Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Records on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the people of South Carolina could not have been more proud of Gaffney, SC, native Tim Montgomery this past week. He set a world record in the 100 meters at the IAAF Grand Prix Final in Paris with a time of 9.78 seconds, one-hundredth of a second faster than the old record. It may surprise some of my colleagues in this body that South Carolina could produce the fastest runner in the world. They look at the races for Senate that Senator Thurmond and I have been involved with, and have probably concluded our state produces only marathoners. But the new generation of South Carolinians excel in speed. Mr. Montgomery has demonstrated great talent as a sprinter, as the 2001 USA Outdoor champion and a gold medalist in the 2000 Olympic 4x100 relay. No question, his hard work culminated in his perfect run this past week, making him the best of the world's best. I know every track fan in our nation joins those of us in South Carolina in congratulating Mr. Montgomery and wishing him continued success in the future.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. So what you have, in January of 2000, is not only the informant, the CIA had the information. Again, like I said, they did not communicate it. The dots are never going to get joined. I can see poor Condoleezza Rice standing up and saying: We didn't have anything specific. We didn't have anything specific. She will never get anything specific. She will not get a phone call saying, ``We are coming,'' like we have already called Saddam with. We have told him, ``We are coming.'' But that is not the way the world works with the al-Qaida crowd. So right to the point, on July 10, 2001, the FBI learned about the Phoenix, AZ, flight school. A memo was sent to the FBI. But it stopped at midlevel--never communicated to the White House, never communicated to the CIA. Again, the dots not joined. I can tell you that right here and now. Here is a news story from July 21, 2001, before 9/11 of last year, in the Iraqi news. The name of that particular newspaper is Al-Nasiriya. Quoting from it: Bin Ladin has become a puzzle and a proof also, of the inability of the American federalism and the CIA to uncover the man and uncover his nest. The most advanced organizations of the world cannot find the man and continues to go in cycles in illusion and presuppositions. It refers to an exercise called ``How Do You Bomb the White House.'' They were planning it. Let me read this to all the colleagues here: The phenomenon of Bin Ladin is a healthy phenomenon in the Arab spirit. It is a decision and a determination that the stolen Arab self has come to realize after it got bored with promises of its rulers; After it disgusted itself from their abomination and their corruption, the man had to carry the book of God . . . and write on some white paper ``If you are unable to drive off the Marines from the Kaaba, I will do so.'' It seems that they will be going away because the revolutionary Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting. In other words, the World Trade Towers. Here, over a year ahead of time in the open press in Iraq, they are writing that this man is planning not only to bomb the White House, but where they are already hurting, the World Trade Towers. I ask unanimous consent to print this article in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Then on August 15, just prior to September 11 of last year, we had Moussaoui arrested in Minnesota. He wanted to know how to fly a plane, but not how to take off in a plane. And the FBI's Coleen Rowley, from Minnesota, testified before the Congress that she had written a memo, and the way she summed it up, they could crash the plane into the World Trade Towers. Again, Mr. President, I could continue to go down the list, but we have this USA Today article of September 2 of this year, where the hijacker allegedly bragged what they were going to do on September 11. The year before the attacks, the Germans reported the particular terrorist saying that was exactly what they were going to do. And there is a Time magazine article of May 27 of this year that sums up how the United States missed all of the clues. We have seen all the particular articles, and now we have the amendment in to fix the problem. Let me just say a word about, and not in any criticism of our distinguished Director of the National Security Council, but Condoleezza Rice is about as steeped in domestic security as I am in foreign policy. You can't find anyone more qualified in foreign policy. This young lady graduated at 20 years of age Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Denver. Then she earned her master's at the University of Notre Dame a year later, when she was 21. At the age of 27, she received her doctorate from the School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and then in 1981 became a faculty member of Stanford University in foreign policy. So she has been steeped in that particular discipline all her life. Let me quote from her particular biography: The Bush administration has substantially restructured the National Security Council during its first three weeks in office, providing an early indication of how the new White House plans to handle foreign policy. She cut the NSC staff by a third, reorganized it to