Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Jane Harman, a very outstanding member of our committee and a member of the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dixon] who has been one of the most attentive, hardworking members of our committee.

Mr. DICKS. I wanted to just say that I concur in all the statements made by the chairman. This is also the understanding that I have of this provision.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise in support of the pending legislation. Mr. Chairman, first of all, let me say that I really agree with what the chairman has just mentioned. Ken Kodama has served this committee extraordinarily well. He has been a part of our senior Democratic staff and just one of the most professional people we have. We wish him and his family well in his future endeavors and compliment him again on his outstanding work. I want to congratulate the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss], the chairman, for the effort he has made to ensure that the committee functions in a bipartisan fashion as much as possible. This bill reflects this effort. He is to be commended for it. Few legislative products can achieve total harmony, and we do have some differences with the majority on this measure. Those differences, while relatively few in number, do concern some important matters. But I very much appreciate the determination of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] that the issues on which we could not reach agreement within the committee would have a substantive rather than a political basis. I also want to applaud the committee staff for their outstanding work and professionalism on this bill and on the other work of the committee. H.R. 1775 provides for a slight increase in funding over the amounts authorized by the Congress for intelligence and intelligence-related activities in fiscal year 1997 and the amounts requested by the President for fiscal year 1998. Although these increases are small, 1.7 percent above the amount authorized by Congress last year, and 0.7 percent above the amount requested by the President this year, I recognize that there are some who believe that we are already spending too much money on intelligence. I would say to those holding that view that the provision of accurate and timely intelligence to policymakers and military commanders is absolutely critical to our national security. The collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of intelligence is in many cases reliant on technologies which are both rapidly changing and quite expensive. The alternative to making the investments necessary to maintain superiority in these areas is to accept an increased risk of not obtaining that critical information which might make a difference in a trade negotiation, disrupt the plans of a terrorist or permit the tracking of chemical warfare agents. In my judgment, the authorization levels in this bill are adequate to ensure that the intelligence agencies continue to provide the kind of information essential to sound policy determinations and successful military operations. I do not believe that a reduction in those amounts would be wise. Although it is important that intelligence activities be adequately funded, it is equally important that the available funds be used in ways which maximize their impact. Spreading resources too thinly by trying to cover everything is a good way of ensuring a general level of inadequate performance. We should remember that, although intelligence is information, not all information used by policymakers or military commanders is provided appropriately by intelligence agencies. In my judgment, the intelligence community best performs its function when it concentrates on providing information unobtainable by other means. It is essential that intelligence agencies not be tasked either by others or by themselves to acquire information which is more readily available from other parts of Government or is of little utility. The gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss], the chairman, has described the bill, but I want to note my concern with section 608, which would terminate the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office [DARO]. I believe it is clear that changes are coming to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and support offices generally in the Pentagon. These offices can and should be streamlined. But that result should be the product of decisions made after all available evidence is gathered rather than before. In the case of section 608, the committee took action without a single hearing. In fact, the only evidence formally presented to the committee was laudatory of DARO and strongly advocated its continuation. I expect that we will use some of the time before conference to better explore DARO's role and its future. I also expect that we will review some of the other actions taken in the bill on certain National Reconnaissance Office programs. Changes in the direction of highly complex activities should be undertaken with a clear understanding of their likely consequences. Mr. Chairman, despite these areas of reservation and disagreement, this is on balance a good bill, which I intend to support. It can be made better in conference, and I shall work with the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss], the chairman, toward that end. The bill deserves the support of the House today, however, and I urge that it be approved. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] for the purpose of a colloquy with the chairman because of her responsibilities as the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs of the Committee on Appropriations. (Ms. PELOSI asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I certainly agree with the gentleman. I would oppose going to the individual amounts, but I think the aggregate will help us with the American people.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman for his initiative. To my friend who says this is a slippery slope, we can say what the number is and say, out of that we fund the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, NIMA, right down the line. We do not have to tell them what that second amount is. I think it would do a lot to help the American people understand how many different entities are funded by this budget and how much of it is in the Department of Defense. We have heard all kinds of misstatements here today on the floor. I think we look kind of foolish. Numbers are in the New York Times. They are not that far off. They are wrong but they are not that far off. In my judgment, it is time for us to let the American people know. I think the gentleman deserves to be commended for his initiative.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I think this bill is intelligence. We are the ones that just authorized it. So that is pretty much what it is.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I am going to vote for the Conyers amendment. I voted for it for the last several years, because I think we ought to have that number out there. I will tell the gentleman this, it is a significant cut.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the rule and also urge my colleagues to support this bill. Our good friend, the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], has made a few comments in the well. I want my colleagues to know it was the Democratic staff of the Committee that uncovered the problem at the NRO. I want you also to know that both the authorizers and the appropriators have taken the money, the excess money that was there and utilized it for other programs. So we have dealt with that problem. In fact, I worry a little bit that we may have been a little too harsh on the NRO, but I will report to the House in my judgment we have solved the financial problems. Mr. Deutch, before he left, brought in new financial people at the NRO. I think they are doing a very fine job. I think the problems that were there have been corrected. It is part of the process of oversight. We found the problem. We corrected it. We made sure that whatever reserves are there are only those that are necessary to keep the program going. Now, this committee operates on a very bipartisan basis and I think this bill is a good bill. The gentleman is correct, we are going to have some very serious debate here on amendments. I urge my colleagues to support the rule. But I also would remind every one that we have cut defense by over $100 billion between 1985 and 1995. Of course, the intelligence budget is part of the defense budget. And it has received cuts as well. So to say that this area has not received reductions simply is inaccurate. Anyone who wants to come up and see the numbers in the committee is welcome to do so.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I thought it was 60 minutes with all amendments thereto.

