Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I want the gentleman to know that I have supported Chairman Glickman, I am supporting and cosponsoring the amendment of the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Conyers, and the President supports, as does the Aspin-Brown Commission, making the aggregate dollar number known to the American public. I would only say one thing to the gentleman about his statement about Kuwait. George Bush, as President, the first thing he stated after the invasion was that it was not an intelligence failure. We knew several days ahead of time, but again, it is always hard for the American Government, the national command authority, when it is getting differing opinions from government heads in the area that, well, Saddham will not do this, to take action. It was not a failure of intelligence. We did have 2 or 3 days of warning. It is acting on that warning that is always difficult under our form of government. So I do not want to disparage the intelligence agencies here. They gave them the information. The leadership could not make a decision that quickly.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I just would say we tried our very best to ensure that. We supported Mr. Deutsch's steps to reform the NRO such as appointing a chief financial officer. We found the money in the first instance, and we now have a more accurate figure.

Mr. DICKS. The NRO did not.

Mr. DICKS. They did not know what the total was.

Mr. DICKS. At the time they discovered it.

Mr. DICKS. Last year.

Mr. DICKS. Several months ago, in February or March of this year, so there was direct action taken. I take some umbrage at this, because it was the staff on our committee, and the minority staff in particular, that were at the forefront of discovering this problem and bringing it to the administration's attention.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would say to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts, first of all, this was not without penalty. The Director and the Deputy Director of the NRO were replaced by the administration and a new head was brought in.

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

Mr. DICKS. The sum of $200 million was used.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman was a little more accurate in his latter phrases. I want to make sure that what we did, what the Defense Department did, was take some of the excess money and use it for Bosnia. Then they did not have to come to Congress, and we approved that.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman wants to read the Record back, that is exactly what he said.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman, I know, is not intending to say that. There was no evidence whatsoever that funds were spent for anything that was unauthorized.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, another point I would make on this is that in a sense this money was never misspent at the NRO. Apparently there was big money misspent over at the Agriculture Department on things that were not supposed to be. The NRO money ultimately would have been spent on programs that had been authorized and appropriated by the Congress, and the irony of this is that we are going to have to restore this money at some future date. We will have to do that because of the amount of money that is required to build these very elaborate, complicated intelligence system. So we took the money away in the short term, but it is going to have to be restored in the long term.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's clarifying that point. I would like to also say that we are not just talking about stopping these satellites. When you talk about the satellites, they are able to gather information that gives our country a warning about terrorists and various terrorist organizations and what they are doing and their plans. So when we have things like the World Trade Center, I think it is a sobering thought that terrorists are now able to do things like this in the United States. That is another reason why in my judgment we ought to protect this budget. This budget is not only important to our military deployed abroad, but it also gives us the ability to find these various terrorist organizations and what their plans and intentions are, some of which are not good for the United States.

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

Mr. DICKS. Let me point out I think we have disciplined an agency pretty well when we take away at least 50 percent immediately of the carryover funds. As soon as we found them out, we took those away. The Director appointed a special task force. He appointed a new financial officer, fired the Director and the Deputy Director, and said we are going to get this thing cleaned up and straightened out. Now, the problem is that what we are doing here is coming in with a punitive approach and saying even though we have done all those things we have to do something more. I would argue that if both my colleagues would come up, we could go through this program and show them that what we are talking abut here are NRO satellites that are vitally important to the military. It is the men and women that we have deployed all over this world who are going to be denied important intelligence if we do not modernize and improve our imagery and satellites. It is not some bureaucrats whose hands we are slapping. It is not an accountant over at the NRO. What we are doing is denying important intelligence to our military people. So I would urge my colleagues not to do this. This is not the right way to go. It is too significant an amount of money. Mr. Deutch has done the right things here. We have got to give him an opportunity to clean up this mess, and he is doing it. But what we are doing here is punishing him because we are undermining the architecture that he has set up for the modernization of our satellites and that was also set up by Mr. Woolsey, another Democrat and appointee of this administration. They both would say that this would undermine and hurt the efforts to improve our satellite capability.

Mr. DICKS. I just want to say that we are actually cutting the NRO by 5 percent.

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

Mr. DICKS. And if the gentleman will yield further, that is on the NRO portion.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, what we can say is it is 5 percent below the Clinton budget request.