Bob Graham

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, obviously I am very touched by those kind remarks by my friend, colleague, and fellow Floridian, Senator Nelson. To speak to the broader point he made, using the example of seaport security, one of the things we as a nation cannot allow ourselves to lapse into is a practice of waiting until one of our infinite number of vulnerabilities has actually been attacked before we start the process of attempting to make it more secure. We have been attacked in the last 2 months basically in two areas: The conversion of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction, and the use of the Postal Service to distribute anthrax. We don't know yet what the origin of that second attack was. We are now responding. We have passed massive economic assistance to the airline industry. We have now in conference legislation passed by both Houses in the area of airline and airport security. We will soon have a major bioterrorism bill before us, largely in response to the anthrax issue. Our Postal Service is now moving at the fastest possible pace to install technologies to check our mail to see that it is safe. While we are doing that, and that is certainly appropriate, we cannot forget all these other vulnerabilities. If you had asked me 5 years ago what I thought was the more likely to be the target of a terrorist, a commercial airline or a container delivered at an American seaport, I would have said the container. Why would I have said that? Because the security standards in our seaports are substantially less rigorous than at airports and airlines, even before September 11. Just a few statistics. We have 361 seaports, as Senator Nelson has outlined. Into those 361 seaports today and every day are delivered an average of 16,000 containers from noncontiguous nations; that is, not from Mexico or Canada but from the rest of the noncontiguous world. Of those 16,000, less than 3 percent are subject to close inspection. If a terrorist wanted to use one of those containers as a weapon of mass destruction, as 757s were used as weapons of mass destruction on September 11, frankly his chances of detection would be minimal. I have gotten some criticism making that same statement, suggesting that I am disclosing some confidential information of which the terrorists might rush to take advantage. I am certain the terrorists are well aware of those statistics because they have been widely reported. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article which appeared in yesterday's New York Times, based on their analysis of one relatively moderate-size port in America, the one at Portland, ME, and its vulnerabilities.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I am proud to be here with my partner, Senator Hutchison and the Senate majority leader to join in this important discussion. Just a few hours ago, the Finance Committee reported out the TANF Supplemental Grants Act of 2001. This bill is critical to the ability of 17 States to help their most vulnerable citizens move from welfare to work. If this bill is not passed into law, several states will be forced to scale back their welfare reform efforts, which have shifted in recent years to include support services for low-income working families and efforts to address the multiple barriers to employment that face a substantial share of the families that remain on welfare. In these difficult economic times, States will require all available resources to provide cash assistance and work support services to low income families who have been displaced from their jobs. Our bill will give these States the tools necessary to do just that. I thank Senator Hutchison for her leadership on this issue, Senators Baucus and Grassley for making a commitment to the passage of this bill by reporting it out of committee today, and Senator Daschle for his dedication to ensuring the bill's passage into law this year.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, it is my hope that today as we pass this antiterrorism legislation and as we will in future days take action on issues of resources to fight antiterrorism and changes in organizational structure, we will be making as significant a national statement about our will and determination to eliminate the scourge of global terrorism as previous generations did about other scourges that afflicted our country. It was not that long ago that America was beset by the scourge of organized crime. Many of our communities had been seriously invaded by these insidious influences of organized crime. People, many of whom occupy the chairs that we now occupy in this very Chamber, decided a half century or more ago that was intolerable and we would take the necessary steps to recapture the essential values of our country. I think it is fair to say we live in a much safer and more secure America because of those efforts. I hope that in years in the future those who occupy this Chamber will look back with a similar belief that the actions we are taking now have had a similar effect in terms of making this a more secure, not just America but world for our children and grandchildren. With that hope, I wish to talk about a few of the provisions of this legislation that relate directly to America's intelligence community and the role it will play in securing that future. First, a bit of history. For most of America's history, we have been extremely uncomfortable with the idea of clandestine intelligence. It ran contrary to our basic spirit of national openness. While the British have had a well-developed intelligence system since the Napoleonic wars, our first adventure in this field really is a product of the Second World War, and as soon as the war was over, the military intelligence services were essentially collapsed. Two years later, President Truman recognized that with the advent of the Soviet Union and the development of what we came to know as the Iron Curtain that separated the Soviet Union from the free world, we were going to have to have some capability to understand what this large adversary was about and therefore prepare ourselves. So in 1947 the National Security Act was adopted which created the Central Intelligence Agency and from that the other intelligence agencies which now constitute America's intelligence community. For 40 years that intelligence community was focused on one target: the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. We knew that community. The United States had been dealing with Russia since even before John Quincy Adams was our Ambassador in St. Petersburg. It was a homogenous enemy. Most of the countries spoke Russian, and therefore if we had command of that language, we could understand what most of the Warsaw Pact nations were saying. It was also an old style symmetrical enemy: We were matching tanks for tanks, nukes for nukes. