Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 1.
Mr. Chairman, I was in a markup and was of the understanding that the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] would be offering his first. I ask unanimous consent to return to title I and that my amendment be allowed to proceed in order.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Vermont?
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I would like to explain my reservation.
I understand the gentleman's dilemma. We have a Committee on Rules, and we have rules for a reason, to try and have an orderly process. I believe, however, that the debate that the gentleman proposes to bring forward is a debate of great value. I am, therefore, willing to not object.
Normally I would object because I think the process is important. As I say, I think this debate is worth it; and on the basis of the gentleman's request for unanimous consent, I will not object.
Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Vermont?
There was no objection.
The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will report the amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment No. 1 offered by Mr. Sanders:
At the end of title I, add the following new section:
SEC. 105. LIMITATION ON AMOUNTS AUTHORIZED TO BE APPROPRIATED.
(a) Limitation.--Except as provided in subsection (b), notwithstanding the total amount of the individual authorizations of appropriations contained in this Act, including the amounts specified in the classified Schedule of Authorizations referred to in section 102, there is authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 1998 to carry out this Act not more than 90 percent of the total amount authorized to be appropriated by the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997.
(b) Exception.--Subsection (a) does not apply to amounts authorized to be appropriated for the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability Fund by section 201.
Mr. SANDERS (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the Record.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Vermont?
There was no objection.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] very much, because this is an important debate and one that I am going to ask for another unanimous consent that I had discussed previously.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, essentially, the amendment as recorded called for a 10-percent reduction in the intelligence agencies; and I would like to change that to a 5 percent reduction. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be allowed to be 5 percent rather than 10 percent.
The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will report the modification.
The Clerk read as follows:
Modification to amendment No. 1 offered by Mr. Sanders:
In the proposed amendment, strike `90 percent' and insert `95 percent.'
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Vermont?
There was no objection.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank my Republican colleague and my Democratic colleague for their indulgence. This is an important debate and I very much appreciate their allowing it to go forward.
Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I have offered is simple, and I would hope would be supported by all, especially those people concerned about the deficit and those people concerned about national priorities. What this amendment does is cut the intelligence budget by 5 percent from the level authorized for fiscal year 1997 while still protecting the CIA retirement and disability funds.
Mr. Chairman, although the amount authorized by this bill is classified, there are various press reports which have indicated that funding for all the intelligence activities is currently about $30 billion, which means that this amendment would cut approximately $1.5 billion from the intelligence agencies.
Mr. Chairman, in my opinion, this debate is about a number of key factors: No. 1, our sense of national priorities. Is it appropriate to increase funding for an already bloated intelligence budget at exactly the same time as we propose painful cuts for senior citizens in Medicare, for low-income people in Medicaid, for others in housing, for kids, for the environment? How appropriate is it to say that we will cut $1.5 billion in home health care for seniors but not cut $1.5 billion for an intelligence budget which, in my view and in the view of many, already has too much money.
Mr. Chairman, if we are serious about deficit reduction, we cannot only go after working people and low-income people, we also have to have the courage to go after the intelligence community. Mr. Chairman, let me be frank that, for whatever reasons, despite the end of the cold war, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and international communism, the intelligence community has not experienced the kind of appropriate cuts that had been made with many other agencies, including the Department of Defense.
Mr. Chairman, in 1996 the U.S. Senate, led by Senators Hank Brown and Warren Rudman, completed a report on the efficacy and appropriateness of the activities of the U.S. intelligence community in the post-cold war global environment. Let me read a brief portion from that report, which is commonly referred to as the 1996 Aspin-Brown Commission Report. They say, and I quote:
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In general, from 1980 until the present, intelligence grew at a faster rate than defense when defense spending was going up and decreased at a slower rate when defense spending was going down. As a result, intelligence funding
Now this is 1990--
is now at a level 80 percent above where it was in 1980, while defense overall, other than intelligence, is now 4 percent below its 1980 level.
Mr. Chairman, the Congress has asked almost every agency to examine its budget and make appropriate cuts as we try to move toward a balanced budget. It is appropriate, now that the cold war is over, to ask the intelligence community to do that as well.
Mr. Chairman, in recent years a number of our allies have made public their intelligence budget, something I think we should do, but that is not for this debate. But let me tell what you we have learned from some of those countries who have made public their intelligence budgets.
In the United Kingdom, our strong ally, under a conservative government, intelligence spending was reduced from 957 million pounds in 1993 down to 701 million pounds in 1997. That is Great Britain. Canada also reduced its intelligence budget. They understood that the cold war is over. They had other priorities. I think we might want to learn something from our allies.
Mr. Chairman, not only do we have to look at our priorities and what our allies are doing; we have got do ask the simple question, are we getting good value for money that we are spending on intelligence? I would argue that there is a wide cross-section of opinion from the left and the right that says no, that the intelligence budgets are inefficient and wasteful, that they can be cut without loss of value in terms of the needs of the American people.
Mr. Chairman, what I would like to do now is not give you my opinion but to quote various newspapers, totally public reports, nothing secret or nothing confidential here, and tell you what some of the newspapers are reporting.
The New York Times front page, May 16, 1996, and I quote:
In a complete collapse of accountability, the government agency that builds spy satellites accumulated about $4 billion in uncounted secret money, nearly twice the amount previously reported to Congress, intelligence officials acknowledged today.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Sanders was allowed to proceed for 3 additional minutes.)
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, what NRO did was to lose track of $4 billion, an amount roughly equal to the annual budgets for the FBI and the State Department combined. They lost the money.
John Nelson, appointed last year as the National Reconnaissance Office's top financial manager and given the task of cleaning up the problem, said in an interview published today in a special edition of Defense Week that the secret agency had gone, and I quote the gentleman, `a fundamental financial meltdown,' an excerpt from the article in the New York Times.
