Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I will agree with the Senator 100 percent. We have to get the flight attendants.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Not quite yet.

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. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire.

Mr. HOLLINGS. So, working with him, we are going to find out his steps, and when, and get realistic drop-dead dates, and so forth, especially airports--that they can't be rebuilt--and get this equipment in and everything else. I remember the distinguished Senator said: Look, they make them out in my backyard, and they are only making seven a month. They can make 50 a month if they have the orders. This was last year.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I think there are 101,249 commercial airline pilots with active pilot certificates. So we could have 100,000 running around here with pistols. And, incidentally, possibly getting pistols on board for the hijackers because you have to understand that hijacking has changed now. You don't just have an individual coming on board because he wants to fly to Cuba. You don't have somebody escaping criminal justice because he wants to get out of the country. We know and we have been put on notice, they have five-man teams, professional suicidal terrorists. Try that on, Senator Smith. Try that on as a pilot. You are a big man. I think Senator Smith could take care of two of them. I think he could take care of two of them and, with a pistol, maybe take care of three. But while he has already killed three, unloading, quick, the pistol, they still have two more that are going to knock him down and take over the other pilot. You crack that door and you are a goner. You are not going to stop professional teams of suicidal attackers. I don't care how good a pilot or how much training you have had, it is not going to happen. That plane is going to be taken over. Think about the situation where there is some disruption and I have a pistol and some fellow is coming after me and I can defend myself. That is not the problem. The problem here is to prevent, if you please, Senator, an airline in the United States, a commercial airline, from ever being used as a weapon of mass destruction. You don't want to save people from getting hurt or whatever else, but you save it, with all that fuel aboard, from ever being run into the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the Sears Building, the Coca-Cola Building down there in Atlanta--wherever they want to run it. They can make a mark if they wiped out the Coca-Cola Building in Atlanta, I can tell you that. And that is the whole idea. It is not necessarily how many, but to get it on national news. So it is that they commercially trade. They stay in country for at least 2 years. They are disciplined. You never know they are here. They train at the gym every day, they are physically fit, and they go on- board planes not with pistols but with box cutters, or whatever else they have on them. But they know how to break in any ordinary cracked door and take over that plane. So you can't crack the door. They should never be opened in flight--and we would have a 30-year record of no hijacks and never have this occur again. There is one way I know of that I can guarantee the American public the best security I can--if anybody can give that guarantee--is to take the El Al procedure and protocol and follow it to the letter T. They have a 30-year track record of success. I will go ahead and read because they have something about testing. I am not worried about cost. I am not worried about testing. I am not worried about the professionalism in the trade. I am worried about this never, ever happening again--no 9/11. I am able, if I can get a majority of this body to go along with me and go along with the administration, to give the public that kind of assurance--that they can get on a plane; immediately the plane will take off. You won't have the plane flying around above you, ``Hey, they are ready to shoot you down,'' because you have secured the cockpit door and there is not going to be any need to shoot down a plane. The plane itself is not going down because it was forced. You don't have to worry about it because it is going by a big building or a nuclear power plant. You don't have to worry about, 30 minutes after takeoff and 30 minutes before landing, keeping your seat, because you are not going to have to worry about that kind of activity, and that is a silly rule, if I have ever heard one. It is one that we ought to be able to get rid of. You don't have to worry about taking off from Reagan National and running into the White House. You don't have to worry about that because as they take off, the door is secure. If they start storming the door, they will land at Dulles with law enforcement to meet them. That hijacking team knows they are going off to the jail. I have given them the guarantee. But if, in turn, you want to support these pistols in the cockpit and if you are going to guarantee that weaponry is there, we hope they can use it. Getting it on the plane and keeping it in the cockpit--a secure little safe, or whatever it is--it is just a bad idea to arm a plane. Let me read further, since the entire letter is one of particular interest. I quote from the letter from the Air Transport Association: In the aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, we understand the rationale for providing crewmembers with means to defend themselves and their aircraft. However, we believe that allowing guns aboard every aircraft in the absence of comprehensive research and testing and without a full evaluation of the potential consequences, is ill-advised. A variety of serious safety, technical and training issues have been raised that require answers prior to moving forward with any proposal to allow the use of firearms by cockpit crews. To ensure the safety and security of our customers and employees, we have a duty and obligation to ask these tough questions and to have a clear understanding of the answers. Otherwise, innocent passengers and crewmembers could be killed or injured--through accidental firings of weapons or, worse, their being used against crews and passengers. For example, what studies or testing have been conducted