Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I rise in this chamber to mark the passing of a great American, Dan J. Smith. A resident of Los Angeles, Dan passed away on May 6, 2008, at the age of 57, leaving a legacy of service to this country. During the first term of President Ronald Reagan, Dan served as a Senior Advisor in the White House Office of Policy Development, where he worked on issues ranging from international trade to NATO defense. The principal achievement he should be remembered for is Executive Order 12320, which established the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Dan was the principal architect of the Reagan Administration's program to coordinate the activities of Federal agencies in supporting HBCUs. A 1972 graduate of the University of Southern California, Dan was instrumental while still an undergraduate in founding the Norman Topping scholarship fund, a voluntary, student-financed program of financial support that still stands as a model for private community service. After receiving a masters degree from Occidental College in 1973, Dan spent his early career in banking and non-profit management. Still in his twenties, he was appointed by the Governor of California in 1976 to the State Economic Development Commission. After leaving the White House staff, Dan founded his own higher education consulting firm, the Corporation for American Education, which he headed for 26 years. In the mid-1980s, he was instrumental in assisting Fisk University, one of this country's most-cherished HBCUs, in recovering from near insolvency. In 1997, at the request of California's Governor, he helped revise California's statutes overseeing private postsecondary and vocational education. Dan was a writer, a deep thinker, a servant-leader, a devoted husband and father, and a friend. He was called early by his Maker, but his legacy lives on. America owes a debt to Dan J. Smith and countless other unsung heroes whose life's work represent the fabric of our Nation.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I preface my remarks with a personal statement that, while I am opposed to the advocates of man-made global warming theories, I am committed to a clean and healthy environment, to purifying our air, our water, and our soil; all of this for the sake of the people of this planet, including my three children, Anika, Tristan and Christian. I do this not because of some paranoid theory that humans are changing the climate of the world, but instead, I am very concerned about the health of the people of the world and, thus, committed to clean air, clean soil, and clean water. Thus, we have, today, to take a look at the issues of global warming and pollution that confront our society because there are enormous implications to this whole discussion of what has been called ``man- made global warming.'' Only 18 months ago the refrain ``Case closed: Global warming is real,'' was repeated as if the mantra from some religious zealots. It was pounded into the public consciousness over the airwaves, in print, and even at congressional hearings, ``Case closed.'' Well, this was obviously a brazen attempt to end open discussion and to silence differing views by dismissing the need for seriously contrary arguments and seriously listening to both sides of an argument. And rather than hearing both sides of the argument, this was an attempt to dismiss arguments even though the person making the arguments might have a very impressive credential or might be a very educated scientist or someone else who should be listened to. And yes, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of prominent scientists and meteorologists, the heads of science departments at major universities, and others, who are highly critical of the man-made global warming theory. There is Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been adamant in his opposition, as has a Bjarne Andresen of the University of Copenhagen, Adreas Prokoph, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Ottawa, Dr. William Gray, a famous hurricane expert and former President of the American Meteorological Association, and Dr. Kevin Trenberth, the head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center of Atmospheric Research. All of these are respected scholars, all skeptical of the unwarranted alarmism that we are being pressured to accept. But their views and those of so many more prominent scholars and scientists don't matter. The debate is over. Al Gore has his Nobel Prize, and the film, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' its Academy Award. So shut up and get your mind in lockstep with the politically correct prevailing wisdom, or at least what the media tells us is the prevailing wisdom. And no questions, please, the case is closed. We heard that dozens and dozens of times. So what is this theory that now is so accepted that no more debate is needed or even tolerated? The man-made global warming theory may be presented as scientific truism, but it is not. It is a disturbing theory that the Earth began a warming cycle 150 years ago that differed greatly from all the other warming and cooling cycles in the Earth's past. This warming cycle of 150 years ago, we keep being told, is tied directly to mankind's use of fossil fuels, basically oil and coal, which, of course, oil and coal and these fuels, these so-called fossil fuels, have powered our industries and made modern civilization possible. Fossil fuels, we are told, puts an ever-increasing so-called level of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the most prevalent of these gases, of course, being carbon dioxide, CO2. This increase in CO2 causes the warming that we are supposedly experiencing today. This man-made warming cycle, according to the theory, is rapidly approaching a tipping point when the world's temperatures will abruptly jump and accelerate with dire and perhaps apocalyptic consequences for the entire planet. For skeptics of this hypothesis, the consequence of accepting this theory, the consequences are far more dire than any of the consequences we're supposed to be suffering out of a predicted rise in temperature. And by the way, that rise in temperature, of course, isn't really happening, which we will discuss a little bit later. If one accepts this as fact rather than theory, this idea that man- made global warming is overwhelming our planet, then one would be expected to also accept controls, regulations, taxation, international planning and enforcement, mandated lifestyle changes, lowering expectations, limiting consumer choice, as well as personal and family sacrifices that are all going to be necessary for us to save the planet from--well, from us. It really takes a lot to frighten people into accepting such personally restrictive mandates that would result from implementing a global warming-based agenda. People's lives will change if we decide to implement a global warming-based agenda. Yes, people's lives will change, but not for the better if we have to end, for example, discount airline tickets and cheap travel. Most people who listen to the global warming advocates don't understand that the global warming advocates believe that jet planes are some of the worst CO2 polluters, and thus they have to be restricted, according to the theory. So how many people really do want to end the cheap airline tickets that can be had over the Internet? Obviously one of the goals will be to severely restrict the use of private automobiles. Sure. Now, we know that. The fact that the automobile has been targeted for the last 20 years certainly suggests that automobiles are on the hit list. But don't worry, we may have to give up our automobiles, but the rich and the government officials will still have their private jets, their Suburbans, and even their limousines. But the rest of us, of course, will be relegated to public transportation. And we will have very limited travel rights unless we can, of course, afford the higher and higher prices. Global warming predictions appear designed to strike fear into the heart of those malcontents who just won't willingly accept the mandates in their lifestyle changes that are needed in order to save the planet. These people, of course, won't accept things like higher food prices, which will come with an implementation of global warming mandates. And of course they certainly won't accept less meat in their diet. That's right, part of the manmade global warming theory and how we're going to solve this is to wean mankind away from meat. A 2006 report entitled ``Livestock's Long Shadow'' to the United Nations mentions livestock emissions and grazing, and it places the blame for global warming squarely on the hind parts of cows. Livestock, the report claims, accounts for 18 percent of the gases that supposedly cause the global warming of our climate. Cows are greenhouse-emitting machines. Fuel for fertilizer and meat production and transportation, as well as clearing the fields for grazing, produce 9 percent of the global CO2 emissions, according to the report. And also, cows produce ammonia, causing acid rain, of course. Now, if that's not bad enough, all of these numbers are projected in this report to double by the year 2050. Well, not only are we then going to have to cut personal transportation, which will keep us at home, but when we stay at home, we can't even have a bbq. And heck, they won't even let us have a hamburger. I would like to point out that before the introduction of cattle, millions upon millions of buffalo dominated the Great Plains of America. They were so thick you could not see where the herd started and where it ended. I can only assume that the anti-meat, manmade global warming crowd must believe that buffalo farts have more socially redeeming value than the same flatulence emitted by cattle. Yes, this is absurd, but the deeper one looks into this global warming juggernaut, the weirder this movement becomes and the more denial is evident. Ten years ago, for example, the alarmists predicted that by now we would be clearly plagued by surging temperatures. In testimony before Congress 20 years ago, now, says James Hansen, a man who has repeatedly challenged people who simply want to make sure that his views are balanced off at NASA, but NASA's James Hansen 20 years ago predicted CO2 would shoot up and global temperatures would shoot up by more than one-third of a degree Celsius during the 1990s. So a rise in temperature was predicted, and it would lead to what? Rising sea levels. In the end, we'll have rising sea levels, perhaps even cities under water, droughts and famines, and of course an increase in tropical diseases. Yes, tropical diseases. Sometimes it's difficult for me to hear it when certain environmentalists use that as an example, considering the fact that tropical diseases, namely malaria, has killed millions of children in the Third World because the environmentalists have been successful in banning DDT. But that's another issue. But the point is there are serious consequences, perhaps unintended consequences to following nonsensical extremism in the arena of the environment. So were the predictions of global heating correct? Forget ``case closed.'' The question needs to be answered. Were all of these predictions correct? Mr. Hansen said it would rise by a third of a degree just a little over a decade ago. And the answer is that the predictions of a decade ago have turned out to be dramatically wrong. Temperatures during that decade rose only one-third of the jump predicted by Hansen, a modest 0.11, one-third of what he had predicted. Furthermore, numerous and powerful hurricanes that were forecast by the National Hurricane Center, for example, at NOAA and others, well, by now we haven't seen such a trend, and by now we were led to believe there would be a drought and a melting of the ice caps would be clearly upon us. My beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains in California were due to heat up, dry up, brown up, and burn, burn, burn. Yep, during the entire Clinton administration, we heard these predictions over and over again. During the Clinton administration, we saw scientists produce study after study predicting the horrific impact of the unstoppable onslaught of man-made global warming, which we were led to believe would be overwhelming us right