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Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the unanimous consent agreement of earlier today, I call up the conference report on the House bill (H.R. 1555) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2000 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, the Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). Pursuant to the order of the House of today, the conference report is considered as having been read.
(For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of Friday, November 5, 1999, at page H. 11630).
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss).
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I obviously rise in strong support of the conference report to accompany H.R. 1555, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000.
Mr. Speaker, in H.R. 1555 we begin the funding for the intelligence community of the next millennium. That, Mr. Speaker, is a most useful perspective for what we have tried to do in our conference report. How can we adapt the tools and skills of the Cold War to meet the challenges of the 21st century? These are new times. We need new ways to approach them.
Underlying that question is how, and in some cases whether, we plan to meet those challenges. How we define our interests, Mr. Speaker, will depend on how we define ourselves. What kind of country will we be in the next century? In 2020, when my grandchildren are grown, what will the American flag mean to them and to people around the world?
In the classified schedule of authorizations in our conference report, we frame a preliminary answer to these questions. In that report, Mr. Speaker, we bring forward the basic tools and skills of the Cold War to bear on the new threats of the next century: the international drug
cartels that bring poison into our cities, the elusive conspiracies that put the pieces of nuclear weapons into the hands of rogue leaders, and the shadowy networks that want to bomb our buildings overseas and here at home.
We will also need to use these tools and skills to meet new and unanticipated challenges that will arise in the coming years. Synthetic pharmaceuticals, genetic terrorists? I cannot know what threats will face my grandchildren in the year 2020 as Americans, but I can tell the Members what intelligence tools and skills will be necessary to meet those threats.
That is our job. We may not know the who, In other words, but we clearly know the how. We have learned that, and now we have to provide for it. In our conference report, Mr. Speaker, we continue to focus on this, how we will meet the threats and the challenges of the future, which is indeed upon us.
We will need more human intelligence or HUMINT, as we call it. Over the past year we have had to understand and to act upon crises in Belgrade, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, East Timor, southern Colombia, and a whole host of other hard-to-pronounce places. In each case, policymakers need more HUMINT on the plans and the intentions of the rogue leaders, dissidents, terrorists, guerillas, and traffickers involved in these crises.
Where will the crises of the year 2000 arise, Kabul, Kinshasa, Lagos? I do not know, but they will be out there, and wherever they do arise our policymakers will need intelligence officers on the ground to collect HUMINT on the plans and intentions of those involved.
For that reason, Mr. Speaker, our conference report continues the rebuilding of our HUMINT capabilities around the world. No surprises is the right way to go.
We will continue to need signals intelligence, or SIGINT, as it is called. As in the past, our ability to collect SIGINT has helped to protect our shores from cocaine and our citizens from terrorists. That ability, however, is threatened in a fundamental way by digital technologies.
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For that reason, Mr. Speaker, our conference report continues the recapitalization of our SIGINT capability. This is a huge undertaking and an extraordinarily significant one.
We must improve the processing of imagery intelligence, or IMINT as it is called. Our ability to collect imagery has accelerated at lightning speed, but our ability to process imagery remains at a crawl. Collection and processing, however, are two halves of one whole. They must work together.
At present, the combination of collection and processing and imagery is a Ferrari welded to a Ford Falcon. That combination simply will not drive our IMINT capability in 2020. And for that reason, Mr. Speaker, our conference report challenges the Intelligence Community to invest more in its ability to process imagery. It does no good to have the pictures if we do not have analysts to review them.
We must rebuild our covert action capability. The rise of rogue leaders and regional conflicts has demonstrated once again that the President must have an option between the use of F-16s and doing nothing. The President must have, whenever appropriate, the ability to influence an adversary through the various forms of covert action, properly oversighted, of course.
For that reason, Mr. Speaker, our conference report provides additional funding for development of the Intelligence Community's covert action capabilities.
Rebuilding and refining our HUMINT, our SIGINT, our IMINT, and our covert action capabilities are central to the conference report accompanying H.R. 1555. In addition, we address legislatively a number of specific issues that have arisen with regard to the use and the oversight of these capabilities.
