Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to, just as we end this debate, again thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) and his staff for the cooperation we have had in drafting this amendment. I think this amendment will go a long ways to dealing with the security problems at our national labs. I can tell my colleagues, Secretary Bill Richardson, Ed Curran, one of our finest FBI leaders in this country, are committed to finally getting this problem cured and resolved. This is the heart and soul of this amendment. It is the heart and soul of our report. I want to thank all of my colleagues, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal- Allard) for their leadership on the committee. We had a good team, and the Republicans had a good team. Let us have an overwhelming vote for this Cox-Dicks amendment.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Cox-Dicks amendment. The amendment is bipartisan and represents a good common ground that members of both parties can support. Most importantly, it will help to solve the important security problems we have at the Department of Energy, and before I go any further I want to echo and associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from California who served this House in a very successful and distinguished way as chairman of the committee, the select committee, and it was about a year ago that we started down this road, and he has done an excellent job representing the House, and I am proud to associate myself with this amendment to start implementing the recommendations of our select committee. And I, too, want to compliment the staff, particularly the investigative staff who did a principle amount of the work on this very important issue. I am proud that the House has managed to address this problem in a bipartisan fashion. We have had several bumps and long terms along the road, but we have arrived in the right place I believe. I commend the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) for working hard to ensure the bipartisan agreement was possible. The amendment we have crafted, while not perfect, is a good one. I urge members to vote for this amendment to help solve the glaring security problems at the Department of Energy. Our new Secretary, Bill Richardson, is doing a great job there to solve these problems with the help of Ed Curran who is in charge of counter intelligence. We can help him, and we should. This amendment codifies major portions of Presidential Decision Directive 61, PDD 61, to establish strong, independent Office of Counter intelligence at DOE with direct access to the Secretary, and I might point out in fairness the President had made his decision on this directive in February of 1998, four months before our select committee was established, and it took awhile to get the recommendations of Mr. Curran in place, but Secretary Richardson is doing that with great force and vigor. This also, this amendment also requires regular polygraphing of employees handling sensitive nuclear information, greatly increases civil and criminal penalties for mishandling or release of classified information, imposes a strong moratorium on foreign visitors to national labs until strong security measures are in place, re-enforces prohibitions on giving classified information to foreign nationals, requires a comprehensive annual report on security and counter intelligence at all DOE defense facilities, requires a report and red team analysis of DOE computer vulnerabilities including funding for a new cyber security program and requires DOE employees to consent to searches of their work computers used in DOE defense activity as a condition of receiving security clearance. Mr. Chairman, these measures are tough but appropriate, and they give Energy Secretary Richardson the authority he needs to solve the problem. That should be our goal today. Let us stay away from the blame game. As I mentioned, this amendment is not perfect. It will require some further work in conference on a few issues. In particular it was my intention that this amendment would not affect the nuclear Navy, and we have committed to work on this issue in the context of conference committee, and in fact it is my belief that this amendment does not reach the nuclear Navy labs. We have also agreed to address in conference the concerns that we may undermine existing bilateral agreements with China and Russia and interfere in launch campaigns with our European allies by requiring the Department of Defense to hire security personnel at launch campaigns. By the way, this was one of my recommendations, and I hope that we can keep it in place. We need to continue to work on it. Again I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) for working with me on this amendment, and I urge every member to support it. I think in addressing what my good friend, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson) has said earlier, it was our intent and our hope that each of the committees of Congress that has jurisdiction would take action, and of course the defense authorization bill gave us a vehicle working with members of the defense committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) and others who are members of the committee in a bipartisan fashion to draft this amendment. So we are trying our very best to live up not only to our select committee's recommendation, but also to respect the jurisdiction of the House and the committees in the House, many of whom were involved in the drafting of this amendment. So, again it has been a great pleasure to work with the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) and his staff on drafting this amendment and working on the select committee report. I think it was good that in a time of upheaval here in the House, during impeachment that we could come to a bipartisan agreement on an important national security issue.