now. Right now. Of course, if there was even a hint that the conclusion of their research wouldn't back up the theory of man-made global warming, these scientists wouldn't have seen one red cent from the Federal research pool during the Clinton administration. In a September, 2005, article from Discovery Magazine, Dr. William Gray, now an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and a former president of the American Meteorological Association, was asked if funding problems that he was experiencing and has been experiencing could be traced to his skepticism of man-made global warming. His response: ``I had NOAA money for 30 years, and then when the Clinton administration came in and Gore started directing some of the environmental stuff, I was cut off. I couldn't get any money from NOAA. They turned down 13 straight proposals from me.'' This man is one of the most prominent hurricane experts in the world, cut off during the Clinton-Gore administration because he had been skeptical of global warming. In fact, Al Gore's first act as Vice President was to insist that William Harper be fired as the Chief Scientist at the Department of Energy. Now, why was that? Well, that's because William Harper had uttered words indicating that he was open minded to the issue of global warming. So off with his head. They didn't want someone who was open minded. They wanted someone who was going to provide grants based on people who would verify this man-made global warming theory. Now, that was 1993 when Mr. Harper was relieved, the first year of the Clinton-Gore administration. So for over a decade, all we got was a drumbeat of one-sided research, setting the stage for the false claim that there is a scientific consensus about whether or not man-made global warming is real. Unfortunately, for all those scientists who went along with the scheme, now, over a decade later, there is a big problem. Contrary to what all those scientists living on their Federal research grants predicted, the world hasn't been getting warmer. In fact, for the last 7 years, there has been no warming at all, which has been verified even by, for example, Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological Organization. He's their Secretary General. He reluctantly admitted that global temperatures have not risen since 1998, according to a BBC article. Global snowfall is at record levels and there are fewer, not more, hurricanes. Furthermore, there is some melting in the Arctic. We all know that there is some melting in the Arctic because we hear about it over and over again. In fact, NBC did some special on the melting of the Arctic and how bad it is and showed the pictures of penguins sitting on a diminishing piece of ice in the Arctic. Except there was a problem with that story. You see, penguins don't live in the Arctic; they live in the Antarctic. There are no penguins in the Arctic. So NBC had it wrong. Somebody must have told them that the penguins from the Arctic were being victimized by global warming. In fact, in the Antarctic, where the penguins are, there is a buildup of ice. It is getting cooler. And in the Arctic, of course, we do recognize there has been a warming in the Arctic, likely due to ocean currents that have changed in the last few years and not due to CO2 that comes from somebody's SUV. After hearing about the extinction of the polar bear, which has been drummed into our heads, we now hear that--and by the way, just today the polar bear was put on an endangered species list. But are the polar bears really disappearing? We now hear from Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Department of the Environment under the Canadian territory of Nunavut and other experts, I might add, who suggest, yes, all but one or two species of the polar bears are flourishing. Yes, of the twenty- odd species, there are perhaps one or two that are suffering and not doing well, but all the rest of the species of polar bear are expanding. In fact, we don't have a situation with fewer polar bears; we've got more polar bears. Yet our government is putting the polar bear on an endangered species list, saying that if the ice cap melts, the polar bears will all be going away because their habitat has been destroyed. Unfortunately, the debate on this case is not closed. So explaining emerging obvious differences between the reality and the theory needs to be addressed by the people who have been advocating global warming. The case is not closed. The gnomes of climate theory now have to come up with explanations for us of why it was predicted that the weather would be this way at this time and it is not. Why is it that basically we've had stable weather, if not a little cooler weather, for the last 8 years? The first attempt to basically cover their tracks about this noticeable dichotomy in what they predicted and what was happening happened a few years ago, and it went very slowly but very cleverly. The words ``climate change'' have now replaced the words ``global warming.'' Get that? Every time you hear it now, half the time they are going to be using the words ``climate change'' where those very same people were so adamant about ``global warming'' only 4 or 5 years ago. So no matter what happens now, now that they've changed it to ``climate change'' rather than global warming, whatever happens to the weather pattern, whether it's hotter or cooler, it can be presented as further verification of human-caused change. If you just had ``human-caused warming,'' it would have to be at least warming for them to actually have any verification of what they were trying to say. But right now by using ``climate change,'' they can bolster their right to be taken seriously upon recommending policies, even though no matter what direction the climate goes, it is justified by how they are labeling themselves. I'm sorry, fellows. Do you really think the world is filled with morons? When it comes to bait and switch, used car salesmen are paragons of virtue compared to this global warming crowd. Excuse me. It's not the ``global warming'' crowd now; it's the ``climate change'' crowd. Of course, they don't want any of us to own automobiles; so what the heck. They can act like used car salesmen because there will be more jobs for them as being advocates in the climate change arena. We just need to ask ourselves, if a salesman gives a strong pitch and claims something that is later found to be wrong, totally wrong, when does one stop trusting that salesman? Then if he starts playing word games, changing the actual words that he's using about the same product rather than just admitting an error, isn't it reasonable to stop trusting him? Yes, Al Gore and company, we have noticed that you are now saying ``climate change'' rather than ``global warming.'' I know that people tried to slip it in, but we have noticed, and there is something behind this that the American people should take note of. Why has that changed? Well, that's because the world has not been getting warmer in these last 7 years, as they predicted it would be. So instead of word games, what these advocates need to explain is what is happening in the real world today and why it doesn't match what they said was going to happen based on their ``case closed, man-made global warming is real.'' They must realize that someone is bound to notice that last winter was unusually cold and that chilly weather seems to be the trend. It actually snowed in Denver just less than a month ago, and people have commented on the chilliness of the weather this year. So now we see a beehive of activity going on. Those federally funded scientists are trying to save some modicum of credibility by adjusting their computers and coming up with some explanations that keep man-made global warming as a theory but explains away the current dichotomy between what they said would happen and what is actually happening. Of course, computer models were used to justify their hysteria and their hysteric warming predictions to begin with. So now the computer's information input is readjusted and we can see all these things coming out of it. Well, there's a lot of questions that need to be answered and a lot of things that were told to us that obviously are not true and are not consistent with what's been going on and what we see happening around us today. And why is this of such concern to us? Why are we concerned that global warming as a theory has been presented and that it's false, and why should we be so concerned that it's being accepted? What could be the negative results of just accepting it from some people who might be very sincere, very sincere and concerned about the planet? Well, what happens in such cases as this is that we have situations that occur and people then actually come to the point where they are focused on aspects of what's going on in the world that will not make it better but instead have terrible consequences in and of themselves. For example, a deadly cyclone just brought death and destruction to Burma, and it was a horrible thing. Burma is a country that is run by a vicious dictatorship, and after the cyclone went through Burma, the dictatorship wouldn't even permit our supplies to be given to those people of Burma. Well, Al Gore is so committed to this idea of global warming, which, of course, most people call ``climate change,'' that when commenting on Burma, instead of talking about the monstrous nature of the Burmese regime, instead he had to say, ``The trend toward more category five storms--the larger ones and the trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.'' What should Al Gore's reaction have been? Well, what it should have been was ``The Burmese regime is despicable. The Burmese people are suffering. They are dying by the hundreds of thousands. It is despicable for this dictatorship not to permit our aid in.'' But instead that was ignored, and what Al Gore did focus on ``This is a chance for me to explain global warming,'' as the quote I just gave suggested. Well, the Burmese cyclone hit Burma. If you take a look at what Al Gore's words were, he is trying to say that it is because of the warming of the water. I have in front of me, which I will submit as part of the Record, a satellite image of ocean temperatures taken by NOAA on May 5 which suggests the ocean in the area of the Burmese cyclone is one of the coldest water areas on Earth. So what the heck is Mr. Gore talking about? What is all this mumbo jumbo? Again, he is warning about global warming because he is grasping at an attempt to try to verify in some way his predictions that have been all wrong for the last 5 years. Dr. William Gray, for example, as I mentioned, the former chairman of the American Meteorological Association, a pre-eminent hurricane expert, has noted ``there is no reliable data available to indicate increased hurricane frequency or intensity in any of the globe's seven tropical cyclone basins.'' So hurricanes and cyclones are not a product of global warming. Dr. Gray, I think, has more credentials than Mr. Gore. But most convincingly, the most convincing part of this is that no matter what Al Gore says about the warming of this water, that is not what we are hearing from other sources. I will now submit for the Record indications that actually the water temperature is not warming and is expected to cool, especially in the northern areas of the world. So what is really important here is that we take a look and we see that the world is not warming and that those people who have been advocating this are grasping to try to find a way out of the fact that they are telling us that we need to adopt the policies that they want for our country, yet their predictions on the weather were wrong. What is happening is, and the articles that I will submit for the Record show, is that some of the organizations that were predicting that we would be in global warming now are telling us that, yes, there will be global warming. We are not giving it up. But it is going to be 10 to 15 years from now and not in the last 10 years, as was predicted. In fact, as I said, we actually have this article that suggests that the sea around Europe and North America will cool slightly during the next decade, and the Pacific will be about the same. And the article suggests that it will be a ``10-year time-out for global warming.'' This is based on