In section 309 of our conference report, we direct the National Security Agency, the NSA, to report in detail on the legal standards that it employs for the interception of communications. I can report, notwithstanding this provision, that the committee has substantial insight into the action of the NSA and the guidance of its legal staff. I have thus far no reason to believe that the NSA is not scrupulous in following the Constitution and the laws conducting its SIGINT mission. However, our job is oversight and we take it seriously.
In section 311 of our conference report, we require that the Director of Central Intelligence report to Congress on any involvement of U.S. intelligence agencies in the abuses of the Pinochet regime in Chile. In response to public and Congressional interest, I have introduced legislation with Senator Moynihan that would coordinate and expedite the gathering and dissemination of such information. The story of U.S. intelligence in Chile, whether good or bad, inspiring or embarrassing, is part of American history. Such stories should, to the extent possible, be provided to the American people. I am hopeful that Senator Moynihan and I have introduced the means to make that happen, and I believe we have.
Finally, in title VIII of our conference report, we provide the President with an important new tool against the menace of foreign drug lords who poison our cities. In title VIII, called `The Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act,' the President and the Secretary of Treasury may publicly identify foreign drug lords and block their transactions and assets. Title VIII extends an executive order against Colombian drug lords to include all foreign drug lords. It provides the President with a new way to use intelligence in the war on drugs. It is long overdue. It is a tried and tested measure. It works and we need to use it.
Mr. Speaker, only through a cooperative, bipartisan effort could our committee have addressed so wide a range of authorizations and legislative provisions in this conference report, and also, incidentally, with such a good professional staff as we have.
The ideas and counsel of the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon), our ranking member, form a major part of this report. It draws as well on the considerable expertise of the Democratic staff of this committee. And I am pleased to say our committee in my view works on a very close, bipartisan, cooperative basis and the results of that are evident to all.
Our work together on this conference report is a part of an annual demonstration that partisanship, like beepers and cell phones, actually get checked at the outer door of our committee before Members can come into our committee's spaces.
In sum, Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of a strong bipartisan conference report that provides funding and direction for the Intelligence Community of the next millennium. It also provides legislation that addresses oversight issues and expands the use of intelligence in the war on drugs. I urge Members to support this conference.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Mr. DIXON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the conference report. First of all, let me congratulate the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Goss), the chairman of our committee, because I think many times not only I, but the staff and other Members thought that we would never reach the floor today. It was due to his diligence and the staff's diligence that we are here today with what I think is a fine conference report.
I also would like to thank John Millis and his staff and Mike Sheehy, our minority counsel, and our staff for working in a very cooperative manner. There is one gentleman on the majority staff who is not present today and that is Tim Sample. That is because his father, Robert Sample, passed away recently. But Tim has done an outstanding job for us, and I know the House extends its sympathy to Tim Sample and his family.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to make special mention of two issues addressed in the conference report. Recently, the National Reconnaissance Office announced the award of a contract to produce the next generation of imagery satellites. These devices will vastly increase the amount of imagery which can be collected. Collection, however, is not the only element in the production of imagery intelligence. Equally important are the elements of tasking, processing, exploitation and dissemination, known collectively as TPED.
Mr. Speaker, to shortchange TPED is to guarantee that the benefit of investments in collection systems will never be fully realized. The imbalance between TPED and collection is now at a critical stage, not because its consequences will be felt in the next month, but because there is no evidence that the executive branch is serious about addressing it adequately in the next few budget submissions.
The conferees agreed to report language which I think is strong and makes clear if the administration cannot budget appropriately for TPED, the scale of the collection system should be modified. There is adequate time in which to assess the resolve of the executive branch on this matter, but in my judgment we are long past the point where we can merely exhort the leadership in the defense and intelligence agencies to bring collection and TPED into balance. The report language is intended to be helpful, but there should be no mistaking the frustration of the conferees with past efforts to achieve realistic budget submissions on this matter.
Mr. Speaker, last week the House adopted overwhelmingly the so-called drug kingpin legislation which would be used to identify foreign individuals and entities that play a significant role in international narcotics trafficking. The bill also provides for the blocking of access to the assets in the United States of those individuals and entities, as well as the assets of those who assist or provide financial or technical support to them.
That legislation is contained in this conference report in place of an amendment on the same issue which had been adopted during the consideration of the intelligence authorization bill in the Senate.
