Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am proud to be a cosponsor of this amendment with Senator McCain. This, again, is part of our attempt to implement through legislation as many of the recommendations of the 9/ 11 Commission Report as we possibly can. This is a critical one. The Commission made a finding not usually focused on, as part of its work, that there is a danger because of the slowness of the transition from one administration to the next that America will be vulnerable. We have an enemy out there, a terrorist enemy, that follows this kind of information. I don't make a causal statement now, but the fact is that it was in 1993, the first year of the Clinton administration, when the World Trade Center was first attacked by terrorists with a truck bomb. And it was 2001, of course, when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and other targets were attacked, in the first year of the Bush administration. These are very good recommendations. I do want to point out simply that the underlying bill incorporates a related recommendation by the Commission to consolidate security clearance investigations in one agency and encourage reciprocity among agencies with respect to those clearances, which should help streamline what is now a frustratingly Balkanized system for determining who can have access to sensitive information. This is very constructive. I do not believe it is controversial at all. To reiterate, this amendment will help ensure that our vital national security capabilities do not suffer undue disruption during a presidential transition. The 9/11 Commission recommended several measures to provide a swift hand-off between incoming and outgoing national security teams during a change in presidential administrations, and this amendment reflects those recommendations. First, it directs the outgoing administration to provide the President-elect with a detailed, classified summary of critical operational threats, including major military or covert operations and pending decisions on the use of military force. The most important member of the national security apparatus is the Commander in Chief. This provision will help the President-elect begin focusing on these issues, and considering any imminent high stakes decisions that might need to be made, well in advance of the day he or she takes office. The amendment also includes several measures to help assure that the President-elect will have a qualified team of national security advisors in place early in the new administration and who are able to hit the ground running. It calls on the President-Elect to submit the names of likely high level national security personnel for security clearances as soon as possible after the election, and directs the appropriate Federal agency or agencies to complete the necessary investigations for those clearances as quickly as possible, preferably before the inauguration. The amendment also urges the administration to submit nominees for the top national security positions by Inauguration Day and, if it does so, urges the Senate to act on those nominations within 30 days wherever possible. I think this language is a useful reminder to both the executive branch and the Senate that we should act to fill these positions with all deliberate speed--mindful that delay has costs, but dedicated as well to careful selection and review of nominees for these sensitive positions. Finally, the amendment would allow major party candidates to seek security clearances for prospective transaction team members prior to the election, with the goal of having those clearances available the day after the election. I should note that the underlying bill already incorporates a related recommendation by the Commission to consolidate security clearance investigations in one agency and encourage reciprocity among agencies with respect to clearances. This should help streamline what is now a frustratingly balkanized system for determining who can have access to sensitive information. We do not include the Commission's recommendation to eliminate Senate confirmation for national security nominees below the Executive Schedule III pay grade. This category would include many Assistant Secretaries with critical policymaking responsibilities. Given the need for strong Congressional oversight of the intelligence community and other national security operations, it does not seem wise to remove this important layer of Congressional review and accountability. I believe this amendment helps ensure that we do not loosen our footing in the war on terriorism at moments of presidential transition. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Arkansas and tell her, I, No. 1, never have any trouble understanding her, and, No. 2, I always enjoy giving her a hug.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, even I want to thank the Senator from Illinois, a dear friend, a great colleague. He has made a very substantial contribution to this bill. Senator Durbin has a quality of service in the Senate that I have noted in some of the best colleagues with whom I have had the honor to serve. He thinks about matters, focuses on a problem, comes up with a solution, and he doesn't let it go until he gets it done. He saw a real problem here which others have seen but, frankly, have not focused on or grabbed ahold of as much, which is the woeful, outrageous, infuriating inability, up until this time, of our Government to put the best information technology at the disposal of those who are working to protect us. The terrorists have figured this out. We all know about the opportunities for cyberterrorism. If you look at the number of hits that are made on even Defense Department sites, you can see the potential. We are beginning to have a very good capacity to launch our own offensives here, but this is about something else. This is just taking information, which is a key to protecting ourselves in the age of terrorism, and moving it quickly to the places it can do the most good. Talk about connecting the dots. Anyway, Senator Durbin is really singlehandedly responsible for this substantial title of the bill. I thank him very much for his contribution. It is part of why this bill is going to make a real difference in protecting the security of the American people.