Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. I see my colleague from the State of Washington who wants to address another matter. I will be brief. I commend our colleague from Florida for crafting this resolution, which will be voted on shortly, by the Senate. He is absolutely correct, it did come out of our committee with a unanimous vote. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. Res. 272. All too often when we have engaged in debate on matters related to Cuba, there have been a great deal of polemics--a lot of heat but very little light shed on the subject matter under debate. That is not the case with the resolution we are considering this afternoon. I have been critical in the past on various policies the US has pursued regarding Cuba. The audience we ought to listen to most are the people behind the projects like the Varela Project, the people who have stayed in Cuba to try to bring about change there--those who have been incarcerated for 15, 20, 25 years, in some cases longer--because of their political views. Those who have authored this Varela Project deserve a great deal of credit for having the courage to round up 11,000 signatures, which is remarkable considering some of the pressures they will be under. I commend Senator Bill Nelson of Florida for crafting this resolution. He has attempted to stick to the facts and to keep the spotlight on what is actually happening on the Island of Cuba. This resolution recognizes a remarkable occurrence--the fact that 11,000 Cubans have petitioned their government for the holding of a referendum on civil, political and economic changes they wish to see. It is also refreshing that, thus far, the government of Cuba has taken no action against the organizers of this effort. Thanks to the recent visit of former President Jimmy Carter to Havana last month, the Varela project now has international visibility. More importantly, because President Carter's speech, including references to this effort, was broadcast on Cuban TV and radio, and reprinted verbatim in the official Cuban newspaper, the Cuban people are now aware of this as well. The organizers of Varela have chosen to exercise their rights under the Cuban Constitution to submit legislative proposals to the National Assembly for its consideration. Some in the Cuban exile community have been critical of this effort because they believe it legitimizes the Cuban constitution and therefore it should be opposed. I reject that argument. For too long we in the United States have tried to tell the Cuban people what is best for them. We did so at the time of Cuban independence from Spain and we did so again during the Batista regime. The result was the 1959 Cuban revolution and the Castro Government. Let's listen to the voices inside Cuba. Let's listen to those who have stayed in Cuba and sought to change it from within. Those voices have called for the United States to engage with Cuba. Those voices have called for an end to the travel ban. If the Carter visit demonstrated anything, it demonstrated that the presence of Americans in Cuba offers opportunities for more political space in Cuba not for shoring up the Castro regime. Mr. President, the Varela project was inspired by Cuban citizens. These citizens have taken advantage of rights provided to them under the Cuban Constitution. The Cuban government should honor those rights and give serious consideration to this request. We in the United States should demonstrate self restraint and allow Cubans to retain ownership of this initiative. We need to be careful not to appropriate these internal efforts inside Cuba. If we give it too much of a label of ``made in the U.S.,'' then this project will be hurt and the effort will be hurt. We have been warned repeatedly by dissidents and human rights activists inside Cuba that, too often, if we become associated with efforts there, they are seen as nothing more than tools of United States foreign policy with regard to Cuba. We should try not to give the Castro government any opportunities to suggest that this is just another plot by the United States to attack the Cuban people. I commend the organizers of the Varela initiative and all who have joined with them in their effort to seek peaceful change in Cuba. I stand ready to listen to their voices and assist them in any way they believe will be helpful in bringing their aspirations to fruition. What is most important is not what we do, but rather what they are doing in Cuba, what they are showing by their tremendous sense of commitment to democracy and freedom. For those reasons, we are endorsing their effort with this resolution, and I strongly support it and urge its adoption. I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, there are only a few minutes before the vote. What time is the vote?

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, why don't we submit the amendments and see how the debate goes. We are under a time limit anyway, under cloture for 2 hours, an hour for either side. There is a time limit, but possibly we can truncate that. Of course, the willingness of my friend from Virginia to accept the amendment would be very appealing to the Senator from Connecticut. Amendment No. 3597 (Purpose: To add the American Servicemembers' Protection Act of 2002)

Mr. DODD. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. DODD. Let me suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD. Section 2015----

Mr. DODD. No. Let's do them together.

Mr. DODD. My point is--I appreciate that--I want to also talk about 2016.