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman for his leadership for the great work done at Whiteman Air Force Base, for the military construction facilities that are there. I know that he worked hard to make sure that that facility in his district was one of the finest in the country. He and I had the great privilege of going out there the first day that the B-2 flew in combat and to greet the first 4 pilots who had flown those two planes, 2 pilots per plane. Thirty-one hours round-trip from Whiteman Air Force Base to Kosovo and back. I think it is a very important point to pause and think about the revolutionary impact of having a stealth bomber with precision-guided weapons. The accuracy, the number of targets that the B-2 hit, is just extraordinary. Also, I had a chance, I would tell my colleagues, to go and visit with our pilots at Fairfort, England, who flew the B-52s and the B-1s. And we have a small bomber force but a good one. In this very bill, I want to compliment the gentleman from California (Mr. Duncan Hunter), the chairman, and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky) for putting in the bomber package of money to enhance all of our existing bombers. I think this war has proven that these bombers are much more valuable than we gave them credit for. And the fact that the B-2 could fly in all weather, day, night, all weather, when nobody else could, was absolutely crucial in keeping the momentum of the air war early on. So, again, it was an honor to go out with my friend from Missouri. He and I came to Congress the same year. We have fought together four times on this floor to vote for the B-2. And I only wish that in the other body we had had the support to keep this program going, because I think it is one of the historic mistakes of this institution that we did not keep production of this airplane moving forward.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I support this rule and I would like to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley) for their indulgence last night as the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) and I put the finishing touches on our bipartisan amendment. This rule makes in order the Cox-Dicks amendment as the first order of business this morning. We have a strong bipartisan response to the security problems at the Department of Energy and the other security problems identified in the report of our committee. I urge every Member to support the amendment. The gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) and I worked in good faith to identify a common ground on these issues. And the amendment, while not perfect in either of our eyes, is a good compromise. We have agreed to work on several issues in conference where we have common goals but where the amendment's language may require perfection and adjustment. In particular, it was my intention that the amendment would not affect the nuclear navy, and this is an example of an issue that we have committed to work out in conference. We have also agreed to address in conference concerns that by requiring the Department of Defense to hire security personnel at launch campaigns we may undermine existing bilateral agreements with China and Russia. The rule makes in order a range of amendments related to similar security concerns. Members are right to be concerned about this issue, and I think most of these amendments attack the right issues. In almost every case, our amendment has a very similar or even identical provision to those being offered by other Members. While I respect every Member's right to offer their amendment in order under the rule, I urge those Members to consult our amendment and not offer it where it duplicates provisions that may have already passed the House. In particular, I cannot support the Ryan amendment, number 7, which largely duplicates the moratorium provision in the Cox-Dicks amendment but reduces incentive for security improvements at the labs by extending a punitive moratorium on the labs well after appropriate security measures are in place. I support the rule and urge Members to support the Cox-Dicks amendment. I also want to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from Texas. I think this is one of the most extraordinary situations where we would be considering cutting off money for the peacekeeping effort that is going to come after this victory in the air war. And I think we should be here today congratulating the young men and women who have flown 30,000 sorties in Kosovo for the tremendous job that they have done. We have not lost a single American life in combat. And we have seen also for the first time the use of the B-2 bomber, the use of JDAMs. This has been one of the most effective military operations in the history of the country. And when I go over there and talk to the personnel, their faces are not dragging. They are proud of what they are doing. They are proud of what they have been trained to do, and they are accomplishing it. And they did a tremendous job. And for this House to be voting on whether we are going to support this effort at this point is utterly ridiculous, and I hope the majority will reconsider their position and support the effort.