studies that were conducted by organizations that only a few years ago were predicting that global warming would be so evident to us today. Well, they have to say something I guess. To understand all of this nonsense, you have to go back and look at the basic assumptions that are being used by global warming alarmists. They believe that excessive amounts of manmade CO2 are being deposited into the air which causes a greenhouse effect that warms the atmosphere. They call this the ``carbon footprint.'' That is what we are led to look for. We don't want to look in Burma for this vicious dictatorship causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people because of the repression. They won't even let our supplies in. We have to blame it on global warming causing a cyclone which hit Burma. No. I don't think so. But carbon footprinting is now what we should look at. The global warming analysts want us to judge everything by its carbon footprint. What that means is how much CO2 is being released because of that activity, because they believe it is CO2 that causes the planet to warm. This concept, just like these other extrapolations that we get from computers, is wrong. It is dead wrong. A rise in CO2 comes after global temperature increases, not before. This has been observed in ice cores by prominent scientists, yet ignored by those screaming their warnings at us. That's right. Ice cores indicate that there have been periods, many periods, of warming and cooling in the history of the world. But the warming that has happened preceded the increase in the level of CO2 in the world. That is why we have warming. That is why we can't say that if we control CO2 that it is going to prevent the climate from warming. Obviously, if the CO2 increase comes as a result of the warming, by changing that, the warming is still going to be with us. Well, that is getting things to the core. And I don't mean a pun by that in terms of the ice core, but the fact is that this evidence is confirmed by ice cores. So take note that the very argument upon which global warming is built has been proven to be false and that manmade global warming advocates will not address that issue. I have been in hearing after hearing. I have been involved with debates on this thing. When you tell them ``no,'' and you name several scientists, and I will be happy to do that for the Record, who are indicating that the CO2 increases come after the warming of the planet, well, that issue just isn't addressed. After all, the case is closed. We don't need to discuss any of those type of details. To cite one example of experts' findings on this, by the way, is Tom Scheffelin of the California Air Resources Board who stated on November 5, 2007, that ``CO2 levels track temperature changes between 300 to 1,000 years after the temperature has changed. CO2 has no direct role in global warming; rather, it responds to biological activity, which responds to climate changes.'' The fact is that the global warming community is jumping through hoops and bending over backwards struggling to find one little glint of new information to cover their arrogant attempt to stampede humankind into draconian policies and to cut off the debate and dismiss the debate without addressing the issues. The government-financed propaganda campaign to convince us that manmade global warming has been and continues to be a major threat, this propaganda is a cacophony of gibberish presented as a scientific explanation. Go back and look at what Mr. Gore's words were about that cyclone. That same sort of putting together of pseudoscience wording in order to impress people is seen time and again. There are facts now evident, of course, that this can't be ignored. And Mr. Gore's mumbo jumbo notwithstanding, the predictions have been wrong. And the CO2 premise is wrong. The methodology that has been used has been wrong. The observations have been wrong. And the attempt to shut up those people who disagree has been wrong. I remember Al Gore labeling me a Stalinist because when I chaired the subcommittee on Research and Science Education, I insisted that both sides be presented. There was a study on research and the environment, a subcommittee of the Science Committee. And I insisted when I was chairman of the committee that expert witnesses on both sides be present at hearings and that they address each other's contentions. Well, to him, that is Stalinism. Well, I would suggest that the propaganda campaign of the manmade global warming alarmists has far more in common with Stalinism than does insisting that both sides of an argument be heard. One has to really believe that he or she has a corner on the truth to make such a complaint as the one that he was making against me. He must feel really safe in saying that he knows the truth and that is in order to justify not having both sides of an argument presented at a hearing. Of course, Mr. Gore's documentary, ``An Inconvenient Truth'' by its own title suggests that it should be taken as the truth. And I won't go into the numerous debatable points and outright errors that are presented in the film. Something far worse has recently emerged concerning the fundamental veracity and truthfulness of Vice President Gore's film. In the film, there are numerous film segments of climate and environmental incidents to add credibility to the alleged scientific points that were being documented in the film. However, what we see is not necessarily what we are getting. The audience is being given questionable information and questionable views because what they are seeing is not necessarily a documentary view but, instead it is a special effects creation in an attempt to convince the viewers that they are watching an actual occurrence of something. Specifically, let me note that the film portrays a huge cracking and breaking away of a large portion of the polar ice cap. I have not seen the film, but I am told the scene is awesome and somewhat overwhelming, leaving the audience feeling that they are witnessing a massive occurrence, and this massive occurrence, of course, Mr. Gore conveniently ties to human activity, the human activity he wants to regulate and of course the human activity that he will profit from if we have this carbon credit scheme instituted by the various governments of the world. Unfortunately, that view of the breakaway of the ice there in the Arctic is a total fake. It is not National Geographic footage of a huge breaking away of a portion of the ice cap. It is not firsthand, grand photographic evidence of the ice breaking. Instead, what the audience is looking at is an example of special effects. It was not the ice cap that was being looked at. It was Styrofoam. That's right. Styrofoam. And the real sin of all of this was not only the sin of presenting Styrofoam and trying to trick people into thinking they are watching something real, the ice breaking away, but that we haven't heard about it. I have only seen this in one or two publications. We haven't heard about it. If such a trick and attempt to deceive was done by a conservative, I could tell you that that conservative would be tarred and feathered in the media. In fact, if there is anything wrong, I am sure that one or two points that I have in this speech are debatable, and I am sure that those will be looked at with a microscope. And if I am wrong, even a little bit, they will try to use that to just say ``don't listen to anything he says.'' But Mr. Gore can present the breaking away of Styrofoam and present it to us as if it is really happening. And he doesn't even apologize or comment on it when it is found out. Al Gore has no comment on this deception. Maybe it is inconvenient for him to comment because, yes, it might hurt his credibility. And after all, the world is getting warmer in these last 7 years, which is just the opposite of what he predicted. And of course, maybe his predictions were based on a Styrofoam computer model. But we will go into that later. Well, the first time I met President Gore was during my first term in Congress back in 1989 and 1990. Al Gore then was a United States Senator. And he marched into the Science Committee room followed by a platoon of cameras and reporters. He sat in front of the Science Committee, and he demanded that President Bush, that is George W.'s father, declare an ozone emergency. And he waved in his hand a report of evidence that an ozone hole was opening up over the Northeast United States. A few days later, the report touted by the Senator was found to have been based on faulty data, data collected by one so-called researcher flying a single-engine Piper Cub with limited technology and not much expertise. Senator Gore was demanding emergency shutdowns of factories and manufacturing plants in the Northeast. It would have had dire consequences for the American economy and for those people who worked in those plants. But they be damned, because we are out to save the planet. Now does anyone here see any type of a pattern here, the ozone hole that wasn't there and then we are going to have this drastic action in order to save the planet? The scare tactics, the Chicken Little-ism and all the rest of these types of things that are trying to create hysteria, this isn't a new tactic. Let's look at some of the past examples of the nonsense being portrayed as science. Cranberries, yes, cranberries, shield your children from Ocean Spray. That's right, the cranberry industry suffered a loss of nearly $20 million back in 1957 when it was determined that perhaps cranberries, there was something wrong with the cranberries. In fact, later on it was admitted to be just a mistake. But the cranberry industry went to hell for 2 or 3 years. But if you are not growing cranberries, what do you care about cranberry farmers? No, you care about people. Many peoples' lives were destroyed because over a 2- or 3-year period, cranberries were basically labeled as something that they should not have been labeled, and it was a catastrophe for them, just like perhaps those people that worked in factories that would have been closed up had we taken that ozone scare seriously. Then there was the scare over cyclamate. Cyclamate was used in everyday items like soda, jams, ice cream. It was a sweetening element, it's very low in calories, that industry, it was a very fine product and generated an enormous profit. In the early 1970s, the FDA banned cyclamates. I remember very well. People spent billions of dollars building this industry. It was a great industry, but it was labeled as a cancer hazard after someone, some kind of a researcher, force-fed rats the equivalent of 350 cans of soda a day. By giving these rats the equivalent of 350 soda cans a day, 8 out of 240 got sick. Well, even that was a faulty test, and eventually the truth prevailed and cyclamates were labeled okay, they were given an okay. That was after about 10 years. Canada, by the way, never banned cyclamates, but in order to protect us and save us, and it was a terrible situation, yes, the cyclamate industry never recovered. The damage, however, was done. This episode has had serious consequences, because when the cyclamates were banned, that led to the introduction of what, high fructose corn syrup, so, yes, and with all of the obesity and problems that come with high fructose corn syrup. That first got its hold in the food business at a time when cyclamates were thought to be the answer, but they were banned. So we have had examples of this over and over again, another American industry that was decimated by a rotten theory that had hazardous consequences for implementing. The next example of fear mongering, of pseudoscience, happened in 1989. February 26, 1989, that evening thousands of Americans tuned into ``60 Minutes'' and heard Ed Bradley say the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them on the trees longer and make them look better. That's the conclusion of a number of scientific experts. And who is at risk? Children who may someday develop cancer. That one story, by the way, snowballed into a media blitz, a feeding frenzy, Meryl Streep testified before Congress, spouting off, again, pseudoscientific nonsense. Parents tossed apples out the window, schools removed applesauce from the cafeteria and, of course, replaced that with much safer nutritious substances like ice cream and pudding. Of