to determine the effects of an accidental weapon discharge in a pressurized aircraft at altitude, or discharge into a sophisticated instrument panel? How will the firearm be stowed, maintained and protected from misuse between flights, particularly when the aircraft is parked overnight or deployed in international operations? Let me divert. There is a law in a lot of these countries that you can't have a weapon. There is not going to be a weapon in a cockpit if you land in downtown Heathrow. We know that. You have all kinds of considerations that come into this. Let me further read from the letter: What is the process to measure the ability of armed pilots to handle a firearm in the close confines of the cockpit? Will the training program disrupt the airline's ability to operate their schedules? How often are firearms utilized by trained law enforcement officers? Will they be lost, or misplaced? Will they be fired accidentally, or used against the officer carrying the weapon? I have the figures on that. In some years, over 10 percent of law enforcement officers are killed when their own weapons are used against them. I have all kinds of criminal statistics from the FBI. I read further: The Transportation Security Administration has testified that the cost to the government for the program is approximately $850 million. I agree with the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire. I am not worried about the cost. Some should be worried about costs. As of yesterday at 11 o'clock, the deficit was $394 billion, and by the end of the month it will exceed $400 billion. But you can see what they are doing now. They are trying to offload expenditures into the next fiscal year because they are worried about the campaign a couple of months from this time in November. And they have come from a $5.6 trillion surplus. They already have created a $400 billion deficit. Nobody wants to talk about it. We asked corporate America for a certificate under oath that we have gotten corporate America away from corruption-- certified by the CEO. Get the CEO of the U.S. Government to certify his figure. No way, Jose. I will go back. I read that sentence again in this letter. The Transportation Security Administration has testified that the cost to the government for the program is approximately $850 million. In light of programs already completed and underway to secure cockpit doors, we seriously question the cost effectiveness of a program mandated in S. 2554 that would impose a further burden on scarce TSA resources. Therein I divert to join the Senator from New Hampshire and the Senator from California. I am not worried about the cost. I think they are right. When we are trying to prevent a 9/11, let us not start talking money around here. When somebody is against something, they all want to start talking money. But when I get up and try to get it paid for, I can't find anybody who wants to pay. Talking about Social Security, we have been using that as a piggy bank, and not a lockbox. Come on. We know it. Indeed, with secure cockpit doors now being further upgraded with even higher protective capabilities, the advisability of introducing dangerous and unnecessary weapons in the cockpit environment must be carefully considered. Until such time as validated answers to these and other questions are available, we believe that a decision to deploy firearms aboard commercial aircraft raises a serious and unnecessary risk for both passengers and crewmembers. Just as we would not introduce an aircraft into service without thorough testing, training of crewmembers and evaluating all safety measures, no one should place deadly weapons in the hands of flight crews without a thorough evaluation. In view of these concerns, we urge you to reject calls for the introduction of thousands of deadly weapons into the cockpits of our aircraft. I say to the Senator from California, you had a nice letter and thousands of pilots. Here are the people who are running the airlines, the ATA board of directors: Carl D. Donaway, chairman and CEO of Airborne Express; John F. Kelly, chairman of Alaska Airlines; Glenn R. Zander, president and CEO of Aloha Airlines; W. Douglas Parker, chairman, president, and CEO of American West Airlines; Donald J. Carty, chairman and CEO of American Airlines; J. George Mikelsons, chairman, president, and CEO of American Trans Air; Richard H. Shuyler, chief executive officer of Atlas Air; Gordon Bethune, chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines; Leo F. Mullin, chairman and CEO of Senator Miller's airline, Delta Air Lines; Vicki Bretthauer, acting chief executive officer of DHL Airways; Jerry Trimarco, chief executive officer, Emery Worldwide; Anthony E. Bauckham, president of Evergreen International Airlines; Frederick W. Smith, chairman and CEO of FedEx Corporation; John W. Adams, chairman, president, and CEO of Hawaiian Airlines; David Neeleman, chief executive officer of JetBlue Airways; Timothy E. Hoeksema, chairman, president, and CEO of Midwest Express Airlines; Richard H. Anderson, chief executive officer of Northwest Airlines; Herbert D. Kelleher, chairman of Southwest Airlines; Glenn Tilton, chairman, president, and CEO of United Airlines; David N. Siegel, president and CEO of US Airways; Thomas H. Weidemeyer, president of United Parcel Service Airlines. I think----

Mr. HOLLINGS. For a question, yes, ma'am, I am glad to yield.