Mr. DICKS. And once the decision was made to go, if the gentleman will continue to yield, there was no undercutting or backstabbing or trying to go back and revisit the decision. The decision was made and then we rallied around the decision and we were proud of our forces when they did an outstanding job. Instead, we still have these votes day after day here to try to undermine the policy, which is ridiculous. We should be supporting this. It is a very successful military campaign, one of the most successful in the history of this country, without the loss of a single life. Two kids in a test situation were killed unfortunately but to execute this air war, it is one of the most incredible things that I have ever seen in my 21 years on the defense subcommittee.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, we must defeat this rule today. We must defeat it because it lets down the American people. It forbids this House from voting on vital changes to policies and procedures of the Department of Energy, procedures that have led directly to the loss of some of our Nation's most valuable secrets. Let me read to my colleagues a list of some of the national security protections the House will not be allowed to vote on today if this rule passes. The House will not be allowed to vote to double penalties on the traitors who betray our Nation by divulging our secrets. The House will not be allowed to vote to ensure that seasoned FBI counterintelligence professionals are hired at the national labs to perform counterintelligence. The House will not be allowed to vote to ensure that never again are counterintelligence agents forced to stand by, unable to search the office or computer of a spy while our Nation's secrets are being poured straight into the arms of potential adversaries. The House will not be allowed to vote to give the Secretary of Energy the authority to expedite polygraphing of people with access to our most sensitive nuclear secrets, even if the Secretary believes that doing so is vital to protect our national security. The House will not be allowed to vote to protect individuals who risked their own careers by bringing to light security lapses at DOE before more secrets are lost. The House will not be allowed to vote to require a comprehensive outside analysis of computer vulnerabilities at the national labs. And the House will not be allowed to vote to require a red team from the FBI and the NSA to find open ways into DOE's classified system and close them. Mr. Speaker, it is simply an outrage that the House has been denied a vote on these measures. But what is most disappointing is the reason why this has been done. The flaw which kept the House from voting for any of these measures is that they were part of a bipartisan bill which was agreed to by both Republicans and Democrats; thoughtful national security experts, like the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry), the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), and the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson) joined with me and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder), and the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Tauscher). Combined, these Members have over 50 years of service on National Security Committees of the House, but we were denied because we chose to work together. I also understand that an amendment offered by two Republican full committee chairmen and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the longest serving and one of the most respected Members of this House, who warned everyone about problems at DOE when everything we have lost today could have still been saved, was denied a vote in the House. Today is a low day for the House, Mr. Speaker, unless we turn back this rule and start over. The gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) and I worked very hard together on a bipartisan basis to bring to this House our best recommendations on what could be done to improve national security at these labs, and I am very disappointed that the Republican leadership has chosen to take a partisan approach to implementing our report. We spent 9 months working on this. We did our very best to give the House our best work product and to have the first effort here to implement these recommendations turned down by the Committee on Rules is an insult to the people who served on this committee. It was a bipartisan effort. Everyone on the committee was asked to join as cosponsors. I do not understand this. I am very offended by it and I hope that the people and the press will take note of the fact that within hours of our report being presented to the House, already partisan considerations in terms of implementing these recommendations are being put forward. It is an insult.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. We gave this to the chairman, and I talked to him about it two or three times as we were doing these various joint appearances. Admittedly, with all the attention there has been on getting this report out, we may not have done our finest job in getting this to everybody as quickly as possible, and I regret that, but the chairman was given the amendment and I asked him to cosponsor it.

Mr. DICKS. We appreciate that.

