Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. I yield myself 30 seconds off my time on the bill.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, if I have any time left on this, I reserve it, and I will yield the floor now for my colleague from Arizona.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, have the yeas and nays been ordered on the previous amendment? If not, I would ask for the yeas and nays on the previous amendment as well.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, let me also say for the benefit of my colleagues that we are trying to accommodate schedules. I thank the Senators from Arizona and Georgia, who were running around trying to get their agreement. At the completion of the two rollcall votes--we are trying to get additional time on one amendment relating to articles X and XI, and we have an hour set aside for it now and we hope to reduce that time. At the conclusion of that vote we would then go to final passage, although there probably may be a few minutes intervening because each has some time left. That is the objective. Some are trying to catch planes and trains and the like. Mr. President, let me suggest quickly what this does. The amendment that I sent to the desk strikes a condition which unilaterally says at the front end we will not allow any inspector from such states as China, Iran, and Iraq, et cetera, if they are signatories to the treaty. If they have deposited their instruments of ratification, now they are in the deal. We are saying, if they are in, we will not allow any inspector from their countries to be any part of a team that would inspect U.S. facilities. The intention is obvious, and it is laudable. The intention is to keep the bad-guy inspectors out because we are worried that what they would do is send over an intelligence officer as part of that inspection team, learn all secrets from us and take them back home. It is not likely that can happen anyway. But let's assume it did. The intelligence community says this is a very bad idea. The reason it is a bad idea if we do that, Mr. President, is every other country will issue a blanket rejection of any U.S. inspectors. We are the class of the field. You have heard all day--and in the closed session--my colleagues expressing their concern about verification. The more we have American inspectors involved, the more likely we are to be able to detect wrongdoing because we are the class of the field. We don't want to be excluded across the board from being on any inspection team. So, therefore, this is intended to do something good but is extremely counterproductive. It is counterproductive, and the intelligence community says so as well. But beyond that, it is unnecessary. There is a provision. In the interest of time--we were going to have an hour of debate; I was going to put all of this out to you--but in this treaty there is a provision now that says the United States, or any other country, can at any time strike an inspector. The way this works, as most of our colleagues know, is when there is going to be a challenge inspection, or a routine inspection, there is a list of inspectors. They give the names. As few as 3 and as many as 15 inspectors are going to show up on the doorsteps of X, Y, Z company, and they list their names and their country. Guess what? Our intelligence community from the time those names are given-- it is like a jury pool. The Presiding Officer was a Federal prosecutor. It is like a grand jury. Every country submits inspectors that they want participating. Their committee picks inspectors from each of the countries. They sit in one town and one city. When an inspection comes up, they say ``You, you, you, and you, go and inspect.'' They have to submit those names. Our intelligence community, when that pool is picked, will do a background check on every one of those guys and women. They know their names. So they can, in fact, go out there and say--we can say, or the intelligence community can say--``Look, he is on that inspection group. Strike him. We don't want him.'' You can do that. The only time we can't strike is when--I have a smart staff here. In the late hours they think they are humorous. You are fired. [Laughter.] I am only kidding. That is a joke; a little levity at this time. As my distinguished friend on the Intelligence Committee, formerly of my staff, wrote, ``They can't strike when they are on the plane.'' You have to give 24 hours notice you don't want So and So in there. So the point is you can already strike anybody. We do this in a blanket way. We knock the class of the field out of the inspection process. We don't want to do that. With all due respect, this is not a thoughtful amendment. This is counterproductive. I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.

Mr. BIDEN. I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, let's get this straight. Verification is about whether or not we can know whether or not our security interests are going to be put in jeopardy. A useful chemical weapons capacity requires a lot more than just whether or not you can produce illicit chemical weapons. It requires a delivery system, infrastructure, storage, and use of chemical weapons. It includes defense preparations, extra security around the storage areas, and training and exercising of troops who will use those weapons. It goes on and on. The ability to put together a chemical weapons capability to go undetected that will diminish our security is not real. I yield back the time and ask unanimous consent that we defer a vote on this amendment at this moment, that we turn to my next motion to strike, which will relate to inspectors, condition 31, that there be 10 minutes equally divided on condition 31, that vote on condition 33 and on condition 31 be stacked after the conclusion of the debate on condition 31, with 15 minutes on the first vote, 10 minutes on the second vote, and with 1 minute intervening.

