Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to express my gratitude to Scott Brown, with whom I have enjoyed the privilege of serving for the past 3 years. During that time, Senator Brown and I served together on the Homeland Security and Government Services Committee, which I have chaired, as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he and I have worked closely together as chairman and ranking member. Senator Brown's life story is a testament to our power to overcome any obstacle. His aptly titled memoir, ``Against All Odds,'' describes how despite suffering through a childhood in which he had to steal in order to help feed his sister and in which he was the victim of abuse, he rose to attend college and law school, serve in the Army National Guard, and eventually be elected to the U.S. Senate. Senator Brown should be a role model to every young American who looks at themselves in the mirror and wonders whether they can overcome the obstacles in their path, because he has. Senator Brown has been an invaluable Member of the Senate and the committees on which he has served, lending a voice of reason in an ever more partisan time. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Brown played a critical role in the debate on whether to repeal the military's don't ask, don't tell policy, grilling witnesses at the committee's hearings on the issue throughout the year. Senator Brown was forthright in his view that the law should not be changed until Congress fully understood any possible risks associated with acting on the issue, but after he had studied the report issued by the Defense Department's working group tasked with reviewing the issue, he lent his strong voice in support of repeal. For that, I am grateful, as are the tens of thousands of gay and lesbian servicemembers who no longer serve under the threat of separation because of who they are. In the 112th Congress, Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Airland, he and I were responsible for overseeing the tactical aviation and land power programs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. It was a great pleasure working with Scott on these important matters, and I always benefitted from his experience as a guardsman when reviewing these programs. As a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Brown fought for and achieved passage of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, STOCK Act, a bill that forbids Members of Congress and their staffs from profiting in any way from the information they obtain as part of the job that is not public. It is a testament to his service in the Senate that one of Scott Brown's most notable accomplishments was a bill to uphold the standards of the ethical behavior of Congress. It was an honor to work with Senator Brown on this important effort. As ranking member on the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee, Scott Brown joined his chairman, Tom Carper, along with full committee ranking member Susan Collins and me to introduce the bipartisan 21st Century Postal Service Act, which the full Senate endorsed on April 25, 2012. This bill reflected many hours of tough negotiations in which Scott played a key role, and set out a balanced plan to get the Postal Service's finances back in order. Senator Scott Brown has enriched the work of the Senate and the lives of his colleagues over the past 3 years. He brought to the Senate not only his considerable talents but a great sense of humor, which was particularly helpful in the 3 tough years he was here. I wish him and his family all the best as he opens a new chapter of his own life and know that he will continue to serve our country in ways that really matter.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to express my own sense of encouragement about the statements made this afternoon by President Obama and Senator McConnell which indicate that the negotiations to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff are making progress. We are not there yet, but they are making progress. I am very encouraged by that. I have heard over the last couple days a familiar phrase invoked many times, and it is that no deal is better than a bad deal. I suppose it is often true that no deal is better than a bad deal. But in the case of the fiscal cliff, no deal is the worst deal because the government will go over the fiscal cliff and will take almost every American with us. Almost every family who pays taxes now will pay higher taxes. People's jobs will immediately be put in jeopardy, unemployment compensation will end for more than 2 million people. Our defenses will be decimated by cuts that will put us in a position of accepting unacceptable risks to our security. Title I programs of education for low-income children will be cut dramatically. Most people, including our own Congressional Budget Office, say the combination of tax increases along with the decreased spending required under the Budget Control Act will push our economy back into recession in the new year. So I do not agree that no deal is better than a bad deal. In this case, I repeat, no deal is the worst deal because it allows our country to go over the fiscal cliff and hurts almost every American family and our country and our economy as a whole. This should not be a surprise to us. It is not as if--if I can use the metaphor that Congress was going along in a bus on a ride through the country and suddenly came to the end of the road and there was a cliff. This should not be a surprise to us. We created this cliff ourselves a year and a half ago when we adopted the Budget Control Act. We created it for a very good reason: Because we knew we had proven ourselves incapable of making the compromises that were necessary to achieve the long-term bipartisan debt reduction program America desperately needs. We are over $16.4 trillion in debt. I am in my last days as a Senator. If you told me when I started that we would be $16 trillion in debt, I would not have believed it. Frankly, if you had told me just a dozen years ago, at the end of the Clinton administration when we were in surplus, that we could possibly be $16 trillion in debt, I would have thought you were not reality tested. But here we are. Most everybody knows the way we are going to get out of this is with a combination of tough medicine--I would call it tough love. We are going to have to reduce spending. We cannot do it all from discretionary spending. The Budget Control Act we adopted last summer; that is, the summer of 2011, does it all from discretionary spending. What is discretionary spending? It is different from entitlement spending: Medicare, Medicaid, et cetera. It is what most people think of as the government. It is education programs. It is environmental protection. It is social service programs. It is defense. It is homeland security. It is law enforcement. That is about one-third of our budget. It is not the part of spending that is driving the debt and deficit. That is being driven by the growth in entitlements, which are rising for a good reason, which is that the American people are living longer; therefore, taking much more money out of programs such as Medicare than they put in and, I suppose, for reasons that are not so good, which is the cost of health care continues to go up. We proved ourselves incapable of dealing with this crisis as part of the normal process of compromise. So we created the cliff, which was intentionally made so harmful that our assumption was that we would not allow ourselves to go over the cliff because it would be so hurtful. Again, that is why no deal in this case is not better than a bad deal. No deal is the worst deal because it means we go over the cliff. Why is all this happening? For a lot of reasons. But one is that there are groups within both great political parties who are defending the status quo, who do not want the situation as it exists now, which has created the $16\1/2\ trillion of debt, to change. But we cannot go on this way. Because if we do, we already are putting an enormous burden on generations of Americans to follow in paying off the debt we have incurred. But we are also coming to a point, if we do not do something soon, where the choices we are going to have to begin to pay off the debt are going to be hurtful to our great country, which is enormous tax increases, enormous spending cuts such as the one in the fiscal cliff proposal or, at worst, the monetizing of the debt, a drop in the value of the dollar, and all the harmful effects that will have on our economy and our country. Here we are, December 31, not only the eve of a new year--which we hope and pray will be a great one for our country and everyone who lives in it--but a few hours away from letting our country go over the cliff. We can't let it happen, and that is why I am so encouraged that these bipartisan negotiations are looking like they will produce a bipartisan agreement, which hopefully will come before the Senate sometime this evening. This is not, this will not be the comprehensive, bipartisan, long- term debt agreement we created the cliff to encourage. This will not be the bipartisan, long-term debt reduction agreement this country needs. So much is beginning to turn right in our economy. Housing prices are doing better, unemployment is down. We see manufacturing picking up again. The big problem the American economy has is right here in Washington, our inability to get together across party lines to bring our country back into fiscal balance and to show the country and the world we have a political system that is capable of fixing our problems. Earlier this year, Bob Carr, the Foreign Minister of Australia, one of our greatest allies in the world, said: ``The United States is one budget deal away from restoring its global preeminence.'' ``The United States is one budget deal away from restoring its global preeminence.'' Perhaps because I am so proud of this country, I would say we are one budget deal away from restoring our global dominance for a considerable number of years. Unfortunately, after--I hope and I pray we adopt the result of negotiations going on now and avoid the fiscal cliff--we will still be one grand bargain budget deal away from restoring our global preeminence. That work has to be done, but at least we will have avoided the cliff. By a twist of fate, the occupant of the chair is my colleague and friend, the Senator from Connecticut. You have probably seen these numbers, but just to bring it home for one State, what will be the impact if we allow the country to go over the fiscal cliff in Connecticut: 1.4 million middle-class families will see their Federal income taxes increase, almost 1.5 million families. If the middle-class tax cuts are allowed to expire on January 1, a median-income Connecticut family--now I know the median in Connecticut is higher than it is in most other States, but this number is true for any family making this amount of money. It makes an important point. A family of four earning $86,000 a year happens to be the median family income in Connecticut. But that family, which I think would be considered median just about everywhere, middle income just about everywhere, would see its Federal income taxes rise by $2,200. That is a lot of money for a family of four paying a mortgage, paying for food, probably paying something for education for their children, maybe college--too much. Another Connecticut number is 680,000 additional Connecticut taxpayers will be hit by the alternative minimum tax. It is amazing when we think about that. Those are going to be middle-class families who will be hit by that. Also, 120,000 Connecticut taxpayers will no longer get a tuition tax credit to help pay for college because that too will expire if we don't do something about it. There are 340,000 Connecticut families raising children who will see an average tax increase of $1,000 as they lose access to the child tax credit. The earned-income tax credit, which was something adopted during the 1990s--which I was proud to be part of--is also set to expire on January 1. That is for--when I say lower working families, some might call them lower middle income, gives them a break that they need. In the most recent year for which we have numbers, almost 43,000 Connecticut working families received important benefits from the earned-income tax credit, and they would lose it. The national numbers are 2.1 million people long-term unemployed who will see their unemployment checks end. We are setting them adrift. In Connecticut, that means 33,600 Connecticut individuals will lose unemployment benefits under the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Program. I met with a group of these folks recently, and I know a lot of these people are white-collar people. Some of them are in their middle years of life, and they lost their jobs in companies that were hit by the recession. They are having an impossible time finding new employment, and, believe me, they are working so hard to try to get it--33,600 of them would be set adrift without unemployment benefits if we go over the fiscal cliff. One estimate by the National Economic Council is that there would be $2.5 billion less in consumer spending in Connecticut, and that is basically because tax hikes will take a bite out of middle-class budgets and, frankly, some people will lose their jobs. I am afraid they will lose their jobs in many industries, including the defense industry, which remains a foundation, as the acting chair knows, of our State's economy. The NEC also estimates that we would have 1.1 percent slower growth in the Connecticut economy with the attendant harmful results of that. I could go on and on. Title I would be forced to serve about 9,300 fewer Connecticut children. We would get $5.6 million less in funding low-income home energy assistance payments to people in our State who heat with oil, and on and on and on. This is all my way of coming back to the point I made at the beginning and why I am encouraged by the statements President Obama and Senator McConnell made this afternoon that we are close to an agreement, close to a deal. I don't agree, I say again, that no deal is better than a bad deal. In this case of the fiscal cliff, no deal is the worst deal possible for the American people. We passed the time when we are going to, before tonight, negotiate the comprehensive bipartisan debt reduction agreement our country desperately needs. The least we can do is protect the constituents who were good enough to send us here from the worst possible result, which is that we let the country go over the cliff. We have proved that to everybody, including people around the world who depend on American strength and watch us, that our political system has become absolutely dysfunctional. So I hope the negotiations going on now end with an agreement, and I hope we will pass it with a bipartisan majority, a strong bipartisan majority in the Senate and the House. I certainly will support it from all I hear about it myself. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. In a short while the Senate will vote on two nominees for service in the executive branch of our government. I rise today to speak in support of one of those two, which is William Baer, who has been nominated to serve as Assistant Attorney General managing the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. I happen to have come to know Bill Baer personally because he practices law in a firm with a very good friend and neighbor of mine here in Washington, and in that regard I can certainly testify to the fact that he is an honorable, interesting, enjoyable person. But that alone doesn't qualify him to hold this high office. He has extraordinary experience. I would say he is very widely acknowledged as one of the best antitrust lawyers in our country. I would say this nomination is really a merit selection nomination. I will get to that in a minute. Bill Baer graduated from Lawrence University and the School of Law at Stanford University. He has served with distinction throughout his career, earning accolades such as recognition as the Washington, DC, Antitrust Lawyer of the Year by Best Lawyers, as well as one of the decade's most influential lawyers by the National Law Journal. He is currently head of the Antitrust Practice Group of a very distinguished firm based in Washington, Arnold & Porter, and there he draws on his 35 years of experience in civil and criminal investigation to manage that firm's work in the areas of antitrust litigation, international cartel investigations, and merger and acquisition reviews. In an earlier chapter in his life, Bill Baer served over several periods at the Federal Trade Commission, rising from a trial attorney during his first term there in 1975 to serve as assistant to the chairman, then assistant general counsel, and between 1995 and 1999 as Director of the Bureau of Competition. Here is the point I think really speaks to the fact that Bill Baer's nomination to head the Antitrust Division is nonpartisan and based on his extraordinary capabilities. His nomination has received a letter of support signed by 12 prior Assistant Attorneys General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice who served between 1972 and 2011, and these include people who have led the Antitrust Division from President Nixon through Presidents of both political parties, to President Obama. His nomination has also received a letter of support signed by each chair of the Section of Antitrust Law of the American Bar Association--those who have served as chair of that section between 1977 and 2011. So 29 of the most distinguished practitioners of antitrust law from all around the country, all different political persuasions, have written in support of this nomination. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say it is an honor to not just thank the President for this nomination but to thank Bill Baer for being willing to leave a quite successful law practice to return to the service of our country in an area that is critically important to our free market economy in which he happens to be one of our Nation's foremost experts. So I hope my colleagues will support the nomination of Bill Baer when it comes to a vote very soon this afternoon. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this is probably the last opportunity I will have to do this, to thank the ranking member again for the extraordinary partnership we have had for more than a decade now on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. It is really meaningful to me that we have this last opportunity to do something together, across party lines, that we believe and hope will be in our national interest. Exhibit 1 Flashing Red: A Special Report on the Terrorist Attack at Benghazi (By Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman and Susan M. Collins, Ranking Member) United States Senate Committee On Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs December 30, 2012 While our country spent September 11, 2012, remembering the terrorist attacks that took place 11 years earlier, brave Americans posted at U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, were fighting for their lives against a terrorist assault. When the fight ended, U.S. Ambassador to Libya John C. (Chris) Stevens and three other Americans were dead and U.S. facilities in Benghazi were left in ruin. We must remember the sacrifice that these selfless public servants made to support the struggle for freedom in Libya and to improve our own national security. While we mourn their deaths, it is also crucial that we learn from how they died. By examining the circumstances of the attack in Benghazi on September 11th, we hope to gain a better understanding of what went wrong and what we must do now to ensure better protection for American diplomatic personnel who must sometimes operate in dangerous places abroad. We are cognizant that the Congressionally-mandated Accountability Review Board (ARB) of the Department of State has now issued its important and constructive report and that other Congressional committees are investigating the Benghazi attack as well. Each makes significant contributions to our collective understanding of what transpired and what we must do going forward. The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC), pursuant to its authority under Rule XXV(k) of the Standing Rules of the Senate, Section 101 of S. Res 445 (108th Congress) and Section 12(e) of S. Res 81 (112th Congress), has a unique mandate to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of governmental agencies, especially when matters that span multiple government agencies are involved. Over the years, HSGAC has spent much time and dedicated considerable resources to understanding the challenges inherent in national security interagency relationships, and it is through this lens that we have examined and drawn lessons from the attack in Benghazi. Since the 112th Congress is drawing to a close, this investigation has necessarily been conducted with a sense of urgency and with focused objectives. Our findings and recommendations are based on investigative work that the Committee has conducted since shortly after the attack of September 11, 2012, including meetings of members and staff with senior and mid-level government officials; reviews of thousands of pages of documents provided by the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the Intelligence Community (IC); written responses to questions posed by the Committee to these agencies; and reading of publicly-available documents. In the report that follows we provide a brief factual overview of the attacks in Benghazi and then discuss our findings and recommendations. Brief Overview of the Benghazi Attacks The attacks in Benghazi occurred at two different locations: a Department of State ``Temporary Mission Facility'' and an Annex facility (``Annex'') approximately a mile away used by another agency of the United States Government. On September 11th, Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi, accompanied by two Diplomatic Security (DS) agents who had traveled there with him. Also present were three other DS agents and a Foreign Service Officer, Sean Smith, who were posted at the Temporary Mission Facility (``facility'' or ``compound''). There were also three members of the February 17 Brigade, a Libyan militia deputized by the Libyan government but not under its direct control, and four unarmed local contract guards protecting the compound. During the day on September 11th, the Ambassador held several meetings on the compound and retired to his room at approximately 9:00 p.m. local time. About 40 minutes later, several agents and guards heard loud shouting, noises coming from the gate, as well as gunfire, and an explosion. A closed-circuit television monitor at the facility's Tactical Operations Center (``TOC'') showed a large number of armed people flowing unimpeded through the main gate. One of the DS agents in the compound's TOC triggered an audible alarm, and immediately alerted the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and DS headquarters in Washington. These notifications were quickly transmitted from the Department of State to the Department of Defense. DS headquarters maintained open phone lines with the DS personnel throughout the attack. That same DS agent also called the Annex to request assistance from security personnel there, who immediately began to prepare to aid the U.S. personnel at the diplomatic facility. When the attack commenced, four DS agents and Foreign Service Officer Smith were in or just outside the same building where the Ambassador was spending that night. A fifth DS agent was in the TOC when the terrorist attack began. Ambassador Stevens, Smith, and one DS agent sought shelter in the building's safe haven, a fortified area designed to keep intruders out, while the other three agents went to retrieve additional weapons and tactical gear such as body armor, helmets, and ammunition. After retrieving their gear, at least two of the DS agents sought to return to the building where the Ambassador was. On the way back, however, the DS agents encountered attackers. The lone DS agent with the Ambassador reported via radio that he was secure within the safe haven, allowing the two agents who had left in search of weapons to seek refuge in the same building where they had armed themselves. The third DS agent who had gone to the TOC to retrieve his gear, stayed there with the DS agent who had been manning the TOC since the beginning of the attack. The attackers started to set several of the compound's structures on fire, using diesel fuel found on site, and groups of attackers tried to enter several buildings on the compound. The attackers did not succeed in entering the TOC, but did