Samuel Nunn

Mr. NUNN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment offered by the chairman of the committee, Senator Thurmond. We are offering this amendment to reduce the overall funding level in this bill to comply with the budget resolution. Although the authorization bill is not technically required to conform to the budget resolution, our committee has always tried to conform its recommendations to the budget resolution, to the maximum extent possible, in order to keep our work relevant to the overall process and to give firmer guidance to the appropriations bill. This amendment lowers the national defense total funding authorized in this bill by $1.8 billion, to a level providing for the national defense function contained in the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution of $265.583 billion. This amendment is in the form of an overall reduction. It does not attempt to amend the bill in the dozens of places that would be necessary to make all the detailed reductions, nor does it spell out the even more numerous changes to all the line items in the report language but which are not part of the bill. In my view, that kind of procedure is not necessary or productive at this time. This amendment ensures, however, that the total authorized for defense in this bill matches the budget resolution. The committee will make the appropriate detailed adjustments during our conference negotiations. Mr. President, I will just take a brief period here to explain how we got to this point. The answer is simple. When we marked up our bill, there was no 1997 budget resolution number to mark to--no House number, no Senate number, no conference number. Our colleagues in the House were in the same situation. Their bill was reported and brought to the floor even earlier than this bill was. The House did not lower their version of this authorization bill on the floor to comply with the budget resolution. Their bill passed the House on May 15, before the budget resolution had gone to conference or even passed the Senate. The House bill exceeds the final defense spending level in the budget resolution by $1.1 billion in budget authority and eight-tenths of a billion in outlays. This armed services bill was ordered reported on May 2, while the Senate version of the 1997 budget resolution was not ordered reported until May 9. Because this bill was marked up before there was a Senate budget resolution or a House budget resolution defense number for 1997, we used the target for fiscal 1997 from last year's fiscal budget resolution, which was $267.3 billion in budget authority. It was the only funding target available for us to use. Furthermore, although the House version, like the Senate version, was reported after our Senate Armed Services Committee markup was completed, the defense number in the House version of this year's budget resolution was $267.2 billion in budget authority and was also consistent with the guidance from last year. In other words, we had two different numbers from the House and Senate that had to be reconciled in conference. Even after we did get the top line funding targets from the Budget Committees, we still had no definitive guidance about what our number would be. Since one of those two targets was basically what we had marked to, there was at least a chance we were already at the right number. So it did not make sense to try to change it before the budget resolution conference was concluded. So it was not until the budget resolution conference completed it on June 7, and adopted it on June 13, that we knew what the defense number would be. The budget resolution conferees adopted the Senate's defense number. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the national defense authorization level in our bill was equivalent to $267.4 billion in budget authority and compared to the budget resolution's budget authority level for national defense of $265.6 billion. That means our bill is over the budget resolution conference by $1.779 billion in budget authority, although it is right on target in terms of outlays, or actual cash. Because our bill was sequentially referred to the Intelligence Committee, which reported it out on June 11, for all practical purposes, we had no way to redo the bill before it came to the floor. Mr. President, I have explained why it is impractical, if not impossible, to redo our bill to comply with the budget resolution before considering this bill on the Senate floor. However, this amendment will bring the bill into compliance with the budget resolution number. This amendment would reduce the amount in the bill by $1.8 billion. The bill would be $11.2 billion above the President's budget request, but, again, will be lower than last year's bill and last year's defense total in real terms. So the defense budget is still coming down, in real terms, and this amendment will not change that. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of the Thurmond-Nunn amendment, and I also urge the Senate to vote against the Exon amendment, which cuts more substantially than does the Thurmond-Nunn amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I yield back all the time we may have.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, how much time would I have?

Mr. NUNN. Eighteen seconds. I must say there is nothing the Senator from Nebraska ever does that could be described as modest. Everything he does is important. This is an important amendment that should be defeated because it makes a substantial reduction in the modernization accounts which are desperately needed in defense.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I know the Senator from South Carolina is going to want to speak on this. I will speak very briefly. This amendment would reduce the pending bill to the total in the budget resolution. It would bring it in full compliance with the budget resolution. It is a reduction of $1.7 billion. I urge our colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, is there any debate time on this amendment?

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I do not see the chairman on the floor. I suggest that Senator Domenici, the Senator from New Mexico, handle the opposition to this amendment. And I agree with every word he is likely to say.

