Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, what I would like to speak to in an indirect way covers this. We have had several votes on wiretaps, and I know people are asking why am I introducing the other wiretap provision that was taken out of the Senate bill. The reason I am is I refuse to believe that, if you all hear this enough, you will not eventually decide to do the right thing on this. The provision that I have proposed is not original with me. It was in the Senate bill that we passed. The provision would add a number--the bill we have before us, the conference report--would add a number of terrorism-related offenses to the law. I will go into those in a minute. What I have sent to the desk, if adopted, would instruct the conferees to add the same number of offenses that we are adding to the bill, to the law, to those categories of things for which the Government, with probable cause, can get a wiretap. It was in the Senate bill as introduced by Senators Hatch and Dole. It was part of the terrorism bill reported out of Representative Hyde's Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, by the time the bill had made it to the House, the provision was dropped. I think it is worth talking a moment about how a wiretap statute works, the one that is in place now in the law, for it seems there is a lot of misunderstanding about it these days. I am repeating myself again to eliminate the misunderstanding. As some people tell it, you would think the FBI and BATF and the local and State police are tapping our phones left and right, that they are riding down the streets in vans with electronic devices eavesdropping into our windows and houses--which they have the capacity to do, by the way. But that is just not the way it works. First and foremost, it is not an FBI agent but a U.S. attorney, or even the Attorney General herself, who has the power to authorize the wiretap. No. Actually, that is not quite true. The ultimate authority to issue a wiretap sits only with a Federal judge. The U.S. attorney has the power to petition the court for a wiretap, but only a judge, a judge who cannot be fired, whose salary cannot be docked by any of us in Washington, who cannot be affected in any way, only a judge may disagree with something that the Attorney General does or does not do. It is that judge who must determine that there is probable cause to believe that a specific crime--not a general crime--a specific crime has been--not is about to--has been committed; that specific people are committing that crime, and that they are doing it at a specific place. The affidavit that the U.S. attorney takes to the court, to the judge, must also satisfy what is called the necessity requirement. The judge must be convinced that other less intrusive investigative procedures have been tried and failed--that is infiltration, that is eavesdropping in a conversation, walking by, any other method--has to be convinced that they have been tried and failed or that they are unlikely to succeed in any reasonable circumstance. That necessity requirement is meant to ensure that wiretapping is not the normal investigative technique, like physical surveillance or the use of informants. These are very serious protections, Mr. President. I believe that interposing a court between the prosecutor and the wiretap is a citizens' best protection. But even before we get to the judge who makes his decision, there is a very painstaking, stringent process within the Justice Department for determining when to seek a court authorization for a wiretap. First, the agent in the field, under the supervision of his or her supervisor, must write an affidavit, a sworn affidavit, that they must sign that sets out all the particular facts relating to probable cause, because even if an order is granted based on the agent, if he is lying, then that information is gone even if the judge issued the wiretap order. So, on the front end, you have to have a sworn law enforcement officer swear that the information they are writing down as to why they think a crime has been committed is true. They are liable. An assistant U.S. attorney then must take that affidavit from the FBI agent and draft an application and a proposed order for the court to sign. The package then must be sent from the U.S. attorney in Wilmington, DE, or in Manchester, NH, and sent down to Washington. The U.S. attorney cannot just walk into the courtroom of the Federal judge or to any of the judges, and say, ``Judge, I want a wiretap.'' They must send it down to Washington. Once the package is sent to Washington, the Criminal Division of the Justice Department takes a look and scrutinizes the affidavit and discusses any necessary changes or additions or questions they have with the U.S. attorney that is handling the case back in Manchester, Wilmington, or Salt Lake City. Then a detailed memorandum summarizing the facts and legal issues and addressing the application's compliance with each statutory requirement is sent to the Assistant Attorney General. All these materials are then sent to the Assistant Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General for final review and final authorization, and then it is sent back to Manchester, sent back to Wilmington, sent back to Salt Lake City. The U.S. attorney then petitions the court and then goes in and sees a judge. This is painstaking. It is time consuming, as well it should be, for we want to make sure that wiretaps are used in only the most serious cases. We want to make sure that they are used only as a last resort when all other less intrusive techniques have