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join the chairman of our committee in urging acceptance of this amendment. I thank Senator Voinovich and the occupant of the chair, the distinguished Senator from Tennessee, for their work on this issue. This is a topic we have been talking about in the Congress for a long time. The occupant of the chair, having been vetted, considered, and confirmed for a Cabinet position in the past, knows the difficulties he and others have faced in fulfilling all those obligations, well beyond what most would deem to be reasonable. What motivates this now is an extra dimension of concern. The September 11 Commission made it very clear that a catastrophic attack might well be more likely to occur during the transition from one administration to the other. Therefore, the Commission recommended that we should do anything we could reasonably think of that would speed up the process of filling national security positions in our Government. Earlier today, I am pleased to say, the Senate adopted an amendment that Senator McCain and I and others introduced to accomplish some of those specific recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. This amendment builds on that, goes beyond it, and makes the bill stronger by helping an incoming administration fill a wide range of its appointive positions more promptly, in some cases, doing what is just plain logical: requiring the OPM, Office of Personnel Management, to send information to Presidential candidates 15 days after they are nominated; describing positions that must be filled in the new administration. This would not only allow time to prepare it, it would create a sense of optimism and fantasy in the minds of candidates nominated as to what they would do when they were elected. The amendment also calls for reports that will help us and the President to consider ways to further improve and streamline the process of getting officials appointed and put into place. It is a very good amendment. It builds on some substantial contributions Senator Voinovich made to the bill in committee. I am pleased to urge its adoption.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his questions. I want to assure him, first, there will be no rental charges for the charts that were a joint product of Senator Collins's and my office. To very briefly give the background, most immediately from the 9/11 Commission Report, when we said here repeatedly, and Lee Hamilton said during the course of our hearings during the investigation about how 9/ 11 happened, the Commissioners very often would say, Who is in charge? The answer more often than not was: No one. They concluded it was an organization without a head. That explained why the CIA would have information and not share it with the Immigration and Naturalization Service about people they would want to keep out of the country, or the FBI would have information and not share it with the CIA. The result was we are athletes--a homelier analogy--that the American intelligence community is like a football team with a lot of very good players but no quarterback. So they are kind of doing their own thing; some of them sometimes seem to be in another stadium and we are not getting the benefit of the billions of dollars that we are investing. The Commission recommended that we put someone in charge as a national intelligence director. Right now, the President is at the top on the chart. The President can't exercise day-to-day control over the intelligence community. Incidentally, this was the report of the 9/11 Commission. Most immediately, it was essentially the recommendation of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Congress, and in the recent past created a national intelligence director. The Scowcroft report--though we have not seen it--everybody knows that it says there has to be a national intelligence director. In fact, these recommendations go way back to 1947 when the National Security Act was passed post-Second World War and the CIA was officially created. Here is part of the problem. This is part of what I want to answer about the question. Part of the problem that all of these groups found was that the Director of Central Intelligence--as that position exists today, which was the same person as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency--effectively became only the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. That is part of why nobody was really directly overhead. As we can see in the first chart, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is over the CIA. The major recommendation was we have to separate those two, have a separate CIA Director, and then the national intelligence director who will be over all those stovepipes. How will he or she break them up? Two things. First, and this goes on from Colin Powell and others, we said the existing DCI was supposed to oversee the whole intelligence operation. We gave them some power but did not get them budget power. As my friend from North Dakota said, 80 percent of the budget for intelligence goes through the Department of Defense. In an episode that Senator Collins and I were struck by in the 9/11 report, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, in 1998, after a series of al-Qaida attacks, sends out a directive--then classified, now public--to the agencies under him and says, war has been declared against us by these terrorists: They hit the World Trade Center in 1993 with the bomb, they went after the embassies in Africa, et cetera. This is a declaration of war by us and the American intelligence community against al-Qaida, a war on terrorism. And no one responded. No one did anything because he is a general without authority. It is the old biblical line, at the sound of the trumpet, be uncertain who will follow