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The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Frank of Massachusetts). Pursuant to House Resolution 229 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill, H.R. 2330.

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IN THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE

Accordingly the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill (H.R. 2330) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 1994 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the U.S. Government and the Central Intelligence Agency retirement and disability system, and for other purposes, with Ms. Slaughter in the chair.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. When the Committee of the Whole rose on Tuesday, August 3, 1993, the amendment offered by the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] had been disposed of, and the bill was open to amendment at any point.

AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MR. FRANK OF MASSACHUSETTS

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment which has been printed on page H5453. The amendment is to page 5, line 11, section 105, a reduction in authorization.

The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. Frank of Massachusetts:--Page 5, after line 11, add the following:

(a) In General: Except as provided in subsection (b), the aggregate amounts authorized to be appropriated by this Act, including the amounts specified in the classified Schedule of Authorizations referred to in section 102, are reduced by $500,000,000.

(b) Exception: Subsection (a) does not apply to amounts authorized to be appropriated by section 201 for the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability Fund.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts (during the reading). Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the Record.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Massachusetts?

There was no objection.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, we debated yesterday the broad context in which this amendment should be put, but we have here a more moderate version of it. I did support yesterday a much larger cut.

This is a cut of $500 million. It exempts the Retirement and Disability Fund. It would reduce the overall intelligence budget by $500 million, a very small percentage of the overall total. The question is, shall the intelligence apparatus, all of the intelligence apparatus, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the various military entities, in effect be exempt from any budgetary discipline at all?

Now, the committee did reduce their effort to get an increase. I think the committee has begun a useful process, but that does not go far enough.

We have heard Members all morning, and we will be hearing them all week, talk about the need for cuts. The question now is, does that rhetoric have any impact on Members' actions? We are talking about a cut that is only a couple of percentage points.

The Soviet Union 5 years ago absorbed approximately two-thirds of the budget, at least, in my judgment, of the intelligence apparatus. That threat has disappeared. Members have said, `Oh, there are new threats.'

I deny that. There are not new threats. Nuclear proliferation, the North Korean regime? Did anyone 5 years ago think that that was the Kiwanis Club with a somewhat culturally different approach?

Terrorism? Was Iran a vacation spot for people interested in the exotic 5 years ago?

There are no new threats. There has been a substantial reduction in the old threat. And I want to say what I think has to be very clear for this budget and the military budget. People have talked about how the defense budget is taking the largest share of cuts.

Of course it is, because in no other area of this Government's activity has there been such a change in the objective reality which the program seeks to deal with.

We have seen the disappearance of the Soviet Union as an entity and the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact. There is no longer a Poland or a Hungary or a Czechoslovakia or a Bulgaria or an East Germany as part of that threat. The Soviet Union itself has been pieced apart. Yes, there are now a couple more former soviet republics to look at for nuclear proliferation. But nuclear proliferation is no more a problem today than it was 5 years ago.

Can the CIA and its related agencies in the military sustain a half-a-billion-dollar cut in reductions?

Madam Chairman, the problem is that people are confusing necessity with what is convenient and what is useful. Let me give an example.

Thirty-one years ago I went on a CIA mission. I think that

secrecy has expired enough now. Anyway that is what the statute of limitations says. I went with some journalists and with Gloria Steinem. We went to Helsinki, Finland. The CIA paid for it. We were not supposed to know that. Anyone who did not know that was too stupid to have gone. We went to infiltrate the Soviet-run youth festival. We went, we argued, and we debated, and I think it was useful. I am glad I went in 1962. I am glad I had a favorable reference from the late and unlamented House Un-American Activities Committee.

But I must say that at no point in my 22-year-old view of the world did I think that what I was doing there, debating and pointing out the horrors of the Hungarian invasion by the Russians and debating and trying to persuade people from Asia and Africa that we had a better way, at no point did I think that the security of the United States rested on the force of my argument. It was useful, it was helpful, but it was not national security at its core.

There has been an argument that we have to improve the technology. A cut of a half a billion dollars can be absorbed by that vast network of agencies, with their vast networks of personnel and their subscriptions and their cars and their analyses and everything else, without impinging in any way on their hardware. This simply says, `Subject yourself to the discipline.'

They do some things that are essential for national security. They do some other things that are useful politically and that are interesting economically.

We have a terrible budget deficit. Finally, people have said, `But if you cut this, it goes to the military budget anyway.' By what rule? Yes, the walls are still up so we cannot take this half a billion and spend it on domestic purposes, but we can use it for deficit reduction, and Members who tell us how serious they are about deficit reduction are about to have a chance to prove it.

Mr. SKAGGS. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I have tremendous respect for the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], who has offered this amendment, so my opposition comes with some difficulty personally, because I know that he has applied his considerable talent, intelligence, and way with words to this very important subject. But I think there are several reasons why it is not in the national interest to support the gentleman's amendment, and I urge my colleagues to vote against it.

I am serving in my first year on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and let me say that the committee worked painstakingly and with great pain to produce the bill that is before us which already incorporates a substantial reduction from what the President asked us to authorize for national intelligence purposes for next year. We have already cut over a billion dollars below the President's request, and he has made it very clear, as has his Director of Central Intelligence, that further reductions will not come without serious incursion on the very important functions of the intelligence community.

The gentleman from Massachusetts seems to be dismissive in his closing comments about the practical effect were we to adopt his amendment. I think the body needs to be well aware that given the point that we are in the appropriations process, given the 602(b) allocations that have been made to the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee which will ultimately decide how much we appropriate in this area, it is in fact the case that whatever might be reduced further in the authorizing phase before us today is highly likely to be absorbed by the appropriators on the Defense Subcommittee.

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Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SKAGGS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I have to correct my good friend from Colorado. He says the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee will decide. No, this House will decide, and the Senate will decide. There is no doubt in my mind that the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee will try to spend it all, but this House will have the ability to impose a little discipline and save half a billion dollars.

Mr. SKAGGS. Madam Chairman, reclaiming my time, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] I think is technically correct. As a practical matter, we have all lived through the process often enough to know that the practical outcome is likely to be as I suggested, especially given the severe constraints that have already been imposed on spending within the defense portion of the budget.

But the other effects of the adoption of his amendment are also significant and perhaps go to the merits more than addressing the issue of institutional politics.

We have heard from the Director of Intelligence that it will cost us somewhat more in the near term to effect the long-term savings, particularly in the very sophisticated overhead collection systems the country will continue to depend on. It is one of those realities, that

in order to save in the long run from consolidating some of these systems, we will need to spend somewhat more in the short run. And I think we would be deluding ourselves to think that these further proposed reductions would occur without greater costs and difficulties over the long haul.

Finally, I think we can take some real note of the fact that the new President of the United States, who has clearly made a very strong commitment to constraints in the intelligence budget and has pledged the credibility of his administration to do so, has drawn the line at this point and made a very sincere plea to this body not to further reduce the budget in this critical area.

So with great respect for the author of this amendment, I urge my colleagues to oppose it.

Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

(Mr. HYDE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] has said that the threat has lessened since the demise of the cold war. I would respectfully suggest that the threat is not less, it is different. The bear is disabled, but there are lots of snakes now loose in the forest.

Our intelligence has to be adequate, adequate to the times we live in. I suggest again with some sorrow that our intelligence has not always been adequate. It certainly was not adequate in Iran, surrounding the abdication of the Shah and the advent of the Ayatollah, and in many other places one could find fault with the adequacy of our intelligence effort.

This country needs more and better intelligence, not less. With the proliferation of chemical warfare and biological warfare, just imagine the ability to bring into this country in a diplomatic pouch vials containing anthrax or containing some chemical substance that would wipe out a city in one fell swoop. They are very portable. You do not need intercontinental ballistic missiles. You need good intelligence, and that is costly and takes time to build up.

There are 22 countries capable within the next 10 years of developing nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them. Twenty-two countries. No, the threat is not less, it is different. It is different.

Now, as far as this budget cut is concerned, there are four words why this is a terrible idea: terrorism, narcotics, proliferation, and personnel. It takes years and years and years to develop competency as analysts, as operators in the field, as human intelligence sources, as people who can collect and analyze and evaluate this intelligence.

Madam Chairman, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] has asked about the CIA, the intelligence community, should they be exempt from budgetary discipline? Nobody in this town has a greater interest in cutting the deficit than the President. He rises or falls on that, so his interest is supreme.

Madam Chairman, this bill is 4 percent less than last year, and 3.7 percent less than the President asked for. Over the next 5 years the intelligence community will reduce its civilian personnel by 17.5 percent and its military personnel by 25 percent. That is cutting back with a vengeance.

Now, look: on one side you have got the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, the Director of the CIA, two Intelligence Committees, the House and the Senate. You have two Armed Services Committees, the House and the Senate. You have two Appropriations Committees, the House and the Senate. They are all saying, stick with this figure. On the other side you have the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HYDE. It is now a pleasure to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, first of all I would say my friend from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] has described the situation we have in every cut. You will have the President, all of the agencies that administer it, and the authorizing and appropriations committees on one side, and others of us on the other side.

Second, I have to say to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], I am surprised when the gentleman says that the threat is now not less.

Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, reclaiming my time, if the gentleman would excuse me for just 1 second, on the other side though you usually have people asking for cuts whose competence is based on more than a trip 33 years ago with Gloria Steinem to the Soviet Union.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, I thank the gentleman. That was not the only purpose. But, as long as the gentleman has pointed it out, I will say that the CIA continues to be interested in other issues, such as immigration and the environment. My point was that some of what they do is national security related, and some is not.

But I want to get back to the central point where I differ with the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], and that is the statement that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the dismantlement of that military apparatus, the threat facing us has not lessened.

Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, I would like to reclaim my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I should not have asked the gentleman to yield, since the gentleman will not yield.

Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, can we not have a discussion without the gentleman getting upset?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, if I could finish my sentence, we might.

Mr. HYDE. I might forget what I wanted to say.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, that is one of the hazards the gentleman will have to deal with.

Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, when you get my age, it is.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, the point is the Soviet Union has been, with the Warsaw Pact and all of its weaponry, an overwhelming threat to our national security. When the gentleman says that the dismantlement of that threat to our national security from the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union means that the threat has not lessened, I think he over-argues the point uncharacteristically.

Yes, there are other threats. They have been around for a while.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] has expired.

(At the request of Mr. Frank of Massachusetts and by unanimous consent, Mr. Hyde was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)

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Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, this is an example of the kind of overargument we are getting. To say that the dismantlement of the Warsaw Pact, the defection of those countries, the breakup of the Soviet Union, that that has not lessened the threat against us, simply does not bear logical analysis.

Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, reclaiming my time, I wish to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank]. If I may respond, there are some 33,000 nuclear warheads aimed at us. They are aimed at us, nobody else, in Russia, in Kazakhstan, in Ukraine, and in Byelarus. They still constitute a threat until they are dismantled and buried in the ground. I do not say they are the threat they used to be. The threat today comes from China, from North Korea, from Angola, from all kinds of places. They come from India, from Punjab, from Nagorno-Karabakh, from the former Yugoslavia. For all of these conflicts we need to know what is going on, who the players are, what our involvement can be, what it ought to be, ought not to be, and that costs money.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, yes, almost everything the gentleman has mentioned has been a threat all during this period, China, North Korea, et cetera. I am trying to focus on what the gentleman said.

The argument of the gentleman that there has been no diminution in the threat, that it is simply different, I submit that is at variance with what the gentleman knows to be the case.

The disappearance of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact has reduced the threat. When the gentleman denies that, he talks about other threats, they are there today, most of them were there a few days ago and a few years ago. But for the gentleman to say that no longer having the Soviet Union with the Warsaw Pact has not lessened the threat is an example of what I think is the overargument that bolsters the case against even a small cut.

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Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HYDE. I yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, the difference I have with the gentleman from Massachusetts is that, yes, some of these problem areas were threats, but there is no question, they have clearly been enhanced since the Soviet Union has ended as a collective central power. For example, North Korea, as a potential nuclear power, is much more serious today than it was 5 years ago.

Mr. HYDE. Madam Chairman, does the gentleman think if the Iranians develop a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it, we are not at risk worse than we were when the Soviet Union, with all its problems, at least the Soviets were rational.