During the debate in the House on the drug kingpin measure, concerns were raised about the impact the bill could have on the property of United States persons who might have a business relationship with an individual or entity identified as a significant narcotics trafficker, even if the relationship was not directly related to the trafficking activities. Similar concerns may be raised today. Some have asserted that the bill would preclude judicial review of an action to block access to the assets of a United States person. I would be extremely concerned by that result.
Others contend that the Administrative Procedures Act and the Federal court system would be available to a United States person who desires to challenge an asset-blocking action under the bill.
Mr. Speaker, the conferees did not intend to create a situation in which the ability of a United States person to challenge an asset-blocking action under the bill would be less than the ability of a foreign person. To ensure that an unintended consequence did not result in this area, the conferees agreed to include a provision which would establish a commission to examine the judicial review questions raised by the drug kingpin measure and report its findings to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on International Relations.
If the commission concludes that due process concerns raised about this legislation are legitimate, I expect that the Congress will take prompt and immediate action.
Mr. Speaker, intelligence programs play an important role in our national security. The conference report strengthens many of those programs and I urge its adoption.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum), a distinguished member of the committee, a chairman of one of our subcommittees, the Subcommittee on Human Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence, a Member who has distinguished himself as leading in the efforts in the war on terrorism.
Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to take the time at this moment to support this bill. I join in supporting H.R. 1555. The bill is a good one. It reflects a great deal of work by Members and the staffs of the two committees of jurisdiction.
Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence, I am especially glad to report the committee's mark has addressed a wide range of pressing requirements in each of the subcommittee's areas of responsibility. The bill continues the committee's multiyear effort to rebuild our Nation's human intelligence capabilities, as the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) has remarked earlier. These have been depleted over the years and are now being rebuilt, as they have been over the last several years, and this bill adds enormously to that.
The bill also includes much-needed support for both the intelligence and law enforcement communities to beef up our counterintelligence programs in a responsible and carefully targeted effort. I am equally pleased that this legislation provides resources for improving our analytical efforts towards emerging threats in such diverse environments as Colombia, North Korea and the former Soviet Union.
Among the most significant provisions in the conference report is title VIII, otherwise known as The Foreign Narcotics Kingpins Designation Act. The House considered and approved this legislation just last week as a stand-alone measure. I am happy to report that the House's action was instrumental in persuading the Senate to incorporate the House-passed kingpins language as a part of this conference report.
Based on the success of President Clinton's 1995 executive order targeting the finances of the Cali Cartel kingpins, I strongly believe that the enactment of this legislation will permit our Nation to fight the war against major narcotics traffickers smarter and with greater precision.
The kingpins legislation gives the President additional legal and financial tools to go after the world's most significant drug kingpins. By building on the legal and administrative precedents established during the 4-year development of the Colombia-focused program, the cosponsors and the administration sought to ensure sufficient legal protection for the innocent, while intensifying the pressure on foreign persons and foreign businesses involved in large-scale narcotics trafficking and money laundering activities.
This mechanism is intended to respond to the emerging threat posed by these global criminals and their organizations. Based on the success obtained to date against the Colombians, it is my expectation that this policy tool could be used with equal success against drug lords based in Southeast and Southwest Asia, Europe, the Former Soviet Union, and elsewhere in Latin America. To ensure that the new tool is properly funded and staffed, I would urge the administration provide the necessary personnel and resources within its fiscal year 2001 budget submissions to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and to the relevant units of the Intelligence Community.
Mr. Speaker, it strikes me that by going after the assets of these kingpins in the United States, we have a great opportunity to destroy the cartels in ways we otherwise would not, and this is the strongest tool to date.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly support the Intelligence authorization conference report before us today, and I urge all of my colleagues to do so.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. McCOLLUM. I yield to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) stated a moment ago that in title VIII of the bill, the rights of innocent persons are protected----
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The time of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) has expired.
Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky).
Mr. SISISKY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference agreement on H.R. 1555, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000. First, let me take this opportunity to congratulate the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), for his efforts in producing a bipartisan bill that addresses the intelligence needs of policymakers and our military.