emphasize defense strategy, national missile defense, and international economics. In a White House first, Rice has expanded her regular meetings with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to include Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. It also indicates: . . . Bush's desire to decrease U.S. involvement in the Balkans and signal to Russia ``that this administration is not going to treat Russia as a special case.'' Other notable changes have been the elimination of the divisions handling international environmental and health issues, and of the NSC's communications and legislative offices. The reason I point this out is that prior to coming on board, the previous Director of the National Security Council, Sandy Berger, had a one-on-one meeting, telling Dr. Rice: Look, you are coming on board, and most of your time is going to be taken up with counterterrorism. There isn't any question about it. But what does she do? Instead, she takes action on everything that she knows about and she is absolutely authoritative in, but is not the need of the moment. My problem with this bill is that it doesn't include any of the agencies that had a failure on 9/11 in the proposed Department. The CIA failed. The FBI failed. The National Security Agency failed. On September 10, the NSA got a message in Arabic: Tomorrow is zero hour. But they didn't translate it from Arabic into English until September 12. And then the National Security Council, limply standing there, not being informed of anything, just said: Well, they didn't give us anything specific. It is the National Security Council's function to bring all the elements together, the gathering of intelligence, the analysis of intelligence, the joining of dots, the fixing of responsibility. The buck stops here. That is what this simple amendment does. It puts the FBI Director on the Council. Now we have a domestic intelligence effort, something we never had. I met immediately with Bob Mueller. I have his particular budget. I gave him some $750 million to up-date his computers and synchronize them with the FAA and the Immigration Service, the Border Patrol, and everything else, so that we could have one-stop shopping on knowledge of any kind of a terrorist threat. We also gave him the money transfer of the funds last fall to institute his new Department of Domestic Intelligence. Now the Domestic Intelligence is supposed to give that over to the Department of Homeland Security. But the Homeland Department does not gather any intelligence. It only takes what it is given, and it only analyzes what is given and, in a sense, doesn't know what to ask for because they are not in the game. It is the same with the CIA. I can see right now a breakdown continuing between domestic and foreign intelligence. I have talked to Director Mueller on this particular score. He has hired experienced CIA personnel at the FBI to help him set it up as a Department of Domestic Intelligence. He says he is talking with the CIA. But he hasn't really gotten all the way down to his agents and directors talking at the State level. They have yet to talk to the chiefs of police. I know because we have had meetings with respect to port security. It will take time. It may take 5 years for this new Department to really get in gear and work correctly. But let me say here and now that we have to have this fixed. The only place I know to be able to fix it is with the President himself--and we have that type of President. That President is no nonsense. He wants to have on his desk timely reports on intelligence, just like he gets from Carl Rove, timely reports on politics. Let's give the emphasis and time--a little bit at least--to intelligence. Give me those timely reports. And that timely report has to be fused not just from the Department of Homeland Security, or the office, or the bureau, or whatever else they call Governor Ridge over there, but it has to be fused at the National Security Council level, with foreign intelligence. I am not for the President having to get his director over here confirmed by the Senate. I would favor the Thompson amendment. We don't want the National Security Council Director to come here and be confirmed. I think Governor Ridge, in contrast to Condoleezza Rice, knows law enforcement. He has been a Governor, been in Congress, been chief law enforcement officer of Pennsylvania. He knows domestic security, which is something that Dr. Rice has never been into until 9/ 11. She will have a hard time learning at that level, unless she gets help. So I think Governor Ridge is an excellent individual in that White House, or wherever they put him, to help her begin to report. But she has to ultimately, as Director, fuse domestic with foreign intelligence, and all the other intelligence you might get from places like the Drug Enforcement Administration. The financing of terrorism is drugs. We know it. They have to follow the banks. She has to get intelligence from the Secretary of the Treasury. She has to work with all these particular entities, and the President doesn't have to take this volumes and volumes of intelligence reports and sit down and read all day. It has to be not only analyzed but prioritized. So it is right in front of him, what he has to give his attention to at that moment and throughout the day, each day, on our homeland security. I yield the floor temporarily.