Let me further quote from the New York Times, same article:
The reconnaissance office found itself in trouble in 1994 for constructing what several Senators called a stealth building. The Senate Intelligence Committee protested that the agency had built itself a headquarters outside Washington costing more than $300 million, without disclosing the building's true cost and size.
That is the New York Times.
According to another newspaper, the New York Daily News, December 16, 1996, and I quote, page 27, editorial:
Two huge threats are looming before the U.S. intelligence community as national security advisor Anthony Lake prepares to become director of central intelligence. The first is a Marine reserve sergeant out in San Diego. Armed with a personal computer and a network of contacts around the world, Eric Nelson has developed and E-mail system that consistently beat the Defense Intelligence Agency's reporting on terrorism, chemical and biological warfare, political profiles, background on hot spots, nuclear weapons, international crime and political analysis. `He really covers the ground,' says Marine Colonel G.I. Wilson at the Pentagon. `And best of all, he is quick. His secret is that he only uses open, i.e., unclassified sources. He has been immensely successful. All the armed services use him.'
[TIME: 1600]
This is a guy on his own, an ex-marine.
`Nelson's threat to the $40 billion intelligence community? His operating cost is about $20 a month.'
Twenty dollars a month and he is doing work that the intelligence community is not able to do. And on and on it goes.
Last, let me quote from another article in the New York Times, March 3, 1997:
`Breaking with its past, the CIA has severed its ties to roughly 100 foreign agents, about half of them in Latin America, whose value as informers was outweighed by their acts of murder, assassination, torture, terrorism and other crimes, Government officials said today.'
The New York Times continues:
`The agency found that the violence and corruption of scores of those informers were so bad, and the quality of the information they provided comparatively so marginal, that they were not worth the tens of thousands they were paid annually.'
The article continues, `The Latin American division of the CIA's clandestine service proved to be one of the most riddled with foreign agents who are killers and torturers, that the agency has violent men on its payroll,' et cetera, et cetera.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask that the Members say no to the intelligence communities and support the Sanders amendment lowering it by 5 percent.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. As President Dewey used to say, `Be careful what you read in the newspapers.'
I think it is very important that we remember that my ranking member has addressed a lot of the issues that the distinguished gentleman from Vermont has just brought forward to us in previous sessions of the Congress in previous years.
We are very concerned with our responsibilities to do our job of oversight to make sure that we are providing the best possible means of defense for Americans and America through the use of eyes and ears and brains around the world, our intelligence business, because despite the fact that the cold war is over, the danger to America and Americans and American interests is clearly not. Anybody who thinks it is might want to look in the newspapers about the World Trade Center bombing or they might want to look in the newspapers about the bombing in Saudi Arabia that regrettably cost the lives of some American troops and much wounding of hundreds of American troops, and on and on. Or they might want to go upstairs and take a look in the Intelligence Committee's area and of course every Member of this Congress is cordially invited to come upstairs and take a look at any time in what we are doing and what information we have as long as they are willing to comply with the accountability and responsibility that goes along with that knowledge.
We think that it is very important that we have what I will call a factual analysis and we on the committee have tried to give it our best bet on what the facts are and what the analysis of the facts are. We have not done a data-free analysis. We have come to a thoughtful conclusion of where we are.
I cannot overstate my opposition to across-the-board cuts, anyway, to intelligence bills, and even though I know that the gentleman from Vermont is well-intentioned, we have had this debate before, such an approach to budget cutting I do not think is good and it is indiscriminate.
To make cuts by a percentage or a number grabbed out of thin air, whether it is 10 percent or 5 percent or any other percent, completely undercuts the duty of Congress to deliberate and make thoughtful decisions on behalf of our constituents in the best interests of the Nation.
Remember, this is the one piece of legislation that must be authorized. We have an authorization charter on this committee that nobody else has. In our representative democracy, Members of Congress are elected to make responsible, informed spending decisions based on the close scrutiny of the costs and the benefits of specific government programs. That is what this permanent select committee has done.
The select committee has analyzed and reviewed the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States to determine the benefit provided by those programs to the national security interests of the United States, and that is the bill we have in front of us today.
To my colleagues who favor this amendment, let me ask, to what specific programs are they opposed? What should we cut back? Which programs should be terminated? Which intelligence targets should be dropped? Specific modifications to intelligence programs would be more appropriate than the broad brush approach that the gentleman proposes.
In the gentleman's testimony to the Committee on Rules that was submitted in support of the amendment, he noted programs that he considers to be bloated wastes of taxpayers' money. In support of this 5 percent budget slashing amendment, he contends that the NRO, which we have heard about, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, NIMA, and the National Security Agency simply collect too much information to be thoroughly analyzed and used by policymaking consumers. He argues that because some information is not put to its best use, the entire intelligence community should suffer a 5 percent reduction in funding.
Because the gentleman is unhappy with the overall lack of analytical capabilities of the intelligence community, which I would note is something that the committee specifically seeks to correct through this bill in a very thoughtful and deliberate and specific manner, he wants to reduce the analytical resources by an additional 5 percent. That is counterintuitive and counterproductive.
If Members come up to the committee spaces and read the classified annex to the bill, they will see that the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on a bipartisan basis did its job. The committee reviewed each program for its merit and its benefit to national security. The committee truly scrubbed each program to ensure the money would be well spent. We had a lot of debate about that.
The committee held 7 full committee budget hearings, as I said, scores of briefings, 100 or so Member and staff briefings, and on and on. The committee thoroughly, let me repeat, the committee thoughtfully and thoroughly and with careful deliberation made appropriate adjustments to the President's intelligence budget proposal.
The committee reported increases for those programs where it found the President's plan lacking, and it reduced authorization levels where appropriate and necessary.
