken by this vital Federal agency.
Now, the CIA's inspector general is a career CIA employee, who has been appointed by the Agency's Director rather than by the President and is not subject to Senate approval. For the most part, those who serve on his staff have been rotated into the IG unit from other jobs within the agency and will return to those divisions when their terms in the IG's office expire.
Clearly, such a system calls into question the independence of inspectors who will return to serve among their associates whose work they may be required
to audit. Objectivity, the hallmark of reliable auditing, is called into question by the structure of the current IG system at the CIA.
Because many of those now serving in the IG's office do not have accounting and auditing backgrounds, the quality of their work may not conform to the highest standards. As a result, the CIA's program goals may not be achieved in the most cost-effective and productive manner. Efficiency may suffer and untold resources may be lost through possible misuse and mismanagement.
During the last Congress I joined Senator Specter to sponsor legislation to establish an independent inspector general at the CIA. I also participated in the Intelligence Committee's review of this legislation, a review which included hearings at which witnesses testified to the benefits which had resulted from the establishment of IG's at almost all Federal agencies.
In addition to the improved efficiency and economy with which those agencies now operate, the cost savings generated by the IG's paid for their operations many times over.
The Intelligence Committee also learned that the IG in no way hampered the most sensitive, classifed programs which are carried out by the Department of Defense.
In order to permit changes instituted by the CIA Director to bear results, the Intelligence Committee agreed to continue its review of the IG's work. That review has revealed an Office of Inspector General which delivers an uneven performance, demonstrating that the time has arrived for the statutory creation of an independent, presidentially appointed inspector general at the CIA to ensure that that agency has an effective system of accountability.
The Iran-Contra scandal is a dramatic example of what can happen when the checks and balances of an accounting system are inadequate. The day-to-day operations of a gigantic agency such as the CIA are what need the firm hand the impartial oversight conducted by a truly independent and accountable inspector general.
With all due respect to my good friend from South Carolina, whose work on Intelligence Committee and defense matters I have such great respect, this is a good piece of legislation that should be implemented.
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Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, I have listened carefully to the debate this afternoon as I listened to the debate for many hours and over several days on this issue in the Intelligence Committee. I would like to try to put into perspective for just a moment the work of the Intelligence Committee and the functioning of our intelligence operations and why on balance I feel the proposal for a statutory inspector general is a good one.
The Intelligence Committee is charged with a very, very difficult task.
In our democracy we believe fundamentally that money should be appropriated and that laws should be written by the repesentatives of the people with as much knowledge on the part of the people of the United States as possible. That is fundamental to our constitutional system.
The very idea of doing something behind closed doors or in secrecy as a method of operation does not sit easily or consistently with our constitutional system.
At the same time, we live in a world where, unfortunately, it is necessary at times in order to protect the national security interests of the United States for us to operate in secrecy, for us to have some information that is classified, for the President of the United States and the intelligence community to be able to undertake certain actions that must remain highly classified, sensitive operations that sometimes involve the cooperation of other countries which would simply not be in a position to cooperate if those operations became known publicly.
So we have done our best in the U.S. Senate and in the Congress to craft a compromise which strikes a balance between two principals that we recognize. One is that there should be no action undertaken without accountability to and authorization by those elected by the people and charged with constitutional responsibility to appropriate funds and to approve and make policy desists.
The other is that this system of accountability and appropriation should be carried out in a manner that still protects secrets when those secrets are necessary for very serious national security interests of this country. Those situations where decisions must be kept secret and appropriations must be kept secret should be held to an absolute minimum in a free society.
Those of us on the Intelligence Committee serve on that committee and that committee is charged with exclusive jurisdiciton over a number of issues in order to keep to a minimum the number of Members of Congress who must be informed of some of the most highly sensitive details of these programs so that you reduce the likelihood that they will be disclosed.
The members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and particularly the vice chairman, and in cooperating with me as chairman and others have worked very hard to assure that we meet that responsibility, that we keep the trust, that we safeguard classified information, that we be known as a trustworthy committee that can give its advice to the executive branch, that can be an efficient watchdog for the American people and for the rest of the U.S. Congress without compromising that information.