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world changed in terms of intelligence requirements. Suddenly, instead of one enemy, we had dozens of enemies. Suddenly, instead of having command of one language which made us linguistically competent, there were scores of languages we had to learn to speak. In Afghanistan alone, there are more than a half dozen languages with which one must have some familiarity in order to understand what is being said there. And instead of symmetrical relationships, we now have small groups of a dozen or a hundred or a thousand or so against a nation the size of the United States of America. So our intelligence community has been challenged to respond to this new reality. This legislation is going to accelerate that response. Let me focus, in my limited time, on three areas within this legislation that I think will be significantly beneficial. The first goes to the reality that we have had, in large part, out of this history of unease with dealing with clandestine information, an orientation to treat terrorist activities as crimes and put up yellow tape, secure the crime scene, hold the information very close because we did not want to have it infected so that the evidence could not be used at a subsequent trial that would lead to the conviction of the perpetrator. In the course of that, we also shut off the ability to share information which might allow us to anticipate the future actions of those same perpetrators and interdict an act of terrorism before it had occurred. We take some significant steps to overcome that orientation by the provisions contained in this legislation which will require the sharing of criminal justice information with intelligence agencies. I underscore the word ``require'' because even as recently as today's Washington Post, there is an article describing the legislation which uses the term ``the authority to share,'' as if this were a permissive requirement. In fact, the legislation very explicitly makes it mandatory. I refer to page 308 beginning at line 9 where it states that the Attorney General or the head of any other Department or Agency of the Federal Government with law enforcement responsibilities shall --shall-- expeditiously disclose to the Director of Central Intelligence pursuant to guidelines developed foreign intelligence acquired by an element of the Department of Justice or any element of such Department or Agency, as the case may be, in the course of a criminal investigation. We are closing that gap which has in the past been a major source of limitation and frustration to our ability to predict and interdict future actions. Second, we are dealing with the issue of the empowerment of the Director of Central Intelligence. We tend to think of the CIA as being the lead agency for our intelligence community. In fact, that is not correct. If one looks at an organizational chart, across the top is the Director of Central Intelligence. Under the Director of Central Intelligence is a series of agencies, of which the CIA is one, which have operational responsibility. If one looks at that chart, one assumes the Director of Central Intelligence is the head coach, the leader with the ability to command and control the intelligence community. In fact, because of other authorities, including budget authority and personnel authorities and some culture of individuality by agencies, the Director of Central Intelligence has not been fully empowered. We take a step in this legislation towards giving the Director of Central Intelligence greater authority and in a very significant area. We have a limited capability to eavesdrop on the communication of potential adversaries, including terrorists. Under the current structure, it is primarily the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which actually operates and targets our electronic surveillance, as to which target will be listened to first if we cannot listen to everybody because we do not have, for instance, enough people who can understand the exotic language in which the communication is being spoken. This legislation will establish the fact it is the Director of Central Intelligence who will decide what the strategic priorities for the use of our electronic surveillance will be. So if the Director of Central Intelligence is aware we face a terrorist attack from a specific terrorist organization which speaks a specific language, those communications will be given the priority for purposes of how we will use our available electronic surveillance capability. The Director of Central Intelligence will then also, at the back end of that process, have the primary responsibility for determining how to disseminate that information. The nightmare that exists, and will exist until we complete a full review of what happened on September 11, is we are going to find someplace a tape of a conversation we secured which will disclose what would have been key information as to what was being prepared, what plot was being matured which resulted in the terror of September 11. These provisions are intended to prioritize, on the front end, what we will gather information against and, on the back end, who will be first in line to get the information that has come from that surveillance. A third provision goes to the criticism that the intelligence community has become risk adverse; that we have been reticent to take on the hardest targets because they are hard, because they may result in failure and nonaccomplishment of the mission. As President Kennedy said as we started our space program, we start this not because it is easy but because it is hard and it will challenge us to our fullest. One of the areas in which we have become risk adverse has been the area of hiring foreign nationals to do work which it is very difficult for Americans to do, not because we are not smart, capable people, but if we are going to hire someone or secure the services of someone who can get close to an ominous figure such as Osama bin Laden, frankly, it is probably somebody who is pretty similar to bin Laden. It is someone who can gain his confidence. That may well mean he has been an associate of bin Laden in the past, has engaged in some of the activities we so abhor. Today there is a sense within the intelligence community we should not hire people who have that kind of background because they are potentially unreliable but also because they bring a dirty background. This legislation, through a sense-of-the-Congress statement, reverses that and says our priority goal in employing persons to assist in our antiterrorism activity should be to acquire services of persons who can be of greatest assistance to us in determining the plans and intentions of the terrorists, even if it means we might have to hire someone with whom we would not personally like to have a social or other relationship. That is a statement of our commitment to this intelligence community; that we, the Congress, are prepared to back them up when they take some of these high-risk undertakings and that we will understand there is the risk of failure but it is better to risk failure than to be cowered by the unwillingness to engage in important but high-risk ventures. So those are three illustrative provisions which are in the intelligence section of this legislation, which I think have the potential of the same impact on our capacity to rid the world of the scourge of terrorism as similar actions have so contributed to our ability to reduce the influence of organized crime within this Nation. I urge the adoption of this conference report.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, several provisions of title VIII would establish criminal prohibitions or expand existing criminal laws to deter terrorist conduct. My understanding is that the Senate certainly does not intend title VIII to criminalize otherwise lawful and authorized United States Government activities. Would the Senator confirm my understanding of the intent and effect of title VIII?