course, there was only one problem, the Alar didn't cause cancer, the apples definitely didn't and even the Alar didn't. The study was based on bad science, and 20,000 apple growers in the United States suffered major financial harm. Okay, so by now such alarmism has become a political tool that scares people to try to get them to do things. That's what we are facing with global warming, excuse me, climate change. The Three Mile Island incident is another example of this. You remember Three Mile Island, a near disaster in Pennsylvania which, basically, coupled with the movie ``The China Syndrome'' led to a total halt in the development of nuclear energy as a means for producing energy in the United States. The Jane Fonda movie, ``The China Syndrome,'' coupled with a mishap at a nuclear power plant, that was, I might add, a mishap that no one suffered any health consequences, no one died, no one was hurt. Yet it was presented to the public as this catastrophe, and that led to a shutdown of the efforts of building any new nuclear power plants. Ironically, of course, nuclear power is the most effective means of producing power with no carbon footprint. Again, it was a total con job on the nuclear energy industry. What about the ozone hole over the Antarctic? We are told that it would grow and grow for decades, and it was totally out of control. Well, Boyce Rensberger, Director of the Knight Fellowship of Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that ozone depletion is a cyclical event, expanding and contracting throughout the eons of history. Here is a scientist from MIT telling us that the current ozone depression has been simply part of a reoccurring cycle, not as a result of the use of chlorofluorocarbons, meaning your aerosol cans. So, what we have got is a situation where at a gigantic shift of expense, of shifting away from aerosol, we have basically accomplished nothing because the ozone hole opens and closes on its own. I might add, we know now, of course, there have been many cycles of warming and cooling, and is this a natural thing? Well, if you consider the sun being natural, yes. Instead of saying that CO2 that's coming out of the use of fossil fuels is causing our climate to change now, as compared to all the other times it changed in the past, maybe these people should look at the sun, and maybe there are natural cycles where you have sunspots and it causes warming and cooling on the Earth. Could that be an explanation? Well, let's think about it. Otherwise, how do we explain the fact that on Jupiter and Mars we have cooling and warming cycles that seem to be matching some of the cycles here on Earth. Well, maybe there are some SUVs up there on Mars. Well, the last example, one of the last examples, of course, that I have in my memory of people trying to be frightened into supporting policy with this kind of alarmism has been acid rain. The acid rain was supposed to decimate our forests, destroy our fresh water bodies and roads, our buildings and sidewalks, and, what happened? That was just an onslaught that was going on, I worked for Ronald Reagan at the time, he was just beaten without mercy for his unwillingness to take costly action aimed at thwarting acid rain. He insisted on waiting for an in- depth study to be completed. While he waited, of course, he was vilified as if he doesn't care about the environment, he doesn't really care about whether or not our environment is being destroyed by acid rain which is being caused by us. Well, a 10-year study was going on, Reagan knew about it. He waited, as he well should have, and there was a study by the Nation Acid Precipitation Assessment Project and was submitted to Congress in the 1990s. It minimized the human impact on the acidity on the water and especially the rain in America's northeast. The issue died quickly after that report, and it just went away. After all of the intense attacks on Ronald Reagan, once that report was in, it just sort of went away. Well, one reason it went away, maybe there was another alarmist scheme to go to. Yes, there was, one was emerging about this time, and it was on the cover of Time Magazine 30 years ago. This was probably the most pitiful of all of these alarmist attempts. It was, three decades ago, the scientists were warning us about global cooling. We were told early that we were on the edge of another ice age. Well, unfortunately, that one went away very quickly because the temperatures immediately didn't do what they said it was going to do, and the temperatures actually did not go down dramatically or freeze. It did get a little bit warmer during those days. It was one of those warming cycles, it went up for a few years and it went down. It was getting warmer, so even as those predictions of frozen gloom and doom, they just changed the words, those same people were making the predictions of frozen gloom and doom now were sort of talking about global warming gloom and doom. You guessed it, so global cooling became global warming almost overnight. Now, after global warming, climate change comes almost overnight. So the scare tactics are nothing new. It is tied to a tried-and-true method of how to try to manipulate people to accept things they wouldn't otherwise accept. Unfortunately, there are long-term negative consequences that will be very clear to our future generations. Of course, they are being lied to all the time. I often asked students from my district, who are here visiting in Washington, whether they believe the air in southern California is better now or worse now than when I went to high school in southern California 40 years ago. A huge percentage, maybe 80 percent of these students, believe that the air quality of 40 years ago was dramatically better than today. Of course, that's not just a lie, that's a big lie. This generation has every reason to be optimistic about the future, and they are being lied to, being told that they are poisoned, and things are getting worse and worse. In fact, man-made global warming is going to devastate the whole planet any way. No, these kids now, when I tell them that, no, when I went to high school, the air pollution in southern California was much worse than it is today, they are incredulous. What is all this lying about? Why are all these children being lied to? Why are we all being lied to? I remember as a college student, the first Earth Day--I am quoting someone here--``I remember as a college student at the first Earth Day being told that it was a certainty that by the year 2000, the world would be starving and out of energy,'' writes Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at University of Alabama. Dr. Christy goes on to say ``Similar pronouncements today about catastrophes due to human-induced climate change sound all too familiar and all too exaggerated to me as someone who actually produces and analyzes climate information.'' So, we are told that polar bears are dying, but they aren't. As we have known that we have all of these other predictions, we are told that the polar ice caps are melting, but now we know that the polar ice caps are melting yes, only in the Arctic, but in the Antarctic, ice is actually growing. Hurricane Katrina, we were told would only be the first of many horrendous hurricanes to hit the United States in the next few years but, of course, no hurricane equal or close to has been on the horizon. In fact, a hurricane that was just as strong as Katrina hit the United States 100 years earlier, long before this effective ``global warming.'' So when you look at facts like this, an honest debate is long overdue but yet we see an attempt to shut down an honest debate. I will submit an advertisement, the Hill newspaper from the Environmental Defense Action Fund, and it says ``What's next? The Bond- Voinovich Cigarettes Aren't Addictive Act?'' What they are saying, it's a cute way of saying, anybody who questions global warning, it is the equivalent of saying that cigarettes aren't addictive. Well, that's a great way to dismiss someone's arguments without addressing them. It says here, ``Some senators,'' this is in the add, ``are asking you to ignore . . . an international scientific consensus.'' Well, let's put it this way, we hear that, there is a consensus over and over again. There is no consensus. The world is not getting warmer, and I would submit a list of 400 members of the scientific community who do not agree with a man-made global warming theory and, I might add, I quoted numerous very prestigious members of the scientific community already in this speech. So what we have is alarmism at its worst, and the consequences will be very, very severe if we let these people get away with this. Now, what we have done is we have, again, permitted people to make their case without having to defend their case. This is never more evident than in the dealings with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the United Nations panel. I will submit several statements that indicate that the IPCC was wrong in its approach, in its entire methodology in trying to determine whether or not global warming, whether there is global warming and whether or not it is caused by man-made activity. So with this said, we need to look and say, What is the negative impact of all of this lack of truthful information? What could possibly happen? If someone says well, aren't we all against pollution? So what if someone is making a claim that global warming exists and it is caused by humankind and in reality it is just the pollution that we are both trying to get it at. Well, that just doesn't work. The fact is if we accept this theory of man-made global warming, we will be focusing our activities on trying to eliminate CO2 rather than eliminate toxic substances from our air. If I am concerned about my children, my three triplets, Christian, Anika and Tristan, I am concerned about their health, that is something that I think I share with every parent. Their health is not in any way threatened by CO2. CO2 is nontoxic. It is threatened by NOX and other toxin materials that come out of engines in cars and other sources. So if we only focus on CO2, we will end up focusing on the wrong target. What we need to do is make sure that we develop clean energy sources, not because of global warming but because of the health of our children. And also, we need to be independent of foreign sources. The fact is that foreign sources of oil, because we are not developing our own oil resources as a result of the dynamics created by the global warming juggernaut that we have been experiencing, the fact is that we have not drilled for our own oil. We have not focused on real alternatives to energy like nuclear energy. The fact is that we need to make sure right now that we do our very best not to be captured by this, what I consider to be one of the greatest hoaxes that I have seen in my lifetime, but instead focus our efforts on accomplishing something that is real and positive for the people of the world and the people of the United States of America. We should be drilling for oil so that the terrorists overseas are denied the revenue when we are forced to buy oil from countries that are allied with these terrorists. We need to make sure that we develop better engines, and make sure that those engines are not putting pollutants into the air and forget about the CO2, go to the pollutants. Mr. Speaker, I thank you and I will submit these articles for the Record.