That is why we have strict rules about divulging classified information even to the point, with the support of the two leaders of the Senate, Democratic and Republican, a rule that members of the committee will be removed if indeed they compromise very sensitive security information.
That is why we do not allow documents and notes to even be taken out of our committee space if they deal with sensitive and classified matters.
Mr. President, the responsibilities of being a member of the Intelligence Committee are different than the responsibilities of being a member of any other committee. In the Agriculture Committee, and Finance Committee on which I serve, I am not hesitant to try to form coalitions, to try to build groups that can work together to form a majority to push through a particular amendment or to kill a particular bill on the basis of what I think is right and what is in the interests of my constitutents, and what I think is in the interests of the country.
That is not the job of the Intelligence Committee. That is not my job as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. It would not be right for me to behave in that fashion as a member of the Intelligence Committee, particularly in a leadership capacity because we are charged with the responsibility not of following our personal views but of standing as trustees in the sense as guardians for the American people and the remainder of the U.S. Congress on these very sensitive issues. We have to strike that balance.
We have to ask ourselves not only about our own conscientious points of view about matters that are brought to us, but we have to ask ourselves how the American people would feel about it if they knew about it. How could the rest of the U.S. Senate feel about it if all of our colleagues who served on this committee spent the time necessary to be informed of all of these details? We have to act in a trusteeship role. We cannot vote our own personal philosophies or our own personal partisan points of view. We have to act as repsonsible trustees for the entire U.S. Senate. We have tried to do that.
If we are going to be faithful to our duty and to our responsibility we also have to strike a very careful balance between the need for effective and true oversight in order to make sure that these decisions are made through the democratic process and the need for the President of the United States and those who served with him to have the flexibility to act as Commander in Chief without the interference of unnecessary restrictions or micromanagement on the part of the Congress to an extent that it would prevent him from acting forthrightly to protect and preserve the national interests of the U.S. Government when emergencies and unforeseen circumstances arise.
That is why the Constitution of the United States says that the President is the Commander in Chief. It is because we in the Congress, none of us, have the foresight to be able to predict the future or to imagine any possible circumstance that might arise, and therefore under the Constitution we entrust that ability to deal in an emergency situation to the President of the United States.
So it is a matter of balance, Mr. President, of careful balance. It is not a matter of taking extreme points of view of
either the left or the right; it is not a matter of taking partisan points of view; it is not a matter of taking an extreme point of view that the President has the unfettered right to do anything that he pleases without seeking the appropriation of funds or the approval of the Congress of the United States, and on the other hand, not taking the extreme point of view that we alone in the Congress are the guardians of the national interests of the country. The President also has a critical and important role which we must recognize as Commander in Chief.
So we try to strike that balance. That is what we have tried to do in this particular proposal that is before you. As has been said by Senators on both sides, this is not a matter that deals with the policy or the right to assassinate foreign leaders.
I would like to say to my colleagues, I have read the articles in the newspapers; I have sometimes been quoted in the newspapers myself on this subject. Let me say that the President of the United States has certainly never suggested to me that he wishes to rescind the Executive order issued by his predecessors, Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, which prohibits officials of the U.S. Government from directly or indirectly participating in or planning or assisting in the assassinaton of foreign leaders; that that is simply an action that is not in keeping with basic American values.
On the other hand, there have been some extreme interpretations made of the Executive order which clearly also go beyond the bounds of reason, interpretations which would indicate that representatives of our Government should not even be allowed to talk with people who are in the process of planning to overthrow tyrannical governments, even governments that are not only hostile to the United States, but governments that exist clearly in opposition to the will of their own people. I think explicitly of the situation in Panama, where we not only have a government, a dictatorship, that is hostile to the interests of this country, that is a threat to the national security interests of this country, not only because it contains within its boundaries an important waterway for international transportation and military use in time of emergency, but because of the role of that particular individual who now holds power illegitimately in that country, to try to undermine the well-being of the United States of America by participation in corruption and particularly in the drug traffic, which poses a threat to our national security.