Mr. BILBRAY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

(Mr. BILBRAY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BILBRAY. Madam Chairman, I think it is important to recognize that as a member of the committee, I came on 6 months ago. And for 6 years, I sat out here, where the majority of the Members sit. It is a very small committee, and I listened to the same sort of arguments, not understanding entirely the intelligence budget because of the extreme secrecy that has to be kept in this committee. Most of the Members do not know even the total amount of the budget, of what it does and where the money goes.

Six months of listening to what goes on within the committee and being on the Budget Subcommittee, subcommittee of the committee, I realized that there is a lot of areas far beyond what we have been talking about today that this committee is involved in.

It is involved with every aspect of Government in trying to make sure our national interests in all areas are secure and protected.

We went in there, and we took an axe to this particular program. We cut it in excess of $1 billion.

Prior to that, the President cut it before it came over, over a billion dollars over what President Bush had recommended.

We have cut this budget, not only the fat, not only the muscle, we have cut it to the bone.

I wish that many Members would take the time to go up to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and examine what they do and get a briefing from the committee on some of the aspects they cover, because let me tell my colleagues, I serve on the Committee on Armed Services. I have supported massive cuts in the size of the military, even though that committee is something near and dear to my heart.

But I sit on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and realize that we are jeopardizing not only the national security of our country but the national economic development of our country by cutting this budget. I urge Members to look at this.

I know the inclination in this Congress is to cut everything that comes up. There was a comment by our chairman that in the committee one day that if somebody brought a cutting motion for his mother's hospital bed, this Congress would cut a portion of that hospital bed very quickly. And I think that has been evidence by continual votes that have come before this body.

In our being anxious to please the public that we are here to cut spending, we sometimes are overzealous and cut programs that do affect our national security and our economic viability.

I think it is very important to Members out there to realize, and I am not a hawk, I am not a hawk, I am not a fanatic conservative. I am not one that does not stand with the President. I am voting for his bill tomorrow.

I am one who is firmly entrenched in believing in the Democratic Party and those premises that we stand for. But this is not the place to do it. This is an

important vote. It is one that we will live to regret, if we follow the guidance of my good friend from Massachusetts and endorse his amendment.

I ask those that are out there that have not been involved in the intelligence process, please become involved. Study it. Find out what it is. Go up to the committee. Talk to the staff. But do not make this serious, serious mistake of voting for this amendment. In the future, believe me, economically and securitywise, we will regret this vote if we make this cut.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Let me begin by thanking the 104 Members who yesterday voted for the Sanders-Owens amendment, which would have reduced the intelligence budget by 10 percent. As Members know, the amendment before us would reduce the intelligence budget by about 500 million, somewhere around 2 percent.

In talking to some Members yesterday, who voted against our amendment, their thought was that the cut that we proposed was too big. My sincere hope is that they will support the amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] and allow us to pass this.

Madam Chairman, I think one of the problems that we have in the House, and it is a deep problem, it affects all of us, is that every committee looks at the world from their own committee's viewpoint.

I believe and I understand the sincerity of the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Glickman] and all the members of his committee, majority and minority. They are here to fight for what they believe is best for the agencies they represent. And that is true, I think, for every subcommittee and every committee in our institution.

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Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANDERS. I yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I do not represent the intelligence community at all. I want to make that clear. I do not think anybody on this committee does.

Second, this is a rotating committee assignment, intentionally done to make sure that there are no vested interests in this thing.

I have this chairmanship about 18 more months, and then I am gone. Hopefully not from the world, but certainly from this committee.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam Chairman, I understand the gentleman's point, but the gentleman understands my point as well. He did not accept his responsibility if he was not prepared to fight as hard as he could.

I think what we have in our institution is every subcommittee and every chairman and every Member is out there fighting for what they believe. They are trying to do a good job. Therefore, what we sometimes lose is a broad sense of priorities.

We are not looking at the whole picture. The chairman and the other Members have said that all of this money is desperately needed. But can we not make the case that there are other desperate needs in this country which, in fact, might even be more desperate than the needs of the intelligence community? Shall we have a debate about morality and philosophy and to say that 10 blocks away from here in the city of Washington or in my own State of Vermont we have children who are hungry, who have no future whatsoever?

Shall we have a debate that another spy satellite for $2 billion is more important for the future of this country, is morally more acceptable than feeding millions and millions of children in this country who are hungry today?

In America today, we have millions of children who have not received their immunization shots. The Third World, in many respects, has done a better job than we have. Shall we have a debate about morality? Whether the CIA or the other intelligence agencies need more money at the expense of the health and welfare of low-income children in this country?

So the broad argument that I want to make is not simply to look at the needs of the intelligence community. That is important. But we have got to look at the broad needs of America.

I would argue, as many have argued before me, that when a nation has a $4 trillion national debt, when we have a $300 billion deficit, when every single day Members of both parties come up here and they say we have got to deal with the deficit, we have got to deal with the deficit, well, today, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] is giving us an opportunity to deal with the deficit. And when other Members come up here and they say that the standard of living for working people is in decline, that poor people are hurting, that we have got to pay attention to those needs, which have been ignored for so many years, the amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] is giving us an opportunity to do that.

So to paraphrase Shakespeare, we come not to speak so much against the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and their request, but we come to speak for the hungry and for the poor and for those people whose needs are perhaps greater than the intelligence community.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by my colleague, the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts.

(Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. HARMAN. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Ms. HARMAN. Madam Chairman, I am a new Member. I am not a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

I represent the aerospace center of the country, and I have made it my business, as a member of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology to learn as much as possible about intelligence and the intelligence budget.

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I asked for and received a briefing on the intelligence budget by the excellent staff of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I was briefed by the CIA and the Intelligence agency, and I have in other ways tried to study this issue.

My conclusion, expressed on the floor yesterday, is that intelligence spending is intelligent spending. This budget is sound and I believe that amendments to reduce it should be defeated.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, I would like to again reiterate that I think our committee has done a good job. We have made a significant reduction in this bill, over $1 billion from the President's budget request. Those cuts have caused some concern in the intelligence community. I think the committee on a bipartisan basis has looked at every aspect of spending here, and we have made significant reductions.

I would urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, please stay with us on this amendment. I would say to my friend, the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], I share his compassion and concern for the homeless and for young people who need immunization and for Head Start, but I would argue that that is the issue we ought to debate as Democrats and as Members of Congress when we have the budget resolution up, because it is when we do the budget resolution that we make the divisions between domestic spending and defense and national security spending.

Let us have that debate there. Once we get down to this bill, which is part of the Defense bill, cuts that are made here will wind up probably being utilized in another aspect of defense. It will not get to the people that my colleagues want to help, so let us have this debate next year. I may well share the priorities of both the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] and the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] when we do the budget resolution, when we allocate the funding. That is when we should talk about our national priorities.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, first I have to reiterate that under the budget walls which are up, the gentleman is correct, this $500 million could not be used for other governmental purposes. It could only be used for deficit reduction.

Now the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations would have the option of spending it, but the House would have the option of doing it for deficit reduction.

I would also say to my friend, he talked about these other issues. The Washington Post says today that the CIA is about to get into such topics as the setting up of a new office, the environment, migration, refugees, epidemics, and world food supplies. Now the gentleman says this is national security and those are other issues.

The point is that the mandate they have given themselves is so broad that we can make a cut without in any way impinging on these. I do not see nuclear proliferation or terrorism here.

Mr. DICKS. If the gentleman from Massachusetts would just realize that dealing with humanitarian problems of the world is part of national security. We need to do that.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I agree, but that ought to be subjected to the same budgetary scrutiny. If this is partly the foreign aid budget, which is what we are being told, then it ought to get the same budgetary scrutiny.

My point simply is that some of what they do is essential to national security. Most of what they do is. That is why my cut leaves 98 percent alone.

However, we are not talking here about that. My point is that the gentleman is not talking about terrorism or nuclear proliferation when we talk about the new areas. What I am trying to do is save some money and say we will deal with the environment, we will deal with these other things in other ways.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Washington has expired.

(By unanimous consent, Mr. Dicks was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)

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Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, in the Defense budget, let us talk about the Defense budget, of which intelligence is a part. I would want to point out to my colleague that there is $11 billion in the Defense budget for environmental restoration. An enormous amount of money is being spent to fix up bases that need to be fixed up, to work on bases that have environmental problems. That is certainly important.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the gentleman will yield, I agree.

Mr. DICKS. We also have done about $4 billion on defense conversion. I see our colleague, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder], who has been a leader in crafting that part of the bill. Defense conversion is another significant activity funded by the Defense budget.

What I am trying to point out is, for example, in the Defense budget there is aid to the Soviet Union. We are taking a significant amount of money and using it from the Defense budget for aid to the Soviet Union, because we think that is in our national security interests. We are sending our troops to Somalia in a peacekeeping mission to deal with hunger. Those are the new issues of national security as we proceed toward the 21st century.

I think the CIA is totally proper in looking at environment and these other issues as part of the new challenge.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman continue to yield?

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. First of all, much of what the gentleman talked about, most of it, is to undo some of the damage that occurred inevitably in the defense process itself, such as the environment conversion, and beyond that, I am not saying this is a waste of money. I am saying that it is a different order of importance from terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

I am saying that the intelligence community does have a wide range of things, some of which are very scary, and we absolutely do not want to even suggest that we interfere, such as nuclear proliferation and terrorism; some of which, however, is exactly in policy terms like the rest of the budget, and therefore, I think Members should not be told that the committee has decided `Don't touch it.'

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Washington has expired.

(By unanimous consent, Mr. Dicks was allowed to proceed for 30 additional seconds.)

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, I would say this, that we have a priorities debate when we do the budget. We have the Black Caucus which will present a budget. The gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] has his `pay-as-you-go' budget. That is where we should argue about these priorities.

We made a decision earlier this year that we were going to allocate a certain amount of money for defense and national security. What we are really talking about here today is how much of that is going to be in the intelligence arena, how much of it is going to be in the defense arena, and the gentleman is quite correct. The Congress could decide to rescind some of the money for deficit reduction.

Mr. DORNAN. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Madam Chairman, I was listening carefully to the remarks of my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] and to the remarks of Mr. Lewis, a new member of the committee, and to the remarks of the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Bilbray] today. It occurred to me that maybe I was wrong years ago when I objected to the committee size growing.

At that time we had a gang of eight, the chairman and the Speaker and both the leaders over in the Senate, the majority leader here, the Republican leader; the gang of eight, and then it was a very small committee, and it was constituted originally in 1976 under our distinguished colleague, Eddie Boland.

Now I am beginning to think that maybe we ought to expand the size of the committee, double it, to encourage more Members to come upstairs and do what they can do anyway. That is to read what the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence accomplishes. There is only a tiny percentage of it which is top secret material, usually code words, that a Congressman cannot have access to.

Who informed me as a freshman here in 1977 that I could have my office swept, the Hill was crawling with more agents in those days, and some willing dupes; that I could have my office swept and get 99 percent of the briefings going on upstairs in the new Committee on Intelligence in my own office, personally; that I could go overseas, and if I had my wits about me, ask to talk to a station chief and get an in-depth briefing?

It should be clear to anybody here today that once they have served on that committee, it may not influence their votes out here on the floor, but no longer do they rise and speak for cuts in our intelligence budget. It just does not happen, by the routine of Members' duties as a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They are forced by attendance and decency to go upstairs and learn how dangerous this world continues to be, and what this committee in trying to do.

Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DORNAN. I am glad to yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Chairman, by way of asking the gentleman a couple of questions, he and I have discussed in the past concerns about the fact that we are shrinking our national defense budget so rapidly that we may be, once again, repeating past mistakes.

Setting that aside, there is a preconceived notice that as we shrink the defense budget, that we automatically ought to shrink at least as much intelligence funding.

I would ask the gentleman, is it not just the reverse, the opposite? If we are going to shrink our defense money, do we not need to make sure that the President has the best information available, and that the appropriate committees around here have the best information available?

Mr. DORNAN. Madam Chairman, I would say to the gentleman from California, it should be an axiom for any country that treasures its existence, going all the way back to Sun-tzu, a millenium ago, that we must increase our intelligence capability if we are drawing down on our defenses. No matter how dry you keep your powder, when you are letting qualified men and women go from our defense structure, you have to have more intelligence.

This is the first day in the well that I have ever had the opportunity, Madam Chairman to say this. This year, this year, coming up, is the year when our deficit spending, the red ink, about $302 billion, will be ahead of what we allocate for national security, which is $294 billion, if we include all of the Department of Energy moneys on atomic affairs.

