John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I am pleased to introduce a resolution recognizing the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. This month we honor and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark decision that not only desegregated public schools, but led to the desegregation of every segment of our society. Half a century ago, on May 17, 1954, the Brown decision advanced the Constitutional principle that every American should be guaranteed equal protection of the laws. In this decision, the United States Supreme Court declared, ``in the field of public education, the doctrine of `separate but equal' has no place.'' It was Brown that reversed Plessy v. Ferguson, the case that established this ``separate but equal'' doctrine, which stamped Africans Americans with a badge of inferiority as articulated by Judge John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in Plessy. Brown commenced an era that began to strip African Americans and other minorities of this badge of inferiority. With Brown, millions of minorities and women would be afforded educational opportunities. This decision also provided momentum to the Civil Rights Movement and this nation would come to realize change not just within the realm of education, but in other segments of society as well. The Brown decision helped lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which advanced the idea that discrimination in the workplace and in public establishments would not be tolerated. The decision also helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which promotes every American's right to participate in the political process and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 which promotes equal and fair access to housing for every American. Fifty years after Brown, however, the pursuit for equal rights and equal opportunity for every American citizen continues. This notion can best be evidenced by statistics that reflect the socio-economic disparities within the African American community: In March 2004, the Department of Labor reported that 10 percent of African Americans were unemployed, compared to 5 percent of white Americans. In 2003, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) or ``the nation's report card'' indicated that 60 percent of African American fourth graders were not reading at a fourth grade level, compared to 25 percent of white American fourth graders. In 2003, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that 20 percent of African Americans were uninsured, compared to 12 percent of white Americans. In 2003, United for a Fair Economy (UFE) reported that 24 percent of African Americans live in poverty, compared to 8 percent of white Americans. It is because of such disparities that this resolution calls upon Congress to do more than celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Brown decision by noting its historical significance. This resolution asks Congress to renew its commitment to continuing and building on the legacy of Brown with a pledge to acknowledge and address the modern day disparities that perpetuate a separate and unequal society.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise to remind the world that the 24th of April marked the 89th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a systematic and deliberate campaign of genocide of the Ottoman Empire. Also, it marked yet another year with the U.S. formally recognizing the atrocities that occurred. Considering how well documented the genocide is in the U.S. archives and through an overwhelming body of first-hand, governmental, and diplomatic evidence this is nothing less than a disgrace. I also rise to reaffirm my support for the adoption of the Genocide Resolution H. Res. 193. The purpose of this legislation is prevent future genocides by stressing the importance of remembering and learning the lessons of past crimes against humanity, including the Armenian Genocide, Holocaust, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides in hopes of preventing future atrocities. In addition, this resolution strengthen America's commitment to the universal values of the Genocide Convention and asks the United States to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Genocide Convention. Support for this legislation is widespread with a diverse coalition of over 100 ethnic, religious, civil, and human rights organizations calling for its passage. As Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, it was an honor to be instrumental in preparing the report which gained unanimous approval at the committee level. The report described the Armenian Genocide in the following terms: ``Beginning in 1915, the Islamic Turkish state of the Ottoman Empire sought to end the collective existence of the Christian Armenian population. From 1915 through 1918, during World War I, the Ottoman Empire subjected the Armenian people to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923. It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians were killed out of over two million Armenians who had lived in the Ottoman Empire. It should be noted that these activities ceased with the institution of the new Republic of Turkey in October, 1923.'' This past March, I signed onto a bipartisan letter to Speaker Hastert asking to bring H. Res. 193 to vote but we have not yet been given the opportunity to vote on this important legislation. Today, also marks the day of the Armenian Genocide Observance on Capital Hill and I join over 110 House and Senate Members who have agreed to co-host this observance. The Armenian Genocide is fully documented in U.S. history. In a July 24, 1915 cable, American Consul Davis noted that, ``I do not believe there has ever been a massacre in the history of the world so general and thorough as that which is now being perpetrated in this region or that a more fiendish, diabolical scheme has ever been conceived by the mind of man. What the order is officially and nominally to exile the Armenians from these Vilayets may mislead the outside world for a time, but the measure is nothing but a massacre of the most atrocious nature. It would be that even if all the people had allowed to perish on the road. As a greater part of them, however, have been actually murdered and as there is no doubt that this was done by order of the Government, there can be no pretense that the measure is anything else but a general massacre.'' Now more than ever as the world is gripped by unrest and terrorism, the memory of the Genocide underscores our responsibility to help convey our cherished tradition of respect for fundamental human rights and opposition to mass slaughter. We owe it to the victims of the Genocide to acknowledge what happened and to teach our students and children about their suffering, so that we can fulfill our obligation to ensure that genocide will never happen again. Our future generation should be able to say, ``I learned, I acknowledge, and I will work to prevent it from happening again.''

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the bipartisan Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2003, along with Representatives Pelosi, Skelton, Frank, Baldwin, Ros-Lehtinen, Kolbe, Foley, Shays, and more than 170 other original cosponsors. There is no more important time in the history of this Nation, since the civil rights era, to pass legislation that sanctions hate violence. The FBI has reported a dramatic increase in hate motivated violence since the September 11 terrorist attacks which has sent a wave of fear through our immigrant communities. While the overall crime rate has grown by approximately 2 percent, the number of reported hate crimes have increased dramatically from 8,063 in 2000 to 9,730 in 2001, a 20.7 percent increase. Although it is unclear how many of the 2001 reported hate crimes were directed at individuals in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, we do know that the number of reported ``anti-Islamic'' crimes increased from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001, which represents an increase of over 1600 percent. In addition, the number of hate crimes directed at individuals on the basis of their national origin/ethnicity more than doubled--from 911 in 2000 to 2,098 in 2001. Racial bias again represented the largest percentage of bias-motivated incidents (44.9 percent), followed by Ethnic/National Origin Bias (21.6 percent), Religious Bias (18.8 percent), Sexual Orientation Bias (14.3 percent), and Disability Bias (0.4 percent). While many of these crimes do and should get prosecuted at the State and local levels, many do not. Current law limits Federal jurisdiction over hate crimes to incidents that occur during the exercise of federally protected activities, such as voting, and does not permit Federal involvement in a range of cases involving crimes motivated by bias against the victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. This loophole is particularly significant given the fact that four States have no hate crime laws on the books, and another 21 States have extremely weak hate crimes laws. If enacted, this legislation would give the Federal Government the jurisdictional tools necessary to assist local law enforcement in fighting the scourge of hate violence. In instances where State and local governments do not have the capacity to prosecute such crimes, the legislation creates a Federal backstop--the ability for the local U.S. attorney to ensure that justice will be done, deterring hate violence regardless of whether the victim happened to be engaged in a ``federally protected'' activity. And even in those cases, Federal prosecution can only proceed if approved by the Attorney General. The gruesome, hateful murders of James Byrd and Matthew Shepard remain symbols of the incidence of hate violence that have only worsened since their deaths. Hate crimes do not only visit unspeakable violence on the immediate victims, but also send a message of a desired apartheid that its sponsors want to violently enforce. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2004 is a constructive and measured response to a problem that continues to plague our Nation--violence motivated by prejudice. Our primary desire here is to ensure that these crimes get prosecuted by State and local governments more effectively. That's why the bill authorizes funds to support State investigative and prosecutorial efforts. The bill is not and should not be treated as a partisan exercise. As a Congress, we should be in unanimous agreement that there will be ``zero-tolerance'' for the hate. This bill takes the first step in that direction.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, Congressional succession is one of the most timely--yet challenging--issues facing this body. In order to successfully resolve this issue, we must craft a solution that will ensure that the legislative branch of government remains fully functional; while also guaranteeing that the will of the people is constantly reflected. Along the way, of course, we must also guarantee that all of the civil rights laws--currently on the books--remain unaffected. I initially agreed to serve as an original cosponsor of the legislation before us because I generally believe that we should avoid amending the Constitution, when a statutory response is available. Such an approach is quicker, more likely to be passed into law, and avoids amending our most sacred national charter. While recognizing that this bill is far from perfect, I considered it to be a good first step-- something we could build upon in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, several serious concerns remain unaddressed. For example, it has been suggested that the 45 day time-frame may be insufficient to conduct expedited elections, and lead to the disenfranchisement of many of our men and women in the armed services. It also has been brought to my attention that the bill contains several unfunded mandates and is completely silent on the issue of Member disability or incapacity. However, the aspect of the bill that I am most deeply troubled by relates to its possible impact on our civil rights laws--laws that I have fought long and hard to protect throughout the tenure of my career. Namely, the impact that the legislation would have on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the American with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973--just to name a few. The expedited timeframe that some seek to establish in this bill could substantially undermine the pre-clearance requirements outlined in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Needless to say, this is an extreme provision of the Act. It remains a bedrock principle of the law. The current bill before us could also lead to the disenfranchisement of countless handicapped and elderly voters--if due to the expedited timeframe--election authorities are forced to use polling places that are not wheelchair accessible. Or, if individuals with disabilities failed to receive the required 30 day notice with respect to polling place information--as required under the ADA. To address these obvious deficiencies, Ranking Member Larson of the House Administration committee submitted an amendment to the Rules committee that would have made clear that nothing within this bill would be construed to affect the application of the numerous civil rights and voting laws I just mentioned. It is worth pointing out that similar language was included in the Help America Vote Act, recently passed by this body. Unfortunately, it was the wisdom of some to object to making that amendment in order. It was my sincere hope that we could have worked together today on a bipartisan basis to reach agreement on these difficult issues. This should not have been an issue that necessitated a partisan debate.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the ``No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels (NOPEC)'' Act of 2004, legislation that subjects a group of competing oil producers, like the OPEC nations, to U.S. antitrust law when they act together to restrict supply or set prices. I am joined by Representatives Lofgren and McIntyre. In recent days, American consumers have paid exorbitant prices at the pump, as gas prices have hit their highest levels since the first Gulf War. Since January, oil prices have climbed more than fifteen percent, driving gasoline prices in the United States to record levels while producing budget surpluses in nations like Saudi Arabia. The group of eleven nations comprising OPEC are a classic definition of a cartel, and they hold all the cards when it comes to oil and gas prices. OPEC accounts for more than a third of global oil production, and OPEC's oil exports represent about 55 percent of the oil traded internationally. This makes OPEC's influence on the oil market dominant, especially when it decides to reduce or increase its levels of production. And this is exactly what OPEC has decided to do again. Just today OPEC announced that it will cut its production target by 4 percent--or by 1 million barrels per day--starting in April. This move will undoubtedly drive our oil and gasoline prices through the roof. The OPEC nations have for years conspired to drive up prices of imported crude oil, gouging American consumers. Their price-fixing and supply-limiting conspiracy is a clear violation of U.S. antitrust laws, yet we have no recourse for action against these nations. The international oil cartel continues to avoid accountability, shielding itself behind the veil of sovereign immunity by claiming that its actions are ``governmental activity''--which is protected under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (``FSIA''), 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1602 et seq.