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

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Now, they say: Well, Senator, you point all those things out. But, after all, we didn't know anything about a plane going into a building. Well, in December 1994, the al-Qaida hijacked an Air France plane that was headed into the Eiffel Tower. Who has not heard of flying a plane into a structure? In 1995, the CIA was hot on the Philippines and thwarted the blowup or the crashing of eight planes at one particular time. They learned of the plan to do what? To crash a plane into the CIA building. That was back 6 years before 9/11. And then, in January of 2000, in Malaysia, there was an article with respect to al-Qaida. Let me read from the article. I quote: At the time, the men had no idea that they were being closely watched--or that the CIA already knew some of their names. A few days earlier, U.S. intelligence had gotten wind of the Qaeda gathering. Special Branch, Malaysia's security service, agreed to follow and photograph the suspected terrorists. They snapped pictures of the men sightseeing and ducking into cybercafes to check Arabic Web sites. What happened next, some U.S. counterterrorism officials say, may be the most puzzling, and devastating, intelligence in the critical months before September 11. A few days after the Kuala Lumpur meeting . . . the CIA tracked one of the terrorists, Nawaf Alhazmi as he flew from the meeting to Los Angeles. Agents discovered that another of the men, Khalid Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple-entry visa that allowed him to enter and leave the United States as he pleased. (They later learned that he had in fact arrived in the United States on the same flight as Alhazmi.) Yet astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this information. Agency officials didn't tell the INS, which could have turned them away at the border. Nor did they notify the FBI, which could have covertly tracked them to find out their mission. Instead, during the year and nine months after the CIA identified them as terrorists, Alhazmi and Almihdhar lived openly in the United States, using their real names, obtaining driver's licenses, opening bank accounts and enrolling in flight schools--until the morning of September 11, when they walked aboard American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record, in addition to another article of this particular week where we had an informant from the CIA who was staying with them all the time. And when he heard that they were the names, he said: Oh, I knew them. Yeah, they were terrorists and everything else.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the Senator.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Of course, we have the President's views. He submitted a bill. In general, that particular view is before the Senate in the form of the House bill. While we have our own views--and that is our responsibility--this is not to preempt the President. In all fairness, when you see the distinguished chairman of Armed Services, he is who is disturbed. Talk about turf--not of the Senator from Virginia, but the Pentagon, the Department of State. Calls went out to the Department of State on this particular amendment. They don't want that FBI. They don't want the domestic intelligence. They don't want that Secretary of Homeland Security. They want their National Security Council to be solely engaged in foreign policy and foreign and international threats, not domestic. So no siree, that would be a put off, as it would be for the Pentagon crowd. We worked very closely with the Army and Navy and their intelligence, and I have the greatest admiration for Secretary Rumsfeld. But they have to report in, too, to this domestic intelligence. That still has to be--the intelligence--fused with CIA foreign intelligence at the level of the National Security Council. There is no substitute for it. If the President doesn't like it, he will say so to the House and it will be knocked out in conference. So don't worry about that. I am not worried about it. I want everybody to know here and now this bill does nothing to avoid and prevent another 9/11. All the agencies that, on 9/ 11, performed admirably--the Coast Guard was doing its job, FEMA was doing its job, and they got the agriculture people who were doing their job--they are the ones being included. Some 110,000 of the 170,000 people to be in this proposed department, with respect to seaport security, airline security, and rail security are already together in the Department of Transportation. We have been working on that. We have instituted an Office of Domestic Preparedness within the Justice Department. We have all of that going. But the ones that failed are totally left out of the Department of Homeland Security--the ones that failed us on 9/11 go untouched. Please, my distinguished colleague, don't come up and say let's find out what he thinks and put this off. We know what he thinks. Vote for this amendment and send it to the House. If they knock it out, it will be dropped out. For one, I go along with Senator Thompson. We don't need to confirm Dr. Rice at the National Security Council. Generally speaking, we don't have her name over on her budget. We talk about that on the Appropriations Committee level--if there is an Office of Homeland Security there. I go along with the Senator from Tennessee not to require that office be confirmed over here because, as President, I know good and well I would not depend on the legislative branch's intelligence. I can tell you that right now. With any Department they would institute, I have a mammoth responsibility. The buck stops here, and I cannot explain another 9/11 by going along with this bill and saying the problem is solved. It is not solved at all. Don't delay me, Senator. You know and I know it will be taken out if the President opposes it.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes, sir.