That same man, who illegitimately holds power, has clearly received the power in spite of the wishes of his own people, who expressed themselves overwhelmingly in an election, the results of which were then altered, according to the testimony of every international observer that happened to be in a position to view and study those election results.
I, for one, do not think that we should say that we simply cannot even talk to people, people who are not planning assassinations, people who are not seeking assassinations, in the case of the recent coup attempt in Panama a few weeks ago, in fact, a person planning a coup to try to bring democracy to that country, who explicitly stated he intended no physical harm
to General Noriega and, in fact, that he did not even intend to physically seize him, let alone attempt to assassinate him. That would be an extreme interpretation of the Executive order to say that officials of our Government could not even talk to such a person, who has tried to bring about a change of government that would reflect a true democratic will of the country and to someone who had been indicted by the appropriate judicial panels within the United States.
So, Mr. President, there is, at some point in time, a reasonable balance to be struck on that question, as well. It should be emphasized that the Executive order has not been withdrawn, nor do I know of anyone, including the Director of Central Intelligence or the President of the United States, who advocates the use of assassination as an acceptable policy of the U.S. Government. That does not mean that we must not carefully consider any proposals that they would make in terms of the interpretation of the meaning of the Executive order. We should do that. We will attempt to meet our responsibilities in due course to do that.
I want to set the record straight. As far as I know, these kinds of extreme departure from our past policy have not been intended, as far as I know, by anyone in the executive branch of the Government, either the President or Director of CIA, and they certainly have not been intended by or approved by, in any way, the membership of the Senate Intelligence Committee or, indeed, of any member of the Senate Intelligence Commitee.
So what are we dealing with here? We are dealing with striking the balance, Mr. President, between accountability and oversight, which we have tried to make effective. We have made it effective in many ways by setting up our own unit in the Intelligence Committee, which, for the first time, has the ability to examine financial data independently from receiving that data from the policy itself. We have done it on the basis of a regular review and on a quarterly basis of all covert actions in force, which also forces the executive branch to review those policies themselves.
So we have gone a long way toward making oversight more effective. That is the interest, not only of the domestic process, it is in the interest of the intelligence community itself. This committee has not only attempted to get the resources--and the record will reflect this has been said by the Senator from Maine--and the appropriations and the resources made available to the intelligence community since the creation of the Intelligence Committee have increased many times over. It is not only a matter of resource; it is a matter of a buffer of protection to professionals within the agency, to assure that these professionals will never be put in the position of being forced to take actions which in their own minds are questionable from the point of view of law, or questionable from the point of view of policy in the democratic process. Because of the obligation to report to the oversight committees, professionals in the Intelligence Committees are stengthened in their ability to simply refuse to follow orders that are questionable or those which would expose them to legal jeopardy or professional, personal jeopardy.
So, Mr. President, we are talking about striking the balance. That is what we are tryig to do here. I believe that the proposal we have crafted in the Intelligence Committee is one that does just that. This inspector general that we have framed is not exactly like the inspector general that would operate in any other agency. If the inspector general attempted to inappropriately use the resources of some other agency, General Accounting Office or any other agency, in a way that might cause the compromise of sensitive intelligence data under this bill, the Director of the
CIA is in power to deny him the right to use those resources and to bring that disagreement to the Intelligence Committee, to notify us of that disagreement.
If the inspector general attempts to delve into areas that might compromise national security, the Director of Central Intelligence, under this bill, is given the right to prohibit him from moving into those areas. The committee must be informed so we can make sure it was a wise and justifiable decision on the part of the Director. We have an inspector general in the Central Intelligence Agency today. The difference between that inspector general and the inspector general we are talking about creating by statute is simply that that inspector general is not confirmed by the Senate, not appointed by the President, and most important, the staff of the office of that inspector general is composed of people who are on career paths within the agency, to rotate in the office of the inspector general, hoping to go on to other careers within the agencies, to receive promotions from others, perhaps even others that it might be their responsibility to investigate during their term as members of the staff of the inspector general's office.