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, in the 6\1/2\ years since terrorists attacked the American homeland, our government has undertaken a series of steps to prepare for, deter, and ultimately stop future attacks from occurring. In advancing these objectives, it has been essential to partner with like-minded nations to ensure security and freedom for all our citizens. In this regard, I would like to take the opportunity to express the appreciation of many in the Congress to President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan as he prepares to leave office later this month. During President Chen's time in office, Taiwan has demonstrated time and again its commitment to global security and cooperation. Such actions have been forthcoming despite the preoccupation of an existential threat facing it from across the Taiwan Strait. After 9/11, Taiwan immediately opened its airspace to U.S. military aircraft transiting Pacific routes to Afghanistan. It subsequently partnered with our government and others in the Container Security Initiative, which seeks to prevent illicit cargo from reaching rogue entities around the world. Furthermore, Taiwan has committed over $100 million to recovery efforts in Afghanistan, making it one of the most significant contributors to coalition efforts there. Recognizing that global security can be advanced in a variety of ways, Taiwan has been a leader in addressing public health issues internationally. Struck by SARS in 2003, Taiwan acted swiftly to share information with other nations that helped limit its spread. Soon thereafter, Taiwan's experience in tackling avian flu was again made available to the international community in order to deter that contagion's deadly proliferation. Beyond these multilateral efforts, Taiwan has also developed one of the most extensive bilateral development assistance programs in the world. For instance, it has established 36 long-term technical missions in 30 partner countries, focusing on capacity building, agriculture, fisheries, horticulture, livestock, handicrafts, medicine, transportation, industry, mining, electricity generation, printing, vocational training, trade and investment. Taiwan allocates approximately 100,000 tons of rice annually as humanitarian foreign aid. After the South Asia tsunami occurred in December 2004, the Taiwanese government provided $50 million in initial relief assistance, and cooperated with international non-governmental organizations in additional relief efforts. It also provided more than 355 tons of relief materials to tsunami-affected countries. These and other measures undertaken by Taiwan over the past several years are to be commended. Under the leadership of President Chen, his government has served as a model for others seeking to play a constructive role in the international community. I encourage continued leadership by Taiwan as a new president prepares to assume office, and can assure him of America's enduring partnership in these efforts.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reserving my right to object, I am just not fully aware of this. I understand that a very important vote that was taken yesterday has been negated and that there is some objection to correcting the situation, which was a clerical error, apparently, by unanimous consent on our side. I am just wondering where that stands in comparison to the unanimous consent objections that were being expected of us today.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Sure, I would yield.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, I won't go that far, but I do appreciate the fact that there has been this effort to reach out and treat people fairly on our side of the aisle. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me congratulate and thank Congressman Frank. Barney has been very fair. He backed my ability to have an amendment on the floor, and I will talk about that amendment next. But let me note when he stated that our goal is debt relief for these countries that are trying to do right for their people, I think that in the manager's amendment, and the Congressman did reach out to try to find language that was agreeable, but I don't think that we have reached that language. I think there is still wiggle room in the language of the manager's amendment that would permit countries that are governed by authoritarian people who are claiming that they are going to have democratic elections is still there. Our State Department quite often supports those governments and would like to claim they are heading in that direction, like the government of Ethiopia, which in their last election threw everybody who won the elections in jail. But now they are our greatest ally in Africa. The State Department would love to have debt relief to a country like that. We shouldn't be doing that.

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would ask for an additional 1 minute.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would just say that Ethiopia is an example of a country that we should not be providing debt relief to until it has democratic elections.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this basic legislation, which would instruct, of course, the Secretary of Treasury to negotiate debt relief for developing countries, especially those new democracies. And let me note that much of the debt that we have heard about today that has had such a horrible impact on the way of living, on the standard of living of people throughout the developing world, that debt is basically a result of dictatorship. It is not a result of democratic governments making wrong decisions. By and large we're talking about governments that have been run by authoritarians and gangsters who are putting their own people in debt. I would suggest that anyone who lends money to a dictatorship should take notice and they are doing so at their own risk. However, these people who establish democratic government and replace dictatorships should not be forced to bear the burden of having massive debt. This is what keeps these countries down even once they've replaced their dictators. For example, in the Soviet Union, once the Communist Party was displaced and they had free elections, we insisted that they not renounce their debt. We did not forgive their debt. That threw the Soviet Union into horrible economic chaos, which then democratic Russia that was paying for the sins of the Communist dictatorship that preceded it. We almost lost democracy in Russia because we were insisting on debt repayment and the people didn't have any moral reason to pay that back. I will have an amendment, and I am very grateful to Barney Frank for backing my ability to propose the amendment, that suggests that it be a democratically elected government and not just someone who's suggesting they will be democratic in the future that gets this debt relief. This gives the right kind of incentive.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, the amendment I am offering is easy to understand. It insists that if we provide debt relief, the recipient country's government must have a democratically elected government. The reason this is important is very clear. The dictators and kooks and gangsters who rule many Third World nations and developing countries will simply steal more if we give them the chance. Those who steal from their people will steal from us. Debt relief to dictators is a license to steal. I understand there are those who believe that we should not set such a high standard of having a democratically elected government as a prerequisite to debt relief. If dictatorships are overthrown, it is postulated then that democratic reformers will need time to hold a free election. The monetary impact of that short time period in order to have a free election organized is minimal and the number of such cases are very, very few. But that is the worst case scenario. The price of debt relief will in fact prevent foot dragging so there will be free elections at a quicker pace. On the other hand, a standard of requiring only a commitment to future and free elections opens the door to large scale manipulations and backtracking on democratic commitments by dictators or by those holding power after dictators have been overthrown. Give those in power in the Third World countries a chance to put off elections and they will just do that. Giving them the wrong incentives and opening up the door to false promises for future elections and giving them a benefit for it enables large scale theft. The chances of this negative impact, of having a lower democratic standard, is great as compared to the number of minimal cases that we will have if we are just asking true democratic reformers to hold elections before we give debt forgiveness. We have seen it over and over again in the Third World. Third World politicians claim they will hold elections, but never quite seem to get there. If we don't act to close it, this loophole will have a huge impact and allow debt relief to governments that have not instituted and have no real intent of instituting Democratic reform. Yes, I have no faith in our State Department or this administration to enforce that rule to see if they are really intent on democracy. If our standard is that words are enough, the tough guys of the world who rule too many countries will lie and get their hands on the loot with our State Department's approval, surprise, surprise. That's why my amendment is important. We should side with the Democratic reformers, not those who simply use the right words. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, which makes sense, and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate that thought very much. Again, I appreciate the fairness that I have been treated with. I will show my bipartisanship a little more. I think that I have been treated more fairly and a number of my Republican colleagues have been treated more fairly since the Democrats have become the majority than I was treated by my own leadership.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I just came from a meeting with local doctors from my district. They told me that there is a severe shortage of funds necessary to care for America's senior citizens. We are having trouble finding the money to even take care of our returning veterans. Millions of Americans are facing foreclosure on their homes. And now, with all of these challenges that we're facing at home, we are being asked to spend $50 billion to fight AIDS in Africa? This is as absurd and as irresponsible as it gets. Where are we going to get the $50 billion for Africa? Well, we can lower spending for our own people. We can raise taxes, which would likely throw us into a recession and leave us even less money for our people at home. Or of course we can borrow it. Yes, if we borrow it, it will probably come from Communist China and make ourselves even more vulnerable to their pressure. We have exported our manufacturing base to China already, and now we want to borrow even more from these dictators so we can give that money away to others? It is terrible that millions of Africans are suffering AIDS. But we cannot afford such totally irrational generosity. This is benevolence gone wild. We can't afford to shortchange our own people, to raise taxes, or to borrow it. Yet, we expect the American people to absorb another $50 billion hit for someone else? We can't take care of our own veterans when they come home from the war. We can't take care of our elderly. We have people who can't take care of their own health needs, and are at risk of losing their homes. And we are going to spend $50 billion in Africa? Mr. Speaker, we have big hearts, but we need to use our brains. We cannot afford this type of $50 billion generosity. It's going to cost, this will cost the American people their way of life. It will cost them their health care, their education for their children. It'll cost our veterans. Our economy is facing a catastrophic setback because of the irresponsible spending and taxing policies of the Federal Government. And now we're going to exacerbate that problem by making believe that we can still afford to save the world by funding every worthwhile cause out there. I'm not in any way suggesting that helping people with AIDS in Africa is not a worthwhile endeavor. But the fact is, we've got to use our heads, or we will have serious negative consequences on our own people. $50 billion is way out of line, is way out of line. It would be wonderful to help the people of Africa through this AIDS crisis by transferring tons of cash into African accounts. But I suggest to you that, as experience shows, just sending that much money will not cure AIDS in Africa, and will have serious repercussions on our standard of living and the quality of life of our own people. I ask my colleagues to vote against this type of nonsense. Watch out for the American people.