failed, and we want to make sure that the Government is not making unwarranted intrusions into our privacy. But we also need to make sure that law enforcement has the tools, if they meet all these hurdles, to catch the bad guy. Now, this provision that I have offered, that we already voted on, will provide an important tool. Let me just point out there is currently a very long list of crimes for which a wiretap can be authorized. Let me make this point because a lot of nonlawyers or people who do not practice criminal law are not aware of this as well. You cannot get a wiretap, even if you do all the things I just said, unless you turn to the Criminal Code, and you have all these crimes listed in the Criminal Code. OK. You may find a crime in one section, and then you have to turn to another section, section 251, of the Criminal Code entitled, ``Authorization for Interception of Wire, Oral or Electronic Communications.'' And then you have to find there in subsection (c) the list of offenses for which you can get a wiretap. Not every crime is entitled to have a wiretap attached to it. So it is a two-step process. First, you have to prove there is a crime being committed that is a violation of the Federal law. Second, you have to go through all these procedures that I outlined to safeguard that it is not willingly used by the Government to intrude on your privacy. And then, in that process, you have to make sure it is a listed crime for which you can seek a wiretap. OK. Now, some of those crimes for which you can seek a wiretap are murder, kidnaping, robbery, extortion, bribing public officials, witnesses, or bank officials, obstructing justice, criminal investigations or law enforcement, all manner of fraud and embezzlement, destroying cars, wrecking trains. They are all listed, all listed. And this list goes on. The provision I am suggesting here does only one minor thing: It would add a very serious and potentially deadly terrorism offense to that list, including new offenses that are added in this legislation. The legislation we are voting on, the conference report is this thing, and in here, to the credit of the chairman and I believe to me and others who worked on this, we add new crimes, new Federal crimes, terrorism crimes for which the Federal Government can go after you if you do these bad things. But we miss one important step. We do not take these new laws and add them to the list of those things for which you can get a wiretap. This would do that, would allow wiretaps with all the procedures for the new crimes of terrorism we have in here. It is ironic. At first I thought it was an oversight, but obviously it is intended that you not be able to use wiretaps to deal with terrorism as we outlined in the bill. I assume my time has expired.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume within my allotted time. Mr. President, before I begin on this amendment, I want to just tell you, and all of my colleagues who may be listening back in the offices, that while the last vote was going on a colleague of ours, Senator Wendell Ford, came to the floor and said, ``Let me show you something my staff just downloaded from the Internet.'' While you were all voting on whether or not to prohibit people from being able to teach people how to make bombs knowing or intending they be used to violate the law, let me read what was downloaded. This is roughly at 3:20 p.m. today. Attention all Unabomber wannabes. You will first have to make a mild version of thermite. Use my recipe but substitute iron filings for rust. Mix the iron with aluminum filings in a ratio of 75 percent aluminum, 25 percent iron. This mixture will burn violently in a closed space (such as an envelope). This brings us to the next ingredient. Go to the post office and buy an insulated (padded) envelope. You know, the type that is double layered. Separate the layers and place the mild thermite in the main section where the letter would go. Then place magnesium powder in the outer layer. There is your bomb!! Now to light it. This is the tricky part, and hard to explain. I am still quoting now. Just keep experimenting until you get something that works. The fuse is just that torch explosive I have told you about in another one of my anarchy files. You might want to wrap it like a long cigarette, then place it at the top of the envelope in the outer layer (on top of the powdered magnesium). When the torch explosive is torn, or even squeezed hard, it will ignite the powdered magnesium (sort of a flash light) and then it will burn the mild thermite. If the thermite did not blow up, it would at least burn your enemy (it does wonders on human flesh). You all just voted to keep that legal--to keep that legal--because of the fear, apparently, or concern that we would not be able to convince 35 recalcitrant House Members to make that illegal. That is what you did. That is what you did. I ask unanimous consent that this be printed in the Record along with the baby food bomb by Warmaster, also taken off the Internet. For all of you who are concerned about the pornography on the Internet, as I am, how do you explain banning that, which we should, and not this? Pornography deforms the mind. These bombs burn the flesh. I ask unanimous consent that these recipes available to our children and the demented people out there in the public, the few that exist, be printed in the Record to know what we have just done.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Chair. Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I understand before the final vote there are 6 minutes allotted to each side.