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

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, what is the regular order, the pending business? _______________________________________________________________________

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment temporarily be laid aside, and I send to the desk an amendment.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I first thank the chairman of the committee, as well as Senator Warner, for their support of this amendment. I am pleased that we are able to present it this evening and that we are likely to get a vote on it tomorrow. Mr. President, this amendment deals with one of the most urgent national security problems America faces today. That is the threat of attack on American cities and towns by terrorists, malcontents, or representatives of hostile powers using radiological, chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Mr. President, because Senator Lugar is on the floor, Senator Domenici is on the floor, and my statement will probably run 15 to 20 minutes, I ask to be notified in 10 minutes, and then I intend to yield and complete my statement after they have made their remarks. If the Chair could notify me when 10 minutes expires.

Mr. NUNN. This threat is very different from the threat of nuclear annihilation with which our Nation and the world has dealt during the cold war. During the cold war, both we and the Soviet Union recognized that either side could destroy the other within about an hour, but only at the price of its own destruction. In the course of carrying out that mutual assured destruction, most of the rest of the civilized world would have been destroyed, in greater or lesser degree, as well. Today, this kind of cataclysmic threat is greatly reduced. And if we are able to continue to implement START I and START II Treaties on both sides, reducing the number of warheads dramatically, it will be reduced further. Tragically, the end of the cold war, however, has not brought peace and stability, but rather has seemingly unleashed countless small bloody wars around the globe. The end of the cold war also encouraged a number of states that are hostile to the United States to try to acquire weapons of mass destruction and appropriate delivery means as an adjunct to their conventional military forces. They are motivated by two beliefs. One is that the possession of such weapons of mass destruction will advance regional status and power relative to neighboring and often rival states. Second is that they believe possession of weapons of mass destruction, coupled with the threat to use them, can both deter superpower states from interfering in regional conflicts and blackmail them into favorable courses of action. While here I am not speaking of nuclear weapons, I am including that. In many of these countries, probably a greater threat is the chemical and biological proliferation we now see going on. Finally, Mr. President, fanatics, small disaffected groups and subnational factions or movements who hold various grievances against governments, or against society, all have increasing access to, and knowledge about the construction of, weapons of mass destruction. Such individuals and groups are not likely to be deterred from using weapons of mass destruction by the classical threat of overwhelming retaliation. In many past instances of terrorism, we have not even known who the perpetrators were or where they were based. It is very hard to threaten retaliation when you do not know who did it or where they came from or where they were based. These groups are not deterred by the threat of a nuclear counterstrike. A national missile defense system, no matter how capable, is sometimes and often irrelevant to this kind of terrorism. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which Senator Roth chairs, and I am the ranking Democrat on that committee, held a series of hearings over the last year on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We heard from representatives of the intelligence and law enforcement communities, the Defense Department, private industry, State and local governments, academia, as well as foreign officials. These witnesses described a threat that we cannot ignore and which we are virtually unprepared to handle. CIA Director John Deutch, for one, candidly observed that ``we have been lucky so far.'' Mr. President, the release of deadly sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system should have been a warning bell for America. Prior to those attacks, this Aum Shrinkiyo sect that made this attack was unknown to the United States intelligence and was poorly monitored by Japanese authorities. The Aum Shrinkiyo sect actually conducted several test releases of lethal chemicals prior to the subway attack. Yet, their capacity to manufacture and store those chemicals was unknown to Japanese authorities, this in spite of the fact that they had over 50,000 members in Russia. They were recruiting nuclear scientists. They owned a radio station in Vladivostok and tested sarin gas in Australia against sheep. In addition to many other things they have done, they were not on the radar screen. We received an even louder warning bell in the World Trade Center bombing which brought it home to America. It was here in the United States, not halfway around the world. The trial judge, at the sentencing of those responsible in that terrible terrorist incident, pointed to several factors that could have made the tragedy far worse. First, in an effort to get that tower to fall down over its twin tower next door, the killers wanted to park the truck in front of a key structural member of the outer corner of the building. But they could not find an empty parking space. So they went elsewhere. Second, the killers had access to chemicals to make lethal cyanide gas and, according to the judge, probably put them into the truck bomb. Fortunately, the chemicals appeared to have been vaporized by the force of the blast. Otherwise, the smoke and fumes that were drawn into and up through the tower would have been far more lethal. So, Mr. President, in all likelihood, it is very likely that the United States has already had, without really focusing on it, our first chemical attack by terrorists. That is the World Trade Center bombing. Fortunately, those chemicals did not activate. Mr. President, we had a third warning bell in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. This showed yet again the ease of access to simple, widely available commercial products that when combined can create powerful explosions. This knowledge, and much more, is available today over the Internet for anyone who wants to tune in. The Department of Defense invested billions in the design and protection of binary chemical weapons. A binary chemical weapon contains two chemicals, each of which is harmless when used separately, and they are widely used industrial chemicals. Yet, when mixed together, they create lethal chemical weapons. You can find lists of the ingredients needed to make binary weapons on the Internet today. Now let me turn to the current state of our domestic efforts to deal with nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological attack. In recent years, several modest test exercises have been held. In one large exercise, the first hundred or so emergency response personnel-- police, firemen, medical personnel--arriving at the scene of the mock simulated disaster rushed headlong into the emergency scene and were promptly declared dead by the referees. In other words, the people who came to the rescue were among the first victims. In the second exercise, featuring both chemical and biological weapons, contaminated casualties brought to the nearest hospital were handled so carelessly by hospital personnel that within hours most of the staff were judged to have been killed or incapacitated by spreading contamination. Mr. President, my purpose is not to frighten the American people; it is to persuade the Congress and the American people that we face a new and severe national security threat for which all governments at all levels are woefully inadequately prepared. We must begin now to prepare what surely threatens us already. To do this effectively requires three things. First, it requires taking the expertise that has been built up over the years in both the Department of Defense and Department of Energy by successive defense budgets and making that expertise available--and rapidly available--to Federal, State, and local emergency preparedness and emergency response teams. The Department of Defense and the Department of Energy need to bring training to the other officials in our State, local, and Federal Government in the detection, recognition, containment, and treatment of acute crises arising from the use of some form of weapon of mass destruction to those on the front lines in our major metropolitan areas. DOD and DOE need to train them in the use of detection equipment and in the use of protective gear to avoid becoming casualties themselves. DOD needs to train emergency medical personnel in the appropriate treatment, for triage, and the administration of antibiotics. There is much to do, and doing it will require DOD and DOE funding. There is simply no other practical source of this kind of expertise. The time to do it is now and not after we suffer a great tragedy. I, like many of my colleagues, believe there is a high likelihood that a chemical or biological incident will take place on American soil in the next several years. We do not want to be in a posture of demanding to know why we were not prepared. We do not want a domestic Pearl Harbor. This training and equipping function is the heart of the amendment, but it is not the whole amendment. There are other parts of the amendment dealing with Customs and dealing with the stopping of these weapons of mass destruction at the source. At this point in time, I will reserve the remainder of my remarks, and I yield the floor to my two partners in this endeavor, Senator Lugar and then Senator Domenici.