Additionally, praise must also be extended to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon), our ranking Democratic member, for his work in helping to craft this important piece of legislation and for his leadership on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is very consistent with the requests submitted by the President. In several areas, the committee recommends modest increases in the request. The committee has recommended additional funding for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance airborne platforms that were so important during Operation Allied Force and continue to be critical in the Balkans, Korea and for counterdrug activities.
During Operation Allied Force, we had no ground forces deployed to drive the Serbs into the open, so intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance airborne platforms provided the eyes and ears for our commanders, air crews and targeteers.
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Without these platforms, we would have had little success against mobile targets. These platforms provided unprecedented levels of information to our warfighters.
This funding is critical. The military services have not provided sufficient funding for these very high-demand, low-density assets. For a small campaign like Allied Force, the European Command found it necessary, not only to dedicate all their intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance airborne platforms, leaving forces in Bosnia and Saudi Arabia vulnerable, but platforms had to also be borrowed from other theaters.
Operation Allied Force proved the value of our investment in unmanned aerial vehicles or UAV's. The Army Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle was flown aggressively and successfully during the air campaign and UAV's are essential for peacekeeping operations in the U.S. sector of Kosovo today. The bill rightly contains increased funding for unmanned aerial vehicles.
The committee strongly believes that it is not enough to just develop intelligence collection platforms; a corresponding investment must be made in the people and the systems that task, process, exploit, and disseminate what is collected.
Collection systems are costly enough, but will be of little value if the data cannot be immediately analyzed and disseminated to support rapid retargeting or other time-critical activities. The committee has put a tough provision in the conference report to address this issue and expects the administration to remedy imbalances in the imagery architecture.
Mr. Speaker, this bill would provide the funds that are needed to sustain our efforts to combat terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and weapons proliferation. I am pleased to support the bill. I urge my colleagues to support it as well.
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Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the vice chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and there be no daylight between us, appropriator of the committee who has done a marvelous job of making sure the authorization and the appropriations match up, and I offer my congratulations to him.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Goss) very much for his remarks as well as his time.
Mr. Speaker, in the years I have served in the Congress, I hold in the highest regard the work that I have done with the Members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the House and in the other body as well. But, particularly, I want to express my appreciation to the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Goss) as well as to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon) and their very fine staffs for the conference report they have developed this year.
I also want to extend my appreciation for their patience with me as I have gone about learning the work that swirls around the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations this year. I have not been available as nearly as much as I would have liked, but their patience is much appreciated as well as their help.
I want to spend a few minutes discussing what I view perhaps is the most important action taken in this conference report. It should come as no surprise to anyone who follows unclassified discussions of our intelligence capabilities that we are at the beginning of building a space-borne imagery intelligence capability that is meant to take us through the next several decades.
This capability, usually known as FIA for the term `future imagery architecture,' will be an incredible improvement over what we can now do. The satellites promise to deliver many times the data at a much-reduced interval between pictures. It has the potential to revolutionize the way we employ our military. It can also greatly complicate the lives of those terrorists, drug lords, and weapons proliferators who threaten our national security. For this reason, Congress has been supportive of FIA.
FIA, to be carried out over the next decade or so, will be the most expensive program in the history of the intelligence community. Over the last 2 years, Congress has imposed spending caps on the program to make sure its costs will not overwhelm the limited money that is available for our intelligence work.
Despite this imposition of those spending caps, there remain severe problems with FIA. We on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are gravely concerned that the program as currently planned has the potential of being the biggest white elephant in U.S. intelligence history.
Now, why would I suggest that? Well, why? Because there is, effectively, no money budgeted now to task the satellites, process the digital data they collect, exploit the information coming from the data, and then disseminate the information to the national policymaker, the President perhaps, the analysts, or the military unit that needs the information. The best that we can do is hope, in the current circumstances.
Let me say that, for 4 years, Congress has warned that the intelligence and the defense communities must keep up to the need to fund the activities to step up to that need to fund these activities to make the system useful. The tasking, the processing, exploitation and dissemination, what we call TPED, has got to have that fundamental support.
We have been told do not worry, we will take care of it. All the while, we get candid comments from the executive branch that, in reality, there is no plan to fund TPED and not even an understanding of how we ought to go about it.
In this bill, Congress has told the administration enough is enough. We have said that, unless there is a plan implemented that will process the satellite data that FIA will collect, we will not buy the satellite system as currently proposed. In English, it does not do any good to take pictures that no one will ever see.