Mr. BIDEN. I yield the remainder of the time to the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, just for the sake of discussion, if there were 10 very important provisions in this bill when we passed it out of the Senate, it has come back to us with 4--I am not being literal--with fewer than we sent over. Fewer than 50 percent of the provisions that I think are important in this bill remain in the bill. In truth, when the Senator and I got to conference, there were probably only 10 percent of the provisions we thought important in the bill. To the credit of the Senator from Utah, he was able to get back additional provisions in the bill. For that I compliment him. What I have been fighting about all afternoon here is trying to add back provisions that I think were mindlessly removed and removed tools that we could make available to law enforcement to protect my children and me and all of us in this Chamber and around this country. This is the one portion of the conference report that I am seeking to delete that has made the bill worse than when it went out of here. Up to now I have been arguing that we sent a bill out of here with a lot of good things that the House stripped out and I wanted to put them back in. Not only did the House take out the bulk of the really good things that were invaluable to fight terrorism, but it added some things which I think are counterproductive. One of them is pandering to this concern of some Americans that the bad guys are the cops, the bad guys are the Government, the bad guys are the FBI or the ATF or the Justice Department. I do not believe we should go forward with an antiterrorism bill that has a study in it only of police and not terrorists. For that reason, I propose to delete the study of the police in this bill. I think it is more of an affront than it is a substantive problem. If we do not delete this, we will be faced with a conference report that studies cops but not terrorists. Let us remember who has literally laid down their lives in the defense of our Nation and our way of life. It is the Federal law enforcement officers, not the terrorists. This study will provide nothing but a forum for those who believe the Federal law enforcement is the enemy of the American people and not the protectors. We are unwittingly aiding and abetting that notion by deciding that, in a terrorism bill, we are going to study the cops. The study says, section 806, Commission on the Advancement of Federal Law Enforcement. (a) Establishment.--There is established a commission to be known as the ``Commission on the Advancement of Federal Law Enforcement'' (hereinafter in this section referred to as the ``Commission''). (b) Duties.--The Commission shall review, ascertain, evaluate, report, and recommend action to the Congress on the following matters: (1) The Federal law enforcement priorities for the 21st century, including Federal law enforcement capability to investigate and deter adequately the threat of terrorism facing the United States. (2) In general, the manner in which significant Federal criminal law enforcement operations are conceived, planned, coordinated, and executed. (3) The standards and procedures used by Federal law enforcement to carry out significant Federal criminal law enforcement . . . (4) The investigation and handling of specific law enforcement cases . . . (5) The necessity for the present number of Federal law enforcement agencies and units. Get that? We are going to study the necessity, the necessity of the present number of law enforcement agents and agencies. What is the implication of that? The implication of that is there are some bad law enforcement agencies out there. I assume this is the right's attempt to go after the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. I do not know. That is who we are studying. We are going to study the cops, not the terrorists. We have to study the location and efficacy of the office or entire entity responsible, aside from the President, for the coordination of interagency bases of operation, programs and activities of all Federal law enforcement agencies. It goes on, by the way, for another half a dozen sections. Think about this. Many of us were local officials before we came here. How many times did a very small segment of our community come to tell us that we had to set up commissions and we had to set up outside organizations, we had to set up police review boards, and so on, because they did not like the cops? Sometimes it was necessary. But remember how good cops responded to this. I spoke with Director Louis Freeh today. He called me--the Director of the FBI. Of every single thing in the bill, this is the thing that most concerns him because of what it says to the American people about what we in the Congress think about our law enforcement agencies, the very people who probably have captured the Unabomber; the very people who have gotten hold of, apparently, the man or men who blew up the World Trade Center, as well as the Federal building in Oklahoma City; the very people who, just a couple of weeks ago, outside of my State in neighboring Pennsylvania, were shot down dead, protecting people in Philadelphia--FBI agents, the very people who, increasingly, are losing their lives fighting crime and terrorism. These are the people who we are going to investigate. There is not even a parallel study in here to investigate malicious, to investigate organizations that, in fact, raise questions, to investigate--separate issue--terrorist, per se, organizations. We are going to investigate the cops. I can remember the years during the Reagan era. We talked about how demoralized the military felt and, to Reagan's great credit, in my view, one of the things I agreed with him on is he built up the morale of the military, after years of being beaten about the head after Vietnam. These guys need our support, Mr. President. These women need our support. They do not need us yielding to the NRA and others insisting on a study--a study of them in a terrorism bill. That is the study we are going to make. We are fighting terrorism, and every law Federal law enforcement officer in the Nation, guarantee you, knows that we spend an entire page of this bill--that is not true, half a page of this bill--laying out extensively what we are going to study, the people we are going to appoint to study this and, listen to this: (1) Number and appointment.--The Commission shall be composed of 5 members appointed-- By whom? One member appointed by the President pro tempore in the Senate; one by the minority leader of the Senate; one by the Speaker of the House; one appointed by the minority leader of the House; one member who shall chair the Commission will be appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (2) Disqualification.--A person who is an officer or employee of the United States shall not be appointed a member of the Commission. How is that? Why cannot someone who is an officer of the U.S. Government--what a field day these wacko Freemen out in Montana are going to have when we pass this. I promise you, they are going to hold this up--some of them, may not be those guys--but other wackos and say, ``See, we're right, the U.S. Congress thinks we have to study these people, and they don't even trust them enough to allow any Federal Government employee in any capacity to be on the commission.'' I think this is humiliating, absolutely humiliating. Disqualifications: you are disqualified if you are an officer or an employee of the United States of America. That means any military person could not be on the commission; it means the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not be put on the commission. This is disturbing, and if you doubt what I am saying after this is over or before we vote, pick up the phone, call Louis Freeh, call any of the police officers you know and respect, call the people we count on to protect our lives that we are studying them. I see my friend from Utah is on his feet, and my friend from Wisconsin who wishes to speak in favor of this motion is here. I will be happy to yield to either one of them. How much time remains under my control, Mr. President?