Mr. BIDEN. I move to lay it on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, let me just take the minute to say the following: If you do not like this treaty and you are not for it, vote against it. If you think this treaty makes sense, vote for my amendment, because if this treaty contains this provision, it is dead. This is a so-called killer amendment. So those of you who have concluded you are not going to vote in the final analysis for this treaty, vote no. Those of you who have decided you want to vote for this treaty--to cut through it all--vote yes. I mean, it really is that basic, because if my motion fails to strike, this treaty is dead. I yield back the remainder of my time, if my colleague from North Carolina is prepared to yield back his time. I am prepared to vote.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I would like to reserve 30 seconds of whatever my time is.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, unless there is someone in opposition, I yield as much time of the remaining time that my colleague from Pennsylvania would like to the Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, how much time do I have on this amendment?

Mr. BIDEN. The answer is I would absolutely like to do that. The statement I was going to introduce has a paragraph about that. I express my deep appreciation to Senator Lugar, with whom I have talked every day for the past few months as we have tried to move the ball forward in this treaty. He was very committed. He is truly the Senate's leading expert on the treaty and, I think, one of the leading experts in this country on foreign policy. We would not have gotten this far without his efforts. Perhaps the reason he is as good as he is that he has a father and son team working for him, Kenneth and Kenny Myers. I envy Ken Myers, Senator Lugar's long-time staff aide, because he gets to work with his son, Kenny Myers, every day. The only thing I found, Mr. Chairman, in my meetings with them is that, like with my sons, I occasionally observe that the son knew more than the father. So my compliments to both of them. The bottom line of all this--and I assume this was one of the intentions of the Senator from North Carolina, the chairman--is that regardless of the final outcome of each of these remaining amendments and the treaty, this has been done fairly and honorably. Everyone has kept their word. We said we would negotiate in good faith; we both did. All of the staff members involved acted in the same way. Lastly--and I hope this doesn't come out the wrong way--I want to thank the chairman of the full committee for the honorable way in which he has dealt with this entire matter. I mean that sincerely. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: How much time is under the control of the Senator from Delaware?

Mr. BIDEN. Yes.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman. I apologize because I may have to augment this. Although it is a very good idea to do it now, I was preparing to do it later, so I may leave somebody out, and I may amend this. Let me begin by thanking a young man, who came over from my personal staff to the Foreign Relations Committee and I think maybe Mr. Billingslea may have thought he was his cousin, they spent so much time together in the last couple of months, and that is Puneet Talwar. He has done a great deal of the heavy lifting for me on this, along with Ed Levine, from the Intelligence Committee, who is now working with me. Ed Hall, the minority staff director; John Lis; the young man--well, he has been with me so long that he is getting old--Brian McKeon, who is counsel for the minority; Frank Januzzi; Dawn Ratliff; Kathi Taylor; Ursula McManus, who we kept up late at night writing memos and other things on our behalf; Casey Adams; Bill Ashworth, a former long-time staff member of the Foreign Relations Committee and Senator Pell's staff; David Schanzer, who worked with me on the Judiciary Committee; Mary Santos; Kimberly Burns; Jennette Murphy; Larry Stein; Randy DeValk; Sheila Murphy, all leadership staff persons who have worked with me. I have left out some, but I will augment this with the staff members of the Intelligence Committee, the Appropriations Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Armed Services Committee. They all played major rolls. The hearings that the distinguished chairman had on this treaty this time around were, I think, among the best hearings--even though I didn't always agree with the witnesses--that I have participated in in my 25 years. The cast of characters were the luminaries of previous administrations, as well as this administration. We had the who's who of the foreign policy establishment, literally. These people were particularly helpful to me, which is going to sound strange. He was up in the gallery, but I am referring to General and former Ambassador Rowny, a close friend and, I think, neighbor of the chairman. I know he is much more philosophically compatible with the chairman than with me, but we found ourselves on the same side of this issue. Everybody wondered why Bob Dole changed his mind--not changed his mind, but why Bob Dole concluded that the conditions that were added to the treaty sufficiently corrected its defects. It is my understanding that General Rowny bumped into Bob Dole in a coffee shop at the Watergate Hotel. I can see the distinguished Senator from Arizona wishing he had been at that coffee shop. But there was Gen. Brent Scowcroft, one of the most respected people in this town, Adm. Elmo Zumwalt; John Deutch; Fred Webber and his staff at the Chemical Manufacturers Association; Gen. Colin Powell; Amy Smithson of the Stimson Center; John Isaacs; Brad Roberts, Institute for Defense Analysis; Barry Kellman, DePaul Law School; Ron Lehman of the Reagan and Bush administrations. I am leaving a number of people out who I will add later. I thank them all for contributing to this debate. I want to make a personal thanks, if I may, Mr. Chairman and Mr. President, to one of the most competent staff people I have ever dealt with in the administration, Bob Bell, who works for Sandy Berger and who also, I think, did an incredibly good job here, and Lori Murray, also of that staff. Bob Bell is a walking encyclopedia, who negotiated with the Lott committee. He is a man who has the ability to understand very complex notions and put them into language everybody can understand. He has done an admirable job. There are other people to thank.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I withdraw my inquiry I did not make.

