Henry Hyde

Mr. HYDE

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

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. HYDE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, the manager's amendment that we are discussing now changes the short title of the bill to the ``Effective Death Penalty and Public Safety Act of 1996.'' It conforms the language in section 102, ``prohibiting material support to terrorists,'' to the language already used in section 204. In other words, it says, ``has reasonable cause to believe,'' instead of ``should have known.'' This amendment would codify current case law on actual and constructive knowledge of criminal activity. This amendment strikes both section 302 and section 303. Section 302 has to do with disclosure of certain consumer reports to the FBI, and section 303 has to do with disclosure of business records held by third parties in foreign counterintelligence cases. Both of those sections are stricken in their entirety. Next, the amendment amends section 803, having to do with jurisdiction for lawsuits against terrorist states, which in turn amends the existing Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. section 1602-1611. This section would allow lawsuits by U.S. citizens against terrorist states who are responsible for state-sponsored torture, extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage, hostage-taking, or the provision of material support or resources for such acts which result in death or personal injury. The manager's amendment would change the language in the committee- reported bill requiring that plaintiffs filing suit under this section must first give the foreign state an opportunity to arbitrate the claim. The manager's amendment would only require pretrial arbitration if the terrorist act upon which the lawsuit is based occurred within the boundaries of the country being sued. The manager's amendment also contains a statute of limitations provision for such suits. The manager's amendment makes it clear that these lawsuits must be filed within 10 years after the terrorist act, but allows cases to be filed after the enactment of this provision, so long as the suit was previously blocked in Federal court based upon sovereign immunity grounds. This amendment provides for closed circuit televised court proceedings to allow victims to watch a criminal trial where the trial is moved out of the State and a significant distance from where it originally would have taken place; that is, Oklahoma City to Denver. The provision authorizes the acceptance of donations to pay the cost. No new spending is authorized. The amendment adds section 807, giving the FBI authority to conduct law enforcement training and instruction to foreign law enforcement officers in order to improve the effectiveness of the United States in investigating and prosecuting transnational criminal offenses. With so many countries emerging from Soviet dominance, it is imperative that the United States establish ties and help create professional law enforcement organizations so that our efforts to investigate and prosecute international criminal offenses is enhanced. The amendment also strikes section 310 of the bill, relating to the Attorney General's reward authority. This provision violates rule XXI, clause 5(a), of the House rules in that it would provide different uses for appropriated funds than those which were originally intended. In addition, reward authority for the Attorney General has been enacted into law elsewhere. The Justice Department supports this change. Lastly, the amendment strikes section 670 of the bill because it also violates rule XXI, clause 5(a), of the rules of the House. It proposed to allocate fiscal year 1995 funds for the Department of Justice for purposes other than those originally intended in that appropriations bill. Moreover, the provision is moot because all fiscal 1995 appropriations have already been expended. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Istook].

Mr. HYDE. I wanted to answer your question. Yes, I think so, because we may need that to get enough votes to pass this bill.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio].

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Oxley]. (Mr. OXLEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Gilman]. (Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I do not rise in opposition, I really rise in support, if that is appropriate.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I would ask how much time I have remaining.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. (Mr. HYDE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Delaware [Mr. Castle], the former Governor.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, it is kind of a sad day for me, and I will tell the Members why. Earlier in the day, standing back there I heard a dear friend of mine, a great Republican, say ``I trust Hamas more than I trust my own government.'' Those words hurt. That is a very tragic situation, because our Government is made up of a lot of people, including me and you, a lot of good judges, honest judges with families. Yes, there are corrupt judges. There are corrupt clergy. So what? Our Government is run by people in a democracy, and ``I trust Hamas more than I trust my own Government''? I heard the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma say almost the same thing, about how paralyzed with fear we are of our own Government. We should get rid of the bad apples. Mr. Chairman, my friend, the gentleman from Indiana, asked my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, does this expand wiretapping; how intrusive. Well, it does not expand wiretapping. It provides for a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, which the gentleman supported on February 7, 1995; which the gentleman supported when he signed the contract. What happened? Why has it suddenly become a terrible thing to have a good faith exclusion? Mr. Chairman, I will tell the Members what happened. The ACLU and the National Rifle Association, in a strange, bizarre marriage, the Jack Klugman and Tony Randall of national security policy, decided it was a bad idea, and people who supported it then, including the gentleman from Georgia, enthusiastically did 180 degrees. Mr. Chairman, I do not care. It is bad policy. We have a real threat. We either do something about it, or take a pass and pretend we are. With the Barr amendment, this is not an antiterrorism bill.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, pursuant to the authority granted in the rule, I offer the following amendments en bloc. No. 3, Mr. Hastings of Florida; No, 8, Mr. Traficant, No. 11, Mr. Bachus and Mr. Spratt, and No. 14, Mr. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Mr. Kasich.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the Traficant amendment is a sense-of-Congress resolution to Buy American wherever practicable. We certainly support that. Mr. Chairman, on the Bachus-Spratt-Leach amendment, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Bachus].

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that a revised amendment to H.R. 2703 which the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Bachus] has just handed me, which makes important corrections which are agreed upon, be substituted for the text that we have been discussing and that we will vote on with regard to Amendment No. 11.