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, no one asked for a study on pornography. No one asked for that. I did not hear anybody stand up here and say, ``Let's have a study on pornography. I wish to stop pornography on the Internet.'' I did not hear anybody say, ``Let's not do it. Let's have a study.'' When it comes to a bomb, teaching our kids how to make bombs, we want to study it.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield myself 20 seconds on the bill.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may use within the limit of the time I have. This provision is very straightforward and simple. It is beyond me why it was taken out of the Senate version of the language that was sent to the House. I have heard many colleagues stand up on the floor here and rail against pornography on the Internet, and for good reason. Even when we thought we had corrected the language that Senator Exon introduced to comport with the first amendment, I still hear in my State, and I hear of people writing about how so and so is promoting pornography on the Internet because they will not ban pornography on the Internet. Yet, in the bill, we came along--all of us here--and the genesis of this came from Senator Feinstein, when it was initially offered. The majority leader, Senator Hatch, and I had some concerns with this, and we thought the language to ban teaching people how to make bombs on the Internet or engage in terrorist activities on the Internet might violate the first amendment. Senators Dole, Hatch, and I worked to tighten the language and came up with language that was tough and true to civil liberties. It was accepted by unanimous consent. We have all heard about the bone-chilling information making its way over the Internet, about explicit instructions about how to detonate pipe bombs and even, if you can believe it, baby food bombs. Senator Feinstein quoted an Internet posting that detailed how to build and explode one of these things, which concludes that ``If the explosion don't get'em, the glass will. If the glass don't get'em, the nails will.'' I would like to give you a couple of illustrations of the kinds of things that come across the Internet. This is one I have in my hand which was downloaded. It said, ``Baby food bombs by War Master.'' And this is actually downloaded off the Internet. It says: These simple, powerful bombs are not very well known, even though all of the materials can be obtained by anyone (including minors). These things are so-- I will delete a word because it is an obscenity. powerful that they can destroy a CAR. The explosion can actually twist and mangle the frame. They are extremely deadly and can very easily kill you and blow the side of a house out if you mess up while building it. Here is how they work. This is on the Internet now. It says: Go to Sports Authority or Herman's Sport Shop and buy shotgun shells. It is by the hunting section. At the Sports Authority that I go to you can actually buy shotgun shells without a parent or an adult. They don't keep it behind the glass counter, or anything like that. It is $2.96 for 25 shells. And then it says: Now for the hard part. You must cut open the plastic housing of the bullet to get to the sweet nectar that is the gun powder. The place where you can cut is CRUCIAL. It means a difference between it blowing up in your face or not. Then there is a diagram, which is shown as to how to do that on the Internet. Then it says: You must not make the cut directly where the gun powder is, or it will explode. You cut it where the pellets are. And then it goes through this in detail. And then it gets to the end, and it says: Did I mention that this is also highly illegal? Unimportant stuff that is cool to know. And then it rates shotgun shells by two numbers, gauge, pellet size, and goes into great detail. It is like building an erector set. It does it in detail. So what Senators Dole and Hatch and I did, we said you should not be able to do this, but we have a first amendment problem, possibly. So we added a provision that says that you have to have the intent, when you are teaching people how to do this, that the person using it is using it for the purpose of doing harm. So it seems to me that this is pretty straightforward. Granted, I want to stop pornography on the Internet. I think pornography does harm to the minds of the people who observe it, particularly young people. But if that does harm, how much harm is done by teaching a 15-year-old kid, a 12-year-old kid, or a 20-year-old person, with great detail, how to build a baby food bomb, or how to build an automatic particle explosion provision, or how to build light bulb bombs. It says: An automatic reaction to walking into a dark room is to turn on the light. This can be fatal if a light-bulb bomb has been placed in the overhead light socket. A light-bulb bomb is surprisingly easy to make. It also comes with its own initiator and electric ignition system. On some light-bulbs, the light-bulb glass can be removed from the metal base by heating the base of the light bulb in a glass flame, such as that of a blowtorch and a gas stove. And so on and so forth. It goes on to explain how if you attach a plastic back to the light bulb when you remove the glass part but leave the filament and attach it and tape it there, when someone comes in and turns on the light, it blows up the room. Or, if you want to just play a prank, you could put odorous, smelling materials in the bag. It would blow up the bag. But you can put anything in it, and it blows it up. We said in the language we passed that it shall be unlawful for any person to teach or demonstrate the making of explosive materials, or to distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture of explosive materials if the person intends or knows that such explosive material, or information will be used for, or in the furtherance of, activity that constitutes a Federal criminal offense, or a criminal purpose affecting