Jane Harman

Ms. HARMAN

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, my colleague and the ranking member of our Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment Dave Reichert, introduced H.R. 6098 earlier this year, and it was reported unanimously out of our subcommittee and the full committee. I have to express my personal disappointment that Mr. Reichert is not here for this debate. I know that this is a subject he is passionate about, as am I, as are the first responders, so-called ``first preventers'' who will benefit enormously by its passage. At issue, Mr. Speaker, is how DHS grant recipients can spend their money when it comes to hiring and retaining intelligence analysts at the State and local levels. In the 9/11 Act, we were clear, grant recipients could use up to 50 percent of their State Homeland Security Grant Program and Urban Area Security Initiative funding for personnel costs, without time limitations. The Department of Homeland Security, however, had other ideas. Instead of following the law, it capped allowable personnel costs far below the 50 percent threshold, and it imposed a 2-year limit on how long States could employ intelligence analysts hired with Federal dollars. This has had the absurd result of States and localities firing analysts after 2 years, just to continue to qualify for DHS funding. Think about this. Someone works for you, is providing excellent, accurate and actionable intelligence analysis that will help us track and prevent the next set of threats, and that person gets fired only because he or she has to be fired in order for money to continue to flow. This makes absolutely no sense. DHS' approach, likewise, undermines the culture of constitutionality that Congress intended to foster at fusion centers in the 9/11 Act. Many States and localities want to use DHS grant funds to hire and retain analysts at those centers, which are increasingly becoming the linchpin for information sharing with the Federal Government. To sustain this effort, however, State and locals need money to pay for staff overtime to make fusion centers work, something both Congress and the President, in his National Strategy For Information Sharing, strongly support. But, Mr. Speaker, the Department's grant guidance ignores this, just as it ignores the stringent privacy and civil liberties training requirements that are the centerpiece of the 9/11 Act's funding provision. By forcing States and localities to fire staff every 2 years in order to access Federal funds, DHS is effectively preventing the ``culture of constitutionality'' from taking root. When privacy and civil liberties best practices have no time to develop, abuses, like the Maryland State Police's apparent spying on peace protestors and death penalty opponents, are the inevitable result. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6098 fixes these problems by giving States and localities the flexibility they need to hire and retain the staff to keep our communities safe. That is why the bill has been cosponsored by both Democrats and Republicans, and that is why it was approved on a unanimous basis by both our subcommittee and the full Homeland Security Committee last month. Mr. Speaker, fusion centers, done the right way, are essential for Homeland Security. I therefore urge passage of this critically important legislation, and reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6098) to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to improve the financial assistance provided to State, local, and tribal governments for information sharing activities, and for other purposes, as amended.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, we have no further speakers on our side. I am prepared to close debate once the minority has closed.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, we have just debated eight bills that come out of the Homeland Security Committee. I think that is a pretty good work product. As I mentioned earlier, four of them, those managed by the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Thompson, I think, are excellent policy. They come from a variety of subcommittees. And I want to thank him again, ranking member King and the superb bipartisan staff that has helped move us along. I urge their passage by this House. The four bills that I have just managed, and that we debated earlier, one of which, hopefully will reduce the pernicious practice of overclassification and selective declassification, a second, which will reduce the ability to put sensitive but unclassified markings on documents, a third which will promote the dissemination of open source information by the Department of Homeland Security, and the fourth, which will end the absurd practice of having to fire people in order to continue to receive Federal funds, all go in one direction. And what is that direction? That direction is to help our first preventers, police and fire services, who know our neighborhoods best, to get critical information in real time about what to look for and what to do. Without critical information in real time, the cop on the beat could unfortunately miss the plot that is being pursued in the house right in front of him because he or she doesn't know what to look for and what to do. Each of these bills is designed to get information which the Federal Government may have or which may appear in open source materials to that first preventer in real time. And each of these bills also is designed to reduce and hopefully eliminate the excuses that can cause a Federal bureaucrat to decide that to protect his turf or her turf or to protect himself or herself from embarrassment, to say ``Oh, I will just mark this document `classified' or I will just put an SBU marking on this document and that way the person next door won't get to see it.'' Well, Mr. Speaker, that's the wrong impulse, it's the wrong signal, and with passage of these bills, we send a strong message; and more than that, a strong requirement to the Department of Homeland Security that at least the people who work there cannot, any longer, use or abuse the classification and SBU systems in order to protect themselves. I'm hopeful that later this afternoon as we debate some additional bills on the suspension calendar, one of the things we will do is to use this principle of limiting the categories for ``sensitive but unclassified'' and take it government-wide. That is legislation that, as I mentioned, has been reported by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and I believe that will be before us shortly. I want to say that I endorse that idea. I think it makes sense to reduce the SBU categories across the government. I think we can make DHS the gold standard, but hopefully every department of government that can use those stamps to prevent necessary information from being shared will get the same strong message. Let me finally say, as one of the co-authors of the Intelligence Reform bill of 2004, that we recognized, when we enacted that bill, that what has been called a ``need-to-know'' culture that has created stovepipes, so-called stovepipes in our government, had to be changed to a ``need-to-share'' culture if we were ever going to be able to connect the dots to prevent the next attack. Changing a culture from ``need to know'' to ``need to share'' is a very difficult thing to do, but a piece of that is breaking down the ways that individuals prevent information from moving off their desks to the person at the next desk. And with passage of the four bills we have just debated, I think we send the strongest possible signal. And with passage of legislation that Mr. Waxman, I believe, is going to offer strongly, we continue to send that signal out across the government. So Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the Reichert bill that we have just debated. I urge passage of the four bills that I have been managing during the last hour or so. I call for an ``aye'' vote on the legislation. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Ms. HARMAN