We are hopeful the administration will step up to the challenge, that the military services who are to be the principal beneficiaries will step up and help pay for the bill, and that the intelligence community will also help by finding priorities that it, too, can set aside for a while. If not, they must next year join with us to rethink this hugely expensive program so as to downsize it and somehow find other savings in its development that will allow us to fund the TPED functions without which FIA will be worthless.
This has been a difficult matter, and I am proud of how the members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligences have dealt with this head on. We are all advocates of a strong intelligence community, but such advocacy must be guided by good sense, good judgment, and a jealous protection of taxpayers' dollars. It is time to pay the bill for taking the intelligence community into the new millennium.
Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop), who is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence.
Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon) for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to serve as the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Tactical and Technical Intelligence. This subcommittee oversees intelligence collected by technical means, such as satellites and airplanes and ships.
During debate on this bill in the House, I urged my colleagues to support the legislation; and I applauded the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Goss) for his respect of the views of the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon), the ranking member, and of all of the Democrats on the committee. I commended as well the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), chairman of the Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence.
I believe that this conference report deserves the same endorsement from the House. It is consistent with the administration's request. It is fair, and it will enhance our nation's security.
I want to point out to my colleagues that this conference report is the only authorization for those intelligence activities of a distinctly national character. The intelligence activities that are unique to the Department of Defense are conferenced with the armed services committees, and the authorization of those activities appears in both the National Defense Authorization Act and the Intelligence Authorization Act. These DoD-unique intelligence activities make up a large fraction of the nation's overall intelligence budget.
This conference report would add about 1 percent to the President's request for national intelligence activities. As with the House version of the bill, there would be modest increases in the budgets for activities centered in the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency, and somewhat less money for the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages the acquisition of our intelligence satellites.
I am pleased that we have fully funded the major satellite acquisition programs, including the new future imagery architecture, or FIA. These new imagery satellites will greatly increase the volume of imagery we can collect, as well as provide for more frequent coverage of targets, which together will address deficiencies identified in Operation Desert Storm and more recent conflicts.
However, these enhanced collection capabilities will not count for much unless we also invest in the means to exploit and disseminate the imagery on the ground. On this score, executive branch planning has been extremely poor. The conference report would require a reduction in planned collection capabilities unless substantial improvements are planned for exploitation and dissemination.
I would also like to call attention to significant problems at the National Security Agency. The NSA is facing tremendous challenges coping with the explosive development of commercial communications and computer technology. As the new NSA director has pointed out, while the new technology is providing incredible benefits to our Nation's security and economy, it is taxing in the extreme to those charged with intercepting the communications of hostile powers and drug lords. At the same time, NSA has not demonstrated much prowess in coping with the challenge.
The new director of NSA, I believe, grasps the seriousness of the situation. I hope that we have made progress in focusing the attention of the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence on this critical issue.
Fixing NSA's internal problems is only half the answer. A sustained funding increase of some magnitude will also probably be necessary, and there are no obvious candidates yet for offsetting cuts. Action, however, is imperative since the nation cannot navigate with an impaired sense of hearing.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, this is a responsible bill that will enhance our nation's security. It supports our military forces and our efforts to combat terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and weapons proliferation. I am pleased to endorse it, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it as well.
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Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, might I make an inquiry of how much time remains on both sides.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) has 15 minutes remaining. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon) has 17 1/2 minutes remaining.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), chairman of the Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, the former governor of Delaware, who is going to tell us about that subcommittee.
Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Florida, the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, for yielding to me, and I thank him for the tremendous work that he does for this country, something that is probably not recognized by many people any place in the country other than people in the intelligence community because of the closed nature of what we do.
The gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon) also is a superb individual in that committee who has helped so much with the intelligence responsibilities of the country.
I would like to also thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop) who just spoke, who is the ranking member on the subcommittee which I do chair, which is the Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence.
I also rise in full support of this conference report for the fiscal year 2000 intelligence authorization.
As chair of the Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, I would like to highlight a few major points of committee emphasis over the past year in areas of technical and tactical intelligence.