interstate commerce. And the House took it out. The House removed it. I want to say to all of you who are going to probably vote down my putting this back in, I want to hear you explain to your folks back home when a commercial is run on your television station that Senator Jones or Senator whoever voted against prohibiting on the Internet explicit directions how to make a bomb knowing that the person intends to use it. I want to hear your explanation of that. I want to be there when you explain that one. Let me read the statute again. It says: It shall be unlawful for a person to teach or demonstrate, et cetera, if the person intends or knows that such explosive material or information will be used for, or in the furtherance of, activity that constitutes a Federal crime. ``Knows or intends'' is a pretty a high standard falling, in my view, and in the view of constitutional scholars, well within our first amendment privileges. I just think this is crazy. Let me go on just a few more moments, and then I will stop. The provision is pretty straightforward. If you are one of the guys who has made a name for himself by bringing manifestoes like ``The Terrorist Handbook'' or ``How to Kill With Joy,'' which literally are on the Internet, and if someone comes to you and says, ``Tomorrow morning a group of police officers are going to be meeting at the Fifth Street precinct, and I want to blow them up,'' and if you say to them, ``Here, let me tell you how to make a bomb,'' arguably at that point the police can get you on a conspiracy charge. That is possible. That is possible. But if you just know what they are about, you see them all out there in a car, you look down and see that they have this plan, and you go ahead and tell them how to make a bomb, it is not a violation of the law to teach them how to make the bomb. Is not that incredible? Last June, all of us in this body agreed to this. I hope we will agree to it again because let me tell you, if this will kill the bill, as I am sure my colleague from Utah is going to say it will, I want to hear--if this is the only change in the bill--I want to see those House Members stand up and say, ``The reason I am not voting for this terrorist legislation is because I want to continue to allow people to teach people how to make bombs,'' knowing that they are going to be used to commit a crime or kill someone, ``And that is why I am voting against this bill,'' because it now contains a provision that prohibits that, I think maybe this is time to face down some of those people over there. Let them stand up and tell all of our colleagues around the Nation, and tell the parents around the Nation, that that is the reason they are voting against the terrorism bill. I retain the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I move to recommit the conference report on the bill S. 735 to the committee of conference with instructions to the managers on the part of the Senate to disagree to the conference substitute recommended by the committee of conference and insist on inserting the following language to prohibit the distribution of information relating to explosive materials for a criminal purposes. I send the motion to the desk. The motion is as follows: Motion to recommit the conference report on the bill S. 735 to the committee of conference with instructions to the managers on the part of the Senate to disagree to the conference substitute recommended by the committee of conference and insist on inserting the following:

Mr. BIDEN. That is a good reason to do it.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, let me respond about this conspiracy. I acknowledge that, if, in fact, there is an agreement with the bombmaker, the bomb teacher, and the bomb user, and they could prove that, then they can get the bomb teacher as part of this conspiracy. That is not how this happens. The way it happens is someone walks in telling me--and looking like they are something out of a movie--telling me, and I do not know them, that they want to learn how to make a fertilizer bomb. ``I want to learn how to make a bomb out of baby food, a baby-food bomb, or a light-bulb bomb''--that is all they tell me, and I do not know them from Adam. I sit down and tell them how to make the bomb. The ability to prove that there was a conspiracy to commit a crime requires that there be an ability to be an agreement between the two of us about the crime that was about to be committed. I am saying it should be a national crime if you intend, or you know the person is about to do something wrong regardless of whether you know what the crime is, what they are going to do with it. Obviously, if a 14-year-old kid comes to you and says, ``By the way, I want to learn how to make a baby-food bomb that has the ability to blow up, has the power, like advertised here, that can bend the frame of a car,'' you are telling me that you have to be able to prove conspiracy. If the guy says, ``I am happy to show you how to make that, just like I can show you how to make a rocket in the field for a science class,'' there is no distinction. And under this law, there is no conspiracy. You vote against this, and it means someone can show a kid how to do that and not have to wonder why this kid is asking me how to make a powerful bomb that can bend the frame of a car. You cannot prove conspiracy. But it should be wrong. It should be wrong. And how any of you can vote here and say that is not wrong is beyond me. I think it is about time we make some of those people hiding over in the House side stand up. Make them stand up. I want to be there when some punk on the New York subway decides he wants a baby food bomb just for the kicks of it, just to see what it is like, and sets it off. You mean to tell me when we find the guy who taught him how to do it, we should say, ``No problem; you didn't do anything wrong. It's OK; no problem.'' I think we should throw the sucker in jail. I cannot understand how you all can vote against this. I understand the rationale. The rationale in part is 35 House Members, or 75 House Members or 99 House Members will turn down the whole bill because of this. I do not believe for 1 second that if this single provision were added to the bill, with all the stuff they have on habeas corpus they want, with all the other stuff they say they want, they are going to vote down this bill because now you are going to be able to arrest some wacko teaching our kids how to make bombs when you know they are going to use them. I cannot believe that. I think we are being cowardly in our willingness to confront whoever the cowards are over there who will not allow us to protect ourselves. This is crazy. I yield the floor. I yield back my time. I am ready to vote.