Mr. DODD. I want to respond as well. I appreciate that. The reason 2016 is there is to say at least give the authorizers a chance to complete our work.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague's offer, and I did not object. I want to make clear to people why we ended up voting on the second-degree amendment. There is in Congress, on the State-Justice authorization bill, a conference on this very matter. Many of us have spent weeks trying to get the House to join us to resolve this matter. They have refused to meet. We included language that would force the House to meet with us or, under the supplemental, this language would die. There is still a Defense appropriations bill and there is still a foreign operations appropriations bill to which this language can be added. It is sad in a way that authorizers cannot meet on the authorizing track to resolve policy matters; that policy matters have to be included on a supplemental appropriations bill. It is regrettable that efforts are not made to force the authorizers to meet and work. Maybe this Senate is so collapsed that there is no longer any need to authorize. Every member of any authorizing committee: Henceforth know that when similar provisions come up, I will join with my friend from Virginia and let it be done on appropriations bills, not authorizing bills. I do not know why I serve on authorizing committees. I am half tempted to get off them. I do not know why I spend all these hours working on these matters and staff working on these matters to have it included in a supplemental appropriations bill. Why does anyone serve on these committees at all? We are about to adopt a very delicate and important matter--29 pages--which I promise no one here has read. There are not two people who have read it. They are going to vote on it because it has a nice title. It looks good in a 30-second spot. It is dangerous, and it is wrong. It is terrible the Senate has come to this.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, the second part of my second-degree amendment is critically important because it gives us a chance to complete our work as authorizers. By not including this--and my friend from Virginia has been candid enough to say they would not accept that as part of this agreement--then I, reluctantly, have to object to this unanimous consent request. I am prepared to vote on the second-degree amendment, that we just vote on it. Members can decide whether or not they think this provision ought to be a part of this amendment or not. But as an authorizer who has worked hard at this, along with others--we are in conference--we have a chance to come out of a committee with a product for which the Senate can be proud. I hope that is the case. To just sort of disregard that and throw this on the appropriations bill is something I reluctantly have to object to. So I urge we just have a vote on this second-degree amendment and complete the debate here and allow us to go to the Durbin amendment.

Mr. DODD. The only thing, 2016----

Mr. DODD. You have to understand that, if you go on to page 9, line 14, a waiver pursuant to subsection (a) or (b) of the prohibitions and requirements of section 3005 and 3007, and I refer back to page 6, 3005 and 3007. There it says, ``authority to initially'' waive these sections. It says, ``notifies the appropriate congressional committees''; and ``determines and reports to the appropriate congressional committees that the International Criminal Court has entered into a binding agreement.'' You have to get a waiver. You have to go back to the earlier waiver, and you have to get agreement by the ICC. That is what I mean by this.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. DODD. The Senator from Virginia has a 29-page amendment. I didn't read the whole thing. If I did, that could take more time than my remarks. This is a bill; this isn't an amendment. I have an amendment. This is a bill of 29 pages. It goes on and on. But read the bill. Don't come over with this nice title, the American Servicemembers' Protection Act. How am I going to vote against that? Read it, and then ask yourself whether or not you really want to be in a situation where ironically, in the same bill we are voting for aid to Colombia, who is a member of the ICC. Under the provisions of this, barring some waiver, maybe as long as Colombia didn't share any information either directly or indirectly with the ICC, we then would have to cut off the aid to them. Remember that this proposal is presently in conference. What do you have a Foreign Relations Committee for? What do you have a Commerce Committee for? What do you have a Judiciary Committee for? If we are just going to adopt things on the appropriations bill, why not get rid of the authorizing committees? What is the point? If I have to watch things being thrown on a supplemental appropriations bill, why do we spend the hours in committee trying to work these things out if we come in and just wipe it out and adopt it on a supplemental appropriations bill, when negotiators have no knowledge of the work that has gone into drafting the language that is sitting in a conference, trying to resolve it? Unless you are on the Appropriations Committee, you have nothing to do with this stuff. Why bring up all of the authorizing controversies and throw them on here--to satisfy Tom Delay and the House leadership who want to jam this thing through? That is what they want to do. There is no mistake about it. This isn't a serious debate about where the United States ought to be on a critical issue facing our country at a time when we were attacked, only 9 months ago, by terrorists. I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD. I want to make my point about this, and then I will be happy to engage my friend in a colloquy.