That does not make for an effective inspector general system, Mr. President. It is not a matter of lack of confidence in the present individual inspector general or his staff; it is not a matter of lack of confidence in the current Director of CIA. I have great respect--and I have said it privately and publicly--for Judge Webster, for his honesty and integrity and commitment to the rule of law. It is a matter that we believe that, on balance, the system we are proposing is one that will work more fairly, objectively, and will be in the interest of efficient operation of the intelligence community, the saving of taxpayers' dollars, and the making sure that the spirit of law and proper policy will be followed.
I urge my colleagues to support the committee recommendation. I say this with all due respect to those who have raised concerns on the other side. I had many of those concerns in the beginning myself. That is why I supported several amendments to the original bill when it was introduced. I think now that those amendments have been included, those safeguards have been put in place, and those special powers given to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to block any action that would be hasty or ill-advised by the inspector general. I think we have now struck the appropriate balance, and I think it is in the interest of the country, and in the interest of an effective accountable intelligence community, that we pass this legislation.
Therefore, Mr. President, in just a moment, it will be my intention--I have to ask the majority leader to return to the floor. He indicated a moment ago he wished to be on the floor to make another announcement before I make the motion. We will determine in just a moment if he wishes to return to the floor. I intend to move to table the amendment offered by the Senator from South Carolina and his colleagues in just a moment. Again, I want to thank him for his participation. He makes an immense contribution. He has made a great contribution in the course of this debate. I say to him that while he has not prevailed on every issue on this particular bill, this bill is in a different form today than it would have been had the Senator from South Carolina not been a member of the Intelligence Committee.
By adopting some of the amendments that he and others proposed, many of which I supported, I think we have a much better bill. It is a bill that I can certainly now support. I understand there are a few other changes he would have preferred to have made in it before he would have been fully satisfied, and I respect that point of view.
As I say, it is just the nature of the beast that the Intelligence Committee will all have a difficult task in striking this balance. That is what we try to do to the best of our ability.
I will withhold for a moment until the majority leader is able to return to the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum until such time he does return at which time I will make the tabling motion.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
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Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, first I want to congratulate the Intelligence Committee, particularly the chairman, Senator Boren, and ranking member, Senator Cohen, for reporting a generally good bill on intelligence authorizations.
In this time of rapidly changing governments and their leaders, it is essential that our intelligence agencies, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency, have the capability to move rapidly to keep the President of the United States up to the minute.
Recent questions on whether we had adequate intelligence on the aborted coup in Panama and on the terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December of last year should only strengthen our resolve to assist the CIA.
Therefore, I cannot understand why the committee would include in the reported bill the so-called inspector general provision. Make no mistake about it, this provision will hamper efforts to rapidly gather intelligence information.
What waste, fraud, and abuse has occurred at CIA under the very capable leadership of Judge Bill Webster to necessitate this change? What runaway covert operations are we seeking to control?
Some have suggested that this may be just another effort by Congress to run the Agency, and I cannot think of anything that would be more tragic. The Congress cannot pass budgets on time, we cannot pass appropriations bills on time, we don't even seem to be able to get our own mass mailings to constituents in order.
We should also remember that the DCIA, Bill Webster, has already strengthened the Inspector General's Office at the Agency, to ensure that everything is in order. Yet, without any accusation that this new structure has failed, all of a sudden we spring up and try to force a new system down his throat. I think we have helped the CIA just about all they can stand, just about all the President will take.
Mr. President, the administration opposes enactment of this bill unless the Hollings-Danforth amendment to strike the inspector general provision is adopted. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the statement of administration policy be included at this point in the Record.
There being no objection, the statement was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Office of Management and Budget,
Washington, DC, November 7, 1989.
The Administration opposes the enactment of S. 1324 unless the provision to establish a statutory Inspector General (IG) at CIA is deleted.