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, if the problem is people misunderstand because this is a roving wiretap, one thing that will get everybody's attention is we amend it, send it back, and it will become real clear. In about 20 minutes of discussion, we can have it back here, and it will not kill the bill--if that is the reason. No. 2, in the letter from the chiefs, the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, they do support the bill but they are very clear. Let me quote. They say: This legislation does not deal with the ability of law enforcement to use roving wiretaps or 48-hour wiretaps in the case of terrorism even though this later type of wiretap is already authorized in other special situations. They list what they do not like about the bill. They do not like the fact that this is not in the bill. They strongly support this wiretap authority. And if we cannot get it done now in this bill, I respectfully suggest to my friend that no matter how much he wishes to fix this, there will be no ability to get it done standing alone. I yield back whatever seconds I may have remaining. Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN. If the Senator will yield for 3 seconds. His mother-in-law may be listening.

Mr. BIDEN. I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator, and former Attorney General of the State of Connecticut, is here. We are going to divide this up a little bit. I want to make in my opening statement here a clarification for anyone listening as to what we are doing here, because we are really not changing anything that is not already done in any significant way. These multipoint wiretaps are made out to be this major new concoction that they have come up with to interfere in the lives of people. I was told in the House conference that some Members of the House thought that it meant that the FBI would be in vans roving down the street literally eavesdropping on people's homes. It is bizarre what people think this means. Let me explain what has to happen now to get a multipoint wiretap. There are all sorts of provisions built into the law now for the Federal Government: One, the Government must convince a judge that there is probable cause to believe that a specific person is committing a specific crime, as with any other wiretap. Two, the application even to ask a Federal judge for one of these wiretaps is approved at the very top level of the Justice Department, either by the Attorney General herself, or the Deputy Attorney General, or the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. No U.S. attorney in America can go out and ask a judge for one of these. No U.S. attorney can do that. No assistant U.S. attorney can do it without the approval of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, or the head of the Criminal Division. The application submitted must identify the person involved and believed to be committing the crime, and whose communications are to be the ones intercepted. A judge then has to find that the target's action--that is, the person who they are targeting. Say, we think our reporter here is in fact committing a crime. What you have to do is get the judge to believe that there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, that he is engaging in an activity. And, further, when they decide that you can wiretap not only his home phone, but the mobile phone he has in his pocket, the phone he has in his car, and the pay phone he uses all the time--the judge has to believe that the person is committing the crime--and communications are intercepted, it has to be proved that he is trying to effectively thwart the tap. For example, if my phone is tapped and there is probable cause that I committed a criminal offense, and I walk every day at 2 o'clock down to the pay phone on the corner, or I use a cell phone and then get rid of the new cell phone every day and get a new one, then that effectively thwarts the ability of the Federal Government investigators to tap someone where there is probable cause that they committed a crime. So that judge has to believe all that before he grants such an order. In addition, any interception cannot begin until the officers have clearly determined that the target in question--that is, the person they believe committed the crime--is using a particular tapped phone. Once the target is off the phone, the interception must end. It does not say, by the way, that any phone that the target uses can be tapped. It says that we have reason to believe that he is using the following phone, one, two, or three. You can tap those phones. Once the phone is tapped, if you go to your mother-in-law's house to use the phone, and after you get off, your mother-in-law is off the phone, they cannot, under the law, tap your mother-in-law. They must end the surveillance. It must stop. It must stop. In addition, the moment the target leaves the phone, the tap on that phone has to be disengaged. It cannot be used. Any evidence cannot be used that would come from such a tap, if it stayed on. So this is nothing new. What is new is that, under the present law, this is used for the mob and other outfits. Under the present law, you have to show that the person is intending to thwart the