[TIME: 1200]

Mr. LEWIS of California. Will the gentleman yield again?

Mr. DORNAN. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Chairman, in that context then, would the gentleman agree with this: If we were to shrink this budget by this $500 million or this one-half billion, recognizing that we have a several billion dollar shortfall in the Defense Appropriation Subcommittee, that this half-billion dollars would be gobbled up for more defense spending?

Mr. DORNAN. That is the opening of my remarks, I say to my colleague from California. This is not going to be a savings. This is not going to go to flood relief, not to all of the tragic problems in this country that the distinguished gentleman from Vermont pointed out, not to families with dependent children, not to permit restoration of a better earned income tax credit. It is just going to fall back into defense moneys and be used for some program that does not have nearly the same priority.

Mr. LEWIS of California. I thank the gentleman for that clarification.

Mr. DORNAN. You bet.

I want to discuss briefly the counterterrorism program. But I want to point out something else about people getting in this well and talking about the cold war is over.

First of all, I wish that they would pump a call to the White House because my calls are not answered by Mr. Clinton, and ask him to tell the reason why he had his only good week in the last 6 months in Japan, which was because he was briefed to the nth power over all of the other six, and the visiting Belgium Prime Minister. He was briefed so far beyond them on what was happening in the world that he glowed, and then he came home to more domestic problems.

There is more to this than just counterterrorism.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] has again expired.

(By unanimous consent, Mr. Dornan was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)

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Mr. COMBEST. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DORNAN. I yield to the gentleman from Texas, and I know what he is going to say is going to be good.

Mr. COMBEST. Madam Chairman, I just cannot let the discussion between the two California colleagues go, leaving any uncertainty of impression. I agree, and you know I agree that at a time of defense reduction intelligence should go up. I want to make certain there is no misunderstanding about the fact, however, that intelligence, in fact, if you put the lines of expenditures of the last 2 years of intelligence and defense, intelligence has actually gone down greater percentage-wise than defense. So it is not that we are spending more money on intelligence percentage-wise. We are actually spending less than we are in defense.

Mr. DORNAN. If C-SPAN tells me correctly, the figures we have is a million or more people are watching, and about half of that is different from yesterday, and the point was emphasized at least 10 times yesterday, and we cannot emphasize it enough. We are going down proportionately more in intelligence than the defense budget.

But before I read something about counterterrorism, let me make an observation here. When people come in this well and say we have won the cold war, the first question that pops in my mind is what did you do, you personally, whoever is standing at this lectern or the other to bring about a victory in what John F. Kennedy called the half a century of twilight struggle against an evil empire? I think that of course if someone was F-1, someone was a woman and we were not drafting women at that time, I am not talking about that, I am talking about service to your State, your country, votes for defense budgets, support for the military, talks at the American Legion, the VFW club. There are a lot of ways to serve other than wearing the uniform. But for people who never wiggled a pinky in their entire adult life, and if anything made the case for the moral equivalency, and sometimes even made the case for the innate goodness of the evil empire, even going so far as to say that Ronald Reagan was the problem with the world, and that Andropov was possibly a closet liberal who maybe listened to classical Western music, and even possibly occasionally to a rock record in his closet in the Kremlin, for people like that to get up here who never get intelligence briefings, never ask the CIA to come to their offices and talk about a victory in the cold war, immediately I think of the Lone Ranger when Tonto said, `What do you mean `we' White Man?' I would like to know what they did do to win the cold war when they talk about the fruits that we are going to reap from it.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] has again expired.

(By unanimous consent Mr. Dornan was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.)

Mr. DORNAN. I am going to put in the Record the counterintelligence programs that the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Jim Woolsey, came back and told us about on what is going on in Managua with arms caches, soldier-fired missiles. This is good stuff on Managua, Madam Chairman. Please read it in the Record. It was in there yesterday too.

• Any deeper cuts will have a devastating effect on our Nation's intelligence and its capabilities, at the very time when we need them the most.

• I repeat where would this money go that some would cut today? It wouldn't go for flood relief in the Midwest; not to families with dependent children; not to permit a restoration of better earned-income credits in the budget reconciliation. No, it would just fall back into the Defense authorization bill and be used for some other program that does not have nearly the same priority.

• This budget funds major counterterrorism programs, the type of program which helped apprehend the World Trade Center bombers. Terrorism is on the rise, including State-sponsored terrorism. Last March 9, Director of Central Intelligence Jim Woolsey testified before our committee in open session, which is very rare. I asked him about the Nicaraguan passports that had been found in the possession of the alleged perpetrators of the World Trade Center bombings. He didn't have any information at that time. Since that time, however, we have found that elements of the government of President Violetta Chamorro and her son-in-law, Antonio Lacayo, have continued to support terrorism elsewhere abroad. A massive arms cache blew up in Managua on May 23. In that cache, were found sophisticated surface-to-air missiles, shoulderheld SAM missiles, that had been owned by the FMLN Salvadoran guerrilla group. The FMLN organization and the Sandinistas were called boy scouts from that lectern, had solemnly pledged that it had turned in all of its weapons to the United Nations. Shortly thereafter, another faction of the FMLN also admitted to having weapons caches. Now, we are all hopeful that things will continue to go well in El Salvador, and that the violence of the 1980's has changed to an age of rebuilding, with expectations that democracy will flourish, but the FMLN weapons found in Managua argue for us to keep a robust intelligence watch on events there.

• Some divisions of the Nicaraguan government are aiding other terrorist organizations, such as the Basque Separatist Movement, the ETA. In fact, three members of that group were deported by Mrs. Chamorro shortly after the May 23 explosion. How are we going to monitor developments such as these in Nicaragua? We are going to monitor them through American intelligence. American intelligence is our first line of defense. It was the FBI's counterterrorism division that quickly found the perpetrators of the World Trade Center bombing, and equally importantly, rounded up the ring that was planning on blowing up several tunnels in New York City, as well as the United Nations headquarters and the Federal building in Manhattan.

• I simply cannot understand why someone would be here, standing on this floor, saying, `Let's cut the budget some more.' Mr. Chairman, let's act responsibly. I believe we have cut too deeply here, but I will vote for this bill. Every Member who understands history should vote for H.R. 2330.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mrs. KENNELLY. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GLICKMAN. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

(Mrs. KENNELLY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mrs. KENNELLY. Madam Chairman, I would like to say that there are many unsung heroes, those station chiefs all over this world that did a great deal to end the cold war. This debate goes beyond the discussion of reasonable cuts. We have an outstanding intelligence worldwide community. Yes, we all have to cut back, but not to the point of damaging a professional, effective well trained intelligence corp. Yes, the world has changed--but that doesn't mean the number or locations of problems requiring intelligence analysis is reduced to the point that we relax our guard. While we are less at the risk of nuclear annihilation there are still incredibly dangerous threats to our country and our citizens daily. Need I remind you today of the World Trade Center bombing. The heartbreak of those families of those on the Pan Am flight from Germany. We are a country with a proven and trained intelligence community. If we are to remain the major world leader--yes be fiscally prudent but not fool hardly.

Mr. REED. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GLICKMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

Mr. REED. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

The gentleman from Massachusetts has long taken a very active role in ensuring that the needs of America are served, and I have supported him in many of these efforts. But I have done so particularly with respect to cutting the troop forces with the understanding that we would maintain a strong, vigilant, and active intelligence operation.

As a member of the committee, I can assure Members in this budget we do. We have looked very closely, very skeptically at all of the programs, and as a result we have reduced that budget by $1 billion, and we present to the House today a budget which is fiscally responsible, but also meets the needs of a very complex and dangerous world.

The presumption of this amendment and other amendments that have been offered is that the world has changed and that we must reduce our spending on intelligence, and this is precisely the presumption that this committee took to a close line-by-line analysis of the budget. The result is the cut that we have announced today in this budget of more than $1 billion.

The world has changed. But it is no less dangerous than it was before the demise of the Soviet Union. It has changed in many different respects. The change can be seen by simply reading the newspapers. A week ago in Kazakhstan the Russian forces killed approximately 100 guerrillas what were flowing into Afghanistan. Two days ago the Russian Governor in Ossetia was assassinated by tribesmen on horseback. If you look at other areas of the world which are turbulent and violent, we have interests and involvements for which we need an active intelligence service.

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Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GLICKMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. And I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island because he has raised here what clearly is the fundamental difference between me and many of my colleagues. When he says the world has changed, and it is no less dangerous, I acknowledge there are great dangers. I want to leave 98 percent of the budget you have asked for there. But when people tell us that the demise of the Soviet Union, the dismantlement of the Soviet military empire, the ending of the Warsaw Pact, the defection of all of the Eastern European countries, when they tell us the world is now no less dangerous, I think that loses credibility. And I would be glad to have this be a surrogate for that. If you believe that with the collapse of the Soviet threat against our very existence as a Nation we are no safer today, and I am sorry that the Governor of Ossetia was killed by men on horseback, but I do not think that the same magnitude of threat that we faced 5 years ago exists, and that defines the difference between us.

Mr. GLICKMAN. I continue to yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

Mr. REED. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I would note to the gentleman from Massachusetts that in the long course of the cold war the Soviet Union did not manage to destroy a major building in one of our major cities, but in fact terrorists operating apparently, and we are trying to find out the source of their inspiration, managed to do that. So the world indeed is dangerous, and the threats are close to home here in the United States.

We are seeing political revolutions around the world. We are seeing revolts, we are seeing the deployment of American forces. We have forces today in Macedonia. We have forces in Somalia. All of them require the utmost in intelligence to protect them, and also to accomplish the mission which this Congress has authorized. In the case of Somalia it is humanitarian relief. In the case of Macedonia, it is to control a very dangerous situation.

As we read the papers each day, every day this week there has been discussion and debate at least about whether we will conduct air strikes in association with NATO in Bosnia. I hope the President of the United States has access to the highest quality of intelligence available, SIGNIT and HUMINIT, and all of the others to make the very, very difficult decisions which are necessary. I would hate to see a situation where he is facing a decision like this without those resources.

But let me say something else. Not only are we engaged in political revolution around the world, not only do we have that type of knowledge, but we are facing a technological revolution. Today telecommunications is expanding tremendously high-capacity channels, from analog to digital. All of these require a tremendous investment in our technological infrastructure, which is included in this bill.

I see on television commercials by AT&T allowing an American citizen, a citizen of the world to put their baby to bed at night, looking by putting their care in and watching. Those types of telecommunications revolutions also have impacts on our ability to intercept signals, to use SIGNIT effectively. This bill recognizes that. This bill recognizes that we have to not only deal with the political instability of the world, which is much greater in many respects, and different, but also the technological revolution. I thank the gentleman from Kansas for yielding.

Mr. COMBEST. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. In the debate of both today and yesterday, Madam Chairman, I am struck by the proponents' consistent and constant repeated references to the fall of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union as though these events had happened yesterday, and that all of a sudden we must this year execute an about-face in our intelligence policy.

[TIME: 1210]

I would like to invite those who propose cuts in the intelligence budget this year because of those monumental events to join us here today, August 1993. And when we make the transition to this year, I would remind them that we are discussing the intelligence authorization for 1994.

This may come as a surprise to those who think that the final days of communism in the Soviet Union were yesterday or even last year. I hope they will listen to just two facts. One, the Soviet Union began its unraveling not this decade but in the late 1980's. The Berlin Wall was 4 years ago, not this year, that it began to come down.

While this is obviously news to some, those developments were not lost on the Intelligence Committee or the intelligence community, and I think the vast majority of this House. We took those events into consideration, and we have acted on them accordingly over the past few years. Specifically the Intelligence Committee and the Congress as a whole have, since the beginning of the 1990's, helped the intelligence community totally to begin totally to revamp its priorities, to revamp its collection efforts and its deployment of resources.

It is also for that reason that the Intelligence Committee has for the last 2 years cut the intelligence budget significantly below its cold war levels.

May I throw in another fact here, Madam Chairman: During the 1980's, upward of 60 percent of our intelligence resources were devoted to the Soviet Warsaw Pact threat. Our total resources given to that region and the former Soviet Union are significantly less than half of that today and are moving downward. Those that remain have been totally redirected. Those that remain have been totally redirected and are concentrating on following the new intelligence issues that are now manifest in that region. Regional instability in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the political dynamics of the new fragile governments, the disposition of thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles which may or may not be under the control of sane, central governments, the spread of radical Islamic and other ideologies, so forth and so on, this is not business as usual. This is not the first time that the cold war issue has been addressed.

