Congressional Record: December 20, 2005 (Senate)
Page S14120-S14122
Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I have asked to address the Senate on
a national security matter of great concern to me. I call my
colleagues' attention to the Senate's inexplicable failure to pass the
fiscal year 2006 Intelligence authorization bill.
[[Page S14121]]
The bill was approved and reported by the Intelligence Committee on
September 29, and it has been available for Senate action since
November 16. This legislation is too important to be allowed to
languish in legislative limbo. That is where it is. I am at a loss to
understand why the Senate cannot complete action before we adjourn on a
matter of national security that is this important.
As I understand the current parliamentary situation, the Intelligence
authorization bill cannot be brought up or be passed under unanimous
consent because of Republican objection, and the majority leader has
decided that it does not merit the minimal amount of floor time needed
to approve the bill, which would pass quickly.
I am informed that one or more Republican Senators object to the
inclusion of amendments offered by Democratic Senators even though
Chairman Roberts has accepted those amendments--and those amendments
were agreed to by the full committee. If there is opposition to these
provisions, I urge the majority leader to allow us to bring up the
bill, debate, and vote on the amendments. Our side is willing to agree
to very short time agreements to each of the three amendments.
The unwillingness to consider this bill is more puzzling because of
the bipartisan effort that has gone into the development of this bill.
The Republican objection is preventing us from considering this
critical national security legislation. The Intelligence Committee is,
after all, an exceedingly important committee which is burdened with
heavy responsibilities and which needs to have an authorizing piece of
legislation underneath it. I hope, whatever the objection is, the
majority leader and Senator Roberts can find a way to overcome it
before we finish our business for this session.
The recent revelations related to surveillance and intelligence
collection within the United States and the lack of effective
congressional oversight of that program make passage of this
legislation even more critical. One of the important themes of the bill
is the improvement of oversight, both within the intelligence community
and by Congress itself. That would include the Intelligence Committee,
which needs to be having intelligence oversight hearings on a number of
matters, which it is not now doing. This theme is embodied in several
sections of the legislation--in the classified annex and specifically
amendments offered specifically by Senators Kennedy and Kerry.
In both the public text of our bill and the associated classified
annex, the committee also has included language requiring the provision
of information to the Intelligence Committees, specifically about
something called detention and interrogation, which has a fair share of
public attention. Additionally, the amendments offered by Senators
Kennedy and Kerry, each of which has been agreed to, as I have
indicated, by Chairman Roberts and the full committee, also will
require additional information Congress needs in order to oversee
detention and interrogation programs, something the Intelligence
Committee should be doing.
The Kerry amendment, my colleagues will recall, was added to the
Defense authorization bill without objection, only to be dropped in
conference.
Finally, an amendment offered by Senator Kennedy and accepted by
Chairman Roberts will require the Director of National Intelligence to
provide the congressional Intelligence Committee all Presidential daily
briefs, or portions of them, from the beginning of President Clinton's
second term in January of 1997 until March 19, 2003, when our troops
actually crossed into Iraq on that day, which refer to Iraq or
otherwise address Iraq in any way, shape, or form. This information
will fill an important gap in the Intelligence Committee's access to
all intelligence available prior to the war in Iraq.
If we do not act on this legislation, it will be an unprecedented
failure.
Since the Intelligence Committee was created, we have had an
unblemished record of 27 years of completing work with this critical
authorizing legislation. Never once have we failed. The annual
Intelligence authorization bill has rightly been considered ``must
pass'' legislation. That is exactly how we should view it.
I call upon the President to weigh in and break this impasse. The
President has been critical of bipartisan concerns voiced about the
PATRIOT Act conference report but has been curiously silent about the
Republican roadblocks preventing passage of this critical piece of
national security legislation.
If the Republican objection to the unanimous consent agreement cannot
be overcome, I hope the majority leader will change his mind and allow
the Senate to consider the bill under a short time agreement with votes
on any issues in contention.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, many of us had hoped the Senate would
take up the Intelligence authorization bill and allow us to offer an
amendment to require the Director of National Intelligence to make the
presidential daily briefs on Iraq available to the Intelligence
Committees of the Senate and House, beginning with the last term of the
Clinton administration and ending on the first day of the war in Iraq
in 2003.