The establishment of a statutory IG is unnecessary and could undermine the effective inspection and investigation process now in place at the CIA. An independent IG may create the impression that the Director of Central Intelligence will be unable to protect intelligence sources and methods, thereby affecting adversely the willingness of human sources and foreign liaison services to cooperate with the CIA. In addition, other IG-related provisions would interfere unconstitutionally with the President's ability to discharge his constitutional responsibility to appoint and remove officials.
The Administration also has reservations about the following provisions in S. 1324 and urges their deletion:
Section 601 which would expand the demonstration project authorizing pay supplements to FBI agents assigned from other locations to the high-cost New York City area. The expansion would apply to pay supplement to all FBI employees in New York. This would be inconsistent with the intent of the demonstration project, which was to address the difficulties of attracting certain FBI personnel to accept assignments requiring a move to New York. Rather than paying a supplement, recruiting and retention problems for employees already living in New York will be better addressed in a more comprehensive approach to pay reform in high cost areas. The Administration is exploring proposals in this area.
Section 603 which would make the FBI responsible for conducting all investigations of violations of U.S. espionage laws by persons employed by, or assigned to, U.S. diplomatic missions. Such a statutory requirement is unduly restrictive. The Executive branch should retain the discretion and flexibility to determine how best to investigate such legal violations.
The Administration will also seek to have certain program authorization levels reallocated to make them consistent with the Administration's request. Specifically, the Administration urges that enhancements for arms control verification be authorized as requested.
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Mr. DOLE. Let me again state, the inspector general provision is a bad idea, particularly at this time. If we further cripple the Central Intelligence Agency, we may simply be removing the United States from any effective ability to intervene in rapidly changing world events.
So I support the Hollings amendment. The CIA needs many, many things--including, in my view, more resources, but the last thing it needs is an independent inspector general.
Just because other agencies have--and perhaps profit from--having an inspector general, that doesn't mean the CIA needs or will benefit from one.
The CIA is different. It is different in function from any other agency of Government, in ways that are obvious to all of us.
The `Dear Colleague' of Senators Boren and Cohen proposing the independent inspector general provision now in the bill acknowledges this difference very specifically. That is why the proponents have felt it necessary to create a unique kind of inspector general. That, in itself, is an explicit admission that we are not dealing with just any other agency.
Because CIA is different, we have a separate, select committee--with rules that are in many ways unique--to oversee its activities, and the activities of the other intelligence agencies.
Equally important, the CIA already gets plenty of oversight. Within the executive branch, there already is an inspector general in the agency. And, of course, the agency and the DCI are responsible directly to the President, and subject to the oversight of OMB and other standard Government oversight bodies.
Even more important, the agency is subject to oversight by our Intelligence Committee, and its House counterpart.
An independent inspector general is not going to mean better oversight--it's going to mean more back-seat driving, Monday morning quarterbacking, and self-serving second-guessing.
So many Senators stand here on the floor and decry what they claim was a reluctance on the administration's part to act against Noriega; and now some of them want to add on another layer of review and second-guessing--certain to dampen what little initiative might remain in the CIA.
Although our Intelligence Committee has been very solid in preventing leaks, the fact is that leaks do occur already from within the intelligence community. And now we want to add one more bureaucracy, staffed with a few more bureaucrats--expanding the universe of potential leakers a bit more.
Mr. President, the Senator from South Carolina is right. We do not need an independent inspector general. We need a stronger CIA.
I want to include in the Record a letter I have received from President Bush, indicating his strong personal opposition to the inspector general proposal. And I would remind the Senate: President Bush speaks not only as our Chief Executive, but as a former Director of Central Intelligence.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
The White House,
Washington, November 3, 1989.
Hon. Robert J. Dole,
Republican Leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Dole: The Intelligence Authorization Bill (S. 1324) has been the subject of intensive negotiations over the past few months. The main issue was timely notification of covert activities. I am very pleased with the outcome on that issue, and the credit goes to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. However, there remains one other major point of contention in S. 1324: the statutory Inspector General for CIA. Before the Senate takes action on the legislation, you should be aware of my strong opposition to that provision.
