Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Five minutes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today I ask that the second portion of Mark A. Bradley's article on the disappearance of the U.S.S. Scorpion be printed in the Record. The first portion of this article, which was featured in the Spring/Summer volume of the Journal of America's Military Past, appeared in yesterday's Record. Mr. Bradley was awarded the James Madison prize by the Society for History in the Federal Government for this article. I will ask that the third and final portion of this article be printed in tomorrow's Record. The material follows: Submiss: The Mysterious Death of the U.S.S. ``SCORPION'' (SSN 589), Part II (By Mark A. Bradley) While the theory of Russian involvement is tantalizing, it is highly unlikely that the Soviet Navy possessed the capability in May 1968 to hunt down the Scorpion. Although the Soviets were on the brink of commissioning two new classes of hunter-killer and ballistic missile submarines-- the Victor I and the Charlie I--fully able to contend with American sea power, they still relied heavily at that time on their vintage diesel Whiskey class submarines to shadow and challenge hostile warships. Slow and lacking advanced weapons and sophisticated electronics, the outdated Whiskeys were no match for the Scorpion. Similarly, the Soviet's Echo II class nuclear submarine had limited capabilities. Although the Echo II was armed with conventional antisubmarine torpedoes, her main weapons were surface-to-surface missiles. According to U.S. intelligence estimates, the Echo II required over 25 minutes to surface and fire, ample time for the Scorpion to parry an attack and to launch one of her own. Moreover, the United States Navy did not begin to decommission its Skipjack class submarines until 1986. Until then, the surviving five remained in firstline service, an unlikely practice for the Navy to maintain if it knew or suspected that the Soviets so easily had hunted down and killed the Scorpion nearly 20 years before. After rejecting Soviet involvement, the Court similarly discounted sabotage, a collision with an undersea mountain, a nuclear accident, a structural failure, a fire, an irrational act by a crew member, a loss of navigational control and, with far less certainty, a weapons accident. Although it found no direct evidence that one of the submarines's own torpedoes had exploded, the Court noted that on December 5, 1967, the Scorpion had confronted an accidentally activated Mark 37 torpedo in one of it firing tubes and had sidestepped disaster by expelling it before it could detonate. Her standard method for deactivating a ``hot run''--the Navy's term for an accidentally activated torpedo with a live warhead--was to flood the tube with cold water, keeping the torpedo cool, and turn the warship in a U turn more than 170 degrees, activating an anti-circular homing device that shut down the projectile's motor. Then her crew would drain the tube, install a propeller lock and jettison it. Small and battery powered, the Mark 37 was a wire-guided anti-submarine torpedo that had a disturbing history of accidentally activating, particularly during testing. In May 1968, the Scorpion had 14 Mark 37s in an arsenal that included two Mark 45 ASTOR torpedoes with nuclear warheads and 7 other conventional projectiles. She also had a new commander. When he took over the Scorpion on October 17, 1967, Francis Atwood Slattery was 36 years old. From West Paris, Maine, he had graduated from Annapolis in 1954 and was a member of the Naval War College's class of 1967. A former executive officer on U.S.S. Nautilus, ``Frank'' Slattery was among a very small cadre of technically gifted offices the Navy had tapped for elite nuclear submarine duty. After promotion to the rank of commander on October 2, 1967, the Scorpion was his first command. His newness to command showed in December when navy inspectors gave the Scorpion an unsatisfactory rating after she failed a series of casualty drills involving her nuclear torpedoes and again in January when she engaged in an advanced submarine versus submarine exercise and received the lowest tactical grade of all the participants. Nevertheless, by the time she was deployed to the Mediterranean in February, the Navy rated her fully ready and, by March, she was praised by the 6th Fleet Command Staff for begin a well- trained, well-run submarine. By April 1968, seven of her 12 officers and 61 of her 87 enlisted men were fully qualified in submarines, and the Court found no ground to blame either her officers or her enlisted men for what happen on May 22. As Admiral Austin closed his investigation and submitted his inconclusive findings, the Mizar found the Scorpion in the early morning hours of October 28, 1968, and began photographing the wreckage. Once all the photographic and sound recordings were collected, Admiral Austin reconvened his court in early November and asked a special Technical Advisory Group comprising scientists and veteran submariners to pore over the newly discovered physical evidence. Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chief of Naval Operations, earlier had created this group to provide technical expertise to the Court. Headed by Dr. John Craven, the naval scientist who in 1966 led the team that retrieved a hydrogen bomb that had plummeted into the Atlantic near Palomares, Spain, after two U.S. Air Force planes collided, and assisted by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the technical experts first examined the acoustical recordings and made a startling discovery--the Scorpion had been heading east, instead of west toward Norfolk, when the first cataclysmic explosion erupted. The advisors estimated that the first sound to register on SOSUS had been caused by at least 30 pounds of TNT detonating 60 feet or more below the surface and theorized that the Scorpion had been engaged in a hastily ordered U-turn in a desperate attempt to disarm a hot run torpedo that exploded and caused uncontrollable flooding. According to Craven, the hot run scenario was the only one that fit all the evidence. In a December 16, 1984, article published in the Virginian- Pilot & Ledger-Star, Craven related that the photographs indicated that the Scorpion's torpedo room was still intact and had not been crushed by water pressure as she spiraled toward her watery grave. In that interview, Craven said he believed the torpedo room did not implode, pointing out that it was the first part of the Scorpion to flood after the explosion and already had filled with water when the submarine began to sink. Noting the absence of visible damage from outside the hull, he added that a torpedo probably detonated inside the compartment instead of in one of the submarine's six firing tubes. Craven also noted that the photographs showed that several access hatches to the torpedo room were open. This meant they probably were pushed out by internal pressure. The other SOSUS recordings were sounds of the Scorpion's various compartments collapsing and buckling as she bent like a piece of taffy as she sank below her crush depth and slammed into the ocean floor at a speed estimated to between 25 and 35 knots per hour. Although the Court discovered that Schade's May 20 operational order did not specify whether the Scorpion's torpedoes were to be fully armed, it seems likely that Slattery would have exercised his discretion and ordered them ready as she approached the Soviet ships. If so, this would have been the first time in over a year that the Scorpion had engaged in an operation which required her tactical torpedoes to be fully loaded. She would have done so with a new torpedo gang and weapons officer. All her torpedo men had been replaced since her last operation, and her weapons officer had been relieved during her Mediterranean deployment. The Court speculated that the Scorpion probably had begun disarming her torpedoes by the time she broadcast her final message on the evening of May 21 because of the Navy's strict policy forbidding submarines from entering Norfolk with fully armed warheads. If so, the investigators theorized that something as simple as a short in a piece of testing equipment accidentally could have activated one of the Mark 37's batteries and triggered a hot run. Left with only seconds to react, Slattery would have ordered the Scorpion into the abrupt U-turn she was making when the torpedo exploded and filled her with rushing sea water. Almost immediately, the Navy's Bureau of Weapons challenged the hot run theory and commissioned its own study to undermine it. The Bureau's position was supported by Admiral P. Ephriam Holmes, the commander of the Navy's Atlantic Fleet, and Vice Admiral Schade. Both pointed out that there was no visible torpedo damage to the Scorpion's hull in any of the thousands of photographs taken by the Mizar and Trieste II, that her weapons room showed no signs of a cataclysmic explosion that would have followed as the warship's torpedoes erupted in a massive chain reaction, and that her torpedo firing doors were tightly shuttered. Moreover, former crew members were unable to identify any objects in her debris field that came from her torpedo room. Admiral Schade, a veteran World War II submariner and holder of both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, told the Court that he believed the Scorpion simply was lost after she flooded and sank below her designed operating capacity. Although unsure of how the flooding started, Schade speculated that it happened while the submarine was at 60 feet or at periscope depth and that she already was full of water by the time she began to sink. In a letter to Admiral Austin, he wrote that he believed that the most likely cause of the disaster was an accident involving the submarine's trash disposal unit. Located in the Scorpion's galley, her trash disposal consisted of an inner door separated from highly pressurized sea water by a basketball-sized valve connected to a 10\1/2\- inch tunnel. Although the inner door was supposed to be mechanically prevented from opening while trash was being flushed, and the crew was trained to use a bleed valve to make sure no pressurized sea water was outside before ejecting waste, a broken system or valve coupled with human error could have unleashed a fatal chain of events as a torrent of high-pressure sea water roared through the submarine. Pouring through the Scorpion's galley and swamping her operations center, the rushing cascade would have overwhelmed her pumps, washed over and shorted out her electric control panels, flooded over her huge battery several decks below and exploded into a deadly mist of fiery hydrogen and poisonous chlorine gas. With her crew dead or unconscious and water pressure squeezing her as she plunged deeper and deeper, the Scorpion would have imploded as she rocketed nearly two miles to the ocean's floor. Vice Admiral Robert Fountain (Ret), the former executive officer on the Scorpion from 1965 until 1967, supports this theory. In a recent interview, Fountain explained that the Scorpion normally came up to periscope depth to expel her trash and that she especially would have needed to do so after completing an underwater intelligence operation. He also pointed out that the submarine had experienced flooding because of her trash disposal unit before. Some of the photographs taken by the Mizar and Trieste II appear to back Fountain's claim. These show that all the submarine's identifiable debris is from her operations center where her galley was located, and that a large section of her hull is missing where her huge 69-ton battery was stored. The Austin Court considered this theory and determined it was possible but ``not probable'' without further comment. Moreover, the several witnesses testified that they believed the warship's safety systems would have deployed to save her if she was flooding that close to the surface. This assessment might have been right if the Scorpion's safety systems were fully working and certified, but they were neither. The Scorpion's safety systems were a direct product of the worst submarine disaster in American history--the loss of U.S.S. Thresher and her entire crew of 112 sailors and 17 civilians on April 10, 1963. It is impossible to overestimate what the Thresher's loss meant to the Navy. A public relations nightmare during the very dangerous middle years of the cold War, the Thresher's abrupt demise during test dives 220 miles off Cape Cod shattered the myth of the service's technological invincibility--much like the Challenger's explosion did to NASA's some 23 years later--and caused acute embarrassment and unwelcome political oversight. Not only did it deprive the Navy of its most advanced submarine, but the disaster also spawned a round of congressional hearings and newspaper editorials questioning the design, testing and safety of the service's underwater nuclear fleet. To combat these criticisms and regain its prestige, the Navy instituted its Submarine Safety Program (SUBSAFE). First initiated in May 1963 and formalized that December, SUBSAFE was designed to ensure the Thresher was not repeated. After months of exhaustive hearings, which produced 12 volumes and 1,718 pages of evidence, the service's experts traced the Thresher's sinking to a series of failed silver-braze joints and pipes that set into motion a deadly chain of catastrophic events that ended with the warship's main systems flooded and her ballast system unable to muster enough air to send her to the surface. The investigators concluded that once the submarine dove to her test depth of 1,300 feet, water pressure ruptured her pipes and created a two inch leak. This sent an unstoppable stream of icy water over her control panels that her crew was unable to stop because they could not reach her centralized shutoff valves in time. It stopped her reactor and sent her backwards and downwards as she lost all power. Unable to blow enough air into her ballast tanks through her narrow pipes--moisture in her pipes had frozen, blocking her air vents--the Thresher imploded as she fell over 8,000 feet to the bottom. In the wake of this, the Navy's Bureau of Ships and the Ship Systems Command placed depth restrictions on all the service's post-World War II submarines--the Scorpion was limited to a depth of 500 feet instead of her standard operating depth of 700 feet--and ordered their inspectors and workmen to begin the time-consuming and expensive task of examining and replacing faulty sea water hydraulic piping systems and rewelding possible faulty joints in over 80 submarines. They also ordered the improvement of flood control systems by increasing ballast tank blow rates and the installation of decentralized sea water shutoff valves. By the time SUBSAFE was instituted, the Scorpion was in dry-dock at the Charleston Naval Shipyard for her first and last full overhaul. Arriving on June 10, 1963, and remaining until April 28, 1964, she had nearly completed her repairs by the time the yard's command received orders to implement the new safety requirements. Although workmen inspected the Scorpion's hull and replaced many of