Mr. BIDEN. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BIDEN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Senator for making clear what he meant. I didn't think that's what he meant. I was hoping that is not what he meant, but it is what he meant. That could be said about almost everybody who testified before our committee, for and against this treaty, and I really, quite frankly, think that the leaders for and against this treaty in the last two administrations are men and women of integrity who would have no conflict. They are consistent with what they did within those administrations. Let me point out a few things. It seems interesting to me that here we are, the very people--our very colleagues who want to have a provision saying that we want all these rogue nations in the treaty before we get into the treaty, argue in the alternative, that these nations in the treaty mean the treaty is worthless. Translated, very simply, they are not for this treaty under any circumstance, whether or not these nations are in the treaty or out of the treaty. I also point out that--in the interest of time, I will not be able to point it out in detail--every argument against this treaty made thus far on the floor today, I respectfully suggest, is made worse by not being in the treaty, by not having the treaty. I find it, quite frankly, interesting. My time is up. I hope my colleague will not move to table. We agree not to attempt to amend any of these conditions. I hope we will have a vote up or down. Apparently, it is not in the agreement. If he chooses to do it, I guess he has the right.

Mr. BIDEN. I yield myself the remaining time. I will speak to a couple of points. With regard to Ken Adelman, I am sure our colleague from Oklahoma didn't mean to impugn his motivation by suggesting for whom he worked. I would not suggest that of Mr. Rumsfeld because of where he works now, that it caused him to have that view. Ken Adelman-- although I disagree with him most of the time, he was an able member of the administration. He was viewed as a hawk at the time he was here. For the record, I am sure there was no intention to do that?

Mr. BIDEN. I yield 10 minutes to my colleague from Indiana.

Mr. BIDEN. Why don't you go ahead?