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Chair. This amendment is so simple that it becomes suspicious, in a sense. All I amend here is the National Security Council so as to include the Attorney General, the future Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of the FBI in an advisory position similar to the CIA as presently included in the 1947 law. The reason for this, of course, is to get not only the responsibility of the Council fixed, but more particularly to realize now that domestic threats are far greater than any international threats. I don't believe Russia is going to attack us. I don't think China is going to attack us. I don't think Saddam, after all he has heard about us attacking him, is going to attack us, except perhaps maybe overseas but not the homeland. But homeland security must be emphasized. Let me refer immediately to that section of the 1947 act signed by President Harry Truman on July 26, 1947. I quote: The functioning of the Council shall be to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security so as to enable the military services and the other departments and agencies of the government to cooperate more effectively in matters involving the national security. In other words, the function of joining all the dots is with the National Security Council. You have all these entities now, here with a new one, to take certain analyses: the Department of Homeland Security. But you still have the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency. You have intelligence sections of the State Department. They are all over the Government; Intelligence Committees within the Congress, and everything else like that. Wherein is the responsibility fixed to join the dots? Harry Truman said it best in 1947. He said: ``The buck stops here.'' So my particular amendment is to fix that responsibility, and assist the President, so there would be no misunderstanding. Incidentally, only the President of the United States can change this culture of the so-called ``need to know.'' I speak advisedly. I was in the intelligence game back in the 1950s. I was a member of the Hoover Commission. We investigated the CIA, the FBI, the Army, Navy, Air Force intelligence, the Defense Department, the Secret Service, the Q clearance, the atomic energy intelligence, and all the other functions. I will never forget, in October of 1962, I got a call from my friend who would later operate this desk as a Senator, Bobby Kennedy. Bobby said: I would like to get that report from you with respect to this Cuban missile crisis, and the background on it. I turned over my report, my particular one. I never have gotten it back. But, in any event, the glaring error that persists this minute is that there are no joining of the dots, people are not talking to each other. Intelligence has gone like economics and trade--globalization, globalization. I cannot emphasize that too much in the little bit of time that is given me. Immediately after 9/11 the CIA, the FBI, the various intelligence agencies said: Oh, this was a surprise. They could know nothing about a plane going into a building. Let me talk about terrorism and give you a dateline: The bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983 by the Islamic Jihad; the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983, also by the Islamic terrorists; the Hezbollah restaurant bombing in April 1984; the Naples USO attack in April 1988; the attempted Iraqi attacks on U.S. posts on January 18 and 19 of 1991; the World Trade Center bombing in February of 1993; the attempted assassination of President Bush by Iraqi agents in April of 1993; the attack on U.S. diplomats in Pakistan in March of 1995; the Khobar Towers bombing in June of 1996; the U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998; the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October of 2000; and the terrorist attacks on, of course, September 11. And they have not stopped. We have the car bombing outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, in June of 2002. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this document be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, in the year since last September 11th, there has been much debate on the Senate floor on how to stop terrorists; and there will be plenty of time in the coming months to debate what we do insofar as organizing homeland security, and how we deal with Iraq and the fanatics who want to blow us up and the like. But on this September 11th, this Senator wants to remember the 3,000 lives lost in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Obviously their loss has been felt by their families in ways none of us can imagine. But their loss has also been felt by all Americans. As a Senator, in the last year, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought about what happened last September 11th, and what actions this Congress can take to prevent such horrifying events. September 11th has moved this nation to respond and to defend ourselves in ways that has made America stronger, I have no doubt. In addition, I want to honor the men and women in the armed forces, who have put their lives on the line in the last year to track down terrorists in caves and everywhere else they are hiding. I honor the law enforcement officials all over this country, who protect our homeland every day. And I have great respect for the newly hired men and women of the Transportation Security Administration, who are wearing the newest American uniform to ensure the safety of our airports. September 11th made us address our security vulnerabilities, but there is more work to be done. In the coming months, on days that are less emotional than this anniversary, I hope we remain as strong and determined to win the war on terrorism.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished leader. I think he has certainly accommodated the Senator from South Carolina. I definitely understand Senator Thompson is not here. I wanted to offer it while he is here so we can talk about it. But we will offer it at that particular time on Thursday.

Mr. HOLLINGS. If I could at least get an hour of debate, or whatever it is, on my amendment before we vote on the Thompson amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That I be allowed to offer it at what time on Thursday?

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I received sad news from my home State last week. Sam Simmons, the sheriff of Greenville, SC, was tragically taken from us. Sheriff Simmons was a tremendous public servant and long-time friend to law enforcement. He began his law enforcement career at the age of 20 and served his community and state for nearly 29 years in this field. During his career, this tenacious, yet soft-spoken man worked his way up through the ranks in the Greenville County Sheriff's Office from dispatcher to the top law enforcement officer for Greenville County. I had the opportunity to work with Sheriff Simmons and his staff over the years and knew him to be an extraordinary example of how law enforcement officials should conduct both themselves and their departments. Last week, several police officers in Sheriff Simmons' department called him a ``lawman's lawman.'' I echo these sentiments and offer my heartfelt condolences to his wife, Mona, and their family.