--rather than ``commercial activity.'' This legislation, the ``No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act'' (``NOPEC''), is simple and effective. It exempts OPEC and other nations from the provisions of FSIA to the extent those governments are engaged in price-fixing and other anticompetitive activities with regard to pricing, production and distribution of petroleum products. It makes clear that the so-called ``Act of State'' doctrine does not prevent courts from ruling on antitrust charges brought against foreign governments and that foreign governments are ``persons'' subject to suit under the antitrust laws. It authorizes lawsuits in U.S. Federal court against oil cartel members by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission. We do not have to stand by and watch OPEC dictate the price of our gas without any recourse; we can do something to combat this conspiracy among oil-rich nations. I am hopeful that Congress can move quickly to enact this worthwhile and timely legislation.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the ``Domestic Violence Connections Campaign Act'' of 2004, legislation that ensures that the National Domestic Violence Hotline continues to provide the essential services it has been providing since it was created in 1996. I am joined by Representative Hart. The Hotline was created by the Violence Against Women Act and answered its first call on February 21, 1996. By August 2003 it answered its one millionth call, an increase of approximately 133 percent. This is due in large part to public awareness of domestic violence and public promotion of the Hotline. Today, on average the Hotline receives almost 16,000 calls a month. The Hotline is primarily funded by federal dollars that come from annual federal spending bills. However, as the Hotline's call volume continues to increase exponentially, funding has failed to keep pace. To keep up, the Hotline needs new equipment, new connection capability, and new data protection technology. Because its system is so outdated, over 26,000 calls last year went unanswered due to long hold times or busy signals. The Connection Campaign is a combination of public and private efforts to bring the Hotline up to speed. It teams up private telecommunication and technology companies with the federal government to solve the Hotline's crisis and guarantee that the Hotline can answer every call. Under the Connection Campaign, companies like Microsoft, Sony, BellSouth, Verizon Wireless, IBM, Dell and others, may donate hardware and software such as cell phones, home computers, mapping software, flat-screened monitors, and telephone airtime to the Hotline. On the public side of the partnership, Representative Hart and I are joining Senator Biden in introducing legislation to bridge the digital divide. Our bill, the Domestic Violence Connections Campaign Act of 2004, has three components: It mandates that federal appropriations to the Hotline include technology training for Hotline advocates so that every new telephone, computer, and database will be used to its fullest capacity. It provides a new research grant program to be used to review and analyze data generated by the Hotline. Administered by the Attorney General, the grant program will study trends, gaps in service and geographical areas of need. The findings of this research will be reported to Congress within 3 years of its enactment. It provides a grant program for the Hotline to increase public awareness about the Hotline's services and domestic violence generally. The Connections Campaign and this legislation are important next steps in our fight to defeat domestic violence and assist victims. I am hopeful that Congress can move quickly to enact this worthwhile and timely legislation.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I submit the following letter for the Record. National Conference of State Legislatures, Washington, DC, April 1, 2004. Hon. Dennis Hastert, Speaker, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Subject: Amendment 8 to H.R. 3550. Dear Speaker Hastert and Representative Pelosi: On behalf of the National Conference of State Legislatures, I am writing to express strong, bipartisan opposition to the passage of Amendment Number 8 to H.R. 3550, ``The Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy For Users.'' This amendment is a blatant attempt by the U.S. Congress to preempt existing state laws regarding vicarious liability for rental car owners. This amendment has been introduced without the benefit of a hearing or debate on how this amendment would impact existing state laws. Tort reform and liability are areas of law that have been traditionally regulated by the states. NCSL supports state efforts to reform or not to reform their own vicarious liability statutes. Perhaps even more egregious is the fact that this federal effort to preempt state laws has been orchestrated without the benefit of input from the states. At the very least, Congress should have held a hearing and discussion of this very important issue. If you need any additional information, please contact NCSL Senior Committee Director for the Law and Criminal Justice Committee Susan Parnas Frederick at (202) 624-3566 (susan.frederick@ncsl.org). Respectfully, Denton Darrington, Idaho State Senate, Chair NCSL Standing Committee on Law & Criminal Justice.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation. I first would like to commend Chairman Sensenbrenner for reasserting the Judiciary Committee's jurisdiction over the Department of Justice with this bill. In the past few years, the Justice Department has become increasingly resistant to congressional oversight, either refusing to answer questions or answering them vaguely at best. Fortunately, we worked together at the Committee level to address our concerns with the Department and arrived at the bill before us today. While the bill has numerous provisions that are worth notice, I would like to concentrate on a few. First, the bill reauthorizes the COPS office. We all know that this Clinton administration program has been increasingly vital in day-to-day crime prevention and crime solving. That is why COPS has received the praise of the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest law enforcement organization in the country. Local policing also is the backbone in our war on terrorism, as community officers are more likely to know the witnesses and more likely to be trusted by community residents who have information about potential attacks. This bill provides over $1 billion per year for three fiscal years for this important program. The bill also includes language offered by my colleague Rep. Adam Schiff to require the Attorney General to submit reports to Congress on the number of persons detained on suspicion of terrorism. This is important because the Department has thwarted congressional and judicial efforts to obtain justification for terrorism detainees. In the past few years, the Department's Office of the Inspector General has found that the Department and its components had abused terrorism suspects, pushing them into walls, leaving them in legal limbo, and depriving them of access to family or counsel. With these reports, elected representatives can better determine whether the Department is overstepping its bounds again. Third, the bill gives the Office of the Inspector General over $70 million for its responsibilities. In the past few years, the OIG has been diligent in overseeing the Department's war on terrorism, issuing reports on 9/11 detainees and pushing the Department to change how its procedures for handling terrorism suspects. The bill provides that the increased funding should be used largely for continuing their PATRIOT Act-related functions. Finally, the bill recognizes the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. It was President Kennedy's vision that brought members of the bar together to fight for the civil rights of all Americans. The Lawyers' Committee continues that fight and deserves our recognition and thanks. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this legislation.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, I rise to review the debate that has been going on between the distinguished National Security Advisor of the President, Condoleezza Rice, and those who believe that she should be called back to testify under oath. The reason that has been put forward that this is not possible is that Ms. Rice claims that it is a matter of constitutional principle that the separation of powers prevents the President's close aides from testifying to Congress. But, as many have noted, there have been senior aides that have testified before. As a matter of fact, they have held the same position that she holds. Mr. Sandy Berger has testified before Congress and Mr. Zbigniew Brzezinski has, in fact, testified before the Congress. So what we realize now is that there is no problem here. There is no separation of powers argument for her to present. I happen to serve with the House Committee on the Judiciary, and I can recall when President Gerald Ford came before the committee to try to deal with a very extraordinary national issue in which he explained why he had granted some extraordinary relief or pardon to former President Nixon. It was a national issue. Well, in my view, I believe the death of more than 3,000 Americans is an extraordinarily important issue that should allow Ms. Rice to come before the 9/11 Commission. But the traditions really do not mean anything and the separations of power argument fails completely because it turns out that Condoleezza Rice has for 4 hours or more already testified before the Commission on February 7. So there is no issue about separation of powers. This would be the same as allowing a person to testify before the Committee on the Judiciary privately about conversations with their attorney, but then when they come before the Committee on the Judiciary they would certainly not be able to invoke the attorney-client privilege and refuse to testify on the same matters that they have at an earlier meeting. So what we are concerned about is about whether we can separate from the American people the truth of what has been happening in our White House. Now the concept of the separation of powers doctrine was conceived by James Madison to prevent any branch of this three-branch system of government from encroaching on the powers of the other two branches. This preserves the dispersal of power so that it is not concentrated in one branch, and it also preserves the constitutional system of checks and balances. But our friend has already testified to the Commission earlier. So that now that she has already given private testimony she cannot be heard to come back and claim that she is prevented from doing that. The only problem that this raises is whether she wants to testify under oath. And I think that this makes it very important that she listen to one of the members of the panel, former Secretary of the Navy Lehman, appointee of the President, who said that this is very bad political strategy for you to claim that you are prevented from coming before the committee to give formal testimony. It is not going to work. I think that it is very important that we realize that. The Congressional Research Service has done for me an analysis of the Presidential advisor's testimony before congressional committees. Now this is made more curious by the fact that more recently, after the statements made by Richard Clarke, that Ms. Rice asked the Commission to again come before it to respond to the allegations of Mr. Clarke. Mr. Speaker, I will insert into the Record the Report for Congress by the Congressional Research Service. CRS Report for Congress--Presidential Advisers' Testimony Before Congressional Committees: A Brief Overview, April 5, 2002 (By Harold C. Relyea, Specialist in American National Government, Government and Finance Division, and Jay R. Shampansky, Legislative Attorney, American Law Division) Summary Since the beginning of the federal government, Presidents have called upon executive branch officials to provide them with advice regarding matters of policy and administration. While Cabinet members were among the first to play such a role, the creation of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) in 1939 and the various agencies located within that structure resulted in a large increase in the number and variety of presidential advisers. All senior staff members of the White House Office and the leaders of the various EOP agencies and instrumentalities could be said to serve as advisers to the President. Occasionally, these executive branch officials playing a presidential advisory role have been called upon to testify before congressional committees and subcommittees. Sometimes, such invited appearances have been prompted by allegations of personal misconduct on the part of the official, but they have also included instances when accountability for policymaking and administrative or managerial actions have instigated the request for testimony. Because such appearances before congressional committees or subcommittees seemingly could result in demands for advice proffered to the President, or the disclosure--inadvertent or otherwise--of such advice, there has been resistance, from time to time, by the Chief Executive to allowing such testimony. Congress has a constitutionally rooted right of access to the information it needs to perform its Article I legislative and oversight functions. Generally, a congressional committee with jurisdiction over the subject matter, which is conducting an authorized investigation for legislative or oversight purposes, has a right to information held by the executive branch in the absence of either a valid claim of constitutional privilege by the executive or a statutory provision whereby Congress has limited its constitutional right to information. A congressional committee may request (informally, or by a letter from the committee chair, perhaps co-signed by the ranking Member) or demand (pursuant to subpoena) the testimony of a presidential adviser. However, Congress may encounter legal and political problems in attempting to enforce a subpoena to a presidential adviser. Conflicts concerning congressional requests or demands for executive branch testimony or documents often involve extensive negotiations and may be resolved by some form of compromise as to, inter alia, the scope of the testimony or information to be provided to Congress.