Mr. DODD. If I may reclaim the floor--and I will finish--the question of the Senator from Nevada was if my second-degree amendment is adopted as part of the Warner underlying amendment, does the Warner amendment go forward? I want to be honest with my colleagues. I think it is a better amendment; that is, the Warner amendment is a better amendment if my adaptation is adopted as a second-degree amendment. Yet, I will still have a problem with his amendment for the reasons I have outlined beyond the adoption of it. It goes too far. I will tell my colleagues that they could vote for the Warner amendment with at least some comfort here should my second-degree pass. Can you imagine the irony of this bill if my amendment is not adopted? If someone catches bin Laden and brings him to the International Criminal Court, the adoption of this amendment would prohibit us from assisting in that prosecution. I can't believe that we would want on record that kind of a judgment.

Mr. DODD. That is correct.

Mr. DODD. If the Warner amendment is agreed to, I still have a problem with it. However, I will read my amendment again. It says: Nothing in this title would prohibit the United States from rendering assistance to the international efforts to bring to justice Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovic, Osama bin Laden, and other members of Al Qaeda, leaders of Islamic Jihad, and other foreign nationals accused of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Mr. DODD. This is outrageous, this amendment. I urge my colleagues to read this. Read this, please, what we are about to do, here. This has waivers within waivers. It is 29 pages of complex contradictory provisions, in my view, that make it virtually impossible in many instances for any kind of waivers to be applied here. Further, the amendment would also prohibit the United States from providing military assistance to many countries that are parties to the Court, including such countries as Colombia, unless the President first takes the step of waiving the provisions of that particular provision. I would say what is going to happen, if our allies respond to this prohibition by barring the sharing of information they may have, which we have a strong national security interest in having--we are sort of provoking this kind of tit for tat, back and forth. I don't believe that is the way to go. There are ways of improving this treaty. This is not the way. This is about politics and votes in here. This is not about making this a stronger agreement and doing something that would make our Nation proud. I can only imagine what would have happened if this Senate had been operating in the days after the end of World War II, when only a few of Americans supported the Marshall Plan, when it wasn't popular to do so, using taxpayer money to rebuild Japan and rebuild Europe. In a sense, that is what we are trying to do here; it is to rebuild an international community to deal with the issues of justice in the world. We are now going to walk away from it entirely. It has been further said you can set up ad hoc courts. No, you can't. The U.N. system has established the ICC. That is it. Not ad hoc courts. The ad hoc courts worked when there was no ICC. Now in the establishment of an ICC, whether we like it or not, it is going to go into effect in July. That is a fact. So the ad hoc courts are not going to be set up. So when we go after these other people, or try to anyway, the only place you can bring them is to the ICC. But by not being a part of that, we take ourselves out of the game and leave ourselves only the option of militarily going after these people. That may be a viable option if nothing else works, but I don't think you want to exclude the option of taking these people to court under the rule of law. The ICC is now the only game in town. The bottom line is that the Security Council is unlikely to approve any new ad hoc tribunals when once the ICC is established. When international efforts attempt to bring Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden or the Islamic Jihad to justice, what is the United States going to be doing? What about slave traders and war criminals around the globe? We will exclude ourselves from assisting in those efforts. That is what this amendment says. We will not be a party to it. The Warner amendment gives the administration a war powers blank check. Section 3008 of the Warner amendment authorizes ``use all means necessary and appropriate'' just as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized all necessary means to release persons arrested by the ICC. This is a huge giveaway of congressional war powers authority. Do we really want to be giving open-ended authority to the executive branch to put American servicemembers at odds with the forces of some our closest allies? Are we prepared to send troops, in a sense, to The Hague? This extraordinary grant of authority in section 3008 just doesn't apply to U.S. servicemen. It extends ``to any person working on behalf of'' many foreign nations, including Egypt, Argentina, Jordan, South Korea, and the like. That goes way beyond what we are being told this amendment accomplishes. This amendment breaks faith with the Holocaust victims. Elie Weisel has warned that this bill ``would erase the legacy of U.S. leadership on international justice.'' Further, he said, for the memory of the victims of the genocide and the war crimes, this bill must be defeated. This comes from Elie Weisel. These are the people we ought to be listening to when it comes to establishing an international criminal justice court to deal with crimes against humanity and genocide. This amendment is bad for Israel. Israel signed the Rome Treaty, which is supported by the American Jewish Committee and the Religious Action Center to Reform Judaism. Most of Israel's concerns have already been favorably resolved through negotiations. But Israel is going to need the United States as a fully engaged partner in future negotiations over the definition of aggression and other issues. No matter what one thinks of the ICC, it is clear that U.S. disengagement from the Court is bad for our ally in the Middle East at a critical time, the State of Israel. For all those reasons, I hope the second-degree amendment I have offered will be agreed to. That would at least provide us an opportunity to go after the people I have mentioned should they be apprehended by the Court, and we could be a part of pursuing them. It seems to me that in the absence of that we are going to look rather ridiculous in making a claim about seeking support for antiterrorism.