her welds, they were not authorized to install emergency sea water shut-off valves. Moreover, the Naval Sea Systems Command deemed the interim emergency blow system the yard constructed unsuitable for service and ordered it disconnected. The Navy decided to defer installing these two systems until early 1967, the date of the Scorpion's next scheduled overhaul. By then, the Navy had spent over $500 million on SUBSAFE and estimated that it needed at least another $200 million more to certify all its submarines. In addition, severe outside pressures were forcing the Navy to rethink how best to allocate its already stretched resources. Faced with fighting an increasingly protracted war in Vietnam while meeting the unchanging demands of maintaining America's global security obligations at a time when the Soviets decided to expand and transform their navy into a full-blown blue water fleet, the service's high command began to grope for new ways to meet its backbreaking obligations. Confronted now with the urgent need to launch more warships and to keep the ones it already had at sea, the Navy decided to delay installing full SUBSAFE systems in many of its older submarines. What prompted this shift started with a series of confidential memoranda and messages drafted in 1966 as the Navy sought ways to reduce the time its submarines spent in dry dock meeting SUBSAFE's requirements. A Naval Sea Systems Command study of that era revealed not only the rising costs of this program but that approximately 40 percent of the average submarine's time was spent undergoing reconditioning instead of serving at sea. The Navy's leadership was clearly worried by the political fallout these statistics would generate. On March 24, 1966, the Commander of Submarine Squadron 6--the Scorpion's unit-- drafted a memorandum to Admiral Schade, Commander Submarine Force, Atlantic Fleet that candidly admitted that ``the inordinate amount of time currently involved in routine overhauls of nuclear submarines is a recognized source of major concern to the Navy as a whole and the submarine force in particular and stands as a source of acute political embarrassment.'' The memorandum blamed the Navy's Bureau of Ships and the managers of the service's shipyards for these problems and complained about the shortage of skilled workers needed to complete the overhauls, their poor planning in ordering critical materials on time, and the overall magnitude of what SUBSAFE required. It also warned that the Scorpion's next scheduled reconditioning in November 1966 ``will establish a new record for in overhaul duration.''

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise with my colleague Senator Schumer to introduce a bill to honor and remember a truly exceptional American, Ronald H. Brown. The bill would designate the newly constructed Federal building located at 290 Broadway in the heart of lower Manhattan as the ``Ronald H. Brown Federal Building.'' It is a fitting gesture to recognize the passing of this remarkable American, and I would ask for my colleagues' support for this legislation to place one more marker in history on Ron Brown's behalf. Ron Brown had a great love for enterprise and industry as reflected in his achievements as the first African-American to hold the office of U.S. Secretary of Commerce. His was also a life of outstanding achievement and public service: Army captain; vice president of the National Urban League; partner in a prestigious law firm; chairman of the Democratic National Committee; husband and father. And these are but a few of the achievements that demonstrated Ron Brown's spirited and sweeping pursuit of life. To have held any one of these posts in the government, and in the private sector, is extraordinary. To have held all of the positions he did and prevail as he did, is unique. Ron Brown was tragically taken from us too soon; we are diminished by his loss. I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to this uncommon man. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Ronald H. Brown Federal Building Designation Act of 1999, be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, this past Friday, the Society for History in the Federal Government awarded its annual James Madison prize for the most distinguished article on an historical topic ``reflecting on the functions of the Federal Government.'' This year, the award was presented to a member of my staff, Mark A. Bradley, for an article he wrote on the disappearance of the U.S.S. Scorpion (SSN 589). The Scorpion was a Skipjack class nuclear submarine. In 1968, after a Mediterranean deployment with the 6th Fleet, the Scorpion was lost with all hands aboard about 400 miles of the Azores. It had been on a secret intelligence mission and the exact circumstances of the tragedy continue to be debated. Mr. Bradley's article recounts the events that led to the loss of the Scorpion and offers an insightful explanation of what might have caused the accident. Our own Senator Robert C. Byrd for his masterly work on the Senate, historian Ira Berlin for his work on Emancipation in the American South, and the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, for its W. Averell Harriman project are all past Society for History in the Federal Government award winners. As a Rhodes scholar, Mr. Bradley is no stranger to distinguished awards. He is an accomplished historian who, in his spare time, serves as the Associate Editor of Periodical, the Journal of America's Military Past, where his award winning article, ``Submiss: The Mysterious Death of the USS Scorpion (SSN 589) appeared. We are proud of him and thankful that he has chosen to apply his talents here in the Senate in the service of the nation. I ask that a portion of his award winning article be printed in the Record and intend to have the remainder of the article printed in the Record over the next several days. The material follows: Submiss: The Mysterious Death of the U.S.S. ``SCORPION'' (SSN 589) (By Mark Bradley) At around midnight on May 16, 1968, U.S.S. Scorpion (SSN 589) slipped quietly through the Straits of Gibraltar and paused just long enough off the choppy breakwaters of Rota, Spain, to rendezvous with a boat and offload two crewmen and several messages. A high performance nuclear attack submarine with 99 men aboard, the Scorpion was on her way home to Norfolk, Virginia, after completing three months of operations in the Mediterranean with vessels from the Sixth Fleet and NATO. Capable of traveling submerged at over 30 knots, she expected to reach her home port within a week. Upon entering the Atlantic, the Scorpion fell under the direct operational control of Vice Admiral Arnold Schade, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Submarine Fleet. On May 20, he issued a still-classified operations order to the submarine that diverted her from her homeward trek and required her to move toward the Canary Islands and a small formation of Soviet warships that had gathered southwest of the islands. Under U.S. Naval air surveillance since May 19, this flotilla consisted of one Echo-II class nuclear submarine, a submarine rescue vessel, and two hydrographic surveys ships. Three days later, a missile destroyer capable of firing nuclear surface-to-surface missiles and an oiler joined the group. At approximately 7:54 p.m. Norfolk time on May 21, the Scorpion rose to within a few feet of the rolling surface, extended her antenna, and radioed the U.S. Naval Communication Station in Greece. Her radioman reported that she was 250 miles southwest of the Azores Islands and estimated her time of arrival in Norfolk to be 1 p.m. on May 27. On that day, as the families of the crew gathered on Pier 22 in a driving rain and waited for their husbands and fathers to surface off the Virginia capes, the captain of the U.S.S. Orion, who was the acting commander of Submarine Squadron 6, the Scorpion's unit, told Schade what the Vice Admiral secretly knew: the Scorpion had failed to respond to routine messages about tug services and her berthing location. After an intensive effort to communicate with the submarine failed, Schade declared a SUBMISS at 3:15 p.m. and launched a massive hunt. Numbering over fifty ships, submarines and planes, the searchers retraced the Scorpion's projected route to Norfolk and found nothing. What most in the Navy, including the crew's families, did not know was that Schade already had organized a secret search for the submarine on May 24 after she had failed to respond to a series of classified messages and, by May 28, he and others in the service's command believed the Scorpion had been destroyed. Highly classified hydrophone data indicated to them that she had suffered a catastrophic explosion on May 22 and had been crushed as she twisted to the ocean's floor. On June 5, the Navy officially declared the submarine presumed lost and her crew dead. On June 4, the service's high command had established a formal court of inquiry chaired by Vice Admiral Bernard Austin (Ret), who also had headed the Navy's investigation into the 1963 loss of U.S.S. Thresher which had cost the lives of 129 men. After evaluating nearly 50 days of testimony, the Court concluded that it could not determine the exact cause for the Scorpion's loss. On October 28, 1968, the Navy found the Scorpion's shaattered remains in over 11,000 feet of water approximately 400 miles southwest of the Azores Islands. On November 6 Admiral Austin reconvened his court, which studied thousands of photographs taken of the wreckage by U.S.N.S. Mizar. After two more months of investigation, the Court again held that it could not determine precisely how the submarine had been destroyed. Frustrated by their lack of any clear answers, the Navy's high command turned to the Trieste II, a specially designed deep water submersible capable of plunging down to the gravesite. Between 2 June and 2 August 1969, this bathyscape made nine dives to the Scorpion, photographing and diagramming her broken corpse. Although these efforts provided a clearer view of where she was and in what condition, they again failed to tell what had happened to one of the service's most elite warships. After thirty years, the Scorpion's fate still remains shrouded in mystery, a not so ironic end for a member of the silent service that spent her life on the shadowy front lines of the Cold War. Launched on December 19, 1959, and commissioned on July 29, 1960, the Scorpion was built by General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division in Groton, Connecticut. One of six Skipjack class nuclear attack submarines, which combined a tear drop- shaped hull with a S5W reactor, the 252 foot Scorpion was capable of traveling over 20 knots while on the surface and over 30 knots while submerged. Her top underwater speed was more than 8 knots faster than that of U.S.S. Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine, launched in 1954, and twice that of the best World War II German U-boats. While the Nazis' Type XXI submarine, completed in 1944 could travel at a top speed of 16.7 knots for 72 minutes without resurfacing, the Scorpion could easily travel submerged at top speed for 70 days. These capabilities for high underwater speed and unlimited endurance gave the Navy new tactical abilities undreamed of in 1941-1945. Although World War II had witnessed two great submarine campaigns, the first in the Atlantic where the Germans tried to sever England's supply lines and the second in the Pacific where the Americans assaulted the Japanese merchant fleet, the submarines of that period were strikingly similar to their World War I counterparts in submerged speed and endurance. Dependent upon diesel oil while traveling on the surface and batteries while underneath, these submarines were forced to spend the bulk of their time above water recharging, only submerging once they had spotted a target. Their reliance on two propulsion systems made them easy prey for air and surface attacks. Only near the war's end did Hitler's U-boats experiment with snorkels and more powerful batteries, and American submarines regularly employ sonar and radar. Even with these innovations, the United States Navy still lost nearly one-fifth of its submarine force while fighting in both theaters. The dropping of the atomic bomb changed all this and made possible not only one fuel system but also much greater underwater speed and endurance. The Navy quickly seized upon these new capabilities and deployed its nuclear submarines in a variety of missions, particularly in gathering intelligence about the Soviet fleet. In 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower approved one of the most closely guarded intelligence operations ever mounted by the United States. Code named Operation HOLYSTONE, its original purpose was to use specially equipped submarines to penetrate Soviet waters to observe missile launches and capture readouts of their computer calculations. Later, they also were used to photograph and gather highly sensitive configuration and sound data on the Russian navy, particularly its submarines. This information was then used by intelligence analysts to track hostile warships by listening to their noise patterns and sound signatures. While the Scorpion specialized in developing undersea nuclear warfare tactics, she also was used to collect intelligence. For instance, in the late winter and early spring of 1966, and again that fall, she was engaged in what the Navy has called ``special operations.'' Her then- commanding officer received the Navy's commendation medal for outstanding service. Although much about her last mission remains a mystery--five out of the last nine messages sent to her between May 21 and May 27 from Norfolk are still classified top secret--it seems likely that the Scorpion was engaged in or had just completed a highly sensitive intelligence operation when she was lost. According to the first Court of Inquiry's sanitized declassified report, the Scorpion had been diverted to shadow a Soviet flotilla engaged in a ``hydroacoustic'' operation. This means the Russians were also collecting and analyzing information derived from the acoustic waves radiated by unfriendly ships and submarines. The Navy would have been greatly interested in any activity of this sort, particularly given the Soviets' location off the Canary Islands and near the Straits of Gibraltar, the gateway to the Mediterranean. The Soviets also may have been trying to gather intelligence on the Americans' highly secretive Sound Underwater Surveillance System (SOSUS), an elaborate global network of fixed sea bottom hydrophones that listened for submarines. First developed in 1950 and installed in 1954, SOSUS formed the backbone of the United States' anti- submarine detection capability. This system became even more crucial in the late 1960s as the Soviet Navy began shifting its focus away from protecting Russia's coastal waters to building a blue water fleet spearheaded by advanced hunter- killer and ballistic missile nuclear submarines. This forced the Pentagon to place a premium on intelligence about the Kremlin's undersea operations. By 1968, the Americans had deployed a SOSUS