Unfortunately, an unidentified Republican has a hold on the bill to
prevent Senate action unless the amendment is withdrawn along with two
other amendments on secret detention facilities.
It is obvious that some of our Republican colleagues are bent on
avoiding the truth about the war. To prevent debate on this all-
important issue, the Republican majority is apparently willing to let
the whole intelligence bill fail. I don't agree with that tactic. It is
a blatant coverup.
President Bush has repeatedly claimed in recent weeks that Congress
had access to the same intelligence he did in deciding to go to war in
Iraq. As President Bush specifically stated in his Veterans Day address
in Pennsylvania last month, ``. . . more than a hundred Democrats in
the House and Senate--who had access to the same intelligence--voted to
support removing Saddam Hussein from power.''
He repeated the claim on November 14, November 17, and again in his
December 14 address to the Nation on the war in Iraq. In fact, he had
made the same statement 98 times between March and October 2004, when
his decision to go to war was under serious challenge in the
presidential election that year. It is hardly surprising, therefore,
that the President is now dusting off the same talking points today,
when his decision to go to war is again under serious challenge.
Vice President Cheney and National Security Advisor Hadley have made
similar claims.
How they could all make such an obvious false claim is beyond belief.
It is bad enough that they distorted the intelligence on the need for
the war. Now they are blatantly distorting the facts about how much
access Congress had to the intelligence.
Someone on the White House staff obviously needs to correct the
President's talking points before he parrots them in another speech.
President Bush should have taken a close and comprehensive look at
the intelligence, rather than building a case for war based on cherry-
picked intelligence It is not enough to recognize now that the
intelligence was not accurate. Whatever flaws existed in the
intelligence were far outweighed by the devious way the administration
manipulated the intelligence to support its preconceived desire for war
and ignored the serious doubts that we now know undermined the
intelligence.
The administration claims the intelligence wasn't deliberately
distorted to justify the war. But how can they possibly pretend that
Congress had access to that intelligence?
The White House has access to thousands of intelligence documents
that Congress never sees. According to a December 14 report by the
Congressional Research Service, ``The President, and a small number of
presidentially-designated Cabinet-level officials, including the Vice
President--in contrast to Members of Congress--have access to a far
greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive
intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence
sources and methods. They, unlike Members of Congress, also have the
authority to more extensively task the intelligence community, and its
extensive cadre of analysts for follow-up information.''
[[Page S14122]]
But, the principal document that Congress doesn't see is the
presidential daily brief, the so-called PDB, which is prepared
specifically for the President. It contains very important classified
intelligence, and equally important information about the credibility
of the intelligence. It is therefore an extremely valuable document.
President Bush receives the PDB every morning and is given an oral
briefing on it by top intelligence officials. The practice began in the
Johnson administration and is intended to give each President a
detailed overall view of national security concerns, including
terrorist threats against the United States.
As the administration well knows, Members of Congress certainly do
not receive this daily briefing document. In fact, when Congress has
sought copies of PDBs, the requests have been denied.
In the case of Iraq, as part of its investigation of the pre-war
intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee specifically asked to
review the PDBs relevant to the key issues of Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction and Saddam Hussein's links to terrorists. The White House
flatly denied the request.
The committee is now working on the second phase of its
investigation, which is whether the administration distorted the
intelligence on Iraq in order to strengthen the case for war.
So far, however, instead of providing the PDBs as part of an effort
to find the truth, the White House continues to hide behind a veil of
secrecy by refusing to disclose these briefs. It is difficult to
believe that there is any sound national security reason for the
administration to continue stonewalling Congress by denying access to
these PDBs. The obvious explanation is coverup.
Members of the Silberman-Robb Commission appointed by the President
to examine pre-war intelligence were given access to articles within
PDBs on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. Four of the 10
members of the 9-11 Commission were given PDB articles they requested.
If these commissioners were given access, Congress should have been
given access as well for its own investigation of the all-important
questions about why we went to war and the way we went to war.
The administration's drumbeat for war in Iraq began at the end of the
summer in 2002. It was carefully staged. As White House Chief of Staff
Andrew Card said on September that year about the plan for war, ``From
a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in
August.''
Hardly by coincidence, the timing of the war also coincided with the
final phase of the congressional election campaigns that year.