Mr. DODD. It is my time. I will be finished in a minute, and then I will give my colleague all the time. Mr. President, may I finish?

Mr. DODD. I say to my colleague, you have to give assurance that none of this information either indirectly or directly would go to the Court in allowing for the prosecution of those people. I don't think the President could get that assurance. If you are going to be prosecuted in the Court and you are going to share information with the country that wants them prosecuted, how can you give a waiver doing that? That is what I mean about this bill.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, first let me explain my second-degree amendment. In fact, I will read it because it is easier to read it than go through an explanation. At the end of the amendment being offered by my friend from Virginia, we would add a new section that says: Nothing in this title shall prohibit the United States from rendering assistance to international efforts to bring to justice Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovic, Osama bin Laden, other members of Al Queda, leaders of Islamic Jihad, and other foreign nationals accused of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. This title shall cease to be effective at the end of September 30, 2002. The reason for that last section is because presently, pending in conference, is this very issue, in the Department of State-Justice authorization bill. I do not understand why we are proceeding with this matter today. Currently, we have in conference a debate going on over this very matter, why should we now add it to an appropriations bill? If we pass the Warner amendment, those who sit on the committees of jurisdiction of this matter will be excluded from the debate. This is not the place for this amendment. But first let me turn to my second-degree amendment. I hope my colleagues might accept this second-degree amendment because I cannot believe, I do not want to believe, that if we apprehend, through the international community, people I have just mentioned on my list, that under this bill we would be prohibited from assisting in the prosecution of Osama bin Laden, the Islamic Jihad, Saddam Hussein, and other members of the terrorist community in the world. My amendment merely says that despite whatever else we have said, when it comes to prosecuting these people, we would participate and help, even though we are not a signatory or a participant in the International Criminal Court. I hope my amendment is adopted and accepted. It seems to me, if not, we will have to have a vote on this amendment as the second-degree amendment to this bill. And, now let me make a case against the underlying proposal. I remind my colleagues this amendment is 29 pages long. This is a bill. This is not an amendment. It deserves to be looked at. Let me state what the bill does, and remember that our NATO allies have signed this treaty, I read from the bill: It bars intelligence of law enforcement sharing, bars the transfer of intelligence of law enforcement information which specifically relates to matters under investigation by the ICC, to the ICC, or any government which is a party to the Court. That is stunning. We are going to bar intelligence sharing with the European Community and our NATO allies because they have signed this? Two, it restricts U.S. participation in U.S. peacekeeping. It bars U.S. participation and U.S. peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations unless the President certifies the action. Third, it prohibits military assistance to any country that is a party to the ICC. I have already mentioned NATO; and major non-NATO allies are exempted, as well as Taiwan, unless they have concluded an agreement to prevent proceeding against U.S. personnel. Lastly, and this is one to pay attention to, this amendment authorizes the President to use ``all means necessary and appropriate'' to free any U.S. personnel of NATO and major non-NATO allies, including persons working on behalf of nonallied nations detained by the ICC. We now send troops to free people from the ICC? The Philippines is an allied nation, but there are terrorists in the Philippines. Now, in the future the UN could bring Phillipine terrorists to The Hague and try them, and the United States, under this, you can make a case, would have to go in and free them because they are an allied nation. Do we really want to do that? Please read this bill. This goes far beyond what may be a reasonable proposal of trying to guarantee the U.S. military personnel not be unfairly, unnecessarily, or unjustly prosecuted. The idea we are going to bar intelligence sharing, bar financial assistance, not going to participate in peacekeeping, and that we are actually going to go in, not on behalf of just U.S. personnel, but under this amendment, if adopted and agreed upon under the supplemental appropriations bill, go in and free criminals when allied personnel are subjected to the ICC. This is a 29-page amendment. This goes way beyond what I think my colleagues believe we are trying to do. Please read this amendment. We are doing things quickly around here. It is a supplemental appropriations bill, and we are trying to rush it through. If we are in conference dealing with this very same proposal or one like it, which is the place to be doing it--and we wouldn't deal with defense matters here or other issues. That is the reason we have a Foreign Relations Committee. It is the reason we have a Commerce