Mr. NUNN. We can look at that. Basically, a facility that is converted, from my definition of conversion, would lose its ability to have any kind of production capability. That would be my definition of conversion. If a facility were being assisted in terms of conversion by any of the funding here, it would certainly be my view that that facility should not continue to produce chemical weapons. But we have a long way to go in that regard. There is nothing that I know of that is taking place in that kind of conversion. There has been some conversion with the nuclear facilities, particularly missile fields and that kind of thing.

Mr. NUNN. This was June 13. So that is it. I will quote one paragraph which I think goes right to the point that I think the Senator was asking about, page 24 of the report, paragraph 3: The focus of efforts to significantly improve our ability to manage the consequences of a terrorist incidence, however, should be on the first response by local police, fire, and rescue organizations. Local authorities need quick access to NBC detection--that is nuclear, biological, chemical-- and decontamination and transport equipment. When an incidence involving NBC materials is suspected, lack of timely arrival in well trained, community based teams, fully equipped with the state of art equipment, could cost thousands of lives in most communities today across the Nation. These casualties would include unacceptable numbers of irreplaceable emergency personnel. So I think the heart of what we are trying to do is also in this joint report. I think the report is entitled ``Preparedness and Response to a Nuclear, Radiological, Biological, Chemical Terrorist Attack.''

