John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is known as the accuracy in debate portion of our activities on the floor today. The chairman says that somebody is telling him we need no new laws. Now, maybe somebody is, but nobody on the Committee on the Judiciary that I know of has been telling anybody that, Republican or Democrat. I think everybody knows we need new laws. The question, sir, is, what new laws, which new laws? Now, I know we have to refer to the Oklahoma City tragedy, the Klinghoffer, Achille Lauro, and other terrorist activities. Hamas will be mentioned 999 times today, and maybe it should be. But what do these have to do with habeas corpus? Here, Chairman Hyde, is where you went wrong, because you made this a grab bag crime bill and lost sight of the fact that this is an antiterrorist piece of legislation of the first moment. So you gathered up every old sack of legislation that has been laying around. And since you thought you were on a fast track, you stuck it on. Here is the first train coming out of the station. Well, we have been debating habeas corpus for 10 years. Stick it on. Let us go get the death penalty. Stick it on. Let us get alien deportation. We have immigration coming up. But stick it on. Now you are paying for it, because you have got a junk bag crime bill, and not what we came here for today, namely, a bill to fight terrorism. Because I have got the best antiterrorist bill that will hit this floor today, the strongest, the most effective, the one with the most additional penalties. And you have got a great crime bill that ought to be debated some other place, some other time. And that is the problem. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman says somebody took wiretaps out. Well, read the bill. We did not take wiretaps out. That is an inaccurate statement. We have got plenty of good things in here, and I just want to close with one: Prohibiting material support to terrorist organizations. That is in my bill: Prohibiting the providing of material support or resources to organizations designated as terrorist by the Secretary of State. But it provides expedited judicial review of that designation in a hearing in which the organization will have the opportunity to call witnesses and present evidence in rebuttal of that designation. You do not mind that, do you? We are in America. Since when can one Cabinet official come up with a list? Do you not remember the McCarthy era, sir? That is what the Attorney General did. Now here we are within the same generation coughing up the same nonsense. And we say, ``Well, let's give people a chance to rebut the designation.'' What for? I would not want the Secretary of State Buchanan designating who is a terrorist organization in this country, America, anytime soon. I do not really think most of the Members do either. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt], an able member of this subcommittee, a practicing attorney for decades.

Mr. CONYERS. But not when it comes to you, sir.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Judiciary for opening up the discussion around a very sensitive and important matter. He has worked very hard on this matter and he feels very strongly about it. I hope we will all stay down on the planet, right down here on terra firma as we discuss a very emotional, very difficult, very sensitive, very terrible circumstance that this House of Representatives is called upon to try to resolve. I begin our part of this debate by referring all of my colleagues, including my chairman, to a Monday, March 11 New York Times op-ed piece by Anthony Lewis. It describes succinctly how terrorism wins. It wins by undermining the Constitution unwittingly as we rush out with an omnibus bag of about every anticrime piece of legislation that has been laying there, and we throw it all together and we throw it at those awful terrorists. It might help, and it will do some good, and there are some good parts of the bill that was authored by the chairman of the Committee on Judiciary. Another piece that I refer to the gentleman is the New York Times editorial dated today: ``The Wrong Answer To Terrorism.'' We are going to discuss this, because there are several proposals on the floor today. One is the Hyde-Barr bill passed in the Committee on Judiciary. One is the Barr bill, which is not antithetical to the Hyde-Barr bill, but they go along together in some parts and they fly apart in some places. I will leave them to explain where there are similarities and differences. But I would like to bring to Members' attention that the bill that many of us are supporting has some very important, good features of the Hyde provision in it, identical. I would like to recite them at the very outset of the debate, because our chairman has made a number of comments that I will be commenting again on with more particularity. He has talked about the Victims' Restitution Act. It is good. We support it. He has it, we have it, ``we'' being the Conyers-Nadler substitute that will come up at the end of this debate. We check off one. We both agree on that. We have significant other agreements in antiterrorism. We both agree that we should have prohibitions on providing material support for terrorists and on fund-raising efforts on their behalf. He cited Hamas. I cite Hamas. I agree that we should not allow terrorist to raise funds and we should not provide material support for their fund-raising efforts where there could be confusion of whether they are charitable or not charitable. We think that there should be very careful, precise distinctions made about that. I think we may do a better job in the substitute than the chairman's bill, but that is what we are here to figure out this afternoon. There are new criminal provisions in both bills protecting Federal employees and their families, prohibiting the sale of nuclear materials and the threatened use of weapons of mass destruction, and new criminal provisions for combating terrorism overseas. It is in the Hyde-Barr bill, it is in the Conyers-Nadler bill. Identical provisions. We agree. There is no dispute about that. We think these are effective remedies. Another area of agreement: Increased criminal penalties for burning or bombing Federal property. Agreement. Conspiring to take hostages and commit air piracy, increase the criminal penalties. Agreement. Transferring explosive material knowing it will be used to commit a crime of violence, increase the penalties. We agree. We also, on our last point of agreement, have both determined that there should be enhanced investigative authority given to parts of our Government. In the area of requiring the marking of plastic explosives, more investigative authority. In the area of requiring telephone companies to preserve their records for at least 3 months, more investigative authority. And in authorizing monetary awards to assist in the prosecution of felony cases, more enhanced authority. It is in the Hyde-Barr bill, it is in the Conyers-Nadler bill. Agreement, point after point after point after point after point after point. But I would like to submit, Mr. Chairman, that the substitute bill is tougher on terrorists than the Hyde-Barr bill in two key respects: First, in our bill we make it a crime to target children when engaging in an act of terrorism, thereby specifically responding to the shocking crime in Oklahoma City. We make it an additional crime to target children when engaging in the act of terrorism. Then we include even stronger protections for American citizens who are the victims of violence in terrorist States like Libya. How? By allowing suits against terrorist nations to be brought directly in an American court. Mr. Chairman, I would like to invite all of our colleagues to inquire, which bill is more effective? Which one has more expanded authority? Which one has more increased criminal penalties? And which one has more new criminal provisions, as we wind our way through this debate? Mr. Chairman, I concede that the Hyde-Barr bill came out first, so it was easier for us to improve on their bill than for them to improve on our bill. We might say we are the new, final, refined, updated version on the subject. We are the latest product of a lot of hard work that went into these bills and these provisions by the members of the Committee on the Judiciary. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am yielding for an answer, not a lecture.