We spent a great deal of time investigating the Chinese embassy bombing. As a subcommittee, we looked at satellite launch failures and intelligence support for military operations. There has been considerable emphasis on the requirements for future satellites and on associated production issues, and a lot of investigation and questions focused on revitalization of our Signals Intelligence capability at the National Security Agency.
I am keenly aware of the vital contributions of space-based assets to the United States national security, and there clearly is a future. From diplomacy to precision strikes, our assets in space are essential for confident planning and execution of policy. Continuity in satellite operations hinges on another critical program, space launch.
Therefore, the large number of recent launch failures became an issue of intense concern for me personally. Several ongoing investigations are examining reasons for the failures. There is no doubt that the issue is being taken seriously and that very competent government and industry personnel are working to identify and to resolve problems.
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However, because the cost of each failure can be so enormous, we must strive for the right balance of independent assessments. The committee will continue to scrutinize the launch issues and exercise its oversight duties. Depending on the results of ongoing studies, I am considering a legislative provision mandating review by an independent panel.
In our hearings on support for the military, a predominant theme was the continued imbalance between collection and other intelligence assets. For years, the committee has stressed the need for better planning and financing of intelligence processing, analysis and dissemination. This year we are insisting that our future imagery satellite capabilities be at least roughly balanced with ground capabilities.
Signals intelligence has also suffered from gaps in what we call `end to end' capability, as well as from enormous leaps in target technology. For several years, the committee has insisted that changes are needed at the National Security Agency in order to modernize our SIGINT capabilities and improve efficiency.
The committee is most gratified that the new director of NSA, Lieutenant General Mike Hayden, agreed to conduct unrestrained studies of the need for reform, using both an internal and an external team. These studies were just completed. Both endorsed previous committee findings identifying systemic obstacles to efficiency and change. The difficult part, sorting and implementing solutions proposed by the teams, soon begins. General Hayden has our strong support for decisive action that will, by nature, be controversial.
We will not rest easy until SIGINT is once again healthy.
Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), a very valuable member of our committee.
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me this time, and I also want to thank him and the chairman for their patience, their insight and their help to a new member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for the past 11 months.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to note the importance of a strong and effective intelligence community. Dating back over 220 years, certainly General George Washington started our intelligence community with the help of such brave patriots as Nathan Hale, who we lost in the first intelligence operation when he was hung by the British. That history and that importance continues as an important thread through the United States efforts in our military history and in our history to be effective in gleaning information from around the world.
If my colleagues read the report, it is equally important, if not even more important today, to have a cost effective and efficacious intelligence community. We deal with such issues as direct cooperation with our military in conflict. Nothing is more important than getting that information in a very timely methodology to our troops in battle.
We have in this report international narcotics trafficking. Very important for the security of our young people. We have counterintelligence and anti-terrorism efforts. Very important for the security of our country. Anti-proliferation of nuclear weapons, where we work very closely with the intelligence community. And a fourth area, cyber warfare, where other countries can either organize or hack into our defense capabilities or our business capabilities, something that we need to look at in even more important and focused ways. So for these reasons I think it is even more important for the intelligence community to be more effective in what they do.
The 1996 report on the Roles and Capability of the Intelligence Community, Preparing for the 21st Century, issued by Harold Brown and Warren Rudman, pointed out four areas that we need to improve in, and I strongly encourage the intelligence community, with the help of our chairman and our ranking member and our bipartisan work, to get better in their cost effectiveness. We had a terrible mistake in the bombing in Kosovo of the Chinese embassy. That is not an issue of money, that is an issue of doing the basic job of mapping.
Secondly, the coordination between the intelligence agencies. We need integrated capabilities.
Thirdly, we need to improve the capabilities of the intelligence estimates. They were not particularly accurate in making and measuring the breakup of the former Soviet Union.
And, fourthly, making sure we have a balance between the human intelligence and the satellite intelligence. Both are very important for our national security. I hope we can balance these efforts in the coming year and have a budget that reflects cost effectiveness.
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Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, it has been said that truth is the first casualty in war. It is also true that constitutional liberty can be a casualty of war. Certainly when it comes to the so-called war on drugs, we are very casual about sacrificing our liberties.