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire is right. Pilots do work hard. I have commented to that effect on other occasions, and on other measures. Our problem is, looking at the Senate floor, we have two Senators, maybe three at the most. What really occurs is that we are addressing a ``fixed'' jury. In other words, 35 years ago when I came to the Senate, we did not have the luxury of television. So if you wanted to know what was going on, you had to come over on the floor. Invariably, there were always 20 to 30 Republican Senators in their cloakroom, and 20 to 30 Democrats in their cloakroom. If an issue was raised, you could make a point and come right out on the floor. Or if you agreed with a particular Senator, you could thank him for his observation. In a sense, we would learn from each other. We now have the TV everywhere. Incidentally, if you are watching it in your office and you find you want to raise a point, you come to the floor quickly; then you find out someone else has been waiting an hour, another Senator has been waiting a half hour, so your opportunity is totally missed. But the real point is, we do not listen to each other. The pilots have worked--he is dead right, they have worked this bill. And to my surprise, it has come up this afternoon. I have tried my very best to improve airline security since the terrorist attacks. As the chairman of the Commerce Committee, I got the best possible witnesses together, and we immediately passed out of the committee a bipartisan, unanimous airline security measure. We passed it out of the Senate 100 to 0. While we had the view in the Senate that airline security should be within the Justice Department in order to compromise and get things done, we went along with the House and kept it in the Transportation Department which proved to be, of course, a mistake in that we wasted now 6 or 7 months in confirming the man who took over, but was replaced in the particular role as head of transportation security. Without a much debate and without a report we just put his nomination up on the floor and we voted to have him confirmed so he could get off to a running start. In any event, we made a mistake. I realize we were behind the curve, and we had a some unnecessary requirements with respect to airline security and they were going in the wrong direction in some instances. Let me say categorically, I am pleased Admiral Loy, the Commandant of the Coast Guard--we had the Coast Guard authorization in our particular committee, so we worked closely with Admiral Loy on Coast Guard and seaport security. We had field hearings together, as well as within the Senate. He is very realistic, very attune, an expert, very professional, very much experienced on security. He had not taken over for very long before the August break. I did not demand that he respond to questions for his nomination, but I gave him our questions in a 2-page letter and said: Work over August and we will have a hearing on this security measure, the guns. I am constantly asked by the press about this issue, and we would be delighted to vote on guns in the cockpit, we would be delighted to vote in the committee. We had this hearing scheduled. I talked to Admiral Loy only yesterday. He has answered our letter, and he is ready to go next Tuesday. He has been doing just the right kind of work, getting around and conferring with the airport managers and getting everybody working together. Not unlike the former occupant of this desk who greatly impressed me, Senator Robert Kennedy. He had never been in the courtroom, but when he was selected as the Attorney General of the United States, he was the first Attorney General to go around and shake hands with the 32,000 in the Justice Department at that time. You have to get your team working together. Admiral Loy has done that. But I say it is a fixed jury because the pilots, as the Senator from New Hampshire has pointed out, have been working this issue. We all have many responsibilities. I just have not had the opportunity to bring up the facts and test what we already have. The Senator from California said: ``And since we know this, and since we know that,'' why have any further tests? I could not agree with the distinguished Senator from California any more. We do know. How do we know? We know from the best of the best. There is one airline that is under the gun. That is the Israeli airline, El Al. In fact, they have been so successful in preventing hijacking that they do not even have attempted hijackings, as far as we know. They just go after the ticket counter itself, as they did in Los Angeles, and shoot it up and kill those people there. But knowing El Al is the most under-the-gun airline, we had the privilege of talking to a gentleman, the chief pilot of El Al, in September of last year. It was just about a year ago, slightly less than a year. He said: ``Senator, what you want to do is get a secure door to the cockpit. That is the last line of defense. Not a gun--the last line of defense is that secure door. And that door is never, ever to be opened in flight.'' Once the door is secure and if there is any disturbance whatsoever in the cabin, they go immediately to the ground and law enforcement meets them there. The chief pilot of El Al emphasized--I will never forget it--he said: ``Senator, they can be assaulting my wife in the cabin. I do not open that door.'' And for 30 years they have not had a hijacking. We have a test, and that is why I am on the floor of the Senate trying to make sense out of this bad mistake that is about to be made because there is one thing you do not want to do, and that is put weaponry on the plane itself. In fact, the marshals pointing their guns recently on that Delta flight going into Philadelphia--wrong. You don't point your gun, and law enforcement and gun safety dictate that, unless you intend to use it. Anybody should know that. So even our marshals need better training already. But be that as it may, for 30 years now they have not had a hijacking on El Al Airlines. We have had a test and we know it. The trouble is, this has been worked politically. I know how the system works. I look around and I look for the measures and speakers who will talk in support of it. I find out that Senators who first were inclined to vote with me and listen and understand the problem, they have gone. I know the White House position is they should not have them. It has been announced and reaffirmed that they do not want pilots to carry guns in the cockpit. But you don't see anybody out here defending President Bush and the policy of this administration. More to the point, I could talk all day long, or talk into next week and just hold the floor. I hope we can work out a compromise with respect to keeping the door closed. But let me read a letter, which is new to me. It was less than an hour ago when I had an appointment with Mr. Leo Mullin, the chief executive officer of Delta Airlines down in Atlanta, down in my backyard. Mr. Mullin was there and mentions the discussion we had about the economic travails of air transport in America. He said: By the way, I want to thank you for your leadership on this. I haven't led anybody. I can't find