network off the Canary Islands and were laying another off the Azores Islands. Both were aimed at tracking Soviet submarines nearing the Straits of Gibraltar and approaching the Cape of Good Hope. Any Soviet attempt to disrupt or penetrate SOSUS would have aroused a great deal of interest in Norfolk and may explain the Navy's decision to send the Scorpion toward the Canary Islands. Whatever he last mission was, it appears likely that the Scorpion had completed her operational phase by 7:54 p.m. on May 21, when she broadcast her last position and estimated time of arrival in Norfolk. Operating under strict orders to maintain electronic silence ``except when necessary'', the Scorpion sent only this message after she left Rota. At the time of her last communication, she was approximately two hundred miles or six hours away from the Soviet formation she had been sent to monitor. Nearly twenty-four hours later, SOSUS and civilian underwater listening systems ranging from Argentina to Newfoundland picked up the shock of an underwater explosion along the Scorpion's projected route followed by crushing sounds not unlike those recorded during the Thresher's destruction in 1963. According to these readouts, the entire episode lasted slightly over three months. Applying sophisticated mathematics to these recordings and tracing the Scorpion's presumed track and speed to Norfolk, the Navy designated an area of ``special interest'' for its search some 400 miles southwest of the Azores Islands. On May 31, the U.S.S. Compass Island, a navigational research ship, was dispatched to conduct an underwater survey and on October 28, 1968, the U.S.N.S. Mizar, another navigational ship with advanced photographic equipment, finally found the wreckage only three miles away from where SOSUS computers had estimated it to be. Broken into two pieces, the Scorpion's remains lay in over 11,000 feet of water. Deeply shaken and still reeling from the loss of the U.S.S. Thresher (SSN 593) five years earlier, the Navy began its post-morten with only the SOSUS readouts, the Scorpion's operational history and the testimony of her former crew members. The first Court of Inquiry deliberated from 4 June 1968 until 25 July 1968 and examined 76 witnesses as it considered a broad array of fatal possibilities. First among these was that the Soviets had intercepted the Scorpion and finished her in an undersea dogfight. The Court discarded this theory after it examined the reports the intelligence community provided and found no evidence that the Soviet formation which the Scorpion had been sent to shadow had launched an attack or fired any weapons when SOSUS recorded the explosion. The Court also noted that there were no other Russian or Warsaw Pact vessels within 1,000 miles of the Scorpion's last reported position.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, it is fitting that we have passed this legislation to name the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUD) Washington, D.C. headquarters after Dr. Robert C. Weaver, adviser to three Presidents, national chairman of the NAACP, and the first African-American Cabinet Secretary. In 1961, President Kennedy appointed Dr. Weaver to head the Housing and Home Finance Agency, the precursor to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 1966, when President Johnson elevated the agency to Cabinet rank, he chose Dr. Weaver to head the department. Bob Weaver was, in Johnson's phrase, ``the man for the job.'' He thus became its first Secretary, and the first African-American to head a Cabinet agency. Dr. Weaver began his career in government service as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ``Black Cabinet,'' an informal advisory group promoting Federal job and educational opportunities for blacks. The Washington Post called this work--``the dismantling of a deeply entrenched system of racial segregation in America''--his greatest legacy. Indeed it was. Bob Weaver was my friend, dating back more than 40 years to our service together in the administration of New York Governor Averell Harriman. Dr. Weaver was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Housing for New York State in 1955, and later became State Rent Administrator with Cabinet rank. It was during these years, working for Governor Harriman, that I first met Bob; I was Assistant to the Secretary to the Governor and later, Acting Secretary. Our friendship and collaboration continued through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Later, he and I served together on the Pennsylvania Avenue Commission. Bob Weaver died in July 1997, at his home in New York City. When he died, America--and Washington, in particular (for he was a native Washingtonian)--lost one of its innovators, one of its true leaders. I was privileged to know him as a friend. He will be missed but properly memorialized, I think, if we can get this legislation to name the HUD building after him to President Clinton for his signature. I wish to thank Senators Boxer, Durbin, Graham, Hollings, Kennedy, Kerry, Robb, Sarbanes, and Schumer, for cosponsoring S. 67, and I wish to thank the majority and minority leaders for scheduling its expeditious passage. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my statement, a July 21, 1997 editorial in the Washington Post, and a July 19, 1997 obituary from the New York Times be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to provide greater disclosure to employees about the impact on their retirement benefits of pension plan conversions. Recent media accounts have reported that many large companies in America are converting their traditional defined benefit pension plans to something called ``cash balance plans.'' A cash balance plan is a hybrid arrangement combining certain features of ``defined contribution'' and ``defined benefit'' plans. Like defined contribution plans, they provide each employee with an account in which his or her benefits accrue. But cash balance plans are actually defined benefit plans, and therefore provide a benefit for life which is insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Cash balance plans, however, differ from other defined benefit plans in the calculation of benefits. Whereas the value of an employee's retirement benefit in a traditional defined benefit plan grows slowly in the early years and more rapidly as one approaches retirement, cash balance plans decrease this later-year growth and increase the early- year growth. Consequently, younger employees tend to do better under cash balance plans than under traditional plans, while older employees typically do worse. In some cases, upon conversion to a cash balance account an older worker's account balance may remain static for years-- typically referred to as the ``wear away'' period. It appears that very few workers who have experienced the conversion of their company retirement plan to a cash balance arrangement understand the differences between the old and new plans. Those who do often complain that the new plans treat older workers unfairly. One 49- year-old engineer profiled by the Wall Street Journal--a rare employee who knows how to calculate pension benefits--determined that his pension value dropped by $56,000 the day his company converted to a cash balance plan. Even more disturbing are complaints from some employees that their employers obscured the adverse effects of plan amendments. When an employer changes the pension plan, the employees have a right to know the consequences. There should be no surprises when it is time to retire. Unfortunately, current law requires little in the way of disclosure when a company changes its pension plan. Section 204(h) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) requires employers to inform employees of a change to a pension plan resulting in a reduction in future benefit accruals. But that is all. It does not require specifics. The 204(h) disclosure can be, and often is, satisfied with a brief statement buried deep in a company communication to employees. It is imperative that we increase these disclosure requirements regarding reductions in pension benefits. The bill I am introducing today would require employers with 1,000 or more employees to provide a ``statement of benefit change'' when adopting plan amendments which significantly reduce benefits. The statement of benefit change would provide a comparison, under the old and new versions of the plan, of the following benefit measures; the employee's accrued benefit and present value of accrued benefit at the time of conversion; and the projected accrued benefit and projected present value of accrued benefit three years, five years, and ten years after conversion and at normal retirement age. These benefit measures are standard concepts which will be well understood by pension administrators, actuaries and others who work with pensions. They will give the employee a clear picture of the difference between the old and new plans immediately, periodically over a ten-year period, and at retirement. The purpose of the three, five and ten-year comparisons is to disclose any ``wear away'' period, in which an employee would work without gaining any new benefits. Using these comparisons, employees can get a clear picture of the relative merits of the two plans. In preparing this bill, my staff has consulted a number of actuaries and pension attorneys. I believe it is a good approach to resolving the problems I have discussed, and I am happy to work with others to incorporate suggestions to further improve the bill. Of course, many call this measure as intrusive or unnecessary. Some employer groups have criticized the idea of requiring individualized benefits calculations for every employee, saying that this requires reviewing each employee's salary history. But that seems a strange complaint given that we are talking about cash balance plans, which already require highly individualized calculations. If an employer can provide personalized account balances under a cash balance arrangement, then the employer can provide such information for the old plan. Moreover, recently completed regulations appear already to contemplate individualized comparisons. Regulation 1.411(d)-6, just finalized by the Internal Revenue Service, requires that in order to determine if a reduction in future benefit accrual is ``significant,'' employers must compare the annual benefit at retirement age under the amended plan with the same benefit under the plan prior to amendment. Therefore, the concept of benefit comparisons is not a new one. And indeed, some companies are proving by their actions that benefit comparisons are not unduly burdensome. Kodak, the prominent employer headquartered in Rochester, New York, recently announced that it will convert to a cash balance plan, and that it will give its 35,000 participants in the company-sponsored pension plan the choice between the old plan and the new. To help employees make an informed decision, Kodak will provide every plan participant with an individualized comparison of his or her benefits under the old and new versions of the plan. The company is also providing computer software that will allow employees to make the comparisons themselves. That is the difference between corporate behavior that is responsible and corporate behavior that is unscrupulous. As usual, Kodak sets a fine example. I believe that such disclosure not only is in the best interest of employees, but also of the employer. Several class action lawsuits have been filed in the last three years challenging conversions to cash balance plans. These suits will likely cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in attorneys' fees. But with proper disclosure, they might not have occurred. In closing, let me be clear about one thing. I take no position on the underlying merit of cash balance plans. Ours is a voluntary pension system, and companies must do what is right for them and their employees. But I feel strongly that companies must fully and comprehensibly inform their employees regarding whatever pension benefits the company offers. Companies have no right to misrepresent the projected benefit employees will receive under a cash balance plan or any other pension arrangement. It is time to let the sun shine on pension plan conversions. I urge the Senate to support this important legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of my bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today, I join with my colleagues Senators Chafee, Mikulski, and Snowe in introducing legislation to ensure that women with breast or cervical cancer will receive coverage for their treatment. The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a successful nationwide program--National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection program--that provides funding for states to screen low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. However, the CDC program is not designed and does not have funding to treat these women after they are diagnosed. The women eligible for cancer screening under the CDC program are low-income individuals, yet are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid coverage. They do not have health insurance coverage for these screenings and for subsequent cancer treatment. From July of 1991 to September of 1997, the CDC program provided mammography screening to 722,000 women and diagnosed 3,600 cases of breast cancer. During this same period, the program also provided over 852,000 pap smears and found more than 400 cases of invasive cervical cancer. The CDC screening program has had to divert a significant amount of its resources from screenings in order to find treatment for the women found to have breast and cervical cancer. The lack of subsequent funding for treatment has, therefore, jeopardized the programs' primary function: to screen low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. Currently, the program screens only about 12 to 15 percent of all eligible women. A study conducted at Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation and the University of Michigan School of Public Health on treatment funding for women screened by the CDC program found that, although funding for treatment services were found for most of these women, treatment was not always available when needed. In addition, during the search for treatment funding, the CDC program lost contact with several women. The study also found that the sources of treatment funding are uncertain, tenuous and fragmented. The burden of funding treatment often fell upon providers themselves. Seeking charity care from public hospitals adds to hospitals' uncompensated care costs. It is no surprise that the National Association of Public Hospitals supports our bill to provide coverage for these women. The legislation would allow states to provide treatment coverage for low-income women who are screened and diagnosed through the CDC program and who are uninsured. States will have the option to provide this coverage through its Medicaid program. States choosing this option would receive an enhanced match for the treatment coverage, similar to the federal match provided to the state for the CDC screening program. With this legislation, the Federal Government will follow through on its intent to assist low-income women with breast and cervical cancer. Mr. President, the Senate has approved this proposal in the past. A similar provision was included in the Senate version of the Balanced Budget bill. I urge the Senate to again support this important legislation.