Mr. DICKS. The chairman was busy, too, though.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, again, I just want to say to my colleagues, we want a national missile defense system against a limited attack. I think that is a wise thing to do. I am just saying to everyone here today, after having General Lyles come before our committee and after going through each of the technologies in place, I have to report to my colleagues that General Lyles says 2005 is the earliest we would have a capability, and that capability has not yet been demonstrated. We have not been able to do what it takes to put it in place. It does not exist. And we cannot just create something out of whole cloth. Now, let us make it work. Let us be sober. Let us be realistic and honest with the House and the American people. Let us wait and do this when it is technologically feasible. We cannot do it, anyway. I mean, we cannot wish this into existence. So I urge everybody, including my colleague from the State of Washington, to be sober. I can remember when these people came in from my own State and they told and told me in 1983 that this technology was in hand. Edward Teller came and told us that the technology was in hand. It is now 1999, we have spent billions, and it is not in hand. This is a hard problem.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I want my good friend and colleague from Pennsylvania to know that I was one of the Democrats who voted for his resolution. But I must say, we held a hearing in the defense appropriations subcommittee, now called the Subcommittee on National Security Appropriations, this year. Lieutenant General Lester Lyles came over and briefed our committee. And, frankly, we are not doing very well in developing this technology. We have got serious problems. I personally believe that if we look at missile defense, that the number one priority when we deploy our troops is to have a capable theater missile defense system. We need to focus on that first. And of course, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania well knows, we have had five failures of the THAAD system, which is fundamental to having a credible theater missile defense system. We have the Patriot 3, the PAC-3 program, which is doing quite well. Now, if we cannot do theater missile defense, no matter how loudly we yell, we are not going to command a national missile defense system into being. Now, General Lyles has testified before our subcommittee that it is going to be at least 2005 before we have done the testing that is necessary to have any confidence that we would have a credible limited system. So I think the language in this resolution that says let us be honest with ourselves, we cannot be in denial here, that we are going to do this, I voted to do it when it is technologically feasible. If the science is not there, if the engineering is not there, if the technology is not there, we cannot just wish it into existence. And so I hope that my colleagues will think about this issue. This is one of the most important national security issues that we face. None of us likes the idea of being vulnerable to any country's potential for using a ballistic missile. But think about it. We had the whole era of the Cold War when the Russians had thousands of warheads aimed at the United States and we had thousands of warheads aimed at them. What did that produce? That produced deterrence. We knew that if either one of us struck the other that we would open up the possibility for a catastrophic war that would destroy both countries, and so we were deterred. And today the United States has more offensive capability than any other country in the world and more credible and more capable offensive capability. And I believe that any country that thought about launching an attack against the United States would have to be out of their mind, because they would know that we would know where the missile launched from and we could have the potential to respond with overwhelming force. I think deterrence still is a valid doctrine that we should not forget about as we work towards getting a national missile defense system in place. So I think the language of the Senate improves and makes more credible this resolution that we previously voted on. And I think my view is that I want this technology to work. One of the companies from my State is in charge of trying to integrate this and make it work. But we cannot tell the American people that there is something out there that will work until we can demonstrate it, and we have not been able to demonstrate THAAD. We have not been able to demonstrate a comprehensive theater missile defense system. And so I think we ought to be very sober about any of these exhortations that we are hearing about from people here who want to wish this into existence.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my friend from Missouri, the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on National Security, that I concur with him and that we should pass this, and I am not at all upset about what the Senate did. I think putting in the phrase ``when technologically feasible'' means that we have to have something to deploy. And I have the greatest respect for the chairman of the committee but I must tell my colleagues, when we brought over the people who were running this program and we went through each of the various possibilities, they have said basically that at this point we do not have something to deploy. Now, we just cannot make it up. Either it is deployable or it is not. Either we have tested it and we know it will work or it will not. So I urge everyone here that we should stay with our commitment to keep working on this problem, but to start deploying something that we have not tested is an absolute recipe for failure. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me. I hope that we get a national missile defense, but let us not waste money trying to deploy something that we have not yet demonstrated, and I think theater missile defense should be our first priority. I appreciate the gentleman having yielded to me.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the one thing the administration has asked us to do is expedite this supplemental, to get it done so they can get the money so we can do the rearmament on things like JDAMs that are critically important. This will ensure a veto of this bill and that, therefore, we are going to slow this process down. It is going to mean it is going to have to come back to this body. I would hope that the House would agree with our chairman and defeat this amendment.