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I turn now to a subject that I consider to be very important, and that is, Haiti, a beleaguered tiny nation in the western hemisphere that has been subject to a succession of activities that have caused President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, his wife, and children to flee from the country. I would like to commend the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), the vice chair of the Progressive Caucus, who has introduced a truth bill to discover and uncover the truth about Haiti. It is a bill that would establish an independent commission and has been cosponsored by more than two dozen other Members, in which she calls for in this measure that we create an independent commission to investigate the circumstances that surround a democratically elected president being forcibly driven from his office and forced to leave the country, which is, incidentally, the second time this has happened during the election of President Aristide. This last time raises some quite ambiguous questions that we need to resolve. Did the United States Government impede democracy and in any way contribute to the overthrow of the Aristide government? What were the circumstances that the President issued a resignation? To what extent did the United States impede efforts by the international community to prevent the overthrow of the democratically elected Government of Haiti? What was the role of the United States in influencing decisions regarding Haiti at the United Nations Security Council in discussions between Haiti and other countries that were apparently willing to assist in the preservation of the democratically elected Government of Haiti by sending security forces there? Was our assistance provided or were U.S. personnel involved in supporting indirectly the forces opposed to the President of Haiti? And, finally, was there bilateral assistance from the United States channeled through nongovernmental organizations that were directly or indirectly associated with political groups actively involved in creating hostilities, and in some instances violence, toward the government of President Aristide and citizens who supported the President of that country? And so we have referred that House Resolution 2625 to the appropriate Committee on Government Reform to be acted upon. We think this is a very important, very timely activity, and we are hoping that there can be a perfectly candid impartial commission formed to study these vexing questions that have been propounded in the proposal of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, in connection with Iraq, we had the benefit of the Committee on Government Reform, which has had a study done about this, which runs some 30 pages, that raises the question of the Bush administration's public statements on Iraq. It is called ``Iraq on the Record,'' and there have been questions raised in several areas. I will include this report in the Record, which was prepared at the request of the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Government Reform, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman); but this table of contents, and this has been released today, special investigations division, raises the question of the number and timing of misleading statements on the part of the administration. Iraq on the Record--The Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq Executive Summary On March 19, 2003, U.S. forces began military operations in Iraq. Addressing the nation about the purpose of the war on the day the bombing began, President Bush stated: ``The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.'' One year later, many doubts have been raised regarding the Administration's assertions about the threat posed by Iraq. Prior to the war in Iraq, the President and his advisors repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that jeopardized the security of the United States. The failure to discover these weapons after the war has led to questions about whether the President and his advisors were candid in describing Iraq's threat. This report, which was prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. It finds that the five officials made misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 125 public appearances. The report and an accompanying database identify 237 specific misleading statements by the five officials. methodology The Special Investigations Division compiled a database of statements about Iraq made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice. All of the statements in the database were drawn from speeches, press conferences and briefings, interviews, written statements, and testimony by the five officials. This Iraq on the Record database contains statements made by the five officials that were misleading at the time they were made. The database does not include statements that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made. The entire database is accessible to members of Congress and the public at www.reform.house.gov/ min. This report is a summary of the Iraq on the Record database. Because the officials' statements have been compiled into a searchable database, the report can make new observations about the topics that were the subject of misleading claims, the timing of these claims, and the officials who were responsible. To ensure objectivity, the report was peer reviewed for fairness and accuracy by two leading experts: Joseph Cirincione, senior associate and director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Greg Thielmann, former acting director of the Office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. findings Number of Misleading Statements. The Iraq on the Record database contains 237 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq that were made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice. These statements were made in 125 separate appearances, consisting of 40 speeches, 26 press conferences and briefings, 53 interviews, 4 written statements, and 2 congressional testimonies. Most of the statements in the database were misleading because they expressed certainty where none existed or failed to acknowledge the doubts of intelligence officials. Ten of the statements were simply false. Timing of the Statements. The statements began at least a year before the commencement of hostilities in Iraq, when Vice President Cheney stated on March 17, 2002: ``We know they have biological and chemical weapons.'' The Administration's misleading statements continued through January 22, 2004, when Vice President Cheney insisted: ``There's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government.'' Most of the misleading statements about Iraq--161 statements--were made prior to the start of the war. But 76 misleading statements were made by the five Administration officials after the start of the war to justify the decision to go to war. The 30-day period with the greatest number of misleading statements was the period before the congressional vote on the Iraq war resolution. Congress voted on the measure on October 10 and October 11, 2002. From September 8 through October 8, 2002, the five officials made 64 misleading statements in 16 public appearances. A large number of misleading statements were also made during the two months before the war began. Between January 19 and March 19, 2003, the five officials made 48 misleading statements in 26 public appearances. Topics of the Statements. The 237 misleading statements can be divided into four categories. The five officials made 11 statements that claimed that Iraq posed an urgent threat; 81 statements that exaggerated Iraq's nuclear activities; 84 statements that overstated Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capabilities; and 61 statements that misrepresented Iraq's ties to al Qaeda. Statements by President Bush. Between September 12, 2002, and July 17, 2003, President Bush made 55 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 27 separate public appearances. On October 7, 2002, three days before the congressional votes on the Iraqi war resolution, President Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, with 11 misleading statements, the most by any of the five officials in a single appearance. Some of the misleading statements by President Bush include his statement in the January 28, 2003, State of the Union address that ``the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa''; his statement on October 2, 2002, that ``the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency''; and his statement on May 1, 2003, that ``the liberation of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al Qaeda.'' Statements by Vice President Cheney. Between March 17, 2002, and January 22, 2004, Vice President Cheney made 51 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 25 separate public appearances. Some of the misleading statements by Vice President Cheney include his statement on September 8, 2002, that ``we do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs . . . to build a nuclear weapon''; his statement on March 16, 2003, that ``we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons''; and his statement on October 10, 2003, that Saddam Hussein ``had an established relationship with al Qaeda.'' Statements by Secretary Rumsfeld. Between May 22, 2002, and November 2, 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld made 52 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 23 separate public appearances. Some of the misleading statements by Secretary Rumsfeld include his statement on November 14, 2002, that within ``a week, or a month'' Saddam Hussein could give his weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda, which could use them to attack the United States and kill ``30,000, or 100,000 . . . human beings''; his statement on January 29, 2003, that Saddam Hussein's regime ``recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa''; and his statement on July 13, 2003, that there ``was never any debate'' about whether Iraq had a nuclear program. Statements by Secretary Powell. Between April 3, 2003, and October 3, 2003, Secretary Powell made 50 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 34 separate public appearances. Secretary Powell sometimes used caveats and qualifying language in his public statements. His statements that contained such cautions or limitations were not included in the database. Nonetheless, many of Secretary Powell's statements did not include these qualifiers and were misleading in their expression of certainty, such as his statement on May 22, 2003, that ``there is no doubt in our minds now that those vans were designed for only one purpose, and that was to make biological weapons.'' Statements by National Security Advisor Rice. Between September 8, 2002, and September 28, 2003, National Security Advisor Rice made 29 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 16 separate public appearances. Although Ms. Rice had the fewest public appearances and the fewest misleading statements, she had the highest number of statements--8--that were false. These false statements included several categorical assertions that no one in the White House knew of the intelligence community's doubts about the President's assertion that Iraq sought to import uranium from Africa. I. Introduction The President and his senior advisors have a special obligation to describe accurately the national security threats facing the Nation. This special obligation derives in part from the nature of the subject. There is no decision that is more grave than sending our armed forces to battle. The special obligation also derives in part from the unique access that the President and his advisors have to classified information. On matters of national security, only the President and his advisors have full access to the relevant classified information. Members of Congress and the public see only a partial picture based on the information the President and his advisors decide to release. Recently, serious questions have been raised regarding whether President Bush and his Administration met this special obligation. Numerous news reports and columns have questioned the accuracy of specific statements by President Bush and other Administration officials. The White House maintains that any misstatements were ``only a small part of an `overwhelming' case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States.'' Other observers, though, have detected a pattern of consistent misrepresentation. The one-year anniversary of the beginning of military operations in Iraq marks an occasion for comprehensively assessing whether the President and his senior advisors met their obligation to accurately present intelligence to the American public. For this reason, Rep. Waxman asked the Special Investigations Division to assemble in a single database any misleading statements made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other senior Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq. This report summarizes key findings from this Iraq on the Record database. The database itself is available to members of Congress and the public at www.reform.house.gov/min. II. Methodology The Iraq on the Record database contains statements from the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on the Iraq war: President George Bush; Vice President Richard Cheney; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; Secretary of State Colin Powell; and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. The statements in the database are drawn from 125 public statements or appearances in which the five officials discussed the threat posed by Iraq. The sources of the statements are 40 speeches, 26 press conferences and briefings, 53 interviews, 4 written statements and articles, and 2 appearances before congressional committees. Quotes from the officials in newspaper articles or other similar secondary sources were not included in the database because of the difficulty of discerning the context of such quotes and ensuring their accuracy. Statements made by the officials before March 2002, one year before the commencement of hostilities in Iraq, were also not included. The database contains statements that were misleading based on what was known to the Administration at the time the statements were made. In compiling the database, the Special Investigations Division did not assess whether ``subjectively'' the officials believed a specific statement to be misleading. Instead, the investigators used an ``objective'' standard. For purposes of the database, a statement is considered ``misleading'' if it conflicted with what intelligence officials knew at the time or involved the selective use of intelligence or the failure to include essential qualifiers or caveats. The database does not include statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. If a statement was an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, the statement is excluded from the database even if it now appears erroneous. To determine whether a statement was misleading, the Special Investigations Division examined the statement in light of intelligence known to the Administration at the time of the statement. The primary sources for determining the intelligence available to the Administration were (1) the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that have been released to the public, (2) the February 5, 2004, statement by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet entitled Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction, (3) the recent report of the nonpartisan Carnegie Endowment for International Peace entitled WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications, and (4) news and other reports quoting U.S. officials regarding the intelligence available to the administration on Iraq. In general, hypothetical and implied statements about threats posed by Iraq were not included in the database of misleading statements. A few such statements were included, however, where they implied a threat in evocative and frightening language. These statements were misleading because the effect was to instill in the public the perception that the threat actually existed. To be conservative, the Special Investigations Division excluded hundreds of statements by the five officials that many observers would consider misleading. For example, the five officials made numerous claims that Iraq ``had'' stockpiles of chemical weapons. Many of these statements were misleading in that they implied that Iraq possessed these stockpiles currently and did not acknowledge the doubts of intelligence experts. Nevertheless, these statements were not included in the database when they were expressed in the past tense because Iraq did possess chemical weapons at least as late as the early 1990s and used them during the 1980s. Investigators also excluded scores of statements of certainty that Iraq possessed ``weapons of mass destruction'' prior to the war. To many observers, these statements would be misleading because they implied that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons without acknowledging the