We are looking at the intelligence budget today, and this is not the issues of the cold war.

Mr. SKELTON. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COMBEST. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. SKELTON. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

It seems that so many people forget the purpose of intelligence. It is so that our country, our Nation, our national security will not be surprised by some unseen event.

We have been surprised in years past, decades past, the shot at Sarajevo that brought us into World War I, the North Koreans and China coming into South Korea, World War II, Hitler's rise, all of these things need to be known about ahead of time, and I might point out to the gentleman that in what used to be the Soviet Union today there are seven armed conflicts going on. Hopefully, we will not get involved or be brought indirectly through the back door in any of them.

But we must, through our intelligence sources, know of these things.

I associate myself with the gentleman's remarks. We cannot cut this any more than the Intelligence Committee already has.

[Page: H5759]

Mr. COMBEST. I would just, Madam Chairman, reiterate one other thing. I think the Congress asked the committees to go and look carefully at where can cuts be made. There are cuts in here beyond where I wish they were, but I think there is a reality that also has to be recognized.

But if this is the continual message that we sent the authorizing committees, that they go up, they do the hard work, make the hard choices, do the hard work and still come to the floor and get further cuts, what is the reason for the authorizing committees to do it. Why not go up, make the budget significantly larger than we know we have to have it because we can anticipate the fact that regardless of how well we do our job, regardless of how deeply we have cut, regardless of the pain that we may have inflicted, we are going to come to the floor and get it cut anyway? We would have been better to come to the floor significantly larger. We could have come to the floor at the President's request, and we would have gotten a cut. We may have gotten away with more than we have gotten away with here, but do not ask the authorizing committees to go and to do the hard work, to make the hard choices and then come to the floor and face the same cuts that we would not be facing otherwise.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] has expired.

(By unanimous consent, Mr. Combest was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)

Mr. GEJDENSON. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COMBEST. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Madam Chairman, without commenting on the merits of the amendment offered by my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts, would the gentleman examine his own record? Has the gentleman never voted for a cut of an authorizing committee after it has done its work?

Mr. COMBEST. Absolutely.

Mr. GEJDENSON. You have?

Mr. COMBEST. Absolutely.

Mr. GEJDENSON. And what does the gentleman from Massachusetts propose to do here? He is proposing to amend the good work of the gentleman from Kansas with a cut, and so it seems to me that without the merits of this case being addressed, everybody does this occasionally.

Mr. COMBEST. No. I understand.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Everybody does this occasionally.

Mr. COMBEST. These are arguments we anticipate. Obviously we have to establish priorities, where are our

concerns, what are out interests. But I will say to the gentleman this, that in those instances where I have made further reductions, I know specifically where the reductions are coming. I know exactly what the impact is going to be. I know exactly what the program is going to be that is affected by it, and I will indicate that this is a unique committee. Certainly I would think any of us who serve on it find it somewhat unique.

But this is a situation to where we deal with extremely highly classified information. We have tried to make that as available as possible to any of the Members who wish to come up and look at it, and it is not something that is going to simply be known by a wide range of people what the impact of those cuts is going to be.

I know that if I move to cut agriculture or education or something of some other method in the House, that, in fact, what those impacts will be, but it is very difficult to have the information broadly recognized, and we have gone to, I think as it has been noted on the floor, the widest extent ever possible to try to inform as many Members who are interested, and I will admit that the gentleman from Massachusetts went to the committee and looked at what that information is to realize the impact of it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COMBEST. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The point is that I do have a pretty good idea of what I am talking about. The point is the intelligence community does some things that are essential to national security. It does some things in the area of economics, in the area of the environment, in the area of food supplies, acknowledged facts which are less important.

My point is the gentleman is trying to put it all under the same rubric.

The other thing that I think I do know without having been on the Intelligence Committee, the collapse of the Soviet Union has lessened the danger to the United States.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] has again expired.

(By unanimous consent, Mr. Combest was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.)

Mr. COMBEST. Madam Chairman, to respond to the gentleman's comments, those are not new programs that are being created in the intelligence community, to go out and to look at the environment, to look at agriculture, to look at economics or whatever. That is taking existing resources and making the maximum use. If we are going to have them up there, let us look at the environment, let us see what is happening around the world, let us look at crop reports. I could not come to the floor, in all good conscience, and suggest to the gentleman that we ought to be spending more on creating entirely new satellite programs or whatever to go around the world and look at the environment, but if they are going to be there, let us do it. Let us utilize them to the maximum extent possible, and I think that is exactly what is being done.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COMBEST. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The point is that it takes personnel, and you have to pay to do that. It is simply illogical to say that because we have the physical capacity, therefore, this helps drive more and more budget higher and to hire more people to analyze it.

Mr. COMBEST. Certainly it takes them to analyze it, but they are sitting there analyzing anyway, and I will remind the gentleman that under the requirements of the Committee on Intelligence, we are forcing the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies to reduce by 17 1/2 percent in the next 5 years.

Mr. RICHARDSON. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

(Mr. RICHARDSON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RICHARDSON. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I think that the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] is one of the more thoughtful Members in this body, and he deserves some answers.

I would give him two. First, one of the reasons that I think is paramount is the fact that President Clinton has basically stated in a letter to the chairman of our committee that he opposes further cuts beyond what has been done by the Intelligence Committee. He states, `Therefore, I will oppose any amendment on the House floor which seeks to reduce intelligence spending beyond the reductions already proposed by the committee.'

Now, the reason I say this is some of my colleagues have mentioned the argument about spending in other areas.

The gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], a very thoughtful Member, talked about immunizations, children's programs, domestic priorities. And I do not think there is anybody in this body who can question President Clinton's commitment to domestic spending to children. I think it is evident in the reconciliation bill, the very strong commitment that he has had since he has been elected.

But I think the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] asks a very legitimate question. He says, what is going to be the impact on the Intelligence budget of his cut? And I think he deserves an answer.

Terminated would be a space-based imaging system, terminated also would be the merger of other space-based collectors, certain airborne-sensor programs, there would be a slowdown of signals-intelligence collection modernization, and there would also be a slowdown of the upgrade of computer, communications, and other equipment.

What would also be reduced would be intelligence systems deployment to tactical military units, operations of space and undersea warning sensors, personnel training and military exercise support, equipment and facilities maintenance, research and development on many programs, and a reduction of the work force on all programs.

[Page: H5760]

[TIME: 1220]

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RICHARDSON. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chairman, I am impressed with that list, but more by its longitude than anything else. My proposal is for a cut of one-half billion dollars. Could the gentleman tell me, first of all, who decided--first, the half-billion dollars tells the intelligence community that it can allocate that among itself. Nothing in my amendment requires any specific thing other than the half-billion-dollar cut.

Second, I would like to see, if I could, how much approximately was involved there. I will look at it privately. I realize we have the security matter. But I will tell the gentleman that I am quite skeptical. It sounds to me like the Washington Monument syndrome: All those things out of a half a billion dollars? How much? Slow them down? Slow them down by a week? Slow them down by a month?

We have said in this amendment they get to cut half a billion dollars out of a budget that approaches $30 billion any way they want to. I would really like to see the breakdown. I would like to know who decided that is exactly how it would be done.

Mr. RICHARDSON. Reclaiming my time, I think the gentleman has been very industrious in going up to the committee and looking at the exact breakdown of the Intelligence budget. This is information that has been provided to me by the staff of the committee. Let me just remind the gentleman the chairman and the ranking member of our committee already cut close to 4 percent from the initial request and close to 4 percent from last year's authorized level. I think when you look at Intelligence, I think the gentleman will recognize that we have some new threats. We have threats of counterterrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, drugs. We face a very uncertain world, and you cannot all of a sudden just downsize in a dramatic fashion.

They are taking cuts. What we are simply doing, as I have stated before, is supporting the President in his request. The Director of the CIA has been unusually candid and approachable by members of the majority and the minority. He has spoken in our caucus, he has spoken in the Republican caucus. I just think that we should respect that view.

The committee has taken significant cuts. I have told the gentleman in the list that I gave him what specific programs

would be hurt, would be terminated. And for that reason, I think my colleagues should be aware that the gentleman's amendment would have an adverse impact, one that I think we should not take. But he deserves answers. He has been very industrious in trying to get these answers. This is a very legitimate debate.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson] has expired.

(On request of Mr. Combest and by unanimous consent, Mr. Richardson was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.)

Mr. COMBEST. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RICHARDSON. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. COMBEST. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chairman, I just want to further--because the gentleman is making reference to hard cuts, and I do not know whether he is still on the floor or not--but the gentleman from Connecticut questioned where is our voting consistency. I think the gentleman will find that in those instances where there have been significant increases in committee, I have voted to reduce. but when there are instances where committees have come out at a level close to freezing, then I have voted to support.

It is the hard cuts that I am talking about. It is not just that you go in and the committee works its will and whatever the committee comes up with will be what the House accepts; but where you are willing to make the hard cuts and come out with a freeze well beyond what this President has requested, I think we should be very careful that we give those committees credit for doing the hard work, not just simply the fact that they may come out with a significantly larger increase.

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

(Mr. BEREUTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, I want to divide my remarks into two areas this morning: First of all, to ask the House to think a little bit about the relationship between the leadership and the Intelligence Committee; and to ask them to think about the relationship between the Intelligence Committee and the House.

First of all, I hope all Members will understand that the Speaker, and, with the consent and advice of the minority leader, chooses the members of the Select Committee on Intelligence. If you take a look at the people who serve on that select committee today, they are not of a stripe, a single stripe; they are pretty much across the whole ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party, and we certainly have moderate to very conservative members of the Republican Party serving on the Intelligence Committee.

Furthermore, we are appointed or selected to serve no more than 6 years, 8 in the case of the Senate. That is to assure that, in contrast to what the gentleman from Vermont said, we do not represent an agency. It is to ensure that we do not become coopted by the intelligence community, so that we have a period of time to come in and focus our intellect, our time, and the resources that we can muster on the oversight and authorization functions for all of these agencies within the intelligence community.

Are we parochial? I suppose everybody is a little bit parochial. But I would like to suggest to you that the way this body is chosen, the select committee, makes us less parochial in what we do in conducting oversight than any other committee. I say this because on both sides of the aisle, we are chosen to represent at least four committees of the House: The Committee on Armed Services; the Committee on Foreign Affairs; the Committee on the Judiciary, for the counter-intelligence/counterterrorism functions; and the Committee on Appropriations.

Yes, there are members from other than those committees who serve as well, but those of us from the four committees are asked to be there to bring our perspective from our committees and the service that we have had on those committees to the function of the oversight of the intelligence community. And we are to serve as the liaison with the leadership for those committees from both sides of the aisle.

Those are the functions that we are selected to pursue. That is why I suggest that, while we do not ask the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] or any other Member to disengage their intellect, to set aside their responsibilities to conduct oversight, there is a special responsibility that we have been given on the Select Committee for the House of Representatives. We do deal with extraordinarily sensitive information at times. In fact, some Members come up to me and to other members of the Select Committee and say, `Is what you deal with really that sensitive, really that secretive?' Ladies and gentleman of the House, sometimes it is.

All of us, I think, having served there a while, come to understand there are many events of terrorism that do not take place, there are equipment or ingredient components for weapons of mass destruction that are not delivered, for example, because our intelligence community has intervened very quietly in a fashion that never reaches the public's attention. I have given you only a couple of examples of many unheralded successes.

So I think it is for some of those reasons that we have come to have a special responsibility for the House and a commitment to assure that we maintain the intelligence necessary to protect our national security and our citizenry. Because of the security classification of the subject matter before the Select Committee, we are at a disadvantage on the House floor in defending in detail the recommendations we bring to you. Likewise the Members are at a disadvantage in attacking the budget suggestions we bring to you. I understand that is a difficulty. But if you can think of a better way for the House to conduct this sensitive oversight, then I would like to hear it.

I think that the challenges offered us by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] today and yesterday are appropriate and by the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] for they prompt us to provide to you as much information to the House about the budget for the Intelligence Community as possible. I do think the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson] has gone a long way in explaining the impact of the Frank amendment cuts in his recent comments.

One final point about the Select Committee: We cannot take the chance of faking it, of overstating our budget requirements for the Intelligence Committee when we come to you, because we understand we are in some difficulty defending whatever our recommendations are because of the nature and sensitivity of the information with which we are provided and which we utilize.