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, at 5 o'clock we are going to vote on an amendment which I have offered, which would restore the 22 percent cut that is contained in the subcommittee report as it relates to the Andean Region Initiative. This is funding which would provide for the four countries of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, with funds divided approximately 50 percent to Colombia and 50 percent to the other three; 50 percent of the funds for law enforcement and military activities, 50 percent for economic and social development programs. This is the second chapter of the Plan Colombia which this Congress, under the leadership of President Clinton, adopted last year. It is also the continuation of the only program that we will have left to provide a means by which to suppress the supply of cocaine into the United States from its primary sources, which are these four countries and today primarily Colombia. I have listened to some of the arguments that have been made in opposition to this amendment. They raise questions about the accountability of this program, raise questions about the efficacy of this program, and raise positive comments about the activities that are going to be funded with the 22 percent of the fund that is going to be taken away from this account. This is a program which has only been in effect since October 1 of last year, for less than 13 months. I believe it has accomplished significant good. It has helped professionalize the army of Colombia, which has made it more able to launch effective attacks against drug dealers. It has begun to show the ability to reduce the amount of coca being produced in Colombia. It has stabilized the governments of, particularly, Peru and Ecuador. But beyond all of those positive benefits, I think the fundamental benefit today, on October 24, is that this is the longest running U.S. partnership program to attack terrorism in the world. In this case, the terrorists happen to also be drug dealers. We are attacking them in their uniform as drug dealers, but, in so doing, we are also attacking them in their 50-year role as terrorists, formerly ideological terrorists, now essentially thugs. They have gone from Che Guevara to being Al Capone. I believe it would send the worst possible signal to the world that we are trying to unite in an effective program against terrorism, to be pulling the plug, essentially, on the effort that we have underway against one of the most vicious terrorist groups in the world, a group which in the year 2000, the last year for which statistics are available, committed 44 percent of the all the terrorist assaults against U.S. citizens and interests in the world. Mr. President, 44 percent of them were committed in Colombia. That is an indication of how concentrated, how deep, and how violent the terrorist activity is there, directed against U.S. citizens, to say nothing of the assaults against Colombian citizens and persons from other nations who are in Colombia. I hope to reserve a few moments to close, but I urge in the strongest terms the adoption of this amendment which will recommit ourselves to a strong U.S. partnership with our neighbors in Latin America, a strong program of attacking drugs at the source as we build up our capability to reduce the demand in the United States and to avoid sending the signal that all of our rhetoric about how strongly we are prepared to resist terrorism is just that--rhetoric. Because when it comes to actual performance, we failed.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I move to waive the Budget Act and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, in my 11 seconds, I want to direct them to our friends on the other side of the aisle. Our amendment would restore the recommendation which has been made by President Bush of his best assessment of what is necessary in order to accomplish the purposes. The President challenged us today to answer the question: Is America prepared to stay in the war against terrorism? His answer was: Absolutely. If we want to say, absolutely, we need to vote yes for the amendment that will restore the funds to the longest running antiterrorism campaign in which the United States is currently engaged.

Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the request by Senator Kyl be modified to also include Senators Grassley and McCain as cosponsors.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, it was certainly not my intention to do that. In fact, I wanted to use the 39 seconds that were left to me. I wanted to use them. And there might be a few more people in the Chamber than is the case now. I suggest the absence of a quorum without that counting against the time of either the Senator from Vermont or the Senator from Florida.

Mr. GRAHAM. Will the Senator from Minnesota yield for a moment?

Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, it is my intention to send to the desk an amendment that will restore the funding recommended by the President for the Andean Regional Counterdrug Initiative. I consider this to be a central issue in the U.S. relationship with our neighbors in Latin America, but maybe even at this time a more important statement as to our commitment to the war against terrorism. To develop these points, I want to first give a brief resume of the history of this region over the past several years. By the late 1990s, Colombia and the Andean region were nations in peril and at risk. Colombia had been one of the most stable countries in Latin America during most of the 20th century. It had a phenomenal economic record, with some 50 years of unbroken increases in its rate of gross domestic product growth. It also was the oldest democracy on the continent of South America, with a long tradition of transition of power from one political party to the other without violence. Unfortunately, it was also a region which had been infected by strong guerrilla groups. These guerrilla groups had their origin in various nuances of Marxism. They were guerrillas who represented Soviet Marxism, guerrillas who represented East German Marxism, Chinese Marxism, North Korean Marxism, Cuban Marxism. They were ideologically oriented. Over time, they had become less political and more economic. They had made the transition from being Lenin to being Al Capone in their orientation. Something else was developing in the countries in the Andean region during the last half of the 20th century, and that was a surge of illicit drug production, starting with marijuana and then moving to cocaine, with a very high percentage of the world's cocaine being produced in this region. The drug traffickers who were producing cocaine were of the General Motors format: They were highly centralized. They had a CEO. They had a vertically integrated process that started by financing the farmers who grow the raw coca to the ultimate distribution and financing of that system in the United States and Europe. We made a major effort--we, the civilized world, with the United States playing a key role--to take down these highly centralized drug organizations--the Medellin cartel, the Cali cartel. After a long period of significant investment and loss of life, we were successful. We thought that by taking off the head of the snake of the drug cartels we would kill the rest of the body. In fact, what we found in the late 1990s was that these decapitated snakes were beginning to reconstitute themselves, and they were moving away from the General Motors model towards a more entrepreneurial model; whereas they used to have vertically integrated parts of the drug trafficking chain, now they have multiple small drug traffickers doing each phase, from the growing in the field, to the transporting, to the financing of the drug trade. For a period of time, these new entrepreneurial drug traffickers found themselves at risk because they did not have the kind of security protection that the old centralized system had, and so they turned to these now economic guerrillas, the Al Capones of Colombia, and made a pact with them. The pact was: We will pay you well if you will provide us security so that we can conduct our illicit activities. For a while, that was the relationship, but then the Al Capones figured out: We are providing the reason and the capability of these drug traffickers to do their business. They are making a lot more money in drug trafficking than we are providing the security for the drug traffickers; why don't we become the drug traffickers ourselves? By the end of the nineties, the drug trade, in particular in Colombia, had been largely taken over by the former ideological guerrillas who had become Al Capones and now were becoming drug traffickers. In addition to the two things I have indicated were occurring, the change in the way in which the drug trade was organized and, second, the role of the guerrillas in the drug trade, a third thing was occurring in the late 1990s, and that was, after this long unbroken period of economic progress and the benefits that was providing for the people of the Andean region, particularly Colombia, they started to go into economic decline. The two previous events were a principal reason for that decline: Both domestic and outside investors became leery about investing in Colombia and other Andean pact countries because of their concern about the level of violence and the influence the drug trade was gaining over those countries. Just 18 months ago, unemployment in Colombia exceeded 20 percent as many of its traditional legal businesses