succeed in entering the building where Ambassador Stevens was staying and the building where the two DS agents were seeking refuge. No safe havens were breached during the initial assault. The attackers spread the diesel fuel throughout the building where the Ambassador was hiding, and ignited it, causing the building to fill with smoke. When the smoke became so thick that breathing was difficult, the DS agent attempted to lead the Ambassador and Smith to escape through a nearby window. The agent opened the window to make sure it was safe to leave, and stepped out but then realized he had become separated from the Ambassador and Smith. The agent radioed the TOC, requesting assistance and returned numerous times to the building to look for the Ambassador and Smith. When the other agents arrived, they also took turns entering and searching the building. Though they were able to find and remove Smith's body, they were unable to find Ambassador Stevens. After being notified about the attack, Annex personnel had attempted to contact the February 17 Brigade, other militias, and the Libyan government to ask for assistance. After gathering necessary weapons and gear, at approximately 10:04 p.m., six security personnel and a translator left the Annex en route to the facility. Prior to reaching the facility, they again attempted to contact and enlist assistance from the February 17 Brigade, other militias, and the Libyan government. By 10:25 p.m., the security personnel from the Annex had entered the compound and engaged in a 15-minute firefight with the armed invaders. The team reached the Ambassador's building at 10:40 p.m. but was unable to find him due to the intense fire and smoke. At 11:15 p.m., the Annex security personnel sent the DS agents (who were all suffering from smoke inhalation from their continuous search for Ambassador Stevens and Smith) to the Annex, and followed there later, both groups taking fire while en route. By this time, an unmanned, unarmed surveillance aircraft began circling over the Benghazi compound, having been diverted by the Department of Defense from its previous surveillance assignment over another location. Soon after the Americans returned to the Annex, just before midnight, they were attacked by rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) and small arms fire. The sporadic attacks stopped at approximately 1:01 a.m. U.S. government security personnel who were based in Tripoli had deployed to Benghazi by chartered aircraft after receiving word of the attack, arriving at the Benghazi airport at 1:15 a.m. They were held at the airport for at least three hours while they negotiated with Libyan authorities about logistics. The exact cause of this hours- long delay, and its relationship to the rescue effort, remains unclear and merits further inquiry. Was it simply the result of a difficult Libyan bureaucracy and a chaotic environment or was it part of a plot to keep American help from reaching the Americans under siege in Benghazi? The team from Tripoli finally cleared the airport and arrived at the Annex at approximately 5:04 a.m., about ten minutes before a new assault by the terrorist began, involving mortar rounds fired at the Annex. The attack concluded at approximately 5:26 a.m., leaving Annex security team members Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty dead and two others wounded. The decision was then made to leave the Annex. Libyan forces, not militia, arrived around 6:00 a.m. with 50 vehicles and escorted the Americans to the airport. Two planes carrying all remaining U.S. personnel then left Benghazi. The first flight departed between 7:00 a.m. and 7:40 a.m. (agency timelines vary on this point) and the second at 10:00 a.m. American government officials outside of Benghazi learned of the attack shortly after it started at 3:40 p.m. EST (9:40 p.m. Benghazi time). DS agents, in addition to notifying personnel at the Annex, immediately alerted officials at the U.S Embassy in Tripoli and the Department of State Headquarters in Washington, D.C. As noted earlier, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) at the Department of Defense (DOD) directed an unarmed surveillance aircraft to the skies over the Benghazi compound at 3:59 p.m. EST. It arrived there at 5:10 p.m. EST (11:10 p.m. Benghazi time). At 4:32 p.m., the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon alerted the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff, and the information was shared with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey. Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey were at the White House for a previously scheduled meeting at 5:00 p.m. and so were able to brief the President on the developments in Benghazi as they were occurring. From 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. EST, Secretary Panetta met with senior DOD officials to discuss the Benghazi attack and other violence in the region in reaction to the anti-Muslim video. The Secretary directed three actions: 1) that one Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) platoon stationed in Rota, Spain, deploy to Benghazi and that a second FAST platoon in Rota prepare to deploy to Tripoli; 2) that U.S. European Command's In-extremis Force, which happened to be training in central Europe, deploy to a staging base in southern Europe; and 3) that a special operations force based in the United States deploy to a staging base in southern Europe. The National Command Center transmitted formal authorization for these actions at 8:39 p.m. A FAST platoon arrived in Tripoli the evening (local time) of September 12th, and the other forces arrived that evening at a staging base in Italy, long after the terrorist attack on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi had ended and four Americans had been killed. Key Findings and Recommendations Finding 1. In the months leading up to the attack on the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi, there was a large amount of evidence gathered by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and from open sources that Benghazi was increasingly dangerous and unstable, and that a significant attack against American personnel there was becoming much more likely. While this intelligence was effectively shared within the Intelligence Community (IC) and with key officials at the Department of State, it did not lead to a commensurate increase in security at Benghazi nor to a decision to close the American mission there, either of which would have been more than justified by the intelligence presented. Security decisions concerning U.S. facilities and personnel overseas are informed by several different types of information, including classified threat reporting from the IC; cables and spot reports from U.S. diplomatic posts, which describe local incidents and threats; and publicly available information. Prior to the attack, the IC and the Department of State were aware of the overall threat landscape in Libya and the challenges facing the new Libyan government in addressing those threats. This understanding evolved over time, consistent with broader changes in the nature of the threat, and also based on reported incidents and attacks in Benghazi and other parts of Libya in 2012. The Committee has reviewed dozens of classified intelligence reports on the evolution of threats in Libya which were issued between February 2011 and September 11, 2012. We are precluded in this report from discussing the information in detail, but overall, these intelligence reports (as the ARB similarly noted) provide a clear and vivid picture of a rapidly deteriorating threat environment in eastern Libya--one that we believe should have been sufficient to inform policy-makers of the growing danger to U.S. facilities and personnel in that part of the country and the urgency of them doing something about it. This information was effectively shared by the IC with key officials at the Department of State. For example, both the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Programs in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Charlene Lamb, who was responsible for the security at more than 275 diplomatic facilities, and former Regional Security Officer (RSO) for Libya Eric Nordstrom, who was the principal security adviser to the U.S. Ambassador in Libya from September 21, 2011 to July 26, 2012, told the Committee that they had full access to all threat information from the IC about eastern Libya during the months before the attack of September 11, 2012. Yet the Department failed to take adequate action to protect its personnel there. This classified intelligence reporting was complemented by open-source reporting on attacks and other incidents targeting western interests in Libya during the months prior to the September 11, 2012 attack. The RSO in Libya compiled a list of 234 security incidents in Libya between June 2011 and July 2012, 50 of which took place in Benghazi. The document describes an array of incidents, including large-scale militia clashes, protests involving several hundred people, and the temporary detention of non-governmental organization (NGO) workers and of U.S. diplomatic personnel in Benghazi. Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy noted in a briefing for the Committee, that Libya and Benghazi were ``flashing red'' around the time of the attack. The incident reporting shows that western facilities and personnel became an increasing focus of threats in the spring of 2012. For example, on April 2, 2012 in Benghazi, a British diplomatic vehicle was attacked by a mob of demonstrators. Four days later, on April 6th, a crude improvised explosive device (IED) was thrown over the wall of the U.S. facility in Benghazi, causing minimal damage. A spot report on the day of the event stated that shortly after the event two individuals were questioned. The suspects included one current and one former guard employed by Blue Mountain Group, the company which supplied the unarmed Libyan contract guards responsible for screening visitors to the U.S. compound--underscoring the potential risk of an insider threat in Benghazi. Four days after that, on April 10th, also in Benghazi, a crude IED was thrown at the convoy of the United Nations Special Envoy to Libya. Other publicly reported incidents occurred during this time frame, but there are four that we believe are particularly noteworthy. Taken as a whole, they demonstrated the capability and intent of Benghazi-based Islamist extremist groups to conduct a significant attack against U.S. or other western interests in Libya: On May 22, 2012, the International Committee for the Red Cross/Red Crescent (ICRC) building in Benghazi was hit by two RPG rounds, causing damage to the building but no casualties. Several days later, the Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman claimed responsibility for this attack, accusing the ICRC of proselytizing in Libya. On June 6, 2012, the U.S. Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi was targeted by an IED attack that blew a hole in the perimeter wall. Credit for this attack was also claimed by the Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, which said it carried out the attack in response to the reported drone strike on al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi in Northern Waziristan. On June 11, 2012, an attack was carried out in Benghazi on the convoy of the British Ambassador to Libya. Attackers fired an RPG on the convoy, followed by small arms fire. Two British bodyguards were injured in the attack. This attack was characterized afterwards in an incident report by the Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security as a ``complex, coordinated attack.'' On June 18, 2012, the Tunisian consulate in Benghazi was stormed by individuals affiliated with Ansar al-Sharia Libya (AAS), allegedly because of ``attacks by Tunisian artists against Islam.'' Overall, the threat to western interests in eastern Libya and in Benghazi specifically was high even prior to the attack of September 11, 2012. Reviewing these incidents, an unclassified open source report by a contractor to AFRICOM noted in July 2012 that: ``Nonetheless, Benghazi has seen a notable increase in violence in recent months, particularly against international targets. These events point to strong anti-Western sentiments among certain segments of the population, the willingness of Salafi-jihadi groups in the city to openly engage in violence against foreign targets, and their capacity to carry out these attacks.'' Taking classified reporting on the increasing dangers in eastern Libya together with the open source incidents should have provided a clear picture of the dangers for American personnel in Benghazi unless their security were greatly improved. Finding 2. Notwithstanding the increasingly dangerous environment in eastern Libya in 2011 and 2012, the U.S. government did not have specific intelligence of an imminent attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. The lack of such actionable intelligence may reflect a failure in the IC to focus sufficiently on terrorist groups that have weak or no operational ties to core al Qaeda and its main affiliates. While the IC had developed and adequately shared general threat information on terrorist groups and Islamist extremist militias in eastern Libya prior to the attack, it did not have specific warning that this attack was to take place on September 11, 2012. Intelligence capabilities that provide early, specific warnings have played a critical role in preventing terrorist attacks against U.S. facilities overseas and in the homeland in the last decade. There were no such warnings available for Benghazi before the attack of September 11, 2012. Why? First, there may not have been significant or elaborate advance planning for the attack. In a hearing before our Committee on September 19, 2012, National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Director Matthew Olsen described the attack as ``opportunistic'' and stated that the IC had no indication of ``significant advanced planning or coordination for this attack.'' However, the activities of local terrorist and Islamist extremist groups in Libya may have received insufficient attention from the IC prior to the attack, partially because some of the groups possessed ambiguous operational ties to core al Qaeda and its primary affiliates. For example, public statements by Libyan officials and many news reports have indicated that Ansar al-Sharia Libya (AAS) was one of the key groups involved in carrying out this attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi. The group took credit on its own Facebook page for the attack before later deleting the post. U.S. officials viewed AAS prior to the attack as a ``local extremist group with an eye on gaining political ground in Libya.'' AAS has not been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government, and apparently the IC was ``not focused'' on this group to the same extent as core al Qaeda and its operational affiliates. This finding has broader implications for U.S. counterterrorism activities in the Middle East and North Africa. With Osama bin Laden dead and core al Qaeda weakened, a new collection of violent Islamist extremist organizations and cells have emerged in the last two to three years. These groups are not all operationally linked to core al Qaeda or in some cases have only weak ties to al Qaeda. This trend is particularly notable in countries such as Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria that are going through political transition or military conflict as a result of the political upheavals referred to as the ``Arab Spring.'' While such groups do not always have strong operational ties to al Qaeda, they adhere to a similar violent Islamist extremist ideology. As an unclassified August 2012 report by the Library of Congress noted, AAS in Libya shares common symbols (the black flag) and ideology with al Qaeda. This Committee has spent several years focusing on the role that this ideology plays in motivating homegrown violent Islamist extremists, most of whom have no direct ties to al Qaeda. A similar phenomenon, though potentially much more dangerous, is at work with respect to many of these nascent terrorist groups, and is leading many of them to shift their focus from local grievances to foreign attacks against U.S. and other western facilities overseas. Recommendation: U.S. intelligence agencies must broaden and deepen their focus in Libya, and beyond, on nascent violent Islamist extremist groups in the region that lack strong operational ties to core al Qaeda or its main affiliate groups. One benefit of doing so would be improved tactical warning capabilities, the kind of which were not present at Benghazi, but might have been even for an ``opportunistic'' attack. Finding 3. The absence of specific intelligence about an imminent attack should not have prevented the Department of State from taking more effective steps to protect its personnel and facilities in Benghazi. This finding reflects earlier conclusions of the 1985 Advisory Panel on Overseas Security (``Inman Report'') and the 1999 Accountability Review Board report on the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which both warned the Department of State against becoming too reliant on tactical intelligence to determine the level of potential terrorist threats. The Inman report points out that ``it would be foolhardy to make security decisions on the basis of an expectation of advance warning of peril.'' Deputy Assistant Secretary Charlene Lamb stated that the level and kind of attack at Benghazi was something they had never seen before anywhere in the world. However, given clear warnings that threats were increasing in the Benghazi area, the Department of State should not have waited for a specific incident to happen or expected the delivery of tactical intelligence of a specific, imminent threat before taking additional steps to protect its diplomats or, if that was not possible, to close the Benghazi facility. Recommendation: In providing security for its personnel around the world, the Department of State must fully consider the types of attacks that could take place given the strategic threat environment, even in the absence of imminent warning intelligence. Finding 4. Prior to the terrorist attacks in Libya on September 11, 2012, it was widely understood that the Libyan government was incapable of performing its duty to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel, as required by longstanding international agreements, but the Department of State failed to take adequate steps to fill the resulting security gap, or to invest in upgrading the Libyan security forces. A host country's responsibility to protect and safeguard a foreign nation's diplomatic personnel and facilities in its country has been codified in several international treaties, including the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which states that ``[t]he receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the consular premises against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the consular post or impairment of its dignity.'' The Treaty also states that ``[t]he receiving State shall treat consular officers with due respect and shall take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on their person, freedom or dignity.'' A host country's protection of an American embassy or other diplomatic facilities is one of the most important elements of security at that facility, but it is not the only one. A facility's own security, such as its U.S. Marine Corps Security Guards, DS agents, and in some cases, private security guards under contract, is also critical to its overall security posture. States whose governments do not exercise full control over their sovereign territory, or that have a limited security capability, cannot be counted on to safeguard U.S. diplomatic personnel and facilities. This is usually true, of course, in the aftermath of a revolution or civil war--as was the case in Libya--where the provision of protective services by the host nations is unpredictable at best. In those instances, the Department of State must improve one or more of the other three protectors of mission security within its control: Marine Corps Security Guards, Dipolmatic Security agents, or private security contractors. In February 2011, the revolution began to end Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi's autocratic rule of Libya. Between February and October of 2011, Libya was consumed with intense fighting between anti-government groups and Qadhafi's regime. On October 20, 2011, opposition forces conquered the last Qadhafi stronghold in Sirte and killed Qadhafi. Qadhafi's death ended the revolt but left open the question of who would govern Libya and how. Just days after Qadhafi's death, Libyans turned to the interim Transitional National Council (TNC), established in the spring of 2011, to improve security and begin the process of reconstituting national institutions. However, the TNC faced numerous challenges and ``struggled to calm the incendiary regional and factional disputes or exert control even over its own militias.'' Since no cohesive opposition group emerged from the civil war, the TNC had to contend with various armed factions that ``remained a law unto themselves.'' On July 7, 2012, Libyan voters participated in the first national election since 1965 and elected 200 members to the General National Congress. The election of the General National Congress represented a significant political achievement, but the formation of a new government was still under negotiation when the attacks in Benghazi occurred three months later in September. Civil order had not yet been restored. According to one expert review, ``[a]ttacks on international targets, a series of aggressive attacks by armed Salafists on religious buildings around the country, and an assassination campaign against senior security officers have fueled widespread criticism of interim leaders since early 2012.'' Given the unstable political and security situation, particularly in eastern Libya, the Libyan government was unable to provide security protection to foreign diplomatic facilities in a manner consistent with international law. That is why the Department of State relied in part on a local militia, the February 17 Brigade, to provide protection for the Benghazi facility, as well as unarmed Libyan guards under contract with a private security firm. Throughout 2012, Department of State officials questioned the February 17 Brigade's competence and expressed concerns about its abilities. U.S. Department of State personnel were also concerned about the involvement of members of the February 17 Brigade in the extrajudicial detention of U.S. diplomatic personnel in at least one incident in Benghazi. Eric Nordstrom, told the Committee that while the February 17 Brigade did provide some protection and would likely respond to an attack, they clearly needed additional training. Only limited training ever occurred. Some U.S. personnel also questioned the Brigade's loyalty to the Libyan government and their capacity or desire to safeguard American interests. In June 2012, an RSO in Benghazi wrote, ``Unfortunately, given the current threat to the diplomatic mission, the militia members not currently on the [four-man team stationed at the facility] have expressed concern with showing active open support for the Americans in Benghazi.'' Notably, the contract between the State Department and the February 17 Brigade had expired by the time of the attack. In a handoff email to his replacement on August 29, 2012, the principal U.S. diplomatic officer in Benghazi wrote that the contract with the militia ``lapsed several weeks ago'' but that they were still operating under its terms. He said that ``[t]his is a delicate issue, as we are relying on a militia in lieu of the central authorities and [Feb 17 Brigade] has been implicated in several of the recent detentions. We also have the usual concerns re their ultimate loyalties. But they are competent, and give us an added measure of security. For the time being, I don't think we have a viable alternative.'' In early September, a member of the February 17 Brigade told another RSO in Benghazi that it could no longer support U.S. personnel movements. The RSO also asked specifically if the militia could provide additional support for the Ambassador's pending visit and was told no. The ability of the Libyan government to provide surge forces to rescue or evacuate personnel from the Benghazi facility was also extremely limited. The Department of State recognized this limitation. As early as February 1, 2012, RSO Nordstrom stated in a memo to his superiors that the political situation in