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I join with the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee in opposing the pending amendment. I do agree with the senator from Arkansas that the Congress ought to take a close look at the terms of any agreement that is reached with China regarding its accession to the WTO. But that is already provided for in the law. Under section 122 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, the administration must consult with the appropriate committees with regard to the accession of any country to the WTO. Those consultations are now taking place. I am assured that Ambassador Barshefsky will meet with each and every Senator who has an interest in this matter. Moreover, as a participant in the WTO's Working Party on the Accession of China, the United States already has an effective veto over China's admission if we determine that the protocol of accession and China's market access commitments are inadequate. Since the Working Party operates by consensus, we could simply block the approval of the Working Party report and that would be the end of the matter. It is clear that bringing China within the WTO framework--and subject to the WTO's rules--would be in the United States' interest. China is ranked as one of the top ten exporting countries in the world (WTO report, 1997 ranking) and ranks as the 12th largest importer. It must certainly be to the benefit of the world trading system to have China abide by the same rules as others. American farmers and businesses also have an interest in securing improved access to China's market, and the WTO accession negotiations may provide the best opportunity that we will have in a very long time. Certainly the United States should not accept an agreement that would bend the rules for China. Nor should we settle for a minimal market access package. And we will not. But neither should we cut off the negotiations at this point, which I fear this amendment would do. In essence, it signals, at a minimum, great skepticism on the part of the United States Congress. I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today, I join with my colleagues Senators Chafee, Mikulski, and Snowe in introducing legislation to ensure that women with breast or cervical cancer will receive coverage for their treatment. The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a successful nationwide program--National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection program--that provides funding for states to screen low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. However, the CDC program is not designed and does not have funding to treat these women after they are diagnosed. The women eligible for cancer screening under the CDC program are low-income individuals, yet are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid coverage. They do not have health insurance coverage for these screenings and for subsequent cancer treatment. From July of 1991 to September of 1997, the CDC program provided mammography screening to 722,000 women and diagnosed 3,600 cases of breast cancer. During this same period, the program also provided over 852,000 pap smears and found more than 400 cases of invasive cervical cancer. The CDC screening program has had to divert a significant amount of its resources from screenings in order to find treatment for the women found to have breast and cervical cancer. The lack of subsequent funding for treatment has, therefore, jeopardized the programs' primary function: to screen low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. Currently, the program screens only about 12 to 15 percent of all eligible women. A study conducted at Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation and the University of Michigan School of Public Health on treatment funding for women screened by the CDC program found that, although funding for treatment services were found for most of these women, treatment was not always available when needed. In addition, during the search for treatment funding, the CDC program lost contact with several women. The study also found that the sources of treatment funding are uncertain, tenuous and fragmented. The burden of funding treatment often fell upon providers themselves. Seeking charity care from public hospitals adds to hospitals' uncompensated care costs. It is no surprise that the National Association of Public Hospitals supports our bill to provide coverage for these women. The legislation would allow states to provide treatment coverage for low-income women who are screened and diagnosed through the CDC program and who are uninsured. States will have the option to provide this coverage through its Medicaid program. States choosing this option would receive an enhanced match for the treatment coverage, similar to the federal match provided to the state for the CDC screening program. With this legislation, the Federal Government will follow through on its intent to assist low-income women with breast and cervical cancer. Mr. President, the Senate has approved this proposal in the past. A similar provision was included in the Senate version of the Balanced Budget bill. I urge the Senate to again support this important legislation.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to provide greater disclosure to employees about the impact on their retirement benefits of pension plan conversions. Recent media accounts have reported that many large companies in America are converting their traditional defined benefit pension plans to something called ``cash balance plans.'' A cash balance plan is a hybrid arrangement combining certain features of ``defined contribution'' and ``defined benefit'' plans. Like defined contribution plans, they provide each employee with an account in which his or her benefits accrue. But cash balance plans are actually defined benefit plans, and therefore provide a benefit for life which is insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Cash balance plans, however, differ from other defined benefit plans in the calculation of benefits. Whereas the value of an employee's retirement benefit in a traditional defined benefit plan grows slowly in the early years and more rapidly as one approaches retirement, cash balance plans decrease this later-year growth and increase the early- year growth. Consequently, younger employees tend to do better under cash balance plans than under traditional plans, while older employees typically do worse. In some cases, upon conversion to a cash balance account an older worker's account balance may remain static for years-- typically referred to as the ``wear away'' period. It appears that very few workers who have experienced the conversion of their company retirement plan to a cash balance arrangement understand the differences between the old and new plans. Those who do often complain that the new plans treat older workers unfairly. One 49- year-old engineer profiled by the Wall Street Journal--a rare employee who knows how to calculate pension benefits--determined that his pension value dropped by $56,000 the day his company converted to a cash balance plan. Even more disturbing are complaints from some employees that their employers obscured the adverse effects of plan amendments. When an employer changes the pension plan, the employees have a right to know the consequences. There should be no surprises when it is time to retire. Unfortunately, current law requires little in the way of disclosure when a company changes its pension plan. Section 204(h) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) requires employers to inform employees of a change to a pension plan resulting in a reduction in future benefit accruals. But that is all. It does not require specifics. The 204(h) disclosure can be, and often is, satisfied with a brief statement buried deep in a company communication to employees. It is imperative that we increase these disclosure requirements regarding reductions in pension benefits. The bill I am introducing today would require employers with 1,000 or more employees to provide a ``statement of benefit change'' when adopting plan amendments which significantly reduce benefits. The statement of benefit change would provide a comparison, under the old and new versions of the plan, of the following benefit measures; the employee's accrued benefit and present value of accrued benefit at the time of conversion; and the projected accrued benefit and projected present value of accrued benefit three years, five years, and ten years after conversion and at normal retirement age. These benefit measures are standard concepts which will be well understood by pension administrators, actuaries and others who work with pensions. They will give the employee a clear picture of the difference between the old and new plans immediately, periodically over a ten-year period, and at retirement. The purpose of the three, five and ten-year comparisons is to disclose any ``wear away'' period, in which an employee would work without gaining any new benefits. Using these comparisons, employees can get a clear picture of the relative merits of the two plans. In preparing this bill, my staff has consulted a number of actuaries and pension attorneys. I believe it is a good approach to resolving the problems I have discussed, and I am happy to work with others to incorporate suggestions to further improve the bill. Of course, many call this measure as intrusive or unnecessary. Some employer groups have criticized the idea of requiring individualized benefits calculations for every employee, saying that this requires reviewing each employee's salary history. But that seems a strange complaint given that we are talking about cash balance plans, which already require highly individualized calculations. If an employer can provide personalized account balances under a cash balance arrangement, then the employer can provide such information for the old plan. Moreover, recently completed regulations appear already to contemplate individualized comparisons. Regulation 1.411(d)-6, just finalized by the Internal Revenue Service, requires that in order to determine if a reduction in future benefit accrual is ``significant,'' employers must compare the annual benefit at retirement age under the amended plan with the same benefit under the plan prior to amendment. Therefore, the concept of benefit comparisons is not a new one. And indeed, some companies are proving by their actions that benefit comparisons are not unduly burdensome. Kodak, the prominent employer headquartered in Rochester, New York, recently announced that it will convert to a cash balance plan, and that it will give its 35,000 participants in the company-sponsored pension plan the choice between the old plan and the new. To help employees make an informed decision, Kodak will provide every plan participant with an individualized comparison of his or her benefits under the old and new versions of the plan. The company is also providing computer software that will allow employees to make the comparisons themselves. That is the difference between corporate behavior that is responsible and corporate behavior that is unscrupulous. As usual, Kodak sets a fine example. I believe that such disclosure not only is in the best interest of employees, but also of the employer. Several class action lawsuits have been filed in the last three years challenging conversions to cash balance plans. These suits will likely cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in attorneys' fees. But with proper disclosure, they might not have occurred. In closing, let me be clear about one thing. I take no position on the underlying merit of cash balance plans. Ours is a voluntary pension system, and companies must do what is right for them and their employees. But I feel strongly that companies must fully and comprehensibly inform their employees regarding whatever pension benefits the company offers. Companies have no right to misrepresent the projected benefit employees will receive under a cash balance plan or any other pension arrangement. It is time to let the sun shine on pension plan conversions. I urge the Senate to support this important legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of my bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am honored, sir, to follow the distinguished Senator from Nebraska and his remarks. And might I begin with a phrase from the old Navy--by which I mean the old, old Navy-- when a fellow was mustering out, he would say, ``I'm going to put that oar on my shoulder.'' And the reference was that you were going to put that oar on your shoulder and march inland until you reached a town where someone said, ``Hey, fella, what's that thing you've got on your shoulder?'' And then you could settle down in comfort after years at sea. Nebraska would surely qualify for such a site. This extraordinary man, who left Nebraska, joined the Navy, brought such honor and distinction to himself, and now to the Senate is remarkable indeed. You've heard of his work. Just a word about the man. Hemingway said that courage was grace under pressure. Bob Kerrey has shown that grace from that very moment 30 years ago on that bluff. Michael Barone in the Almanac of American Politics recounts that when asked about the medals he had won, Senator Kerrey answered, ``One Purple Heart, one Bronze Star--one whatever.'' Well, the ``whatever'' is, of course, the Congressional Medal of Honor. There have been--all told--five U.S. Senators to have won that medal. It was created during the Civil War. Four of the senators received the medal for service in the Civil War. And now, 134 years later, a fifth. Bob Kerrey does do such honor to this body, as he has done to his country, with grace under pressure. Perhaps nothing more distinguished him than the long and difficult time in the Philadelphia Naval Hospital witnessed by many, including the marine Lewis Puller, Jr.--son of the most decorated marine in history. He wrote of Senator Kerrey, ``His stoicism, though unnerving, was a source of amazement to all.'' It continues such. It continues with an evenness that can be eerie at the same moment it is inspiring. Robert Novak has recently written that what sets Senator Kerrey apart is how ``unashamedly he preaches love of and service to country.'' And so, sir, from another generation and in a far distant conflict, this lieutenant junior grade salutes him and would have the Senate know--those who don't--that when a Medal of Honor winner appears anywhere on ship, the answer is, ``Attention all hands.'' He is to be so saluted on all occasions and honored throughout his life, and for the extraordinary legacy he will one day leave. I salute you, sir. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. ``Joe, Joe DiMaggio, we want you on our side!'' Well, he is on the other side now, but stays with us in our memories. Mine are, well, special to me. It would be in 1938 or 1939 in Manhattan. The Depression lingered. Life was, well, life. But there was even so somebody who made a great difference and that was Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees. I admired him as no other man. Read of him each day, or so it seemed, in the Daily News. And yet I had never seen him play. One summer day my mother somehow found the needful sixty cents. Fifty cents for a ticket at the Stadium, a nickel for the subway up and back. Off I went in high expectation. But Gehrig, disease I must assume was now in progress, got no hit. A young player I had scarce noticed hit a home run. Joe DiMaggio. It began to drizzle, but they kept the game going just long enough so there would be no raincheck. I went home lifeless and lay on my bed desolate. Clearly I was in pain, if that is the word. The next day my mother somehow came up with yet another sixty cents. Up I went. And the exact same sequence occurred. I went home. But not lifeless. To the contrary, animated. For I hated Joe DiMaggio. For life. I knew this to be a sin, but it did not matter. Gehrig retired, then died. My animus only grew more animated. Thirty years and some went by. I was now the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations. One evening I was having dinner at an Italian restaurant in midtown. As our company was about finished, who walked in but DiMaggio himself, accompanied by a friend. They took a table against the wall opposite. I watched. He looked over, smiled and gave a sort of wave. Emboldened, as we were leaving, I went over to shake hands. He rose wonderfully to the occasion. I went out on 54th Street as I recall. And of a sudden was struck as if by some Old Testament lightening. ``My God,'' I thought, ``he has forgiven me!'' He must have known about me all those years, but he returned hate with love. My soul had been in danger and he had rescued me. Still years later, just a little while ago the Yankees won another pennant. Mayor Guiliani arranged a parade from the Battery to City Hall. Joe was in the lead car; I was to follow. As we waited to get started, I went up to him, introduced myself and told of having watched him at the Stadium these many years ago. ``But I have to tell you,'' I added, ``Lou Gehrig was my hero.'' ``He was my hero, too,'' said Joe. Well, Joe, too, was a hero to many people. Few have embodied the American dream or created a more enduring legend than ``Joltin'' Joe DiMaggio. And fewer have carried themselves, both on and off the field, with the pride and courtliness of, as Hemingway said, ``the great DiMaggio.'' Born the fourth son of an immigrant fisherman--two other brothers also played in the majors--he joined the Yankees in 1936 after dropping out of high school and grew into the game's most complete center fielder. He wore No. 5 and became the heir to Babe Ruth (No. 3) and Lou Gehrig (No. 4) in the team's pantheon. DiMaggio was the team's superstar, on a team of superstars, for 13 seasons. By the time his career ended in 1951, he had played in 11 All-Star games and 10 World Series, nine of which the Yankees won. The ``Yankee Clipper'' was acclaimed at baseball's centennial in 1969 as ``the greatest living ballplayer.'' Even his main rival Ted Williams, admitted this: ``. . . he [DiMaggio] was the greatest baseball player of our time. He could do it all.'' DiMaggio played 1,736 games with the Yankees. He had a career batting average of .325 and hit 361 home runs while striking out only 369 times. He could indeed do it all. But there is one statistic for which DiMaggio will be most remembered: his 56-game hitting streak, possibly the most enduring accomplishment in all of sports. The streak began on May 15, 1941, with a single in four at-bats against the Chicago White Sox, and ended 56 games later on July 17 during a hot night in Cleveland. In 56 games, DiMaggio had gone to bat 223 times and delivered 91 hits, including 15 home runs, for a .408 average. He drew 21 walks, twice was hit by pitched balls, scored 56 runs, and knocked in 55. He hit in every game for two months, striking out just seven times. But DiMaggio's game was so complete and elegant that statistics cannot do it justice. The New York Times said in an editorial when he retired, ``The combination of proficiency and exquisite grace which Joe DiMaggio brought to the art of playing center field was something no baseball averages can measure and that must be seen to be believed and appreciated.'' Today, I join the Majority Leader and Senators Charles Schumer (D- NY), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Jim H. Bunning (R-KY) in introducing a resolution that honors Joe DiMaggio for his storied baseball career and for all that he has done off the field. As we reflect on his life and mourn his death, I ask that we consider ourselves extremely lucky for knowing such a man, particularly in this age of pampered sports heroes, when ego and self-importance often overshadow what is occurring on the field. Even I, who resented DiMaggio for displacing my hero Gehrig, have come to realize that there will never be another like Joseph Paul DiMaggio. I ask unanimous consent that the March 9, 1999, New York Times editorial and George F. Will's op-ed in the Washington Post on Joe DiMaggio be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation I introduced in the 105th Congress to require the Department of Energy to return the journal Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg kept as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, who died on February 25 at the age of 86, was the co-discoverer of plutonium, and led a research team which created a total of nine elements, all of which are heavier than uranium. For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 which he shared with Dr. Edwin M. McMillan. Dr. Seaborg kept a journal while chairman of the AEC. The journal consisted of a diary written at home each evening, correspondence, announcements, minutes, and the like. He was careful about classified matters; nothing was included that could not be made public, and the journal was reviewed by the AEC before his departure in 1971. Nevertheless, more than a decade after his departure from the AEC, the Department of Energy subjected two copies of Dr. Seaborg's journals-- one of which it had borrowed--to a number of classification reviews. He came unannounced to my Senate office in September of 1997 to tell me of the problems he was having getting his journal released, saying it was something he wished to have resolved prior to his death. Although he has left us, it is fitting that his journal should finally be returned to his estate. This bill would do just that. I introduced a bill to return to Dr. Seaborg his journal in its original, unredacted form but to no avail, so bureaucracy triumphed. It was never returned. Now he has left us without having the satisfaction of resolving the fate of his journal. It is devastating that a man who gave so much of his life to his country was so outrageously treated by his own government.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation I introduced in the 105th Congress to require the Department of Energy to return the journal Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg kept as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, who died on February 25 at the age of 86, was the co-discoverer of plutonium, and led a research team which created a total of nine elements, all of which are heavier than uranium. For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 which he shared with Dr. Edwin M. McMillan. Dr. Seaborg kept a journal while chairman of the AEC. The journal consisted of a diary written at home each evening, correspondence, announcements, minutes, and the like. He was careful about classified matters; nothing was included that could not be made public, and the journal was reviewed by the AEC before his departure in 1971. Nevertheless, more than a decade after his departure from the AEC, the Department of Energy subjected two copies of Dr. Seaborg's journals-- one of which it had borrowed--to a number of classification reviews. He came unannounced to my Senate office in September of 1997 to tell me of the problems he was having getting his journal released, saying it was something he wished to have resolved prior to his death. Although he has left us, it is fitting that his journal should finally be returned to his estate. This bill would do just that. I introduced a bill to return to Dr. Seaborg his journal in its original, unredacted form but to no avail, so bureaucracy triumphed. It was never returned. Now he has left us without having the satisfaction of resolving the fate of his journal. It is devastating that a man who gave so much of his life to his country was so outrageously treated by his own government.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to call the Senate's attention to works of an artist with whom we are all quite familiar. Constantino Brumidi is famous for having painted much of the fine murals here in the Capitol. What is not as yet known, however, is that his other major body of work, in fact the only other great body of work in the United States, is at the Our Lady of the Scapular & St. Stephen's Church (St. Stephen's) in New York City. Located on 29th Street and Third Avenue on Manhattan's East Side, St. Stephens is home to many Brumidi masterpieces, including a mural of the crucifixion which is believed to be the largest of its kind in the world. At one time, St. Stephen's was home to the New York City Arch Diocese and the largest Catholic Church in New York. Unfortunately, many of the paintings and murals have fallen into disrepair and are in need of restoration. The church has undertaken a campaign to raise the funds necessary to complete this task. I am hopeful that some government funds may be available as well, perhaps through the Save America's Treasures program. Our own Barbara Wolanin from the Architect of the Capitol's office is familiar with St. Stephen's and their efforts to preserve their collection of Brumidis. I invite my colleagues to visit St. Stephen's the next time they are in New York and see the other body of work by the artist we have all come to love. Mr. President, I ask that an article written by members of St. Stephen's about their Brumidi collection be printed in the Record. The article follows: Constantino Brumidi--Artist of the Capitol--Classical Artist and Decorator of St. Stephen's Church In a new publication, Constantino Brumidi: Artist of the Capitol, Barbara Wolanin (curator for the architect of the Capitol) and a host of other scholars present the first in depth biography of this important painter whose work at the Capitol has recently been restored. In addition to ``The Apotheosis of George Washington'' which adorns the Capitol dome in the Rotunda, Brumidi painted in the House of Representatives Chamber, the President's Room, the Senate Reception Room, and throughout many of the corridors of our nation's Capitol. The first floor Senate corridors of the Capitol are known as the ``Brumidi Corridors.'' Ms. Wolanin brings to our attention the fact that a large body of Constantino Brumidi's work is in a Catholic church in New York City. The Order of Carmelites, who serve the parish of Our Lady of the Scapular & St. Stephen's Church in the Rosehill District of Manhattan, have invested over a million dollars of their own funds to restore the exterior of their Romanesque Revival church built to the designs of the architect James Renwick Jr. in 1854 (Mr. Renwick also designed the Smithsonian Castle and the Renwick Gallery). This initial investment has halted deterioration of the many frescoes, murals and decorative elements by Brumidi on the church's interior walls. Brumidi's mural of the Crucifixion behind the main altar of the church is believed to be the largest of its kind in the world. Brumidi's frescoes of David, the Madonna and Child and St. Cecilia on the south wall, once neglected and in danger of irreversible damage, have been restored by Constance Silver of Preservar in an effort to understand the composition of the underlying wall and the materials and techniques Brumidi used. The goal of the Carmelites is to fully restore the baroque interior of the church, which may be the only one of its kind in America. Examples of ``trompe l'oeil,'' Brumidi's scheme of architectural illusion which originally united all of the artistic and architectural elements of the church, have been exposed for study and may be seen on the partially restored south wall. From the mid 1850's through the early 1870's when not working at the Capitol, Brumidi traveled to New York to work at St. Stephen's. Today, the parish serves a small and thriving community. In the 19th century, however, due to a massive immigration of Irish fleeing the Great Famine, St. Stephen's Church became, for a time, the largest and most influential Catholic parish in the United States.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, every year on March 10th we reflect on the plight of the Tibetan people. Forty years ago many Tibetan citizens gave their lives to defend their freedom and to prevent the Dalai Lama from being kidnaped by the Chinese army. For those who are committed to standing with the Tibetan people, it is a day to consider what can be done to lend support to Tibetan people, it is a day to consider what can be done to lend support to Tibetan aspirations. The United States Senate will mark the occasion by considering a resolution to mark this solemn occasion. The United States Congress takes the position that Tibet is an occupied country whose true representatives are the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in exile. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which has closely followed the situation in Tibet since the Dalai Lama was forced to flee into exile, and has published reports in 1959, 1960, 1964, and 1997. After examining Chinese policies in Tibet, it reported its findings to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The 1960 report made the important international legal determination that ``Tibet demonstrated from 1913 to 1950 the conditions of statehood as generally accepted under international law.'' Now the ICJ has returned to the issue of Tibet and produced another important report. It finds that repression in Tibet has increased since 1994. This is an assessment which my daughter Maura shares after having visited Tibet and having worked closely for many years with Tibetan refugees who continue to make the dangerous journey over the Himalayan mountains to flee persecution in their homeland. In 1996 she returned from Tibet to report that, . . . in recent months Beijing's leaders have renewed their assault on Tibetan culture, especially Buddhism, with an alarming vehemence. The rhetoric and the methods of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s have been resurrected-- reincarnated, what you will--to shape an aggressive campaign to vilify the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama, of course, remains unstained, but it is time for the Chinese to consider a policy of ``constructive engagement'' of their own--with the Tibetans. For many years now, the United States Congress has called on the People's Republic of China to enter into discussions with the Dalai Lama or his representatives on a solution to the question of Tibet. Today we continue that message. This resolution declares March 10, 1999 as ``Tibetan National Day in solemn recognition of those Tibetans who sacrificed, suffered, or died as a result of Chinese aggression among their country.'' It also affirms the right of the Tibetan people to ``determine their own political future, including independence if they so determine.'' The government of the People's Republic of China should know that as the Tibetan people and His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet go forward on their journey toward freedom the Congress and the people of the United States stand with them.