Committee. It is the reason we have a Judiciary Committee. So we are going to turn this matter over to the Appropriations Committee and deny the other committees that have worked on this a chance to resolve it? That is not the way the Senate ought to be doing its business, in my view. Let me give my colleagues a bit of history. It was the United States at the end of World War II, people like George Marshall and Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower and Arthur Vandenberg, who stood in this Chamber and outside of it and argued for rebuilding Japan, rebuilding Europe with the Marshall Plan, setting up the U.N. system, the World Bank, the IMF. And they did it in spite of huge opposition. Only about 18 percent of the American public believed we ought to have a Marshall Plan. But we had a leader with the guts of a George Marshall and an Arthur Vandenberg and a Harry Truman who said it is the right thing to do. It may not be popular, but it is the right thing to do. When you have 133 nations, and 67 others who have ratified an international court which we argued for, we ought to be trying to do something to make it work right. I quickly add, if that treaty as written were before the Senate today, I would have a hard time voting for it. And my colleague from Virginia is right. When President Clinton signed that treaty, he recommended it not be ratified as written. However, to say we should not ratify it does not mean we should not work at it. And it does not mean you go around and penalize every one of your allies because they have. We do protect service people. Each day we protect them. We have agreements, where our servicemen are located all over the world, on how they would be handled should a matter arise, such as it has in Japan with allegations of rape by servicemen. And we deal with those matters. But the idea that we would walk away at the very hour we are trying to build support internationally for dealing with terrorists is absurd. I also note that we have been told flatly there will be no further ad hoc trials, the ICC is a U.N. system that has been set up so as not to go through it on an ad hoc basis. It means for all the future efforts our recourse only is military action. There are many who believe if we had an international criminal court in the early part of the 20th century, we might have been able to avoid some of the tragedies that occurred. Listening to people such as Elie Wiesel, today's proceedings are an insult to the Holocaust victims. Elie Wiesel says this bill is an outrage, it is wrong. The people who went through what they did as a result of the Nazis ought to understand that we are trying to set up a system so that we might avoid that kind of atrocity being repeated. This bill is poorly written. It is poorly crafted. It does great damage to the United States at a critical time when we are trying to build support in dealing with the issues of terrorism. It should be fresh in our minds the fact that at the end of the cold war, an explosion of ethnic brutality led to the necessity of creating ad hoc tribunals in Rwanda and in Yugoslavia, but there was no means available during those days to try the Idi Amins and Saddam Husseins of the world and others who evade their nation's justice and avoid the response of the international community. With very few exceptions, the world has stood helpless and silent in the face of such crimes against humanity. Finally, the world stands up. We have been begging to do it for half a century, and they finally do it. They finally adopt the Rome treaty-- 133 countries, and 67 sign it. It goes into effect in a matter of days. They are finally doing what we asked them to do for years. What do we do? We walk away from it, and we threaten them. We tell them we will not share intelligence. We tell them they do not get foreign aid or military assistance, that we will deal with them in a harsh way. I don't think that is wise. These are our NATO allies, European allies. We should be rejoicing that finally--finally--at our insistence, with the entry into force of this Court, any individual who commits genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, will be on notice that they will be prosecuted for those crimes. So these thugs around the world who are doing what they are doing--we are finally getting the world to recognize we have to stand up to them. Now we are going to go after our allies and penalize them because they signed the Rome treaty and because they believed that finally this may be a way to proceed on some of these issues. We attack the Court and those who have chosen to join it? We have nothing to fear from this Court. We have nothing to fear about strengthening the rule of law. That is what people such as Harry Truman, George Marshall, and Douglas MacArthur stood for. They believed it. We ought to be joining them historically by opposing this amendment and encouraging the improvement of this International Criminal Court, becoming a party to a great effort and not walking away from it. I do not understand in many cases why our allies continue to support our efforts when we react to them as we are doing with these amendments. Last month, in fact, the Bush administration took the unprecedented step of unsigning the International Criminal Court. Ironically, I offered an amendment at that time when we were debating the issue to say I will accept this but give the President the authority to waive all of this. He only got 48 votes in this Chamber. This President--not