post-revolution Libya ``was fragile'' and that ``[m]any basic state institutions, including emergency services and tourist facilities are not yet fully operational.'' Nordstrom noted that ``various factions and militias continue to vie for power in the absence of a stable political and security environment, often resulting in violence.'' This view of the Libyan government's inadequate security capabilities persisted through the attack on September 11, 2012. Communications from U.S. personnel in Libya continued to repeat the same conclusions stated by Nordstrom earlier in February. For instance, an early August cable from the Tripoli Embassy to the Department of State in Washington, states that even though the TNC had established a Supreme Security Council (SSC) to stabilize the security situation in Benghazi, its own commander had said that the SSC had ``not coalesced into an effective, stable security force.'' Further, the cable warned that the ``absence of a significant deterrence, has contributed to a security vacuum that is being exploited by independent actors.'' Similarly, an August 20, 2012 security update reported that other diplomats believed the SSC was `` `fading away,' unwilling to take on `anyone with powerful patrons from powerful tribes.' '' That same month, DS personnel reviewing tripwires for an ordered departure of the post--that is, political, security, and intelligence benchmarks which would prompt diplomatic officials to close a facility or modify its operations-- stated that ``[m]ission opinion is that Libyan security forces are indifferent to the safety needs of the U.S. mission.'' On September 11, 2012, the day of the attack, the ``Weekly Report'' prepared by Department of State officers on the security situation in Benghazi described the frustrations of an SSC commander that the police and security forces were ``too weak to keep the country secure.'' Prior to Ambassador Stevens' visit to Benghazi in September 2012, the U.S. mission in Benghazi had made a request to the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs for additional security in Benghazi to support the visit. At a minimum, these requests included appeals for a 24/7 police presence consisting of a vehicle and personnel at each of the compound's three gates. The only Libyan government response appears to have been an SSC police vehicle parked in front of the front gate (which, as the ARB noted, sped away as the attack began). Though a few members of the February 17 Brigade and the Libya Shield militia assisted the Americans on the night of the attack, the security that these militias and the local police provided to U.S. personnel was woefully inadequate to the dangerous security environment in Benghazi. The unarmed local contract guards also provided no meaningful resistance to the attackers. The Department of State's Inspector General had previously found that concerns about local security guards were not limited to Libya. A February 2012 Department of State Inspector General (IG) report found that more than two-thirds of 86 diplomatic posts around the world surveyed reported problems with their local guard contractors. Of those posts that reported problems with their contractors, 37 percent said there was an insufficient number of local guards and 40 percent said there was insufficient training. The IG found that overseas diplomatic posts, particularly those in high-threat situations beyond Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan urgently needed best-value contracting, which takes into account the past performance of contractors. Recommendation: When it becomes clear that a host nation cannot adequately perform its functions under the Vienna Convention, the Department of State must provide additional security measures of its own, urgently attempt to upgrade the host nation security forces, or decide to close a U.S. Diplomatic facility and remove U.S. personnel until appropriate steps can be taken to provide adequate security. American personnel who serve us abroad must often work in high risk environments, but when they do, we must provide them with adequate security. That clearly was not the case in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Recommendation: The Department must conduct a review of its local guard programs and particularly the use of local guard contractors at high-risk posts who do not meet appropriate standards necessary for the protection of our personnel or facilities. Finding 5. The Benghazi facility's temporary status had a detrimental effect on security decisions, and that fact was clearly known by DS personnel in Benghazi and to their superiors who nevertheless left the American personnel in Benghazi in this very dangerous situation. The Department of State did not take adequate measures to mitigate the facility's significant vulnerabilities in this high-threat environment. The Department of State opened the temporary mission in Benghazi in 2011 after the revolution against the Qadhafi government began because eastern Libya was the headquartes of the opposition to Qadhafi, and the embassy in Tripoli had been closed due to security concerns. The temporary mission was first located in a hotel and then moved, based on security concerns, to the compound referred to as the Temporary Mission Facility. After the U.S. Embassy was reopened in Tripoli when Qadhafi was overthrown, the Department of State initially planned to close the Benghazi facility in late 2011. However, in December 2011, the Department decided to extend its presence in Benghazi until December 2012. In the memo approving this decision, the Department stated that the facility would be a ``smaller operation'' but noted its importance to eastern Libyans and the assistance it could provide to the embassy in Tripoli. The temporary status of the Benghazi facility contributed to its vulnerability. For example, DS agents stationed in Benghazi were always on temporary duty assignments, remaining there for relatively short periods, often no longer than a month. As Nordstrom noted, having temporary duty agents made ``developing security procedures, policies, and relationships more difficult.'' The temporary status also made it difficult to procure funds for security upgrades. A briefing paper prepared for a meeting of Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell and then- Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz noted, ``Due to the ambiguity surrounding the duration of the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, RSO Benghazi has encountered funding issues for projects that are commonplace at most U.S. missions.'' The Committee received conflicting evidence with regard to whether the temporary Benghazi facility was on the Security Environment Threat List--a semiannual document that aids DS management in the allocation of overseas security resources and programs. In any event, it is hard to imagine there were more than a few Department of State missions anywhere in the world that were in a more dangerous environment than Benghazi. In the December 2011 memo approving the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi, the Department of State noted the need for corrective security measures for the facility. According to RSO Nordstrom, the Department of State never consulted with him about the security requirements of the facility before the December 2011 action memo was sent to Under Secretary Kennedy for approval. The memo approved by Kennedy indicated that the Department of State would ``rapidly implement a series of corrective security measures as part of the consolidation of the State footprint.'' However, the memo lacked details as to the security standards to be followed and the resources required to implement the security measures. The absence of dedicated resources contributed to the constraints under which those in Washington and Benghazi would operate throughout 2012. During 2012, however, the Department did make a variety of field expedient security enhancements, including: The installation of concrete jersey barriers; The installation of four vehicle barriers for access control and anti-ram protection; Increased compound lighting; The installation of barbed wire on top of the existing perimeter wall to raise height and on top of the interior chain link fence to create secondary barrier; The installation of platforms for property and street surveillance; The construction of four guard booths; The installation of steel grillwork on windows; The installation of emergency releases on select windows grills for fire/emergency exit; The replacement of several wooden doors with steel doors with appropriate locking hardware; Sandbag emplacements for internal defense purposes; and Hardening villas with safe rooms with a steel door. But these physical security upgrades were insufficient to deter or repel the dozens of armed attackers that swarmed the compound, unimpeded, on September 11, 2012. As discussed in more detail below, the facility lacked the type of pedestrian barriers that could have slowed the attackers, even though the Department of State Inspector General and an earlier Accountability Review Board had each recommended the installation of such barriers at diplomatic posts in high- risk places like Benghazi. Because the Benghazi facility was temporary, no security standards applied to it. While existing security standards require meaningful physical barriers to slow pedestrian access for permanent U.S. diplomatic facilities, there were few meaningful physical barriers at the Benghazi facility that would slow pedestrian access other than the closed gate. Once the gate was opened, there were no other physical impediments at that access point to keep anyone out of the facility's grounds or slow their assault. Having additional physical barriers to reinforce the gate might have delayed the breach of the compound, giving those inside more time to prepare for the attack. For example, some permanent diplomatic facilities have a compound access control (CAC) point, a ``mantrap,'' or both. Both of these types of barriers act as gates or enclosures that are used to limit the movement of pedestrians entering a diplomatic facility. While a CAC is primarily installed in conjunction with a pedestrian entrance, a mantrap is typically installed in conjunction with a vehicle gate or barrier. According to Deputy Assistant Secretary Charlene Lamb, a CAC was not in place at Benghazi due to time and money constraints. She estimated a CAC there would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. No mantrap was in place either, though the reason for that is less clear. Unfortunately, we will never know if the additional investment in either a CAC or mantrap would have provided the time needed to save the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith because of the fires set by the terrorists. The absence of mantraps has been identified as a security vulnerability at least twice in the last ten years by the Department of State. According to a 2009 Department of State Inspector General Report, the 2004 Accountability Review Board regarding the attack on the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia recommended the installation of pedestrian barriers at U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas. During that attack, terrorists exited their vehicle and quickly breached the perimeter after being stopped by the entrance's anti- vehicle barrier. The attackers killed six and wounded several others. Five years later, the Department of State Inspector General found that the absence of approved security standards or recent directives from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security regarding the installation of mantraps resulted in a fewer number of mantraps at overseas posts than required worldwide. At the time, 25 percent of critical threat posts that responded to the IG's survey did not have or request a mantrap and 39 percent of posts rated as a high threat post that responded to the survey also had no mantraps, plans for a mantrap, or were unable to accommodate mantraps. The numbers were worse for low and medium threat posts. According to the Department of State IG report, the average cost of installing mantraps at a U.S. diplomatic post (including related infrastructure) is approximately $55,000. In determining the amount of additional security to provide to the Benghazi facility, the Department of State did not conduct a joint analysis or confer with other agencies, such as DOD or members of the IC. For U.S. diplomatic facilities at greatest risk, such as Benghazi, more interagency analysis of security needs must be done to identify gaps in security and take the steps to address them. Since the attack in Benghazi, the Department of State and the Department of Defense have jointly begun this important work, focusing initially on the highest threat facilities around the globe, but that should have happened before the attack. Resourcing for security is a joint responsibility of the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch. The Department of State's decisions regarding security at the Benghazi facility were made in the context of its budget and security requirements for diplomatic facilities around the world. Overall, the Department of State's base requests for security funding have increased by 38 percent since Fiscal Year (FY) 2007, and base budget appropriations have increased by 27 percent in the same time period. Other security funding provided beyond that in supplemental appropriations bills has been nearly entirely for diplomatic facilities in just three countries--Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Less has gone elsewhere and very little is available to the temporary facilities such as the one in Benghazi. Importantly, funding requests for baseline diplomatic security programs have not been fully funded in any year since FY 2010. These accounts fund local guards, security technology, DS agents, and maintenance, construction and security upgrades for facilities. The Administration requested almost $2.4 billion for the Worldwide Security Protection (WSP) and Embassy Security, Construction and Maintenance (ESCM) accounts in fiscal year 2011 (the Department of State's two largest diplomatic security accounts), but the House of Representatives recommended a funding level that was $127.5 million less than the President's Budget request. The Senate restored $38 million of the funding in the final enacted appropriations bill for that year. In fiscal year 2012, the gap was larger: Congress enacted appropriations for diplomatic security that were $275 million less than was requested. At the same time, Congress has generally been responsive in providing supplemental and Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funds to the Department of State--more than $1.7 billion since 2007--in response to emergent, security-driven funding requests, although primarily for facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, there was no supplemental or OCO request made by the President for additional diplomatic security enhancements in FY2010 or FY2011. Neither the Department of State nor Congress made a point of providing additional funds in a supplemental request for Libya, or more specifically, Benghazi. Congress' inability to appropriate funds in a timely manner has also had consequences for the implementation of security upgrades. RSO Nordstrom stated that Continuing Resolutions had two detrimental effects on efforts to improve security in Benghazi. First, the Department of State would only allow funds to be expended at a rate of 80 percent of the previous year's appropriations level, so as not to risk a violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act. Second, in the absence of a supplemental appropriations or reprogramming request, security funds for Benghazi had to be taken ``out of hide'' from funding levels for Libya because Benghazi was not included in previous budget requests. Recommendation: The Department of State should establish a mandatory process to determine what security standards are applicable to temporary facilities to ensure that they are adequately protected. Recommendation: In the future, more interagency joint assessments or analyses of security needs must be done for U.S. diplomatic facilities at greatest risk. A joint assessment could not only improve our government's ability to identify security gaps, it would make all agencies more aware of assets available to meet security challenges and those available to respond to a crisis. Recommendation: The Administration and Congress must work together to provide sufficient, steady, and timely funding resources to secure diplomatic facilities and personnel worldwide. Finding 6. The Department of State did not adequately support security requests from its own security personnel in Benghazi. Throughout 2012, the number of DS agents temporarily deployed to Benghazi fluctuated, decreasing to as low as one agent for a six week period in March and April 2012 due to visa problems. At the time of the attack, there were three DS agents who were stationed in Benghazi and two more who accompanied the Ambassador there from Tripoli. RSO Nordstrom said that security personnel in Tripoli were sometimes used to augment Benghazi security when necessary. As conditions changed in late spring and early summer, officers in Tripoli and in Washington had good situational awareness of the growing threats in Libya and especially in Benghazi. However, the Department of State did not provide enough security to address the increased threats and did not adequately support field requests for additional security. For example, in March 2012 the Tripoli Embassy had requested five full-time security positions for Benghazi. However, a day after sending this request, Nordstrom was told that Washington had capped the number of agents in Benghazi at three, even though the request for five agents was consistent with the December 2011 action memo approved by Under Secretary Kennedy to extend the duration of the Benghazi facility. In addressing the March request for five DS agents, Deputy Assistant Secretary Lamb questioned RSO Nordstrom about the fact that two of those five requested positions would be used for non-personnel security related duties--one for driving and one to secure a computer. Deputy Assistant Secretary Lamb asked that local employees be hired for these positions since they were arguably not related to security. Later, two local nationals were hired to fulfill these duties. In July Embassy officials in Tripoli requested a minimum of three DS agents for Benghazi. Nordstrom also testified that he would have preferred to extend a DOD support team, which DOD provided to the Department of State on a non-reimbursable basis, that was scheduled to depart in August 2012. The 16-person Site Security Team (SST) was stationed in Tripoli, but on occasion some of its members also helped with security in Benghazi. The team's deployment had previously been extended twice. Nordstrom said he thought that requesting an extension would have ``too much political cost,'' and he was not told to do so. In July 2012, Nordstrom had sent a request, via cable approved by Ambassador Stevens, for a minimum of 13 temporary U.S. security personnel--which he said could be either DS employees or SST personnel, or a combination of both--to support needs in Tripoli. Nordstrom said he never received a response to that request. Though the Department of State never formally asked DOD to extend the SST team, at the time of the attack several members of the SST were still in Tripoli for other purposes, and two participated in the rescue effort the night of the attack. In the Department's late 2011 plan describing a transition to ``locally staffed operations,'' one of the reasons given for that transition was that ``DS does not have sufficient resources to sustain the current level of the security assets in Libya.'' Lamb commented on this issue in her interview with the Committee, stating that it was hard to sustain large numbers of DS agents on short-term tours because there is not a floating pool of agents so that to fill a gap in Libya she needed to create a gap elsewhere. Finding 7. Despite the inability of the Libyan government to fulfill its duties to secure the facility, the increasingly dangerous threat assessments, and a particularly vulnerable facility, the Department of State officials did not conclude the facility in Benghazi should be closed or temporarily shut down. That was a grevious mistake. The Department of State kept the Benghazi facility open despite the inability of the Libyan government to fulfill its duties to secure the facility and the increasingly dangerous threat environment that American intelligence described. Though diplomatic security officials in Libya repeatedly considered and discussed the adequacy of security at the Benghazi facility, we found no evidence that any official ever recommended closing the facility even though the facility's vulnerability remained high, particularly in relation to the limited number and quality of the security personnel on site including the militia, the contracted guards, and DS agents on short-term assignments. In the months leading up to the September 11, 2012 attack, U.S. personnel sitting on the Benghazi Emergency Action Committee (EAC)--the interagency entity responsible for assessing the security of the facility--met several times to discuss the growing threats in eastern Libya, and whether additional actions to protect U.S. personnel ought to be taken. As late as August 15, 2012, an EAC was convened and resolved to update the ``tripwires'' for the facility. The updates were to include a new category, ``suspension of operations,'' under which diplomatic personnel remain present at a post but limit activity off U.S. grounds. Notes from that meeting show that joint security exercises were carried out with Annex security personnel that same month, and that conditional manpower requests and the revised set of tripwires were sent to the Embassy in Tripoli for review. A Department of State document shared between officials in Tripoli show various ``tripwires'' in Benghazi were, in fact, set off weeks before September 11, 2012. Following a bomb attack on a Libyan Army colonel in August, the principal U.S. diplomatic officer in Benghazi wrote that ``[g]iven our small size, there is really no distinction between authorized and ordered departure from Benghazi: if we lose one more person, we will be ineffective . . . we are already at a skeleton crew.'' Still, no additional security was provided to the facility in Benghazi and there was no ordered evacuation. RSO Nordstrom said the inability of the host nation to provide security is a significant tripwire. Yet neither he nor, to his knowledge anyone else at the Department of State, recommended the Benghazi post be closed. Despite the Department of State's initial determination that the facility in Benghazi would be a temporary one, as time progressed, some Department of State officials believed U.S. diplomats needed to remain there longer than they initially expected. Just weeks before his death and even after there had been attacks against the facility and other western targets in Benghazi, Ambassador Stevens continued to make the case that the Department of State needed a long term presence in Benghazi. A number of other western governments also continued to maintain a presence in Benghazi throughout the summer and fall of 2012. Under Secretary Kennedy noted that diplomats for Italy, France, Turkey and the United Nations remained in Benghazi during that time period. One option American officials did consider was co-locating the American government facilities in Benghazi. By December 27, 2011, officials had ``come to the conclusion that co- location is the best and most economical option for'' a continued presence in Benghazi. They also recognized that there were administrative hurdles to this--such as finding a suitable location large enough for the presence of all personnel. The ARB report on the 1998 Nairobi and Dar es Salaam attacks recommended that, ``When building new chanceries abroad, all U.S. government agencies, with rare exceptions, should be located in the same compound.'' The Department of State should also examine whether similar standards should be adopted for the co-location of temporary facilities. Finding 8. The Department of Defense and the Department of State had not jointly assessed the availability of U.S. assets to support the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi in the event of a crisis and although DOD attempted to quickly mobilize its resources, it did not have assets or personnel close enough to reach Benghazi in a timely fashion. The Department of Defense (DOD) has a longstanding cooperative relationship with the