went out of business. Into this very difficult environment came a new leader for Colombia: President Pastrana. President Pastrana was not a person who was unknowing or immune from these forces that were shaping his country. He himself had been kidnapped by the guerrillas and held for a considerable period of time. Members of his family had been kidnapped and assassinated by the guerrillas. He was elected on a reform platform that he was going to, as the hallmark of his administration, lean toward a resolution of all three of these issues: The guerrillas, the drug trafficking, and begin to build a base for a new period of economic expansion. The key to this became Plan Colombia which President Pastrana developed early in his administration. Plan Colombia is a very misunderstood concept, particularly from the perspective of the United States. I like to present it as being a jigsaw puzzle with 10 pieces. That total puzzle, once assembled, was a comprehensive plan to rid Colombia of the influence of the guerrillas, to suppress the drug trafficking and large-scale production of cocaine, and to engage in social and economic and political reform within Colombia, to transform Colombia into a fully functioning, modern, democratic, capitalistic nation state. Of those 10 pieces that made up that total picture of Plan Colombia, the Colombians were going to be responsible for 5 of those 10 pieces. The total cost of Plan Colombia was estimated at $8 billion, and the Colombian Government was going to pay for $4 billion. They raised taxes, made adjustments in their budget, and did other things to get prepared to accept their 50-percent share of this plan. The other 50 percent was going to be divided between the United States, which would assume approximately 20 percent of the cost of Plan Colombia, and the rest of the international community, which was to assume 30 percent of the cost. When the decisions were being made as to what parts of that international effort should be the U.S. component, the decision was made that most of our responsibility was going to be on the military side. Why was that? The reason was, because a key part of a successful attack against the drug traffickers and since, in many instances, drug traffickers and guerrillas were the same people in the same uniform, the United States had the best ability to provide the intelligence the Colombian military would need to use its forces as effectively as possible. We had the ability to provide the training that the Colombian military needed to increase its professionalism, and particularly to deal with issues such as the long history of human rights abuses within the military of Colombia, and we also could provide some of the equipment the Colombian military needed, specifically helicopters, to give the Colombian military greater mobility so that when they identified through intelligence where there was a drug activity that was susceptible to being attacked, they would be able to deliver the troops and the materials necessary to successfully carry out that attack. I go into this in some detail because, for Americans, there has been a tendency to assume that since our component of Plan Colombia was heavily oriented toward military activities, that described the totality of Plan Colombia. That is not quite the fact. The fact is the totality of Plan Colombia was a balanced plan that had social, economic, political components, as well as law enforcement and military components. It just happened that because we were in the best position to provide the military components, that was where most of our part of Plan Colombia happened to fall. Plan Colombia was presented to the Congress in 2000, and in the summer of 2000 the Congress voted to provide as the first installment towards our commitment to Plan Colombia $1.3 billion. We also committed we would have follow-on commitments to Plan Colombia as the progress of this effort to fight the three ills of Colombia: The guerrillas, the drug traffickers, and the economic decline. President Bush has continued the Plan Colombia commitment which had been made by President Clinton. He has recommended to us that we appropriate $731 million. His plan substantially broadens the commitment from a primary focus on Colombia, which was the focus of the first year of the plan under President Clinton's leadership, to a regional focus. The funds, as proposed by President Bush, are roughly evenly divided between Colombia on the one hand and the other Andean pact countries that are beneficiaries, which are Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. President Bush also recommended that of the 50 percent to go to Colombia, that should also be divided roughly 50/50 between law enforcement and military on the one side and economic and social development on the other. Part of the reason for that recommendation was the fact it has been thus far difficult to get the other components of the international community, with a few major exceptions, Spain and Great Britain being two of those exceptions, to fully participate as had been anticipated in Plan Colombia. So we are now, in addition to our original area of principal responsibility, becoming more engaged in the social and economic development aspects of this now Andean legislative initiative. The reason I am speaking this afternoon is the Foreign Operations Subcommittee rejected much of what President Bush had recommended, and they recommended the $731 million be cut by 22 percent, or to $567 million. That cut will have serious implications on the United States and our relationship with this region and the future of this region, and our commitments we are making today towards the fight against terrorism around the world. To be specific, what are some of the implications of a 22-percent cut in the now Andean Regional Counterdrug Initiative? Let me start with the country that has been our principal focus and would be the recipient of half of these funds: The Republic of Colombia. Support for the Colombian National Police interdiction and eradication effort would be reduced because there would be less funding for spare parts for the equipment we provided and fuel to operate the equipment. This would make coca reduction targets less likely to be attained. The failure to attain those coca reduction targets means there will be more cocaine in the streets of the United States of America, afflicting the people of this Nation. A second result will be security for government officials, which the military provides in high conflict areas, will also be reduced, making the police and alternative development workers even more vulnerable. Last week there was a meeting held in Washington of an organization in which several members of this body participate called the Inter- American Legislative Network. The purpose of this organization is to encourage the full development of the parliaments and congresses of the nations of the Western Hemisphere on the belief if they are truly going to have a democratic society, the institution in which we serve is a critical component of that society. We started our meeting last Tuesday with a period of silence. That period of silence was in recognition of the fact two legislators from Colombia had been assassinated the week before we met, illustrative of the level of violence which is being directed towards the democratic institutions by the assassination of the members of democratic institutions in Colombia. A third effect of this cut will be the Colombian alternative development program will be restricted, and the success we have had to date of signing up farmers who have been producing illicit coca to start producing legal crops will be substantially hampered, and our ability to comply with commitments we have already made will be restricted. Next, programs to strengthen democratic institutions such as the judiciary and witness protection will also be reduced because of less funds available to support those programs. Lowered support for the police and military would also call into question our political support for Colombia, which might undermine the progress that has been made to date in human rights. Finally, in the next year a new President will be elected in Colombia. They have a one-term limit on their Presidents. So President Pastrana could not run for reelection. There is an active campaign underway to elect his successors, and the candidates for the Presidential election which will occur next spring might raise questions as to the reliability of United States support, particularly during this difficult and significant period in the history of Colombia. The consequences both within Colombia and on the U.S.