division among intelligence officials about whether this was the case. The Special Investigations Division excluded these general ``weapons of mass destruction'' assertions, however, because of the ambiguity inherent in the phrase. The Special Investigations Division asked two leading independent experts to peer review this report for fairness and accuracy. These two independent experts are: Joseph Cirincione, senior associate and director of the Non- Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Greg Thielmann, former acting director of the Office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. These experts judged that this report is a fair and accurate depiction of the administration's statements. III. Number and Timing of Misleading Statements President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice repeatedly made misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq. They made these statements in 125 separate public appearances. The total number of misleading statements made by the five officials is 237. The 237 misleading statements were made in a variety of forums. On 53 occasions, the five officials gave interviews in which they made claims that were misleading. They also made misleading statements in 40 speeches, 26 press conferences and briefings, 4 written statements and articles, and 2 appearances before Congress. The misleading statements began at least one year before the start of the war in Iraq, when Vice President Cheney stated on March 17, 2002: ``The President's made it clear that we are concerned about nations such as Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction. We know the Iraqis have been engaged in such efforts over the years. We know they have biological and chemical weapons. . . . And we also have reason to believe they're pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons.'' These misleading statements have continued through at least January 2004. On January 22, 2004, Vice President Cheney said in a National Public Radio interview, ``I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al- Qaeda and the Iraqi government. . . . I'm very confident that there was an established relationship there.'' He also said in the same interview, ``we know . . . that prior to our going in that he had spent time and effort acquiring mobile biological weapons labs, and we're quite confident he did, in fact, have such a program. We've found a couple of semi trailers at this point which we believe were, in fact, part of that program.'' As described below, both of these assertions were misleading in that they failed to disclose the serious doubts held by intelligence officials. The majority of the misleading statements--161--were made in the buildup to the war in Iraq. The volume of misleading statements by the five officials peaked before key decision points in the buildup to the war. Congress began debate on the Iraq war resolution in early October 2002 and voted on the measure on October 10 and October 11, 2002. During the 30 days between September 8 and October 8, 2002, the five officials made 64 misleading statements in 16 public appearances. This was the highest number of misleading statements for any 30-day period. There were also a large number of misleading statements in the two months before hostilities began on March 19, 2003, when the five officials made 48 misleading statements in 26 public appearances. Most of the misleading statements in the Iraq on the Record database involve the selective use of intelligence or the failure to include essential qualifiers or caveats. For example, statements of certainty that Iraq was close to possessing nuclear weapons were misleading because they ignored significant doubts and disagreement in the U.S. intelligence community regarding whether Iraq was actively pursuing a nuclear program. In 10 instances, however, the statements included in the database were false statements that directly contradicted facts known at the time by the Administration. For example, on July 11, 2003, Ms. Rice stated with respect to the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa: ``Now, if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence . . . those doubts were not communicated to the President, to the Vice President, or to me.'' This statement is false because, as Ms. Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley subsequently acknowledged, the CIA sent Ms. Rice and Mr. Hadley memos in October 2002 warning against the use of this claim. IV. Categories of Misleading Statements The misleading statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice fall into four general categories: (1) statements suggesting that Iraq posed an urgent threat, (2) statements regarding Iraq's nuclear activities, (3) statements regarding Iraq's biological and chemical weapons capabilities, and (4) statements regarding Iraq's support of al Qaeda. a. statements that iraq posed an urgent threat On February 5, 2004, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet categorically stated that the U.S. intelligence community ``never said there was an `imminent' threat.'' Yet this was not the impression conveyed by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice in their public statements on Iraq. In 10 different appearances, these five officials made 11 statements claiming that Iraq posed an urgent threat. For example: President Bush stated on October 2, 2002: ``The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . . [I[t has developed weapons of mass death.'' President Bush stated on November 20, 2002: ``Today the world is . . . uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq.'' Vice President Cheney stated on August 26, 2002: ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.'' In one instance, Secretary Rumsfeld said that Iraq could give weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda in ``a week, or a month,'' resulting in the deaths of up to 100,000 people. On November 14, 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld stated: ``Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years, or a week, or a month, and if Saddam Hussein were to take his weapons of mass destruction and transfer them, either use them himself, or transfer them to the Al-Qaeda, and somehow the Al-Qaeda, and somehow the Al-Qaeda were to engage in an attack on the United States, or an attack on U.S. forces overseas, with a weapon of mass destruction you're not talking about 300, or 3,000 people potentially being killed, but 30,000, or 100,000 . . . human beings.'' b. statements about iraq's nuclear capabilities In their potential for destruction and their ability to evoke horror, nuclear weapons are in a class by themselves. As Dr. David Kay, former special advisor to the Iraq Survey Group, testified on January 28, 2004: ``All of us have and would continue to put the nuclear weapons in a different category. It's a single weapon that can do tremendous damage, as opposed to multiple weapons that can do the same order of damage. . . . I think we should politically treat nuclear as a difference.'' For precisely this reason, the Administration's statements about Iraq's nuclear capabilities had a large impact on congressional and public perceptions about the threat posed by Iraq. Many members of Congress were more influenced by the Administration's nuclear assertions than by any other piece of evidence. Rep. Waxman, for example, wrote to President Bush in June 2003 that in voting for the Iraq war resolution: ``Like other members, I was particularly influenced by your views about Iraq's nuclear intentions. Although chemical and biological weapons can inflict casualties, no threat is greater than the threat of nuclear weapons.'' Numerous members of Congress stressed Iraq's nuclear threat in their floor statements explaining their support of the resolution. Despite the significance of the nuclear issue, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Powell, Secretary Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Rice repeatedly misrepresented the nuclear threat posed by Iraq. The five officials made 49 separate public appearances in which they made misleading statements about Iraq's nuclear threat. In these appearances, they made a total of 81 misleading statements regarding Iraq's nuclear activities. These misleading statements generally fall into one of three categories: (1) misleading statements about the status of Iraq's nuclear program, (2) misleading statements about the purpose of aluminum tubes sought by Iraq, and (3) misleading statements about Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium from Africa. 1. Claims about the Status of Iraq's Nuclear Program Prior to the war, there were significant divisions within the intelligence community about whether Iraq had resumed efforts to make nuclear weapons. In his speech on February 5, 2004, Mr. Tenet explained that there was not unanimity on whether Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program and that these differences were described in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE): ``Let me be clear, where there were differences, the Estimate laid out the disputes clearly.'' In particular, the State department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) concluded in the NIE that ``[t]he activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons.'' INR added: ``Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began soon after the departure of UN inspectors.'' The INR position was similar to the conclusions of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which concluded that there was ``no indication of resumed nuclear activities . . . nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities.'' These doubts and qualifications, however, were not communicated to the public. Instead, the five Administration officials repeatedly made unequivocal comments about Iraq's nuclear program. For example, President Bush said in October 2002 that ``[t]he regime has the scientists and facilities to build nuclear weapons and is seeking the materials required to do so.'' Several days later, President Bush asserted that Saddam Hussein ``is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.'' Vice President Cheney made perhaps the single most egregious statement about Iraq's nuclear capabilities, claiming: ``we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' He made this statement just three days before the war. He did not admit until September 14, 2003, that his statement was wrong and that he ``did misspeak.'' President Bush and others portrayed the threat of Saddam Hussein waging nuclear war against the United States or its allies as one of the most urgent reasons for preemptively attacking Iraq. Administration officials used evocative language and images. On the eve of congressional votes on the Iraq war resolution, for example, President Bush stated: ``Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence or peril, we cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.'' Following the commencement of military operations in Iraq, Administration officials continued to make misleading statements regarding Iraq's nuclear program. For example, Secretary Rumsfeld denied on July 13, 2003, that there was ``any debate'' about Iraq's nuclear capabilities within the Administration, stating: ``We said they had a nuclear program. That was never any debate.'' Since the war ended, the Iraq Survey Group has been unable to find evidence of the nuclear program described by the five officials. On October 2, 2003, David Kay reported that ``we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material.'' In his January 28, 2004, testimony, Dr. Kay reported that ``[i]t was not a reconstituted, full-blown nuclear program.'' He added, ``As best as has been determined . . . in 2000 they had decided that their nuclear establishment had deteriorated to such point that it was totally useless.'' His conclusion was that there was ``no doubt at all'' that Iraq had less of an ability to produce fissile material in 2001 than in 1991. According to Dr. Kay, the nuclear program had been ``seriously degraded'' and the ``activities of the inspectors in the early '90s did a tremendous amount.'' 2. Claims about the Aluminum Tubes In 2001 and 2002, shipments of aluminum tubes to Iraq were intercepted. This discovery led to an active debate within intelligence agencies about the intended use of the tubes. Numerous experts believed the tubes were for conventional rockets rather than a nuclear development program. In his February 5, 2004, speech, Mr. Tenet explained that disagreement over the purpose of the aluminum tubes was ``a debate laid out extensively in the estimate and one that experts still argue over.'' The agency with the most technical expertise in this area, the Department of Energy, believed that the tubes likely were not part of a nuclear enrichment program, stating in the NIE that ``the tubes probably are not part of the program.'' The International Atomic Energy Agency agreed, concluding: ``There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment.'' In addition to dissent from the Energy Department and international inspectors, the State Department also expressed formal reservations, stating in the NIE that ``INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors.'' Instead, the State Department accepted the ``judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges.'' The State Department explained its position in detail: The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that led INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapon program. According to the NIE, ``INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets.'' These doubts about the use of the aluminum tubes were not conveyed by Administration officials, however. Instead, the aluminum tubes became one of the two principal pieces of information cited by the Administration to support the claim that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice made 10 misleading statements in 9 public appearances about the significance of the aluminum tubes. For example, Ms. Rice stated on September 8, 2002: ``We do know that there have been shipments going into . . . Iraq . . . of aluminum tubes that . . . are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.'' Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on September 8, 2002: ``[Saddam Hussein] now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs . . . [s]pecifically aluminum tubes.'' These statements were misleading because they did not present the possibility that the tubes were suitable or intended for another purpose, or acknowledge that key U.S. experts doubted that the tubes were intended to make nuclear bombs. In one instance, Secretary Powell did acknowledge that some experts disputed that the aluminum tubes were intended for nuclear uses. In his February 5, 2003, address before the United Nations, Secretary Powell stated, ``By now, just about everyone has heard of these tubes and we all know that there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium.'' Even in that statement, however, Secretary Powell did not make clear that experts from the Department of Energy and the State Department's own intelligence division played a significant role in the analysis of this issue and in formal and deliberate dissents had disputed the view that the tubes would likely be used to enrich uranium. On another occasion, Secretary Powell cited the tubes as evidence of pursuit of nuclear weapons, without noting that the intended use of the tubes was under dispute, asserting: ``We also know that Iraq has tried to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes, which can be used to enrich uranium in centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program.'' By January 27, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency had reached the tentative conclusion that the aluminum tubes ``would be consistent with the purpose stated by Iraq and, unless modified, would not be suitable for manufacturing centrifuges.'' Following the occupation of Iraq, the Iraq Survey Group did not find evidence indicating that the tubes were intended for nuclear use. In his January 28, 2004, testimony, Dr. Kay announced: ``It is my judgment, based on the evidence that was collected . . . that it's more probable that those tubes were intended for use in a conventional missile program, rather than in a centrifuge program.'' 