Department of State, providing support for evacuation and security of diplomatic facilities. For Libya, responsibility for DOD support for diplomatic missions primarily rested with AFRICOM and its Combatant Commander, General Carter F. Ham, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. AFRICOM is one of DOD's six geographic combatant commands and is responsible for all DOD operations, exercises, and security cooperation on the African continent (with the exception of Egypt), its island nations, and surrounding waters. The command is also responsible to the Secretary of Defense for military relations with 54 African nations, the African Union, and African regional security organizations. It was established in February 2007 and became a stand-alone command in October 2008. The reason for establishing AFRICOM grew out of concerns about DOD's division of responsibility for Africa among three geographic commands--European Command (EUCOM), Central Command (CENTCOM), and Pacific Command (PACOM)--and worries that security in Africa was receiving less attention than it required based on the increasing presence of Islamist extremists and terrorists there. Since its creation, AFRICOM has been involved in a number of operations in Africa, with a focus on training African forces and engaging in counterterrorism activities in the Horn of Africa. Unlike many of the other geographical combatant commands, AFRICOM was developed to maintain a light footprint. It maintains a single base on the entire continent, in Djibouti. In the spring of 2011, AFRICOM directed U.S. support to the NATO military operations in Libya, and in October 2011, it established a joint task force to command and control post-conflict U.S. operations related to Libya. Since DOD assumes responsibility for evacuation of diplomatic personnel, U.S. citizens, and designated host nation and third country nationals in crises, AFRICOM was responsible for working with Department of State officials in Libya to develop and coordinate Noncombatant Evacuation Operations (NEO) plans for the diplomatic facilities within the region. But the Department of State did not know how long it would take DOD to evacuate personnel at the Benghazi facility in the case of a crisis, naturally making it more difficult for the Department of State to ensure it had adequate security at the facility. In addition, General Ham did not have complete visibility of the extent and number of government personnel in Benghazi in the event that a NEO was required. If sufficient time had been available for such an evacuation, we are concerned that this limitation could have impeded AFRICOM's ability to respond and fulfill its mission responsibility. AFRICOM's lack of operational assets near Benghazi hindered its capacity to evacuate U.S. personnel during the attacks. The Djibouti base was several thousand miles away. There was no Marine expeditionary unit, carrier group or a smaller group of U.S. ships closely located in the Mediterranean Sea that could have provided aerial or ground support or helped evacuate personnel from Benghazi. AFRICOM also lacked a dedicated Commander's In-extremis Force (CIF)--a specially trained force capable of performing no-notice missions. As a result, General Ham was forced to call on the European Command's CIF whose location in Eastern Europe prevented it from getting to Benghazi before the four Americans were killed and all other U.S. personnel were evacuated. We note that AFRICOM later received an independent CIF in October, 2012. DOD and AFRICOM tried to provide effective support on September 11th, but given the nature of the attack in Benghazi and the distance of their assets from Benghazi, they were tragically unable to do so. Recommendation: DOD and the Department of State must jointly perform comprehensive crisis defense and evacuation planning for personnel at U.S. diplomatic facilities worldwide, particularly in high risk environments to determine whether DOD can provide timely support and evacuation capabilities, and assist the Department of State in deciding whether to keep facilities open. Recommendation: Because Africa has increasingly become a haven for terrorist groups in places like Libya and Mali, DOD should provide more assets and personnel within range on land and sea to protect and defend both Americans and our allies on the African continent. Finding 9. Although the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi was recognized as a terrorist attack by the Intelligence Community and personnel at the Department of State from the beginning, Administration officials were inconsistent in stating publicly that the deaths in Benghazi were the result of a terrorist attack. One of the key lessons of this Committee's six-year focus on the threat of violent Islamist extremism is that, in order to understand and counter the threat we face, we must clearly identify that threat. During the Committee's investigation into the Fort Hood massacre, for example, we found systemic problems with the way the military addressed violent Islamist extremism in its policies and procedures (treating this specific threat within the broader context of ``workplace violence''). Similarly, while we welcomed the Administration's release last year of a national strategy and implementation plan for countering radicalization domestically, we expressed our disappointment in the Administration's continued refusal to identify violent Islamist extremism as our enemy. The enemy is not a vague catchall of violent extremism, but a specific violent Islamist extremism. It is unfair to the vast majority of law- abiding Muslims not to distinguish between their peaceful religion and a twisted corruption of that religion used to justify violence. There are related lessons to be learned from the Administration's public comments about Benghazi, which we believe contributed to the confusion in the public discourse after the attack about exactly what happened. The NCTC and U.S. law define terrorism as the ``premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.'' Senior officials from the IC, the Department of State, and the FBI who participated in briefings and interviews with the Committee said they believed the attack on the mission facility in Benghazi to be a terrorist attack immediately or almost immediately after it occurred. The ODNI's spokesman also has publicly said, ``The intelligence community assessed from the very beginning that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.'' In short, regardless of questions about whether there had been a demonstration or protest outside the Temporary Mission Facility in advance of the attack, the extent to which the attacks were preplanned, or the role of an anti-Islamic video which had sparked protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo and elsewhere earlier on September 11th, there was never any doubt among key officials, including officials in the IC and the Department of State, that the attack in Benghazi was an act of terrorism. For example, two emails from the State Department Diplomatic Security Operations Center on the day of the attack, September 11, and the day after, September 12, 2012, characterized the attack as an ``initial terrorism incident'' and as a ``terrorist event.'' Agencies and offices responsible for terrorism, including the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the CIA's Office of Terrorism Analysis, and the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, were immediately involved with gathering information about the attack. Indeed, how could there have been any doubt in anyone's mind that, when a large number of armed men break into a U.S. diplomatic facility, set fire to its buildings, and fire mortars at Americans, that it is by definition a terrorist attack? However, the IC's assessment was not reflected consistently in the public statements made by Administration officials, several of whom cited the ongoing investigation, in the week following the attack: On September 12th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attributed the attack to ``heavily armed militants'' who assaulted the compound . . .'' Her suspicion was that the people involved in this ``were looking to target Americans from the start.'' She also noted that we ``continue to apply pressure on Al Qaeda and other elements that are affiliated . . .'' Also that September 12th President Obama, referring to the anti-Islamic video, said ``we reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence . . .'' He went on to add, ``Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks,'' and that ``No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.'' However, that same day, the President had the following exchanges with Steve Kroft in a taping for the CBS news program 60 Minutes: Mr. Kroft: Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack? The President: Well, it's too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans and we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice one way or the other . . . Mr. Kroft: That doesn't sound like your normal demonstration. The President: As I said, we're still investigating exactly what happened, I don't want to jump the gun on this. But-- you're right that this is not a situation that was--exactly the same as what happened in Egypt. And--my suspicion is--is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start. So we're gonna--make sure that our first priority is to get our folks out safe, make sure that our embassies are secured around the world. And then we are gonna go after--those folks who carried this out . . . This is also obviously a reminder that for all the progress that we've made in fighting terrorism, that we're living in a volatile world. And, you know, our troops, but also our diplomats and our intelligence officers they're putting their lives on the line every single day in some very dangerous circumstances . . . But I think we also also have to understand that, we have to remain vigilant. And that even as we--continue to apply pressure on Al Qaeda and--other elements that are affiliated--that in big chunks of the world, in Northern Africa and the Middle East, you've got--a lot of dangerous characters. And we've got to make sure that we're continuing to apply pressure on them . . . Two days later, during a September 14, 2012, White House press briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked to respond to senators' characterizations of the incident as a terrorist attack following a briefing by Secretary Panetta and others: [Unidentified Reporter]: Jay, one last question--while we were sitting here--Secretary Panetta and the Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee. And the senators came out and said their indication was that this, or the attack on Benghazi was a terrorist attack organized and carried out by terrorists, that it was premeditated, a calculated act of terror. Levin said--Senator Levin--I think it was a planned, premeditated attack. The kind of equipment that they had used was evidence it was a planned, premeditated attack. Is there anything more you can--now that the administration is briefing senators on this, is there anything more you can tell us? Mr. Carney: Well, I think we wait to hear from administration officials. Again, it's actively under investigation, both the Benghazi attack and incidents elsewhere. And my point was that we don't have and did not have concrete evidence to suggest that this was not in reaction to the film. But we're obviously investigating the matter, and I'll certainly--I'm sure both the Department of Defense and the White House and other places will have more to say about that as more information becomes available. Then, on September 16th, during one of several similar appearances on the Sunday news programs, Ambassador Susan Rice had the following exchange with David Gregory of NBC's Meet the Press: Gregory: Can you say definitively that the attacks on--on our consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Stevens and others there security personnel, that was spontaneous, was it a planned attack? Was there a terrorist element to it? Ms. Rice: Well, let us--let me tell you the--the best information we have at present. First of all, there's an FBI investigation which is ongoing. And we look to that investigation to give us the definitive word as to what transpired. But putting together the best information that we have available to us today our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of--of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video. What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons which unfortunately are readily available in post revolutionary Libya. And it escalated into a much more violent episode. Obviously, that's--that's our best judgment now. We'll await the results of the investigation . . . On September 18th, President Obama said on the Late Show with David Letterman that ``extremists and terrorists used this (referring again to the anti-Islamist video) as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the consulate in Libya.'' A definitive response to the question of whether Benghazi was a terrorist attack was given by NCTC Director Matthew Olsen during a hearing before this Committee on September 19, 2012. Olsen was asked by the Chairman whether he ``would say that Ambassador Stevens and the three other Americans died as a result of a terrorist attack.'' Director Olsen responded that, ``[c]ertainly, on that particular question, I would say yes. They were killed in the course of a terrorist attack'' on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi. After Olsen's September 19th appearance before the Committee, other Administration officials stated with more certainty that Benghazi was a terrorist attack. For example: On September 19th, referring to Matthew Olsen's statements that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, Victoria Nuland stated ``We stand by comments made by our intelligence community who has first responsibility for evaluating the intelligence and what they believe we are seeing.'' On September 20th, Jay Carney said, ``It is, I think, self- evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently, and the result was four deaths of American officials. So again, that's self evident . . . '' On September 21st, Secretary Clinton said, ``What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and we will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the terrorist who murdered four Americans.'' On September 24th, however, when one of the co-hosts of the television program The View asked the President to clarify what she perceived to be discrepancies in the public record regarding the Administration's position about whether Benghazi attack was an act of terrorism, the President's answer was not as definitive: Joy Behar: It was reported that people just went crazy and wild because of this anti-Muslim movie, or anti-Muhammad, I guess, movie. But then I heard Hillary Clinton say that it was an act of terrorism. Is it? What do you say? The President: Well, we're still doing an investigation. There's no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn't just a mob action. Now, we don't have all the information yet, so we're still gathering it. But what's clear is that around the world, there's still a lot of threats out there. And that's why we have to maintain the strongest military in the world. That's why we can't let down our guard when it comes to the intelligence work that we do, and staying on top of not just al Qaeda--the traditional al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan--but all these various fringe groups that have started to develop . . . Director Olsen's statement on September 19, 2012 before this Committee was also significant because he mentioned ties to al Qaeda. He said: At this point, what I would say is that a number of different elements appear to have been involved in the attack, including individuals connected to militant groups that are prevalent in eastern Libya, particularly in the Benghazi area. As well, we are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al Qaeda or al Qaeda's affiliates, in particular al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb. Olsen's acknowledgement was important because, in talking points that were prepared the previous week by the IC for Congress, a line saying ``we know'' that individuals associated with al Qaeda or its affiliates participated in the attacks had been changed to say: ``There are indications that extremists participated,'' dropping the reference to al Qaeda and its affiliates altogether. Members of the IC differed over whether or not this information should remain classified. It is nevertheless noteworthy that the analyst who drafted the original talking points--a veteran career analyst in the intelligence community believed it was appropriate to include a reference to al Qaeda in the unclassified talking points. The senior analyst concluded that the information could be made public because of the claims of responsibility made by Ansar al-Sharia, which has been publicly linked to al Qaeda. In addition to the change deleting al-Qaeda, a reference to ``attacks'' in Benghazi was changed to ``demonstrations.'' Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and representatives from the CIA, the State Department, NCTC and the FBI told this Committee that the changes characterizing the attacks as ``demonstrations'' and removing references to al-Qaeda or its affiliates were made within the CIA and the IC, while the change from ``we know'' to ``indications'' was made in response to an FBI request. They also testified that no changes were made for political reasons, that there was no attempt to mislead the American people about what happened in Benghazi, and that the only change made by the White House was to change a reference of ``consulate'' to ``mission.'' To provide a full account of the changes made to the talking points, by whom they were made and why, DNI Clapper offered to provide the Committee with a detailed timeline regarding the development of the talking points. At the time of writing this report, despite repeated requests, the Committee had yet to receive this timeline. According to a senior IC official, the timeline has not been delivered as promised because the Administration has spent weeks debating internally whether or not it should turn over information considered ``deliberative'' to the Congress. The September 28, 2012 public statement from the ODNI confirmed the IC's judgment ``that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qa'ida.'' We anticipate that the ongoing investigation into these attacks by the FBI will provide important new details about exactly which violent Islamist extremists carried out the attack, the extent to which it was planned, and their precise motivations. But as everyone now acknowledges, there is no doubt that Benghazi was indeed a deliberate and organized terrorist attack on our nation. If the fact that Benghazi was indeed a terrorist attack had been made clear from the outset by all Administration and Executive Branch spokespeople, there would have been much less confusion and division in the public response to what happened there on September 11, 2012. Much of the public discussion about the Benghazi attack has focused on whether a protest took place in Benghazi prior to the attack. While the IC worked feverishly in the days after the attack to identify the perpetrators of the attack, they did not place a high priority on determining with certainty whether a protest had in fact occurred. The IC's preliminary conclusion was that there had been a protest outside of the mission prior to the attack, making this assessment based on open source news reports and on other information available to intelligence agencies. The IC later revised its assessment and the Accountability Review Board has since ``concluded that no protest took place before the Special Mission and Annex attacks.'' The unnecessary confusion in public statements about what happened that night with regards to an alleged protest should have ended much earlier than it did. Key evidence suggesting the absence of a protest was not widely shared as early as it could have been, creating or contributing to confusion over whether this was a peaceful protest that evolved into something more violent or a terrorist attack by an opportunistic enemy looking for the most advantageous moments to strike. As early as September 15th, the Annex team that had been in Benghazi during the attack reported there had been no protest. This information was apparently not shared broadly, and to the extent that it was shared, it apparently did not outweigh the evidence decribed above that there was a protest. The next day, the President of Libya's General National Congress, Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf, also stated on the CBS News show Face the Nation that the attack was planned and involved Al Qaeda elements. On September 15th and 16th, officials from the FBI conducted face-to-face interviews in Germany of the U.S. personnel who had been on the compound in Benghazi during the attack. The U.S. personnel who were interviewed saw no indications that there had been a protest prior to the attack. Information from those interviews was shared on a secure video teleconference on the afternoon of the 16th with FBI and other IC officials in Washington; it is unclear whether the question of whether a protest took place was discussed during this video conference. Information from those interviews was written into FBI FD- 302 interrogation reports and sent back to the FBI headquarters. Nearly a week later, on or around September 22nd, key information from those interrogation reports was disseminated by the FBI in Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs) to other agencies within the IC. By that date, however, the IC had already received conclusive proof via other means that there had been no protest prior to the attack, in the form of video evidence from the facility's CCTV cameras. We also found documentation that one DS agent apparently concluded there had been no protest as early as September 18th. On that date, a State Department DS agent who had seen national press reporting about the attacks asked an agent at the DS Command Center in an email, ``Was there any rioting in Benghazi reported prior to the attack?'' The reply from the Command Center agent: ``Zip, nothing, nada.'' Recommendation: When terrorists attack our country, either at home or abroad, Administration officials should speak clearly and consistently about what has happened. While specific details and a full accounting cannot be provided until the government has completed its investigation, the fact that a terrorist attack occurred must be communicated with clarity. Finding 10. As discussed earlier, the talking points about the September 11th attack in Benghazi which were issued by the Intelligence Community on September 14th in response to a request by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, were the subject of much of the confusion and division in the discussion of the attack. That confusion and division were intensified by the fact that the talking points were issued before the IC had a high degree of confidence about what happened in Benghazi and in the midst of a national political campaign. Recommendation: While the Intelligence Community's primary mission is to inform the appropriate officials of the executive and legislative branches of our government about events that affect our security, it is not the responsibility of the IC to draft talking points for public consumption-- especially in the heat of a political campaign--and we therefore recommend that the IC decline to do so in the future. Conclusion The deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans at the hands of terrorists is a tragic reminder that the fight our country is engaged in with Islamist extremists and terrorists is not over. U.S. and Western diplomats, and other personnel operating in the Middle East and other countries where these terrorists use violence to further their extremist agenda and thwart democratic reforms are increasingly at risk. We hope this report will help contribute to the ongoing discussion that our nation must have about how best to protect the brave men and women who serve our country abroad and how to win this war that will continue for years to come. We owe it to our public servants abroad to protect them as they work to protect us. The government of the U.S. failed tragically to fulfill that responsibility in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. We hope the findings and recommendations we have made in this Special Report will help ensure that such a failure never happens again. endnotes 1. The details of this narrative are based on briefings to the Committee in November 2012, as well as publicly available documents describing the narrative provided by the Department of State and the Department of Defense. 