Mr. HYDE. That is correct.

Mr. HYDE. I will yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, this is a very interesting and important debate. Frankly, as the distinguished gentleman from Georgia said, we negotiated for 3 months trying to get a bill in proper shape that would be acceptable to people of different points of view in this matter. We took out emergency wiretap provisions, to my regret. We took out roving wiretap provisions, to my regret. We took out use of the military to protect against the use of chemical warfare, say, in mass transportation, to my regret. We took out funding provisions for that domestic counterterrorism center, which the intelligence agencies and the FBI wanted, to my regret. We have no way to pay for digital telephony, which will permit our law enforcement to wiretap fiber optics, which is the wave of the future, to my regret. But, we bent over backwards to accommodate the distinguished gentleman because we wanted his support. Evidently, we did not bend over far enough, because now we have several other objections to our bill that he seeks to strike. First of all, let me make clear I resist with whatever strength I can muster the gentleman's amendment without in any way diminishing my profound respect for his sincerity and for his scholarship. But, for example, he strikes section 301 of the bill relating to pen registers and trap and trace devices for foreign counterintelligence investigations. We are talking about counterespionage cases where one is suspected of being a spy for a foreign government. Pen registers record the telephone numbers called from a telephone; trap and trace devices record the telephone numbers calling into a telephone. The law requires that a court order must be obtained before these devices can be installed, and it does not seem to me too big a stretch for our law enforcement to learn who is calling whom in an appropriate criminal investigation after a court order. This is especially vital in espionage cases because of the necessarily secretive nature of the contacts between a spy and a foreign government agent. There is no fourth amendment protection for one's telephone number. But, in striking this from the bill, we seem to imply one. Strike section 305, this is serious. This provides in the bill a good-faith exception to the statutory exclusionary rule for wiretap evidence. In other words, if you get a court order, a warrant to wiretap, and there is a defect, a technical defect, but it was made in good faith as determined by a judge, you still have a suppression of that evidence, because it did not comply with the fourth amendment. Well, I hate to remind our people, but this Contract With America, which was signed by myself and the gentleman from Georgia and others, specifically provides, on page 62, for a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. The contract says too many guilty go free because of simple technical errors committed by officers who believed they were conducting proper investigations. May I say, the gentleman from Georgia was a leading defender of the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule on February 7, 1995. I have his remarks here, and they do make stirring reading, and I commend them to my colleagues. But that is out, under the gentleman's amendment, somewhat to my surprise. Another part of the bill that the gentleman from Georgia strikes is section 601, the alien terrorist removal provisions. I vehemently oppose effort to strip these provisions from the bill. These were thoroughly discussed, debated in committee, and the bill will be incomplete without these alien terrorist removal provisions. They do not deny due process rights to aliens. An alien will not find himself in these proceedings unless a Federal district court judge finds that there is probable cause to believe that the alien is a terrorist and that the use of normal deportation proceedings would pose a risk to the national security of the United States. The alien in entitled to court-appointed counsel at these special hearings, which will be open to the public. The alien gets extensive rights to confront and cross-examination witnesses and examine any nonclassified information. Now, when you get to classified information, it may be used as evidence in the deportation proceedings, but only if the alien is given an adequate summary of the classified information that will enable him to defend the allegations. Legal permanent resident aliens will be given an attorney at Government expense who can challenge the classified information if no summary can be provided. The only circumstance in which classified information can be used without providing a summary to the alien is if the judge finds that providing the summary would cause serious and irreparable harm to the national security of the United States or serious bodily injury to any person, and the continued presence of the alien in the United States would pose the same risks. The Government's burden of proof, as in regular deportation proceedings, is to establish by clear and convincing evidence that the alien is a terrorist. Now, please hear me, the Supreme Court and lower Federal courts have upheld the authority of the Immigration Service to use classified information in the cases of aliens who seek discretionary relief from deportation without disclosing such information to the applicant. I have got all the citations here. The sixth-amendment protection of our confrontation rights has no application in deportation proceedings, because they are purely civil matters. They are not criminal. Striking these provisions, as the gentleman does, would lead to alien terrorists being allowed to remain in the United States, to harm our citizens and lawful residents. Now, the next thing I object to is his striking of section 611. Section 611 bars entry of representatives and members of designated terrorist organizations and the process by which those foreign groups are designated as terrorists. By passing the Barr amendment, you remove from the bill the process by which groups are designated terrorists. These are not done arbitrarily with the Attorney General, who provides the factual evidence to Congress, and judicial review is provided to the group or the individual. I do not know how much more protection you can have to protect us from alien terrorists, who really have no right to come in this country, anyway. In any event, that is barred, and the process by which these groups are designated as terrorists. And, so, with Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, there is no way to designate them as terrorist organizations. We can designate a terrorist country under another law, thank God. They have not found that yet or they would take that away. But here they are not going to let you designate terrorist organizations. Your Washington Post today, on page A18, says Hamas is raising money in the United States today. Are you comfortable with that? I am not.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. HYDE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers], and I ask unanimous consent that he be permitted to yield blocks of time to other Members.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.