If Members have looked at the schedule of authorizations, they will see that the committee has made drastic, substantial, and real cuts, not just reductions in budget request levels but real cuts in several programs. The committee did so based on the merits of the program, not simply to achieve a percentile decrease that is altogether meaningless. These reductions were made for good government reasons.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. GOSS was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)
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Mr. GOSS. At the same time, however, the committee has increased authorization levels for certain other programs to ensure that the U.S. government has adequate intelligence capabilities so that another Kamisiyah does not occur, so that collected intelligence is not wasted, to adequately support all our deployed Armed Forces and to properly address global crises that threaten our national security interests without diminishing our capabilities in other areas of this still treacherous world.
Just because the cold war is over does not make this world more safe. Quite the contrary. Radical regimes exist that wish us harm, and transnational threats of terrorism, narcotrafficking, organized crime and weapons proliferation actually threaten our way of life on a daily basis whether we are here or abroad.
This amendment would indiscriminately make cuts where program funding has already been reduced by significant amounts and cut those programs that need additional budgetary resources. This amendment requires no thought for what is needed, how things operate or the fixed cost of a strong national security enjoyed by all Americans. It is purely a number thing.
If this amendment passes, how will we explain to the American public that the funding for the FBI, the CIA, and others against international terrorists was cut back? How will we justify the reduction in our ability to monitor the unfair trade and economic policies of business competitors? What will we say to your business constituents after we reduce our ability to determine when foreign countries and foreign corporations try to steal us blind of our technology and commercial secrets? Should we hamstring our efforts to stay one step ahead of the radical regimes who are feverishly working to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missile systems to deliver them? And they are.
That is what this amendment would do. This amendment would also put our deployed troops at risk. Passage of this amendment will result in higher casualties in all likelihood because of the inability to provide the necessary force protection. We have had a sad lesson there recently.
This indiscriminate 5 percent reduction in the authorization levels will result in less accurate and less timely intelligence that is critical to disclosing the threatening capabilities or evil intentions of our foes. The parents of those serving this country in the armed services will want to know the justification for increasing the threat to their children.
The global strategic reality is that we have won the cold war, but we have not resolved the danger problem.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
The gentleman from Florida makes a good case against across-the-board cuts. I for one have never particularly favored across-the-board cuts, but in this case we are confronted with a budget that is secret. We cannot come out here and debate the individual elements of the budget or the individual allocations to the individual components of this budget because it is secret. If I went up to the little room upstairs and found out how much the National Reconnaissance Office is getting and I came down here to the floor and revealed it, I would be subject to censure or removal from the House. So how is it that we can approach this more reasonably as long as we keep these numbers secret? What can our enemies learn from knowing how much money we spend or waste on the intelligence services, whether it is well spent or wasted?
The sum is phenomenal. It is reported in the press to be more than $30 billion, an increase this year of about $1 billion. Perhaps the gentleman could help me out here. Could the gentleman from Florida tell me what the 5-percent cut would constitute? How much money would the 5-percent cut constitute?
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Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I would invite the gentleman to come upstairs to the committee quarters and we will be happy to share with him, we will provide as much staff as he likes, we will walk him through line by line and we will be the better for it and so will the gentleman.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman, but here on the floor, in the people's House, for the people of the United States who pay the taxes that constitute this secret budget, we cannot know how much a 5-percent cut constitutes, so we cannot know whether it is prudent or imprudent.
The gentleman said one other thing that particularly intrigued me, and this did concern me. He said the FBI would not be able to protect against international terrorists if this 5-percent cut went through.
How much will be cut by this 5-percent cut from the budget of the FBI to combat international terrorism?
Mr. GOSS. If the gentleman will yield further, it is impossible to know in foresight. Let me put it this way. In hindsight we have discovered that if we had better equipment in the question of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, we may very well have avoided that.
Mr. DeFAZIO. But again we cannot reveal the number.
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the dilemma that the gentleman has described. There is perhaps one other solution. Perhaps the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence would determine, and the leadership as well, to accept the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] as a member of the committee, and that way he would be privy to the information that has been pointed out by the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] as necessary to effect a specific solution. Because right now there is not only no way that the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] can be specific to those seven excellent questions, but neither can any other Member in the House of Representatives who is not on the committee.
Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman.
Again the dilemma we have here, and I do not like across-the-board cuts, is we are not given an option. Yes, I can go to the room upstairs. The gentleman can show me the individual budgets of the individual agencies, but I cannot come down here to the floor and use that information in any way. I cannot come down here and say, `Well, the National Reconnaissance Office is up by $1 billion, I want to cut $500 million there because they are spending it on this particular satellite that I do not think is helpful.' I can do none of that on the floor. I can go up there and be imbued with information that will tie my hands and my tongue if I come to the floor. I could not talk about the amount of money here if I had been up there to review the budget. I can only talk about it because I read it in the New York Times. I know there will be an amendment later to reveal the total amount of money spent, and I would hope the gentleman would support that and I hope this gentleman will support that.
Mr. DICKS. And I will.
Mr. DeFAZIO. And I would hope it passes.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. I would urge the gentleman to come up to the room upstairs.
Mr. DeFAZIO. The gentleman wants to tie my tongue.
Mr. DICKS. You got it, baby.
Mr. DeFAZIO. I do want to see the special room sometime, but I do not want to look at any of the documents in there.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
Mr. BONIOR. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to commend my colleagues here who have taken the leadership position on this committee, my dear old friend the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss], who knows probably more about this, him and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Combest], than anybody in this institution, and for their capable staffs.
Having said all those nice things, let me encourage Members to follow the line of my friend from Oregon and support the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], and I hope the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] if the Sanders amendment does not pass. All the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] wants to do is keep us within the bounds of the administration, keep it basically at a freeze, and also the Conyers amendment, which will get to the point of this discussion that we are having right now of revealing what the number is.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. DeFAZIO was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I continue to yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
Mr. BONIOR. I would say to my friend from Oregon, we need these amendments because this is a Rip Van Winkle budget. If Rip Van Winkle was just waking up, he would not know that the cold war was over, that the world has changed, that our intelligence needs are dramatically different than they were a decade ago.