3. Claims about Uranium from Africa Another significant component of the Administration's nuclear claims was the assertion that Iraq had sought to import uranium from Africa. As one of few new pieces of intelligence, this claim was repeated multiple times by Administration officials as proof that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. In total, the five Administration officials made misleading assertions about Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium from Africa in 7 statements in 6 public appearances. In his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, President Bush stated: ``The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. . . . Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.'' Other officials echoed this statement. In a January 23, 2003, New York Times op-ed piece, Ms. Rice argued that Iraq had lied in its December 2002 declaration, noting: ``the declaration fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad.'' In his opening remarks in his televised press conference on January 29, 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld stated, ``[Saddam Hussein's] regime . . . recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' These claims that Iraq was seeking to import uranium were misleading. The documentary evidence behind the assertions was declared to be ``not authentic'' by the International Atomic Energy Agency. An envoy, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was sent by the CIA to investigate the alleged purchase. Ambassador Wilson concluded that it was ``highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place,'' and on his return, he provided detailed briefings to the CIA and to the State Department African Affairs Bureau. When evidence emerged that the importation claim was false, Ms. Rice claimed that the White House had no knowledge of these doubts. She asserted unequivocally that no senior White House officials were informed about questions about the uranium claim prior to its use in the State of the Union address. She stated that ``[t]he intelligence community did not know at that time, or at levels that got to us . . . that there was serious questions about this report.'' As she put it on another occasion: ``[H]ad there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence in, that the Director of Central Intelligence did not want it in, it would have been gone.'' Ms. Rice's claims were simply false. The CIA sent two memos to the National Security Council--one of which was addressed to Ms. Rice personally--warning against including the claim in a speech by the President. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet also ``argued personally'' to Ms. Rice's deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, ``that the allegation should not be used'' by the President. Further, in the October 2002 NIE provided to top White House officials, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research had stated that claims that Iraq sought to acquire uranium in Africa were ``highly dubious.'' Ultimately, the White House was forced to admit its error. On July 9, 2003, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said that the statement about importing uranium from Africa ``should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech.'' The White House minimized the significance of the Administration's use of the Niger claim, arguing that it was ``only a small part of an `overwhelming' case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States.'' C. STATEMENTS ABOUT IRAQ's CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS PROGRAMS President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice made misleading statements regarding Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs in 61 public appearances. In these appearances, the five officials made 84 different misleading statements. These statements addressed three general topics: (1) Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, (2) Iraq's efforts to build unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and (3) Iraq's mobile biological laboratories. 1. Claims about Chemical and Biological Weapons Prior to the war, there were questions within the intelligence community about whether Iraq in fact possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Because Iraq previously had such stockpiles, had used them in the past, and had not adequately demonstrated that all previously produced stockpiles had been destroyed, the intelligence community made an assessment in the October NIE that it was likely that Iraq continued to possess them. Because intelligence agencies had no direct evidence of such stockpiles, however, the conclusions in the October NIE were cast in the context of an intelligence ``estimate.'' The NIE began its sections on chemical and biological weapons with the phrases ``we assess'' and ``we judge.'' The NIE concluded that Iraq ``probably'' had stockpiled chemicals and ``probably'' had genetically engineered biological agents. The NIE also included major qualifiers, such as: ``We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD programs.'' Other intelligence assessments specifically cited the uncertainty surrounding Iraq's possession of such stockpiles. In September 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) issued a report that concluded: ``There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has--or will--establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.'' The report also observed that ``[a] substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions.'' While the report assessed that Iraq ``probably'' retained some ``CW agents,'' it warned that ``we lack any direct information.'' Despite these uncertainties among the intelligence officials, the five Administration officials made 45 misleading statements in 35 appearances about Iraq's possession of chemical or biological weapons. Often these statements were misleading because they projected certainty about their claims. Secretary Powell, for example, claimed, ``there is no doubt in our mind that he still has chemical weapons stocks.'' Secretary Rumsfeld stated: ``He has at this moment stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.'' Vice President Cheney asserted: ``We know they have biological and chemical weapons.'' And President Bush said bluntly, ``He's got them.'' Administration officials sometimes claimed to have specific details about stockpile locations and movements. In his speech to the United Nations, for example, Secretary Powell showed photographs of supposed Iraqi chemical stockpiles, stating: ``How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions.'' Secretary Rumsfeld was even more specific, claiming that the Iraqis were ``moving them to different locations as often as every 12 to 24 hours and placing them in residential neighborhoods.'' He also made this statement: ``We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.'' The five officials also drew selectively from individual intelligence sources. In 1995, Hussein Kamel, the Iraqi official who had been in charge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, defected and described how Iraq had violated U.N. resolutions in the early 1990s. Administration officials cited these claims repeatedly. For example, President Bush said: ``In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. . . . This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions.'' President Bush failed to disclose, however, that this same defector reported to U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed all of its chemical and biological weapons stocks. Since the war ended, the Iraq Survey Group has reported that it is unlikely that chemical or biological stockpiles existed prior to the war. As Dr. Kay concluded: ``I'm personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction. We don't find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on.'' Dr. Kay reported in October 2003 that ``Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced-- if not entirely destroyed--during Operation Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections.'' Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet echoed these findings: ``It also appears that Iraq had the infrastructure and talent to resume production--but we have yet to find that it actually did so, nor have we found weapons.'' His bottom line was that ``we do not know if production took place--and just as clearly--we have not yet found biological weapons.'' 2. Claims about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Prior to the war, Administration officials raised the specter of Iraq using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to distribute chemical or biological weapons directly over the United States. Although there was agreement within the intelligence community that Iraq had a UAV program, there was a sharp split over whether these UAVs were designed to deliver chemical or biological weapons. The October NIE concluded that the UAV program was ``probably'' intended to deliver biological weapons. However, the government entity most knowledgeable about UAVs and their potential applications, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center, disagreed with this conclusion. According to the NIE, the U.S. Air Force ``does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological (CBW) agents.'' Instead, the Air Force experts asserted that ``[t]he small size of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance.'' The five Administration officials did not acknowledge these doubts in their public statements, however. Instead, they made misleading assertions regarding the purpose of the UAVs in 5 statements in 5 public appearances. For example, on October 7, 2002, just days before the October 10 and October 11, 2002, congressional votes on the Iraqi war resolution, President Bush claimed that ``Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons.'' He did not disclose that experts at the Air Force found such a use improbable. Instead, he highlighted the fear of Iraq's UAVs being used ``for missions targeting the United States.'' Such statements had an impact on members of Congress. For example, Senator Bill Nelson voted for the Iraq war resolution ``precisely because of the administration's UAV evidence.'' He explained: ``I was told not only that [Hussein had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard. . . . I thought there was an imminent threat.'' In his address to the United Nations, Secretary Powell asserted: ``UAVs are well suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons. There is ample evidence that Iraq has dedicated much effort to developing and testing spray devices that could be adapted for UAVs.'' In making his presentation to the U.N., Secretary Powell showed a photo of an ``illustrative'' UAV, which he suggested was well-suited for spraying chemical or biological weapons over the United States. This presentation affected members of Congress. Senator Dianne Feinstein stated that of the various pieces of evidence presented by Secretary Powell, ``The most compelling to me was the unmanned aerial vehicle and the development of that with spray tanks. And he kind of laid down the fact that this could be in our country and there was a possibility that this might be used against the United States.'' President Bush later highlighted Secretary Powell's presentation, claiming: ``All the world has now seen the footage of an Iraqi Mirage aircraft with a fuel tank modified to spray biological agents over wide areas. . . . A UAV launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland.'' The Iraq Survey Group found little to substantiate these claims. According to Dr. Kay's January 28, testimony, Iraq's UAV program ``was not a strong point'' because it was only ``theoretically possible'' to have ``snuck one of those on a ship off the East Coast of the United States that might have been able to deliver a small amount someplace.'' He found only that ``at least one of those families of UAVs'' was a ``descendent'' of another model that once had a ``spray tank on it.'' In his assessment, there was no ``existing deployment capability at that point for any sort of systematic military attack.'' 3. Claims about Mobile Biological Laboratories In April and early May 2003, military forces found mobile trailers in Iraq. Although intelligence experts disputed the purpose of the trailers, Administration officials repeatedly asserted that they were mobile biological weapons laboratories. In total, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice made 34 misleading statements about the trailers in 27 separate public appearances. Shortly after the trailers were found, the CIA and DIA issued an unclassified white paper evaluating the trailers. The white paper was released without coordination with other members of the intelligence community, however. It was disclosed later that engineers from DIA who examined the trailers concluded that they were most likely used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. A former senior intelligence official reported that ``only one of 15 intelligence analysts assembled from three agencies to discuss the issue in June endorsed the white paper conclusion.'' Despite these doubts within the intelligence community, the five officials repeatedly misled Congress and the public about the trailers by asserting without qualification that they were proof of Iraq's biological weapons program. President Bush made perhaps the most prominent misleading statement on this matter when he proclaimed: ``We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.'' Similarly, Secretary Powell's comments about the trailers frequently asserted with certainty that the trailers were biological weapons laboratories. For example: On May 21, 2003, Secretary Powell said: ``The intelligence community has really looked hard at these vans, and we can find no other purpose for them. Although you can't find actual germs on them, they have been cleaned and we don't know whether they have been used for that purpose or not, but they were certainly designed and constructed for that purpose. And we have taken our time on this one because we wanted to make sure we got it right. And the intelligence community, I think, is convinced now that that's the purpose they served.'' On May 22, 2003, Secretary Powell said, ``So far, we have found the biological weapons vans that I spoke about when I presented the case to the United Nations on the 5th of February, and there is no doubt in our minds now that those vans were designed for only one purpose, and that was to make biological weapons.'' The doubts about the trailers were confirmed by the work of the Iraq Survey Group. According to Dr. Kay's January 28, 2004, testimony, ``the consensus opinion is that when you look at those two trailers, while [they] had capabilities in many areas, their actual intended use was not for the production of biological weapons.'' In a separate interview, Dr. Kay explained that the trailers ``were actually designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, or perhaps to produce rocket fuel.'' d. statements about Iraq's support of al qaeda Another key component of the case for going to war against Iraq was the claim