Mr. NUNN. That is correct. I say to my friend from Virginia that in terms of the amount of money here it is not an insignificant sum. We are talking about a total amount under the Nunn-Lugar program thus far of $1.5 billion that has been spent.

Mr. NUNN. Yes. This amendment tonight represents $235 million. It is not additional money to the DOD-DOE bill. It is shifting of funds within the bill. So this is not an increase in DOD-DOE funding. I happen to believe-- the Senator from Virginia may not share this; others may not--but I think it is clear and in that report that the CSIS just issued by Judge Webster, former head of the FBI and former head of the CIA--there is great respect for him I know in this body on both sides of the aisle, and for others on that very distinguished panel--they came to the conclusion, and I have come to this conclusion and stated it often, that this is our No. 1 one national security threat. In the era we are in, this is the No. 1 one security threat to American people; that is, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction--chemical, biological, nuclear, scientific know-how, and scientists themselves ending up in countries like Libya, Iran, Iraq. As the Senator from Virginia will recall, after World War II the biggest contest we had in the first stages of the cold war was who was going to get the German scientists, whether it would be the Soviet Union or the United States. We got more of them than they did. Much of our space age came from that. So we are in that unusual period of time when an empire has collapsed still containing 30,000 nuclear weapons, over 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, and no one knows how much in the way of biological weapons-- tens of thousands of scientists and technicians that know how to make these weapons, know how to make weapons of mass destruction, with many of those people not knowing where their next paycheck is coming from and how they are going to feed their families. So this is an unprecedented era that we are in. We have a window of opportunity now that may not be open very long, certainly not with all the countries there. We hope it will. But we could not have any assurance of that. While we have this window of opportunity open, I think that it is a priority expenditure in terms of helping them, focusing enough money, but not doing the job for them because they are spending far more of their money than we are. Ours is only a small part. It is seed money. But what it has succeeded in doing is it has focused their attention and helped them make this a priority. In the final analysis, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus are not doing us any favor and the other countries. They are going to take steps in their own national security interests. They are in very dire financial straits having cut back on their procurement budget in Russia by 80-some odd percent from the peak in that kind of condition. This kind of funding helps focus the attention and it gives us the ability to communicate with them. It opens them up for us telling them what we think about the threat, and it has an enormous psychological effect in terms of their capability. I recall Secretary Cheney said--not on this program but on the START II treaty when that one was signed, I believe under the Bush administration--he said then that he recommended that we give substantial amount of aid to Russia so they could accelerate the START II schedule, and take down those missiles on a more rapid pace. That probably is still good advice. So it is within that context that Secretary Cheney was saying this is our national security. And I would say this is a very small amount of money compared to the $260-some odd billion in our defense budget each year. This is a small amount of money if you compare it to almost any category of expenditure, and what we are getting for it. I think it may be the highest leverage defense money in terms of national security that we spend.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I urge support of the amendment.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senators Johnston and Breaux, I offer an amendment that would direct the Secretary of Agriculture to transfer 85,000 acres of the national forest in Louisiana to the Secretary of the Army for use in connection with training and maneuver activities in connection with Fort Polk, LA. I believe this amendment has been cleared on the other side of the aisle.

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4353 (Purpose: To authorize a land conveyance, Air Force Plant No. 85, Columbus, OH)

Mr. NUNN. It has been cleared. I urge the approval of the amendment. I urge its adoption.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I will take a short time here. I will support the tabling motion on this amendment. I think this is not a necessary provision at this moment. I think it is certainly not timely. Senator Exon and Senator Hatfield offered their amendment in 1991. It is the law of the land. It prohibits further U.S. underground nuclear testing unless, after September 30 of this year, another country conducts an underground nuclear test. If another country does it, the Exon-Hatfield provision automatically expires. Moreover, the administration is in the final throes of negotiating a CTBT. President Clinton pledged that if there were problems with the U.S. weapons stockpile, he could exercise the supreme national interest clause in the treaty in order to take the necessary steps to protect our security. If adopted, it is my belief that this amendment, particularly with the timing, could make the negotiations of the CTBT harder rather than easier to conclude. So I urge my colleagues to support the Hatfield tabling motion when it is made. Mr. KYL addressed the Chair.

Mr. NUNN. How much time is on each side? I did not get that.