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(Mr. COX of California asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate President Bush on his nomination of Robert Gates, with whom I worked on the White House staff, to be the next Director of Central Intelligence. I agree with the statement by Mr. Gates this morning, that American intelligence is the best in the world. However, American intelligence will not continue to be the best in the world if the Kremlin and the KGB succeed in their scandalous efforts to bug our Embassy in Moscow.

Most Americans are already aware that the KGB saw to it that the extensive electronic eavesdropping devices were embedded in the Moscow Embassy when it was built. Independent analysts and Bush administration security officials, the intelligence community, the Secretary of State, and the current Director of Central Intelligence has all agreed that the only way to fix the problem is to tear down the Embassy and rebuild it from the ground up.

Later this week a small number of House Democrats are going to force Members, or attempt to do so, to use that Embassy by building secure, allegedly secure floors on top of the bugged ones.

[TIME: 1230]

This week, our colleague, the gentlewoman from Maine [Ms. Snowe] will offer an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act to require that we tear down that Moscow Embassy and rebuild it.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for the Snowe amendment and for an effective defense against KGB spying against our diplomats.

END