into battle and, unfortunately, here, one of the elements of a certain trumpet in the Washington bureaucracy is money, budget authority. So no one did anything. When the Commission asked one of the heads of the boxes on the chart, Why didn't you respond to George Tenet, he said, We didn't think we had to; we thought that was a memo. Separate CIA from the Director so he is not responsible only for that agency but everyone in the community, with the budget authority to enforce decisions, with transfer authority for personnel within the intelligence community and, one of the most important, form the budget. Do not let other agencies do it. Actually do the budget. The Senator from North Dakota is one of the Senate's experts on budgeting, one who worries most about whether we are getting taxpayers their money's worth. Billions of dollars--it is a classified number, so I cannot state it--but billions go into intelligence every year. One of my hopes, because we do not talk about it much, we talk about connecting the dot, the national intelligence director will, one, be a tough budget official; two, make sure we get our money's worth; and third, more budget authority and oversight over the constituents. And, too, maybe decide this box under me is getting more money in terms of the current threat to America than it should, but this one is not getting enough; I have to move this money around. One more point. A critical element under the national intelligence director to help him or her connect the dots is the National Counterterrorist Center. The other centers he can create for separate problems such as nuclear proliferation or separate geographic public areas like Iran and North Korea. This is the place where he will bring together as never before all the constituent parts of the intelligence community. They will sit down. He can transfer people to those centers. He can give them assignments. Most of all, he can make sure they will pool their collection of intelligence, their analysis of intelligence and, very importantly, since they are around the table--they are talking with one another, they see the problem, they have an idea from the best intelligence, signal intelligence, imagery from the satellites we have, human intelligence from people on the ground--they will do some joint operational planning as to how to deal with the problem. How do we get bin Laden? Or if there is a terrorist cell in America, what is the best way to pool our resources to get them? We put somebody in charge and we give them real authority. Incidentally, there will be amendments introduced, or already have been, that will come to a vote in the next 2 or 3 days aimed at cutting away at that power. I say, with all respect, probably folks worried about the Department of Defense losing some authority--Senator Collins and I are both on the Armed Services Committee. We have a deep commitment to the warfighters. We are confident this structure will actually give better intelligence to the warfighters. That is my answer to your question.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. They did. Interesting question. As a matter of fact, this was a real priority for the 9/11 Commission, that we separate the CIA from the national intelligence director. The point is that the CIA is only one element of the remarkable assets we have in our intelligence community, including the so-called signal intelligence, the imagery from the satellites we have, the work coordinating domestic and foreign. Because the terrorists do not separate between domestic and foreign, now for the FBI it is made statutory under the bill creating a new directorate of intelligence, counterterrorism, working with the CIA under the national intelligence director. So the answer is yes. In fact, my understanding of the original proposal for the National Security Act post-World War II was there be a separate national intelligence director overlooking a whole community and a separate CIA. Folks in the military community were able to blend the two and diminish--here in Congress we were worried about this--and diminish and separate the power of the DCI. We look back now, and the 9/11 Commission certainly did, and say that was part of the problem. They created the vulnerabilities and weaknesses and openings the terrorists took advantage of on September 11.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Senator from North Dakota. He is absolutely right in his statement. We heard from witness after witness in our committee's deliberations in August and into September that probably worse than the status quo-- which is bad, without leadership--would be to create a national intelligence director and not give him the power to direct. This may be an old quote my friend is familiar with, but former CIA Director Jim Woolsey said: In Washington, there is a different definition of the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules. We are making sure the national intelligence director has the gold, which is to say the budget authority, both to formulate the budget for this entire community of national intelligence--the so-called tactical military intelligence budget--that stays with the Department of Defense. But while I cannot say the specific percentage, I will tell you under our proposal--again this is classified, but well over 50 percent of the budget authority will now go from the Department of Defense to the national intelligence director. So that position will have that budget authority in two ways. The first is to formulate the budget. Again, this is a very important colloquy because we are going to see some amendments that are intended to reduce the authority of the national intelligence director over budget to say he basically has to accept the budget proposals of the constituent agencies. That is not so in our bill. The second very important point: Right now the budget for the intelligence agencies goes to the Department of Defense. Even for the CIA it goes to the Department of Defense, then to the CIA. In our proposal, the money goes to the national intelligence director and then that position parcels it out to the others.