that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda. As was the case with other featured claims the al Qaeda claims were disputed by intelligence officials within the Administration. Yet President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice regularly failed to acknowledge these doubts or the weaknesses in the case linking Iraq and al Qaeda. They made 61 misleading statements about the strength of the Iraq-al Qaeda alliance in 52 public appearances. Well before the war of Iraq, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate made clear that the U.S. intelligence community had serious doubts about the threat of Iraq arming al Qaeda. In its section on ``Confidence Levels for Selected Key Judgements in This Estimate,'' the NIE gave a ``Low Confidence'' rating to the notion of ``Whether in desperation Saddam would share chemical or biological weapons with Al Qa'ida.'' The discussion of this possibility in the NIE contained highly qualified language: ``Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al Qa'ida . . . could perpetuate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.'' The NIE also reported that ``Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger cause for making war.'' Director of Central Intelligence Tenet stated in an October 2002 letter that there were intelligence reports of contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq. At the same time, however, he asserted clear qualifiers for this information: ``Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al- Qa'ida is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability.'' Senators who were briefed by intelligence officials in the fall of 2002 expressed skepticism about the significance of the link. For example, Senator Jeffords on October 8, 2002, stated, ``While there is talk of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and I don't doubt that there has been some cooperation, I have not seen any hard evidence of close cooperation.'' According to another account, Sen. Richard J. Durbin . . . said some classified information he had seen did not support the administration's portrayal of the Iraqi threat. ``It's troubling to have classified information that contradicts statements made by the administration,'' Durbin said. ``There's more they should share with the public.'' Durbin would not be more specific, but he did say the committee had received the views of some analysts who do not share the administration's conclusion that Iraq was an urgent threat with important links to al-Qaeda terrorists. Journalists also reported that many intelligence officials within the Administration doubted the significance of reported contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to one report: ``[A]nalysts at the C.I.A. . . . believed that the evidence showed some contacts between Baghdad and the terrorist organization, but not an operational alliance. . . . [A]t the C.I.A., many analysts believed that Mr. bin Laden saw Mr. Hussein as one of the corrupt secular Arab leaders who should be toppled.'' Despite the doubts of many intelligence analysts, the five Administration officials regularly asserted that there was a close relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For example: In a November 7, 2002, speech, President Bush stated: Saddam Hussein is ``a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda. . . . [A] true threat facing our country is that an Al Qaeda-type network trained and armed by Saddam could attack America and not leave one fingerprint.'' In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, President Bush stated: ``Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.'' In his February 5, 2003, remarks to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated: ``what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants.'' In his remarks on May 1, 2003, announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq, President Bush stated: ``The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001--and still goes on. . . . [T]he liberation of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al Qaeda.'' Vice President Cheney's statements on this topic repeatedly cited reports of a specific alleged Iraq-al Qaeda contact: A meeting between Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, and a senior Iraqi official in Prague a few months before September 11, 2001. For example, Vice President Cheney stated on September 14, 2003: ``With respect to 9/11, of course, we've had the story that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohammed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know.'' The Vice President's assertions about this meeting omitted key information. He did not acknowledge that the CIA and FBI had concluded before the war in Iraq that ``the meeting probably did not take place''; and Czech government officials had developed doubts regarding whether this meeting occurred; or that American records indicate that Mr. Atta was in Virginia Beach, Virginia, at the time of the purported meeting. Assessments following the war further highlighted the tenuous nature of the Administration's assertions about an Iraq-al Qaeda alliance. According to the New York Times, ``Since American forces toppled the Hussein government and the United States gained access to captured Iraqi officials and Iraqi files, the C.I.A. has not yet uncovered evidence that has altered its prewar assessment concerning the connections between Mr. Hussein and Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, officials said.'' Consistent with this view, during Dr. Kay's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28, 2004, the following exchange occurred between Senator Warner and Dr. Kay. Senator Warner: Any evidence with regard to participation by either Saddam Hussein or his principal henchmen in the WMD-sharing with al Qaeda or any other terrorist organizations? Dr. Kay: Senator Levin--Senator Warner, there is no evidence that I can think of that I know of. V. Misleading Statements by Individual Officials a. president bush President Bush made 55 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 27 separate public statements or appearances. Of the 55 misleading statements by President Bush, 4 claimed that Iraq posed an urgent threat; 14 exaggerated Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons; 18 overstated Iraq's chemical or biological weapons capacity; and 19 misrepresented Iraq's links to al Qaeda. On October 7, 2002, just days before the October 10 and October 11, 2002 congressional votes on the Iraq war resolution, President Bush gave an address in Cincinnati, Ohio, about the threat posed by Iraq. In this speech, President Bush made 11 misleading statements about Iraq, the highest number of misleading statements in any single appearance by any of the five officials. In this single appearance, President Bush made misleading statements about Iraq's nuclear capabilities, Iraq's efforts to procure aluminum tubes, Iraq's chemical and biological capabilities, and Iraq's connection to al Qaeda. Some of the misleading statements made by President Bush included the following: ``On its present course, the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . . It has developed weapons of mass death.'' ``The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' ``The liberation of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al Qaeda.'' ``We found the weapons of mass destruction. . . . [F]or those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.'' b. vice president cheney Vice President Cheney made 51 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 25 separate public statements or appearances. Of the 51 misleading statements by Vice President Cheney, 1 claimed that Iraq posed an urgent threat; 22 exaggerated Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons; 7 overstated Iraq's chemical or biological weapons capacity; and 21 misrepresented Iraq's links to al Qaeda. Some of the misleading statements made by Vice President Cheney included the following: ``[W]e do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.'' Saddam Hussein ``had an established relationship with al Qaeda.'' ``[W]e believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' c. secretary rumsfeld Secretary Rumsfeld made 52 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 23 separate public statements or appearances. Of the 52 misleading statements by Secretary Rumsfeld; 5 claimed that Iraq posed an urgent threat; 18 exaggerated Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons; 21 overstated Iraq's chemical or biological weapons capacity; and 8 misrepresented Iraq's links to al Qaeda. Some of the misleading statements made by Secretary Rumsfeld included the following: ``Now transport yourself forward a year, two years, or a week, or a month, and if Saddam Hussein were to take his weapons of mass destruction and transfer them, either use himself, or transfer them to the Al-Qaeda, and somehow the Al-Qaeda were to engage in an attack on the United States . . . with a weapon of mass destruction you're now talking about 300, or 3,000 people potentially being killed, but 30,000, or 100,000 . . . human beings.'' ``[Saddam Hussein's] regime . . . recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' ``We said they had a nuclear program. That was never any debate.'' d. secretary powell Secretary Powell made 50 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 34 separate public statements or appearances. Of the 50 misleading statements by Secretary Powell, 1 claimed that Iraq posed an urgent threat; 10 exaggerated Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons; 32 overstated Iraq's chemical or biological weapons capacity; and 7 misrepresented Iraq's links to al Qaeda. Sometimes Secretary Powell used caveats and qualifying language in his public statements. For example, on March 9, 2003, he said, ``Well with respect to the aluminum tubes, we still believe the case is out. The CIA has done a great deal of analysis on those tubes. They are not persuaded they were just for rockets. And, in fact, another nation this week, a European nation, came forward with some additional information that still, I think, leaves it an open question as to what the purpose of those tubes was.'' Secretary Powell's acknowledgement of differences in this example was not an unqualified statement that only mentioned one side of an intelligence debate. On numerous other occasions, however, Secretary Powell made unconditional statements about the threats posed by Iraq without disclosing the doubts of intelligence officials. Some of the misleading statements he made included the following: ``Iraq is now concentrating . . . on developing and testing smaller UAVs. . . . UAVs are well suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons.'' ``The more we wait, the more chance there is for this dictator with clear ties to terrorist groups, including al- Qaida, more time for him to pass a weapon, share a technology, or use these weapons again.'' ``So far, we have found the biological weapons vans that I spoke about when I presented the case to the United Nations on the 5th of February, and there is no doubt in our minds that those vans were designed for only one purpose, and that was to make biological weapons.'' E. National Security Advisor Rice Ms. Rice made 29 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 16 separate public statements or appearances. Of the 29 misleading statements by Ms. Rice, 17 concerned Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons; 6 overstated Iraq's chemical or biological weapons capacity; and 6 misrepresented Iraq's links to al Qaeda. Some of the misleading statements made by Ms. Rice included the following: ``We do know that [Saddam Hussein] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.'' ``We do know that there have been shipments going into . . . Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to--high quality aluminum tools that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.'' ``[T]he declaration fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad.'' Ms. Rice made significantly more statements that were false--8--than any of the other four officials. Many of these statements came in June and July 2003 when questions were being raised about why President Bush asserted in his State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking to import uranium from Africa. Ms. Rice repeatedly stated during this period that no one in the White House was informed of the doubts about this uranium claim. For example, she stated: ``We did not know at the time--no one knew at the time, in our circles--maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.'' ``[H]ad there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence in, that the director of Central Intelligence did not want it in, it would have been gone.'' These statements were simply false. As explained above, the CIA had repeatedly communicated its objections to White House officials, including Ms. Rice. VI. Conclusion Because of the gravity of the subject and the President's unique access to classified information, members of Congress and the public expect the President and his senior officials to take special care to be balanced and accurate in describing national security threats. It does not appear, however, that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice met this standard in the case of Iraq. To the contrary, these five officials repeatedly made misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq. In 125 separate appearances, they made 11 misleading statements about the urgency of Iraq's threat, 81 misleading statements about Iraq's nuclear activities, 84 misleading statements about Iraq's chemical and biological capabilities, and 61 misleading statements about Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda. Some of the categories of the misleading statements: A, a statement that Iraq posed an urgent threat; B, statements about Iraq's nuclear capabilities, including the claims about the status of the Iraqi nuclear program; the claims about the aluminum tubes; the claims about uranium from Africa. Then there is another category, statements about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs, claims about chemical and biological weapons, about unmanned aerial vehicles, about mobile biological laboratories; and then there is a special part in this study about Iraq's statements about Iraq's support of al Qaeda. Then just to be fair to the four other members in the White House that work on these matters, there are misleading statements by individual officials. The first official is the President of the United States. The second official is the Vice President of the United States. The third official is the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The fourth category is the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and the fifth category is reserved for the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice. I recommend these items and this study to each and every Member of the House; and I would be happy to discuss it, along with the ranking member of the Committee on Government Reform, with any of the Members of the Congress on or off the record. Haiti