So, we are more likely than any other authorizing committee to bring you our very best and realistic budgetary effort, without padding and nothing more.

Second, this morning I would like to follow up on a few comments that were offered yesterday when the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] offered his amendment, because I think those comments may underlie some of the arguments and thoughts of people who may be tempted to vote for the Frank amendment here today.

To support their contention that the intelligence budget was fat and supports cold war systems, they made repeated references to a Congressional Budget Office study of February 1993, which is entitled `Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options.'

[Page: H5761]

[TIME: 1230]

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Nebraska has expired.

(By unanimous consent, Mr. Bereuter was allowed to proceed for 3 additional minutes.)

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, I thought at the time perhaps they were reading a different report than the one I remember. In fact, the construction was very different. I have gone back to refresh my memory about that report. I must tell you that they reach a very different conclusion than this Member and a different one than I think you would too, if you looked at the report.

First of all, they said that there was support in the report for a 10-percent budget cut in the fiscal year 1994 Intelligence budget, and that they were being generous to the Intelligence Community in only proposing a 10-percent cut because the CBO report had suggested a 20-percent cut would not hurt the capabilities at all.

First of all, the CBO report attached an incredible string of qualifiers and caveats to their contention and to their figures.

Second and most important, I will point out, the CBO was suggesting the possibility of a 20-percent cut over the next 5 years, not 10 percent in 1 year. And, indeed, we have already brought you a budget that is 3.7 percent less than the President had asked. It is 6 percent less than the baseline from last year, and so we are on a glide path to easily meet the 20-percent cut in 5 years that the CBO says may be possible.

Finally, on the CBO report, let me give you a few additional comments about that CBO report and what it says about some of our satellite and technical programs which are indeed very costly elements of our Intelligence budget and what it says about cold war collection systems.

May I also suggest it also says something about United States-Russian relations that we ought to hear, because it addresses this question of how dangerous the former Soviet Union's republics are to our national interest. Here is the second to last paragraph in chapter 2 of that report:

Major changes in U.S. intelligence operations, though probably feasible given the dissolution of the Soviet threat, must be made with a good deal of caution. Most intelligence assets cannot be directly and exclusively related to the Soviet threat. Even if that was their primary focus in the past, they generally had other important missions that have lasted beyond the end of the Cold War. Moreover, in a period of increased trust and disarmament between the United States and the former Soviet republics, having very substantial intelligence capabilities--even if they involve some redundancies and some capabilities that may be larger than historical norms--may provide a prudent and economical form of insurance against volatility in central Eurasia. Consequently, reductions in intelligence funding, though they may be feasible, should be attempted only if waste or inefficiency has been clearly identified.

Madam Speaker, this committee has brought you a recommendation that takes into account the need to cut any waste and inefficiencies. If there were any such areas, we have attempted to strike them.

So let me conclude these remarks, my colleagues, by saying that the Intelligence Committee has been fully engaged in specific cuts, as the CBO report suggests we should be. We have taken seriously our responsibilities to make the hard choices, to weigh costs and benefits of specific programs after hearing and exhaustively studying the options and the cautions presented to us by the CBO and other sources.

So I would suggest to my colleagues, it is important that you oppose the Frank amendment today, and I ask you for that vote.

Mr. EDWARDS of California. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Madam Chairman, in the work that I do as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, which has jurisdiction over the FBI, we collaborate and work very closely with the members of the Intelligence Committee and, of course, their very excellent staff that is very cooperative and helps us a lot and we try to help them, because a lot of the work that the FBI does has to do with espionage and counterespionage and other important intelligence issues.

I think we ought to remember a little bit about the history of both the FBI and the CIA. I have been here a long time. I think that under chairmen like the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Glickman] and the previous chairmen in the last few years and under the good members from the other side, the CIA has come into a new era. It is a vastly improved organization.

I do not think we should ever forget the bad old days, and let me tell you, they were terrible. The CIA was described as a rogue elephant, and this happened just up to a few years ago when the CIA secretly hired a secret army of several hundred thousand people in Nicaragua and carried on without the knowledge of the American people a very expensive and divisive war. But I cannot blame the CIA today for what they were doing then or the FBI for what it did in the COINTELPRO and all those things, not only immoral, but in many ways illegal. Those days are over, I assure you, for the FBI and they are over, I am happy to say, for the CIA.

But I think it is our job in oversight, and this is a good committee, this is I think the best Intelligence Committee in my experience, I am sure they have in mind that when any agency, and especially a police agency or an intelligence agency, finds that they are running out of work or have less responsibility, and this happened to the FBI, I assure you, and they want to get into some new things, into some new expensive data banks on gangs and things like that we say, `No, you stick to your work. You stick to catching terrorists and crooks and putting them in jail. That is what we hired you for.'

I am happy to say that the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Glickman] has pointed out to me on a number of occasions that he has a narrow view of the responsibilities of the CIA. It is getting those terrorists and doing the things that have to do with the national security of the United States.

So let me come to this, and I hope the chairman of the committee will respond, because it has to do with the excellent debate we have had here, and I think we all should be grateful to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] and to the gentleman from Vermont yesterday. I think a lot of important things have been said, and certainly all of us have done more valuable thinking than we have done in a long time about the CIA and Intelligence generally.

I was shocked an hour or so ago to find that the CIA is about or interested in getting into new areas that really do not have very much to do with what I consider the security of the United States.

Somebody had a Washington Post article there, stating the CIA is considering getting into global issues, the environment, immigration, refugees, epidemics, world food supplies.

I know that in this bill there is a provision to help high schools train science

students. And industrial espionage. Most of those items, I would say, if the CIA is going to go into these areas, they should be authorized by this committee and they should be subject to debate.

[Page: H5762]

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. EDWARDS of California. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. GLICKMAN. First of all, Madam Chairman, let me just mention that the fact of the matter is that the Intelligence Committee ought to be focusing primarily if not exclusively on those things that directly relate to the national security of the United States. That would mean terrorism, proliferation, the kind of conflicts that could result in military action, and then support of our military forces.

I have done my best to encourage the intelligence community not to venture into other things that do not directly relate to that. I think there is less of that than there used to be.

I have read the same story. I have found out that it is actually the State Department that asked the intelligence community to provide backup for the global issues.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California has expired.

(At the request of Mr. Glickman, and by unanimous consent, Mr. Edwards of California was allowed to proceed for 3 additional minutes.)

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, the State Department asked for intelligence community support for former Senator Writh's new position in the area of epidemics, world food supplies, primarily to get a better collection of intelligence so the State Department would then know more about what they needed to do on those issues.

I submit that this is a very, very small effort. We are going to oversee it quite effectively to make sure that it is not an excessive effort.

I have been somewhat concerned there may be some interest from perhaps the Office of the Vice President and others about environmental work in this area.

The committee vastly reduced those requests as well.

What I am trying to say here is, that unfortunately just because it was in the Washington Post this morning does not mean that that particular reporter understands from whence this came.

[TIME: 1240]

As I understand it, it came from policy makers in the State Department and the White House who wanted the intelligence support, but you have my assurance that we are going to do whatever we can to minimize things that do not directly relate to national security.

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. EDWARDS of California. Let me yield first to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Let me say in fairness to the Washington Post reporter, and I do think fairness to reporters ought to be kept to a minimum, but sometimes it is unavoidable, that reporter does say this request came from the State Department, but that is part of my point, why we ought to be reducing it. On the one hand you say this is the CIA, this is the intelligence community, it is unique, and they have to get a greater degree of deference, both the committee and the agency. Then they start subcontracting for the State Department. If the State Department wants it, let the State Department put it in its budget where the Committee on Foreign Affairs and you can, both, look at it where it will get the usual scrutiny. That is my point. You are confusing time and time again in this debate the essential Massachusetts security issues of proliferation and terrorism and then something the State Department finds useful. That does not belong under that rubric.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. EDWARDS of California. I yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I just want to say that when the intelligence community embarks down some of these roads, we do say, `No,' or we do say, `Stop it,' and in some of the areas we have said----

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. They probably did not hear the gentleman this time.

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. EDWARDS of California. I yield to the gentleman from Nebraska.

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Edwards] for yielding to me. I think I can shed a little bit of light here, or perhaps help a little bit.

About 2 or 3 years ago, Madam Chairman, this gentleman was concerned after hearing some scientists from Europe discuss the level of the ecological disaster in the Soviet Union, and I found, with some great astonishment, that some of the best information in the world on the level of ecological disaster in the former Soviet Union existed within this Central Intelligence Agency. It seemed to me only proper that I urge them to try to release some of that information to policy makers here and in the Soviet Union. In fact, we have better information than they did about some of their ecological problems and about their own morbidity rates related to ecological conditions.

Now that is information which the CIA did not go out and collect for release.

That information was on file, readily available within the CIA. There were analysts that were familiar with it.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Edwards] has expired.

(On request of Mr. Bereuter and by unanimous consent, Mr. Edwards of California was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.)

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, if the gentleman from California would continue to yield, I would like to give him one additional example.

Not too long ago, this gentleman is willing to tell his colleagues, I asked members of the intelligence community, `Have they looked at the potential ramifications of an extraordinary AIDS epidemic in Africa? What would it do to the political institutions of the region? What would it do to the cultural base? What would be the ramifications for the United States of America?' And I think it was appropriate for them to begin to gather information that they had and to make some suggestions about alternatives scenarios and projections--not to make decisions, but to provide it to this Member so that we are assured that we have the intellectual elements on which our policymakers in the State Department, and the President and others, can make related decisions.

So, there are two examples of why it is possible, I think, that we can advantageously use information already available in our intelligence agency for a much broader and salutary effort.

Mr. EDWARDS of California. Madam Chairman, I reclaim my time.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Edwards] has expired.

(By unanimous consent, Mr. Edwards of California was allowed to proceed for 30 additional seconds.)

[Page: H5763]

Mr. EDWARDS of California. Madam Chairman, I appreciate the points that the gentleman made, and he is talking about incidental information that the CIA picks up in its regular duties. What I am talking about are new duties that the CIA and the FBI, or any police agency, or bureaucracy, will seek when they are starting to cut back on the work allocated to them by Congress. It is our job to tell the CIA what we want them to do and the FBI, what we want them to do. It is not up to them to decide on the money that we appropriate to pick up a number of new areas of investigation.

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Edwards] has expired.

(On request of Mr. Bereuter and by unanimous consent, Mr. Edwards of California was allowed to proceed for 30 additional seconds.)

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. EDWARDS of California. I yield to the gentleman from Nebraska.

Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.

I understand the distinction that the gentleman is making is entirely appropriate, that for new responsibilities, authorizations should be sought and given before they move into those areas. And I think you can count on this committee to give exactly that kind of scrutiny to proposed new activities to make sure they are authorized, and make recommendations to the Congress for any additional duties.

Mr. LAUGHLIN. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

(Mr. LAUGHLIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield to me for one quick comment?

Mr. LAUGHLIN. I yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am just curious about how many additional speakers there are on this amendment. I am not going to limit them, but I would like to have some idea. There are three over here, and one here, and myself, and perhaps the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank]. He may be in part of the discussion.

I am just trying to get some idea of the time before. We are talking about probably 30 additional minutes before a vote.

Mr. LAUGHLIN. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], and I would urge all our colleagues to vote against it.

While all Members of this body very seriously take the oath of office to support and defend the Constitution and the United States, I am proud of the experience I have had on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, watching the committee operate under the leadership of our chairman and the ranking member, and I assure the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] that the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] indeed wanted far greater cuts, as did other members of this committee, and there were some of us, like myself, that thought we ought to have greater increase; in fact, increases in the intelligence budget because of the defense cut that this body has done. But we did not reach this budget figure based on averages or compromise. We did not reach this figure based on philosophical beliefs in the strengths or weaknesses of America or the intelligence community. We reached this after scrubbing through a lot of the programs and requiring the director of the CIA, James Woolsey, to come back to the committee several times. We reached this by having the programs that we knew we would cut, if we cut further, evaluated and explained to us, and many of us did not understand some of those programs.

So, Madam Chairman, this decision on this budget was reached through what was a proud moment behind closed doors, as it should have been, by people who are very liberal, and people who are very conservative, and people in between who were doing what they took an oath of office to do, and that is to support and defend our country, and that is how we reached this decision.