the past President, this President--got 48 votes in this Chamber, deferring to the President to decide whether or not to invoke the provisions of this particular bill. Here we are now even walking away from that. I point out that when the President decided to unsign this treaty it was an unprecedented act in the history of this Nation. I cannot find a single example in our more than 200 years of great history where an American President of either party ever unsigned something like this. What does that say to the countries around the world that we get to sign treaties with us when they decide to unsign them in the future? What kind of precedent is that? You didn't have to ratify that treaty. But for an American President to unsign it, while we encourage people to live up to their agreements when an American President signs them, is going to create real problems for us down the road, I predict. On May 6, 2002, Under Secretary of State Grossman announced that the United States would make its objections to the ICC clear through nullification of its signature on the ICC's Rome statute and said the United States would seek agreements with other countries to remove American servicemen. Mr. Grossman also said: Not withstanding our disagreements with the Rome treaty, [again, the Rome treaty was our idea] the United States respects the decisions of those nations who have chosen to join the ICC. Is this respecting these other nations, when we go down that list of the provisions of this bill? Is this respecting those who have signed it? We bar intelligence or law enforcement sharing. We are not going to participate in U.N. peacekeeping in their countries. We are going to prohibit military assistance. And we threaten to use military force to go in. That is respecting the decision of those who signed on to this agreement? Ambassador Pierre Prosper, who is head of the War Crimes Office, said: The President has made clear that what he wanted to do today was make our intentions clear and to not take aggressive action or wage war, if you will, against the ICC or the supporters of the ICC. Read that statement and then read this bill that you are going to vote on shortly and ask whether that is consistent with the administration's position. Read what we do here under this amendment if adopted. I wonder if our colleagues know the amendment that is being offered is called The Hague Invasion Act by our allies because of its extreme provisions authorizing the use of armed force. All but one other NATO nation completely and strongly backs the ICC, and the entire European Union has ratified the ICC and strongly demarched the United States, indicating disappointment with the U.S. signature nullification. The amendment by the Senator from Virginia forces the United States into a dangerous and counterproductive game of diplomatic chicken with our closest allies at a time when the alliance is already under great strain, and throws salt in the open wounds of our closest allies in the war on terror, and I think it is dangerous. The amendment is a very complex amendment. It is 29 pages. There are waivers within waivers which turn out not to be waivers at all because the conditions of the waivers are unattainable in many instances. This is not an issue we should be considering as part of an emergency supplemental appropriations bill, but as I said earlier, it truly belongs in the conference where it is, with the members of the committees of jurisdiction debating it. This matter is in that conference. That is the place it ought to be considered. The Warner amendment would prevent the United States from participating in peacekeeping or peacemaking activities pursuant to the United Nations in countries that happen to be members of the Court. There is a significant amount of assistance in this bill for Colombia on which we are voting here. I wonder if our colleagues know that Colombia ratified this treaty on June 5 and is now a party with the Court. President Pastrana said ratification with the ICC would send a message to the FARC, the revolutionary group in Colombia, that it would be held accountable for the murder of 119 civilians who took refuge in a church in that country. The Warner amendment would prevent the President from sharing national security information with a court or any country which is a party to the Court, absent assurance the information would not go directly or indirectly to the Court. I don't think you could ever give that assurance. If faced with an effort to prosecute the FARC and Colombian request for assistance to go after the people who murdered those 119 innocent civilians, under the provisions of this amendment, if adopted, the United States would refuse cooperation. I think that is outrageous, I think that is sad, if it is adopted.

Mr. DODD. I thank the Chair. Madam President, why don't I allow my friend from Virginia to make his case on his amendment, and then I will respond to that by talking about what my second-degree amendment does. That way we can have some order to the debate. I know the Senator from Georgia wants to be heard on this as well. There may be others who want to be heard. In fact, I invite my colleague to look at the second-degree amendment. He might be willing to accept it. We can have a short debate on the amendment--it is a long amendment, 29 pages. Nonetheless, we can focus on that amendment if the second-degree amendment is acceptable. I will let him look at the amendment and make his case for the first-degree amendment.