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the disturbing thing to this particular Senator--incidently, Senators are always disturbed--but in all candor, the best way to recognize 9/11 of last year is to make certain that a 9/11 does not occur again and that we correct the intelligence failure that brought about 9/11. With respect to actually assuring us that a 9/11 would never occur again, we had that debate last Thursday relative to securing the cockpit of airplanes. We are depending on the White House to weigh in now with their particular view. In my view, once that cockpit door is secured, never to be opened in flight, a 9/11 could never happen again. I speak advisedly. In the month of September of last year, I had the privilege of meeting with the chief pilot of El Al, the Israeli airline. That is the one airline in the world--particularly, of course, in the Mideast, where you have suicidal terrorists--that would be subject to a hijacking and people taking over the plane and running it into a building. They determined years ago the only way to prevent a hijacking was to not give responsibility to the pilots for law and order on the flight itself--namely, a pistol and so forth to overpower any kind of attempted hijacking. Instead, they wanted the pilots to assume the responsibility that the plane would never go into a building or never be hijacked or taken to another country. Over the last 30 years they have shown this is the right rule: Once the door has been secured, it has never opened in flight. I can hear the chief pilot of El Al. He said: Senator, I can tell you here and now, if they are assaulting my wife in the cabin, I do not open that door. I go straight to the ground, and law enforcement meets me. And whoever is causing the trouble is off to jail. As a result, they have not had a hijacking in 30 years. Yes, they have attacked the ticket counter of El Al in Los Angeles. But terrorists don't even hardly make an attempt to hijack an El Al plane because they know that, yes, they could cause trouble with the passengers but not with the crew, not with the plane itself. There is no way to take it over. Let me embellish on that thought because we had a debate with respect to arming pilots with pistols. Many pilots wanted Congress to allow pistols in the cockpit. The House has passed that, and the Senate on last Thursday voted for that overwhelmingly. What should be understood is, you have to remove the responsibility from that pilot. In other words, let's assume you have that pistol on the pilots as they walk to and fro; that is another danger. And as they get in transatlantic flights, that is another forbidden practice--those kinds of things need to be considered. But more particularly, if a flight attendant is crying out: They are choking me, they are killing me, open the door. In my opinion, once that door is cracked open, the pilot with the pistol might get off a shot or two. But as we saw on 9/ 11, there are now teams of suicide terrorists, five-member teams willing to sacrifice one, two, or three people. The pilot might be able to kill three of them, but the other highjackers would still be coming into that cockpit. They would take over that plane once that door is cracked, with pistols, machine guns, whatever else they have up there. So it has to be categorical and clearly understood. People have criticized me for saying this, but as I come into Reagan National Airport and see the sign, ``Welcome to Reagan National, Washington, DC,'' I would rather have a reflective sign saying, in Arabic: ``Try to hijack, go to jail.'' People will say: Why are you saying that in Arabic? I use Arabic numerals regularly. I invaded Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Incidentally, I have the highest esteem for the country of Tunisia because I traveled there not too long ago, and they have some 65 percent literacy and 80 percent home ownership. And the Foreign Minister told me, when I asked: How in the world did you ever do this? He said: The secret is to let the women vote. He said: As soon as we allowed women to vote in Tunisia, they wanted better schools for the children. They wanted nice homes for their families. In World War II, I was one of the first in the African campaign with Colonel Anderson and the 178th Field Artillery. I wasn't in the frontline unit. I am not trying to fudge on his bravery. But we went into Tunisia. Now you can go into the city of Tunis itself and what was the Dust Bowl during the war, looks like a golf course. They have turned the country around. But the fact is, it was Muslim extremists who overtook the barracks in Lebanon, and who blew up barracks in Saudi Arabia. They blew up our Embassy in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. They blew up our Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. They blew up the USS Cole. Almost nine years ago they tried to blow up the World Trade Centers. All of those were Islamic teams that came and caused the blowing up. So I am justified in saying this. I want those who are blowing us up to understand: try to hijack and go to jail. As I relate all these particular incidents, I come right to the point of my amendment in the second degree to Senator Thompson. I was working, and my staff was working with Senator Thompson's staff, to see if it was acceptable to him. He is not with us this afternoon, but we will be glad to talk to him tomorrow and on Thursday because he and I have the same intent. I think we have to fix the responsibility. There is none better in the history of the United States of America than old Harry Truman. He said: The buck stops here. He put that little sign on his desk. That has been the trouble. I don't fault President Bush. He didn't know anything before 9/11. He was not properly informed. And having not been properly informed, he could do nothing to have prevented it. So it is not my role this afternoon, on the floor of the Senate, to find fault with the President himself. But I think we have to fix that responsibility for national security with him. In 1947, and later, as a Presidential directive, and then later in statutory language, the National Security Council was instituted. It says: ``the function of the Council shall be to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security so as to enable the military services and the other departments and agencies of the Government to cooperate more effectively in matters involving the national security.'' The problem is the make-up of the National Security Council. On it are the Vice President, Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense. It has been in bed some with the Secretary of Treasury. But there are some others, like the Attorney General who should be included. The Attorney General has oversight of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and we know that terrorism is financed by drugs. He has the Border Patrol and the Immigration Service under him. He has all of these entities. He would be the chief Cabinet