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

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for his comments; and I want to just add a paragraph that the President sent us on April 28. However, were I to change my policy with regard to the introduction of ground forces, I can assure you that I would fully consult with the Congress. Indeed, without regard to our differing constitutional views on the use of force, I would ask for congressional support before introducing U.S. ground forces into Kosovo into a nonpermissive environment. I think that says it all, and I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. I thank the gentleman from Mississippi for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong opposition to H.R. 1569. I believe that this restriction, which is in essence a limitation on spending, is premature. I think the President has conducted this air campaign in a very vigorous, forthright way. I think all of us recognize the problem with ethnic cleansing and what the Serbian forces have been doing in Kosovo. I think to put this restriction, and the language, by the way, I think is very poorly drafted. I urge my colleagues to look at the second section which talks only about limited rescue opportunities, only in Yugoslavia. What if we need to use ground forces somewhere else? I just think this is premature. I would hope that if the President makes a decision that we are going to have to use ground forces, that in fact Congress would vote on it at that time, but not at this time. This is premature. And so I urge our colleagues to reject this and to support the Senate resolution that was passed with bipartisan support, carefully worked out, that basically expresses our support for the ongoing air campaign. I have had an opportunity to go over to the Pentagon to see how the air war is doing. It is becoming very effective. And so I think there is a lot of hand wringing here that is premature. I think we ought to give the air war additional time to work. I think we are weakening Mr. Milosevic. I think there is still a prospect that we may achieve our objective. To have this Congress divided and not have a bipartisan effort here to find common ground I think is extremely disappointing. I think, to the majority, there was a bipartisan effort in the other body, I think there needs to be a bipartisan effort here to support our troops and to support the air war in Yugoslavia.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the gentleman for his statement, and I always appreciate working with the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), who probably, as our ranking member on the Committee on Natural Resources, has probably been the strongest advocate for protecting the environment that there is in the Congress. And his point about the northwest timber situation was so absolutely on point. We were enjoying, there were zero sales coming off the Federal timber lands. Now, as my colleagues know, there are some people in my district who were not thrilled about the levels that we got to, but at least we got something going, and at the same time the Vice President worked to get 1.2 billion over 5 years to help all these communities in northern California, in Oregon, in Washington State that had been affected by this and helped them diversify their economies, helped them get into other new businesses. So it was not just leaving these people out there. They resolved the problem and then helped the communities deal with the transitional period. Mr. Speaker, that is why I think that instead of attacking the Vice President, we should be praising the Vice President for that kind of a problem-solving, constructive, sensible approach to dealing with environmental issues. I have known this man. He was in my class. We came to Congress together. He deeply cares about these issues, and I will say this, there is nobody who is more informed. He does his homework. He looks into these matters in great detail, whether it is national security issues, environmental issues or economic issues. The other point my colleague makes that is so important here is that the economy today in the United States is as good as it gets. As the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) said, here we are, we have decided as a country we are going to protect the environment, that Earth Day means something to us, and we still have the lowest unemployment, the lowest inflation. The Vice President has been in charge of doing a lot of work on reinventing government to try to deal with regulations that are unnecessary and to help in those respects. I do not think the House floor should be used to go out and attack people, especially when we have an agenda. We have to get down and get busy now and start dealing with Medicare. We have to get busy on education. We have to get busy on Social Security. We have to start passing the appropriations bills. So for the majority to say they are going to waste the time, I think, of the House getting into a partisan attack, it just does not make any sense. We should be spending that time trying to work together in a bipartisan way to deal with these issues. One of those issues, by the way, is the environment. I will say this, one thing that I am pleased about is that there is a sensible group of people on the other side of the aisle who have joined with the Democrats, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) and people of that nature who have joined with us on the important environmental issues and, frankly, I think we have a majority, a significant majority in this House in favor of protecting the environment. So I think we should make this an issue that is bipartisan, that we work together on, not trying to go out and scapegoat, take partisan advantage. There is plenty of time for politics when we get to the year 2000. I think we have to do the people's business now, work on legislation, develop a record, and we can all go home and run again in 2000 on the basis of getting something done rather than playing political games.