Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I agree with the gentleman. I think that this bill is going to provide for more jobs for civil service employees because it is easier when we have a job to do under this massive bureaucracy we have now and the SECDEF says, I need that job done, can we have a civil servant do it? And the answer is, we can in 6 months. So the Secretary then does one of two things: He says, okay, let us get a contractor to do it, if we cannot get one of our own guys to do it the other alternative is let us get a sergeant to do it. The sergeant salutes and says, yes, sir, and he goes and gets the information he needs to do the job and he does it. So the idea that we are going to be contracting the civil service force as a result of this is absolutely not accurate. In my opinion, we are going to have more people. Secretary Rumsfeld said there are, right now, under his estimate, some 300,000 uniformed people, people in the military, doing jobs that civil service folks could do if we could get the bureaucracy out of the way.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is aware of the map that I put up of Camp Pendleton that showed the overlays on the various environmental restrictions. I have gone through that a number of times. It has got the areas for the gnatcatcher, it has got the estuarine sanctuary, it has got the closeout for the beach. The gentleman is aware that there is about 17 miles of beach there where the Marines practice their amphibious landings. Is it the gentleman's claim that that beach is now open for use for the United States Marines?

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an en bloc amendment.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons), who is a member of the committee and has a great defense background. (Mr. SIMMONS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would pledge to work to see that we have a balanced result coming out of the conference and that we work with the gentleman and the other gentlemen who have spoken of this.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from the great State of Michigan (Mr. Upton).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter). (Mr. PORTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I wish to assure the gentlewoman that we will work to see to it that small businesses participate robustly in rebuilding Iraq.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time to reciprocate to my partner, the ranking member of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), and thank him for his great work on this bill, and I want to thank all the Members for their great work on this en bloc package.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, we have a system today which makes a great deal of sense. It says if we sell a supercomputer, and the President has a right to define what a supercomputer is, he can raise the number of millions of theoretical operations per second that define a supercomputer, but once he makes that determination, then if someone sells to what is known as a Tier III country, and that is a country that we may have great problems with, and I will ask the staff to bring down a poster that has those countries. I am talking about countries like China, India, Djibouti, other countries like that; and if you sell a supercomputer to those countries, you have to do something very simple, you just give notice. You just send a notice to the Department of Commerce; and under our law that we worked out very studiously, the Department of Commerce gives within 24 hours that notice to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, and they are able to scrub their list and say wait a minute, have we got a bad guy who is an end user here? Have we got a company that wants to kill Americans? Do we have somebody who is going to aid terrorists? If that is not the case and we come up with a benign end user, okay, go ahead and sell it. All we have to do is give notice 10 days before the transfer is made. And if the bureaucracy fails to act in 10 days, the trade under our present law is authorized. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), and I have great respect for him and he is a great friend and he is right on many defense issues, is wrong on this one because this takes away the notice. We are a Nation that now understands that fighting terrorism means knowing things. It means intelligence. We are the country that is going to get information off driver's licenses and visas and background checks because we need information; and yet if this passes, there is no notice requirement. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) says some notice requirement may be built in in the future; but when we strike title B, it takes away the notice requirement. The other thing that it takes away, it takes away what is known as end-use verification. That means when we sell a supercomputer to Communist China, and they say we are not using this for our nuclear weapons development, we are going to use this for our weather laboratories, that means we have a right to go over and check in that weather laboratory and make sure that they have not transferred it over to nuclear weapons development. The Dreier amendment strikes this, and we no longer can check on how this equipment is being used.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, let me just say, the playtop system that the gentlewoman from California held up and said this would be licensed, that is not the case today. Today the case is 19,000 million theoretical operations per second. That is about 2,000. Nobody is asking for a report on that. We have taken care of that. Secondly, the heart of this is the report. If you sell to one of these controlled countries like China, you have to let the Secretary of Defense know you did it. He only has 10 days to review it. If he does not do anything, you make the sale. But the idea that we do not want to bother ourselves with knowing what we are doing makes no sense. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities. (Mr. SAXTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment guts a very important aspect of national security, and that aspect is knowledge. The idea that we want to take away notice when a supercomputer is sold to one of these third-tier countries, and once again I would ask the floor staff to put up that list of so-called third-tier countries, including Communist China and a number of others which may at some point be our adversary, the idea that we want to take away our notice so that we do not know if we are transferring a supercomputer to the Osama bin Laden Construction Corporation, we want to divest ourselves of that knowledge, that makes no sense. We have a system in place which is very practical. It is a 10-day system. You simply tell, by notice, the Department of Commerce if you are going to sell a supercomputer. The President decides what a supercomputer consists of; and if you are going to sell a supercomputer to China or Pakistan or Vietnam or Algeria, you give them a 10-day notice. He sends a copy within 24 hours to the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State. If nobody objects, you make the sale. If 10 days expires, you go ahead and transfer this supercomputer. The other thing we have is in-use verification. We want to make sure when a supercomputer goes to China it is being used by their weather bureau, for example, not by their nuclear facilities. The only way one can tell is by sending a team and saying is that supercomputer where they said it would be? That is called in-use verification. The gentleman from California's (Mr. Dreier) amendment strikes in-use verification. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) joins me in opposing this amendment very strongly. I would ask the Members to look at the handout that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) and I put out together. Please vote this amendment down and please retain notice.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent for the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.