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Sure.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Senator from North Dakota. Mr. President, I will begin, and if the Senator from Maine wants to get into this, I would welcome her doing so. First, I would say, again, Senator Collins and I are members of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate. If we felt there was the remotest possibility this proposal of ours would shortchange the warfighters, we would not make it. And believe me, it does not. A couple things to say: First, we make a distinction in this bill between the tactical military budget on one hand and the national intelligence budget on the other. The tactical military budget-- intelligence officials who are working for individual services; Army, Navy, combatant commanders working on joint programs within the military for more than one service--that money all stays with the Department of Defense. But the national intelligence assets, which are used, let's say, for satellites--which are clearly used by the military but also provide information that is critically important for the Department of Homeland Security or the State Department in advising the President on critical foreign policy decisions--that is under the national intelligence director, as it should be. The fact is, a lot of this is worked out in a consulting, consensus way. But we want to just raise that national interest here. The military will always be a priority customer of the intelligence community, but it is not the only customer. The President of the United States is the most important recipient of intelligence. The Secretary of State is very important; now the Secretary of Homeland Security. I believe we have struck exactly a balance here in making sure the warfighter is well supported. We had very interesting testimony, which I can share with my friend, from two generals who are heads of two of the constituent national intelligence agencies. They said to us they believe this proposal establishing a national intelligence director would be an improvement and be an improvement from the point of view of their agencies because it ended the ambiguity that exists now which they think is not good for their agencies and ultimately not good for the military. I wonder if the Senator from Maine wants to get into this and answer some of the very good questions my friend from North Dakota has asked.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this is a very important discussion about another critical part of this bill. Obviously, the Senator from Alaska has had an extraordinary record of leadership in this and so many areas of the Senate. He knows the subject matter. He has lived with it a long time. I understand what we are proposing represents change. He is quite sincerely concerned about it from the point of view of our national security interests. I most of all want to assure him we spent a lot of time thinking about this. We did not just go for the 9/11 Commission recommendation. The 9/11 Commission recommended that we disclose not only the bottom line of the national intelligence budget but, in fact, the budget of every single agency. Their argument, as I am sure the Senator from Alaska knows, was that, one, the public has a right to know. Of course, we have to balance it-- what we disclose to our enemies--against national security, but if the budgets of those constituent agencies were out in the public, then maybe over the years the public and more Members of Congress might have decided we were not putting enough money into human intelligence, CIA, et cetera, and that we were putting too much into signal intelligence and that we would not have had the shortfall many people think we have now. In our committee, Senator Collins and I decided we were not ready to make that leap of disclosing the budgets of the 15 constituent agencies of the intelligence community because we thought there was some risk involved about signaling the movement of our resources to those who wish us ill. Incidentally, there were some members of the Commission who felt very strongly about the disclosure of the budgets of all the agencies, including some former Members of this Chamber who really feel this was at the heart of it. We did not think so, and that is why we called for the study. We think we have, however, achieved something for asking for the disclosure of the bottom line because at least that tells the taxpayers and all the Members of Congress how much money we are spending for intelligence. In the course of this investigation, I asked some specific questions, obviously in closed settings, about the amount of money we are spending overall and for each individual agency. I was surprised at the answers I got. I think maybe more Members of Congress should ask those questions. But this is what I think we do achieve by having the bottom line disclosed. We are fulfilling a responsibility to the taxpayers to let them know how much money we are spending on intelligence because it is just the bottom line, without giving any particular guidance to our enemies as to where we are putting that money. The second point is, one result of this might be when more Members of Congress and the public see what we are spending on intelligence, which is so critical in the war on terrorism--intelligence is always critical in warfare and even more critical today because of the nature of this enemy which strikes at undefended targets, innocent civilians, and is crazy enough to blow themselves up. So the more we can see and hear and know what they are planning, the more likely we are going to be able to stop them. One conclusion, I say to my friend from Alaska, might be that Members of Congress and the public might conclude we are not spending enough on intelligence if they see the bottom line.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Alaska, it is impossible that he and I can both be wrong.