2. Charlene Lamb and Eric Nordstrom, interviews with Committee staff, December 2012. 3. U.S. Embassy Tripoli, Libya, Regional Security Office, ``Security Incidents since June 2011.'' 4. Committee Member briefing, November 14, 2012. 5. REDACTED, e-mail message to DS-IP-NEA, April 6, 2012. 6. U.S. Embassy Tripoli, Libya, Regional Security Office, ``Security Incidents since June 2011.'' 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. REDACTED, e-mail message to DS-IP-NEA; DSCC_E TIA/PII; DSCC_E TIA/ITA; DSCC_C DS Seniors, ``Benghazi--SR--Attack on British Ambassador Motorcade--06112012,'' June 11, 2012. 10. Hadeel Al-Shalchi, ``Gunmen attack Tunisian consulate in Benghazi,'' Reuters, June 18, 2012. http:// www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/18/us-libya-gunmen-tunisia- idUSBRE85H1V620120618; Michel Cousins, ``Tunisian Consulate in Benghazi attacked,'' Libya Herald, June 18, 2012. http:// www.libyaherald.com/2012/06/18/tunisian-consulate-in- benghazi-attacked/ 11. Navanti Group, Security Conditions in Benghazi, Libya, July 12, 2012. 12. However, as discussed later in this report, reliance solely on early warning intelligence is insufficient for making security improvement decisions. 13. Homeland Threats and Agency Responses: Hearing before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, United States Senate, 112th Cong., September 19, 2012. (Statement of Matthew Olsen, Director, NCTC). 14. Eli Lake, ``Ansar al Sharia's Role in Benghazi Attacks still a Mystery,'' The Daily Beast, November 5, 2012, http:// www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/05/ansar-al-sharia-s- role-in-benghazi-attacks-still-a- mystery.html 15. Ibid. 16. For a general discussion of this phenomenon: Robert F. Worth, ``Al Qaeda-Inspired Groups, Minus Goal of Striking U.S.'', The New York Times, October 27, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/world/middleeast/al-qaeda- inspired-groups-minus-goal-of-striking-us.html 17. Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Al- Qaeda in Libya: A Profile, August 2012. See, e.g., the discussion of two local Libyan Islamist-oriented militias-- Ansar al-Sharia and al-A'hrar Libya--which are described as broadcasting ``typical al-Qaeda-type propaganda on the Internet.''(33), http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2012/10/LOC-AQ-Libya.pdf 18. As discussed further, infra, the State Department and the IC must also think beyond ``warning'' intelligence of specific attacks when making security decisions. This is one of the key lessons of the Accountability Review Board (ARB) Reports on the 1998 terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. 19. Inman Report, Report of the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Overseas Security, (June 1985). http:// www.fas.org/irp/threat/inman/. 20. Charlene Lamb, interview with Committee staff, December 6, 2012. 21. See Finzer v. Barry, 798 F.2d 1450, 1455 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (Bork, J.), (citing 2 C. Hyde, International Law 1249 (1945)) (``The principle that host states have a special responsibility to ensure that foreign embassies and the personnel inside them are free from threats of violence and intimidation is `solidly entrenched in the Law of Nations.' ''). 22. Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, (Adopted April 24, 1963, entered into force, March 19, 1967) Art. 31; see also The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Art. 22 (Adopted April 18, 1961, entered into force, April 29, 1964). 23. Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, (Adopted April 24, 1963, entered into force, March 19, 1967) Art. 40. 24. Christopher M. Blanchard, Congressional Research Service, Libya: Transition and U.S. Policy, October 18, 2012 (16). 25. Adam Nossiter and Kareem Fahim, ``Revolution Won, Top Libyan Official Promises Elections and a More Pious State,'' New York Times, October 24, 2011, A10. 26. Ibid. 27. Blanchard (17). 28. Blanchard (6). 29. See, for example, REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, January 4, 2012; or REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, April 1, 2012. 30. ``Security Incidents since June 2011,'' U.S. Embassy Tripoli, Libya, Regional Security Office and REDACTED, email to DS-IP-NEA, ``Benghazi RSO Spot Report,'' March 15, 2012. 31. Eric Nordstrom, interview with Committee staff, December 7, 2012. The State Department did provide some training to members of the Brigade. 32. See, for example, REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, January 4, 2012; or REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, April 1, 2012. See also, REDACTED, email to REDACTED, June 17, 2012. 33. REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, June 17, 2012. 34. REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, ``Benghazi Hand- off Notes,'' August 29, 2012. 35. REDACTED, e-mail message to Charlene Lamb, ``Ambassador's protective detail in Benghazi,'' September 20, 2012. 36. The Security Failures of Benghazi: Hearing before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. Congress, 112th Cong., October 10, 2012. (Eric Allan Nordstrom, Regional Security Officer, Tripoli, Libya from 9/21/11--7/26/ 12). 37. RSO Eric Nordstrom, Memorandum to DS/DSS/TIA/OSAC, ``OSAC Crime and Safety Report,'' February 1, 2012. 38. Ibid. 39. REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, ``The Guns of August: security in eastern Libya,'' August 8, 2012. 40. Ibid. 41. REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, ``Benghazi Weekly Report, Special Eid al-Fitr Edition,'' August 20, 2012. 42. Under an ordered departure, all U.S. diplomatic personnel and their families are instructed by the Chief of Mission to leave the post. 43. Benghazi Assessment of Tripwires Breached as of August 13, 2012. 44. REDACTED, e-mail message to REDACTED, ``Benghazi Weekly Report,'' September 11, 2012, (1). 45. REDACTED, e-mail message to Charlene Lamb, ``Ambassador's protective detail in Benghazi,'' September 20, 2012. 46. State Department, Office of Inspector General, Review of Best-Value Contracting for the Department of State Local Guard Program and the Utility of Expanding the Policy Beyond High-Threat Posts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, February, 2012 (9). 47. Ibid. (5). 48. Alex Tiersky and Susan Epstein, Congressional Research Service, Securing U.S. Diplomatic Facilities and Personnel Abroad: Background and Policy Issues, November 26, 2012, (3). 49. REDACTED, e-mail message to DS-IP-NEA and REDACTED, September 13, 2012. 50. NEA--Jeffrey Feltman, Action Memo to Under Secretary Kennedy, December 27, 2011, (2). 51. The Security Failures of Benghazi: Hearing before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. Congress, 112th Cong., October 10, 2012. (Eric Allan Nordstrom, Regional Security Officer, Tripoli, Libya from 9/21/11-7/26/ 12). 52. Diplomatic Security Issues Only Briefing paper for March 6, 2012 meeting of Assistant Secretary Boswell and Ambassador Cretz. 53. Eric Nordstrom, interview with Committee staff, December 7, 2012. 54. Ibid. 55. NEA--Jeffrey Feltman, Action Memo to Under Secretary Kennedy, December 27, 2011, (2). 56. REDACTED, e-mail message to DS-IP-NEA and REDACTED, September 13, 2012. 57. Charlene Lamb and Eric Nordstrom, interviews with Committee staff, December 2012. 58. Charlene Lamb, interview with Committee staff, December 6, 2012. 59. Department of State, Inspector General, Review of the Department's Implementation of Mantraps, Report Number ISP-I- 09-29, February 2009, (2-3). 60. Attack on U.S. Consulate General in Jeddah, James C. Oberwetter, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, On-the-Record Briefing, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, December 7, 2004 http://2001- 2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/39516.htm 61. Department of State, Inspector General, Review of the Department's Implementation of Mantraps, Report Number ISP-I- 09-29, February 2009, (3). 62. Committee member briefing, November 14, 2012. 63. Congressional Research Service (CRS), e-mail message to Committee staff, December 20, 2012. For example, CRS noted all Overseas Contingency Operations enacted and requested for the Worldwide Security Protection account in Fiscal Years 2012 and 2013 were for facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Additionally, there was approximately $1.5 billion funding for Iraq embassy ``security and overhead cover'' in

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I guess the good news is that I am rising today not to speak about the fiscal cliff. What I am speaking about is not good news because it deals with the tragic event that occurred in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, when terrorists took the lives of our Ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other brave Americans who were serving us there. I rise today, along with the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Collins, to submit for the Record the report she and I have been working on with our staffs and other members of the committee following those events in Libya. We call this report ``Flashing Red: A Special Report On The Terrorist Attack At Benghazi.'' ``Flashing red'' is a term that was used in a conversation with us by an official of the State Department, and it could not have been more correct. All the evidence was flashing red that we had put American personnel in Benghazi in an increasingly dangerous situation, with violent Islamic extremists gathering there, with events having occurred, attacks on our mission there--two others prior that year. Yet we did not give them the security they needed to protect them, and we did not make the decision that I believe we should have made, since we did not provide them with the security, that we should have closed our mission there. As a result, people really suffered. We recognize that the congressionally mandated Accountability Review Board at the Department of State has issued a report on the events in Benghazi. I think it was an excellent report. There are other committees of Congress continuing with their own investigations. Each of these will and should make a valuable contribution to our understanding of what happened at Benghazi so that we can take steps to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. Under the rules of the Senate, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has a unique mandate to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of governmental agencies, especially when matters that span multiple agencies are involved. Our report is intended to inform the Senate and the American people about events immediately before, during, and after the attack at Benghazi. In order to contribute most to the public debate, we have chosen to include only unclassified information in this report. We are hopeful that the report can and will make an important contribution to the ongoing discussions about how to better protect our diplomatic personnel abroad. Our report contains 10 findings and 11 recommendations that we believe can help us better protect our diplomats and others who serve our country, often in very dangerous places. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the report be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise in honor of the innocent lives that were lost in Newtown, CT, on December 14, when a madman murdered 26 students, teachers, and administrators, as well as his own mother. The terrible act of violence that occurred that day has left the whole Nation wounded and shaken. In the wake of this tragedy, Mr. Albert Caswell penned the following poem: We Now So Weep in memory of all the lost lives and the tragedy at sandy hook elementary school (By Albert Carey Caswell) We Now So Weep We . . . We now so weep . . . All in our hearts so very deep! All in this pain to so repeat! Forever now so to keep! We now so weep! And from all of this heartache! What must we now so take! And what sense from all of this, must we now so make? All so very deep, deep down inside all of our souls to so create . . . That there is a battle! And there is a fight! That which but so rages on this very night! Of Good Vs. Evil . . . Of wrong or so right! And that hate is hard, as it makes me weep! It makes me cry! When, I so see those tears in your parent's eyes! And that our moments together upon this earth, are such so very short ones there so first! So hold your families close, and always remember what but means the most! All in your hearts so very deep! As all across this nation, we now so weep . . . As the tears run down our faces so deep! At this evil our souls so tries to defeat! All in these our darkest hours of heartbreak, which now so beat . . . As it's for them we now so weep! And for all of those love ones, who so lost their most precious daughters and sons . . . Thy Kingdom Come, for heaven but lies for each of them! Their parent's most precious children so to keep! And for all of those educators, who were so slain so all in such grief! Knowing full well, all of the pain that their loved ones must now so keep! The kind of pain, that which only Heaven can bring such relief! For a child! Is but the very hope of the world! So very innocent and so very precious, oh such beautiful little boys and so girls . . . With their sweet little smiles unto us as so unfurled . . . As all around them such happiness so swirls . . . Touching all of our hearts, as was their part, these most precious boys and so girls! With their little voices and so little curls . . . And who could so cast out such vile evil upon as so hurled? Because, a child is but The Brightest of All Lights! The Brightest of all Bright! So listen on the wind, and you will hear this my friend . . . our Lord crying for all of them! To take a child's life, but stands at the very top of evil's darkest of all heights! With all of their futures so up ahead, so very shinny and bright! As it's for all of them, we now so weep! And for all of those dedicated teachers, whose very being was to so nurture our true heart's delights! Who so heroically towards evil so ran, ``lock the doors, look the doors'', as she so cried out all in her most courageous fight! As all of their children are but so now motherless now! As a young teacher who so hid her children, to so escape past a door, as the evil came in she so fooled and so lured . . . sacrificing herself . . . All so they could escape, why now up in heaven she's so adored! Our children, are but our most precious of all gifts from above! For these are our greatest gifts to our world, of our true loves! Such shear delights! As no more joyful Christmas mornings, will they so see so in sight . . . Or Hanukkah's, so surrounded by their families with such smiles so very bright! Not to grow up to be so very tall! Not to have children at all . . . Oh but the sad shame of it all! No Weddings, No Birthdays, No Proms, or Graduations for one and all! As a parent's greatest of all nightmares, has now come to call! To bury our children, with tears in eyes to their knees they now fall! As out across this nation, we so try to so make sense of it all . . . But, the answer is so very clear, as it's as old as time is so here! It's The Struggle! It's The Fight! As out across this great nation . . . I bid to you to so hold your families close . . . On this very night! And remember our love and time together, but means the most! And that this battle is not over, so wrap your hearts all in this clover, of all of those teachers love and courage so showed! All in that selfless sacrifice! Because, the darkness is no match . . . for the light in our hearts that which evil ignites! Goodness! Evil! Darkness! Light! Those brave hearts who evil must fight! Who bring their light! As against the darkest of all evils, as onward we fight! Rise! Rise Up To Heaven My Child, with but tears in your eyes! As our Lord's Littlest of Angels now so fill the skies! And do not so worry because in our Lord's arms you now lie! Mommy! Daddy! I'm already in Heaven so don't you so cry! Up here, there are candy canes to so taste, and Christmas trains to so ride! And there are puppies up in heaven, and the most beautiful of all butterflies . . . And because you won't ever turn seven it now makes me so cry! And when their comes a gentle rain, your tear drops shall wash down upon your parents to so ease their pain . . . Until, one day up in Heaven you shall all so meet again . . . And you won't have to cry anymore! Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers, Grand Parents and all the others . . . Somehow! Someway! Find the strength on this day! All in what their short live's so had to say! And so try! To so carry them all in your hearts out on your way! As you so wipe all of those tears from your eyes . . . And from out of all of this heartache you must so realize, that your children and your loved ones are Angels now up in Heaven on high! And isn't that but where we all so wish to wake, so you and

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, included in the Department of Defense Authorization Act is bipartisan, bicameral legislation I co- sponsored titled ``The Interagency Personnel Rotation Act,'' which seeks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal Government's national and homeland security operations by encouraging the temporary rotation of certain homeland and national security employees among the different agencies that have homeland security missions. Like the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which established the principle of interagency rotation within our armed forces, this amendment will have the effect of building trust and better communications among these different agencies, thus enhancing their collective efforts to safeguard our nation from the terrorist threat. Much of the credit for crafting this bipartisan legislation goes to Gordon Lederman, formerly Associate Staff Director and Chief Counsel for National Security and Investigations on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Gordon left my Committee staff earlier this year due to illness. However, this legislation will add to his record of enhancing the security of our country, and especially of breaking down the barriers to greater cooperation and collaboration between agencies that must work together to keep our country safe. Thomas Jefferson once asked the question: ``What duty does a citizen owe to the government that secures the society in which he lives?'' Answering his own question, Jefferson said: ``A nation that rests on the will of the people must also depend on individuals to support its institutions if it is to flourish. Persons qualified for public service should feel an obligation to make that contribution.'' Gordon has selflessly answered Jefferson's centuries old call and has had a distinguished career in public service dedicated to the security of our Nation. Here are just a few highlights of Gordon's career. In 2003, Gordon joined the 9/11 Commission staff and was responsible for assessing the Intelligence Community's senior-level management structure. His work included developing potential recommendations for intelligence reform modeled on the Goldwater-Nichols Act as well as examining Congressional oversight. After the 9/11 Commission released its report in July 2004, Gordon moved to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as a special bipartisan staff member. He served as the lead drafter and negotiator of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which enacted the Commission's recommendations to create the Director of National Intelligence and National Counterterrorism Center. Gordon also worked on the Committee's investigation into the flawed response to Hurricane Katrina at all levels of government. In February 2006, Gordon joined the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to assist the Executive Branch in implementing the legislation he helped author. His work included the Center's organizational strategy and internal allocation of roles and responsibilities. Gordon later returned to the Committee and was the lead investigator of the Committee's inquiry into the murders at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009, when Maj. Nidal Hasan--a psychiatrist trained by the U.S. Army at taxpayer expense--entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center with two loaded pistols and opened fire, killing 13 and wounding 32. Following a 14-month investigation, the Committee released its report--``A Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government's Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack,'' of which Gordon was the lead writer. The report detailed flawed practices and communications, both within and between the FBI and Department of Defense, which allowed Hasan to remain in the military--and even be promoted--despite many warning signs that he was becoming dangerous. The report also contained a series of recommendations that, had they been in place, probably would have led to Hasan's dismissal from the Army and prodded the FBI, which was aware of Hasan's suspicious actions, into a more aggressive investigation of his growing violent Islamist radicalization. My time in the Senate is drawing to a close. I have already given my farewell address. However, I just wanted to take these few minutes to thank Gordon Lederman for the Interagency Personnel Rotation Act into law, and for his career long dedication to making our homeland more secure.