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, I was visited by the Michigan floral shop owners, small business people who were telling me they can hardly afford the private health insurance coverage for their employees. And many of them are going to have to give up the practice of insuring for health purposes their employees because the costs are just too enormous. I am reminded of a discussion I had with the esteemed president of the United Automobile Workers, Mr. Ron Gettelfinger, who indicated that we have just about run out of how much unions in collective bargaining agreements can continue to give up in terms of the health care, employer-based health care that the United Automobile Workers have been working on for decades because the demands of the corporations, the automobile corporations, continue and insist at every round of collective bargaining to require more and more give-backs, higher premiums, and fewer services to be provided under the employer-employee health plan. It is also my duty to report to you that I have been advised that DaimlerChrysler Corporation is examining something different from the plan that the Chrysler Corporation, who they succeeded, has been engaged in with the United Automobile Workers in terms of their employee health coverage. It is getting too high, it is costing too much. And so I am here to continue a discussion that has been going on for many years. And I would like to recommend to my colleagues a few of the things I have been reading about this subject matter and see where it takes it. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Ron Mueller, the author of a book entitled ``As Sick As It Gets: The Shocking Reality of America's Health Care, a Diagnosis and Treatment Plan,'' which he prescribes in this book. Here is what he said: Some of the patients had to tell him about their health coverage. One said that, ``When my wife dies I can slow down, I will not need to work so hard to pay for her medications.'' Another said, ``I borrowed my sister's insulin, she has insurance.'' Another, ``I don't have insurance. Actually I do, but I have a $5,000 per year deductible.'' Another, all of his Social Security goes for his medications and his medical bills. ``I am trapped. You work all your life and look forward to retirement and it will not come. I got to work to pay for the pills and the bills.'' Another, ``It was only after my lawyer got involved that they agreed to cover my surgery.'' ``Those (expletive deleted) are a bunch of thieves. I called Medicare and they told me not to pay another dime. Then the (expletive deleted) threatened me.'' Another, ``I have a history of using cocaine but I have been drug free for 3 years. Unfortunately, I have had thoughts of using it again and I am afraid I might relapse. So I called my insurance company to see if counseling was covered. The insurance company said I was not covered unless I tested positive. So I have to go out and use the drugs before I am covered. Makes sense, does not it?'' And the final comment, ``The letter said we have covered all your medical bills except $384,000.'' And so it is an important subject that we begin to examine more and more closely as we move forward. Dr. David Himmelstein, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, and Dr. Ida Hellander have a book that deals with the consequences of corporate health care. And they make the following points, and I quote: ``Centuries ago, doctors practiced phlebotomy by applying incisions and leaches to their patients. Doctors acted on the misguided belief that illnesses could be cured by bleeding them away. Some patients lost so much blood that it killed them. Today we wonder how they got it so wrong. One day our grandchildren will look back on the damage wrought by corporate health care with an equal sense of bewilderment. They will learn that early in the 21st century, 45 percent of all bankruptcies involved a medical reason or a large medical debt; that 47 percent of those denied authorization for emergency room care by their HMOs had unstable vital signs or other high-risk indicators; the death rates and patient expenses are higher at the for-profit hospitals than at nonprofit facilities; that doctors are actually paid money to withhold medical services; that in a solid economy, infant mortality rates for African Americans are more than twice those for whites. And perhaps most baffling is the continued existence of a corporate system when 77 percent of Americans believe the government should provide quality medical coverage to all adults.'' And so their book, with extraordinary detail, is a compelling argument in favor of a national health care program, a program that would cover everyone and provide better care for less than what we spend today. I want to emphasize that. We could spend less with a reorganized national health care system than we are spending today. How could that be? How could we get better care for less money? Well, one simple answer would be to take the incredible profit taking that goes on within the health care industry. It is amazing; 47 percent, or 45.6 percent to be precise, of all bankruptcies involve a medical reason or a large medical debt; 326,441 families identified illness as the main reason for bankruptcy in the year 1999. An additional 269,757 had large medical debts at the time of bankruptcy. And that 7 per 1,000 single women and 5 per 1,000 men suffered a medical-related bankruptcy in the year 1999. This is from the Norton's Bankruptcy Advisor, which is the source of those statistics. So we could do a lot for our Nation's citizens by revisiting health care. We have some other issues that relate to this subject that I think are pretty important. We have here another interesting book, soft cover, put together by the staff of the New York Times. It is called ``Solving America's Health-Care Crisis, A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Your Family's Economic Security,'' and so they point out to us that this great problem is the biggest one that confronts the most Americans. ``The labyrinth of issues involved in understanding this crisis is daunting,'' and so they provide for a primer that will help all of us make judgments about the complicated health care issues now plaguing the country. This New York Times staff provides searching reportage and penetrating analysis and tells what works and what does not, who profits and who loses and what might or might not be done to fix a health care industry on the brink of collapse. What is done in this book that is most interesting is to examine how high technology and high medical costs both save lives and at the same time hurt growing numbers of Americans, how other countries, for example, handle health care better than we do. As a matter of fact, all of the industrialized nations of the world have a national health care plan that does not turn on whether a person has the right insurance company or carries the right provisions within the health care plan before it can be covered, whether or not a person can independently afford to pay for it. This book, ``Solving America's Health-Care Crisis,'' examines how some doctors profit from patients by becoming high-tech entrepreneurs; and so it seems to many of us that it is correct to say that the key to America's economic fate lies in health care reform, and so I would like to thank Mr. Eric Eckholm, who led the team that put this very interesting discussion together. We are forced now to examine whether, with the hundreds and hundreds of proposals of bills in both the House and the Senate relating to health care and health care delivery, to Medicare and Medicaid, to Social Security, how we are going to more quickly improve the system that we are working on; and I look forward to discussions with my colleagues, informally, about what we must do to deal with this subject. I would like now to turn to a very interesting statement that has been put forward by my friend, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in which he asserted that 130 nations backed us in the war against Iraq. There are 191 countries in the United Nations. There are some 40 or more that are not in the United Nations, and there may be as much as a dozen who are neither in the United Nations nor are formally organized and recognized as nation states. We are talking about a lot of people, 6.4 billion people in the world, more than 250 countries, and 130 of them backed us up. I have sent a note, and I will include it in the Record, asking the Secretary to advise me of which of these countries contributed to our success in the war in Iraq. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC, March 16, 2004. Hon. Colin Powell, Secretary, Department of State, Washington, DC. Urgent Attn: Office of the Secretary. Dear Secretary Powell: I write to request a specific identification from your office of the countries who support the United States' decision to declare war on Iraq. In your statement regarding the matter, it was your position that approximately 130 countries were behind the U.S. in this war. I would appreciate your urgent assistance in providing a list of these countries at your earliest possible convenience. Thank you for your kind assistance in this matter, and if you need any further information relevant to this request, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at 202-225- 5126. Sincerely, John Conyers, Jr. Ranking Member. May I indicate, that it has been brought to the attention of the Roll Call newspaper that the question of whether the legality of the government-sponsored ads promoting the new Medicare prescription drug benefit is appropriate or indeed legal. GAO, of course, the investigative arm of the Congress, wants to find out whether this ad program launched by the administration violates a Federal law prohibiting the government from disseminating ``covert propaganda,'' and so we await the examination and report of the General Accounting Office. It has been commented by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) that there are a number of questions that are related to this very important subject. Iraq

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation. I cannot overstate the importance of encouraging collaboration when it comes to developing new technologies, particularly in the medical field. That is why Congress amended the patent laws in the mid-1980's to allow the patenting of inventions even when the inventions were not developed by a single person. Unfortunately, the Federal courts have interpreted the law in a way that vitiates our intent in enacting it in the first place. The Federal Circuit ruled in the OddzOn case that an inventor's knowledge of ``secret prior art'' could prevent the issuance of a patent unless the inventor basically worked in the same organization that developed the prior art. This ruling is having a detrimental impact on innovation. Because many universities and other non-profits do not enter into the formal structures envisioned by OddzOn when they work to develop drugs and other technologies, they are losing patent protection and an incentive to work together. We will see a decline not only in collaborations but also in the development of life-saving drugs and other inventions. That is why I am pleased we are considering this bill, of which I am an original cosponsor. H.R. 2391 reiterates the importance of research collaborations by allowing them to obtain patent protection without entering into formal relationships. This legislation will encourage collaboration and spur innovation. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this legislation.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to my colleagues' attention the circumstances surrounding President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, whose circumstances are somewhat in doubt tonight. I have spent a fair amount of time calling a number of people to find out whether President Aristide and his wife, Mildred Aristide, are in safe circumstances; and I have this report to make to my colleagues tonight. We have called the offices of the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Noriega; the Secretary of State, Mr. Powell; the Security Council Chief, Ms. Rice; the President of the United States, Mr. Bush; the President of the Central Republic of Africa; the ambassador to the United States of the Central Republic of Africa; the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld; and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. George Tenet. I was able to reach General Craddock, who works as an assistant to Secretary Rumsfeld, who asked that we send a communication so that they could begin trying to help us determine the whereabouts, and, more importantly, the safety of the circumstances surrounding President Aristide. We sent the following letter, which I include for the Record. House of Representatives, Washington, DC, March 10, 2004. Hon. Donald Rumsfeld, c/o General Craddock, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Washington, DC. Dear General Craddock. This letter is written notification in response to a telephone inquiry on today's date of the location of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This evening the inquiry was conducted by a member of my staff, Bernard Graham, and yourself. As per your conversation, please advise me as soon as possible as to the whereabouts of President Aristide. My staffer has informed me that you will start to retrieve this information tonight through proper channels. This matter is of utmost importance to me and I look forward to your timely response. Sincerely, John Conyers, Jr., Member of Congress. In addition, I was able to reach Mr. Brian Newbert, the watch officer at the State Department, who was very co-operative, who was calling Bangui, the capital of the Central Republic of Africa, in an attempt to locate President and Mrs. Aristide. He was not able to do it. There is an 11-hour time difference. But he told me that he would continue this search in the morning. Now, this problem has arisen because in last week's testimony before a subcommittee of the Committee on International Relations we were told by Assistant Secretary Noriega that it was true that a U.S. aircraft, or an aircraft controlled by the United States, had taken the President and his wife to the Central Republic of Africa. We asked him how were they doing, and he said that he did not know, because the United States Government's responsibility ended with him delivering President Aristide to this francophone country of 3.5 million people in the center of the continent of Africa, and that he had no further responsibility in connection with this. This was a slightly shocking statement to the people that were in the hearing room, because it would have seemed that we might want to know what was happening to him from that point on. We have a very sensitive and very serious matter here, and I hope that I will continue to enjoy the cooperation of the various heads of the agencies as we attempt to reach and make contact with President Aristide. His country was overrun by rebels. He was forced to leave the country. He left under United States auspices and control, and it seems to me that the most elementary act of courtesy would be for us to make sure that he and his wife, which we pray are alive and in good condition and safe, are that. But it is very disturbing to me to report to my colleagues tonight that not only have I not been able to reach anyone that has been in contact with him, but we do not know anybody that has.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent during some of the votes on amendments to H.R. 339, the ``Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act.'' I would like the Record to reflect that, had I been present, I would have voted in the following manner: Watt No. 6/ Scott (exempt state agency actions to enforce state consumer protection laws concerning mislabeling or other unfair and deceptive trade practices): ``Yes.'' Watt No. 7 (preserve the right of state courts to hear cases brought under state law): ``Yes.'' Andrews No. 2 (exempt manufacturers of genetically modified foods that do not disclose that the food is genetically modified from the legal immunity provided in the bill): ``Yes.'' Ackerman No. 1 (exempt manufacturers and sellers of foods that have not taken steps to prevent meat from being tainted with mad cow disease from the legal immunity provided in the bill): ``Yes.''