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. We have been there before. Listen, because of who you are and what you stand for, Senator Collins and I will certainly think about this. We think we have struck a good balance in just asking for disclosure of the bottom line, no details, beginning public consideration of what we are spending on intelligence, and this study we ask for in 180 days, 6 months, and then we can make some judgments beyond that. I yield the floor. I thank the Senator. This is an important discussion.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I want to read a few sentences from the 9/11 Commission Report on page 416 which I think are relevant. It says: . . . Opponents of declassification argue that America's enemies could learn about intelligence capabilities by tracking the top-line appropriations figure. Yet the top-line figure by itself provides little insight into U.S. intelligence sources and methods. . . . Here is a point that one of the members of the Commission, again a former member of this body, made from the 9/11 Commission Report. The U.S. Government readily provides copious information about spending on its military forces, including military intelligence. The intelligence community should not be subject to that much disclosure. But when even aggregate categorical numbers remain hidden, it is hard to judge priorities and foster accountability. That is in defense of disclosing the 15 individual agency budgets. I say to the Senator from Alaska, who knows this better than I--and I am honored to serve on the authorizing Armed Services Committee--we give a fair amount of detail of the budget in terms of military programs.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I know that is true.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Sure.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. A final response on this point. The Senator from Alaska says correctly if one looks at the overall budget of a given military agency, it does not tell what they are spending on different programs. So I want to assure the Senator from Alaska that under the committee's proposal, not only do we not talk about what is being spent on specific programs and specific intelligence agencies, we do not talk about what is being spent in those agencies. We talk about the one number, the conglomerate bottom line or top-line number, and I think that only gives a general idea of what we are investing in intelligence, far from any specific information about what we are investing in particular kinds of intelligence, signal, human, image, let alone specific programs. I would not do this if I thought it would jeopardize our national security. In fact, that is why we did not call, as the Commission requested, for disclosure of individual agency budgets because we worried it might, and that is why we are asking for a report from the national intelligence director.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the Hollings amendment. The Senator from South Carolina raised a question: Who cares about the country? Who is putting the country's interests and security first? I assure him that Senator Collins and I, the members of our committee from both parties, care about the country, care about the security of the country, worry about the imminence of a terrorist attack, read the reports, came in in July and August and September, worked real hard to produce this proposal. Talk about treating something casually, the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina would casually eliminate all our work and that of the 9/11 Commission and a series of commissions going back to 1947, when the National Security Act was adopted, recommending a strong national intelligence director. What you are doing is creating a position that is cosmetic, that has no teeth to it, and will not be able to do what we need to do. It will bring us back to where we were before September 11, with no one in charge and, even worse, the appearance of someone in charge. Witness after witness--people no one would treat casually, Secretaries of State, heads of the intelligence community, the past three or four of those people said: The worst thing you can do is to create a position and not give that position the authority to direct the intelligence community. With all respect, that is what the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina is doing. Secretary Powell said to us on September 13 of this year at a hearing: A [Director of Central Intelligence] was there before, but the DCI did not have that kind of authority. And in this town, it's budget authority that counts. Can you move the money? Can you set standards for people? The [national intelligence director]-- The one created in our bill-- will have all of that, and so I think this is a far more powerful player. And that will help the State Department. Stansfield Turner, CIA Director under President Carter, told us on August 16: I think it's empowering somebody to run a $40 billion a year . . . operation. And we just don't have that. And we need to have a CEO. So the real issue is just how much authority to give that CEO and still protect the Department of Defense. And I, as a military officer, would err on the side of giving it to the national intelligence director. That is what we do. With all respect, not casually, we have built in a lot of time and effort that this committee put in over a period of time on a totally bipartisan basis. This amendment would take us back to where we were when we were struck on September 11, 2001. I don't want to go back there, and that is why I oppose this amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank our colleagues from West Virginia, Texas, and Kansas for this amendment. It has been a priority of our focus, Senator Collins and mine and the committee, to make sure that intelligence is not only coordinated by the national intelligence director and the dots are connected, but that intelligence be high quality and objective and subjected to the competition of ideas. This amendment makes that basic approach even stronger. I thank our friends for all they have done. Senator Rockefeller, again, if I haven't said it on the floor, has been a tremendous contributor to our effort. I thank him for all the support he has given.