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to sending $50 billion, $50 billion taken from the American people, to Africa to fight AIDS. When it comes to this situation with AIDS in Africa, obviously, we have some people in crisis who are very deserving people. But where does that $50 billion come from? Are we going to be helping people overseas at the expense of the well-being of our own people? There are only three ways of getting the money: We can take it from domestic programs, take it from those programs to help our own elderly and the health care for our own people, our own veterans; or we can raise taxes, which would knock the legs out from under our economy and make our deficit even higher; or we can borrow the money. And if we borrow the money, we end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on interest. We're going to borrow $50 billion in order to help people overseas and then end up paying interest on it for the next umpteen years? This is benevolence gone wild. Yes, we would like to help everybody in the world. But if we vote for this, it's the most irresponsible measure that I have ever seen in my term here in Congress for 20 years. We are taking directly from our veterans, from our elderly, and others to give $50 billion to Africa.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. Thus what we have to decided to is, are we going to deprive our own people, our seniors? I just came from a meeting with doctors from my district. We can't afford to provide health care for our seniors, for our veterans. We can't afford all the educational things we want to do. How can we possibly, then, take $50 billion and send it to Africa, even though it's a worthy cause? We should not be doing this. It is not in the interests of the American people. And I would call on my colleagues to oppose this totally wasteful expenditure of money.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, tonight I will discuss some serious examples of how this administration's contemptuous disregard for the authority delegated to Congress by the Constitution has impacted on how we do business here in Washington. This bad attitude has consistently manifested itself in a sophomoric resentment of Congress' constitutional role as an equal branch of government. Ironically, Congress has proven itself far more willing to cooperate than what Ronald Reagan found during the Cold War. The executive branch, however, seems too insecure to let Congress do its job, as the executive branch sees Congress basically, even with a Republican- controlled majority, as a rival. And they see us as a spoiler rather than as elected representatives of the American people playing a rightful role in establishing policy for our great country. So, unfortunately, we see that in this President of the United States. But let me add that I have worked in the White House before. I worked in the White House at a time when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress. And I have witnessed times when Congress itself, yes, has sought to undermine foreign policy initiatives of Presidents who are watching out for America's national security interests in a tumultuous time. That is not what I'm referring to and will be referring to tonight. But I mention this only to note that, yes, while I am condemning our President tonight, I recognize that in the past, many liberal left Democrats have been obstructionist in their relationship with the White House as today that I see the White House is being obstructionist to Congress. Many congressional Democrats, especially those on the far liberal left of the party, fought President Reagan every step of the way as he maneuvered to thwart Soviet expansionism during the waning days of the Cold War. Whether it was building a missile defense system, which now, I might add, protects us from rogue states such as Iran, Korea and China, or whether it was supporting resistance movements against Soviet puppet regimes in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, many congressional Democrats not only voted against the policy, which of course is their prerogative, but went far beyond that in an attempt to actually undercut and undermine the implementation of President Reagan's Cold War strategy. Liberal left Democrats in the U.S. Congress, for example, visited Nicaragua to encourage that Soviet ally regime to hold firm against Ronald Reagan's pressure to democratize. Even as the Soviets poured billions of dollars of military equipment into Nicaragua, Congress, at a very crucial moment, restricted aid to the resistance fighters who were struggling to pressure the Sandanistas, to what? To have democratic elections. In order to save Central America from a hostile takeover, Reagan had to overcome Soviet support for these rogue regimes, like the Sandinistas and different insurgencies that were supported by Cuba and the Soviet puppets in Central America, but the President also had to overcome congressional undermining of this stand that he had taken. In the end, of course, Congress, after 1 year of eliminating all aid to the freedom fighters, or he would say the ``democratic resistance'' in Nicaragua, after 1 year, which drew, threw the entire Reagan strategy into a chaotic state, Congress restored U.S. financial aid to the Nicaraguan resistance. All of this was in keeping with the fact that the liberal left of the Democratic Party at that time was trying their best not to cooperate with Ronald Reagan but to undermine what he was trying to do. Finally, after Congress, by the way, restored money to the democratic resistance, the Sandanistas agreed and relented to a democratic election. And when it was held, the Sandanistas were trounced at the polls and thrown out of power for about 10 or 15 years, which of course must have surprised the liberal left Members of the U.S. Congress who had repeatedly dumped their vitriol on President Reagan as if he was supporting a terrorist group that was trying to implement a policy in Nicaragua that would lead not to democracy but to control of their government. Well, don't let anyone tell you that bipartisanship won the Cold War. It did not. And from my point of view, and I saw it very firsthand, there was a lack of cooperation, an unwillingness to cooperate on the part of many liberal left Members of this body during the Cold War. And that's history. That's a long time ago. And it was not a shining moment for many congressional Democrats. And it is certainly not a great example, as many people say, of cooperation and bipartisanship during the Cold War. Reagan's personal influence, however, enabled Congress and the executive branch to function even though there was a certain number of people here who were intent on obstructionism. Reagan respected disagreement, even if it was done in such a disruptive way. He respected the separation and the balance of powers at the heart of our Federal Government's structure and consulted often with Congress and had very significant changes of views with Members of Congress, even those liberal leftists who were trying to obstruct his policy. That same spirit from the top is, unfortunately, not evident in this administration. The Cold War is history, yes, but currently, radical Islam has declared war on us. It is a threat that should strengthen our willingness to pull together and cooperate. Yet, the disdain and uncooperative nature of this administration towards Congress, including Republican Members, is so egregious that I can no longer assume that it is simply bureaucratic incompetence or some isolated mistake; rather, I have come to the sad conclusion that this administration is intentionally obstructing Congress' rightful and constitutional duties. Tonight I will discuss some serious examples of this administration's contemptuous disregard for authority that was delegated to Congress by the Constitution. This bad attitude has consistently manifested itself in a sophomoric resentment toward Congress' constitutional role as an equal branch of government. Ironically, Congress has proven itself far more willing to cooperate than what Ronald Reagan found in the Cold War. The executive branch, however, seems too insecure to let Congress do its job, and it is an executive branch that sees Congress, even when the Republicans held the majority, as a rival and a spoiler rather than as elected representatives of the American people, people who are playing a rightful role in establishing a policy for our great country. Unfortunately, when the President of the United States rejects the legitimacy of congressional prerogatives, there are serious consequences. Tonight I will provide examples of how this administration, for the past 7 years, has undercut congressional investigations, had lied to Members of Congress, and has forged ahead with secret deals in spite of efforts and pleas by Congress to be informed, if not involved. In the last Congress, I was chairman of the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In that capacity, I learned that in the time immediately leading up to the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City, convicted Oklahoma City bomber and murderer Terry Nichols had been in Cebu City in the Philippines. His stay in Cebu City coincided with another visitor, al Qaeda's terrorist leader Ramsey Yousef. Well, interestingly, both Nichols and Yousef used similar bombs and methods just 2 years apart to blow up two American targets. Yousef was the mastermind of the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Fifteen years ago, 1993, the World Trade Center blew up. That was Ramsey Yousef who organized that attack. Two years later Terry Nichols was a co-conspirator in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. These two individuals, one an American, one an Arab, were responsible for planning two of the most lethal terrorist attacks in our country's history. We are to believe, however, that by coincidence they both ended up in an off-the-beaten- track city in the southern Philippines. Well, one doesn't have to be a conspiracy nut to understand that this coincidence is worth looking into. The perfunctory investigation into this matter was not comprehensive. And, yes, there was a small investigation into this, but it left many questions unanswered. So I started a congressional inquiry to look at that investigation and to look into the issue myself. This inquiry was sanctioned by Henry Hyde, chairman of the International Relations Committee, and its purpose was to see whether Terry Nichols or his accomplice Timothy McVeigh had foreign help with their murderous bombing attack on the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Again, in light of the fact that Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef were both in Cebu City, some off-the-beaten-track city in the Philippines, and they were there at the same time and they had both committed hauntingly similar terrorist attacks, it was no stretch for a congressional investigative committee to look into the matter. However, the Bush administration felt quite differently. To those I had to deal with, it was case closed, don't bother us, the matter has been looked into, and Congress should simply and blindly accept the conclusions that there was no Nichols-Ramzi Yousef connection. ``Don't bother us'' was the attitude I confronted. This at times was bureaucratic laziness. At other times it was clearly based on a disdain for congressional investigations and authority. During my investigation, I secured Ramzi Yousef's cell phone records. The cell phone calls he made were documented. These were calls that he made in New York City, in that area, just months before he bombed the World Trade Center. The phone records clearly show that Yousef had made at least two phone calls to a row house in Queens, New York, basically at a time leading up to the bombing. Significant to my inquiry, that row house that Yousef, the bomber of the World Trade Center, was calling was occupied by the cousin of Terry Nichols' Filipino wife. Let me repeat that: the terrorist bomber of the first World Trade Center attack, the nephew of al Qaeda's 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, made phone calls to the same row house that was occupied by Terry Nichols' cousin-in-law just 2 months before Ramzi Yousef exploded his bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center. What another coincidence. Just another coincidence. I gave this information to the Department of Justice that had never been thoroughly investigated, and since that time I have repeatedly sought their help to investigate this matter. Time after time my requests have gone unanswered or