[TIME: 1615]
But that is exactly how this intelligence budget is framed, like nothing has changed, and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] who I have deep respect for, is absolutely right. We actually need a strong intelligence budget for those things that occurred at the World Trade Center and occurred in the Middle East and took so many lives. But let us be realistic.
Mr. DeFAZIO. How much of this budget is spent on those particular terrorist threats?
Mr. BONIOR. We do not know.
Mr. DeFAZIO. We do not know.
Mr. BONIOR. We do not know.
Mr. DeFAZIO. But even if we wanted to beef up those portions of the budget, we could not do that here on the floor?
Mr. BONIOR. I think we probably could. I think we probably could.
Mr. DeFAZIO. We could transfer from one account to another since we do not know what is in the accounts?
Mr. BONIOR. That is kind of the dilemma here that we are facing.
And so I would say to my friend that what we need to do is to work together to rein this in. Today the drive to a balanced budget is reducing spending dramatically.
In fact, we read in the paper this morning that the budget is going to be down about $45 billion, the annual budget, a tremendous drop since 1993. Yet today we are spending 95 percent more than our major allies combined on intelligence, combined, and twice as much as nations that are viewed as rogue states.
So as my colleagues know, here we are, we have got about $112 billion bill to refurbish schools that are falling apart across this country, we have got 10 million kids in this country without health insurance, and we are spending, according to the New York Times, over $30 billion on intelligence, and the cold war is what? Nine years, seven years, eight years over with?
It does not make any sense, so I urge my colleagues, support Sanders, support Frank and support Conyers.
Mr. BASS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
I rise in opposition to the Sanders amendment. The implication from the discussion they have been hearing here is that intelligence in this country has been developed as a result of the cold war. Well, the cold war is yet a small part of an entire history of this country especially its strategic interests which have been around since the Constitution was written.
Let me just point out that the debate here is on the amendment not the other extraneous issues. We will debate when we reach, if we do, the Conyers amendment, the issue of publicity of intelligence authorization or authorizing numbers, but let me just point out that this amendment in essence implies that the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 6 or 7 months that it has been working on its budget has not really done its work.
The fact of the matter is, as the chairman has mentioned, we have held numerous hearings, we have had plenty of hearings to discuss each and every line item as has been amply discussed. Every Member of the Congress, Republican or Democrat, could come up and examine these numbers in any level of detail.
The fact of the matter is, as the chairman has mentioned, we have held numerous hearings, we have had plenty of hearings to discuss each and every line item as has been amply discussed. Every Member of the Congress, Republican or Democrat, could come up and examine these numbers in any level of detail.
The fact of the matter is that it is surprising to me that any amendment that would be offered at a 10-percent reduction yesterday and then turn into a 5-percent reduction today can be called a responsible amendment. It only goes to show that when the chairman said, `What would you cut,' that there is no real intention here of being serious about reducing this budget.
The fact is the committee has been responsible in dealing with this budget on a line-by-line basis over the last 7 months. The distinguished gentleman from Michigan calls this a Rip Van Winkle budget; I would point out that this amendment is probably a blind man's bluff amendment because we have absolutely no idea what the impact would be.
That is not responsible legislating, and I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
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Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BASS. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished gentleman from New Hampshire for doing that. I did want to point out on a serious note that any Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, of course, enjoys a very high privilege for serving here, but they also enjoy the opportunity to examine classified information, and I believe that that is a wonderful opportunity. I hope Members will take advantage of it; I mean that very sincerely because I think that they get a better impression of what our responsibilities in the area of national security are by examining classified information and material available to the committee then they do by reading various newspapers which inevitably have a slant or point of view and less than full information, or even watching C-Span which is always dramatic; excuse me, CNN which is always dramatic.
But that is not really the point. The other point I wanted to make is this:
We have clearly got a responsibility, the 15 Members of the House Permanent Select Committe on Intelligence. Oversight has come a long way, baby, since we first started to have oversight of the intelligence community. We needed oversight. It all started back, and my colleague has said a long time ago, but in the Second World War became apparent that we needed to deal with the oversight question and organize intelligence, and shortly after that we did. And oversight has become much more sophisticated, much more organized, I believe much more representative.
But it is true, the 15 of us on that committee have a responsibility to all of the other Members of this body to make the right decisions. We have brought forward a bill, 15 to zero, that we do not all agree with every item on to be sure, but, 15 to zero, we have brought our colleagues a bipartisan bill which we think is about right for where we are to go into conference with, and we are asking our colleagues to basically understand that we have not come out of thin air, that we have worked hard and deliberately, going time and time again into these programs dealing with these agencies, making them justify how they expend these moneys.
I am a fiscal conservative. I would not be voting for pork or waste. I assure that the Members who know me know that is true. As I say, I think we have got it about right, I think the members of this committee have done a very good job, and I think a straight across the board cut that is totally indiscriminate is going to do serious damage and not going to get the kind of benefits or savings that the well intentioned sponsors of the amendment has envisaged.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, in these days with the cold war behind us, Berlin Wall having come down, we find ourselves in a comparable era, as we did in the 1920's and the early 1930's where there was no known adversary on the horizon.
I support the bill as it is, and I oppose the amendment to reduce the authorization.
Serving on the Committee on National Security, and there are a few of us on this Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that do, also as a member of this committee, I know the value of timely and accurate intelligence to military commanders as well as to the administration and the State Department. In these days where the predictability of the future is so cloudy, that is when, Mr. Chairman, it is all the more important for us to have the best, the finest intelligence network we can.