It is true, as the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] has said, and the gentleman from New York yesterday, and the gentleman from Vermont, the Soviet Union does not exist anymore. No one debates that, and the threat is philosophical in our differences. But I would remind the gentlemen that today Libya, Iran, Iraq exist. Today they are funding terrorist groups, and it was not until this year in the history of our country that we had an act of terrorism at the World Trade Center. Nothing in

the history of this country has happened to that magnitude, and, yes, there have been other attempts. But we should not know and talk about the successes of the intelligence community. We should talk about their failures because we can only analyze their failures and try to do better.

Madam Chairman, just as the Soviet Union does not exist today, the Abu Nidal organization exists, as does the Islamic Jihad, and the PLO, and the Japanese Red Army, all committed to acts of terrorism against our country and against our people whom we have supported to defend, and in response to one of the gentleman yesterday who made the comment that they got a lot of information out of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, not once in the years I have been able to read have I read an ad in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times where any of these groups have run an advertisement that they were getting ready to commit some act of terrorism against the American people, and I would submit that not once in the future will any of these groups talk about running ads, or even consider running ads, in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times.

Just today, if we think the Soviet Empire is gone, Madam Chairman, just today, in the Washington Post which we do not have to rely on all the time, but just today it was reported that Iran has purchased another submarine, and guess what? They bought it from one of the Republics that used to be in the Soviet Empire. Indeed they bought it from the Soviet Union, from Russia, and while the Soviet Union does not exist anymore, certainly the nuclear weapons that were under control of the Soviet Union still exist today, as do the many weapons of mass destruction. Indeed it is worse in some respects. I would suggest that there are arms merchants in some of these countries who indeed are trying to sell some of these weapons to the countries that are pushing the acts of terrorism.

[TIME: 1250]

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Laughlin] has expired.

(By unanimous consent, Mr. Laughlin was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)

Mr. LAUGHLIN. Madam Chairman, so we are here today to ask for support of the committee report, from a committee that worked together to ensure the best for America, not for the best of this committee, because the chairman of this committee will be gone in 18 months to the Committee on Agriculture or the Committee on Foreign Affairs and to other good work in the Congress. The ranking member will be on to other congressional assignments. In 6 years every member of this committee will go to other committees. There will not be one member of this committee still on this committee trying to perpetuate the goodness of this committee and the work it does.

So I would ask all of us to respond to the needs of our country and to stand with the Select Committee on Intelligence, who has worked very hard to reach a figure that is good for the defense of America and one that ensures the safety of American citizens as well as their security.

Mr. LEWIS of California addressed the Committee. His remarks will appear hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.

Mr. CARDIN. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I take this time to explain my opposition to the Frank amendment. As I explained yesterday, I do not serve on the Select Committee on Intelligence. I have had a chance to visit one of the intelligence agencies and talk with and meet the people who are working for gathering the intelligence needs of our Nation, meeting the intelligence needs of our Nation, and I am impressed by their dedication and hard work.

But one point should be underscored, and that is, as we are debating some of the needs of our Nation, those that perhaps have the most expertise in the area are refrained from joining in our debate because of the work that they do. They are not here to defend some of the criticisms that have been made, and they cannot be here to advocate some of the needs.

We have an intelligence community that is going to be called upon to do more as the defense tools of our country are reduced. We have less in defense. We have cut the defense budget. But we need more information in order to be able to deploy our limited defense capacity in a more efficient way. We are going to be calling upon the intelligence community to do more with less.

As has been pointed out on this floor, the committee bill, the authorization that has been reported to this House, already is a cut over last year's authorization. We should reward the committee for the work that it has done and we should support the committee's results.

Madam Chairman, I would urge my colleague's to reject the Frank amendment and stick with the committee's recommendation so that we do not further compromise the intelligence capacity of this country, which will be called upon in a more significant way as we try to meet the needs of the Nation.

[Page: H5764]

Mr. HOAGLAND. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CARDIN. I yield my remaining time to the gentleman from Nebraska.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Hoagland] is recognized for 3 minutes.

Mr. HOAGLAND. Madam Chairman, I also rise in opposition to the Frank amendment. Let me say initially there have been many persuasive arguments made this morning and yesterday, and I do not want to repeat those. I just want to make three brief points.

First, this is an authorization bill, not an appropriations bill. The Committee on Appropriations and the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] tell me the appropriators for this particular agency will be the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Madam Chairman, the appropriators can always come in with a lesser amount. All we are doing in this legislation is setting the outer limits. If there is any question about whether there might be enough funds available to fund what we need to do at a national level, why, let us leave the outer limits in place. Savings, if justified, can be shown later. Not just through the appropriations process, but also Mr. Woolsey does not have to spend the funds if he thinks they are not warranted. There are ways he can recommend a rescission to the White House and other methods by which the funds do not have to be spent.

Second, let me emphasize that the President opposes this, as we know, as does the very capable Director of the CIA, Jim Woolsey, a man I have known and greatly respected for many, many years.

I think we should give our new President and the Director an opportunity to implement changes they would like to make, which have been explained to us in confidential sessions in some detail, and which are going to be expensive initially, but which will save dollars in the long run.

[TIME: 1300]

Third, this will be a very expensive cut. As others have said, the committee is already setting us 3 percent below last year's budget. I see no point in adopting this amendment. Let us let the process go forward and ratify the committee's decision.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

(Mr. CUNNINGHAM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Madam Chairman, to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], I understand the spirit of the gentleman's amendment. We have supported the gentleman, I think, on the National Endowment for Democracy and some of the other spending cuts, because we did not see a direct correlation on American lives and how it would affect this country.

But let me tell the gentleman why I oppose his amendment more through a personal view and a personal inference and using the intelligence community.

First of all, President Clinton supports the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and no cuts in it for a very good reason. And where the President is wrong, we will sure lambaste him on this side. But where he is good, we need to praise President Clinton. I support his position in this.

But there are no points for second place. When we are dealing with the lives of our young American fighting men and women, we are not competing for six gold medals.

Let me tell Members about some specific examples. In North Vietnam, there was a place called Hourglass over the Red River Valley. The intelligence that we had is that the active SA-2 SAM sites were down. We went in over an overcast, and we lost four aircraft in one afternoon because the intelligence was wrong.

Let me give another specific example. There was a place called Operation Proud Deep, in which we had 3 days to strike the supplies over North Vietnam. Our intel told us that most of those SAM sites had not been supplied. Madam Chairman, we lost 37 aircraft in 3 days, many of my very close friends, because of faulty intelligence.

There was another strike called Protective Reaction Strikes, in which we were to strike the enemy in North Vietnam. There also, because of a lack of knowledge of the surface-to-air missile sites, myself was fired at about 37 SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, fired in pairs. The intel said that the MIG's were operating against our B-52's, which was correct. But with the lack of knowledge of the SAM sites, we went in and we lost American lives, because of faulty intel on that.

The Bekaa Valley in the Middle East. We had the Israelis, who lost zero aircraft in the Bekaa Valley, where the opposition lost over 400 aircraft, because of good intelligence.

In 1973, while flying over Mount Hermone, the intelligence that we had in the Middle East saved many, many lives and would today. The President is asking our American pilots, men and women, to fly in Bosnia. We have the technology to tell what real targets are. Since World War I, we have gone into targets and they have had false targets. And if we could go in and strike the real targets, that means that we do not have to go back a second and a third time, which means survivability and less time of exposure over hostile environment for our pilots.

In Top Gun, I was an instructor where we taught pincer tactics, as a direct result of our satellites and monitoring enemy tactics and formations that they would fly against American pilots and our allies. We fly today those tactics at Navy Fighter Weapons School, at the Air Force Aggressor Squadrons and others. And what that is is a direct result. And if we get into a conflict in Bosnia, Serbia, Libya, or wherever it happens to be, we will have the edge on whatever those potential enemies are.

Our priorities should be with the young men and women that we ask to serve. There is a favorite saying, those who fight for life, Madam Chairman, have a special flavor for life that the protected will never know.

On 10 May 1972, I was shot down with an SA-2 missile over North Vietnam. One month ago, I met the Soviet scientist, who is now one of my voters and gives me campaign money, that developed the SA-2 missile that shot me down. Those scientists are all over the world. I have no doubt that Libya and many of our enemies have some of those same scientists.

With $217 billion in cuts in our defense budget is it any wonder that we need more intelligence? This Member has a personal vendetta or maybe not a vendetta but a personal gripe against the CIA. I would love to cut them, but not when it is going to cost the lives of men and women in our armed services.

It is like the movie `Critters,' where in the Soviet Union you dissolve one and that one becomes 100. There is an additional need for the CIA and our intelligence community and the information tools that we get to determine what the factors are in the air order of battle and land battles that we could face in the future.

Madam Chairman, this is an example of survival. We need to support our men and women who ask to lay their lives, especially with dwindling military support. I ask to defeat the Frank amendment, and I support the request of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

[Page: H5765]

Mr. SHAYS. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

I rise in support of this amendment.

I have nothing but the highest respect for the members who serve on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the work of the ranking member and chairman.

But having said that, I have high respect for the members who serve on the Budget Committee or the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and other committees of Congress. But it doesn't mean I have to agree with them. And the fact is I disagree with a budget that cannot be cut.

I look at this as a budget vote. I am sorry, that is the way I look at it.

I see the President has come in with a budget that significantly increases spending over the next 5 years. But then I see my colleagues, who want no new taxes. We can't have it both ways. We either have to cut spending or raise taxes. I prefer to cut spending.

When I look at the budget presented by the President I see the national debt will increase 42 percent in the next 5 years. And 60 percent of all his spending cuts, happen in the 4th and 5th years.

I think we have to cut the budget. I think we have to cut the budget in every department, in every agency.

So when I look at this authorization, I say, yes, I want an intelligence community that does a better job. I want it to do more. But I want it to do more with less, like we ask everybody else in this Government to do.

I want us to do what is being done in the private sector. Companies are cutting back. And they are becoming more productive, because they do not have the layers of bureaucracy.

I look at this intelligence community, starting out with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency and the Army Intelligence and the Navy Intelligence and the Air Force Intelligence and the Marine Corps Intelligence, the Central Imagery Office, the National Reconnaissance Office and conclude we need to consolidate. Then we have the FBI, the Department of Treasury, the Department of Energy, the Department of State, all getting involved as well. Why should we exempt the intelligence community from downsizing and becoming more efficient?

Taking $500 million on what is reported by the media as, give or take a $28 billion budget, amounts to less than a 2-percent reduction. Every day Members of this great body say we need to cut from this department and that

department and from this agency and that agency.

I do not serve on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I fully acknowledge that. So I do not know what happens behind its closed doors. But the one thing I do know is that a 2-percent cut is not too much to ask in any large department or agency especially when there is so much opportunity for consolidation.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SHAYS. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, I just want to make sure that the gentleman realizes, last year we cut this budget by 7.6 percent. This year we have cut it by 3.7 percent. So the committee has not been derelict in its responsibilities.

Mr. SHAYS. Let us not have a debate on whether the committee is derelict or not. The issue is, are the spending cuts off the baseline? Are they an actual, absolute decrease or a relative one? Can this authorization be cut by $500,000,000? I think it can.

The bottom line is, this budget, and I have seen the intelligence budget, it is pretty much about the same, give or take a little bit.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, as the gentleman realizes, of course, this intelligence authorization is part of the Defense appropriations bill. So any savings in the intelligence arena is going to be utilized for Defense appropriations.

Mr. SHAYS. I want to point out to the gentleman that I have amendments to cut the defense budget as well.

[TIME: 1310]

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I would just have to say, the gentleman from Washington has probably got a rule book that none of the rest of us have that says once something is within the general jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations, that they have a right to spend every penny of it and no votes take place.

I have to remind the gentleman again that not everyone shares his appetite for spending every last penny that might come within a mile of the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. SHAYS. Madam Chairman, in conclusion, I just make this point. The private sector is cutting back. We asked our own government departments and agencies to cut back. Efficiencies are taking place. I want to see consolidation in the intelligence community take place as well. I want to see some reductions in this area of government spending.

I recognize, and fully acknowledge, that in some cases it is more difficult to track the parts than the whole. I do not make the argument that because the Soviet Union has broken apart that our job is easier or that we do not need to track what is happening there. I just make the argument that $28 billion, give or take, is a great deal of money that can do a heck of a lot of things.

I think the intelligence community should be able to live with that amount minus the $500 million cut required in Mr. Frank's amendment.