flatly denied. I also asked the Department of Justice on numerous occasions to help me investigate the name Samir Khalil. Now, this name is on the list, Samir Khalil, of unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. I found that name. That name was there. A lot of people had overlooked that name. Why is it important? Because that is also the name of an Iraqi man in Oklahoma City who, at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, employed an immigrant who was ID'd by many witnesses as a possible accomplice to the bombing. He was a look-alike. He may have been the person. He may have been John Doe II. He looked like what everybody described as John Doe II. That man's employer was Samir Khalil, and that same name happens to be on a list of unindicted co-conspirators for the World Trade Center bombing. Well, let's look at this for a moment. Numerous witnesses at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing and the truck rental company that provided the truck for the bombing described an accomplice they say had accompanied bomber Tim McVeigh. An FBI sketch was made, and this unknown suspect was labeled ``John Doe II.'' You remember John Doe II. John Doe I was, of course, Timothy McVeigh. These witnesses described a man who, as I say, looked very much like this employee of another Arab immigrant, Samir Khalil. I have repeatedly asked the Department of Justice to tell me if the Samir Khalil on the unindicted co-conspirators list of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is the same Samir Khalil who employed this man who was originally identified as John Doe II by a number of witnesses. The Justice Department's answer: it would be far too burdensome for us to try to find out if this is the same man. Further, we asked for help in finding the Arab immigrant, the John Doe II look-alike, who was employed by Samir Khalil. The guy who may well have been in the bombing of the Oklahoma City bombing. We traced this man to Boston, but we had no support and no cooperation in finding this very possible terrorist or at least a terrorist suspect. By the way, we now know that this same man who worked for Samir Khalil, the same guy who looked like John Doe II, once he went to Boston, and this has not been proven yet but it is possible and it may well be true that he was working at Boston's Logan Airport on 9/11 of 2001, the day that a plane took off from that airport and was hijacked and then crashed into the World Trade Center. I guess another weird coincidence to the Oklahoma City bombing. If we don't want conspiracy theories to run wild, these types of things should be investigated. Instead, no follow-throughs, no interest, case is closed, don't bother us. Both Samir Khalil and his Iraqi employee now reside at this moment in the United States. And now let's not forget that there were eye- witnesses who described an accomplice at Tim McVeigh's side at the time of the bombing and when he rented the truck that carried the bomb to the Federal building there in Oklahoma City. These are witnesses who saw somebody, and the FBI after a very short time simply declared John Doe II to be nonexistent. He never existed, and thus that means that no more investigation would be necessary even if a congressional investigator comes up with names that seem to match the Oklahoma City bombing and a list of unindicted co-conspirators for the first World Trade Center attack. No, that is not worthy of investigating even then because that would be too burdensome. Well, if it is true, of course, and it's not being investigated, that means there are two terrorists. If this happens to be true, and we don't know it's not true because the Justice Department refuses to investigate and to help in our investigation, that means there are two terrorists out there who may still be active and, in fact, may have been active later on in other terrorist actions. That is just a small taste of the deplorable lack of cooperation for a legitimate congressional investigation. And this, by and large, was a time when Republicans controlled the House. And it was no fluke, this lack of cooperation. I didn't happen to snag an uncooperative Federal employee. No, this was the level of noncooperation Congress now has learned to expect. And, yes, let me acknowledge that Departments and agencies have limited resources. So maybe they have other uses, better uses, for their time of their investigators. I understand that. I can hear that. I can listen with a sympathetic ear. They probably want to use the time of their investigators to follow up on their own leads and their own cases rather than following up on leads provided by Members of Congress. Well, I could buy that excuse except for the fact that there has been a total lack of cooperation that goes way beyond just not using their resources, committing scarce resources. Even when it costs no time and no resources, the administration has stonewalled my every effort to look into these so-called ``coincidences.'' For the past year, for example, I have repeatedly requested an interview with imprisoned terrorist Ramzi Yousef. This would have taken no time. It would have required no new resources to be committed from the executive branch, or it wouldn't use the time of any Federal employee. This request was well within my committee jurisdiction and didn't cost the executive branch any time or effort or money. And as ranking member of an investigative subcommittee on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I certainly had the right and, yes, my committee has the jurisdiction to make such inquiries and to look into such issues. This request that I made just to interview Ramzi Yousef, who is in prison, this request has been supported by the chairman of the investigative subcommittee on which I serve, that is, the chairman of the investigative subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Delahunt; the chairman of the Judiciary Committee; the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. All of them are backing this request. This is a bipartisan request that Dana Rohrabacher, who has been looking into this issue, who has an official investigation, who is part of an official investigative subcommittee, is being denied a simple request to interview a Federal prisoner. Such attention by Congress should be welcomed by the administration. The legislative branch should be able to help bring new information to light. We can actually, if we look into these things, lay to rest some conspiracy theories that have no validity. We can help inform the public. Nevertheless, the Department of Justice, consistent with its treatment of congressional inquiries mainly during the tenure of this President, has dismissed our request, this valid request. It has treated the request with what I can only describe as contempt and condescension. The point is, unfortunately, that this rejectionist attitude is typical of this administration, not just for Democrats but for Republicans alike. So why should this administration obstruct congressional inquiries such as this? Remember, Ramzi Yousef was the mastermind of several devastating terrorist plots against America. He led the first murderous attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993. And after fleeing to the Philippines after that explosion, he and two other terrorists plotted to kill thousands of Americans by blowing up 12 commercial airliners over the Pacific. This was known as the Bojinka Plot. It was within 2 weeks of being executed when it was discovered and thwarted by the Philippine police. Now, interestingly, the terrorist operation that we're talking about, the Bojinka Plot, the blowing up of these airliners, was to take place about the same time as the Oklahoma City Federal Building was to be bombed. Perhaps it was to be happening on the same day, but we don't know, of course, because we're stonewalled and blocked from looking into this. Perhaps we should know if the Bojinka Plot was originally scheduled to happen on the same day that the Federal building was blown up in Oklahoma City. In fact, when Philippine police arrested Ramzi Yousef's right-hand man at the makeshift bomb factory in the Philippines, Yousef fled the Philippines immediately, left the country. But he wasn't the only one to flee the country once that bomb-making factory had been captured by the Philippine police. The very next morning after it was learned that that bomb factory had been broken into and people had been arrested there by the Philippine police, Terry Nichols, who was down in Cebu City in the southern Philippines, cut short his scheduled visit to the Philippines and took the first available flight out of the country. This after just a day or two after he had extended his passport with the explanation that he wanted to stay a few more weeks in the Philippines. Yousef has been a Federal prisoner for over a decade. He is a prisoner with a unique understanding of al Qaeda terrorist structure. He is the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. In 2006, when I was chairman of the Oversight Investigation Subcommittee, 2006, I was investigating Yousef's moments and activities not only in the United States, but also in the Philippines. I even traveled to the Philippines to question the authorities who had captured Yousef's roommate and coconspirator in the Bojinka plot. In spite of the fact I was looking into Yousef's terrorist activities, and in spite of the fact that I had obtained new information about Yousef's phone calls and some of the people he was associating with while he was in the United States prior to the bombing of the World Trade Center, the first bombing, the Department of Justice still dismissed this effort, just dismisses it. More than that, they are obstructing a legitimate congressional investigation by refusing to permit this elected Member of Congress, who is a ranking member of a congressional investigative committee, to interview a Federal prisoner. They refuse access to Yousef, claiming there is an ``ongoing investigation''. I have been told by people in the Justice Department, people who had worked for the Justice Department in high levels, that this is nothing more than a vehicle, without any justification, for turning down any requests made by a Member of Congress. The arrogance of this ongoing investigation answer has to be understood. As I say, I was told by a high level Justice Department official that this was just the standard tactic to dismiss a Member of Congress, even though there was no validity and there was no even looking into whether or not there really was an investigation. It was without substance; a phrase that is used simply to turn down Members of Congress and to shut the door on inquiry. Let me note, an ongoing investigation. They expect us to believe that? This prisoner has been in jail for over ten years. More likely what we have here is an ongoing coverup. Not an ongoing investigation, an ongoing coverup. It is outrageous and, unfortunately, it is not atypical of this administration. By accepting this behavior, or perhaps, more accurately, acquiescing to it, we Republicans are permitting this administration to set a terrible precedent. Doesn't Congress have the right to talk to Federal prisoners? Is that the rules of engagement that we want to lay down and accept for our government? That is apparently what the Bush administration is trying to establish as the executive branch's rightful authority to deny congressional investigators access to Federal prisoners. What happens when a Democrat President engages in such stonewalling and obstructionism of congressional oversight? My fellow Republicans need to take this very seriously. This is an issue that goes way beyond Republicans and Democrats. This is a matter of the legitimate congressional oversight authority and whether or not we are going to permit this administration to basically undermine an important element of our right of oversight, and that is to go to Federal prisoners and to interview them ourselves to try to find information about what is going on in the Federal Government. Again, the attitude in its treatment of a legitimate request by a congressional oversight committee is not an aberration. It is not nonrepresentative of the way this administration has exercised its authority. It is actually representative of the way they have