More than that, it is more than just being able to collect intelligence. We need the analysts who can give us that predictive analysis as to where we think problems may arise. Successful military operations, successful diplomatic operations which minimize the risk of problems and lives of American service men and women cannot, simply cannot be conducted without excellent intelligence and excellent analysis.
As a member of both of the committees that deal with this I pay particular attention to the needs of the military as well as the other. I believe this bill responds to those needs, I support it. A cut, I think, would be doing a disservice to our diplomats, it would be doing a disservice to those who serve in uniform, a disservice to those who want to keep our country free and our interests keen in the days and years ahead.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment. I understand this amendment originally suggested that we cut 10 percent of this budget. This amendment says we cut 5 percent. This is a very reasonable amount in this time when we are supposed to be working in tight budgets. Of course we can make the argument that rather than spending money on international spying activities that could be better spent here at home, and I think there is a lot to that argument.
But I am pleased with the amendment, and I am very happy that the amendment is brought to the floor because, if nothing else, the 5 percent of savings that we might get if we pass the amendment, we do not know the exact figures so we cannot even make that calculation, it is not going to make or break the budget even though it could be helpful. But the amendment allows us to come to the floor and at least express a concern, and we have heard many of these concerns already. It is just a chance to get on the floor and say to the Congress and to our colleagues, Whoa, let's slow up a minute, let's think for a minute what we're doing and what have we been doing.
It is now accepted that the activities of the CIA is they are proper and something that we have had for a long time, but the CIA is a rather new invention. It is part of the 20th century. It came up after World War II. But it was pointed out earlier that this is not exactly true because we have been dealing with intelligence for a long time, and that is true. But it has always been dealt with in national defense, it was strictly limited, and it was handled by the military. But since World War II, since the time that we have built and tried to run the American empire, we have to have our spy agents out there. Now we have a civilian international spy agency.
I might ask my colleagues really if they would even be inclined to read the Constitution in a strict manner where would they get this authority that we have to go out, have an organization like this that is very poorly followed by the Congress? We know very little in general about what happens when it comes to our Government being involved in overthrow of certain leaders around the world. I would suggest that when the history of the 20th century is written that many of us will not be very proud of the history of the CIA and the involvement that they have been involved in over these many years. I think the activity of the CIA has gone a long way to give America a bad reputation.
This does not mean that we should not have intelligence and we should not be concerned about national defense, but if it were done in a proper manner it would be done without an organization such as the CIA. These very secret clandestine activities of the CIA really is very unbecoming of a free society. It is not generally found in a society which is considered free and open and that the people know what is going on.
It surprised me a little bit to hear it even admitted earlier that some of the activity of the CIA is involved with, business activity that we have to be thinking about business espionage, many of us have made this accusation challenge that, yes, we have the CIA that represents big business in many parts of the world. And I think this is the case. And not only do we have our business interests reaching out to many areas of the world and we have a very internationalistic interventionist foreign policy, we have troops in so many countries, over a hundred countries.
I would really like somebody to get up here today that is knowledgeable; tell me how many countries we have CIA agents in. If we have troops in 100 countries, we may have CIA agents in 200 countries. But I do not know that, and possibly it will be buried someplace, but I am not allowed to come down here and explain it to the American people.
The American people are responsible. They pay the bills. They are the ones who have to fight the wars if we go and do something nonsensical. And was the CIA involved in Vietnam? It certainly was. There was a killing of a leader in Vietnam that escalated that affair which led to war and killing and the death of many young Americans.
So we in the Congress should be more responsible so we can tell the people exactly what is going on, exactly what it is going to cost and exactly what the ramifications are when these agents are dealing in other countries.
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I would say that the CIA does not have a very good reputation among many Members of Congress nor among many citizens of this country. They are concerned about it and would like to know a lot more about it.
Is there any chance the CIA could have funding outside of the so-called normal appropriations process? I think there is a very good chance that is possible and that they may well have been involved in drug dealing.
Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I thought for the last several years that I would stay out of these debates about the CIA, but I am torn to come back and say a few words here.
I had the pleasure of serving on the Committee on Intelligence for a few years, and I finally resigned in disgust because I did not find either that the intelligence was very reliable, and certainly that the rules and regulations with which the process was conducted were utterly asinine.
We have had references here to statements in the newspapers about the level of funding and other things involving the CIA. I, as most Members know, have been involved with the space program for 30-odd years. I thought I knew something about space activities and the kinds of things that the CIA was doing in overhead collection. I was getting my information from scientific journals and some of the researchers who were doing the work on these kinds of collection systems.
I was precluded by the rules with regard to my serving on the Committee on Intelligence from reflecting not what I saw in newspapers but what I saw in scientific journals or scientific reports of various kinds. This is kind of asinine, to classify something that the most informed people have already published. Mr. Chairman, I thought this was something that we really ought to get away from, but I found that my loyalty to the country was questioned if I even brought this up for discussion, in many cases.
Now progress is being made, not very much, but some. The members of the committee are honorable people who are trying to do a better job, and I commend them for it, because it is frequently a thankless task. When I was on the committee, I served under the chairmanship of the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Lee Hamilton, and the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Lou Stokes, and they were honorable people, wonderful people who were doing their best for the welfare of this country. Nevertheless, they were constrained by the same rules and practices that I was constrained by to sort of go along with the system.
I remember the time, for example, when we would be invited down to the White House, and Admiral Poindexter, at that time National Security Adviser, and Ollie North would lie through their teeth to us about what was going on. Every time a critical event came up, they would invent some new lie to explain it to us. Mr. Chairman, I did not particularly like that, but I suppose I could understand it.
Actually, the whole intelligence apparatus, or the CIA in particular, and the National Reconnaissance Office, which I suppose we are still precluded from mentioning on the floor because it is classified, are actually a secret army for the President. They do what he says and they kind of protect him in the process, and we saw this occurring over long periods of time.