anybody behind me. I am not a leader unless they let my staff vote. I think they would go along with me. But I haven't been able to find a Senator to go with me, and we have called the White House. You can rest for a while. Don't worry about it because I am going to take a little time and give you all some rest. I know I am doing the Lord's work. This letter is dated today. Dear Senator Hollings: With the safety of our passengers and crewmembers as our number one priority, we are writing to convey our serious concerns regarding S. 2554 that would permit the use of firearms by pilots aboard commercial aircraft. As discussions continue on the merits of this subject, we stand ready to work with Congress and the Administration in an effort to reach a prudent consensus position. It must be noted, however, that while we are spending literally billions of dollars to keep dangerous weapons off of aircraft, the idea of intentionally introducing thousands of deadly weapons into the system appears to be dangerously counter-productive. Divert right here. I ask unanimous consent the letter in its entirety be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Right. Well, I don't know about agreeing to the vote. I want to hear some more. I might be persuaded by the Senator from Georgia or the Senator from New Hampshire. I am sure they are going to have more to say. But, yes, one, on the flight attendants, absolutely we have to. And we have that hearing next week. And we finally have someone in charge of airline security. You know it. I think you like Admiral Loy. I like Admiral Loy. He is the bipartisan choice of the committee.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Thirty minutes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. You will find in there that 11 functional coordinating committees within the council itself, chaired by the National Security Council. Among them are committees on counterterrorism and national preparedness, chaired by Condoleezza Rice, to Advisor to the President for National Security Affairs. You have another committee on counterproliferation and homeland defense, which the President of the United States thought was necessary in February of last year, chaired by Condoleezza Rice. There is another one on intelligence and counterintelligence, again chaired by Condoleezza Rice. Later we see President's National Security Advisor on the TV saying: We did not get anything specific. In fairness to her, she is an expert in foreign policy. She used to instruct a course, I understand, at Stanford. She has never served in law enforcement or counterterrorism. But it is time to get real. This bill does not directly deal with the entities that failed. It is about running around, like my Navy friend used to say, ``when in danger, when in doubt, run in circles scream and shout.'' The administration propose this big bureaucracy. I have 110,000 of them already at DOT. I have been working on transportation security of the airlines, the rails, and the seaports. How are you going to get a department full of midlevel personnel in charge if you cannot get the Executive level, the Presidential level, engaged in active management. I told the President of the United States: Mr. President, I want you to get hourly reports on the homeland security intelligence as you receive those hourly political reports from Carl Rove. He knows what is going on politically in this country. I want him to know what is going on intelligence-wise with respect to homeland security, but we do not have that. What we have is another finger-pointing agency. As Harry Truman said: The buck stops here. He is the one who brought in the 1947 initiative to reorganize for national security. He did not mind assuming that responsibility. Mr. President, do you think if you were President that you would depend on the Department of Homeland Security for your intelligence analysis? No, no, that is not going to ever happen. One, that Department is only going to be fed what the President says to feed them. The FBI is not going to tell them everything. The CIA is not going to tell them everything. It is a culture. We have to break down that culture, but the only place we know they are not afraid to tell is the National Security Council of the President of the United States. The Secretary of the Homeland Defense Department would not even know what to ask for. They do not have any kind of intelligence collection. They do not have the authority or resources to do that. They would create another analysis department, but it will not function properly unless it is fused. There has to be a fusion, an integration, as they said in 1947, of domestic and foreign intelligence so they know where to act. We have read in the newspapers where they are getting their money for terrorism, outfitting Canada and so on.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is all right, Mr. President. I will yield the time back and come back in on the debate. This is only a motion to proceed. I work with them. I can tell you the resistance of the FBI talking to the CIA--that is not in this bill--but we have to have a President get them together and make sure information is fused. There is a resistance. We have had meetings on port security. I cannot get the FBI to attend those meetings. I am going to get on Bob Mueller about that because I have his appropriation, but they do not want to get together. They are looking for crime. They are not looking for prevention. They want to catch somebody. When crimes are committed they are called into action. While we hope crimes are never committed, the FBI serves the nation by responding when crimes are committed. We must work to prevent terrorist attacks. That is the new culture, the new role to be taken on. The President has to play the game of President, be the chief executive. Mr. President, I say to Senator Byrd, in his mind, does he think he would depend on the Department of Domestic Security for making a decision? He is not going to depend on that Department or any other, except for the National Security Council. There is no substitute for the CIA being on the Council or for the FBI being on the Council, the Attorney General, or the Secretary of Homeland Security. Put him on the National Security Council. Let's begin to emphasize the domestic side of foreign policy and international threats. That is what has to be done, and it has to be done at the White House. You cannot run all over the country fundraising; you have to go to work. That is one fault with this particular President. I cannot put him to work. I see him out with flags, military people, policemen, firemen, and others. Carl Rove has him. I would like to get hold of him, and we could get this Government going. He has to go to work and bring them in and say: I want to make sure I know what I am doing. And this Department does not help him know what he is doing. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, right quickly, the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island was talking about the firemen running up those steps. It brings to mind 4 years ago the creation of the Office of Domestic Preparedness by this Congress. We were confronting terrorism long before 9/11. Mr. President, 144,000 individuals have been through schools in Nevada, New Mexico, Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. There are five big schools there to train the first responders. And that training has been really salutary in the sense that in the state of New York we have had over 17,000 first responders who were trained in the ODP program. So I say to the Senator, many who rushed up those steps had received the training and were responding in accordance with the foreseeability that we had in the congressional branch with respect to terrorism. I jump right quickly, with my time limited, to the hearings that we had. We hear so much about Hart-Rudman. We had hearings in the Senate, not just deciding on Hart-Rudman, that large bureaucracy, but, on the contrary, after 3 days of hearings in the State-Justice-Commerce Subcommittee of Appropriations we came down with a further beefing up of the Office of Domestic Preparedness. At the present time, ODP has a budget of $1.2 billion. We already have at the desk, unanimously approved by the Appropriations Committee and ready for debate, an increase of $1 billion, some $2.2 billion. In short, we were on the floor of the Senate on 9/11 debating terrorism. I emphasize that because they go right to the point and say they don't believe in domestic security. We have been working on domestic security since immediately after 9/ 11. I got together--and I must tell this story because it has already passed me with respect to the gun crowd--but be that as it may, I sat down with the El Al chief pilot from Israel who flew over from Tel Aviv and sat down and talked with us, myself and about four other Senators. At that seating, he emphasized the security of the cockpit door because I asked him: Sir, how is it that El Al, the airline most subject to be under the gun, where the terrorists do not even wait now, for example, to get to a plane--they shoot up the ticket counter like they did out in Los Angeles--that you have not had a hijacking in 30 years? He said: There is one way to prevent hijackings. Secure the cockpit door, and never open that door in flight. Let me emphasize, he said: My wife can be assaulted in the cabin. I would go straight to the ground, and law enforcement would meet me there. In flight, you do not want to give responsibility to the pilots for law and order. You give the pilots the responsibility for flying the plane. If they have the responsibility, with a gun, for law and order, then they have made a bad mistake because the pilots cannot prevent a plane from being hijacked. The enemy is not a single hijacker. There are teams of terrorists, suicidal terrorists, who do not mind losing their lives. And, yes, you can stop one or two, maybe, but the next three will take that plane over, and you will have a 9/11. I think our responsibility in this particular debate is--in addition to going up to New York on Friday, in addition to having the debate here, and a whole day turned over on next Wednesday, which I commend-- but the main thing is for us to act and assume the responsibility that a 9/11 never happens again. Once you secure that door--Delta Airlines has gone along with it, JetBlue is going along with it, but we are still debating it. We immediately moved for airline security. We passed it 100-0 in a bipartisan bill. You see in the morning paper it is not turf. This Senate voted to put the Transportation Security Administration in the Justice Department. I was not trying to hold it because I am chairman of the Transportation Committee. I have commerce, science, and transportation. I was not trying to hold it in my committee. I voted to put it in Justice and defended this position on the House side arguing that Justice would get it up and going. Instead I got a bureaucrat who was more interested in the logo and his office equipment and did not even talk to the airline managers. We confirmed--the pressure was on--before Christmas. We voted without the committee confirming this particular gentlemen. We just reported it out and we had a vote on it without any debate whatsoever. But now we are behind the curve and we have Admiral Malloy over there, and I think he is a great man, and I think we can do a lot of repairing and we are going to be realistic about what we can accomplish. There is no use arguing about what kind of terminal dates and everything else. We live in the real world and we must work together. We put in rail security, we put in seaport security before Christmas of last year. You don't find the administration pressuring the House to get going to pass it. They are still fussing about fees and taxes over there. They don't want to pay for it. It is domestic politics, reelection, not seaport security. So there we are. We can go down the list of all the work we have done on it, and here comes this bill and what does it do? It organizes every entity that did not fail, like the Coast Guard, FEMA, and the Agriculture Department and everything else, and ignores the ones that did fail. 9/11 was an intelligence failure, and you will not get that out of the Select Committee on Intelligence that is investigating between the House and Senate because the entities of this administration--I am not saying the President knew anything will not be embarrassed. I am sure if the President knew anything he would have put measures in place to avoid it. But I can tell you here