Mr. McCURDY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

(Mr. McCURDY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McCURDY. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Frank amendment, which is probably not a surprise, but I do so just to make a couple of quick points. I want to commend the committee for its actions. It was a very difficult session, and I know there is a great deal of pressure to cut more out of the budget.

In the last Congress, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, there was a tremendous debate within the administration, the Bush administration, that was soon to be outgoing, and the Congress regarding the role of intelligence. At that time the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and myself initiated legislation to bring about a major reorganization of the intelligence community. It was somewhat controversial, because we pressed the administration, we pressed the envelope, as they say, in order to help bring about the kinds of organizational changes that would be producing an intelligence community that was more responsive in a post-cold-war environment, and a community that would deal with the threats that were most likely to occur with the changing world.

The Bush administration, to its credit, Director Gates and others, through their review process, initiated, and by Executive action, most of the reforms that the chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee and I had undertaken. We also took action to cut the budget. We cut the budget by over 6 percent. We agreed upon a personnel cut of 17 1/2 percent, which, when we are talking about jobs, we are still talking about people in the intelligence community because it is personnel-intensive. That is because we rely on these people.

Does that mean everything is perfect? No. Director Woolsey has his hands full. He is going to try to bring out additional reforms. He also needs to provide the direction for the community that is most relevant for the future. The intelligence community, unfortunately, in the past was often more known for the so-called failures than it was for the successes.

I wish that Members had the opportunity that the relatively small number of Members in the House and the Senate have had of serving on the Intelligence Committee, because there are a number of successes, but they do not get published. It is hard to put a dollar amount, or it is hard to appreciate the lives saved in Desert Storm by the contributions of intelligence. It is hard to calculate that.

We have actually established a standard in defense these days which is almost no fault, no pain, no loss. The small number of Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war, I believe, was very low because of the information and the ability to know what the adversary was doing.

During the cold war we had a lot of focus, perhaps too much focus, on the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. Today we are shifting that. We are looking at a broader spectrum of problems and challenges, whether it is Bosnia, whether it is Somalia, whether it is the Middle East, or whether it is investments in Asia.

I can guarantee that many of these same people who are today asking us to cut even further from what I consider a prudent downsizing would be here saying, `Why did the CIA miss the estimate on a dictatorship that took over an African country,' or `Why would the CIA miss this particular estimate?'

The fact of the matter is, we are talking about improving the analytical capability, improving the type of analysis, so it is relevant for those kinds of challenges, and I believe that will be the appropriate direction. I believe this budget and the new direction can provide that.

[Page: H5766]

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. McCURDY. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I would tell the gentleman, he can look at everything I have ever said. He will never find any statement that I have made that I have been second-guessing the CIA. In fact, the gentleman reinforces my point when he talks about military intelligence involved in the gulf. He is absolutely right. We should not touch that a bit.

When we get into questions of political and economic and sociological intelligence, then the case is a very different one. That becomes a case of more or less there, I think, the same budgetary discipline should apply.

I do think it is essential that we provide full military protection to people who are risking their lives, but when it comes to guessing, estimating which African dictator is or is not going to be trouble, then the stakes are far smaller, one, and two, the objectives and standards are very, very different.

The gentleman is very wrong if he is implying that I have ever made any unfair criticism of the CIA in not making that distinction. Indeed, my amendment, with a less-than-2-percent cut, rests on that distinction, so the hard, military-related intelligence is, in fact, not touched.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired.

(On request of Mr. Dicks and by unanimous consent, Mr. McCurdy was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)

Mr. McCURDY. Madam Chairman, I would say to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], that certainly I would not do anything to impugn the integrity or the honor or intentions or motives of my friend, and he is a friend and I respect him.

The point I am trying to make is that because of the different types of challenges we face today, we are having to develop a broader range of abilities in analysis, and I think in many ways it is more challenging than it was just having a clear enemy or potential threat, as we did during the cold war.

Also, one point, I am not so sure that the gentleman and I have very different views on the issues of economic intelligence. I happen to be one of those who urges caution in that area, and believes that there are safeguards that need to be taken. I think the community understands that point as well. I think we are not that far off.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired.

(On request of Mr. Dicks and by unanimous consent, Mr. McCurdy was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. McCURDY. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, one thing that the gentleman knows, having served with great distinction on this committee as chairman for several years and as a Member for 9 years, is how to be able to talk on the floor about certain aspects of this program. One thing I wanted to just reiterate was, we are this year starting on several modernization efforts as it relates to certain space-based assets.

The problem is, we have to invest some money up front in order to do that modernization. We think that with it we will be able to simplify the architecture. This is Mr. Woolsey's goal and objective, that over the 5-year plan we will save considerable resources, because we will be able to have fewer ground stations. We will need fewer of these satellites. In order to do it, we have to invest some money up front. That is why the budget goes up a little bit this year.

That is why regarding the impact of the so-called Frank amendment, we have taken this down as far as we think is prudent. The additional $500 million will make it impossible for us to do the modernization that is necessary in order to save the money in the longer term.

It is difficult to discuss this, but I feel very strongly that the number that the chairman has reached and the ranking member and the committee have adopted is about the right number. I know that the gentleman, with his experience, understands the difficulty was have in trying to clearly explain this to our colleagues.

[TIME: 1320]

Mr. COLEMAN. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

(Mr. COLEMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I would like to get some idea of time and how many more speakers we have. I note that at this stage there might be a way to limit the time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, whatever time the gentleman decides is appropriate, I would want a 50-50 split, and I would take the other half.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the debate on this amendment, and all amendments thereto, end in 10 minutes, the time to be divided, one-half to myself--and I will yield to Members on the other side who are standing--and one-half to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], providing he gives me some of his time.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Kansas?

There was no objection.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Coleman] was previously recognized for 5 minutes before the gentleman from Kansas made his unanimous consent request.

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Coleman].

Mr. COLEMAN. Madam Chairman, there are some points that I think need to be made.

First of all, this year's bill is not at a cold war high level. We have all discussed that and debated it. Everyone knows that is not the case.

Second, in the debate yesterday as well as this morning we heard oftentimes that there were those who suggested that the Soviet Union's failure of its political system somehow must equate to the disappearance of a number of the problems and concerns that the Soviet target represented. I do not think that is the case.

There are still thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of nuclear weapons experts in the former Soviet Union. If these experts are selling their services to Iran or Iraq, how do we know that? Are we going to wait for CNN to tell us? I do not think so.

I do not think that means that we necessarily have to eliminate the intelligence service and our capabilities to inform us of what is going on. In fact, I submit it is arguably more expensive, not less expensive to keep track of proliferation and the monitoring of weapons of mass destruction without the predictability of the former Soviet Union and its political system.

Third, and I think this goes to the heart of some of the arguments we have heard on the economics and the economy of what we are attempting to do with this amendment, and the reason I think the Frank amendment is inappropriate is because of the same infrastructure that was used against the Soviet Union targets is the infrastructure we will use against the targets of terrorism, of proliferation and other national security interests that we want to protect.

Everyone says they do not want to touch those. Everybody gets up and says oh, no, we do not want to cut those, we do not want to do that yet. But that is exactly what this amendment would do.

Intelligence does not consist of sending a swarm of case officers to enemy country. We did not do that in the Soviet Union, and obviously we are not going to do that in other countries that are of critical interest to us today. Good intelligence consists of an infrastructure that is expensive, yes. It is technical, and although it is being reduced by this very budget, by this bill that is before the Congress as we did last year, even though we did that, we know that we cannot reduce it by the same percentage of the intelligence budget that the Soviet Union supposedly represented.

I would say to all Members here this afternoon that I would hope they would review what it is we give up. It is the old question that you are asked in law school early on. You know, to try to prove a negative is very difficult. That question is simple, and I want a specific answer. How many ships did the lighthouse save? Hard to know, is it not? Hard to know.

I submit that it is our responsibility to see to it that we maintain a strong intelligence service for the United States.

[Page: H5767]

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter].

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time.

Madam Chairman, I want to say simply as a Member who watches many committees come to the floor, and there is always a call to defer to the credibility and to the work product of the committee, I think of all of the committees that come to the floor, the Intelligence Committee is one committee where truly, in Scoop Jackson's words, partisanship ends at the water's edge. There is an enormous work product put together behind closed doors. There is in this committee I think, in my estimation, less politics, less in terms of outside interests, deferment, less in terms of the political process that we see in all of the other committees, and I think that there is a certain credibility in this committee that Members who are not on the committee should defer to. And I am not a member of the committee, and in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, the way that members of this committee, Republican and Democrat are a little like the members in our intelligence agencies who serve throughout the world, who get very little in terms of public relations, they do not get any ticker tape parades down Main Street, but they do a lot of work. They do a very difficult job, and they put together a good product.

Let me just say, to reiterate, what my colleague, Duke Cunningham, who was nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor for his air operations over the skies of North Vietnam, said. He said good intelligence operations save lives. And the world that we have in this post-cold-war environment is a much more complex world than that we dealt with before. Whereas we had one fairly predictable adversary, we now have many. We have four nations where we had one Soviet Union, all holding nuclear weapons, the pink slip of which is somewhat in doubt.

So I would ask my colleagues, unless they think there is compelling evidence that has been offered to support this cut to defer to the good judgment of the committee, and I thank the gentleman for yielding the time.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I would inquire if I have the right to close the debate?

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Kansas has the right to close debate.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston], a former member of this committee.

Mr. LIVINGSTON. Madam Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding the time. And I will not take the full 3 minutes. But as a former member of the Intelligence Committee, I have to say that I would think that the adoption of this amendment would be very, very foolish.

We have cut the defense appropriations since 1985 by an incredible amount. When you factor in inflation, operations, maintenance, training, procurement of ships and planes, tanks and whatnot have been cut tremendously. And if we had to do some of the things we were capable of only a few years ago, we would not be able to do them.

That is all well and good. Times have changed. The Soviet empire has collapsed, and we should declare victory and save the expense of much defense weaponry.

But it would be foolish to believe that because this is now a peaceful world, we could withdraw altogether. I think that when the House voted a couple of weeks ago to repeal the National Endowment for Democracy, we made a great mistake. We need the National Endowment for Democracy. We should be spreading freedom, and peace, and respect for human rights around the world, so we need civilians going out and working toward those goals within that framework. There are some wonderful success stories within the sectors of the National Endowment for Democracy.

But there are also some wonderful success stories that we do not hear about in the intelligence world. And if we start cutting our human intelligence and our capability to understand what potential adversaries are doing, we risk the possibility that all of the many billions of dollars that we saved in defense will be for naught, and that we will have to begin rebuilding our defense posture by spending more billions, many more billions, in what possible could become a full-fledged heated war somewhere in the world, or even in several places in the world.

[TIME: 1330]

Intelligence can actually save us the possibility of war at a later date. We need to be increasing our intelligence capability, no decreasing it.

I am totally against this amendment, and if I had thought about it, I might have offered an increase in funding for the intelligence capability of this Nation.

We are not going to do that right now, but I urge the defeat of this amendment.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Madam Chairman, we are talking here about a cut of less than 2 percent probably of the overall budget.

The committee has said they have done it all and there really is no need for the rest of the House. I do not think it can be sustained that somehow in this situation, unlike every other, the whole House suspend its judgment for the committee. Any vote like this is a combination of factors.

Arguing that this is somehow the result of a finely balanced purely technical judgment in which philosophical values and competing priorities and how much you think the deficit is important do not enter, in simply are not accurate. We have a very large bureaucracy in the intelligence bureaucracy. They have worked hard to persuade people what they need The committee, to its credit, has resisted that some.

But that does not in the slightest reduce the burden on the whole House. In fact, intelligence has many components. I believe that the military intelligence that would have to support actual combat, that terrorism, and that nuclear proliferation are very, very important and, therefore, my amendment would not touch them by talking about a cut of less than 2 percent.

But it is also clear that the intelligence community has been in economic areas. It has been in environmental areas. It has been in other areas. It is seeking to expand. That is a natural rule of bureaucracy is seeking to expand.

The Soviet Union used to take up about two-thirds or so of the budget. People have said on the floor from the committee that they are now doing only about half of that for the Soviet Union. That means about a third of the budget has now been freed up, that 33 percent of what used to be the budget has been freed up to go to these other areas. I am talking about instead of giving them 33 percent for the new areas giving them 31 percent.