Ms. HARMAN. Madam Speaker, the stories are shocking in their simplicity and brutality: a female military recruit is pinned down at knifepoint and raped repeatedly in her barracks. Though her attackers hid their faces she identified them by their uniforms. They were her fellow soldiers. During a routine gynecological exam, a female soldier is attacked and raped by her military physician. Yet another young soldier, still adapting to life in a war zone, is raped by her commanding officer. Afraid for her standing in her unit, she feels she has nowhere to turn. These are true stories, and, sadly, not isolated incidents. Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq. The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Health Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 percent of female veterans seen there say they are victims of sexual assault while in the military and 29 percent report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness, and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken. Numbers reported by the Department of Defense show the same sickening pattern. In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported--73 percent more than in 2004. The DOD's most recent report, released earlier this summer, indicates that 2,688 reports were made in 2007, but a recent shift from calendar year reporting to fiscal year reporting makes comparisons with data from previous years much more difficult. The Pentagon has made some efforts to manage this epidemic--most notably in 2005, after the media received anonymous e-mail messages about sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy. The press scrutiny and congressional attention that followed led DOD to create the Sexual Assault and Response Office. Since its inception, SAPRO has initiated training and improved reporting of rapes and sexual assaults but has inexplicably failed to track prosecution rates or how victims are faring within the military structure. At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to the DOD's own statistics, a mere 181 out of 2,212 subjects--or 8 percent-- investigated for sexual assault in 2007 (including 1,259 reports of rape) were referred to courts martial. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action and in the majority of those that were acted upon, the offenders were assigned administrative or non-judicial punishment. In other words, slaps on the wrist. In more than one-third of the cases that were not pursued, the commander took no action because of ``insufficient evidence.'' This is in stark contrast to the civil justice system, where 40 percent of those arrested for rape are prosecuted, according to the Department of Justice and FBI. The DOD must close this gap and remove the obstacles to effective investigation and prosecution. Failure to draw bright red lines produces two harmful consequences: it deters victims from reporting rapes and it fails to deter offenders. The absence of rigorous prosecution perpetuates a culture tolerant of sexual assault and rape-- an attitude that says ``boys will be boys.'' The legislation that Mr. Turner and I introduce today calls on the Secretary of Defense to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to end assault and rape in the military--to encourage and increase investigations and prosecutions. I have raised the issue personally with Defense Secretary Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen, and Army Secretary Geren, among others. While they express real concern, thus far the military's response has been underwhelming. The apparent lack of urgency is inexcusable. Congress can do better too. While these sexual assault statistics are readily available, our oversight has failed to come to grips with the magnitude of the crisis. No doubt the abhorrent and graphic nature of the reports makes people uncomfortable. But this is no excuse for inaction. I applaud the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee for holding hearings later this week to shine a light on the failure of existing policies. Madam Speaker, most of our service women and men are patriotic, courageous and hard-working people who embody the best of what it means to be an American. The failure to stem sexual assault and rape in the military runs counter to those ideals and shames us all.