officer as of this minute for security, unless you get that Secretary of Homeland Security. But it still is going to be his professional teams that ensure security and provide the domestic intelligence that the Council needs. So that homeland security intelligence, wherever you have it--if you have it at a Bureau or an office of homeland security in the White House, or a Department of Homeland Security with a particular assimilating and analytical role of intelligence, or as a department in Congress itself--wherever you have it, you still are going to have to take whatever analysis, whatever finding, and fuse it at the National Security Council level. If you were President of the United States, or I were President of the United States, I would only have one particular briefing, one report on my desk. Every hour the President gets them now with respect to political intelligence. He knows what the polls show in Nebraska and what the trends are in South Carolina. He has political polls on November given to him every hour just about. So they are constantly taking that. I want intelligence polls taken and reported to the President of the United States and fused at the National Security Council. The National Security Council has that responsibility. The particular Department of Homeland Security does not amend that particular statute. In fact, we could pass a Department of Homeland Security in the next 10 minutes and you could have a 9/11, because the very things that went wrong on 9/11 would go wrong again. The very Departments that failed, starting with the CIA is not included in the new Department. The Central Intelligence Agency knew about all of these things I have related. An article in this week's Newsweek says that they knew they had persons who roomed with the suicidal terrorists of 9/11 who commandeered the planes themselves. We know of attempts made to run a plane into the Eiffel Tower. We know from the Philippines incident that the CIA knew they had planned to run a plane into the CIA building. You can go down the litany--all of this was known before 9/11. The CIA didn't even correlate it, didn't pay attention to it, and certainly didn't pass it on and give it in the briefings to the National Security Council. I can hear Condoleezza Rice, the Director of the National Security Council, saying, ``We never got anything specific.'' I want to be sure they get something specific. The Department of Homeland Security bill, now being debated on the floor of the Senate, could pass and you would not have any of the Departments included that failed on last September 11. The CIA failed. The FBI had reports from the field that something is wrong. The field teams said people were coming in and getting flight training, and we ought to be looking into it. It didn't get past the second level. You have Coleen Rowley, from Minneapolis, saying in her memo that they could be flying a plane into the World Trade Towers. We knew the World Trade Towers were vulnerable. They had already attacked them in 1993. Here was a memo again that they didn't pay any attention to. She came all the way to Washington and talked to the folks in the FBI. Nothing was done. We know, of course, the National Security Agency had something that said ``Tomorrow is zero hour.'' That was in Arabic. People tell me that I will hurt somebody's feelings if I put up a sign in Arabic that reads: try to hijack and go to jail. They say that is typecasting, profiling. Well, I mean to profile. I want it understood. That is exactly what occurred--in Arabic, ``Tomorrow is zero hour.'' They got that on September 10 of last year, but they didn't translate it at the National Security Agency until September 12--after the tragedy. Here we have everyone running up and down saying we are going to make sure 9/11 never happens again. Not with this bill. You might tinker around with what we already have on course. Incidentally, of the 170,000 proposed staff for this Department, we already have 110,000 of them together in one Department--the Transportation Department. We had a hearing this morning with Admiral Loy of the Transportation Security Administration. It is a blessing we have him, because he knows what he is doing. He is moving and working. He has the airports, the authority, Republicans and Democrats-- everybody pulling together. He solved the biggest problem we have had with respect to airline security. But he has the seaport security, the rail security, and Amtrak--the rail stations, the tunnels, and everything else of that kind; they are all in one Department. We haven't been waiting. If you had just the homeland security bill and it had an up-or-down vote this minute, without any amendments, I would have to vote against it. I don't want to mislead my constituents and say that I have voted for homeland security, because I know with that bill I have not voted for homeland security; I haven't done anything about the intelligence failures of 9/11 of last year. So, Mr. President, that is the attempt of my particular amendment--to get the National Security Council beefed up. By beefing up, I mean the President did put out an order in February after he took office last year. You ought to see that particular order. It has included in various forms of the Council, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Peace Corps, and everybody else. It was so inclusive as to really confuse rather than fix a responsibility, that the buck stops here. I want to make it absolutely certain that this particular National Security Council needs to be beefed up, irrespective of whether we pass a Department of Homeland Security, irrespective of whether they put an Office of Homeland Security in the White House, as is presently constituted with Governor Ridge, or whether they call it a bureau--and I certainly would go along with Senator Thompson with respect to the matter of confirmation. I know if I were President, I would not want my staff subject to the confirmation and to have to respond to the Congress. You elected me the President, you have given me the responsibility, and the buck stops here. My Chief of Staff, head of my Security Council, and everything else like that, are my choice, and I have my team, and I don't have to worry about the politics over in the legislative branch as to confirmation and being responsible to subpoenas coming over. We cannot subpoena the Director of the National Security Council. We should not be able to just subpoena willy-nilly. They can say we just have to plead executive privilege. Be that as it may, I think the distinguished Senator from Tennessee is off on the right track. He wants to make sure we don't have all this bureaucracy; in other words, if you are going to have a Department collecting intelligence, you have the CIA collecting