The establishment of a statutory Inspector General at CIA is unnecessary and could be counterproductive to the effective inspection and investigation process in place at the Agency.
My strong reservations regarding the creation of a statutory Inspector General at CIA are shared by a bipartisan group of members on the Intelligence Committee. I agree with the position of Senators Bradley, Danforth, Hollings, and Murkowski that a statutory Inspector General `would inevitably mean more bureaucracy, more regulation, more outside intervention, when the real need is to make CIA more productive, more skilled and more useful in confronting a variety of difficult national challenges.'
I hope that I can count on your support for a motion to strike the statutory Inspector General provision from the Intelligence Authorization Bill when it comes to floor.
Sincerely,
George Bush
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let us quit tying the hands of our intelligence agencies. We do it too much already. Let's not turn the knots a little bit tighter, by foisting on the agency another second-guesser.
Mr. President, I strongly support the Hollings amendment, and urge its adoption.
Mr. DeCONCINI. Mr. President, the time to establish an independent inspector general at the Central Intelligence Agency is long past. To those who say a legislatively mandated inspector general would jeopardize the CIA's sensitive missions which depend on air-tight security for success, I reply that the CIA cannot afford to be without an independent IG, whose very independence will help guaranteee the efficiency and integrity of operations undertaken by this vital Federal agency.
Now, the CIA's inspector general is a career CIA employee, who has been appointed by the Agency's Director rather than by the President and is not subject to Senate approval. For the most part, those who serve on his staff have been rotated into the IG unit from other jobs within the agency and will return to those divisions when their terms in the IG's office expire.
Clearly, such a system calls into question the independence of inspectors who will return to serve among their associates whose work they may be required to audit. Objectively, the hallmark of reliable auditing, is called into question by the structure of the current IG system at the CIA.
Because many of those now serving in the IG's office do not have accounting and auditing backgrounds, the quality of their work may not conform to the highest standards. As a result, the CIA's program goals may not be achieved in the most cost-effective and productive manner. Efficiency may suffer and untold resources may be lost through possible misuse and mismanagement.
During the last Congress I joined Senator Specter to sponsor legislation to establish an independent inspector general at the CIA. I also participated in the Intelligence Committee's review of this legislation, a review which included hearings at which witnesses testified to the benefits which had resulted from the estlishment of IG's at almost all Federal agencies.
In addition to the improved efficiency and economy with which those agencies now operate, the cost savings generated by the IG's paid for their operations many times over.
The Intelligence Committee also learned that the IG in no way hampered the most sensitive, classified programs which are carried out by the Department of Defense.
In order to permit changes instituted by the CIA Director to bear results, the Intelligence Committee agreed to continue its review of the IG's work. That review has revealed an Office of Inspector General which delivers an uneven performance, demonstrating that the time has arrived for the statutory creation of an independent, presidentially appointed inspector general at the CIA to ensure that that agency has an effective system of accountability.
The Iran-Contra scandal is a dramatic example of what can happen when the checks and balances of an accounting system are inadequate. The day-to-day operations of a gigantic agency such as the CIA are what need the firm hand of impartial oversight conducted by a truly independent and accountable inspector general.
During my 13 years in the Senate I have been pleased to support all legislation establishing independent inspector generals, and today I am pleased to have the opportunity to support this legislation which would fill the need for an independent inspector general at the CIA.
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Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the inspector general provision of S. 1324. I want to emphasize the importance of this provision to the President and to the CIA.
My colleagues are well aware of the history of the inspector general issue. It is based upon the good work of our distinguished colleague, the junior Senator from Pennsylvania. A `Dear Colleague' letter in support of this provision was circulated, setting forth in detail the history and the reasons for approval of this provision.
My remarks will be brief, because I want to get to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is the tension between the necessity of secrecy in our intelligence affairs and the necessity for openness in a democratic society.
This tension is a permanent fact of life, so long as we need a national intelligence capability and so long as our Constitution endures.
The CIA's operations cannot be made public. If they were, the CIA would become instantly ineffective.