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. ``Joe, Joe DiMaggio, we want you on our side!'' Well, he is on the other side now, but stays with us in our memories. Mine are, well, special to me. It would be in 1938 or 1939 in Manhattan. The Depression lingered. Life was, well, life. But there was even so somebody who made a great difference and that was Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees. I admired him as no other man. Read of him each day, or so it seemed, in the Daily News. And yet I had never seen him play. One summer day my mother somehow found the needful sixty cents. Fifty cents for a ticket at the Stadium, a nickel for the subway up and back. Off I went in high expectation. But Gehrig, disease I must assume was now in progress, got no hit. A young rookie I had scarce noticed hit a home run. Joe DiMaggio. It began to drizzle, but they kept the game going just long enough so there would be no raincheck. I went home lifeless and lay on my bed desolate. Clearly I was in pain, if that is the word. The next day my mother somehow came up with yet another sixty cents. Up I went. And the exact same sequence occurred. I went home. But not lifeless. To the contrary, animated. For I hated Joe DiMaggio. For life. I knew this to be a sin, but it did not matter. Gehrig retired, then died. My animus only grew more animated. Thirty years and some went by. I was now the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations. One evening I was having dinner at an Italian restaurant in midtown. As our company was about finished, who walked in but DiMaggio himself, accompanied by a friend. They took a table against the wall opposite. I watched. He looked over, smiled and gave a sort of wave. Emboldened, as we were leaving, I went over to shake hands. He rose wonderfully to the occasion. I went out on 54th Street as I recall. And of a sudden was struck as if by some Old Testament lightening. ``My God,'' I thought, ``he has forgiven me!'' He must have known about me all those years, but he returned hate with love. My soul had been in danger and he had rescued me. Still years later, just a little while ago the Yankees won another pennant. Mayor Guiliani arranged a parade from the Battery to City Hall. Joe was in the lead car; I was to follow. As we waited to get started, I went up to him, introduced myself and told of having watched him at the Stadium these many years ago. ``But I have to tell you,'' I added, ``Lou Gehrig was my hero.'' ``He was my hero, too,'' said Joe.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues today in introducing the Credit for Voluntary Reductions Act of 1999. I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this legislation. The bill represents a far sighted effort to encourage early reductions of greenhouse gases. Under our program, companies in a wide range of industries may participate in a voluntary, market-based system of credit by making measurable reductions in greenhouse gases. We have learned from our experience with implementing the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments that the use of market-based incentives is the most cost-efficient, effective way to encourage corporate responsibility with respect to air emissions. Credit based systems have proven to effect emissions reductions which are larger than anticipated, at significantly lesser cost. The program laid out in our bill will remove market disincentives to taking action on greenhouse gas emissions and reward the initiative and innovation in the corporate sector. My good friend Senator Chafee has highlighted today what is perhaps the most important issue facing any climate change legislation. While there is growing scientific certainty that human actions may eventually cause harmful disturbances to our climate system, no one is sure what may be done in the future to mitigate the effects of any atmospheric disruptions. The legislative and diplomatic proposals are myriad. Uncertainty over how climate change will be addressed, if at all, is a formidable hurdle to corporate actions which may begin to mitigate the problem. By simply establishing a system of credits which may be used at a later time to document emissions reductions, our bill begins to address this issue of uncertainty and provide incentives for positive action on emissions reductions. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this innovative legislation, and I encourage my colleagues to support our efforts.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am delighted to see that the Senate passed S. 314, the Small Business Year 2000 Readiness Act, today. I introduced this bill with Senators Christopher S. Bond, John F. Kerry, Robert F. Bennett, Christopher J. Dodd, and Olympia Snowe on January 27, 1999. S. 314 establishes a loan guarantee program to help small businesses prepare for the year 2000. Because our economy is interdependent, we must make sure that our small businesses are still up and running and providing services on January 1, 2000. This bill will help ensure that that is the case. I began warning about the Y2K problem 3 years ago. Since that time, people have begun to listen and progress has been made on the Y2K front. The federal government and large corporations are expected to have their computers functioning on January 1, 2000. Good news indeed. But small businesses continue to lag behind in fixing the millennium problem. I am confident that the Readiness Act will help small businesses remediate their computer systems and I urge the House to consider it forthwith. There is no time to waste.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise in the first instance to congratulate the chairman of our committee and his vice chairman for the extraordinary work they have done in less than a year. I make the point, it is a point of Senate procedure, that it is rare there is a chairman and vice chairman, not chairman and ranking member. This has been a wholly bipartisan effort from the first, and I think we can see that from the results in so brief a span. The issue has been with us for some while, and it would be derelict of me not to mention that it was brought to my attention by a dear friend from New York, a financial analyst, John Westergaard, who began talking to me about the matter in 1995. On February 13 of 1996, I wrote to the Congressional Research Service to say: Well, now, what about this? Richard Nunno authored a report which the CRS sent to me on June 7 saying that ``the Y2K problem is indeed serious and that fixing it will be costly and time-consuming. The problem deserves the careful and coordinated attention of the Federal Government, as well as the private sector, in order to avert major disruptions on January 1, 2000.'' I wrote the President, on July 31 of that year, to relay the findings of the CRS report and raise the issue generally. And, in time, a Presidential appointment was made to deal with this in the executive branch, to which I will return. But last spring--less than one year ago--the majority leader and the minority leader had the perception to appoint this gifted committee, with its exceptional staff, and now we have its report before us. Two points, followed by a coda, if I may. Shortly after the committee s establishment, Senator Bennett and I convened a field hearing--on July 6--in New York in the ceremonial chamber of the U.S. Federal Court House for the Southern District of New York at Foley Square. We found we were talking to the banks, the big, large, international banks in the city, and the stock exchange. And we found them well advanced in their preparations regarding this matter. I think my colleague from Connecticut would agree. They were not only dealing with it in their own terms, they had gone to the Bank for International Settlements in Basel where a Joint Year 2000 Council had been established at our initiative. They were hard at work on their own problems. They were worried about others. One witness told us that 49 Japanese banks planned to spend some $249 million as a group on Y2K compliance; 49 banks are thinking of spending in combination $249 million. Citicorp was planning $600 million, and it already expended a goodly share of that. Indeed, it was not all our initiative, but certainly it was serendipitous, if I can use that term, that the security industry commenced massive testing just a week later--on July 13, 1998. The tests went very well. The industry was on to this subject. The point being, if you are on to this, you can handle it. It is those who aren't who will leave us in the greatest trouble. There will be another industry-wide test later this month. So much for private initiative. We should be grateful for what we have learned, here and abroad. As the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Connecticut have made clear, there are countries that have understood this, as we have done, and are on top of this. But there are too many other countries that don't know the problem exists or might as well not. As a sometime resident in India, I was interested to find that Indian enterprises, concentrated in the Bangalore area, are very much involved in doing the computer remediation. If you would like to know something about the world we live in, Mr. President, the work for the day is sent to them from San Francisco or New York or Chicago; they do it overnight, which is not overnight for them, it is the daytime, and it is back on our desks in the morning. It is that kind of world we live in. Hence, to the second subject, which is the nuclear one. There is potential here for the kind of unintended disaster of an order we cannot describe in terms of medical care or financial statements or, for that matter, air travel at New Year's--which is to say that the failure of computer systems in Russia to give the correct information about early warning systems, such that 6,000 nuclear warheads still in Russia are not inadvertently launched. They could be, you know. They are in place--not all--but enough. A hundred would do. Three would be a calamity. Two were dropped on Japan and ended the Second World War. These are all huge weapons, far above the tonnage and of a different chemical composition than the early atomic bombs, as we have come to know them. The Russians seem to know they have a problem--or they may have a problem. Or they don't know whether they do or they don't. In that situation, ``we didn't quite catch it'' could bring incomprehensible catastrophe just at the moment when we thought that long, dark half a century was ended, the half century that began in 1946, when the Soviets exploded their first nuclear device. We have a danger here and we have an opportunity, and we ought to respond to the one and seize the other. We are given to understand that our Department of Defense officials have begun some negotiations, discussions in Moscow to invite a Russian team to Colorado Springs-- where it happens our facilities in these regards are located--to let us watch each other's nuclear launches, nuclear alerts, false alarms. We can think, Mr. President, that this was something behind us, surely a matter of passing. It wasn't. We have learned just recently that in 1983, one Soviet officer, a Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel, was in the Serpukhov-15 installation where the Soviet Union monitored its early warning satellites over the United States, and all of a sudden the lights began to flash ``Start,'' because the warning time is very short. He made a decision on his own: they only supposed that they had picked up a launching; the equipment picked up five ICBMs. Mankind was spared by one lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Army who knew enough strategic doctrine to know that the United States would never launch five. It might launch 5,000. So as the information went up, by the nanoseconds, through the chain of command, it was decided not to launch a counterstrike. That is how close we came, probably never in a more mortal way. He is still alive and has told his tale. I ask unanimous consent that at the end of my remarks David Hoffman's account of this in the Washington Post be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I suggest that we seek to reach an agreement for the Russians to come and bring with them all their codes and their classified communications modes, learn what our early warning system is, tell us what they will of theirs, perhaps be open about its own weaknesses, which are so great. These are the people who still have the fate of mankind in their hands, and they haven't been paid in 6 months. What they talk about, evidently, is the need for money. How in God's name we cannot provide it I fail to see. The maintenance of our nuclear system in the course of a half century cost $5.5 trillion. I sometimes forget this, but in my years on the Finance Committee, I have learned that a billion minutes ago, Saint Peter was just 30 years dead. A billion is a large number. A trillion is beyond our capacity. They are asking thousands of millions. Very little. I hope Beijing might want to join. I would invite Islamabad and New Delhi, places which are unstable and have nuclear devices. Out of that, Mr. President, out of this immediate crisis, we might find a longrun institution or institutions--they need not be here, exclusively--they can be in many places--in which we would monitor one another's nuclear activity while, pray God, we develop it down, and relearn the confidence-building measures that were so important in the cold war. That telephone between the Kremlin and the White House made more of a difference than we probably know. It is this kind of thing. I note to my dear friends--and I will get complete agreement--this body has known fewer persons with a greater understanding of the cold war than Senator Sam Nunn and the late Senator Henry Jackson who, in the early 1980s, brought up the concept of a joint early warning system. And then the MX was deployed, and we moved from essentially a deterrence position on nuclear matters, a second-strike, if you will, to a first- strike capacity, such that the Soviet systems had to be constantly