-Colombian relationship of this proposed reduction are dire, but the implications are not limited to Colombia because, as I indicated, half of this money will now go to the other countries, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Speaking of Peru, where there has been a very aggressive alternative development program which has been enormously successful, 15 years ago most of the coca produced in the world was produced in either Peru or Bolivia and then was transported to Colombia for processing into cocaine. That level of production in Peru and Bolivia has been dramatically reduced. That reduction has, in large part, been because we have been encouraging the farmers to do the same thing we hoped to accomplish in Colombia, which is to transition to legal crops. We had no funding for that alternative development program in either fiscal year 2000 or 2001 because of our concerns about President Fujimori. As we know, President Fujimori was forced out of the country. He is now living in exile. A new President, President Toledo, has been elected and had been anticipating we would resume the level of support we have been giving to Peru. That support is now at risk. Failure to support Peru in this area of alternative development will undermine the hopeful reflourishing of democracy that will come to Peru under the leadership of President Toledo. Similarly, Brazil's success is also being challenged as a new President takes office. Planting of coca is beginning to occur in the Champara region, which was the principal area of coca production in Bolivia. We need to help the new Government continue to enforce the coca ban and to offer further alternative development assistance, not to retreat as this subcommittee recommendation would have us do. Ecuador is also vulnerable to cuts as we seek to maintain enforcement and foster community development, particularly in the northern border region adjacent to Colombia's major coca cultivation zones. Ecuador, which is one of the poorer countries of Latin America, has a long border with Colombia which is immediately adjacent to the area where the principal guerilla group called the FARC in Colombia operates, and the area where we have been putting the principal focus of our coca eradication. There has been a great deal of cross-border activity, and Ecuador has been looking to us to give them some assistance in maintaining the sanctity of their borders so they can maintain what has been a surprisingly effective effort to avoid substantial coca production in Ecuador. Brazil, Panama, and Venezuela also have modest enforcement programs which need support to have a chance to overcome the efforts of traffickers to transit drugs and corrupt local governments. The whole Andean region is a region at risk. I suggest we are sending exactly the wrong signal of our awareness of that risk and our willingness to be a good partner at a time of need by this 22-percent cut in our program of assistance to the Andean region. The proposed Andean Regional Counterdrug Initiative, in my opinion, is an integrated, balanced package. There are proposals now, even with those funds that are left, to earmark those funds in ways that will not be consistent with an integrated effort in the Andean region. Earmarking funds for non-Colombian programs will increase the likelihood of failure and increased violence in Colombia, the largest coca producer in the world. As indicated, we are already proposing--the administration is proposing--to allocate these funds on a 50/50 basis between Colombia and the other Andean countries. The earmarking would change that rational balance. Finally, following September 11, U.S. law enforcement and military resources which had been placed in the Andean region were withdrawn. Significant numbers of law enforcement personnel were withdrawn back to the United States to assist in homeland security. Many of the military personnel are now in central Asia. This regional effort, funded by foreign assistance, the effort we are considering today, represents the most significant remaining activity in the world to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. For those who say they want to fight drugs, this is the drug program in terms of reducing the supply into the United States. To cut it by almost a quarter will seriously curtail a program on the verge of success, with no alternative supply reduction strategy available. The consequences of this action are serious, immediate, but also with very long-range implications. I close by asking this question: What is the message the United States of America is sending to our own citizens, what is the message we are sending to the world, when on October 24, 2001, we come before the Senate with a proposal to cut back on the only effective program we have in the world to reduce the flow of cocaine into the United States and one of the most important programs we have in the world to attack terrorists? These are some of the messages. We are saying we are prepared to give up on the international effort to strengthen the forces of democracy, lawfulness, and future economic growth in a very important region for the United States. How do we ask a European country to make a commitment to support this region if we, who have much more immediate interests and so much more at risk, take the action being recommended today? Second, are we giving up on Latin America? President Bush, when he came into office, and previously as Governor of Texas and as a candidate for the Presidency, emphasized the importance of the United States relations with Latin America. Unfortunately, we have yet to move forward on an effective program to influence our closest neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. The one next to this program that is most important is to increase our trade relations. We have a 10-year program with the countries of the Andean region, called the Andean trade pact, whereby we have provided beneficial trade relations. That program will expire in early December. As of today, less than 60 days to expiration day, we have not moved in either the House Ways and Means Committee or the Senate Finance Committee the legislation even to renew that program which is a vital part of the economic capacity of that region and particularly critical now as we are trying, for instance in the case of Colombia, to disemploy 400,000 people who are now working in illicit drug activities, and give them some opportunity to work in a legal, productive area of the economy. Yet we are about to see an important part of the pillar of that legal economy eroded. The irony is that much of the funding that has been stripped out of the Andean region has been diverted to, as I understand it, providing additional funds to the Export-Import Bank, the purpose of which is to increase our trade. Here we are with some of the best self-trading partners the United States has, a region of the world in which we have a positive trade balance, and we are undercutting its capacity so we can fund the Export-Import Bank whose purpose is to promote trade. That is ironic. Third, I am concerned we are returning to neo-isolationism, and doing so at the very time when we need to be building strong international coalitions to prepare for the long-range war against terrorism. That brings me to my final point. What is the message we are sending? A number of Members earlier today were asked to go to the White House to meet with the President, the Vice President, and other leaders of the administration and the newly appointed head of the Homeland Security Agency, Gov. Tom Ridge. At the end of the meeting, President Bush gave us a final challenge. I would like, to the best of my ability, to quote what he said in that final challenge. He asked this question: Do we really want to win the war against terrorism? His answer: Absolutely, and that it will require unity, that we must be prepared to act in different ways in order to win this war. We must be prepared to win it at home, and we must be prepared to win it at the source. I agree with all of those challenges the President has given to the American people. But what is it going to say if, today, on October 24, some 6 weeks and 1 day after the tragedy of September 11, we strip away a substantial amount of the resources that are being used to fight one of the most virulent terrorist operations extant in the world? The FARC terrorists of Colombia. In the year 2000 alone there were 423 terrorist attacks against U.S. interests by guerrillas in Colombia. Tell me that we are not fighting terrorism as we fight the source of funding for those terrorists, which is the drug trade in Colombia. Of those 423 international terrorist acts against U.S. interests, over a third were in Colombia. Mr. President, 44 percent of all attacks against American interests in 2000 were conducted in the country of Colombia. We have a war against terrorists. An important component of that war is not just 6 weeks old but now is several years old. We have made representations to the people of the United States, the people of Colombia, the people of the Andean region, that we were going to be a full partner in the successful pursuit of that war. More recently, we have made similar representations to the people of Pakistan and to its leadership and to other countries around the world as we ask them to join the coalition for a long, protracted, difficult war to root out global terrorism wherever it exists in the world. I suggest our true commitment is not going to be judged by the words we speak but by the actions we take. If we, today, accept a budget which strips 22 percent of the funds we have committed to an area which has become in many ways the global testing ground for our commitment against terrorism, I believe we will be sending a signal that will reverberate around the world, and one that will potentially substantially erode our credibility. We have only had Plan Colombia now for a few days more than 12 months. It went into effect October 1 of 2000. Today is October 24 of 2001. Yet hardly more than a year into this battle we are beginning to sound the trumpet of retreat and run up the white flag of surrender. That is not what America wants this Senate to say on its behalf. We want to say, as President Bush asked us: Are we really in this war to win? Absolutely. We will have a chance later today to decide whether we want to put an exclamation point behind the President's statement and commitment.