Title VIII of this bill, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, empowers the President to designate people as `significant foreign narcotics traffickers.' Once designated, all property in the United States of such a person is seized. Any American who does any business with him can be jailed for 10 years and fined $10 million. All this without any criteria for such designation in the bill. All this without any evidence being necessary. No notice, no hearing, no opportunity to be heard, no protection for the innocent, and no judicial review.
Even the Anti-terrorism Act of 1996 allows a group designated by the person as a foreign terrorist organization the right to challenge the designation in court. But not this bill. No judicial review. The President is given the powers of a pre-Magna Carta King of England to accuse and find guilty with no due process, no process at all, and no appeal.
In 1951, the Supreme Court, in the case of Joint Anti-Fascist Committee vs. McGrath, said that the Fifth Amendment due process clause barred the government from condemning organizations as Communists without giving them notice and opportunity to be heard in their own defense. This title gives no notice, no opportunity to be heard, and no appeal. It is clearly unconstitutional and grossly subversive of the liberty for which this country stands and which we are sworn to uphold.
It is a travesty that this very important and very dangerous title was rushed through this House without any hearings and without any committee review. This title alone richly merits the defeat of the entire conference report, and I will urge my colleagues to vote against the report because of this title.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire about the remaining balances of time for both sides?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) has 11 1/2 minutes remaining, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon) has 12 1/2 minutes remaining.
Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for his leadership, as well as for the leadership of our distinguished chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss).
One of the provisions of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 which I have been most interested in is an amendment offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) during floor consideration of this bill. The Hinchey amendment required the Director of Central Intelligence to produce a report on the activities of the officers, covert agents, and employees of the intelligence community with respect to the Pinochet regime in Chile.
The Hinchey amendment was somewhat controversial. It was very controversial in fact. It was argued that the search for documents related to human rights violations in Chile directed by the National Security Council was sufficient and nothing further was needed. The issue of cost was also raised, as was the question of how much time should be allotted for the DCI to produce an adequate report on the subject.
Others of us argued that a report was needed on U.S. intelligence activities in Chile with respect to the assassination of President Allende, the accession of General Pinochet, and the violations of human rights committed by officers and agents of Pinochet. Indeed, such a report is long overdue.
An authoritative report from the DCI submitted to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Appropriations on the role of the CIA and other elements of the intelligence community will put into context the information that is now being reviewed, declassified, and released under the direction of the National Security Council. I believe this report should make clear exactly what, if anything, the CIA was doing in concert with General Pinochet and his supporters before and during the Pinochet regime.
Mr. Speaker, I would have preferred to have had a report produced within 4 or 6 months of enactment of this bill, but I am grateful to the chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), and our distinguished ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon), for their leadership. We were able to agree that the report be produced in no later than 270 days after enactment and not a year from now, as some would have preferred. I commend the gentlemen for including this in the legislation.
Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey).
Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, I also want to commend the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon), and also my good friend, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), for their hard work in forging this legislation.
The conference report includes my amendment, which was adopted by the House on a voice vote back in May, requiring the CIA to report to Congress on its activities in Chile during the early 1970s. It is time that the Central Intelligence Agency accounted for its role in the military coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and led to his death. The American people need to know how our government supported the rise of Augusto Pinochet, a ruthless dictator who systematically murdered and tortured his enemies.
General Pinochet has been under house arrest in London for the past year awaiting trial in Spain for his crimes against humanity. The British courts recently upheld the Spanish judge's petition to extradite him.
Last year, the National Security Agency directed the CIA and other government departments and agencies to disclose relevant information regarding Pinochet's military coup and subsequent crimes against humanity. The CIA has not yet complied with this order and has released only a handful of documents to this date. My amendment will ensure that the CIA releases these documents and accounts for its activities during this dark period in Chile's history.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the willingness of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) to work with me on this issue, and I thank him very much for that. I also thank our ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon), and also the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) for their strong and effective advocacy on behalf of my amendment. I know full well that our success would not have been possible had it not been for their diligence, attention and good work.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons), a decorated colleague and member of our committee from somewhere west of the Mississippi, who has been invaluable in advising me on military equipment, Air Force needs, and other needs of that ilk, and who adds a great deal of value to the committee.
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference report for the intelligence authorization bill, and I want to thank my friend from Florida, somewhere east of the Mississippi, and the chairman of the committee for yielding me this time.