The argument has been in part, `Oh, but we need much more,' because incredibly to me, I have heard Member after Member say, and not everybody, but Member after Member has said that now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, the world is now more dangerous. I guess if it were not for the fact that this would mean less freedom for all of the people, we should all be working to reconstitute the Soviet Union. I gather the argument is we should long for the good old days when we were secure, when we had a Soviet Union there to protect us. The argument is nonsense.

Nuclear proliferation, terrorism, all of those issues were issues 5 years ago. But there is a qualitative difference.

Five years ago and before, there was an entity capable of physically destroying the United States. That is what drove many of us to say you err greatly on the side of security.

We have a new set of dangers, yes, to other people in the world. We have the old dangers, but they are qualitatively different in that none of them represents the ability to destroy the United States.

[Page: H5768]

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, one point I would make is I think we, in fairness, have entered into some very comprehensive arms control agreements, and I hope we can have START I and START II, but they are not yet ratified.

We now have, instead of one country controlling the 10,000 warheads of the Soviet Union, 4 different Republics, which presents us with some extraordinary challenges.

So I would just say to the gentleman that the 16 Republics of the former Soviet Union present us with 16 new challenges for the intelligence community.

The only point I am making is the world obviously is less dangerous. I agree with you, but there are still significant dangers out there.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank my friend from Washington for separating himself from those who have argued that the defeat of the Soviet Union has made the world more dangerous. He agrees it has made it less dangerous.

The fact, however, is that he understates still the degree to which we have benefited. Yes, there are now four former Soviet countries with nuclear weapons. No one of them, nor in combination, do they present as much of a threat to the security of the United States. The delivery capacity is gone.

By the way, we have also completely lost the Warsaw Pact, the conventional problem. Remember, we were in Europe, and we were worried about the conventional forces.

Were none of our intelligence assets used to watch the armies of East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia in those nations? They are all gone.

The fact is this: We will, with my amendment, leave the intelligence community fully empowered to deal with the military threats, with counterterrorism, and with nuclear proliferation, but their tendency to expand in the economic area, to expand in the environmental area, to get into other areas which will be interesting, which will be useful, but which are not of the same order of magnitude of a threat; they will be curtailed, and if the intelligence community cannot take a 2-percent-minus cut and allocate it without wrecking all of their plans, then they are, in fact, confessing a great degree of incompetence.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Lantos].

(Mr. LANTOS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. LANTOS. Madam Chairman, I have the highest regard for my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts, and in all the years we have served in this body together, this is the first time I have reason to speak in opposition to his amendment.

The gentleman from Massachusetts made the point that it is customary in this body to have committees protect their own budget. I am not a member of the Intelligence Committee, but I am chairman of the International Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and if anything as become obvious to me since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is that our intelligence tasks have become infinitely more complex and multitudinous than they had been during the cold war confrontation.

As a matter of fact, a very strong case could be made for increasing the intelligence budget to deal with this enormously turbulent, unpredictable, fluid international situation.

I take advantage of intelligence briefings. Just today we had an extensive intelligence briefing concerning the tragic situation surrounding the city of Sarajevo. It is a miracle how much valuable, indispensable, preventive material of all types is provided this body by the intelligence community.

An argument can be made that in all the arena of defending the security of the United States, an argument can be made that probably the most effective dollar we spend in the field of providing security to the United States is the funds we spend on our intelligence community.

I ask with all the emphasis at my command all of my colleagues to reject this amendment which I think would be detrimental to the security of the United States of America.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young], a member of the committee.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Chairman, one of our friends and colleagues made the comment that this was a budget vote. This is not an appropriation bill. This is an authorizing bill. You will have an opportunity to make the budget votes when the appropriations bill comes to the floor.

This is pure and simple a vote on national security. It deals with the ability of the United States to recognize a potential threat and to deter that threat before it becomes real.

Yesterday I made the comment that the world in the post-Soviet Union stage was arming itself in a very dramatic fashion, in a drastic fashion, and that is true, and not just arming themselves with rifles and bullets and guns and things of this nature, but weapons of mass destruction.

Because of our effective intelligence, we are aware that some terrorist countries have the ability and the facility to manufacture chemical weapons, for example. We know that the proliferation of nuclear capability, nuclear technology, is expanding throughout the world at an alarming rate.

Our own security demands that we know about this, that we know who is doing it, what their plans are, and how they plan to carry them out. That is in the interests of America.

Now, when the Soviet Union went away, I, like most of our colleagues, breathed a big sigh of relief, and I thought that the world is going to be safe, a generation of peace.

[TIME: 1340]

The Berlin Wall came down, the Iron Curtain melted, things changed in the Soviet Union, elections in Russia. And while we were breathing that sigh of relief, up from the sands of the desert came a would-be dictator named Saddam Hussein. We did not expect that, but it happened. We do not know where that might happen again. It is essential that we keep our intelligence capability intact and that we not make a cut that would reduce the capability of the United States to look out into the world and see what people are plotting against us--and believe me, they are there.

I say again this is not a budget vote that we vote here today; this is a vote dealing with the security of the United States of America.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Madam Chairman, we are at a very important moment in our history. We have succeeded through a united national effort in helping the destruction of the major threat to the world, the Soviet Union. There are still threats to the peace and security of the world. Virtually all of them existed alongside the Soviet Union. The fundamental logic flaw here that we are getting is to equate a threat to our very existence as a society with the other threats that now exist and did then exist. No one is talking about dismantling our intelligence community. This is a cut of less than 2 percent, in a very large bureaucracy which has many, many parts and which has been expanding into new areas, as acknowledged today in the Washington Post, to becoming a new office to advise the State Department on a range of policy issues not related to security in the most direct sense.

The question is: Given the collapse not simply of the largest single component of the threat but the only one that threatened our national existence, can we make any substantial reduction in the intelligence budget? If in fact Members are correct that a cut of less than 2 percent would cripple the intelligence community, then it is a miracle that we have survived this far because apparently all these threats--counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, chemicals weapons--have been ignored because with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Warsaw Pact, billions of dollars of intelligence assets have been freed up for that purpose.

The question is whether they need exactly the same amount or not, because one of the very great coincidences of history is that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Warsaw Pact, the defection of all those countries, with that no longer a threat, somehow today they need about exactly the same amount of money that they used to have. Anyone who thinks that is a result of an objective calculation and not bureaucratic inertia at work does not understand the way Government functions.

Madam Chairman, I yield my remaining 3 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Glickman].

[Page: H5769]

Mr. GLICKMAN. Madam Chairman, I believe I have 30 seconds remaining on my own time.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. The gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Glickman] is recognized for 3 1/2 minutes.

Mr. GLICKMAN. First, I long for the day when Mr. McCurdy and Mr. Beilenson were in the chair when they had quick debates and no amendments. I do not know if it is me or the world; but I assume it's the world.

First of all, let me make a point: Mr. Frank is not cutting 2 percent; Mr. Frank is cutting 2 percent over what the committee cut, which is 3.7 percent under last year, which is one of the few places where this Congress and a congressional committee have cut dramatically under the President. You know, we could have come in, as the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest] said, with an inflated, or, as Mr. Bereuter said, fake number so that the Members could cut further because I know there is a cutting zeal on the floor. But we did not do that. We talked about that, and we did not do it. We decided to play this game straight.

So, we cut 3.7 percent. We are under the President's budget by nearly the same amount, and the President believes we should cut no more.

I say to my colleagues on my side of the aisle, while I realize there is another vote he wants tomorrow or Friday, in the area of national security I think you have to give some deference to the President of the United States. The fact of the matter is Mr. Frank's amendment cuts $500 million; will this make a difference to our national security? I do not know for sure. But the President thinks it will make a difference to our national security. He is out there negotiating with Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, North Korea, Pakistan, and every place else, nuclear weapons proliferation all over the world, 10,000 warheads in the old Soviet Union alone. He thinks, `better not make this additional cut, this might be a threat to America. Can't be sure that it is, but it might be.' It might be one less conversation that we pick up, one less picture that you get.

You see, the money is in a system, the infrastructure, and that system has to be preserved for the contingencies of the world: blowing up a tunnel, blowing up a bridge, killing thousands of Americans with a nuclear device that we never had to worry about before.

Let me talk for a moment about a couple of examples of why this is important. In Desert Storm there is no question in my mind that 2,000 to 3,000 American soldiers' lives were saved because we knew, in many cases before the Iraqi commanders knew, where they were going to be. There is no way to actually prove that, but I can tell you this: that we accessed information in an almost surrealistic, miraculous way before they knew it. Our soldiers and sailors need that.

Will this cut by Mr. Frank make the difference. I do not know for sure, but I do not want to risk it now and neither does the President of the United States want to risk it.

Let us talk about nuclear weapons for a moment. There have been many cases in the last 20 years where our intelligence community have stopped the proliferation of warheads, missiles, and nuclear weapons from bad people getting them, things that could be aimed at the United States. Will Mr. Frank's amendment stop that? I do not know if it will or not. But it could. Why risk it now?

Finally, one other point: He says the threat has been reduced. The Soviet threat has been reduced, but the North Korean threat, the threat from Rafsanjani and Iran, that has not been reduced over the last 5 years. These are people that are blowing up buildings in the United States, not the Russians. The threat from Pakistan, the threat from nuclear weapons around the world, these threats have increased. Maybe it is because the big Russian bear isn't there anymore to contain them any longer. But I say to you in a personal way: This vote could affect American lives. There is no reason to take the risk right now. Support the committee on this one.

We cut rather radically, I might say. Support the President of the United States, a Democratic President who says to you any further cuts jeopardize national security.

I urge defeat of the Frank amendment.

The CHAIRMAN. All time has expired.

The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].

The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the noes appeared to have it.

RECORDED VOTE

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

A recorded vote was ordered.

The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 134, noes 299, not voting 5, as follows:

Roll No. 393

• Abercrombie
• Andrews (ME)
• Barca
• Barrett (WI)
• Becerra
• Blackwell
• Bonior
• Boucher
• Brown (CA)
• Brown (FL)
• Brown (OH)
• Bryant
• Cantwell
• Clay
• Clayton
• Clyburn
• Coble
• Collins (IL)
• Collins (MI)
• Condit
• Conyers
• Coyne
• DeFazio
• DeLauro
• Dellums
• Dooley
• Duncan
• Durbin
• Edwards (CA)
• Engel
• English (AZ)
• Eshoo
• Evans
• Farr
• Fields (LA)
• Filner
• Fingerhut
• Flake
• Foglietta
• Ford (MI)
• Ford (TN)
• Frank (MA)
• Furse
• Gejdenson
• Gibbons
• Gonzalez
• Gutierrez
• Hall (OH)
• Hamburg
• Hilliard
• Hinchey
• Inslee
• Jacobs
• Kanjorski
• Kennedy
• Kennelly
• Kingston
• Kleczka
• Klink
• Kopetski
• Lambert
• Lewis (GA)
• Long
• Manzullo
• Markey
• McDermott
• McKinney
• Meehan
• Mfume
• Miller (CA)
• Minge
• Mink
• Moakley
• Murphy
• Nadler
• Neal (MA)
• Norton (DC)
• Nussle
• Oberstar
• Obey
• Olver
• Orton
• Owens
• Pastor
• Payne (NJ)
• Pelosi
• Penny
• Peterson (MN)
• Petri
• Poshard
• Quillen
• Rangel
• Roemer
• Rohrabacher
• Rostenkowski
• Roth
• Roukema
• Roybal-Allard
• Rush
• Sabo
• Sanders
• Sawyer
• Schenk
• Schroeder
• Sensenbrenner
• Serrano
• Shays
• Shepherd
• Slattery
• Slaughter
• Stark
• Stokes
• Strickland
• Studds
• Sundquist
• Swett
• Synar
• Thompson
• Thurman
• Torres
• Towns
• Tucker
• Unsoeld
• Valentine
• Velazquez
• Vento
• Washington
• Waters
• Watt
• Williams
• Woolsey
• Wyden
• Wynn
• Yates

• Ackerman
• Allard
• Andrews (NJ)
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[Page: H5770]

• Edwards (TX)
• Houghton
• Jefferson
• Packard
• Talent

[TIME: 1410]

Mr. HUTTO and Mrs. MEEK changed their vote from `aye' to `no.'

Miss COLLINS of Michigan, Mr. MANZULLO, Ms. LONG, Mr. MOAKLEY, Mrs. KENNELLY, and Mrs. CLAYTON changed their vote from `no' to `aye'.

So the amendment was rejected.

The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.

END