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I have an amendment which I send to the desk at this time.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise with Senator McCain to offer this amendment that takes the fight against terrorism right to where they live--right to their front lines. This amendment says we will identify terrorist havens and--working with our allies--we will break them up and keep them on the run. They will have no peace, no rest, no time to settle in and plot destruction. This amendment also says we will attack and cut their most vital supply line--the disaffected young who serve as recruits. We will do this by showing the Muslim world--especially the young-- that we believe in and can help them achieve their dreams of living in a 21st century world that still respects the tenets of Islam. These goals are a challenge. But if we succeed--and we must--this generation will see the calls to jihad fade and the global chorus celebrating our shared humanity and peaceful futures grow. Let us start with the challenge of eliminating terrorist sanctuaries and their sense of safety. As the 9/11 Commission reported, terrorist cells stretch from Afghanistan right into the major cities of Europe. And as 9/11 proved, into the United States as well. To fight and win this war, we need to identify these pockets of terrorist sanctuaries and, working with other nations, develop strategies that in the words of the Commission: Keep possible terrorists insecure and on the run using all instruments of national power. The Commission did identify specific countries where we should concentrate our immediate efforts and I would like to focus on two of them. One is Afghanistan. This almost goes without saying. This is where al-Qaida trained its killers. This is where the 9/11 plot was hatched. This is where the tyrannical Taliban rulers enslaved an entire nation except for those who plotted global destruction. This amendment says that Congress needs to authorize the aid and support necessary for the entire Afghan nation to finally realize its freedom, which is so close but still so fragile. At this stage, half measures in Afghanistan are the same as throwing a five-foot rope to someone drowning 10 feet away. We can't let that happen. Another country identified by the Commission was Pakistan. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Pakistani government made the choice to stand with us in the fight against terrorism at great risk to the stability of the nation and the lives of its leaders. We have no choice but to stand by them. Pakistan may be an imperfect ally at times. But they have been a loyal ally--committing troops on their own frontiers to hunt down al- Qaida fighters and denying them safe bases. This amendment says we not only need to maintain our current financial support of Pakistan, but let the Pakistanis know we are making a long-term commitment to the future of their nation. They need to know they have our support for as long as they remain true to their goals of defeating domestic extremists, promoting a civil society and preserving the hope of Pakistani democracy that can become another beacon for the Muslin world in the years to come. Just imagine if one of the outcomes of the global war against terrorism was stable democracies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. This goal is within our grasp. It is within our means. Only our vision can fail us now. And vision--long-term vision--is what we will need to fulfill the second part of the strategy outlined in this amendment. We must win over the minds of the Muslim world, especially the young, by reaching out and talking to them in ways we never have before. Let me pose a question the 9/11 Commission asked. How can a man hiding in a cave be communicating more effectively with the Muslim world than the nation that invented mass media and the Internet? The 9/11 Commission report said: To Muslim parents, terrorists like bin Laden have nothing to offer their children but visions of violence and death. America and its friends have a crucial advantage. We can offer these parents a vision that gives their children a better future. But it doesn't matter if we don't effectively communicate that vision. This amendment says we must improve our mass communications efforts with the Muslim world through sustained and well-funded broadcast efforts on satellite television and radio. That is a good start. But this can't just be an air war. Minds are won over more by actions than words. And this amendment looks to engage the minds of Muslim youth by rebuilding scholarship, student exchange and library programs. It also calls for establishing an International Youth Opportunity Fund--that other nations would be asked to contribute to--that would help build and operate primary and secondary schools in Muslim nations committed to public education. Why do this? Because most of these nations are too poor to pay for public education. Instead, students attend Madrassahs that far too often are classrooms where hatred is taught and bigotry affirmed. Consider this: In Karachi, Pakistan, 200,000 students attend Madrassahs; 200,000 in one city alone. Multiply that over the entire Muslim world. We can't possibly keep up with those numbers year after year. The challenges ahead of us are daunting. But with this amendment we say that we are ready and willing to go to the front lines of the terrorist world and take away the sanctuaries where they hide--and take back the minds that they steal. This is another in a series of amendments that Senator McCain and I have offered to carry out the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. This one has to do with recommendations they have made with regard to foreign policy. It has been cleared on both sides. I urge its adoption.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Amendment No. 3781, As Modified