I am not sure that that really is what we need from an intelligence agency. We do need intelligence, without regard to the fact that the cold war is over. This is a dangerous world and we need intelligence. Going back to the writings of that great Chinese author, Sun Dzu, who wrote with regard to war, about war 2,500 years ago, good intelligence collection was the most important thing that any military commander could have, regardless. It is still true today, that it is essential.
But we are not getting good intelligence. If so, we would have known far more about the economic, social, and other conditions in the Soviet Union which led to its collapse. We would know far more about the kind of cultural and religious conflicts taking place in the Islamic nations than we know. We know practically nothing, as a matter of fact. We are not going to get it from the CIA.
I think the committee is beginning to understand that there are problems with our intelligence collection in certain vital areas, such as those that I have mentioned. Their suggestion that we might consider a civilian reserve corps may be the best idea that has come out of the Committee on Intelligence in a long time, because with a civilian reserve corps of people who understand the language and the culture and the economies of the areas that we have an intelligence interest in, we will get more and better intelligence than we have ever had before.
With regard to analytical capabilities, it has been known for two decades that the CIA was collecting huge amounts of information which they never bothered to analyze. We would apparently not give them the money to analyze it, and if we did, they cached it away to pay for a $3 billion building, or whatever.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Brown] has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. BROWN of California was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)
Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, the committee's report recognizes these things and lays them out specifically and then asks for more money. This is ridiculous. If we are getting inadequate intelligence and intelligence analysis today, why reward that with more money? Maybe it would be a healthy lesson if we would cut them 5 percent or 10 percent.
We have been doing this with another agency that I am very well acquainted with, NASA, for the last several years. I regretted it. I hated it, because I felt that NASA was doing a good job and producing huge benefits to the American people through the technology it developed and sponsored. But they survived it, and they are doing a better job today.
The landing of a rover on Mars, for example, was done at half the cost that we thought it would be done a few years ago, because we have found that we can do things faster, cheaper, and better.
Why cannot the CIA and the other intelligence agencies live with that same kind of discipline? I think they could. I think it would be good for them. The intelligence would be better. The country would be better served. We could say that we are enhancing the security of this country and our understanding of the rest of the world and saving money at the same time. That is what we should be trying to do. We are doing it in every other area, and I think it is time we applied it to the intelligence agencies.
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Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
(Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, one speaker has implied that we are not serious when we offer this amendment because we know it is not going to pass. I regret that it will not pass. We are reduced to a ceremonial action each year. Once again we are here to impose what I consider a civilized and reason-based ceremony on a very primitive Congress, which goes through a ritual of blindly authorizing more than $30 billion for a CIA that should have been streamlined and downsized at the end of the cold war. By the most conservative estimate in the New York Times, this is $30 billion that we are talking about.
We ought to take 5 percent of that, which is $1.5 billion; $1.5 billion may seem like a small amount compared to the overall CIA budget, but our entire proposed initiative by the President on school construction was merely $5 billion over a 5-year period; $5 billion over a 5-year period, which means we could fund the school construction initiative out of this cut and still have $2.5 billion left over for other matters, like the empowerment zones in poverty areas. So we are talking about money that could do a great deal that is probably being wasted in a CIA that is unaccountable.
The very basic but baffling instinct and superstition of this congressional village is to insist that tampering with the secret budget of the CIA is taboo. The CIA is untouchable. There is fear that dangerous, invisible demons will rise up and destroy our village if we disturb this almighty Washington wizard.
It is not reasonable, what we do here. Downsizing, streamlining, and restructuring are vitally necessary for this Federal agency, just as it was useful in other Federal agencies. The era of big government is over. We are proud to keep repeating that the era of big government is over. The era of the big unaccountable CIA should also be over, but nobody wants to touch the big, unaccountable CIA.
We have just heard more than 1 hour of general debate which did not grapple with the following taboo subjects.
They did not talk really in the general debate about the failure of the CIA to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, the greatest failure of all. They did not talk about the dangerous and costly interference with administrative diplomatic initiatives, policy initiatives, in Haiti.
Somebody just said a few minutes ago that the CIA is the President's secret army. It certainly did not behave like the President's secret army in Haiti, because the President authorized one policy and took one set of initiatives and the CIA was funding the organization in Haiti called FRAPH, which had a big demonstration of wielding pistols, shooting guns, and stopped a peaceful initiative to bring some police officers in to help train the Haitian police.
We later had to have a costly military operation in order to deal with the criminals in Haiti. The CIA did it. Emanuel Constanz, who headed that organization, was on the payroll of the CIA. He was arrested for a while and then set free. He is out there free somewhere now. The CIA has never explained their relationship with Emanuel Constanz and the FRAPH organization.
The loss of $40 billion in petty cash funds. It was written in the New York Times that the petty cash funds of the National Reconnaissance Agency somehow lost $2 billion first, and later on they said no, it is $4 billion, lost and later recovered, of course.
The Aldrich Ames affair. His name has not been mentioned during general debate at all. Aldrich Ames was very dangerous. At least 10 agents, 10 operatives of the CIA, by their own admission, lost their lives, yet Aldrich Ames is alive and well now, and he intimidates the CIA with interviews that he gives from prison. He makes fun of the CIA. Aldrich Ames was said to receive $2 to $3 million for his treason.
Harald Nicholson, another highly placed CIA person recently was given 20 years; he will be out in 10 years, for betraying his country, for selling secrets. First it was for $120,000 and later on they said maybe it was $300,000. Who knows how much it was. But this pattern in the CIA occurs at very high levels. Aldrich Ames was a very high level person in charge of the Eastern European and Soviet operation; very high level people are selling out for dollars. Something must be wrong somewhere.