One further point deserves mention. Initially, in the run-up to the
war in 2002, the Administration did not produce and give Congress a
National Intelligence Estimate--a document summarizing the collective
expert wisdom of the intelligence community--to support its claims
about Iraq's involvement with al-Qaida and its development of nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction. When Democrats on
the Senate Intelligence Committee insisted that an estimate be
produced, it was finally provided on October 1, 2002, 2 days before the
congressional resolution authorizing the war was brought before the
Senate for debate. The estimate itself buried important dissenting
views in the footnotes.
The Senate adopted the war resolution on October 11, the day after it
passed the House of Representatives--and after 6 weeks of an aggressive
White House campaign replete with images of mushroom clouds over
America, in a brazen attempt to pressure Congress to give the President
the blank check he wanted for the war, and to do so before adjourning
for the November elections.
As we now know all too well, Saddam had no weapons of mass
destruction and no ties to al-Qaida; 150,000 American troops are bogged
down in a quagmire in Iraq in a war that America never should have
fought, that has seriously undermined our respect in the world, and
that has made the real war on terrorism far harder to win.
It is time for the administration to come clean and provide the PDBs
to the Congress.
This is not a meaningless debate about documents. The issue is the
quality and quantity of intelligence the President was looking at when
he made the decision to go to war.
It's essential to get to the bottom of the rush to war--not only to
get the truth, but also because there are other threats on the horizon
as well--in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere. America must get it right
next time, and access to the PDBs is an essential part of doing so.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
Senate go into a quorum and that the time be equally divided between
both sides.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
[...]
Congressional Record: December 20, 2005 (Senate)
Page S14165
INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the fiscal year
2006 Intelligence authorization bill.
As every American knows, we are a nation at war--at war in Iraq and
at war against radical terrorists. These are wars Democrats and
Republicans agree we cannot afford to lose. These wars have demanded a
great deal from our troops and our taxpayers and will require much more
sacrifice before they are over.
Given the stakes involved and the sacrifices required of so many, you
would think that funding our troops and our intelligence community
would be this Republican controlled Congress's top priority. You would
think that our friends on the other side of the aisle would take up
this must do legislation at the start of the Congress not at the end.
Unfortunately, while the Republican leadership is fond of stating the
importance of prevailing in these wars and taking care of our troops,
they have not matched those words with action. In fact, the hypocrisy
demonstrated by the Republicans in this Congress on national security
matters is astounding. How else to explain that with less than a week
to go before Christmas, in the waning hours of this session of
Congress, our Republican friends have yet to complete action on three
major pieces of national security legislation--the fiscal year 2006
Defense authorization bill, the fiscal year 2006 Defense appropriations
bill, and the fiscal year 2006 Intelligence authorization bill.
In recent times, Republicans have been extremely fond of painting
themselves as patriots and extremely quick to brand those who challenge
their policies as traitors. Given the callous way Republicans have
treated our national security and our troops, I feel I must speak out
on the Republicans' hypocrisy.
Although this point could be made with respect to each of the
unfinished national security bills bottled up in this Congress, right
now, I want to focus my remarks on the Intelligence authorization
bill--a bill Republicans have not even seen fit to bring to the Senate
floor despite the fact that the bill was reported out unanimously by
the Senate Intelligence Committee.
This bill should have been taken up months ago. And Democrats would
have been more than willing to quickly debate and pass this legislation
once it reached the Senate floor so it could go to a conference with
the House. Democrats know that it is essential that we permit the men
and women of the intelligence agencies to continue their critical work
on the front lines of the war in Iraq and the war on terror.
Unfortunately, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle
apparently don't share that view. Republicans have taken months to move
this bill through the legislative process. Once the committee acted and
the bill was ready for the floor, an anonymous Republican placed a hold
on the bill and prevented the Senate from working its will. As a
result, the bill can't go forward. Vital intelligence operations are on
hold while the bill languishes. And the men and women who selflessly
serve are left wondering whether the Congress understands how vital
their work is to this Nation's security.
I hope the Republican-led Congress will eventually get its act
together and get this bill passed before we adjourn for the year.
In the meantime, to the men and women of the intelligence agencies, I
say: Senate Democrats stand with you. We are proud of your bravery and
your patriotism, and we thank you for your sacrifice working in silence
and in the shadows against the threats America faces.
____________________