Mr. GRAHAM. I sought the floor for the purpose of submitting the amendment to the desk.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. GRAHAM. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I understand we are going to vote at 5 o'clock.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. So the question then is whether we should take that affirmative action. I think we should for two basic reasons. One is fairness. It is, in my judgment, intolerable to have an economic system in which government says if you are selling from a distant location, you are at a competitive advantage over persons who are selling on Main Street. That is precisely the current circumstance of requiring one to collect sales tax but not requiring the other to do it, and it is not an insubstantial competitive disadvantage. In my State, depending on which locality one is in, it could be a 6-, 7-, or more percent differential. Second, the practical effect of this is going to be to erode the capacity of State and local governments, acting through the democratic process of representative election and decision, as to what services should be provided and how they should be financed to substantially erode that capability. My State happens to be particularly dependent upon sales tax. About 70 percent or more of our general revenue is collected by sales tax. So if there were a significant percentage of that which moved from Main Street to distant seller, it would have an immediate and substantial impact on the capacity of our State to educate its children, to defend our people through police, to protect our people in time of emergency through fire and other emergency response institutions. So this is a basic question of whether we at the national level are going to say to our brethren in the 50 States that for all time you are going to be saddled by this discrimination, which will have the effect of eroding your capacity to decide how to finance the services your people are asking you to provide. I do not believe all wisdom resides in Washington. I believe in a distributed democracy and that we ought to let 50 States and thousands of local jurisdictions make those kinds of judgments, and eliminating this massive discrimination that currently is part of our tax system will return that degree of respect and capacity to State and local governments.

Mr. GRAHAM. In just a moment when I complete my remarks, I will be pleased to yield. The reality is that what we are about here, for those who are new to this issue, is the fact that time is on the side of the distant sellers. Right now, a relatively small percentage of American retail sales are conducted over the Internet, but that percentage has been growing every year. Already the distant sellers have acquired enough influence to cause the House of Representatives to take the action it has taken and to build considerable support within the Senate for an extension of the moratorium without any mechanism to deal with the discrimination against Main Street and the discrimination against the children and the other citizens who depend upon State and local government for fundamental services such as education and police. The secret of those who would like to effectively make this discrimination against Main Street permanent is they want to continue moratorium after moratorium until the percentage of people who are using the Internet is so great that there will be no political constituency to deal with this discrimination. I state for myself and I believe for others that we consider this to be a core issue of the future of federalism in America; that we have to have strong State and local governments, and we have to depend upon them to make decisions appropriate to their people. State and local governments, as one who served there for 20 years, do not like taxing their people. They are as sensitive to that as we are in Washington, maybe more so. We should not deny them the capacity to make the decisions that are in the best interest of their people. That is a fundamental part of our federalist system, that different levels of government have responsibilities and must accept the obligation of those responsibilities, including the appropriate way to finance them. So this is, as I say, a very basic issue. I, for one, will insist before we extend this moratorium beyond the very short period as suggested by the Senator from North Dakota that any longer extension must be linked to a process, not a solution but a process, to move us towards the resolution of this fundamental discrimination that exists within our Nation and within our economy today. I yield to the Senator from Oregon for his question.