It was $7.5 billion that we talked about over a 5-year period. Surely we can use it and put it to better purposes than have it go on existing in this unaccountable agency. If we start with a 5 percent cut, maybe next time it will be a 10 percent cut and maybe next time we will go to the real purpose of restructuring, restructuring the CIA to fit its mission in the present time.
Common sense, combined with scientific reasoning, should be allowed to prevail over the primitive kinds of instincts that are employed when we have discussions of the CIA. It is not rational what we are doing, not scientific, not based on reason, not based on the evidence that exists.
The CIA budget was increased to deal with the evil empire. The evil empire no longer exists. The evil empire gets aid from us, and they use some of that aid to pay our agents. Russia pays our agents out of some of the aid we give them. Ridiculous.
Ms. WATERS. I move to strike the requisite number of words, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment. It seems almost impossible that this Congress would not embrace a 10-percent, a measly 10-percent reduction in this intelligence budget. I am not going to talk at this moment about everything that I have learned about the CIA and their drug dealing and other activities. I am just going to talk about what some of our allies think about them.
In a Los Angeles Times article Monday, March 17, 1997, our international allies' dislike of the CIA's clandestine activities is stated as such.
I quote: `Around the world, America's friends are sending a quiet but stern message to the Central Intelligence Agency: The cold war is over, the rules of the spy game have changed, and it's time for the United States to curb its espionage operations on its allies' turf.
`At least four friendly nations, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France, have halted secret CIA operations on their territory during the past 2 years.' In Germany a CIA officer was ordered to leave the country, get out, apparently for trying to recruit a German official. In 1995 there was a major intelligence failure in Paris when the French uncovered and put an end to an economic espionage operation run by our CIA.
In the Washington Post there was an article entitled `House panel affirms some allegations against CIA.' This was March 18, 1997. The Washington Post reported that a House intelligence committee report affirmed a previous conclusion that CIA contacts in Guatemala were involved in serious human rights violations with the agency's knowledge and their involvement, which was improperly kept from Congress in the early 1990's.
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In fact, the article stated, and I quote, `The report represents a sharp criticism of the CIA from a Republican-controlled committee that has tended to be more sympathetic to CIA arguments that it must deal with unsavory individuals to get good intelligence,' unquote.
What is the mission of the CIA in the post-cold war environment? Is it necessary to continue allocating $30 billion to this intelligence effort? Should we not use these funds for other purposes such as job development or school infrastructure or rehabilitation? I am encouraged that the New York Times on March 3, 1997, recently reported that the CIA was doing some scrubbing, they called it, in an effort to sever ties with 100 foreign agents, about half of them in Latin America, whose value as informers was outweighed by their acts of murder, assassination, torture, terrorism and other crimes. According to these articles, the Latin American division of the CIA's clandestine service proved to be the one most riddled with foreign agents who were killers and torturers, and that the CIA also has had on its payroll people who are terrorists and drug dealers. I am going to talk about drug dealers in an amendment that I am going to bring up, but I want Members to keep fixed on that. Drug dealers who were terrorists and, of course, drug dealers.
It is not enough to cleanse some of the rogue agents employed by the CIA in their clandestine activities. We really need to eliminate the CIA. The Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA, needs to take over the functions and responsibilities currently held by the CIA. There are overlapping functions between the CIA and the DIA. So while I think they need to be eliminated, certainly this very small modest request for a 10-percent reduction, a 5-percent reduction, 5 percent, 10 percent, whatever, should be done. It should be embraced by everybody. It would show that at least we are concerned about this agency that is just riddled with problems. I mean this agency is a disgrace. Time and time again we find these articles that are appearing that are talking about not only our agents who are selling us out but all of the rogues and the terrorists and the dope dealers that they are dealing with. Do we not want to do something about the CIA? Are we not ashamed? Do we not feel that we have enough power to rein them in?
I will be back with my own amendment to deal with them on dope dealing.
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Ms. FURSE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
I rise in support of the Sanders amendment which would cut intelligence funding by 5 percent. Now, other agencies have been reduced. Do Members know that the State Department has had its budget cut 20 percent in the past 5 years? But we are going to give the intelligence department, and I use the word in quotes, an `increase.' It is absolutely preposterous to even think about spending more on intelligence when the cold war is over.
I have heard colleagues say, well, this is a dangerous world. I agree. It is a dangerous world. This is a dangerous country where 10 million children have no health insurance. It is a dangerous country when gangs threaten citizens in the streets. It is a dangerous country where 3 people get shot in the capital city. Yet we have cut those programs. We have cut the programs which solved those problems, but we increase the budget for the Central Intelligence Agency. Of course I say we increase it, but how do I know? We do not even know exactly how much we spend because that has been a secret since it was started.
I would like to quote from the Constitution of the United States. It says, and I quote, `a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.' The CIA has simply exempted itself from this constitutional requirement. I wonder if that is constitutional to have a secret budget.
I can guess why the CIA might want to keep some of its activities in the dark, but unfortunately for them the news is out anyway. The Intelligence Oversight Board, a Presidential panel, has recently reported on some of the activities of the CIA. I have heard some of my colleagues mention them, the horrors of the Guatemalan incidents, the stuff in Haiti, the fact that we gave weapons to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan which are now turned on us in Bosnia. But I would like to ask whether we got value for the money we spent. Did we get value? That is a good question for us to ask the American people.
We have recently learned about a computer error during the Persian Gulf war. Well, that sounds bad, a computer error, but think of the horror of that computer error. It exposed 120,000 United States troops to sarin nerve gas, sarin nerve gas, the gas that killed so many in Japan. The CIA had known about Iraqi storage of these agents since 1985, but it did not alert the United States military which subsequently blew up the bunker in 1991. They knew the exact, the CIA knew the exact coordinates but all this money we spent on them, the information was filed under a spelling error. So the military did not get the intelligence. All this intelligence we have paid for, did not get it. So 20,000 American servicemen and women were exposed to sarin gas. I do not think we get value for the money we spend and I think we spend too much of it.