surveillance--intending to. So essentially what you have to get is a mobster or terrorist saying, ``I cannot use this phone in my house anymore because I think it is tapped. I am going to be going other places to use other phones. I will get to you later.'' That is what you basically have to prove now. What we are saying in this law is--and 77 Senators voted for it last year--if the effect of the target is to thwart the surveillance, that is all you need to prove. The effect is to thwart the surveillance. You do not have to prove that he intended to thwart the surveillance; you have to prove the effect is to thwart surveillance. So, again, a minor change already exists with multipoint wiretaps, is already in place. I will quote Mr. McCollum, the Republican leader of the Criminal Subcommittee. When I offered this in conference, he said: I think the reality is quite simple here-- This is McCollum speaking to me. You are 100 percent right. I am 100 percent right. It is the single-most important issue we are not putting in this bill. We have got to find some way to do it. But we are not going to get the votes for this bill, and we could not get the votes for this freestanding bill, I don't think, right this minute in the House. Get the first part: ``It is the single-most important issue we are not putting in the bill.'' Mr. McCollum is right. I yield the remainder of my time to the distinguished Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, let me explain briefly what this is. First, right now there is a statute of limitations that if you go out and impersonate Smokey the Bear, you have 5 years to track them down, if you write a bad check you have 5 years. If you make poison gas, if you make a chemical weapon, if you have a rocket propellant charge of more than 4 ounces, if you produce missiles and hide them in your garage, and they find them, without them being used, they only have a 3-year statute of limitations. So if they did not find them until 1 year after you have made them, you have 2 years. If they did not find them until 2\1/2\ years, you have 6 months. We want to make this a 5-year statute of limitations, just like impersonating Smokey the Bear. This is mindless not to do this when you are talking about making poison gas and chemical weapons and grenade launchers. Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I would like to make two very brief points. I do not believe this is a deal killer, No. 1. But No. 2, there are two pieces here. It is illegal to make a bomb. It is illegal to put together poison gas. That is one crime all by itself. The second crime is if you go out and use it. So, if you used a bomb to blow up buildings, a new statute of limitations starts to run. There is a distinction between what is lacking in this bill across the board, between prevention and apprehension. We not only want to get the bad guys who do the bad things; we want to prevent the bad guys from being able to do the bad things. By allowing the statute of limitations to be like it is for Smokey the Bear impersonation, and everything else in the Federal code--just about--it gives us more time to track down the people who have prepared or are stockpiling this kind of material, whether or not they have used it. That is an important distinction. I think this is an important amendment. I cannot believe for a moment that this would kill the bill, that you would have 35 people in the House vote against this because we made the statute of limitations for making poison gas the same as for impersonating Smokey the Bear. I find that unfathomable. I thank my colleague for yielding me an extra minute.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes of what I understand to be 5 minutes of remaining time. The idea, of course, here, Mr. President, is that the proposal that is in the bill, the failure to do this in the bill does not make sense. Listen to some of the types of weapons covered. Poison gas, bombs, grenades, rockets having propellant charges of more than 4 ounces, missiles having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one- quarter ounce, mines--these are not playthings we are talking about. Remember, the statute of limitations runs not from the time the crime becomes public knowledge, but from the time the crime was committed. So if a terrorist builds a bomb secretly, keeps it in his barn for 2\1/2\ years, and blows up a building with it, the Federal prosecutors only have 6 months to track the guy down and get an indictment for building that bomb. Crimes covered by the National Firearms Act are serious. They involve illegal manufacture of rockets, bombs, missiles, and sawed-off shotguns. So I cannot understand why anybody would oppose bringing the statute of limitations for these crimes into line with almost every other Federal crime. Here are a few examples of crimes with a 5-year statute: Simple assault; stealing a car; impersonating a Federal employee; buying contraband cigarettes; impersonating, without authority, the character Smokey the Bear. If we are going to give the Government 5 years to track down a guy who impersonates Smokey the Bear, why not track down a guy who is involved in producing poison gas in his garage or barn? I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from California.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Chair for its assistance. I yield as much time as the Senator from California may need under my control.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I offer a motion to recommit the conference report with instructions to add provisions on the National Firearms Act statute of limitations. For the purpose of discussion of that motion, I send that motion to the desk.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, for the benefit of my colleagues, to review the bidding from yesterday, the distinguished chairman of the committee and I agreed on a unanimous-consent proposal that we have one-half hour on each of up to as many as 14 motions. I doubt there will be that many. But we will move them out seriatim here. I see my distinguished colleague from California, Senator Boxer, is on the floor prepared to go with her motion, to begin to debate her motion. So I would, with the permission of the Senator from Utah, yield to the Senator from California for that purpose. I will make one important point, Mr. President. At the appropriate time I will make the motion. As I understand the parliamentary situation, debate must be concluded before I make the motion, otherwise the motion is subject to immediately being tabled, which I do not think my friend has any intention of doing. But just to make sure we do it by the numbers--I beg your pardon. I have been informed by staff we got unanimous consent yesterday that that is not necessary, that we can offer the motion. But I will offer the motion at this point. Motion To Recommit