Ms. HARMAN

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4806) to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop a strategy to prevent the over-classification of homeland security and other information and to promote the sharing of unclassified homeland security and other information, and for other purposes, as amended.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I would like to include in the Record an exchange of letters between the distinguished chairmen of the Committees on Homeland Security and Oversight and Government Reform. House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Washington, DC, July 24, 2008. Hon. Bennie G. Thompson, Chairman, Committee on Homeland Security, Ford House Office Building, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Thompson: I am writing about H.R. 4806, the Reducing Over-Classification Act of 2008, which the Homeland Security Committee ordered reported to the House on June 26, 2008. I appreciate your effort to consult with the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding H.R. 4806. In particular, I appreciate your willingness to work with me to move a governmentwide over-classification bill, H.R. 6575, to the House floor so that H.R. 4806 and H.R. 6575 can be considered during the same week. In the interest of expediting consideration of H.R. 4806 and in recognition of your efforts to address my concerns, the Oversight Committee will not request a sequential referral of this bill. I would, however, request your support for the appointment of conferees from the Oversight Committee should H.R. 4806 or a similar Senate bill be considered in conference with the Senate. Notwithstanding the Oversight Committee's agreement to forgo a sequential referral, I believe it is important to reiterate my general concern about H.R. 4806 as it applies to the Department of Homeland Security. H.R. 4806 creates procedures for the Department to follow in order to reduce the over-classification of information. Several congressional investigations and the 9/11 Commission have emphasized, however, that over-classification is a governmentwide problem that requires a governmentwide solution. Accordingly, I favor an approach that requires all agencies to follow the same classification protocols and encourages the sharing of information between agencies and with the public to the maximum extent possible. Again, thank you for your efforts to address my concerns with H.R. 4806. I look forward to working with you to reduce the significant problem of over-classification throughout the federal government. This letter should not be construed as a waiver of the Oversight Committee's legislative jurisdiction over subjects addressed in H.R. 4806 that fall within the jurisdiction of the Oversight Committee. Please include our exchange of letters on this matter in the Homeland Security Committee Report on H.R. 4806 and in the Congressional Record during consideration of this legislation on the House floor. Sincerely, Henry Waxman, Chairman.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to thank Mr. Bilirakis for his generous comments and for his strong support of this legislation. I think this is landmark legislation. I think our committee will get enormous attention for finally trying to attack this insidious problem of overclassification, and I very much appreciate his personal support. I also want to tell him that I have watched him raise this issue about authorization and appropriation, the need for both actions, by this House. I agree with him. I think we need an authorization of this bill this year. And it is my understanding that all of the individual bills we are debating this afternoon will be included in that authorization bill. So I thank him for pointing out the need for us to act. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, of the bills that I am managing on the floor this afternoon, this is the one that I feel most strongly about. This is the one that will make the biggest difference. If we can get classification right at the Department of Homeland Security, a new department, we can then get it right in the rest of the government. As I mentioned earlier, I am working with Mr. Waxman and others on his committee to see whether we can craft a bill that manages properly all the equities involved in taking this approach governmentwide, but I hope we can work that out. I think this bill sets the right precedent. I urge its passage by the full House. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. HARMAN