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this legislation which is both misleading and frivolous. H.R. 339 goes much further than its stated purpose of banning the small handful of private suits brought against the food industry. It also bans suits for harm caused by dietary supplements and mislabeling which have nothing to do with excess food consumption, and would prevent state law enforcement officials from bringing legal actions to enforce their own consumer protection laws. If you don't believe me, I implore you to read the bill. Section 4(5) would prevent any legal action relating to ``any health condition that is associated with a person's weight gain or obesity'' stemming from consumption of a ``qualified food product,'' which in turn is defined to include food and nutritional supplements. There is no requirement whatsoever that the person actually have gained weight as a result of consuming the product. As a result, the bill would prevent persons who develop heart disease and diabetes from dietary supplements such as Ephedra and Phen Phen from being able to obtain redress. Moreover, under the Manager's amendment, private actions for harm caused by adulterated or poisoned products would also be limited. Even worse, the bill bans these lawsuits on a retroactive basis, so it would throw out dozens of Ephedra and Phen Phen cases currently pending in court. This is a far cry from the concerns that led to this legislation. H.R. 339 would also prevent state law enforcement officials from enforcing their own laws. Under section 4(3) the bill applies to legal actions brought by any ``persons,'' which in turn is defined to include any ``governmental entity.'' That means state attorneys general will be prevented from pursuing actions for deceptive practices and false advertising against the food industry. Again, this is a vast departure from most of the so-called tort reform bills considered by this Congress, which are drafted to apply to private lawsuits. The legislation is frivolous because it deals with a non-existent problem. To date every single private lawsuit against the industry--a total of five--have been dismissed. The system is working fine, there is absolutely no crisis. Frivolous suits are thrown out of courts, and lawyers who bring them are subject to fines and other sanctions. It is absurd that this Congress would even consider eliminating liability when today's Washington Post is reporting that obesity is passing smoking as the leading avoidable cause of death in our nation. Lets not pass a bill which harms the victims of Ephedra and Phen Phen, or handcuffs our state attorneys general from protecting consumers. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, it has been a busy 14 days here in Washington. We began with the President of the United States, according to the Los Angeles Times, explaining how the export of jobs is beneficial to the economy. Two days later, he was followed up by the chairman of the President's Economic Advisory Council, Mr. Gregory Mankiw, who explained to the other body that we have to face that in a global economy, it is inevitable that there will be a loss and shortage of jobs. I am not able to give the precise details of the reaction of the committee that heard that testimony. And then thereafter the distinguished chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Mr. Alan Greenspan, explained that even though we are hemorrhaging money, the deficit is growing, the surplus has disappeared, and we have to do something about it, that this legislative body is going to have to put its foot down. Where, the question arose, should we end the tax cuts for the upper 1 percent in our American system? No, he said, not only was that probably good, but that it should be made permanent. Then pray tell us, Mr. Greenspan, where would this reduction come from? Well, it would come from looking into Social Security. It is time we realized that perhaps these benefits are excessive and that they are being paid out too early. Well, thank you very much, Chairman Greenspan. My dear colleague, who is unfortunately not on the floor, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Burns), touted the benefits of the Leave No Child Behind Education Act, a bill that I thought was pretty important. It was explained to me by Members on my side of the aisle in both the Senate and the House, the same provisions that he described that were going to be so excellent. But the problem, we are underfunding the bill by $8 billion a year. Mr. Speaker, at this point I move to the recent problems in the western hemisphere, and I will include for the Record a number of statements about Haiti and what we ought to do about it. The long and short, of course, is that we have an obligation to support the resolution introduced by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) to determine what the truth is about Haiti and that we have an independent bipartisan commission on Haiti to find out whether we impeded democracy or indeed contributed to the overthrow of a democratically elected government; what were the circumstances that brought about the alleged resignation and what was the role of the United States Government in bringing about the departure; and to what extent did the United States impede efforts by the international community, and especially the Caribbean community, CARICOM, to prevent the overthrow of an elected government in Haiti. What was the role of the United States in influencing decisions regarding Haiti at the United Nations Security Council, and was there U.S. assistance provided in the personnel or weapons for the forces that were used against Haiti? These are just a few very important questions that kind of coincide with some destabilization efforts going on in Venezuela, where the democratically-elected President is undergoing a very serious set of difficulties, that it looks like, it is said, it is being reported, that the United States, believe this or not, is having a role and something to do with the destabilization. I yield to the distinguished member of the Committee on International Relations, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the documents I referred to earlier. March 9, 2004. Truth Commission--The Responsibility to Uncover the Truth About Haiti Dear Colleagues: Today we will introduce a resolution calling for an independent commission to uncover the facts about the Bush Administration's involvement in the recent coup d'etat in Haiti. There are questions that Members of Congress need answered regarding this Administration's involvement: 1. Did the U.S. Government impede democracy and contribute to the overthrow of the Aristide government? 2. Under what circumstances did President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resign and what was the role of the United States Government in bringing about his departure? 3. To what extent did the US impede efforts by the international community, particularly the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries, to prevent the overthrow of the democratically-elected Government of Haiti? 4. What was the role of the United States in influencing decisions regarding Haiti at the United Nations Security Council and in discussions between Haiti and other countries that were willing to assist in the preservation of the democratically-elected Government of Haiti by sending security forces to Haiti? 5. Was US assistance provided or were US personnel involved in supporting, directly or indirectly, the forces opposed to the government of President Aristide, and/or United States bilateral assistance channeled through nongovernmental organizations that were directly or indirectly associated with political groups actively involved in fomenting hostilities or violence toward the government of President Aristide? There are many more questions that must be answered. We believe this Administration has, in essence, carried out a form of ``regime change,'' a different variation than it took in Iraq, but still regime change. Accordingly, we must uncover their actions. The American people and the international community deserves to know the truth, and the people of Haiti deserve a fair shot at democracy. We call on all of our colleagues to support this resolution calling for a bipartisan independent commission. I apologize for the short notice; however, if you would like to be an original cosponsor of this bill or have any questions, please call Aysha House (Lee) at 225-2661. The deadline for original co-sponsorship will be 7:30 p.m. Sincerely, Barbara Lee, Member of Congress. John Conyers, Member of Congress.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the women of the Detroit Shock Women's National Basketball Association team. On September 16, 2003, the ladies of the Detroit Shock made history with their first ever Women's National Basketball Association championship, defeating the 2-time defending champion Los Angeles Sparks. Through the leadership of Rookie of the Year Cheryl Ford, Playoff MVP Ruth Riley, and Coach Bill Laimbeer, the Shocks displayed strength, resolve and the highest standard of sportsmanship. It is fitting that H. Res. 392 will be passed today, just one day after International Women's Day and during National Women's Month. This month we are celebrating the great strides women have made in society, and must recognize and highlight the advancements women have made in professional sports. Since the passage of Title IX, which mandates gender equity in school sports, we have seen women's athletics flourish as a tool for empowering young girls. College basketball programs across the country have produced some of the most dynamic athletes of our time--including Cheryl Ford and Ruth Riley of the Shock, as well as Diana Taurasi of the University of Connecticut. These young women are clear examples to the younger generation of girls that the pursuit of athletic excellence can produce the highest rewards for women and men alike. The Detroit Shock team has made metropolitan Detroit and greater Michigan proud by displaying the trademark Michigan values of hard work, dedication, and perseverance. We honor these women for their strength and resolve, and for being leaders of the next generation of women in sports. We look forward to another win this year! Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, the PTO is in the midst of a crisis. Funded by user fees instead of taxpayers, the PTO generates $1 billion in revenues each year. This success has been an Achilles' heel--the Administration treats the PTO as a cash cow and diverts hundreds of millions of dollars every year for other programs. This is making it difficult for the PTO to hire or even retain qualified examiners to review patent applications. Our technological advancement and our economy can only suffer if Congress sits idly by while this happens. This bill remedies this by ensuring the PTO can spend all of the fees it collects. I believe ending fee diversion is one of the most important signals we can send to spur innovation and encourage new technologies and new drugs. The bill also incorporates a proposal of mine and Representative Kaptur's to maintain a fee deduction for small businesses. Small businesses are important to this country's economy, and we should give them every incentive to innovate and seek protection for those innovations. Having said that, I still have concerns about outsourcing. The bill would give the PTO the ability to hire private contractors to do patent searches. This is problematic for a variety of reasons. First, searching old patents and journals is one of the core functions of the PTO, giving that job to private companies would be like shutting down the FBI and having someone else conduct criminal investigations for the Justice Department. Second, no one questions the accuracy and integrity of the work of PTO employees, so the need for contractors is questionable. Also, there could be conflicts of interest if the employee of a contractor doing searches has his or her own patent applications pending. While the bill will be improved to prevent outsourcing to foreign companies and to limit conflicts of interest, some of my concerns remain.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding. (Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. This has been very important; and, of course, it is very clear that this is the beginning of our inquiries into U.S. activities, conduct, action, in front of and behind the scenes with regard to this poor, distraught, economically strapped nation. We have a much wider obligation than has been employed so far, and I think the Congressional Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus which has joined with us, the Progressive Caucus, the Pacific-Asian caucus, the Native American Caucus, we have all been working together with a number of people. The gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is in at least one of those caucuses, but there are a number of other people that are coming in to join us because democracy is being tested by what we do and what we say. It is very important. We met with the CARICOM leaders and its chairman, just before we met in the United Nations; and it was very obvious to them that if this could happen to Haiti, it could happen to them.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to join the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks) in that commendation to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek).

Mr. CONYERS. Under the Special Orders that we will be taking tomorrow evening, I will be able to report to you the whereabouts of young Duvalier, who is reported today to be planning to return to Haiti. And there is a young gentleman evicted from Haiti named Constant in New York.

Mr. CONYERS. We have to watch where he is at all times. His record is bloody and long and unsavory. And so I am very glad that both of the gentleman, who have enormous Haitian constituents, are here not just because of their numbers, but because American democracy is on trial in Haiti.