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, the Senator from Utah keeps saying anything will kill this bill. That is not true. This is not ``kill this bill.'' If we send this back to conference for one or two or 12 amendments it does not kill this bill. Every major bill we had, including the crime bill, we sent back to conference with instructions--at least on three occasions. This will not kill this bill. Some of this has not been well thought out. Much of what we left out of the bill, I am convinced, on reconsideration by our friends in the House, they would change their view. But I want to make it clear, I do not believe there is any evidence to suggest that sending this back to conference with specific instructions would kill the bill. I am prepared, if the chairman and if Senator Leahy is, to yield back. I yield the floor. Mr. LEAHY addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, the Senator from Utah, the distinguished chairman of the committee, keeps referencing that----

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Yesterday, Senator Gramm, Senator Hutchison, Senator Faircloth, and I introduced Senate bill 1675--legislation to strengthen and improve the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act. The Jacob Wetterling Act requires States to enact laws to register and track the most violent, the most horrible--and least likely to be rehabilitated--criminals our Nation faces today. I refer to those criminals who attack our children and criminals who are sexually violent predators. These criminals must be tracked. And local law enforcement must know when these criminals are in their communities. This was the reason I worked to include this important measure in the 1994 crime law. And I will also point out that almost all States have taken great strides to build an effective tracking system. Now we seek to build upon this progress to meet three specific goals: First, we must have a nationwide system that will help State and local law enforcement track these offenders as they move from State to State and will help by providing a backup system of tracking. Second, while most States have established or are about to establish these systems, if any States fail to act, we cannot allow there to be a black hole where sexual predators can hide--and are then lost to all States. A nationwide system will track offenders if States do not maintain registration systems. Third, we must ensure that the most serious sexual predators are required to remain registered with law enforcement officials for the rest of their lives. All of these key goals will be met by this legislation. In addition, our bill will offer some improvements which are made possible by the nationwide system this bill will provide. For example, our bill will-- Require all offenders to verify their address on a regular basis by returning verification cards with their fingerprints. Require that a nationwide warning is issued whenever an offender fails to verify their address or when an offender cannot be located. Institute tough penalties for offenders who willfully fail to meet their obligations to register with the nationwide system in States where there is no registration and in cases of offenders who move from one State to another. Notify law enforcement officials not only when an offender moves to their area, but also when an offender moves out of their neighborhood. To offer just one of the practical problems a national data base will help local law enforcement address--Delaware law enforcement, because Delaware is so close to other States, will certainly need to know if a sexual predator lives just over the line in Pennsylvania. And only a national data base can provide this information. To offer a real life example of why a nationwide system is needed--in Delaware, a sex offender was released last year. Fortunately, Delaware's offender registration law requires this offender--Freddy Marine--to be tracked by Delaware law enforcement. Since his release, Marine has moved to another State. The nationwide system established by this bill will help make sure that if Freddy Marine moves back to Delaware--our State law enforcement will know, and knowledge is the key to effective enforcement. Let me also point out that our bill would still allow States the flexibility to decide when a community should be notified of the presence of a sexual offender, as State and local law enforcement is in the best position to decide when and how notification in their area is warranted. Frankly, our bill has erred on the side of registering many more offenders than may be necessary. Therefore, the specific decision to require community notification must be left to the State and local officials. In summary, the sex offender tracking and identification bill is possible because States such as Delaware and Texas have done the hard work to build statewide registration systems. We now seek to build a system where all movements of sexually violent and child offenders can be tracked and we will go a long way toward the day when none of these predators will fall between the cracks.