and now that the committee that is investigating is not going to speak out about the intelligence failure because it would reflect, if you please, poorly on the President's management of their FBI, their CIA, their National Security Agency. I have been on the Intelligence Committee. In fact, I started in this work in 1954 on the Hoover Commission. The same problem we had almost 50 years ago with the FBI talking to the CIA, and the CIA talking to the FBI, persists today. I have gotten together with Bob Mueller, and he is a good man. He has hired some CIA officials. Last year before Thanksgiving, we gave him $750 million to clean up his computerization. He reorganized the Department and instituted a Department of Domestic Intelligence and now is talking, I understand, to George Tenet, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA failed on 9/11. We already had the blowing up of the World Trade Towers almost 10 years ago. But the CIA said we didn't know a plane could be used. They did not know a plane could be used? They had the direct record in 1994. In 1994, they had the Islamic group that was going to blow up the Eiffel Tower. Then, in 1995, they were working on a case out there in the Philippines where they uncovered a plan to blow up 12 planes at one time. The documents revealed that the terrorists, who had links to al Qaida, planned to ram a plane into the CIA building itself. But now they say they had no idea you could fly a plane into a building. Then al-Qaida blew up our embassies and blew up the USS Cole. They knew. Right to the point, they had warned about this crowd so much so that the President actually had on his desk on September 10--the day before--a plan to attack Afghanistan. We had the intelligence. We just were not paying attention. The FBI also failed. There isn't any question about that. We know about the flight schools in Arizona. Agent Williams sent notice saying: There is something wrong. These people of Mideastern descent are trying to learn how to fly. We believe they are connected to fundamentalist groups, something's not right to me. That word never did get up to the head of the FBI or the President of the United States. That was an intelligence failure. But we had the woman--Agent Coleen Rowley, I think her name was. When they arrested Moussaoui in Minnesota, they became so exercised she wrote a memo that: Look, this fellow doesn't want to learn how to take-off or land. He only wants to learn how to fly. We need to investigate him further. But the Minnesota field office was denied permission for a warrant. Why should we investigate him further? Because he was training to run a plane into the World Trade Towers. That is the record. I am not on any Intelligence Committee. I am not giving you any security information. If you want any kind of information along that line, there is a wonderful article that appeared in Time magazine on May 27, 2002. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Time magazine got into it very thoroughly--much more so than the committee that has been leaking. I was disappointed Sunday when I heard my distinguished colleague from Tennessee say: No, he would not take a polygraph test. I am an old trial lawyer. You are not going to convict my client on a polygraph test. We used it in the Hoover Commission 50 years ago, and it is an indicator. I wanted to make sure the staff on the Intelligence Committee--as I found out, I had been doubledealed by the CIA and was told: I cannot give you that information, Senator, because your staff does not have the appropriate clearance. Before you serve here as a Capitol policeman, you have to take a polygraph, and also before you serve in the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service--go down the list--but not the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. So I learned that in a war you never ask your man to do something you do not do yourself first. So I went over to take a polygraph test. To the very first question, I started off my answer ``in my humble opinion'' and the needle went right off the chart. I flunked. It took 2 hours and they gave me a chance again, and after that 2-hour test, I passed it and came back and I still brought it up that as a member of the Intelligence Committee, they do not have the appropriate clearance. If they want to know where the leaks are, go to the committees. Mr. President, the National Security Agency failed. They had all kinds of warnings about al-Qaida. They had Arabic friends over there. They got the word on September 10 in Arabic that ``the match is about to begin,'' but they didn't translate the Arabic into English until September 12. Now comes the National Security Council. It is interesting that in 1947 we had the same problem of coordination--instituting not only the CIA, but the 1947 National Security Council that the function of the Council shall be to advise the President with respect to the integration--that is joining--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 Government to cooperate more effectively in matters involving national security. If you don't have a President right at the catbird seat pointing to them and saying you either talk and coordinate with each other or else you are out, it is not going to be done. You can pass all the bills you want in the U.S. Congress. You are just passing another entity for finger-pointing. They need correlation again and again. Here is exactly what the President said in the National Security Presidential directive he made. I had a copy of it here. It is with respect to ordering the bush National Security Council. Incidentally, what I am saying I had said to him at the Cabinet table over 2 months ago. But on February 13--I ask unanimous consent that this National Security Presidential directive of February 13, 2001, be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. As the distinguished Senator from Texas always says, they are pulling the wagon, paying the taxes, keeping the country strong. We have removed 700,000 textile jobs alone. Akio Morita and I went to a seminar in Chicago almost 20 years ago, and they were lecturing about the Third World countries, the emerging nations trying to become nation states. Morita, then head of Sony, said: Wait a minute, in order to become a nation state, you have to develop a strong manufacturing capacity. Then later, he turned and said to this Senator: Senator, the world power that loses its manufacturing strength will cease to be a world power. I am worried about this country. I tell you, we have over a $412 billion deficit in fiscal year 2002. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that page 1 and page 60 of the Mid-Session review on the budget just issued be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. There is no question, Senator----