Mr. CONYERS. Now, let us figure out how many times in the Federal jurisdiction that the gentleman can remember there have been multiple killings or multiple attempted killings in which the gentleman's provision, if it became law, would have application? I would yield to the gentleman for an answer to that question.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would ask the gentleman, in other words, this is not germane particularly to the anti-terrorist legislation. This is a anti-crime measure, is it not?

Mr. CONYERS. Wait a minute. That is all I wanted to know. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Schumer].

Mr. CONYERS. Would the gentleman be very greatly disappointed in the legislative product that is on the floor, which is antiterrorism, if his measure happened to not succeed?

Mr. CONYERS. Who would make the appointments?

Mr. CONYERS. Law enforcement experts like who?

Mr. CONYERS. Who?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am not surprised that a commission to evaluate public confidence on the current state of Federal law enforcement would be put into this sandwich that we have got on the floor now. We do not have anything in it. We have got to put something in it. So let us go back into, Mr. Bartlett, Waco. We had three committees spend millions of dollars. We had every law enforcement office in the Federal Government before the House and Senate. But you did not get enough, did you? The gentleman from Maryland did not get enough, did he? The gentleman wants to go into it some more. Let us look at Waco some more, please. The Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury, the head of three other agencies, the two top-ranking members other than the Director of the FBI, 50 other witnesses, lawyers from all over the planet, the witnesses, people that survived Waco, and we now come to it under this antiterrorist bill and want to set up a blue-ribbon commission. May I ask one question? Who would be on this commission?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

Mr. CONYERS. Then I will take it back. Mr. Chairman, let me say this, sir, is there not something redeeming about us passing legislation on its own bottom, since more people want this, since the gentleman has as many Attorney Generals, and then throw in Dan Lundgren on top of it? Could we not just have a bill that studies the death penalty, and we come up on it? Why do we have to tack it onto a piece of antiterrorist legislation which, unfortunately for both you and I, has been gutted?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield one more time, I will never ask him again.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for describing what my tone ought to be for the victims' families. However, I know victims' families that oppose the death penalty. They do not want them executed in 10 years or 2 years or 2 days, because they happen to have another view from the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller]. (Mr. MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Nadler], a cosponsor of the bill.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. CONYERS. Not just not excited but disappointed.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's parliamentary finesse has always stood the House of Representatives in good standing and credit. I only wish I could have thought of this motion and then had the courage to follow through on it, being the ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary. But am I not correct that we are at this situation? We have had the principal vehicle of the Committee on the Judiciary gutted. We now only have a substitute remaining. The measure is probably a lower grade crime bill, certainly not an antiterrorist bill. So I do not have a reason in the world why I should object to the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?