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislation days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I would like to include for the Record an exchange of letters between the distinguished chairmen of the Committees on Homeland Security and Oversight and Government Reform. House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Washington, DC, July 25, 2008. Hon. Bennie G. Thompson, Chairman, Committee on Homeland Security, Ford House Office Building, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Thompson: I am writing about H.R. 6193, the Improving Public Access to Documents Act of 2008, which the Homeland Security Committee ordered reported to the House on June 26, 2008. I appreciate your effort to consult with the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding H.R. 6193. In particular, I appreciate your willingness to work with me to move a govenunentwide pseudo-classification bill, H.R. 6576, to the House floor so that H.R. 6193 and H.R. 6576 can be considered during the same week. In the interest of expediting consideration of H.R. 6193, the Oversight Committee will not request a sequential referral of this bill. I would, however, request your support for the appointment of conferees from the Oversight Committee should H.R. 6193 or a similar Senate bill be considered in conference with the Senate. Moreover, although the Oversight Committee has agreed to forgo a sequential referral of this measure, I believe it is important to reiterate my general concern about H.R. 6193 as it applies to the Department of Homeland Security. H.R. 6193 creates procedures for the Department to follow in order to reduce the proliferation of unnecessary information classification. This is a commendable goal, however, investigations by the Oversight Committee have demonstrated that there has been a proliferation of pseudo- classification designations such as ``sensitive but unclassified'' or ``for official use only.'' In my view, any legislation addressing information control designations should be implemented on a government-wide basis. Again, thank you for considering my concerns about H.R. 6193. I look forward to working with you to reduce the serious problem of pseudo-classification of information throughout the federal government. This letter should not be construed as a waiver of the Oversight Committee's legislative jurisdiction over subjects addressed in H.R. 6193 that fall within the jurisdiction of the Oversight Committee. Please include our exchange of letters on this matter in the Homeland Security Report on H.R. 6193 and in the Congressional Record during consideration of this legislation on the House floor. Sincerely, Henry A. Waxman, Chairman.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, we have no further speakers and I am prepared to close once the minority has closed.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, again, I appreciate Mr. Bilirakis' support and the support of the minority members of the Homeland Security Committee and my principal cosponsor of this bill, the ranking member, Mr. Reichert. It is pretty astounding that there are over 100 ways to block nonclassified information from moving across the Federal Government. With passage of this bill, we will, at least at the Department of Homeland Security, reduce that 100 plus list of poor reasons in many cases to just seven. Again, I want the commend Ambassador Ted McNamara for his path- breaking work at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and I want to commend the Government Reform and Oversight Committee for a bill that will move under the suspension of rules later today, H.R. 6576, which will take the principles we are debating now with respect to the Department of Homeland Security and apply them government-wide. I think that is very good policy, and we start now, I hope, by passage of this important legislation. I urge an aye vote. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. HARMAN

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of H.R. 3815, the Homeland Security Open Source Enhancement Act of 2008, introduced last year by our subcommittee member, Ed Perlmutter, who is, by my lights, though a freshman member, an enormously talented contributor to the work of our subcommittee. Regrettably, he couldn't be here for this debate this afternoon. This is an important piece of legislation that will go a long way towards ensuring that the Department offers critical intelligence products that matter to its State, local and tribal partners. Mr. Speaker, the Federal Government has, at its disposal, nearly limitless amounts of unclassified, open source information and can share it with key stakeholders, regardless of whether those partners have security clearances. This is crucial because the next attack in the U.S. will not be stopped, as I mentioned earlier, by a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., it will be the cop on the beat who is familiar with the rhythms and nuances of his or her neighborhood who will find out about that attack. An observant police officer somewhere in America will see something or someone out of place and, guided by timely, accurate and actionable and unclassified, open source information, will connect the dots that will unravel that new potential terrorist plot. The Department, and specifically its Office of Intelligence and Analysis, has pursued a variety of missions without a clear focus. Open source is a case in point. The Department's open source efforts have lagged far behind the rest of the Federal Government. While the DNI and the CIA have both established programs in this area, DHS, the lead Federal agency responsible for sharing terrorism threat and vulnerability information with State and local law enforcement, has yet to articulate a vision for how it will collect, analyze and disseminate it to stakeholders. This legislation directs the Department to jump start its open source program and protect the privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans in the process. It will help DHS fill a critical gap in information sharing, and, hopefully, provide its primary customers with timely and actionable information. Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this important legislation and reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, we have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close once the minority has closed.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume, and I am prepared to close debate. Mr. Speaker, I am thinking back to those years on the Intelligence Committee, when I would leave classified briefings dissatisfied with the amount of information I was receiving. I would then go out and read my local newspaper or maybe an article that I had saved for airplane reading, and realize that in open sources there was a huge amount of information directly relevant to the problem that had not been organized in a way that I could quickly access it, and that in fact was probably more useful than the classified briefings I received. This happened not one time, not five times, but often. So the point of Mr. Perlmutter's excellent legislation is to help the Department of Homeland Security, which has primary responsibility for the security of our homeland, make public source information available to those who need it to keep us safe. And those would be our first preventers, police and firefighters in our neighborhoods, and the general public. It sounds obvious, but it doesn't happen. And I appreciate the support of Mr. Bilirakis and the unanimous support of the members of the committee. Again, I want to commend the bill's principal author, Mr. Perlmutter, for offering this legislation. I ask for an ``aye'' vote on the bill and yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. HARMAN