Mr. GRAHAM. I appreciate the very sincere and committed effort the Senator has made to try to arrive at a resolution, and I hope in this debate which has arisen today, and will arise with greater frequency now that the moratorium is about to lapse, that we can reach such a resolution. What I think is basic is, first, the Constitution. The Constitution vests--and it was one of the most controversial debates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787--in the Federal Government the control of interstate commerce. The Supreme Court, as I read the most recent opinions on this issue, did not say requiring distant sellers to collect sales tax was unconstitutional. Rather, they said it was unauthorized; that it would take an affirmative act of Congress to sanction the States to require distant sellers--that is, sellers who did not have a physical presence in their State--to collect their sales tax. So the issue is, we have to take an affirmative act in order to empower the States to require that distant sellers should collect their sales tax. So then the question is why----

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I had not intended to speak this morning, but I arrived in the midst of the discussion of an issue which I think is very central to our federalist system of government. The Nation depends upon our States and local governments to deliver some of the most basic services that protect the security and advance the well- being of our people and our Nation as a whole. We just had a dramatic demonstration of that with what happened after September 11. While there were a number of Federal personnel involved, the front line, the first responders, the people who lost their lives in the collapse of those buildings serving the public interest were largely employees of State and local governments. We know, and we all applaud the importance of education for the future of our Nation. That is predominantly a State and local responsibility. What we are talking about today is the capacity of State and local governments to have sufficient control of their sources of revenue to continue to provide those very services. While the current law, as the Senator from Oregon has correctly stated, focuses on prohibiting the States from adopting discriminatory tax systems that will single out and adversely affect distance sellers, particularly those who sell over the Internet, the fact is there is another form of discrimination, and that is the discrimination between the Main Street retail seller and that distant seller. The discrimination is that in times past, we have adopted a philosophy that said in order for a State to require a seller to collect its sales tax, there had to be a physical presence of that seller within the State. That was a concept that made sense in a previous era, but that era has passed. We just passed a major antiterrorism bill, and one of the basic changes we made had to do with wiretaps. Our wiretap law was basically written for the old rotary phone. It proved to be inadequate to deal with the issues of the cellular phone, computer communication, and all the things with which we are now familiar and in daily personal use. The same economic and technical changes that have caused the Congress to reevaluate its concept of what it takes to fight terrorism have affected the way in which commerce is delivered in America. We now have a situation where if you sell the same book at a retail store on Main Street, that seller is obligated to collect the sales tax of the State and local jurisdictions that might be imposed on that book. If you buy the identical book over the Internet, there is no obligation to collect sales tax. I do not think that is a defensible differentiation, and the practical effect of that is going to be over time to erode the competitive position of the Main Street seller, and through that erosion also affect the ability to properly finance our police, fire, and education systems that are so critical to the functioning of our Nation. Yes, there is an issue of discrimination here, a mild discrimination, and a quite unlikely discrimination that might be directed by State legislatures against Internet sellers and a massive discrimination that is being directed today against the Main Street retailer. I believe these two issues are interconnected, and we should do as Senator Enzi is suggesting: At the same time we grant an extension of the moratorium, we build into that extension a mechanism that will result in the resolution of this much bigger issue of discrimination-- the discrimination against the Main Street seller.

Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I ask for an additional 2 minutes to complete the answer to the question from the Senator from Oregon.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. I appreciate the Senator's limitations.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont. We have a provision that the Director of Central Intelligence, the DCI, will set the overall strategic goals for the collection of foreign intelligence so that we can use our limited resources as effectively as possible. In order to complement that, we also have a provision that will establish a national virtual translation center as a means of increasing our woefully limited linguistic capabilities to translate the material which we are gathering. We will also provide for additional capability with human intelligence. We have become very reliant on technology--eavesdropping, satellite imagery, to the exclusion of the use of human beings. If we want to gain information about the bin Ladens of the world, we cannot just take a picture of bin Laden. Today it is increasingly difficult to eavesdrop on bin Laden. What we need to do is get a human being who is able to get close enough to bin Laden to learn his intentions and capabilities. This gets to the difficult issue of what kind of assets, human beings, we hire to work for us to gather such information? We would all like to employ the purist of people, all choir boys to do this type of work. Unfortunately, they are not the type of people who are likely to be able to get close to the bin Ladens of the world. Thus, we have a provision in this legislation in the nature of a sense of Congress which we hope will send a strong message to the intelligence community that we are encouraging them to overcome some previous messages from Congress and to proceed to recruit the persons who they find to be necessary to gain access to terrorists so that we can have the best opportunity of protecting ourselves. With the adoption of this legislation, we have not reached the end of our task or responsibilities to protect the American people. We are taking a substantial step in that direction. To reiterate, another provision of title 9 addresses the role of the Director of Central Intelligence in the process of collecting foreign intelligence under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It recognizes the need to target limited resources--e.g. translators--against the highest priority targets. In order to ensure that scarce resources are effectively used, the DCI--in his role as head of the Intelligence community, not as CIA Director--will set overall strategic goals for FISA collection. He will work with the Attorney General to ensure that FISA information is distributed to the intelligence operators and analysts who need it government-wide. Of course, the operational targeting and collection using wiretaps will be conducted by the FBI, as it has in the past; the DCI will perform no role in those decisions. One of the scarce resources that has plagued the Intelligence Community, as well as law enforcement, is translation capability. Section 907 of this bill requires the FBI and CIA to work together to create a ``National Virtual Translation Center.'' Such a center would seek to remedy the chronic problem of developing critical language abilities, and matching those resources to intelligence collected by the wide range of techniques available. It is not enough to be able to listen to the conversations of terrorists and their supporters. Those conversations must be translated, often from difficult languages such as Urdu, and analyzed, all in a timely fashion. Our intelligence services collect vast amounts of data every day. It is possible that we may find that a critical clue to the September 11 attacks may have been available, but untranslated, days, weeks, or even months before the hijackings. We must address this problem before another specific threat is overlooked. Finally, I would like to mention a problem that has received a great deal of attention in recent weeks. There has been criticism of the intelligence agencies for placing too great a reliance on technical intelligence collection--laws dropping, satelite photograph--in recent years at the expense of human sources, or spies. A corollary of this criticism is that CIA officers are to risk-averse and that they do not aggressively recruit sources overseas that may have access to terrorist groups because the sources may have engaged in human rights violations or violent crimes. As to the first problem, the Intelligence authorization bill for fiscal year 2002, which may come to the floor next week, provides greater resources for human source recruitment--and it is part of a 5- year plan to beef up this method of collection. With respect to the second problem, we in the Congress simply must accept some of the responsibility for creating a risk-averse reaction at CIA, if needed there is one. The internal CIA regulations addressing the so-called ``dirty asset'' problem grew out of the criticisms by Congress in the mid-1990s about the recruitment of sources in Guatemala with sordid pasts. We address this issue in S. 1510, section 903, by sending a strong message to CIA Headquarters and CIA officers overseas that recruitment of any person who has access to terrorists or terrorist groups should be of the highest priority. There is no place in times like these for timidity in seeking every method available to learn the capabilities, plans, and intentions of terrorists. Congress needs to send a strong message that we value such efforts to recruit sources on terrorism, even those with pasts we would not applaud. Section 903 sends that message. I urge passage of S. 1510. I again commend the Members of the Senate who have played such an effective role. I also thank the staff: Al Cumming, Bob Filippone, Vicki Divoll, Steven Cash, Bill Duhnke, Paula DeSutter, Jim Hensler, and Jim Barnett. They have been working for the past many months to bring us to the point of this legislation being available for adoption by the Senate tonight and for the safety of the American people.