This past year, Mr. Speaker, has been a challenging one for the intelligence community, particularly in the area of support for our military operations. The United States launched a heavy 4-day offensive against Iraq in the late time frame of December 1998 and fought a war over Kosovo and Serbia earlier this year, all this while our pilots are enforcing the no-fly zones over Iraq. Meanwhile, crises or potential crises in other parts of the world, like the Taiwan Strait, Korea, Indonesia, India and Pakistan, and the Caucasus keep our military on a high state of alert.
Ten years today after the fall of the Berlin Wall I think it is safe to say, Mr. Speaker, that the post-Cold War honeymoon is over. With the men and women of our armed forces deployed across the world, it is especially important that we meet the pressing need for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, to support their missions and provide for their protection.
For several years, members of the intelligence community have recognized that American ISR resources and personnel are stretched thin, and we have searched for ways to address these shortfalls. This year, airborne ISR was one of the committee's very top priorities, and I believe this conference report reflects that. Mr. Speaker, while we have not solved all the ISR problems, this bill takes concrete steps toward providing the accurate, timely intelligence and warnings necessary to save American lives and win the battles on the ground and in the air.
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Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this conference report.
Mr. DIXON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I again want to urge adoption of this report. I think it is a fine work product. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) raises an issue of due process. It is my feeling, Mr. Speaker, although there is some controversy, that there is nothing in this bill that abrogates existing rights of U.S. persons to address their grievance either through the Administrative Procedure Act or ultimately in a Federal district court.
But just in case there is a question on that, and there is, we have provided in this conference report a commission to examine that issue. As I indicated in my opening comments, I hope the commission would act expeditiously on this matter. I think that is sufficient to cover that issue.
Once again, I would like to thank the chairman of the committee for his cooperation and all the members of the committee for their efforts.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon) very much for his hard work and close teamwork and the great spirit of bipartisanship and concern for our country and its national security that he brings himself and his members and, in fact, all our members to the committee.
I am exceedingly proud of our committee. I am very proud of the membership. The value added of each and every Member brings to the committee a wide variety of view and opinion across the country of the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons), who just spoke who represents vast areas of countryside, and others who represent more concentrated, consolidated urban areas.
We have what I think is a very balanced perspective of the United States of America and its national security needs. But behind as good a membership team as that, I would say we have the finest professional staff on the Hill. I would measure them against any other professional staff. I take great pride in them. And again, I do not make distinctions about party affiliation.
Mr. Millis, our chief of staff, does an excellent job, as does Mike Shehy. Both of them I treat as co-equals in running the affairs of the committee. Pat Murray, our general counsel. We have had an expression today of sympathy that is both personal and collective from all of us to our budget cruncher, Tim Sample. But for all those names I just mentioned, there are other members of the committee that have equally pulled the oars just as well in their own area of expertise and deserve to be recognized and thanked by all of America for the work they do.
I think that the points that needed to come out other than the basic themes that we have made clear in this authorization process, which I point out are exactly in line with the appropriations process, and have gone through a very arduous conference process with our colleagues in the other body, we have covered the ground that we needed to cover; and I think we covered it very well.
We certainly have taken into consideration what our other colleagues who are not on the committee have brought forward during this long, deliberative process this year since the authorization bill began, as we have heard in some of the testimonies from the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey). And there are many other Members who have brought matters forward, I think the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sweeney), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), and the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Barr). Several come to mind.
We have tried to accommodate in every way their concerns. We may not have done it in exactly the way they asked, but they have gotten consideration and I think a reasonable result out of this.
The gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) has expressed concern about our title XIII. I would point out that our title XIII, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Dixon) just pointed out, basically is the same as what this House has passed recently on a vote of 385-26. The language is virtually the same. But in an abundance of caution and fair play and deliberation to make sure that we have got it right, we have gone forward with the idea of a panel to review the situation just to be extra sure because these are important rights we are talking about.
I think it is that kind of fair play and that kind of reasonableness in dealing with legitimate concerns that this committee needs to be attentive to, and I think we have passed that test. I stand forth here today to ask every Member of this House to proudly support this piece of legislation. I believe it is worthy of their vote.
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Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the conference report.
The previous question was ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The question is on the conference report.
The conference report was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
END