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleague, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), for his outstanding leadership and his record as a Member of this Congress in support of the environment. All of us are saddened today of course by the events yesterday out near Denver, Colorado. Our sympathies go out to the families and to the schoolchildren who suffered through that terrible crisis yesterday, and none of us here today, and I think all of us are saddened by that, and we are not about to get into a partisan fight, but I think it is obvious to me that on the day before Earth Day we should take the floor to talk about the record of the Democratic Party in the Congress, the record of the Vice President and the President. I am proud to be a Democrat because of our consistent record over the years in support of environmental legislation. I can remember when I was a staffer working in the other body when the Clean Water Act was passed, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act was enacted, and it is interesting. As my colleagues know, there were some Presidents in the past like Richard Nixon who signed some of these important legislative vehicles into law, and there was broad bipartisan support in the 1970s here in this Congress for improving the environment. So I hope that today we will remember that this is the 29th celebration of Earth Day. The first one was April 22, 1970, and it is appropriate to call attention here in the House of Representatives to the progress that has been made in those past three decades, and certainly to the progress we have made during the 1990's to the initiative of the Clinton- Gore administration, and that is why a lot of us were concerned when we saw in the Roll Call this week that the majority leader of the majority party had decided that he was going to form a truth squad to talk about the Vice President's record on the environment. Mr. Speaker, if it is a truth squad, it is going to be a very positive report then, because I do not think there has been a public official in my career that has done more during their term of office to work on environmental issues than Vice President Gore . Now under this administration we have made great progress in protecting the environment, toughening enforcement of clean air and clean water laws, improving the safety of our drinking water and the food we eat, and, as my colleagues know, a couple years ago we had a terrible disaster in the State of Washington related to E. coli, and, as my colleagues know, I came back here, I talked to Secretary Glickman. We wanted to make certain that we got tougher standards for our meat packing plants in order to protect our kids from E. coli. Frankly, I was shocked in the Committee on Appropriations when one of my colleagues got up to offer a limitation to stop those regulations from going into effect, and it was enacted at the Committee on Appropriations level and then later was dropped. And I was glad that it was dropped here on the floor of the House because it would not have strengthened these safety regulations, it would have in fact weakened them. And so we were glad that that was prevented. Also, this administration, and I can talk to my colleagues about this, has been active in restoring and preserving roadless and wilderness areas across the Nation, and we have done all this while the Federal budget has been brought into balance and largely while the majority party here in the Congress has fought against our environmental protection efforts. So I think the Vice President, certainly Vice President Gore, must be given a large share of the credit for this administration's successes. I know from my State of Washington how involved and constructive the Vice President has been in helping us address some of our toughest environmental challenges in the last 6 years. He was there with President Clinton at the Forest Summit in early 1993, one of the first acts of the Clinton-Gore administration, helping to balance the need to protect habitat for endangered species and the need to sustain a way of life in the timber communities in our State. The Vice President's leadership was critically important at that time in assembling the Northwest Forest Plan which has been a great success. He was there for us when we needed help in approving several habitat conservation plans in Washington State which have become blueprints for balancing the requirements of protecting critical habitat and providing certainty for people and businesses who make their living off the land, and he is still there today helping Washington and three other West Coast States address the new challenge of the salmon listings. I asked the Vice President and the President if they would not add $100 million in the budget for a west coast salmon recovery initiative, and that money was added, and we are very much appreciative of it. I also asked the Vice President if he could help us with a conservation reserve enhancement program between the Department of Agriculture and the State of Washington, and he intervened to help make sure that that happened, sent Secretary Glickman again out to our State to work with us on these important issues.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, in December, a group of Microsoft's competitors and their consultants convened a briefing for congressional staff here on Capitol Hill. I was alarmed to learn recently that they used the occasion to allege that Microsoft's software posed a national security risk, and I want to take this opportunity to set the record straight. At this time when the Justice Department is pursuing Microsoft in federal court over alleged anti-trust violations, there has been a lot of misinformation promulgated by the company's competitors, and I believe it is appropriate to provide a clarification. In this instance, reference was made to an incident on the Navy's Aegis cruiser, U.S.S. Yorktown, in which the vessel's computers crashed, leaving the ship dead in the water. The allegation was made during this congressional briefing that the computers' operating system, Microsoft Windows NT, was the cause of the outage. This allegation was false, and the Navy had conceded publicly at least one month before this briefing that human