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I wish to commend Senators Daschle and Lott for their leadership in bringing this critical piece of legislation to the Senate just 1 month after the horrific events of September 11. Senators Leahy and Hatch also deserve credit for moving quickly to shape the judiciary components of this bill and choreograph other provisions, including those affecting the intelligence agencies. My remarks will focus on title IX of this legislation, which is entitled ``Improved Intelligence,'' as well as the other provisions in the bill that directly affect the mission of the agencies of the intelligence community. Title IX is derived from S. 1448, legislation which was developed within the intelligence community, entitled ``Intelligence to Prevent Terrorism Act of 2001.'' Since long before September 11, I have been working with members of the committee, particularly Senators Feinstein and Kyl, on comprehensive counterterrorism legislation. Most of the provisions of our bill, with some changes requested by the administration, have now become title IX of S. 1510. The provisions in title IX, as well as other provisions in the bill, are designed to accomplish a daunting but not impossible task. That task is to change the cultures within the Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies--primarily the FBI and the CIA--so they work seamlessly together for the good of the American people. Both the FBI and the CIA are very good. They are the standards of the world in their own missions. But those missions are very different. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is goal oriented. A criminal case has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In a case that has developed the guilty party, the end is a conviction for the crime committed. The information collected during a criminal case is very closely held. It is held closely because its purpose is to result in the successful prosecution of an event that occurred in the past--not to inform thinking about what may happen now or in the future. The Central Intelligence Agency, on the other hand, as well as its other companions in the intelligence community, has a global approach, literally and figuratively. The CIA is restricted to activities outside the United States of America. The CIA collects information on a worldwide basis, and it processes that information, analyzes that information, and it places it in the hands of its customers. Its customers are other Federal agencies and senior policymakers, including the President of the United States. The purpose of that information is to allow those senior policymakers to make more informed decisions. Given the threats we now face, the cultures growing out of these different missions must be melded. We cannot fight terrorism by putting yellow tape around a bomb site, calling it a crime scene, collecting evidence, and proceeding to trial frequently years later. We must put the evidence collected after such an event to work for us in real time so we can predict and prevent the next attack. If there is a single goal of the intelligence components of this antiterrorism bill, it is to change the focus from responding to acts that have already occurred to preventing the acts which threaten the lives of American citizens in this country and abroad. It is critical that all information lawfully available to the Federal Government be used efficiently and effectively to fight terrorism. We cannot continue to use critical information only in a criminal trial. Any information collected must be available to intelligence officials to inform their operational initiatives so as to prevent the next attack. Along these lines, several provisions of S. 1510 are designed to change the way information is handled within the Federal Government. For example, section 203 permits law enforcement to share information collected in grand jury proceedings and from title III criminal wiretaps with intelligence agencies. Current law, as it has been interpreted, prevents that sharing, except in very limited circumstances. Section 905 then complements section 203 in that it requires law enforcement officers, FBI agents, and the Justice Department prosecutors to provide foreign intelligence derived in the course of a criminal investigation, including grand juries, criminal wiretaps, FBI interviews, and the like, to the Central Intelligence Agency and to other intelligence agencies. A ``permissive'' approach is not good enough under current circumstances. Too many lives have been lost, too many lives are at risk. Law enforcement sharing of information with the intelligence agencies must be mandatory. Section 908 further complements this legislation by providing the training of law enforcement officers at the Federal, State, and local agencies so they will be better equipped to recognize foreign intelligence information when they see it, and to get it to the right place on a timely basis. Let me give a couple of hypothetical but eerily-close-to-reality examples. It is likely that there are, tonight, grand juries meeting at various places in the United States to deal with issues related to the events of September 11. Witnesses may be providing information-- information about training camps in Afghanistan, ground warfare techniques used by al-Qaida and the Taliban, the types and quantity of weapons available. This type of information will be critical for the military--critical for the military now, not 2 years from now when these cases might go to trial. Another example is in the area of wiretaps. Let me just take two wiretaps. One has been issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act because there was a finding by a Federal judge that there was credible evidence that the telephone was being used by an agent of a foreign power. In the course of listening to the wiretap, this conversation comes across: I am planning to fly from a specifically designated site in Central America to a city in Texas. I am going to take my flight a week from Monday. My intention is, once I arrive over that city, to distribute chemical or biological materials that will terrorize the people of that city by creating havoc due to the illnesses that will be provoked. But how are you going to pay for this? You don't have the money to buy a plane, chemicals, or get the expertise necessary to do that? I am going to do that because I am going to rob a bank next Monday in order to get the money that I need to pay for this operation. The bank is going to be located at the corner of First and Main, and I am going to do it 3 hours after the bank closes next Monday. The person listening to that conversation with a foreign intelligence wiretap is under a legal obligation to make known to the appropriate law enforcement officials that there is about to be a bank robbery at a specific location on a specific date and time in a certain Texas city. Conversely, if that exact conversation had taken place under a criminal wiretap under title 3, the person listening to that conversation would be prohibited from telling the foreign intelligence agencies that there was about to be a terrorist attack on a date certain against a specific Texas city originating at a specific site in Central America. Try to convince the American people that makes sense. It clearly does not in today's reality. This legislation is going to make the same requirement of mandatory sharing when the information is gathered under a criminal wiretap that involves foreign intelligence information, as is the case today when information gathered under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wiretap must be made available to appropriate law enforcement officials. Another provision of title 9 addresses the role of the Director of Central Intelligence in the process of collecting foreign intelligence under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It recognizes the need to target limited resources, including personnel and translators against the highest priority targets. I ask if I can have an additional 5 minutes.