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the nearly quarter of a century of public service of my friend and the staff director of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Michael L. Alexander. Mike will be leaving his position when this Congress adjourns. And he will leave quite a legacy. Thomas Jefferson once asked the question: ``What duty does a citizen owe to the government that secures the society in which he lives?'' Answering his own question, Jefferson said: ``A nation that rests on the will of the people must also depend on individuals to support its institutions if it is to flourish. Persons qualified for public service should feel an obligation to make that contribution.'' Mike answered that call in a way that would have made Jefferson proud. Mike joined what was then the Governmental Affairs Committee as a staff member for the minority side in April 2001 and was a leader in negotiating and drafting the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security and later the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. In recognition of his hard work and proven leadership abilities, I promoted Mike to the position of staff director in May 2006. Under his direction, the committee, through legislation and investigation, took on some of the great challenges of our time. After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in August 2005, claiming more than 1,800 lives, the committee launched a major investigation into how American government at all levels failed so dramatically to safeguard its citizens from a predicted storm. Over the course of the investigation, the committee held 22 hearings, interviewed, 345 witnesses, and reviewed over 800,000 documents. The, ``Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared,'' was the most comprehensive evaluation of the Katrina catastrophe. In 2007, the committee began a series of 14 hearings examining the root causes of violent domestic radicalization, the tactics and measures used by U.S. law enforcement at every level to prevent and deter homegrown terrorism, the role of the Internet in self radicalization, and the threat of homegrown terrorism to military personnel. In May 2008, the committee issued a bipartisan staff report detailing the results of its investigation entitled, ``Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.'' The report concluded that: ``No longer is the threat just from abroad, as was the case with the attacks of September 11, 2001; the threat is now increasingly from within, from homegrown terrorists who are inspired by violent Islamist ideology to plan and execute attacks where they live. One of the primary drivers of this new threat is the use of the Internet to enlist individuals or groups of individuals to join the cause without ever affiliating with a terrorist organization.'' Following the murders at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009, when Maj. Nidal Hasan--a psychiatrist trained by the U.S. Army at taxpayer expense entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center with two loaded pistols and opened fire, killing 13 and wounding 32, the committee launched a 14-month investigation into what happened and why. The report that followed the investigation--``A Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government's Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack''--detailed flawed practices and communications, both within and between the FBI and Department of Defense, that allowed Hasan to remain in the military--and even be promoted--despite many warning signs that he was becoming dangerous. Besides the investigations, here are just a few of the successful pieces of legislation that were passed out of the committee and enacted into law on Mike's watch: The ``Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006,'' which remade and strengthened the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina; the ``Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007,'' which made sweeping ethics and lobbying reforms; the ``Implementing the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007,'' which strengthened the Nation's security against terrorism by providing first responders with the resources they need to protect their communities from disaster, promoting interoperable emergency communications, requiring screening of cargo placed on passenger aircraft, securing mass transit, rail and buses; and improving the security of maritime cargo; ``The Inspector General Reform Act,'' passed in 2008, which sought to improve government accountability by guaranteeing that qualified individuals are appointed as IGs and that IGs remain independent; ``The Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011'' that addresses the increasingly slow and burdensome appointments process by, among other things, removing about 170 non-policymaking positions from the list of Presidential appointments requiring Senate confirmation, thereby allowing the Senate to focus on the most important positions; and the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, STOCK Act, that ensures that Members of Congress are subject to the same insider information prohibitions as other Americans. It is quite a record of accomplishment. And he did it all with a wonderful sense of humor, patience and civility. Mr. President, I want to return to Thomas Jefferson for a moment, because he had another thought on public service that sums up one of Mike's greatest assets--spotting talent in young people and convincing them to use those talents in public service. Jefferson once wrote to a friend: ``It will remain . . . to those now coming on the stage of public affairs to perfect what has been so well begun by those going off it.'' Mike may be leaving the Senate, but he leaves behind a cadre of talented and diverse individuals he recruited to join the committee and then gave increased responsibilities as their talents began to flower. Many of these people who started out as interns or junior support staffers, have moved up the committee ranks, working on important legislation and investigations, while others have gone on to other Congressional or executive branch offices thanks to the skills Mike helped them develop. Prior to joining the committee, Mike served as an Executive Assistant to former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and had also been Espy's Legislative Director when Espy was a Congressman. One of the joys of my Senate career was the chance to work with talented and dedicated public servants like Michael Alexander and I want to thank him for all his hard work and wish him the best of luck in whatever his next endeavor may be.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the New Columbia Admissions Act that will create a 51st State from the populated portions of Washington, D.C., giving these more than 600,000 disenfranchised Americans the voice they deserve in our national government. The United States is the only democracy in the world that denies voting representation to the people who live in its capital city. It is long past time to end this unjust and embarrassing distinction. I am not the only Senator who feels this way--Senators Durbin, Boxer, and Murray join me in cosponsoring this bill today. My friend Senator Inouye had planned to cosponsor this bill as he was a strong supporter of the District's right to have congressional representation. Under this bill, there would still be Federal district called Washington, D.C., which would be under the control of Congress as the Constitution mandates. But it would be a smaller area encompassing the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and the National Mall, where few people actually live. The rest of the current District of Columbia--diverse business districts and residential neighborhoods that are home to more than half a million U.S. citizens--would become a new State. This is completely in accord with the principles and mandates of the Constitution and our Founding Fathers. Indeed, I think it is worth remembering why our Founding Fathers created a Federal district in the first place. After the Revolutionary War, Philadelphia, PA, was the capital of the government formed by the Articles of Confederation. That Congress met in what we now know as Independence Hall in Philadephia. In 1783, a mob of Revolutionary War veterans besieged Independence Hall, demanding promised payments for their service during the war. Congress asked the governor of Pennsylvania, John Dickinson, to call out the militia to defend the capital, but he sided with the veterans and refused. Congress had to flee to Princeton, NJ. This failure of a state government to protect the national government became a major concern of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and it was decided the Constitution must create a Federal district that could be controlled and protected by the new Federal government. But Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution, which created the Federal district, did not order a particular location. It only said only that it may not exceed ``10 miles square''--or 100 square miles. The Residence Act of 1790 gave President Washington authority to pick the final site of the capital, and the site of the current Washington D.C. was chosen as a result of a compromise between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. When John Adams moved into the White House in 1800, Washington, D.C. had a population of just 3,210 people--in a Nation of roughly 5 million. Even then the founders were concerned about voting rights for residents of the new capital. In the early days before the capital was fully established, its residents were allowed to vote in Maryland or Virginia. There were proposals to guarantee their suffrage going forward but unfortunately they did not get enacted amid the press to establish the new government. Certainly, though, it would have been unimaginable to the founders that a population of more than half a million in our capital city should be disenfranchised in the national legislature. Yet that is the current reality. Now we are a Nation of more than 300 million and Washington, D.C. is a thriving community of 618,000 people. That's more people than Wyoming has and about the same as Vermont and North Dakota have, which, of course, have full representation in Congress. Acccording to the U.S. Census, Washington, D.C. is growing faster than all 50 States. Demographers expect it will only get bigger in the years to come because much of that growth has been with young people who want to raise families in the District. The District of Columbia already functions as a state in many respects--indeed the Federal Government treats it as a State for purposes of most Federal programs. More important, the residents of the District of Columbia have all the responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. They pay more Federal income tax per capita than residents of any state; D.C. residents and businesses send on average $20 billion to the Federal treasury each year. D.C. residents must serve on Federal juries and male residents must register for Selective Service. More than 190,000 D.C. residents have served in the military in wartime and about 1,700 have died for our country in the wars of the last century alone. All this occurred while the District's residents were denied voting representation in Congress. The current inequity has even been noted by international bodies, including the United Nations Human Rights Commission, as a possible violation of international human rights accords. It is long past time to give these American citizens who have chosen Washington as their home full participation in our democracy. People who live in D.C. are, of course, as American as people who live throughout our country--teachers, firefighters, doctors, janitors, parents, children, veterans, retirees. Why do their contributions to our democracy--financial and otherwise--merit rights and representation any less than those of their fellow citizens in the 50 states? In sum, nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from ceding this territory to a new State. There will still be a Federal district under Congressional control and protected by Federal authorities. The voters of this new state will have the same rights we give voters in every other State, including those seven small states with populations under 1 million. If the idea seems strange, remember that many also once could not imagine full voting rights for women or racial minorities. It is the nature of civil rights that the disenfranchised must fight to gain acceptance of rights that, in retrospect, seem morally compelled and beyond question. We must right this injustice toward the residents of the District just as Congress historically has righted other voting injustices that stretched back to the very founding of the Nation. I will soon leave Congress after having had the great privilege of serving here for 24 years. Securing full voting rights for the 600,000 Americans who live in the District of Columbia is unfinished business, not just for me, but for the United States of America.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the New Columbia Admissions Act that will create a 51st State from the populated portions of Washington, D.C., giving these more than 600,000 disenfranchised Americans the voice they deserve in our national government. The United States is the only democracy in the world that denies voting representation to the people who live in its capital city. It is long past time to end this unjust and embarrassing distinction. I am not the only Senator who feels this way--Senators Durbin, Boxer, and Murray join me in cosponsoring this bill today. My friend Senator Inouye had planned to cosponsor this bill as he was a strong supporter of the District's right to have congressional representation. Under this bill, there would still be Federal district called Washington, D.C., which would be under the control of Congress as the Constitution mandates. But it would be a smaller area encompassing the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and the National Mall, where few people actually live. The rest of the current District of Columbia--diverse business districts and residential neighborhoods that are home to more than half a million U.S. citizens--would become a new State. This is completely in accord with the principles and mandates of the Constitution and our Founding Fathers. Indeed, I think it is worth remembering why our Founding Fathers created a Federal district in the first place. After the Revolutionary War, Philadelphia, PA, was the capital of the government formed by the Articles of Confederation. That Congress met in what we now know as Independence Hall in Philadephia. In 1783, a mob of Revolutionary War veterans besieged Independence Hall, demanding promised payments for their service during the war. Congress asked the governor of Pennsylvania, John Dickinson, to call out the militia to defend the capital, but he sided with the veterans and refused. Congress had to flee to Princeton, NJ. This failure of a state government to protect the national government became a major concern of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and it was decided the Constitution must create a Federal district that could be controlled and protected by the new Federal government. But Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution, which created the Federal district, did not order a particular location. It only said only that it may not exceed ``10 miles square''--or 100 square miles. The Residence Act of 1790 gave President Washington authority to pick the final site of the capital, and the site of the current Washington D.C. was chosen as a result of a compromise between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. When John Adams moved into the White House in 1800, Washington, D.C. had a population of just 3,210 people--in a Nation of roughly 5 million. Even then the founders were concerned about voting rights for residents of the new capital. In the early days before the capital was fully established, its residents were allowed to vote in Maryland or Virginia. There were proposals to guarantee their suffrage going forward but unfortunately they did not get enacted amid the press to establish the new government. Certainly, though, it would have been unimaginable to the founders that a population of more than half a million in our capital city should be disenfranchised in the national legislature. Yet that is the current reality. Now we are a Nation of more than 300 million and Washington, D.C. is a thriving community of 618,000 people. That's more people than Wyoming has and about the same as Vermont and North Dakota have, which, of course, have full representation in Congress. Acccording to the U.S. Census, Washington, D.C. is growing faster than all 50 States. Demographers expect it will only get bigger in the years to come because much of that growth has been with young people who want to raise families in the District. The District of Columbia already functions as a state in many respects--indeed the Federal Government treats it as a State for purposes of most Federal programs. More important, the residents of the District of Columbia have all the responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. They pay more Federal income tax per capita than residents of any state; D.C. residents and businesses send on average $20 billion to the Federal treasury each year. D.C. residents must serve on Federal juries and male residents must register for Selective Service. More than 190,000 D.C. residents have served in the military in wartime and about 1,700 have died for our country in the wars of the last century alone. All this occurred while the District's residents were denied voting representation in Congress. The current inequity has even been noted by international bodies, including the United Nations Human Rights Commission, as a possible violation of international human rights accords. It is long past time to give these American citizens who have chosen Washington as their home full participation in our democracy. People who live in D.C. are, of course, as American as people who live throughout our country--teachers, firefighters, doctors, janitors, parents, children, veterans, retirees. Why do their contributions to our democracy--financial and otherwise--merit rights and representation any less than those of their fellow citizens in the 50 states? In sum, nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from ceding this territory to a new State. There will still be a Federal district under Congressional control and protected by Federal authorities. The voters of this new state will have the same rights we give voters in every other State, including those seven small states with populations under 1 million. If the idea seems strange, remember that many also once could not imagine full voting rights for women or racial minorities. It is the nature of civil rights that the disenfranchised must fight to gain acceptance of rights that, in retrospect, seem morally compelled and beyond question. We must right this injustice toward the residents of the District just as Congress historically has righted other voting injustices that stretched back to the very founding of the Nation. I will soon leave Congress after having had the great privilege of serving here for 24 years. Securing full voting rights for the 600,000 Americans who live in the District of Columbia is unfinished business, not just for me, but for the United States of America.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I also wish to thank my dear friend and colleague from California for her words of support and comfort and resolve. We appear to be in one of those periods of time where we are walking too often through the valley of the shadow of death. Senator Blumenthal and I have come to the floor to speak about the tragedy that occurred; the senseless, horrific attacks on innocent people in Newtown, CT, last Friday. Mr. President, I note with extraordinary respect and a sense of loss the death of our truly beloved colleague Senator Dan Inouye of Hawaii. America, as Senator Reid and Senator Durbin made so clear, has lost a true hero, a patriot. This Senate has lost a great leader--a leader whose accomplishments have been literally historic. I think all of us have lost a friend. Last evening, Senator Akaka spoke about how Dan Inouye's legacy--I am paraphrasing--was all around Hawaii and all he had done for the State. The truth is I think most every State in the country is full of legacies of the service of Dan Inouye. I know it is true of Connecticut. It was truly my honor to serve for 24 years with Dan Inouye. He was exactly the opposite of all the caricature pictures people have of Congress today and particularly about the rabid partisanship and personal incivility. Dan was a great gentleman and the most civil of people, the kindest and most decent of people. As Senator Reid said, he was a proud Democrat, a faithful Democrat but not at all partisan. The relationship he had with the late Ted Stevens on the Appropriations Committee was historic and actually inspirational. They were so different ostensibly in their background and in their temperament, particularly. Ted Stevens, bless his memory, was my neighbor and my dear friend. Let's say he had a--how do I describe it? He was a very emotional person. Danny Inouye was more calm. But they formed this remarkable friendship based on shared history, going back to World War II, and probably some sense of shared destiny in the sense they were both from the two last States to join the Union, not part of the continental United States, and came as the first Senators and were here so long. But truly what united them was an enormous dedication to America and patriotism. I said Dan Inouye's legacy is in Connecticut and probably most every other State. I could go around the State, and I am thinking of the years and years that Danny was the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. There wasn't anything we were able to do for Connecticut in that time that he didn't support, including protecting Long Island Sound, the Connecticut River, improving our transportation systems, making grants to our schools, colleges, and universities, and support of the defense industries in Connecticut which have meant so much to the defense of our country but also to the economy of our State. I salute his memory. All of us should honor it and all of us should try in our own way to emulate this great man.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, my fourth and final term as a U.S. Senator will soon come to an end. As I reflect on that reality, I am, of course, filled with many emotions, but the one I feel most is gratitude--gratitude first to God, creator of life and law, without whose loving kindness nothing would be possible; gratitude to America, the extraordinary land of opportunity which has given someone like me so many opportunities; gratitude to the people of Connecticut, who have entrusted me with the privilege of public service for 40 years, the last 24 in the Senate; gratitude to my Senate colleagues, whom I have come to know as friends and with whom it has been such an honor to serve; gratitude to all the people without whose help, hard work, and support I never would have made it to the Senate or stayed here, the gifted and hard-working staff in Connecticut and Washington who supported, informed, and enriched my service here, and the volunteers in my campaigns who gave so much and asked for nothing in return except that I do what I believed was right; gratitude to all those who labor out of view in the corridors of this Capitol Building, from the maintenance crews to the Capitol Police and everybody else anywhere in this building--thank you for keeping our Capitol running and keeping us safe; and gratitude most of all, of course, to my family for the love, support, and inspiration they have given me every day of my life--my parents, grandparents, and siblings, my children and grandchildren, and Hadassah, my wife of almost 30 years now, the love of my life, who has been my constant companion, supporter, and partner through this amazing adventure. So I want to begin this farewell speech by simply saying thank you all. I have a lot to be grateful for. But, Mr. President, being a Senator, and since this is my farewell speech, I do have a few more things I would like to say. I am leaving the Senate at a moment in our history when America faces daunting challenges both domestic and foreign and when too often our problems seem greater than our government's ability to solve them. But I can tell you I remain deeply optimistic about America's future and constantly inspired by the special destiny I am convinced is ours as Americans. My optimism is based not in theory or hope but in American history and in personal experience. I think particularly about my time in public life and especially the changes I have witnessed since I took the oath of office as a Senator on January 3, 1989. The fact is that over the past quarter century, America and the world have become freer and more prosperous. The Iron Curtain was peacefully torn down, and the Soviet empire defeated. The eternal values of freedom and opportunity, on which America was founded and for which we still stand, have made global gains that were once unimaginable. We have seen the spread of democracy from Central Europe to Southeast Asia and from Latin America to the Middle East. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in places such as China, India, and just about every other corner of the globe, and technological advances have transformed almost every aspect of our daily lives. When I started in the Senate, a BlackBerry was a fruit and tweeting was something only birds did. No more. None of these extraordinary developments happened by accident. In fact, to a significant degree, I would say they were made possible by the principled leadership of the United States, by the global economy and international system America created with our diplomacy and protected with our military and by the unique culture of freedom, innovation, and entrepreneurship that flourishes in our country and that remains the model and inspiration for the rest of the modernizing world. We have every reason to be proud of the progress of humanity that has happened on America's watch and here at home to be grateful for the countless ways in which our own country has been benefited in the process. We live in a world whose shape and trajectory the United States, more than any other nation, is responsible for. It is certainly not a perfect world. I know that. But it is a better world than the one we inherited. In my opinion, it is actually in so many ways a better world than has ever existed before. Here at home, over the past quarter century, we have moved closer to the more perfect union our Founders sought--becoming a more free and open society, in ways I would guess those same Founders never could have imagined. Barriers of discrimination and bigotry that just a few decades ago seemed immoveable have been broken, and the doors of opportunity have been opened wider for all Americans--regardless of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability. During my time in Washington, we have had our first female Secretary of State nominated and confirmed and our first African-American President elected and reelected. It will forever remain one of my deepest honors that--thanks to Vice President Gore--I was given the opportunity to be the first Jewish American nominated by a major political party for national office--and, incidentally, thanks to the American people, grateful to have received one-half million more votes than my opponent on the other side. But that is a longer story. While there is still much work to do and many problems to be solved, I believe we can and should approach our future with a confidence that is based on the real and substantial progress we have made together. What is required now to solve the real urgent problems we still have is leadership--leadership of the kind that is never easy or common but which we as Americans know we can summon in times of need because we have summoned it before. Today, I regret to say, as I leave the Senate, the greatest obstacle I see standing between us and the brighter American future we all want is right here in Washington. It is the partisan polarization of our politics which prevents us from making the principled compromises on which progress in a democracy depends and which right now prevents us from restoring our fiscal solvency as a nation. We need bipartisan leadership to break the gridlock in Washington that will unleash all the potential that is in the American people. So I would respectfully make this appeal to my colleagues--especially the 12 new Senators who will take the oath of office for the first time next month. I know how hard each of you has worked to get elected to the Senate, and I know you worked so hard because you wanted to come here to make a difference for the better. There is no magic or mystery about the way to do so in the Senate. It requires reaching across the aisle and finding partners from the opposite party. It means ultimately putting the interests of country and constituents ahead of the dictates of party and ideology. When I look back at my own career, the legislative achievements I am proudest to have been part of--such as passing the Clean Air Act of 1990, stopping the genocide in the Balkans, creating the 9/11 Commission and the Department of Homeland Security, reforming the intelligence community, reorganizing FEMA, and repealing don't ask, don't tell--all were achieved only because a critical mass of Democrats and Republicans found common ground. That is what is desperately needed in Washington now to solve our Nation's biggest problems and address our biggest challenges before they become crises or catastrophes. Our future also depends on our Nation continuing to exercise another kind of leadership; that is, leadership beyond our borders. This too has never been easy or popular. Americans have rarely been eager to entangle ourselves abroad, especially at times when we have faced economic difficulties at home, as we do now. There has been the temptation to turn inward, to tell ourselves that the problems of the world are not our responsibility or that we cannot afford to do anything about them. In fact, the prosperity, security, and freedom of the American people depend more than ever before on what is happening in the rest of the world--and so, too, does the rest of the world depend especially on us. I know we can't solve all the planet's problems by ourselves, nor should we try. But the fact is that none of the biggest problems facing the world can or will be solved in the absence of American leadership. Here, too, I appeal to my Senate colleagues--and, again, especially those who will take the oath of office for the first time early in January--do not listen to the political consultants or others who tell you that you shouldn't spend time on foreign affairs or national security. They are wrong. The American people need us, the Senate, to stay engaged economically, diplomatically, and militarily in an ever smaller world. Do not underestimate the impact you can have by getting involved in matters of foreign policy and national security, whether by using your voice to stand in solidarity with those who are struggling for the American ideal of freedom in their own countries across the globe or working to strengthen the foreign policy and national security institutions of our own country or by rallying our citizens to embrace the role that we as a country must play on the world stage, as both our interests and our values demand. None of the challenges we face in a still dangerous world is beyond our ability to meet. Just as we ended the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, we can stop the slaughter in Syria. Just as we nurtured the democratic transitions after communism fell in Central and Eastern Europe, we can support the forces of freedom in the Middle East today. Just as we were able to prevail in the long struggle against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, we can prevail in the global conflict with Islamist extremism and terrorism we were forced into by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But all that too will require leadership in the Senate. It will require leaders who will stand against the siren song of isolationism, who will defend our defense and foreign assistance budgets, who will support, when necessary, the use of America's military power against our enemies in the world, and who will have the patience and determination when the public grows weary to see our battles through until they are won. I first set foot in this Chamber almost exactly 50 years ago, in the summer of 1963, inspired like so many of my generation by President John F. Kennedy and his call to service. I spent that summer right here in the Senate as an intern for my home State Senator, Abe Ribicoff. He was and remains another personal hero of mine. Although I never would have admitted so publicly back then, because it was so presumptuous, I came away from that experience with the dream that I might someday, somehow return to serve in this place. I have been blessed to live that dream, and that is what America is all about. We have always been a nation of dreamers whose destiny is determined only by the bounds of our own imagination and by our willingness to work hard to realize what we have imagined. Indeed, long before the United States came into being as a government of institutions and laws, it was a dream--a dream, an implausible, incredible dream, animated by faith of a country defined not by its borders nor by its rulers nor by the ethnicity of its Founders but by a set of eternal and universal principles--that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are God's endowment to each of us. That was the dream that gave us our existence and our purpose as a nation, and it is the dream that for more than 200 years, through every passing generation, has been reinventing, renewing, enthralling, and surprising us--the very dreamers who are living that dream. I leave this Chamber as full of faith in the dream called America as when I stood here nearly one quarter century ago to take the oath of office for the first time--and as when I first came here nearly one- half century ago as a 21-year-old, the grandchild of four immigrants to America, the son of wonderful parents who never had the opportunity even to go to college but made sure my sisters and I did and gave us the confidence to pursue our dreams, which was their American dream for us. America remains a land of dreams and a nation of dreamers. I know my own story repeats itself today in millions of American families and their children. As long as that is so, I know our best days as a country are still ahead of us. So I will end my remarks where our country began a long time ago-- with a dream and a prayer that God will continue to bless the United States of America. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I thank my friend, the chair of the Finance Committee. I thank him for yielding me 10 minutes. While I am expressing gratitude, may I express gratitude to the Senator from Maryland. Talk about moral clarity, which is a term he just used for our friend from Arizona, he showed real moral clarity for this and so many other issues. I thank him for that. As I begin my final month in the U.S. Senate, it gives me great confidence to know that people such as Senator Cardin and Senator McCain are going to be here to continue to hold America to the standard that our founding doctrines hold us to, which is to be a beacon of human rights and a protector of those who fight for human rights around the world. So my thanks and compliments to Senator Cardin. I rise to join those who are supporting this bill, which is two measures brought together in a mutually productive partnership. The case for granting PNTR to Russia is clear and straightforward. Russia became a full member of the World Trade Organization over 3 months ago, and in doing so was bound to pledge to cut tariffs for manufactured imports and open its service sector to foreign competition. In order for American companies to realize these benefits, we must grant permanent normal trade relations, PNTR, to Russia. For this reason the only country that will be disadvantaged if we fail to pass this bill will be our own, and that particularly means our own businesses. Of course, that is why generally American businesses and leading business advocacy groups such as the chamber of commerce, in particular, have supported this legislation so strongly. It is also why the Governors of 14 of our States, including Connecticut, and six former U.S. Trade Representatives have urged the Senate to follow the House and swiftly pass this bill. I also note that this legislation will grant permanent normal trade relations to the country of Moldova, a country that has demonstrated tremendous democratic progress over the past two decades. Deepening our economic ties with Moldova is good for American business and will help keep Moldova on the path of democracy as well as development. So PNTR for Russia and Moldova is necessary and good for the United States. For me, and I hope many others--eloquently expressed by Senator Cardin and Senator McCain--the case for this bill is sealed because of its incorporation of separate legislation, the Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act, of which I am privileged to be a cosponsor. I must say that as I look back over the 24 years in the Senate, which I have been doing a lot lately, there are not too many pieces of legislation that I have been prouder to be associated with than the Magnitsky Act. As many of you know, this legislation is named for a 37-year-old Russian tax lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky whose tragic murder 3 years ago is among the most horrible examples of corruption and thuggishness that continues to afflict Russia. Mr. Magnitsky is rightfully the namesake of this legislation. It will impose a visa ban and asset freeze not only against those officials whom we have good reason to believe are responsible for his murder, but also against Russian officials responsible for any and all human rights abuses that are too regularly taking place in that country. Senator McCain, Senator Cardin, and I have had the privilege of meeting with Russian dissidents, political activists, and human rights leaders over the years. What they have told me and my colleagues over and over is that there is one thing above all others we can do here in the United States to help support the cause of human rights and the rule of law in Russia, and that is to pass the Magnitsky Act. So today I join my colleagues who support this legislation and say to those in Russia who are striving courageously to secure their fundamental freedoms--the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our Founders said in our declaration were the endowment of our Creator to every human being--that we have not and will not forget them and their cause. We know and will remember their names. We will stand in solidarity with them and in support of them until they achieve their goal, which is a goal we share. That goal is the spread of democracy and a democratic Russia that respects the rule of law, protects human rights, and is free of corruption. I want to echo what my friends said a moment ago. I was thinking about it. I am not sure anybody has mentioned the name of Natan Sharansky, a famous Russian dissident of an earlier time, a refusenik placed in a Russian gulag and who served so much time in solitary confinement. I have had the honor to get to know him. If you read his books, there is a very moving series of sections where he talks about the fact that when Jackson-Vanik passed and they learned about it, they would communicate with each other in the most primitive ways when news came in, and what an inspiration it was. In some sense it kept not just hope alive but kept them alive, that the U.S. Congress had adopted this law which would impose penalties on the Soviet Union unless it allowed people to freely emigrate. Disproportionately at that time it was dealing with Jews. It was also stated that they wanted to leave because they were so oppressed in the Soviet Union. It was actually stated in global terms at that time. Maybe sometime we will come back and address that. I remember what Sharansky said about the day while in solitary confinement somebody was able to convey to him by tapping pipes that President Reagan had called Russia--and the Soviet Union, really--the evil empire. And knowing that the leader of the free world--the most powerful person in the world--would call out this oppressive government that had locked him up for no reason other than he had advocated for human rights, he said this would sustain his hope. In some small way I hope the passage of this Magnitsky Act will do the same for those who are fighting for the many people whose freedom of expression has already been compromised by the government in Russia and for the people whose businesses have been essentially taken by the government. I think one of the great disappointments over the last quarter century is the hope that we had after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, that this great country of Russia, this great people whose history and culture is so proud and so strong, would finally be able to be free of tyranny. Well, they are freer than they were during Soviet times. I guess that is some small consolation. But increasingly the central government and President Putin have compromised human rights. Incidentally, going to the other part of this bill, the PNTR part for free trade, there are a lot of businesses in the United States and elsewhere in the world that will be hesitant to invest as much as they would otherwise invest in Russia so long as the Russian Government is as autocratic, irrational, suppressive, repressive, and corrupt as this Russian Government is. So in all these respects, I would say that the Magnitsky Act is a worthy successor to Jackson-Vanik, which was such a crusading human rights measure in its own day and, may I add, bears the name of a truly great Senator, Henry M. ``Scoop'' Jackson, a personal role model to me and others. Today the Jackson-Vanik amendment no longer makes sense because there is free emigration from Russia; therefore, we are right to lift it. But it is equally right that we replace it with a law that will address the primary human rights facing Russia today. May I say in repealing Jackson-Vanik, we actually honor his proud legacy and keep it alive. Just over a year ago, when the Russian people responded to a fraudulent parliamentary election by taking peacefully to the streets, the Kremlin responded with thuggish brutality. Instead of at least respecting the legitimate demands of his people or listening to them, President Putin falsely accused the United States of creating this opposition in Russia and began a campaign of stifling dissent that continues to escalate to this day. Independent media outlets have been targeted, including American broadcasting services. Journalists and opposition activists have been harassed and arrested and put in jail, and the Russian Duma has passed a law that grants sweeping power to authorities to close Web sites and limit freedom of expression, and another law passed by the Duma expands the definition of treason so broadly that human rights groups believe it could be used to punish anyone who questions the government. Meanwhile, the nongovernmental organization community has come under increasing attack. Our own Agency for International Development has been evicted from Russia recently, and Russian NGOs are now required by law to register as foreign agents if they receive any money from abroad or engage in political activity. This is a sorry state of affairs, and it is very important that we heed Senator Cardin's call to act as best we can to speak out against it and to do something that the dissidents of Russia have told us will really affect the elite class, the leadership class in Russia, which is to seize their assets if they are human rights violators and to prohibit them from freedom of travel. When we pass this, as I am confident we will--this is one of the days when I am sure everybody in the Senate feels grateful we are here because what we do here matters. Sometimes we wonder, I think, in the gridlock and partisanship and complexity of politics in our country these days. But as I have traveled around the world over the last 24 years, I have been struck by how many places democracy has taken root where few predicted it was possible, and the voices of Members of Congress or Congress as a body have encouraged the dissidents to show the courage they needed to achieve what they wanted. From Indonesia to Chile, from East Germany to South Korea, authoritarian regimes have been supplanted by flourishing free societies in just about every corner of the Earth. We in the United States and everybody in the world are a lot better off for it. Unfortunately, that can't be said of Russia, and that is why this Magnitsky act is so important to adopt. Despite the democratic setbacks in Russia I have just described and the repressive acts by its government, I remain confident that the future of these great people does not belong to those who would impose upon them a system of tyranny, of corruption, of abuse with impunity. The future of Russia belongs to Russians who believe they have the right to decide their destiny for themselves, to the Russian people who are sick of corruption and who demand the rule of law--fairness, justice under law. In short, it belongs to people like the late Segei Magnitsky, whose name will be immortalized when we pass this legislation. In supporting this legislation, I say to my colleagues, we stand with them in their noble cause. That is why I hope and I am confident that we will all join together, Democrats and Republicans and an occasional Independent, and pass this legislation overwhelmingly. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to express my strong support for the nomination of Michael Shea to serve as the next Federal district court judge for the District of Connecticut. As the Presiding Officer heard--and I did as well--Chairman Leahy and Senator Grassley expressed very different analyses of the pace at which this Senate is confirming judicial nominations of President Obama, but I note, with gratitude, that both of them expressed support for this particular judge, Michael Shea, and it gives me confidence that he will receive the confirmation vote today that he deserves. I suppose, because I am at the end of the privilege of serving as a Senator for 24 years, I am looking back at various opportunities and experiences I have had. It strikes me at this moment that I should say what I am sure is felt by all of my colleagues; that is, while it is often said of Presidents of the United States that the most important decisions they make are the people they put on the Federal bench, particularly Justices of the Supreme Court because those Justices and judges serve long after a President has left office and continue to affect the course of our country of justice under law, the same really can be said with regard to Senators and the role we play in proposing nominees for the Federal district courts in our States. I must say as I look back at the time I have been privileged to be in the Senate, working with Senator Dodd and now with Senator Blumenthal, I am proud of the people we have helped onto the district courts for the District of Connecticut, obviously, with a lot of support from nominating Presidents of both parties and from people of both parties in the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor. The district court bench in Connecticut is an impressive group and quite a diverse one as well. Michael Shea, if confirmed, will add to its excellence and its legal heft. In November of last year, Judge Christopher Droney left the district court when the Senate confirmed his nomination to serve on the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Droney's vacancy gave Senator Blumenthal and me the opportunity to recommend his replacement. We took this responsibility seriously. We brought together an advisory panel of nine Connecticut citizens who considered more than 20 candidates for this spot. The panel included a former chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, a former U.S. attorney, several partners at major Connecticut and national law firms, and academic, business, and community leaders throughout the State. Their insights and hard work throughout the process were invaluable to my colleague from Connecticut and I. I express on this floor my gratitude to them for their service. Based on the work of the advisory panel and our review of its recommendations, Senator Blumenthal and I recommended Michael Shea to the President for nomination. I will say that Michael was ranked very high among the highly qualified applicants for this position by all members of the advisory panel. I should say right at the outset that we are grateful to President Obama for nominating him for this place on our court. Michael Shea is a native of West Hartford, CT, a graduate of Amherst College and Yale Law School, served as a clerk to Judge James Buckley, though a resident of Connecticut, and sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Michael Shea clerked for Judge Buckley in 1993 and 1994. I will say that Judge Buckley sent our advisory committee and, I believe, the Judiciary Committee and Senator Blumenthal and me a very thoughtful, positive, personal letter of recommendation on Mr. Shea's behalf. After concluding his clerkship, Michael Shea joined the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton as an associate, where he stayed for 4 years working on both criminal and civil cases and for a period of time was dispatched to the Brussels, Belgium, office of the firm working on an antitrust investigation. But much more significant than his legal work, in Brussels he met his wife Frederique, and together they now have three wonderful children. Since 1998, Michael Shea has been a partner at Day Pittney, LLP, where his practice has included trials and appeals in commercial, civil rights, personal injury, criminal, and other cases. He is currently the chair of the firm's Appellate Practice Group. But we found in talking to lawyers and judges around Connecticut on the State and Federal bench that Michael Shea is quite simply one of the most experienced and broadly respected litigators in our State. If confirmed, he will bring to the district bench an enormous background of experience in our courts. I want to add that Michael Shea also serves his community in various charitable organizations, including the Nutmeg Big Brothers and Sisters, and the Supreme Court Historical Society. In 2008, as a result of pro bono work Michael has consistently done representing indigent criminal defendants, he received the Connecticut Bar Association's Pro Bono Award for successfully protecting a young mother from having to return her children to an abusive father who lived abroad. First, I thank Michael Shea for his interest in serving on the Federal bench of Connecticut. I am honored to present him, along with Senator Blumenthal, to our colleagues in the Senate. He is a first class nominee. Again, I thank the President for nominating him. I am confident that the President's trust in Mr. Shea will be more than vindicated by the years of judicial service that he will give our State and country. I am now glad to yield the floor to my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, who I am sure, with my successor, Chris Murphy, will continue to fill vacancies as they arise. There is one now with the same high level of nominee as we have been privileged to do together in this case.