intelligence, you have the National Security Council collecting intelligence, and you have got domestic intelligence collected by the FBI. You have the office in the White House trying to correlate and work with it, but even that correlation has to be fused with international threats, with foreign policy. There is only one place, and that is the National Security Council, as the Congress has already determined and as determined by none other than President Truman himself back in 1947, ``The buck stops here.'' I do not want to have another buck stop in an office here and a department here and another agency there and a CIA agent and a defense intelligence agent over here. We have intelligence coming out of our ears. The reason this is not understood is we do not have an independent Presidential commission investigating 9/11. I was moved the other evening when we heard former Vice President Mondale emphasize the need for that particular initiative. I joined in that some months back, and I did so advisedly. The reason I do it is when you have the House and the Senate investigate intelligence, you have a political split. It is 50 Republican and 50 Democratic. Having served for 8 years on the Intelligence Committee I can tell you that we had categorical sworn testimony to a certain effect, that was known by the White House, and we had it on two occasions to verify it, but we never could make that public because of 50 percent being Republican. They just did not want it to surface because it was critical. Incidentally, that same Intelligence Committee staff is not subject to a polygraph. I want to emphasize that for the simple reason that one cannot get a job with the Secret Service unless they are polygraphed. They cannot get a job with the Central Intelligence Agency unless they are polygraphed. They cannot get a job with the FBI unless they are polygraphed. More particularly, they cannot get a job out there as a Capitol policeman unless they take a lie detector test. I was told that certain information was not revealed to me by the CIA, as a member of the committee, because my staff--not my personal staff but the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee--had not had the proper clearance. I will never forget I had a constituent who was arrested in another country, and I was trying to get him out of that arrest. I had to struggle to do it. The country involved said he was an agent of the CIA or had gotten briefings from the CIA. They categorically denied it. It was a year and a half to 2 years later, I went into one country and talked with the station agent. He said: Oh, Senator, you are from South Carolina. I said: I certainly am. How is that? He said: Well, I debriefed so and so. He was one of the best we ever had. That is how I found out about the lie saying that they never knew anything about him. I served on the Hoover Commission in 1954 under GEN Mark Clark and President Herbert Hoover investigating the intelligence activities of the United States of America. It was the Joe McCarthy days. We went into the CIA, the CID, the Army, Navy, air intelligence, Secret Service, Q clearance, and the Atomic Energy Commission, and all the rest of the intelligence divisions. I have a slight background in intelligence. There is a lack of coordination. In addition to having the buck stop here, you have to have that coordination, and only the President of the United States can get that coordination. He has to get those involved on the Council. I have talked to Director Mueller of the FBI because I oversee his appropriation. He says he has gotten CIA fellows over there. But then I hear reports that they are not always exchanging the information. That information exchange and getting it all to the one Commander in Chief to make a decision as to whether or not we have intelligence, for example, with respect to a need to invade Iraq, that has to be centralized, not at the Department of Homeland Security, not at an Office of Homeland Security, but fused at the level of the National Security Council, reporting directly to the President of the United States. I have included in this amendment, in an advisory capacity to the Council, the Director of the FBI--as is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is also in an advisory capacity. But that one summary intelligence report that is put on the President's desk early every morning has to have the fused intelligence of domestic as well as foreign intelligence. There is this idea now that we can beef up and fix that responsibility. I am very much concerned, as I have tried to point out with respect to this particular amendment--I am in step with the distinguished Senator from Tennessee. He is trying to avoid further bureaucracy and further politics with respect to confirmation. You never have the Director of the National Security Council confirmed or the chief of staff. The Presiding Officer of the Senate or this particular Senator would never have our chief of staff or administrative AA assistant confirmed by the Senate. That is just more bureaucracy. I agree with Senator Thompson on that. But it still does not fix that responsibility of the buck stopping there and that has to be at the National Security Council level with the President of the United States, and nowhere else. There has to be one place in case we ever have anything that is even like 9/11, instead of people running around finger pointing, saying: This Department said, no, but the CIA did not do it, but the FBI, well, the National Security Agency guy, no, we did not find out from defense intelligence. They knew. They should have told. We have intelligence, tens of billions of dollars according to what I read in the newspapers. We have all kinds of entities running around with intelligence. Here we are going around and saying we are going to avoid a 9/11 by the institution of a Department of Homeland Security. So this particular Senator has been working in that field. Namely, we passed 100 to 0, all Republicans and all Democrats, airport security. We got together and we reported out of the Commerce Committee, and it passed the Senate 100 to 0, all Republicans and all Democrats, seaport security. It is hung up over in the House with respect to the conference. I have at the desk rail security in an Amtrak bill by a vote of, I think it was, 20 to 3 out of the committee. So I have been working in this field. I sat down last fall with the new Director of the FBI, Bob Mueller. We gave him $750 million. We said: Straighten out your computers, get those all working, reorganize your department, institute domestic intelligence. We never wanted to do that. We shied away from domestic intelligence. With the McCarthy days and the witch hunts, the un-American activities and all, we do not want to