Our intelligence apparatus is a cold war creation that now includes thirteen agencies, employs 150,000 people, and yet we are not allowed to talk about what it is spent on. We are not allowed to come down and tell the American people, that dollar you sent us for your Federal income tax which we are giving to the CIA, we are not going to tell you about it, even though the Constitution says we should.
So it is time to rein it in. It is time to make this agency live by the same rules we are asking of all others. I urge Members' support for the Sanders amendment. It is a support for fiscal responsibility and for sanity.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the Sanders amendment.
First of all, I would say to my colleagues, I think Mr. Goss is right. What we read in the newspapers is not necessarily correct. The number that has been bandied around here today is not necessarily correct.
Second, I think it is important to realize that the Central Intelligence Agency receives only a small fraction of the money that is spent on the intelligence effort. The overwhelming part of the intelligence budget is spent at the Department of Defense on defense-related activities. I would point out to my colleagues that if they go back and look at World War I, look at World War II, look at Desert Storm/Desert Shield, intelligence played a major role in our victory in those wars.
The second lesson I think it is important to remember is that after World War II, we cut back our military spending. We cut back on intelligence. Then we wound up in Korea and we wound up in a military mess. After the Vietnam war, we cut back on defense. We cut back on intelligence. What happened? We wound up weakening our military and we had to come back and restore it and spend a tremendous amount of effort, and when we did do that, we wound up having a very successful effort in Desert Storm/Desert Shield.
Again, in my judgment, the amount of money we are spending with 15 Members of the Congress that have reviewed this very carefully, going through it on a line item by line-item basis, I think is about right.
I oppose this amendment. I will also say as a senior member of the defense appropriations subcommittee that we are going to be within our 602(b) allocation when the appropriation bill comes to the floor. So I want to assure everyone that defense will be within our 602(b) allocation.
Now, let us get down to the specifics as much as we can. I urge everyone who has spoken today with all the passion, all the concern, please come up to the Intelligence Committee. We will see that you are briefed. We will see that you have an opportunity to look at these numbers and to see why we think that the authorization that is presented here is about right.
Having had some experience in the defense area, I want to tell my colleagues, I believe intelligence is a force multiplier. We have cut defense overall, and the intelligence budget is part of that, by over $100 billion between 1985 and 1995. Intelligence has not been cut as much as defense. But I will tell my colleagues this: It has been cut significantly, maybe not enough for some, but it has been cut significantly. For Members to stand up here and say intelligence has not been cut is simply inaccurate. It has been cut very significantly.
I will just tell my colleagues, I believe that the information that we get, if Members go back to Desert Storm/Desert Shield, we were able to do things there because of the intelligence-gathering success that we had that gave our soldiers a critical advantage. We were able to end that war rapidly, using a combination of air power and intelligence, and we did it rapidly and saved American lives.
I want to point out to my colleagues, this is serious business. This is serious business. I agree with my colleague who said if you can take this amendment from 10 to 5 percent in one afternoon, one has to question just how seriously it has been thought out. So I would argue that the intelligence that we get, especially for the military, is absolutely crucial. As we get better and better at this, through our national technical means, we are going to solve some of the problems we had in the gulf war. One was broad area search. General Schwarzkopf wanted to have a better idea of what the enemy was doing. With a combination of our satellites and our UAV's, we are going to be able in the future to let commanders know really what is going on behind enemy lines. That will be an enormous advantage. One of the problems we had there was finding the Scud launchers, and they could have devastated the 500,000 troops we had there if they used chemical and biological weapons.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Dicks was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)
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Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if they had used chemical and biological weapons on the 500,000 American troops sitting out there in that desert, they could have done devastating damage. We could have taken huge casualties. It was lucky for us that those Scuds were not accurate. We cannot expect that to happen in the future.
With the improvements in intelligence, we are going to be able to target those Scud launchers which we had such a difficult time finding in the past, using Link 16 and other developments that come from our national technical means that will be fused into the cockpit of our advanced aircraft.
One of the things we have worked on for the last 20 years is to take advantage of these investments in intelligence to give our military people a significant advantage against any enemy. My hope and prayer is that this will lead to deterrence, that we will be able to prevent future wars because when they go up against the United States, they are going to know we have a very capable force and, No. 2, that that force has the best possible intelligence. That will save money and save American lives and prevent future wars.
Military strength and intelligence strength will help prevent conflict in the future.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would just ask the gentleman, he and I agree we should not be under this restriction but we are, he cannot give us the dollar figure. He said intelligence has already been cut. Could he tell us what the percentage cut was?
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I cannot tell the gentleman that.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, he cannot tell me because the Iranians would find out.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I am going to vote for the Conyers amendment. I voted for it for the last several years, because I think we ought to have that number out there. I will tell the gentleman this, it is a significant cut.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I have a later amendment dealing with a cut, in case this one does not pass. Maybe we can have that number by then, what the percentage was of what it was cut.
Mr. DICKS. I will just tell the gentleman that when we look at the highwater mark and take it back down, it is a significant reduction.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] has again expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Dicks was allowed to proceed for 30 additional seconds.)
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Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, as I said, I will support the Conyers amendment when the gentleman from Michigan offers that amendment. I think the American people have a right to know.
One of the reasons I want it out there is because the number that is being bandied around here today is inaccurate. It is inaccurate. I would like to have the American people know what the truth is.
I would like to also have them know, frankly, what the CIA percentage of that is, because it is a lot different than what we have heard today on the floor.
Again to my colleagues, please come up to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and get the real facts. I think it is embarrassing to have these numbers bandied around on this floor that are simply inaccurate.