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I am honored to rise to support this amendment and just to make a few points. The first is to assure all of our colleagues that this is just an amendment that asks the Pentagon to conduct a study. It is nothing more than that. I want to particularly say that to reassure anyone who is concerned that somehow this is an authorization for the use of military force. Look at the wording. That is just not the case. All we are debating and voting on is whether the Pentagon should be asked to do a study of the possibility of how we might stop Bashar al- Assad's air force from committing acts of murder against his own people. In my way of thinking, to tell the truth, it is two things: One, this amendment is simply a way of saying that we in the Senate are concerned and care about the slaughter that is going on in Syria and agitated that the United States and the rest of the world is not doing more to come to the assistance of those who are fighting for their freedom and lives in Syria. I want to point out that there are a lot of options for the Pentagon to study. One is a traditional no-fly zone. We know a lot of people in the Pentagon are concerned that to carry out a traditional no-fly zone with our aircraft, we need to spend a lot of time and energy and assume risks to knock out the Syrian air defenses. Well enough. But there are other ways to achieve the goal of keeping Assad's aircraft from destroying Syria's people. One is to use Patriot antimissile batteries to keep Syrian planes--placed in Turkey and Jordan--out of the air. The second, of course, that I can think of is to fire precision guided missiles from offshore to hit the Syrian Air Force on the ground so it cannot take off. All of those should be considered as part of this study, as the most obvious, which is to make sure that the freedom fighters on the ground have their own antiaircraft weapons to fire from the ground at Assad's aircraft so they can protect their own lives. The truth is, in supporting this amendment, I come to say that I continue to be troubled, deeply, by why the United States and so much of the rest of the civilized world is standing by and letting this happen. To me--and I speak only personally, and I do so with respect-- getting involved in this on behalf of the opposition in Syria has been now for 18 months as close to a no-brainer as America ever has the opportunity to get involved in in foreign policy. I say that because from the beginning we knew which side was fighting for freedom and which side was against it. And America is supposed to be on the side of the freedom fighters. Secondly, this has developed into a humanitarian disaster: 40,000 people killed. And, third, we have not just humanitarian interests here and values interests, we have strategic interests because Assad's government is the No. 1 friend of our No. 1 enemy in the world, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran. If he goes down, Iran and its radical regime suffers a body blow. If we continue to stand back, we run the risk of terrible sectarian conflict in Syria, which runs the risk of spreading beyond, between Sunni and Shia, also between secular and religious modernizers and people who do not want to modernize. We have every good reason to come to the aid of these people in need, and I do not see an argument for not at least studying how we might better do that. I thank my colleagues. I am proud to support the amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I yield back all time on this side.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on a broadly bipartisan amendment that I have filed, and that I hope and believe will be called up at some point. Obviously, I would like it to be adopted by unanimous consent but, if not, it merits a rollcall vote, and I am confident it will be addressed on a rollcall vote. This amendment is amendment No. 3090 to this National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. It will reauthorize two very important and very broadly supported programs--the Assistance to Firefighters, AFG, Program--which otherwise used to be known as FIRE, the FIRE Act--and the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Program, known as SAFER. This amendment also reauthorizes the U.S. Fire Administration for 5 years, an agency which is a component of FEMA that is focused on supporting firefighters and EMS personnel. This amendment reauthorizes AFG and SAFER for 5 years but it also takes much needed steps to ensure that the firefighters not only have the equipment, vehicles, and personnel that we need them to have to do the jobs they do for us in our country every day, the amendment also helps departments in communities struggling with economic difficulties, creating a hardship waiver for both of these fire programs--AFG and SAFER--that allows FEMA to waive requirements in communities that have been hard hit in these tough economic times. Some people might say: Well, why has the Federal Government established these programs to support firefighting? Aren't those local responsibilities? Well, of course, the Federal Government has partnered with many local and State responsibilities that we deem to have national importance. There is no question since 9-11-2001, as we witnessed those firefighters putting their lives on the line, running into danger to save people as opposed to running away from it--and we contemplated after 9-11-2001, as we have consistently in the Senate Homeland Security Committee, how we would respond--are we ready to respond to, God forbid, another mass terrorist attack on the United States? The first line of defense will be the local firefighters, the local law enforcers, and the local emergency medical personnel. So these brave and skillful firefighters around America now become part of the first line of response to the kind of threats in this unconventional age in which we live that our homeland security is threatened by. As important as it is to help our firefighters, obviously, many of us on both sides of the aisle, who have cosponsored both of these bills, understand we have to demand accountability as we spend taxpayer dollars in a time when we are trying to reduce our deficit and debt. For this reason, the amendment does a couple of things. It includes provisions to prevent earmarks from being attached to these programs. AFG and SAFER actually have never been earmarked, which is an impressive accomplishment. In other words, these are formula programs in that sense and decided on a merit basis, decided on applications, never earmarked from Congress. We should keep it that way. But this amendment, recognizing the tough economic times we are in, also reduces the authorizations for these two programs, AFG and SAFER, by more than 30 percent--more than 30 percent. So we are meeting a national need with the authorization of these programs, but we are doing it in a way that is mindful of the tough fiscal times we are in. Supporting our Nation's firefighters and emergency medical service responders is a national priority. It is, in my opinion, one that is not only broadly supported by Members of both parties and an occasional Independent here in the Senate, but is broadly supported by the American people regardless of where they live all over this country. So, Mr. President, I will, with the cooperation and support of the two managers of the bill, who are supporters of these two pieces of legislation--Chairman Levin and Senator McCain--look forward to the time when I can ask that this amendment be the pending business and that we can either adopt it by consent or bring it up for a rollcall vote. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. Congress has passed the Defense Authorization every year for the past 5 decades and it remains one of the most bipartisan pieces of legislation we produce in this body. I believe strongly that there is no more important responsibility that we have than providing for our common defense. The NDAA is a crucial part of that responsibility and I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in favor of it today. As Senators, it is one of our most important duties, and one of our greatest privileges, to debate and pass this bill every year. I would like to thank Chairman Levin and Ranking Member McCain for their leadership of the Armed Services Committee and their determination in getting the NDAA to the floor. I have had the honor to serve as Chairman of the AirLand Subcommittee, of which I have been a member of since its inception in 1995 and been either Chairman or Ranking Member since 1999. I would like to recognize Ranking Member Scott Brown and thank him. We have worked together very well once again this year. Ours has been a bipartisan effort through our hearings, our markup, and now on the floor. I would also like to thank the Subcommittee staff, Bill Sutey and Creighton Greene of the majority and Church Hutton and Pablo Carrillo of the minority, for their hard work that helped make this bill possible. This year, the portion of the budget request falling under the Airland Subcommittee's jurisdiction total over $50 billion, including $37.4 billion in procurement, and $12.9 billion in research and development. The portion of the bill under the AirLand Subcommittee's jurisdiction supports the Defense Department's requests for several major weapons programs, including: $639.9 million for the Army's new Ground Combat Vehicle that will replace some of the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles in the current force; $2.7 billion for procurement of UH-60 Blackhawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopters so critically important to operations in Afghanistan and around the world; $6.9 billion in the base request for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program; $60.0 million for F/A-18E/F advance procurement to preserve the Navy's option to produce additional aircraft in fiscal year 2014. $91.0 million for M1 Abrams tank upgrades and $123.0 million for M88A2 advanced recovery vehicles. These recommended increases will extend armored vehicle production through fiscal year 2013 and allow tank production through 2014, thus preserving important combat vehicle industrial capability. Perhaps of greatest interest to many of our colleagues, the bill addresses concerns that the Air Force proposed disproportionate cuts to the Air National Guard in its FY13 budget submission by establishing an independent commission to study the appropriate force structure of the Air Force, including the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve, and providing $1.4 billion to freeze Air Force force structure pending the commission's review. The NDAA also provides an opportunity to address policy concerns important to military families, defense, and National security at large. There are a number of worthwhile amendments that have been filed and that I support, including my amendment with Senator Gillibrand providing TRICARE coverage for important autism treatments and my amendment with Senator Collins mandating a prescription drug take-back program to help reduce the scourge of military suicide. I would like to briefly highlight a pair of issues I hope we address through floor amendments. Finally and most importantly, I hope this bill will include a new package of Iran sanctions that Senator Menendez, Senator Kirk, and I plan to introduce. The fact is, Iran is continuing to make progress towards a nuclear weapons capability, and time is running out to stop them, short of the military option that none of us desire. That is why we need to do everything in our power to ratchet up the pressure on the Iranian government, as quickly as possible. The NDAA provides the last, best chance that we will have in this Congress to impose tougher sanctions on Iran, and we must seize it. In conclusion, I urge all my colleagues to support the NDAA for FY13. It is a strong bill that provides critical funding and authorities to our military, and it has always been passed on a broad bipartisan basis. As I approach the end of my career in the Senate, I look back gratefully upon the annual floor debates on the NDAA as examples of the way this body should operate.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I wish to commemorate the completion of the series, ``Culture and Civilization of China,'' published jointly by Yale University and China International Publishing Group. Having been published since the early 1990s, the award winning series will be concluded this year with its final volume, ``Chinese Silks.'' The series has brought together leaders from both the United States and China. Former President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger have each head consulting committees. I congratulate everyone who worked to make this series happen, in particular the Director of Yale University Press John Donatich, the President of China International Publishing Group Zhou Mingwei, and U.N. Under Secretary General Joseph V. Reed. I ask that Under Secretary General Reed's remarks at a September 19, 2012, event to celebrate the completion of this series be printed in the Record. The remarks follow. Remarks by Ambassador Joseph Verner Reed at the Celebratory Luncheon for the Conclusion of the Chinese Culture & Civilization Publishing Project With Yale University Press and the Chinese International Publishing Group, September 19, 2012 We have come a long, long way with the great publishing project known as CCC . . . started in 1988 and completed with our final volume (our ninth) on ``Silks'' this autumn. In President Levin's words--``CCC is the ``Crown Jewel'' of Yale University''. I have been very proud to have been associated with the Press and CIPG on this historic publishing adventure. Our Honorary Chair President George H.W. Bush has declared: ``I have been privileged to serve as Honorary Chair for the Culture & Civilization of China project. The CCC project has had a profound impact on international relations between China and the United States in a way that no other undertaking has accomplished. The achievement of collaboration in the development of this superb series of beautiful volumes examining the cultural and artistic heritage of China will serve as a model of cooperation for the future generations committed to building an enduring bond between our two great countries''. The Chair of the Advisory Council Dr. Henry A. Kissinger has called CCC--a ``seminal work''. China has recognized the effort with bestowing the highest Award--``The Special Book Awards of China'' to President Levin and yours truly in the Great Hall of the People, by Madame Liu Yangdon, a member of China's Politburo and State Councilor. CCC has published nine volumes--several having been awarded distinguished honors the volume on painting Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting (1997) won The Hawkins Prize, the highest award in the publishing industry. This volume was the State Gift of the People's Republic to the United States during President Jiang Zeming's State Visit in 1997. President Jiang Zeming gave a copy of this work and the volume on Chinese Architecture to President Bush for the Bush Presidential Library in 2002. President Hu Jintao visited Yale University in 2006 and donated a large number of Chinese books to the University including the Culture & Civilization series. President Hu also introduced the newly published Chinese Sculture to Yale faculty, staff and students. The publishing effort was arduous and not without many differences and difficulties. It is a miracle that we published the volumes in such a cooperative manner. How can one forget the drama with our very first volume on ``Painting''? The map of China caused great review/ discussion--back and forth for weeks--the borders, the provinces, the islands. There were other ``to and froes'' but, in the end we have had ``a splendid and co-operative result''. There are so many to salute and thank for their efforts starting with President Levin, Vice President Linda Lorimer, former Yale University Press Director John G. Ryden (the godfather of CCC), current YUP Director John Donatich and, of course, all our colleagues at CIPG led by Vice Minister Cai Mingzhao, President Zhou and the distinguished and brilliant Editor Huang Youyi. To the donors to CCC a special vote of appreciation and admiration for their generosity. CCC involved 435 specialists including 56 authors, 39 translators and 340 consultants. 348 Museums and research institutes from around the globe provided images, line- drawings, photographs and maps. I thank Julianne Griffin and Taiping Chang Knecknes and Mary Pasti and Cynthia Forbes for their signal contributions. A special salute to Charles Hill who first introduced me to the Press for work on the CCC project and to James Watt of the Metropolitan Museum for superb counsel. All in all, CCC was a splendid effort. It has truly contributed to the mutual understanding of the People's Republic and the United States as well as having provided a platform for education for citizens from around the world. CCC is an historic publishing project. It is a gift for future generations. Once again, a salute and vote of thanks to one and all.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I want to begin by thanking the majority leader, Senator Reid, for being as steadfast as he has been in pursuit of a law that will protect America from what I think most security experts would say today, surprisingly, is the most serious threat to our security and to our economy, which is from cyber attack and cyber theft. The majority leader, with the authority he has over our schedule, has now pulled up the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, S. 3414, for reconsideration; that is to say, to reconsider the cloture vote that was held in August and failed to get 60 votes, much to my disappointment. I am very grateful that Senator Reid now gives the Senate a second chance to do something to protect the American people from cyber attack and cyber theft. If you look at what has happened since the cloture vote on the Cybersecurity Act failed back in August, I think you will see how urgently we need to seize this opportunity to at least vote to proceed to the Cybersecurity Act. Senator Reid has made clear that he would allow a finite number of amendments--finite because, after all, we are in a postelection so-called lameduck session. The amendments can't go on forever. But a finite list would allow there to be a discussion and vote on the major concerns people still seem to have with the compromised bipartisan Cybersecurity Act of 2012. I appeal to my colleagues: Don't be recorded as no. Say yes to at least allowing a discussion of cybersecurity legislation here, offer some amendments, and then, of course, understand that we are not a unicameral legislature, to say the obvious. If--as I hope--we can pass cyber security legislation here, it has to go to conference with the House that I would say has--describing it diplomatically--a different position than as reflected in the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 that emerged in part from the Homeland Security Committee; which is why I have the honor of managing this debate, brought out with the strong support from my ranking member and dear friend Senator Collins of Maine, and then working together with Senator Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Rockefeller, the chair of the Commerce Committee, and Senator Carper, who has had a real interest in cyber security and is a leader on the Homeland Security Committee. We bring this legislation forward. We are being given a second chance to raise our defenses against rival nations, enemy nations, industrial spies, cyber terrorists, organized anti-American nonstate actors, and international organized criminal gangs who are constantly probing our computer networks for weaknesses that they can exploit to steal industrial secrets, to take some of the best results of American innovation and entrepreneurship overseas and, with it, the jobs that come with those secrets. And, of course, to sabotage critical infrastructure--powerplants, financial systems, telecommunications systems, water systems, and so on and so on--which are the systems that we depend on in our society for our quality of life, for our freedom of expression, so many of them owned by the private sector and managed and controlled now, operated, by cyber systems over the Internet and, therefore, subject to cyber attacks. That is what this bill is about, creating standards for public- private cooperation to raise our defenses against cyber attack and cyber theft. Everybody you talk to in the public or private sector says today that we are vulnerable to attack. This bill only relates to the most critical cyber infrastructure whose compromise, whose attack, whose disabling would result in mass casualties, catastrophic economic loss, and assaults on our national security. So let me come back to what I said. The best arguments for this bill and for voting on the motion to proceed and going to the bill are not the arguments, frankly, that I will make on behalf of the bill but the facts that have occurred and the limited amount of time since August when this initial vote to proceed to the Cybersecurity Act occurred. On August 15, just 2 weeks after the last cloture vote, a computer virus called Shamoon erased the hard drives of 30,000 computers owned and operated by Saudi Aramco, one of the world's largest energy companies. What happened as a result of the erasing of those hard drives, the data files were replaced with images of burning American flags. It is pretty clear who carried out this attack. The computers were rendered useless and had to be replaced and restored. Some cyber experts that I trust say this was the most destructive cyber attack against a private company in history. A similar attack was carried out on the Qatari natural gas company called RasGas. Remember the burning American flags? Iran is suspected as the attacker in both instances. Thanks to quick work, really extraordinary work by Aramco and many of the world's leading cyber security technologists and experts, the damage to Saudi Aramco was contained. But this attack could have thrown global oil markets into chaos and a lot of economies--including ours-- into greater stress than we are already in if orders couldn't be filled or shipments made. That was August, 2 weeks after the last cloture vote on the cyber security bill. Then in September, the consumer Web banking sites of some great American financial institutions--Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC Bank, and some others--came under the largest sustained denial of service attack in history. As I am sure most of my colleagues know, this is when the Web sites are essentially overloaded, they are flooded, to make it impossible for them to stay up and provide the service they normally do. These attacks went on in different waves for weeks, knocking many of these sites that are very important to commercial life in our country offline or slowing them to a crawl. Just take a look at how much commerce is now conducted over the Internet and I think you can see the potential catastrophe here. These kinds of attacks really could bring our banking system and the economy to its knees. Again, some intelligence officials that I respect suspect that Iran or its agents launched these attacks against the American banks. Defense Secretary Panetta warned in a recent speech that these and other cyber attacks show that we are approaching a cyber Pearl Harbor where: An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cybertools to gain control of critical switches . . . [and] derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country. That is not science fiction. That is not an alarmist. That is the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Leon Panetta, issuing a warning based on what anybody who works in this field knows is reality. In recent weeks, we have watched one section of our country--in this case the Northeast, including my own State of Connecticut--hit by Hurricane Sandy and then a follow-on northeaster storm, losing power. Some parts of New York and certainly New Jersey were hit harder than Connecticut, but we were hit pretty hard ourselves. Some still are without power, and this is the third week since the hurricane. This is exactly the kind of dislocation and suffering that would occur if an enemy cyber attacked America's electric power system. It is why we need to at least vote to take this bill up now with a sense of urgency in this session. Time is not on our side. The elections are over. The American people through their votes have told us in a clear and certain voice that they want us to work together to solve the many challenges our Nation confronts. I know we are focused on avoiding going over the fiscal cliff and the challenge to Congress is, Can we solve our fiscal problems? Can we come to a bipartisan compromise before we go over the cliff? In this case of cyber security and cyber vulnerability, the challenge before us is, Can we come to a bipartisan agreement compromise--and we think we have in the bill before us--and create and improve our defenses before a catastrophic cyber attack occurs, as it surely will, and then we come rushing back to raise our defenses, as we did after 9/ 11, after we have suffered an attack?