alarmed. Now, maybe that idea of Senators Nunn and Jackson will come, come at last. I would hope for two things. And I do not want to impose, and I do not want to presume, but I will do. This is not a time for too much delicacy. I would hope that our chairman and vice chairman--I make that point: the Intelligence Committee and, I believe, the Ethics Committee have a chairman and vice chairman; all the rest is majority rule around here, which is fine, but this is bipartisan--if they might find it possible to visit Moscow and talk with members of the Duma there where the START II treaty, which we took all the 1980s to negotiate, lies unratified. And our plans for START III are, accordingly, on hold. They might go or they might invite--some action from the Congress, I think, is in order. And it would be no harm to point out to the Russian Government that they now have a legislative branch. And if it acts in ways that are not always agreeable to the executive, well, that is not an unknown phenomena. It has been going on for two centuries in the United States. It is an important and necessary initiative we ought to somehow pursue. One final point. I hope my friends will not feel I am trespassing on their--our concerns, as I am a member and am honored to be a member of the committee--the Pentagon is too much disposed to discuss this matter in secret session. This is a time for more openness. This is a time the American people can be trusted with information which the Russian authorities already have. One of the phenomenons of the cultural secrecy which has developed over the last century is that the U.S. Government is continuing to keep information from us which our adversaries know perfectly well. It is only we who do not know. This has done a perceptible harm to American democracy. We have no idea how distant it is from the beginning of the century when Woodrow Wilson could proclaim, as a condition of peace to conclude the First World War, ``open covenants openly arrived at.'' Now, mind you, that same President Wilson, to whom I am devoted, in the day after he asked for a declaration of war, he sent a series of 17 bills, which were rolled together and called the Espionage Act. It provided for prior restraint, as lawyers call it, censorship of the press. First Henry Lodge, on this floor, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said, ``Yes, I think that is a good idea.'' The next day he came back and said, ``You know, I don't think it's a good idea. The press should be free in this country.'' President Wilson wrote the bill manager on the House side, and said, ``Please keep it.'' It was not kept. But it was assumed it was kept, so much so that when the Pentagon Papers were released, the executive branch of our Government just assumed that was a crime and proceeded to prevent their publication and find out more about the person who had released them. And the next thing you know, we had an impeachment hearing in the Federal Government--a crisis that all grew out of secrecy and presumptions of secrecy. I would hope--I doubt there is anybody in the Pentagon listening, but I see the chairman and vice chairman listening--I would hope they would say we could have an open briefing. The American people will respond intelligently to dangers of which they are appropriately apprised. And this surely is one. But, sir, I have spoken sufficiently. I beg to say one last thing. On the House side, our colleague and friend, Representative Stephen Horn of California, has been very active producing ``report cards'' on the status of the different departments of the Government and keeping it up regularly. As the Senator from Connecticut observed, the Social Security Administration got A's all along. Others have not. It would not be a bad idea for the chairmen and ranking members of our standing committees to review Representative Horn's report cards and keep an eye on the departments that report to them. Other than that, I think I have spoken long enough. I do not think, however, I have sufficiently expressed my admiration and at times awe of the performance of our chairman and vice chairman. The Senate is grateful, is in their debt. So is the Nation. The Nation need not know that; it just needs to pay attention to their message, sir. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Washington Post, Feb. 10, 1999] ``I Had a Funny Feeling in My Gut''--Soviet Officer Faced Nuclear Armageddon (By David Hoffman) Moscow--It was just past midnight as Stanislav Petrov settled into the commander's chair inside the secret bunker at Serpukhov-15, the installation where the Soviet Union monitored its early-warning satellites over the United States. Then the alarms went off. On the panel in front of him was a red pulsating button. One word flashed: ``Start.'' It was Sept. 26, 1983, and Petrov was playing a principal role in one of the most harrowing incidents of the nuclear age, a false alarm signaling a U.S. missile attack. Although virtually unknown to the West at the time, the false alarm at the closed military facility south of Moscow came during one of the most tense periods of the Cold War. And the episode resonates today because Russia's early- warning system has fewer than half the satellites it did back then, raising the specter of more such dangerous incidents. As Petrov described it in an interview, one of the Soviet satellites sent a signal to the bunker that a nuclear missile attack was underway. The warning system's computer, weighing the signal against static, concluded that a missile had been launched from a base in the United States. The responsibility fell to Petrov, then a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel, to make a decision: Was it for real? Petrov was situated at a critical point in the chain of command, overseeing a staff that monitored incoming signals from the satellites. He reported to superiors at warning- system headquarters; they, in turn, reported to the general staff, which would consult with Soviet leader Yuri Andropov on the possibility of launching a retaliatory attack. Petrov's role was to evaluate the incoming data. At first, the satellite reported that one missile had been launched-- then another, and another. Soon, the system was ``roaring,'' he recalled--five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched, it reported. Despite the electronic evidence, Petrov decided--and advised the others--that the satellite alert was a false alarm, a call that may have averted a nuclear holocaust. But he was relentlessly interrogated afterward, was never rewarded for his decision and today is a long-forgotten pensioner living in a town outside Moscow. He spoke openly about the incident, although the official account is still considered secret by authorities here. On the night of the crisis, Petrov had little time to think. When the alarms went off, he recalled, ``for 15 seconds, we were in a state of shock. We needed to understand, what's next?'' Usually, Petrov said, one report of a lone rocket launch did not immediately go up the chain to the general staff and the electronic command system there, known as Krokus. But in this case, the reports of a missile salvo were coming so quickly that an alert had already gone to general staff headquarters automatically, even before he could judge if they were genuine. A determination by the general staff was critical because, at the time, the nuclear ``suitcase'' that gives a Soviet leader a remote-control role in such decisions was still under development. In the end, less than five minutes after the alert began, Petrov decided the launch reports must be false. He recalled making the tense decision under enormous stress--electronic maps and consoles were flashing as he held a phone in one hand and juggled an intercom in the other, trying to take in all the information at once. Another officer at the early- warning facility was shouting into the phone to him to remain calm and do his job. ``I had a funny feeling in my gut,'' Petrov said. ``I didn't want to make a mistake. I made a decision, and that was it.'' Petrov's decision was based partly on a guess, he recalled. He had been told many times that a nuclear attack would be massive--an onslaught designed to overwhelm Soviet defenses at a single stroke. But the monitors showed only five missiles. ``When people start a war, they don't start it with only five missiles,'' he remembered thinking at the time. ``You can do little damage with just five missiles.'' Another factor, he said, was that Soviet ground-based radar installations--which search for missiles rising above the horizon--showed no evidence of an attack. The ground radar units were controlled from a different command center, and because they cannot see beyond the horizon, they would not spot incoming missiles until some minutes after the satellites had. Following the false alarm, Petrov went through a second ordeal. At first, he was praised for his actions. But then came an investigation, and his questioners pressed him hard. Why had he not written everything down that night? ``Because I had a phone in one hand and the intercom in the other, and I don't have a third hand,'' he replied. Petrov, who was assigned to the satellite early-warning system at its inception in the 1970s, said in the interview that he knew the system had flaws. It had been rushed into service, he said, and was ``raw.'' Petrov said the investigators tried to make him a scapegoat for the false alarm. In the end, he was neither punished nor rewarded. According to Petrov and other sources, the false alarm was eventually traced to the satellite, which picked up the sun's reflection off the tops of clouds and mistook it for a missile launch. The computer program that was supposed to filter out such information was rewritten. It is not known what happened at the highest levels of the Kremlin on the night of the alarm, but it came at a climactic stage in U.S.-Soviet relations that is now regarded as a Soviet ``war scare.'' According to former CIA analyst Peter Pry, and a separate study by the agency, Andropov was obsessed with the possibility of a surprise nuclear attack by the West and sent instructions to Soviet spies around the world to look for evidence of preparations. One reason for Soviet jitters at the time was that the West had unleashed a series of psychological warfare exercises aimed at Moscow, including naval maneuvers into forward areas near Soviet strategic bastions, such as the submarine bases in the Barents Sea. The 1983 alarm also came just weeks after Soviet pilots had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and just before the start of a NATO military exercise, known as Able Archer, that involved raising alert levels of U.S. nuclear forces in Europe to simulate preparations for an attack. Pry has described this exercise as ``probably the single most dangerous incident of the early 1980s.'' Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues Senators Graham, Roth and Grassley in introducing this legislation--the Nursing Home Residential Security Act of 1999. It is a modest modification providing an enormous protection for nursing home residents. The situation today is as follows. Frail elderly individuals who require nursing home care are faced with costs of $40,000 to $50,000 on average per year. These sums quickly deplete family savings. As a result, about two-thirds of nursing home residents at some point spend down their assets and require the assistance of Medicaid coverage. Because Medicaid typically has low reimbursement rates, nursing homes, in turn, must carefully balance their finances by screening which patients to accept, limiting the number of Medicaid residents. When nursing homes can no longer operate with low Medicaid rates, they may choose to reduce the number of beds available for Medicaid residents or no longer participate in the Medicaid program altogether. What, then, happens to the residents who depend on Medicaid to cover their nursing home costs? The Wall Street Journal first reported on April 7 of last year what has occurred: Vencor Inc., with the nation's largest nursing home chain of 310 facilities, decided to withdraw participation in the Medicaid program. Residents covered by Medicaid were so notified and told they would have to leave the nursing homes-- their homes. Industry analysts had predicted that some other companies may follow Vencor's lead in jettisoning Medicaid residents. For example, Renaissance Healthcare Corp. withdrew from Medicaid the year before due to rising expenses. The evictions in Vencor's Indiana and Florida nursing homes caused panic among residents and their families, and aggravated some patients' frail medical conditions. In all, it was a wrenching experience for residents and their families. Our legislation is a small modification amid an otherwise larger problem. The bill would merely protect current Medicaid residents in nursing homes from evictions if their nursing home decides to withdraw from the Medicaid program. Nursing homes will be able to continue to screen patients for acceptance into their facility. The screening process is quite sophisticated and includes collection of information about assets and income to determine when the individual will likely spend down his or her resources before requiring Medicaid coverage. The larger dilemma still exists. We need a system that both covers our frail elderly in nursing homes after they spend themselves into poverty due to nursing home costs and ensures that nursing homes can stay in business in order to provide such services. Momentum is moving behind this legislation. Our bill enjoys bipartisan support in Congress as well as support from the nursing home industry and advocates. On the Senate side, we introduce this bill today with a total of 15 sponsors. Last week, the House Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Environment held a hearing on this legislation. Chairman Roth and I are committed to marking up this bill in our Committee in the near future. I commend Senator Graham for his leadership in initiating this proposal, and urge its early adoption.