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Harman-Ehlers amendment, and I'm pleased to be here on the House floor once again with my friend Vern Ehlers to call attention to a looming crisis in our aerospace industrial base. I represent the heart of the space industrial base and have long called my district the satellite center of the universe. Most of the intelligence satellites built in the United States are built in my district, and that is why it was such an honor to serve for 8 years on the Intelligence Committee and why I'm so proud of the work the committee is doing. I have always been mindful of the need for a skilled industrial base. Simply put, rocket scientists don't grow on trees. Earlier this year, on a visit to a major aerospace firm in my district, there was a stark reminder of the crisis facing this industry. Following a briefing on an important satellite program, I asked if any of the employees in attendance had anything to tell me. A 31-year- old engineer raised his hand and said, ``All my peers are gone.'' Engineers his age, he explained, are leaving the aerospace industry for other fields, and very few are taking their place. The problem is two-fold. More than 60 percent of aerospace industry workers are over 45, and 26 percent of them are eligible for retirement this year. So the result is a looming demographic cliff that leaves the intelligence community and the industry without the intellectual capital necessary to keep pace with global competitors. There are many reasons for this. Part of it is the training we give kids in secondary school. Part of it is Congress and the Department of Defense, who don't necessarily provide predictable funding streams. We saw the results of our failure in the 1990s, when we declared a peace dividend, cut our procurement budgets, then tried to do defense procurement and satellite manufacturing on the cheap, and guess what happened? Launch failures, performance problems, and engineers abandoning the industry in droves. We have finally managed to regrow some of these specialties just at a time when, again, because of age and because other careers are more sexy, we may lose these people forever. This will hurt our national security. And this is why our amendment expresses the sense of Congress that a skilled workforce is essential to the intelligence community's success, and that the Director of National Intelligence should work cooperatively with other government agencies to sustain and expand a diverse workforce. Mr. Chairman, before yielding to Mr. Ehlers, I would just like to say that so much in the Intelligence bill before us--like multilevel clearances, like very sensible comments on the National Applications Office, like prohibiting the use of contractors for CIA detainee interrogations, like the requirements for more briefings for more Members of the Intelligence Committee--are ideas that were generated some years back when I had the privilege of being ranking member on the committee. The committee matters. Bipartisanship matters. I want to commend my coauthor for the enormous work he does on this issue. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Reyes.

Ms. HARMAN

Ms. HARMAN. I thank the chairman for yielding to me, and I commend him and the ranking member for crafting a very good bill. Many parts of this bill that reflect work we did together in this committee in years past, and it's wonderful that we will act on it later this afternoon. With respect to this amendment, I rise in reluctant opposition which I want to explain. I do understand the point that we should not be engaged in political correctness or censorship. I don't think my opposition is based on either of those things. Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld once wrote a snowflake which asked, Are we capturing and killing them faster than they are rising up against us? The answer was no, and it's still no. It does matter that we try to win the argument, and not just with the next generation who could become suicide bombers or build the next lethal generation of IEDs, but we win the argument with moderate Muslims, many of whom live in the United States and want to help us. And their guidance has gone into this guidance, published by the Homeland Security Department, which is that we not use language that inflames. To the gentleman from Michigan, there is no prohibition in this to quoting the statements of Osama bin Laden and others who use these hateful words. Why would we want to sensor that? The prohibition is directed at ourselves, words that will inflame the very communities we're trying to convince. I would just close with the observation that if we had thought a little longer about using the phrase ``axis of evil'' we might have, it seems to me, engendered more cooperation on the part of some countries that have, sadly, moved far away from us, and engendered more cooperation on the part of populations which now look at America with disapproval.