Mr. BIDEN. I yield myself such time as I may consume under the 7 minutes. I do not plan on using it all. Mr. President, it has been a long road to this spot, this point. We have had not only extensive debate in the last 2 days, we have had an extensive debate on this floor, in committees, in the press, among foreign policy experts, think-tank types, for the past 3 years. We reached the point where we are constitutionally required to fulfill a duty of either giving our consent to ratification or withholding it. As both leaders have pointed out, it is maybe the most significant responsibility delegated to the U.S. Senate I realize that we sometimes stand on this floor, particularly when any one of us and all of us have invested a significant amount of time in one issue or another where we feel that we have spent most of our waking hours for the past month, two, or three--everyone has experienced that on this floor--and we tend to think that since we put so much time into the passage of a piece of legislation, or in this case, a treaty, that maybe it is the most important thing that the Senate has done or could do because I guess we say to ourselves we would not invest that much of our time, our energy, our mind, our soul, into the effort if it was not so important. Acknowledging that we all err on that side of thinking what we do is sometimes more important than what it is, I respectfully suggest that the vote each of us is about to cast on this treaty is likely to be the most significant vote any of us cast in this Congress. Twice today I have been referred to as the senior Senator from Delaware. I want the record to show, I know I am the junior Senator. I am the second most senior junior Senator in the United States. I have been here 25 years, but that young man in the back there is the most senior junior Senator, the distinguished Senator from South Carolina, Senator Hollings, because the most senior Senator of senior Senators is his colleague, Senator Thurmond. Mr. President, I am not sure that there is any vote that I have cast in the last 4 or 5 years that I think is as significant for the future of the United States as this treaty. And as I said, and I will conclude with this, not merely because of what the treaty attempts to do--and that is, for the first time in the history of modern man, ban even the possession of an entire category of weaponry--but that is not the reason why this is the most important vote. We are at a juncture in our history, Mr. President, in my opinion, where the United States has an opportunity, which rarely comes to any nation in its history--it has come to us, in my opinion, on two occasions--where our actions and our leadership can literally, not figuratively--and it is not hyperbole-- can literally shape, at least on the margins, the future of the world. After World War II, we stepped up to the plate. My father's generation and my grandfather's generation and grandmother's and my mother's generation stepped up to the plate. They did things, when we look back on them, that must have taken incredible courage. Can you imagine having over 10 million men still under arms and standing up as a Senator, or as a President, or as a Secretary of State, and saying, by the way, I want us now to send billions of dollars to those people who killed our sons and daughters? That was the Marshall Plan. Can you imagine the foresight it took and how difficult it must have been to cast a vote to set up an outfit called NATO, of which Germany, our sworn enemy that killed our sons and daughters, were members? Those people had courage. But they did what the Senator from Indiana, Senator Lugar, said: They led. This is about leadership. This is about the role of the United States in leading the world. If we refrain from exercising that opportunity-- and we will if we do not vote for this treaty--we will have passed up an opportunity that, as I said, rarely comes to any nation in the history of the world. We can affect, if we are wise, the behavior, activity and actions for a generation to come, not for what is contained in this treaty, but because of the leadership that was demonstrated in drafting this treaty, in ratifying this treaty and enforcing this treaty. So, Mr. President, I realize that all of us--myself included--tend to engage in hyperbole and rhetoric that doesn't mean the substance of what we are talking about. But I honestly believe this is one of the most important votes, in terms of the future of this country and its ability to lead at a moment in history that seldom comes to any nation, that may be the most important vote that any of us will cast. If we embark on this path of continuing to engage the world and lead the world, we maintain the reasonable prospect that we can make the world-- the world--a better place in which to live. I yield the remainder of my time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. How much time remains?

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am obviously very pleased with the decision the Senator from Nebraska made, but I want to state on the record that I would have been comfortable with whatever decision he made, and I say that for the following reasons. I have been here for 24 years. It has been a long time since I have been a freshman Senator, but I remember how overwhelming it was and the pressures that are exerted, legitimate pressures, when major issues confront someone. I have watched the Senator from Nebraska from the day he got here, because we serve on the same committee, attack with a seriousness of purpose I have seldom seen one of the most complicated issues that is going to come before this body this year. It was not merely determining what groups, what party, what factions of parties were for and against the treaty. He wanted to know what article X meant in the language. He wanted to know whether article I trumped article X. He wanted to know the details of it, and he addressed it. He indicated that this is the eve of an anniversary. It seems appropriate and totally consistent, I am going to say for the record--I hope I do not embarrass him--what I said to him privately. I have also observed another feature about him. This is a man whose conduct on the battlefield is mirrored by his conduct in politics, in that when he thinks he is right he is not afraid to do whatever it is he thinks he should do. And that comes through. That is what I mean when I say I would have been comfortable and assured that he had given it every consideration had he concluded to vote the other way. I want to publicly compliment him, not for the decision he made, but the way he made the decision. I hope that does not cost him politically, for someone on this side of the aisle to compliment my colleague. There is another freshman Senator I serve with, Senator Gordon Smith, who may not come to the same conclusion, but he has addressed it with the same kind of alacrity and commitment. So I just say it is a pleasure to serve with the Senator and our colleague, Senator Smith. But as I said, I am happy he came out the way he did. Regardless of how the Senator came out, I would have been comfortable. I yield the floor.