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues Senators Graham, Roth and Grassley in introducing this legislation--the Nursing Home Residential Security Act of 1999. It is a modest modification providing an enormous protection for nursing home residents. The situation today is as follows. Frail elderly individuals who require nursing home care are faced with costs of $40,000 to $50,000 on average per year. These sums quickly deplete family savings. As a result, about two-thirds of nursing home residents at some point spend down their assets and require the assistance of Medicaid coverage. Because Medicaid typically has low reimbursement rates, nursing homes, in turn, must carefully balance their finances by screening which patients to accept, limiting the number of Medicaid residents. When nursing homes can no longer operate with low Medicaid rates, they may choose to reduce the number of beds available for Medicaid residents or no longer participate in the Medicaid program altogether. What, then, happens to the residents who depend on Medicaid to cover their nursing home costs? The Wall Street Journal first reported on April 7 of last year what has occurred: Vencor Inc., with the nation's largest nursing home chain of 310 facilities, decided to withdraw participation in the Medicaid program. Residents covered by Medicaid were so notified and told they would have to leave the nursing homes-- their homes. Industry analysts had predicted that some other companies may follow Vencor's lead in jettisoning Medicaid residents. For example, Renaissance Healthcare Corp. withdrew from Medicaid the year before due to rising expenses. The evictions in Vencor's Indiana and Florida nursing homes caused panic among residents and their families, and aggravated some patients' frail medical conditions. In all, it was a wrenching experience for residents and their families. Our legislation is a small modification amid an otherwise larger problem. The bill would merely protect current Medicaid residents in nursing homes from evictions if their nursing home decides to withdraw from the Medicaid program. Nursing homes will be able to continue to screen patients for acceptance into their facility. The screening process is quite sophisticated and includes collection of information about assets and income to determine when the individual will likely spend down his or her resources before requiring Medicaid coverage. The larger dilemma still exists. We need a system that both covers our frail elderly in nursing homes after they spend themselves into poverty due to nursing home costs and ensures that nursing homes can stay in business in order to provide such services. Momentum is moving behind this legislation. Our bill enjoys bipartisan support in Congress as well as support from the nursing home industry and advocates. On the Senate side, we introduce this bill today with a total of 15 sponsors. Last week, the House Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Environment held a hearing on this legislation. Chairman Roth and I are committed to marking up this bill in our Committee in the near future. I commend Senator Graham for his leadership in initiating this proposal, and urge its early adoption.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to salute a pioneering scientist and a great American, Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, who died on February 25 at the age of 86. Although a chemist by training, Dr. Seaborg is best remembered for his contributions to nuclear physics. Dr. Seaborg was the co-discoverer of plutonium, and led a research team which created a total of nine elements, all of which are heavier than uranium. For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 which he shared with Dr. Edwin M. McMillan. In 1942, as a member of the Manhattan Project, Dr. Seaborg was assigned to a laboratory at the University of Chicago. There he headed a unit that worked to isolate plutonium from uranium--the fuel used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. After the war ended, Dr. Seaborg returned to the University of California at Berkeley until 1961, when, at the request of President John F. Kennedy, he became chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). It was a position he held for ten years, spanning three administrations. Dr. Seaborg was the first scientist to direct the Commission. It was in this capacity that Dr. Seaborg acted as an advisor to the U.S. negotiator, Averell Harriman, in talks that led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty and was an advocate for the peaceful use of atomic energy. Dr. Seaborg kept a journal while chairman of the AEC. The journal consisted of a diary written at home each evening, correspondence, announcements, minutes, and the like. He was careful about classified matters; nothing was included that could not be made public, and the journal was reviewed by the AEC before his departure in 1971. Nevertheless, more than a decade after his departure from the AEC, the Department of Energy subjected two copies of Dr. Seaborg's journals-- one of which it had borrowed--to a number of classification reviews. He came unannounced to my Senate office in September of 1997 to tell me of the problems he was having getting his journal released, saying it was something he wished to have resolved prior to his death. I introduced a bill to return to Dr. Seaborg his journal in its original, unredacted form but to no avail, so bureaucracy triumphed. It was never returned. Now he has left us without having the satisfaction of resolving the fate of his journal. It is devastating that a man who gave so much of his life to his country was so outrageously treated by his own government. Dr. Seaborg continued to lead a productive life until the very end. After his tenure as chairman of the AEC, Dr. Seaborg returned to the University of California at Berkeley where he was a University Professor--the highest academic distinction--and later a professor in the university's graduate school of education as a result of his concern about the quality of science education. He was the director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and until his death its director emeritus. And there were well deserved accolades. In 1991 Dr. Seaborg was awarded the nation's highest award for scientific achievement, the National Medal of Science. In 1997 the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry named an element after a living person for the first time. Thus element 106 became Seaborgium (Sg), and Dr. Seaborg was immortalized as a permanent part of the periodic table to which he had already added so much. So today I remember Dr. Seaborg for his contributions to nuclear physics, and I salute him for his service as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Dr. Seaborg's family is in my prayers at this time of great loss; his wife of 57 years, Helen, and five of their six children: Lynne Annette Seaborg, Cobb, David Seaborg, Stephen Seaborg, John Eric Seaborg, and Dianne Karole Seaborg. Their son Peter Glenn Seaborg died in May of 1997. Mr. President, I ask that Dr. Seaborg's obituary, which appeared in the Washington Post on Saturday, February 27, 1999, be printed in the Record. The obituary follows: [From the Washington Post, Feb. 27, 1999] Nobel-Winning Chemist Glenn Seaborg Dies (By Bart Barnes) Glenn T. Seaborg, 86, the chemist whose work leading to the discovery of plutonium won a Nobel Prize and helped bring about the nuclear age, died Feb. 25 at his home near Berkeley, Calif. He had been convalescing since suffering a stroke in August while being honored at a meeting in Boston of the American Chemical Society. Dr. Seaborg was a major player on the team of scientists that developed the world's first atomic bomb used in warfare, which was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II. His research was later a critical element in the peacetime operation of nuclear power plants. For 10 years, during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations, he was chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. It was a period of Cold War tension and mounting international anxiety over the nuclear arms race. As the president's primary nuclear adviser, Dr. Seaborg participated in negotiations that led to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, and he was an articulate and forceful advocate for the peaceful use of atomic energy. A former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Seaborg returned to the university as a chemistry professor on leaving the AEC chairmanship in 1971. It was at the Berkeley laboratories three decades earlier that he created from uranium a previously unknown element that he called plutonium. The amount was infinitesimally small, about a millionth of a millionth of an ounce, and it could not be seen with the naked eye. The process by which this was achieved--the transmutation of uranium into plutonium by bombarding it with neutrons-- would win the 1951 Nobel Prize in chemistry, which Dr. Seaborg shared with a Berkeley colleague, Edwin M. McMillan. A form of this new element--known as plutonium 239--was found to undergo fission and to release great energy when bombarded by slow neutrons. That, Dr. Seaborg would say later, gave plutonium 239 ``the potential for serving as the explosive ingredient for a nuclear bomb.'' In 1942, at the age of 30, Dr. Seaborg took a leave of absence from the University of California to join the Manhattan Project, the code name for the U.S. World War II effort to develop an atomic bomb. Since Nazi Germany was believed to be engaged in a similar effort, the project was given the highest wartime priority. Assigned to a laboratory at the University of Chicago, Dr. Seaborg was chief of a Manhattan Project unit that was trying to devise a way of isolating large amounts of plutonium from uranium. By 1943, they had separated enough plutonium to send samples to the Manhattan Project scientists working at the laboratories at Los Alamos, N.M., where it was needed for some crucial experiments. To arrange for the return of the plutonium to the Chicago laboratory, Dr. Seaborg had to devise a shortcut around the cumbersome and top secret wartime security apparatus. Lacking clearance to enter the Los Alamos laboratories, he took his wife on a vacation to nearby Santa Fe, where one morning he had breakfast with one of the Los Alamos physicists. At the restaurant after the meal, the physicist handed over the plutonium, which Dr. Seaborg placed in his suitcase and took back to Chicago on a train. By 1945, there had been enough plutonium produced to build two atomic bombs, including the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Shortly thereafter, Japan capitulated and on Aug. 14, 1945, the war ended. In 1946, Dr. Seaborg returned to Berkeley as a full professor, where he continued his prewar research on the discovery of new elements. He was associate director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and chief of its nuclear chemistry research section from 1954 to 1958. He became chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley in 1958 and served in that capacity until his 1961 appointment as chairman of the AEC. Glenn Theodore Seaborg was born in the small mining town of Ishpeming, on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. At the age of 10, he moved to a suburb of Los Angeles with his family. He was first in his class and valedictorian in high school, and in September 1929, he entered the University of California at Los Angeles. To raise money for his college expenses he was a stevedore, an apricot picker, a laboratory assistant at a rubber company and an apprentice Linotype operator for the Los Angeles Herald. He was an assistant in the UCLA chemistry laboratory and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. On graduating from UCLA, he transferred to the University of California's Berkeley campus where he had a teaching assistantship and a fellowship to study nuclear chemistry under the noted chemist, Gilbert N. Lewis. He received a doctorate in chemistry at Berkeley in 1937, then became a research associate under Lewis and later an instructor in chemistry. He was a popular classroom teacher, but it was in the laboratory that Dr. Seaborg made his mark in the scientific community. There his co-worker, McMillan, he demonstrated that by bombarding uranium with neutrons, a new element-- heavier than uranium--could be identified and produced. He called it neptunium after Neptune, the planet beyond Uranus in the solar system. Building on this demonstration, Dr. Seaborg directed a team that employed a similar process to isolate the next of what came to be known as the transurnium elements--those with nuclei heavier than uranium, which had been the heaviest of the known elements. This next new element was named plutonium, after Pluto, the planet beyond Neptune in the solar system. This would become the critical element in the development of atomic war weapons. After World War II, Dr. Seaborg continued his work on transuranium elements in the Berkeley laboratories, discovering substances later called berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and ``seaborgium,'' which was officially accepted as the name for element 106 in August 1997. In his presentation speech on the awarding of the 1951 Nobel Prize, A.F. Westgren of the Royal Swedish Academy said Dr. Seaborg had ``written one of the most brilliant pages in the history of discovery of chemical elements.'' As a member of the General Advisory Committee of the AEC, Dr. Seaborg endorsed--reluctantly--the postwar crash program that developed the hydrogen bomb. ``Although I deplore the prospect of our country's putting a tremendous effort into the H-bomb, I must confess that I have been unable to come to the conclusion that we should not,'' he said. On his appointment as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley in 1958, Dr. Seaborg gave up his research work. For the next three years, he supervised what Newsweek magazine called ``possibly the best faculty in the United States.'' His 1961 appointment as AEC chairman made him the first scientist to direct the commission, and he was an insider and adviser to President Kennedy and U.S. negotiator Averell Harriman in the talks with the Soviet Union that led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Ratified by the Senate in September 1963, the treaty banned above-ground nuclear tests and committed the United States and the Soviet Union to seeking ``discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time.'' For Dr. Seaborg, who had hoped for comprehensive prohibition of nuclear tests, the treaty was only a partial victory. On leaving the AEC in summer 1971, Dr. Seaborg told NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that the commission's major achievement under his leadership was ``the development of economic nuclear power and the placement of that in the domain of private enterprise.'' In addition to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, he also mentioned the start-up of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He observed, somewhat ruefully, that it was the Department of the Defense, not the AEC, that had full control of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. On rejoining the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, following his departure from the AEC, Dr. Seaborg held the rank of university professor--the highest academic distinction. In 1983, concerned with the quality of science education, he became a professor in the university's graduate school of education. He was a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award of the AEC and the Priestly Medal of the American Chemical Society. In 1991, he received the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest award for scientific achievement. In 1942, Dr. Seaborg married Helen L. Griggs, with whom he had four sons and two daughters. When his children were young, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist was an enthusiastic participant in family baseball, volleyball and basketball games and in swimming contests. One of his sons, Peter Glenn Seaborg, died in May of 1997.