On the other hand, if charges are leveled against the CIA, the Agency cannot come forward and defend itself, because to do so, it would have to disclose the details of its activities.
Thus, charges of illegal or unethical behavior against the Agency can be leveled without fear of detailed rebuttal. If the person or organization leveling the charges has public credibility, then the legitimacy of the CIA and, indeed, of the United States' intelligence activities as a whole, are called into question.
While the President has been and remains rightfully determined to protect his constitutional powers over foreign affairs, and has opposed efforts to limit his powers and prerogatives in this area, I believe that this provision helps both the President and the CIA.
The creation of an independent statutory inspector general will enhance the legitimacy of the CIA and protect the President from charges of abuse and misconduct by the CIA or its officers. As the Iran-Contra affair proves, the CIA is one of the few agencies of the U.S. Government that can bring down a President through the actions of a few misguided individuals.
The President has written in opposition to this provision. In his letter of November 3, he quoted approvingly from the `Dear Colleague' letter from our distinguished colleagues, Senators Bradley, Danforth, Hollings, and Murkowski, as follows:
`A statutory inspector general `would inevitably mean more bureaucracy, more regulation, more outside intervention, when the real need is to make the CIA more productive, more skilled and more useful in confronting a variety of difficult national challenges.'
The rebuttal to this argument is simple: What we don't need is a CIA that is more productive, skilled, and useful in ways contrary to law or its own regulations. There is ample evidence that there is a real danger of overzealous persons undertaking activities that are in violation of law or regulation.
The inspector general provision protects against that precise problem and provides added support to the President and the Director of Central Intelligence. The CIA must remain a disciplined tool for our foreign policy that does what it is ordered to do and what it is permitted to do under the Constitution and our law. The IG will be there to make certain that it does.
In addition, the existence of the statutory independent IG will assist the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to fulfill its oversight responsibilities. The IG will be on site, full time, and the IG's staff will be able to look into complaints or evidence of problems. The IG will continue to share the results of investigations with this committee. That can only help us do our job better.
In conclusion, I strongly support this provision. I urge my colleagues to vote for the motion to table the amendment to strike the IG provision and to vote for the bill as a whole.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I agree with the intent of the committee legislation, which would establish an independent inspector general for the Central Intelligence Agency. However, because I fear that the establishment of such a position could reduce the already inadequate oversight by the Congress that exists today, I will vote against those who would table the Hollings amendment to eliminate the IG.
One lesson I learned from the Iran-Contra affair is that the Congress often does not exercise sufficient oversight over covert intelligence activities as is. The signs of the secret Contra network were there for all to see--I myself tried to investigate them, and was told that the allegations I had heard had already been looked at by the Intelligence Committees and found to be false.
What happened, of course, is that when these questions had been raised, and the Intelligence Committees sought to conduct oversight, they asked the executive branch questions and were lied to.
That unfortunately, was the end of their investigations until the scandal was revealed by the Hasenfus crash, and by a press account in the Middle East.
While I do not agree with the distinguished Senator from South Carolina that an inspector general would cripple the CIA, I do agree with him that the establishment of an inspector general is not the best approach to the issue of oversight.
What is wrong with the inspector general provision is that it substitutes an IG for Congress doing its own work in asking the right questions of the CIA. I fear it would permit the Intelligence Committees to do less, when doing more is needed.
In short, contrary to the intentions of the sponsors, I believe even an ostensibly independent IG has the potential to be more of a figleaf than real oversight, and a figleaf which would make the already difficult job of the Congress in finding out what is going on even harder.
Accordingly, I will vote against this motion to table the Hollings amendment.
Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina and ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second.
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion of the Senator from Oklahoma to lay on the table the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina. On this question, the yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. CRANSTON. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Matsunaga] is necessarily absent.
Mr. SIMPSON. I announce that the Senator from Colorado [Mr. Armstrong] is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lieberman). Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 64, nays 34, as follows:
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So the motion was agreed to.
Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. COHEN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senate majority leader.
END