Mr. DICKS. Further reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, do we understand that we would roll the votes and we would have a 15-minute vote followed by two 5-minute votes if there were 3 votes requested? Is that the understanding?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, is it my understanding that the chairman on the second amendment might have a substitute amendment?

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I think that we ought to accept what the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Waters] has said here. She is willing to accept this compromise. I would like to see this be a bipartisan study supported on both sides of the aisle, and I would urge that we all yield back our time and have a vote and move forward.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to rise in support of the substitute, and I appreciate the efforts of the gentlewoman from Los Angeles, who has been very interested in this subject. I think the language drafted by the chairman gets to what we all want to get to. Let me just say that when this happened, I had some serious reservations about the studies that were done by the Defense Department, the work that was done by the CIA on this. I asked Mr. Deutch, when he was still the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to have the Inspector General start a study. So the chairman is right, the Inspector General has already engaged in this, and particularly about the destruction of chemical weapons at a storage site in Khamisiyah. I also asked them to look at the whole question of what did the CIA know, when did it know it, and what did it say to the Department of Defense and to the Army and to the other units that were there about their knowledge about what was stored at these various sites. This is one of those situations where knowledge may not have been shared in a timely way, and there was destruction of some of these weapons, and I am not sure we still, even to this day, know exactly what all those weapons were. I am worried that this goes beyond just chemical weapons; that we may have had biological or other infectious agents that were released on our own people. And whether it was done by the Iraqis or it was done in our destroying these weapons, there are a lot of unanswered questions. I think one of the big problems here is the Department of Defense did such a lousy job of investigating this thing initially that it created suspicion everywhere. We had all these veterans coming home with these various symptoms and it just did not add up, and the Department's continued denial after denial after denial, and then finally having to say, oh yes, we may have made a big mistake here and there may have been something that actually happened, is one of the reasons why there is such suspicion, not only on the part of Members of Congress but on the part of the American people, about what actually happened over there. That is why I insisted with Mr. Deutch that the Inspector General, Fred Hintz, out at the CIA, would do the investigation. I did not want the CIA, in essence, investigating itself. I wanted the independent Inspector General of the CIA tasked for this. So I think what this study does is expand upon that, and I think it does get the information that my colleague wants sooner by making the date August. I am certainly glad it is on her birthday. I hope the report is something that she will find joyous. And hopefully this is not a report we will all be embarrassed about, and I hope it is not. The bottom line here is I think the chairman has crafted a good compromise. I would like to see us accept it and then move on to the next amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. DICKS. I thank the Chair.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, does that mean that the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] has to re-request a recorded vote when we go back to vote on this at a later point?

Mr. DICKS. I have a parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the only thing I would want to maybe say to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], is that if we take the money away from the intelligence community, that money is not going to go to NIH, it is not going to go to Medicare or Medicaid. It is going to go to defense spending. That is where it is going to go. It is going to go to somewhere else in the defense budget, because under the 602(b), the defense budget is there. We do not take money from it and move it somewhere else. It is going to be either intelligence or something else in defense. We think that this is the right balance between the two.

Mr. DICKS. I appreciate the gentleman's yielding this time to me, and without fear of disclosure here my good friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], and he and I voted together on disclosing the overall number, but he asked me a very important question. He asked me how much the intelligence budget has been cut in nominal terms and figuring inflation. Now this does not violate any intelligence prohibitions. I want to tell my colleagues that between 1992 and 1997 in nominal terms the cut is 13.4 percent. In real terms, considering a 2-percent inflation rate, which is very, very low, the cut has been 21.4 percent. So I would point out to our colleagues we have cut this budget. We have also cut defense by about 40 percent. Now I still believe that intelligence is a force multiplier. By being able to use these national technical means, being able to use UAV's, by getting this information to our commanders, we can save American lives, and I believe that we carefully went through this budget. We added some money, we cut some money, and Mr. Young is here. We did the same thing over the last 2 days in the Appropriations Subcommittee on National Security. So we do not always agree with everything the President does. We see some areas, for example, in analysis where we think more needs to be done. We added money for that. So I would urge the committee to stay with the recommendations of our bipartisan Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Fifteen members voted for this, and I think that the right thing to do is to stay with that recommendation, I would stress again when you consider inflation, we've cut this budget by 21.4 percent since 1992.