error, not Windows NT, caused the failure. Mr. Speaker, while I am concerned that this incident happened at all, I commend the Navy for quickly pinpointing the problem, accepting responsibility, and taking action to prevent a recurrence. What concerns me more at this point are the specious, deceptive and irresponsible accusations which Microsoft's competitors are clearly willing to make to congressional staff and the public. Lately, Mr. Speaker, Members of Congress have seen media reports about accusations against Microsoft and proposals to break up the company or force it to relinquish its intellectual property. Much of this attention has been generated or fueled by this same group of the company's competitors. At this point I would like to urge my colleagues and their staffs to be careful, to listen to such discussions with a skeptical ear, and to seek out both sides when such allegations are made. And for the Record, Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert a copy of an article from the trade publication, Government Computer News, published November 9, 1998--more than a month before the congressional staff briefing was held. The story details the Navy's investigation and the full story behind the human error that caused the U.S.S. Yorktown's computer problem. Navy: Calibration Flaw Crashed Yorktown LAN (By Gregory Slabodkin, GCN Staff) Pascagoula, Miss.--Human error, not Microsoft Windows NT, was the cause of a LAN failure aboard the Aegis cruiser USS Yorktown that left the Smart Ship dead in the water for nearly three hours last fall during maneuvers near Cape Charles, Va., Navy officials said. The Yorktown last September suffered an engineering LAN casualty when a petty officer calibrating a fuel valve entered a zero into a shipboard database, officials said. The resulting database overload caused the ship's LAN, including 27 dual 200-MHz Pentium Pro miniature remote terminal units, to crash, they said. The petty officer, who has since left the Navy, fed the bad data into the Remote Data Base Manager, a Standard Monitoring Control System application. SMCS, developed by Canadian Aviation Electronics Inc. of Toronto, allows sailors to monitor the ship's engineering and propulsion plant for potential casualties. The system provides troubleshooting data and normally indicates whether a valve is open or closed without requiring calibration. But something went wrong. ``There was a problem in that this one valve was closed, but SMCS wasn't indicating it as such,'' said Cmdr. Eric Sweigard, the Yorktown's commanding officer. ``So this petty officer stared playing with the data. ``This was the only time it occurred, and since then there have been some changes made to prevent it from happening again,'' he said. SMCS managers are now aware of the problem of entering zero into database fields and are trained to bypass a bad data field and change the value if such a problem were to occurs again, Sweigard said. ``Now that we know what can happen, we've realized how to bring the system back quickly,'' Petty Officer 1st Class Phillip Cramer said. ``All we have to do is change the zero to any number, and everything comes right back up.'' The Yorktown was not towed into port as a result of this incident, Sweigard said. The ship restored the LAN in about two hours as it made its way to the Naval base at Norfolk, VA., under its own power, he said. ``It's not something that we desire, but ships do go dead in the water,'' Sweigard said. ``People sometimes make mistakes and systems break. The trick is we have trained our crew to react to those situations.'' The Office of the Navy's Chief Information Officer is conducting a detailed inquiry of the Yorktown incident, Navy officials said. A report from the Navy CIO is expected later this month, officials said. Point of no return Regardless of who or what was at fault for the Yorktown LAN failure, the stakes for the Navy are high. The service plans to install Smart Ship technology on all its cruisers. The Navy selected NT 4.0 as the standard operating system aboard the Yorktown for its reliability, functionality, low cost and ease of integration, said Lt. Danny Bethel, Yorktown's electronics material officer. NT runs the Yorktown's integrated bridge, engineering, condition assessment and damage control systems. The Yorktown uses dual 200-MIIz Pentium Pro systems from Intergraph Corp. of Huntsville, Ala., to run NT over a fiber- optic, asynchronous transfer mode LAN. Shipboard users can access computers from 15 locations so that the Yorktown can be driven from virtually anywhere on the ship. The Navy has reduced the Yorktown's crew from about 350 sailors to 307 personnel by adopting new policies and procedures, as well as through the use of commercial products, Sweigard said. The Navy's Western Hemisphere Group will begin installing Smart Ship technologies aboard the USS Ticonderoga and USS Thomas S. Gates early next year, said Lt. Danny Hernandez, public affairs officer for the group in Mayport, Fla. Smart Ship was the brainchild of Adm. Jeremy Boorda, the late chief of Naval operations who wanted to save money by reducing personnel aboard Navy ships while maintaining safety.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I am very concerned about the budget resolution's promises on increases in defense. We have heard some claims of an increase of $8 billion in budget authority over the President's request, but this resolution provides almost no increase in outlay authority. Now, I have served for 20 years on the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations, and I can tell my colleagues that when we are writing an appropriations budget, budget authority but no outlay to support it, we have nothing. The problem is if we do not have adequate outlays, we cannot do the 4.4 percent across-the-board pay raise and we cannot have the fix in the retirement benefits. So I believe that this budget, that I think was presented with good intent, is fatally flawed. It is not going to do the job that the Joint Chiefs need to have done. It is not going to do the job that all of us on a bipartisan basis who support defense need to have done.