go down that road. But the terrorism war requires an intelligence effort at the domestic level. Fine, you can have a Department--we have it going right now, to tell the truth, and we are trying to reorganize it under a new Secretary. According to GAO, it is going to take 5 to 6 years to get it organized right, so we are going to have to depend on what we have. I have been working in that particular field and just got through with a hearing this morning with the new Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration in the Department of Transportation, and I think we are on course. But we are behind the curve with respect to seaport security. We are behind the curve with respect to rail security, with respect to actual intelligence security and correlating it. This bill absolutely leaves out all of the failures of last year, 9/11, and includes therein all of the good operative entities; namely, that there was nothing wrong with the Coast Guard that would be included in the new Department, there was nothing wrong with FEMA or the agriculture office that would be included in the new Department. As they said in the Navy during World War II: When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. We are running around here. We have a Department going, and it is supposed to govern. I voted for homeland security. You did not. This bill could pass in the next 10 minutes and it would not correct the failings of September 11. My amendment to the Thompson amendment would fix that responsibility at the National Security Council, so the buck would stop there. The President of the United States would have to know what is going on. If he could not find out, this President would get rid of him. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. The ranking member is correct. While it is our hope that teams would be able to issue a consensus report, the committee urges the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, when setting the procedures to govern construction safety teams, to ensure that any such minority or dissenting views are included in any report.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, today the Senate will consider H.R. 4687, the National Construction Safety Team Act. The Senate companion, S. 2496, was introduced by Senators Clinton, Schumer, Lieberman, and Dodd, and is currently pending before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which I chair. At the urging of our colleagues, particularly Senator Clinton, the committee has agreed to move the House version of the legislation in the hopes that action on this bill might be completed by September 11. The committee has worked to accommodate those requests to move this bill. In that effort, the committee has made some changes to the bill to clarify its purpose and to address some technical issues. The National Construction Safety Team Act would provide for the establishment of investigative teams to assess building performance and emergency response and evacuation procedures in the wake of any building failure that has resulted in substantial loss of life. The bill seeks to address several problems identified as a result of the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers. For example, no Federal agency is clearly charged with investigating building failures. The bill would solve this problem by giving the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, clear responsibility to handle such investigations. Further, there are currently no guarantees that investigations will begin quickly enough to preserve valuable evidence. The bill would require NIST to act within 48 hours of a building failure. In addition, no Federal agency has the investigative authority needed to ensure access to a building's structural information. Therefore, the bill would provide to NIST clear authority to enter sites, access documents, test materials, and move evidence, as well as clear authority to issue subpoenas. Finally, there is no mechanism for keeping the public informed of the progress of an investigation. The bill would require NIST to provide regular public briefings and to make public its findings and the materials that led to those findings. I would like to enter into a discussion with my friend Senator McCain, the ranking member of the committee, regarding the provisions in the bill relating to a construction safety team's final report and membership.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I agree that is the committee's intent. I thank Senator McCain once again for his cooperation in this matter and urge the Senate to pass this legislation, as amended. Amendment No. 4514 (Purpose: To provide for the establishment of investigative teams to assess building performance and emergency response and evacuation procedures in the wake of any building failure that has resulted in substantial loss of life or that posed significant potential of substantial loss of life)

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. They are on the front lines. We call them in a war, the MLR, the main line of resistance. With my door secure, it is the flight attendants who are going to have to defends themselves while getting the plane down to the ground.

Mr. HOLLINGS. So we are together on that. I will agree with you on the flight attendants and anything else we can possibly get done to increase safety, and more than anything else, get the airline business back up and going. I am very much disturbed that we could adopt the Smith-Boxer amendment, and you could have a plane being used as a weapon of mass destruction. There isn't any question about it. It is not going to be one fellow, and one fellow defending himself in the cockpit. I can see it now, with the flight attendant outside saying, ``He's killing me''-- whatever it is--``Open the door.'' Once that door is slightly cracked, they have their team, and they will have practiced how to take over that plane. They will take the shots, the first two or something like that, but the other three will get in and have that plane. And they will have control and they will have pistols. They will take that pistol away. I can tell you that here and now. So you have really weaponized the aircraft, which El Al says do not ever do that. I can tell you that right now. Don't weaponize. They do not have weapons in the cockpit. With that having been said, that is why I feel as strongly as I do. We have had the tests. I agree with the distinguished colleagues. We are not worried about cost in this instance. We have already spent $15 billion to keep people economically going. To save one life, I would spend another $15 billion. So it is not the cost; it is not the training; this is a tested and true program of never having had a hijacking in 30 years. I yield the floor.