Mr. HOLLINGS. No. You bring out the point that this is bipartisan. President Clinton said he had to have fast track for NAFTA.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right. They said if we pass NAFTA we would get 200,000 jobs, but we lost 700,000 textile jobs. In the State of South Carolina, since NAFTA, we have lost more than 54,000 jobs. Now, this farm crowd, they get their $70 billion bill, and they come here blinking their eyes and talking about free trade, free trade. They get all the subsidies and protection--the Export-Import Bank, support payments, and everything else of that kind--and they run away with some $80 billion. The poor, hard-working people, such as your mine workers and my textile workers--

Mr. HOLLINGS. Now you begin to see what I started to talk about--the corruption, not of Senators, but of the process. You and I saw the corruption of the process when they brought TV cameras in here. I first got here 35 years ago. If you wanted to know what was going on down on the floor, you had to go down on the floor. So you always had 20, 25 Senators in this cloakroom, 20 Senators over in that cloakroom; and a point was made that you could immediately go out and contest that point. Now I stay back in my office looking at my TV. I know that is wrong, and I should run over to the floor. But when I get here, two other Senators have been waiting for an hour as the next speakers. So there is no debate. The process has been corrupted, as the budget process has been corrupted. Let me tell you exactly how it happened because I was chairman of the Budget Committee. I went over with Alan Greenspan in January of 1981 to brief President Reagan on the budget. He had pledged to balance the budget. He pledged, of course, tax cuts. He also pledged to balance the budget in 1 year. After the briefing, he said: Oops, this is way worse than I thought. It is going to take 3 years. That is how we got into the 3-year budgets. And with Gramm-Rudman- Hollings, we got the 5-year budget, and now we have 10-year budgets. Whoopee, let's have a 20-year budget and make all kinds of happy projections and re-elect ourselves. That is the corruption that has gone on. After President Reagan came in, the Greenspan Commission issued their report on Social Security, making it fiscally sound. Section 21 of the Greenspan Commission report said: Put Social Security off budget. As a former chairman of the Budget Committee and an old-timer, I worked with John Heinz from Pennsylvania, and we finally got it passed. On November 5, 1990, George Herbert Walker Bush--President senior Bush--signed into law, section 13.301 that says you shall not use Social Security in your budget. But we do. The President violates it, the Congress violates it, and, more particularly, the media does. The distinguished Senator from West Virginia is so terrific on historical reference, and I must think at this moment of President Thomas Jefferson. When he was asked: Between a free government and a free press, which would you choose? He said: I choose the latter. So long as the free press tells the truth to the American people, the Government will remain free. Why do they say on page 1, which we have just put into the Record, the deficit is $165 billion? But on page 60, the deficit, the real debt we will spend in this fiscal year, Madam President, is $412 billion more than we take in. Why? Because Mitch Daniels, our Enron accountant--wants to fool Americans. He is more interested in rolling out hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for Kenny-Boy Lay. Now, President Reagan, in trying to get both tax cuts and his pledge to balance the budget, got what he called ``unified.'' That was the biggest bunch of nonsense and charade I ever saw because it was all but unified. He just separated out the trust funds, including Social Security, and the civil service retirement and military retirees funds. He factored them out, and the next thing you know, we had unified. Then, under President Clinton, we went to on-budget, off-budget, on- budget, off-budget. Then to continue the charade, under President Bush, we refer to it as public debt and Government debt, Government debt and public debt. They confuse the public in order to get reelected. They tell everybody Social Security is not spent. That is exactly what the Secretary of the Treasury said this last Sunday. He said that under no circumstance would we spend Social Security. I almost went through the TV set when I heard him say: Social Security moneys are never spent for anything except Social Security. It's a red herring. CBO has already said we will owe not $1.170 trillion, but $1.333 trillion to Social Security. In fact, on page 44 of the Mid-Session Review you will see Mitch Daniels hides that fact. I ask unanimous consent that page 44 be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I am delighted to yield.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I thank my colleague from North Dakota. If the Senate had been in session listening and heard the persuasive argument made by the distinguished Senator from North Dakota and we had a vote, we would vote his way immediately because he has presented the case. The only thing is, he has not presented the case in the stark reality that it really is. We are talking to a fixed jury. As an old trial lawyer for some 20 years, where I made enough to afford the luxury of serving here, I know how to talk to a fixed jury. Specifically, the contention in the trial of this case is that we have to give the President negotiating authority that cannot be amended; it is on a take-it-or-leave-it basis; and that the trading nations, some, let's say, 160, 170 trading countries, just will not enter into an agreement unless the President has fast track. He doesn't want to go through the negotiation period and then find that his particular trade agreement has been amended on the floor of the Congress. If you refer to the 2001 Trade Policy Agenda and 2000 Annual Report, which is the most recent, issued by the U.S. Trade Representative, turn to page 1 of the list of trade agreements. You will find, in essence, five trade agreements as a result of fast track, and thereafter some 200 agreements without fast track. The contention that you can't get an agreement unless you have fast track is totally absurd. We have had the Tokyo round, and the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement. Incidentally, this Senator voted for that because we have relatively the same standard of living. We have the labor protections. We have the environmental protections. When you have a level playing field, I am delighted to vote for trade, and so-called free trade. But now, we have fixed trade. That is what we are debating. This jury is fixed. We also had the United States-Israel trade agreement, which I also supported; NAFTA, which I opposed; and the Uruguay Round with WTO. Those are the five so- called trade agreements under fast track. But then turn the pages and continue turning, and there are some 200 trade agreements without fast track. When I first got here, we had SALT I, and it was very complex. We had reservations and amendments on the floor of the Congress. We had a vote on that. We didn't have fast track for SALT I and fast track for SALT II and fast track for the chemical weapons treaty. The contention of the White House is you can't get trade agreements, but the President needs to look at his own book.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, you will see on page 44 that the Social Security moneys, to the tune of $157 billion, is spent. It shows it in his own document. We need to catch these fellows. That is why I say the budget is corrupt. Robert Kennedy, who used to sit at this desk, wrote a famous book, ``The Enemy Within.'' I could write a book called ``Your Best Friends and My Best Friends.'' The best friends are the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Manufacturers Association, and the National Federation of Independent Business. They are the enemy within for fixed trade. Yes, they want to export--export our jobs. That is what this is all about. Senator Byrd, over half of what we consume in this country is imported. Does the Senator realize that? We import 56 percent of our optical goods; 80 percent of our watches; and 42 percent of our semiconductors. I thought we were in the age of high tech, high tech, high tech--that motor of growth, high tech, high tech. But we import 42 percent of our semiconductors. By the way, out in Silicon Valley, they do not have health care, and I say to Senator Byrd, they do not have medical care. They are part- time workers. My friends at Microsoft had to sue to get health care. I would rather have a GE plant where they are making turbines and employee make $24 an hour, than to have high tech, high tech plants, where people make $12 or $14 an hour. Don't give me this high-tech stuff. This is all catching up with corporate America on the front pages. Corrupt executives are going to be indicted. The Justice Department has charged some executives already, but not Kenny Boy Lay, of Enron. You do not even hear about him. The Commerce Committee brought the Enron and WorldCom crowds in for hearings. We also heard from David Freeman, of the California Power Authority. I wanted to know how Kenny Boy Lay could not have heard about the fraudulent pricing structure Enron had out there. I saw his wife on TV, who said Mr. Lay did not know anything. Mr. Freeman said he knew everything going on out in California, I can tell you that. We have enough to bring charges. But that said, I am wondering and worrying about this because the fellow in charge of this, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, used to worked at a law firm that represented Enron. And if you think we cleaned up corporate America the other day with the new accounting bill, we did not, because it did not include expensing stock options. We also need companies to change auditors every 5 years. If they do, then every 5 years you will have the auditors auditing the auditors. When you know that another audit group is going to come in behind you, you do not start any tricky stuff. You are on trial. That is the quickest way to clean up the books. I wanted to offer an amendment for that, but the leadership on both sides had it tabled. We have not solved that problem, but I will be back. Back to the task at hand, we import 46 percent of our camera equipment; 93 percent of electrical capacitors; 55 percent of printing and related machinery; and already 36 percent of motor vehicles. That is a third of the vehicles Americans drive. Imported cars keep taking over the market here, they keep taking over the market. Also we import 62 percent of our motorcycles; over 50 percent of our office machines; 70 percent of our television sets; and 50 percent of our crude petroleum. I ask unanimous consent to print this list in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. No, sir, he doesn't. I can tell you now he wants the fast track for the fix. That is the point I want to make. I can tell you right now. Let's look at the result of the so-called trade agreements. Look at 1992, and you find that the Foreign Trade Barriers of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is 267 pages long. Oh, we had WTO, we had GATT, we had NAFTA, and we did away with all the barriers. Why then is this year's Foreign Trade Barriers--458 pages long? Like the monkey making love to the skunk, I cannot stand any more of this. I can tell you that right now. For Heaven's sake, don't give me any more free trade agreements or fast tracks. This would be the end of the argument, if you didn't have a fixed jury. What is better proof? I am using the President's proof. No. 1, he doesn't need fast track and, with fast track, we are actually going out of business.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I tell the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, they literally have almost a dozen and a half pages of all of these agreements, right here in the President's report, that were obtained without fast track.