handled themselves. This request was first made and denied when Republicans controlled Congress, and I was then the chairman of the Investigative Subcommittee. The Congress now has a Democrat majority. In my position as ranking member of the International Organizations Human Rights and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I have seen this time and again. Our current subcommittee chairman, now that the Democrats have taken control of the House, is Congressman Bill Delahunt from Massachusetts. He read in the paper that our President is negotiating a secret agreement with the Iraqi Prime Minister that will govern the future relationship of our countries. Let me say that again. The chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is getting his information about a hugely important bilateral security agreement from the newspaper. So, Chairman Delahunt rightfully decided to conduct a hearing and find out as much as he could about the agreement and invited the administration to testify before Congress. How did the administration respond? They ignored the request. So the hearing was held with private witnesses. Yes, the public has a right and an obligation to fully understand what commitments are being made by our President in our name. But the President and this administration did not feel compelled to come and tell us anything about those agreements. In a democratic society, policy is made after having open dialog. This administration has had to have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into open dialog because this President was elected President. George Bush was elected President. Perhaps he thinks he was elected king. In another attempt last month, our subcommittee held another hearing on this Iraqi security agreement and again we invited an administration witness to come to the panel, and the response was silent. The subcommittee held another, a third hearing on the topic, and again the subcommittee invited a Member of Congress to tell us what is going on in these negotiations about an agreement, status of forces agreement, and other agreements, with the government of Iraq, which may or may not commit us to future military involvement in that country. Even our full committee chairman wrote letters asking the administration to participate, and all the requests to this administration by our committee were ignored, except in one instance Chairman Delahunt's subcommittee was told by a White House staffer, and this went to one of the committee staffers that were looking into this, that the administration was unwilling to participate because, ``There's nothing to talk about because we haven't put pen to paper.'' Haven't put pen to paper on this security agreement. When confronted with the fact that the New York Times had written a story saying that a 17-page agreement was being passed around, that 17- page, and I might say, first draft of the agreement was being passed around, this same White House staffer backtracked and quibbled. This, Madam Speaker, is unacceptable. It's dishonest, and it is typical. For an update, the stonewalling prevailed until a few weeks ago when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a person who I dearly admire, testified at a hearing of the full International Relations Committee. When asked, she pledged, now she was asked directly by Chairman Delahunt, she pledged that in the future, witnesses dealing with the Iraqi agreement would be forthcoming. Well, today our subcommittee held another hearing, and at long last, at long last, the administration sent two witnesses, one from the State Department and one from the Defense Department, to come and talk to us about the ongoing negotiations and the ongoing development of different plans, the status of forces agreements and such dealing with Iraq, agreements that might bind us in some way to future ties with Iraq, and we had a long and positive discussion. That should have happened a long time ago. But we had to force the administration, after months, after months, to have an open discussion of this issue. And it took Condoleezza Rice herself to overcome the bad attitude that was preventing that. So, thus, we have to assume that that bad attitude was coming from someone higher up than Condoleezza Rice. Sadly, this administration's antipathy to the constitutional responsibilities of the legislative branch of government does not stop and end with the efforts of my Subcommittee on Investigations. In October of last year, 22 Members, 22 colleagues and I wrote a letter to the Acting Attorney General regarding former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. In 2005, Sandy Berger pled guilty to mishandling and destruction of classified documents. He admitted to unlawfully removing and subsequently destroying classified documents from the National Archives. These documents dealt with the failure of our intelligence agencies during the Clinton administration to prevent the horrendous attacks of 9/11. As part of his plea deal, Mr. Berger agreed to take a lie detector test, which was to be given by the Department of Justice. This would verify what documents had been stolen by Mr. Berger. We are still waiting, Madam Speaker, for that lie detector test to be administered. We need to know what documents this man took from the Archives. It is important for us to know who is responsible for 9/11, what mistakes were being made, and what is being kept from the American people. As a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I was and still am rightfully concerned that this lie detector test has not been given and we haven't verified what documents have been stolen. Well, on October 10, I and, as I said, 22 of my colleagues sent a letter to the DOJ, the Department of Justice. We received a letter back on October 22. It acknowledged the DOJ's receipt of our inquiry, and it was signed with an illegible signature so we weren't able to find out who the heck was answering us. And we were given a tracking number so we could track further correspondence. Well, in spite of the fact that we were treated with this insulting computer-generated response, as well as a tracking number, what we have here is an official inquiry by 23 Members of Congress, and we had hoped that in time our request would at least be answered by a responsible party at Justice. Well, we got our wish. On January 24, 2008, 94 days later, we received a response, a dismissive short letter that explained that the Department of Justice saw no reason to polygraph test Sandy Berger. No reason whatsoever. Madam Speaker, I have been a Member of Congress now for over 19 years, and I have never seen such a pattern of blatant disregard and outright disdain for Members of Congress. If Sandy Berger is not to be polygraphed to verify what documents he stole from the Archives, we need to know why such verification is not being done. We don't need to be dismissed with short letters and form letters. Twenty-three Members of Congress made a request, a legitimate request, and this administration thumbed its nose at these Members of Congress, and thus was thumbing its nose at congressional oversight and our congressional prerogatives as elected representatives of the people. This administration wouldn't even give a respectable answer to a rightful inquiry of Members of Congress. Of course, on the other hand, the President thinks he has a right to make demands on us. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush demanded that Members of Congress must act on certain issues, we must do as he wishes, we must pass legislation that is necessary. Yes, we must do things; yet, when 23 Members of Congress, most of his own party, write to his Justice Department a serious letter of inquiry about a national security issue or we make a request to see a Federal prisoner, we get a computer-generated letter, or just a disdainful, contemptuous turndown. By the way, one of the responses I received, obviously looking into this, all of them, not just one but all of them were basically, one was an old letter, a copy of an old letter that had been sent to another Congressman. This bad attitude that I am detailing is pervasive. The handling of a proposed totalization agreement with Mexico is yet another example of the type of bad attitude and secrecy of this administration. The totalization agreements with Mexico have to be looked at very closely. Totalization agreements in and of themselves can serve a useful function. Large corporations in both the United States and elsewhere, in Europe, for example, assign personnel to work overseas, and during these years when these employees are overseas, they are double taxed. They pay both Social Security and the equivalent tax in their native countries. So allowing the Social Security Administration and foreign agencies to give credit to one another towards their retirement systems makes sense when it involves a limited number of persons working legally and temporarily in another country. So the concept is not itself alarming. However, this is not the case with illegal immigrants. We have 20 million people living and working illegally in the United States, with Mexicans by far making up the largest chunk of this illegal immigrant population. This is not a limited number of Swedes or Japanese executives who will work here for several years and then go home. We are talking about millions and millions of people who can make or break our Social Security system if this issue is not handled responsibly. Knowing the volatility of both the Social Security and illegal immigration issues, the totalization negotiations with Mexico have been kept strictly under wraps. Remember, these negotiations started in 2002. That is when Republicans controlled Congress. One would think that a Republican administration would at the very least advise Congress, perhaps a status report, concerning such significant diplomatic efforts as the totalization negotiations with Mexico. Well, Congress did not know the details about this negotiation until it hit the press. Now, I just detailed for you a few moments ago how the President of the United States and this administration is keeping things from this Congress, tried its very best not to send witnesses to help discuss a grievance that is being made with the Government of Iraq. Well, that is not new. What I am telling you now is that it also manifested that very same lack of openness and secretiveness in these talks with Mexico over a totalization agreement. And it wasn't just secrecy. Worse, the press releases about the negotiations that were going on were misleading, and it appears that Congress was being misled as to exactly what it was the administration was agreeing to concerning Social Security benefits for Mexican nationals who are working illegally in the United States. This issue is of the utmost concern to my constituents, who are suffering from the uncontrolled flood of illegals pouring into our country. In California, our schools, our health care system, our criminal justice system all are at the breaking point. All we need is to attract millions more illegals into our country by giving them access to our Social Security system. I have in fact proposed legislation to ensure that no work done while someone is in this country illegally should count toward a Social Security benefit. That is not what President Bush believes, however. In the totalization agreement negotiations, the Bush administration agreed that illegal aliens from Mexico will be eligible for the same treatment under Social Security as U.S. citizens, without ever becoming a legal resident or citizen of our country. It took a long, drawn-out battle in the form of a Freedom of Information lawsuit to get the details of this agreement from this administration. Again, another example of secrecy, of deceit. Again, the administration was stonewalling and concealing information from the American people and from Congress, information Congress and the American people had a right to know. Please remember, the danger from this agreement has not passed. While due to public outrage it has been put on the back burner, our President at any time can still submit this agreement to Congress, and he just might do it, just to show us who is boss. Now, what I am describing is a pattern of arrogance and contempt that is especially true not just with Social Security, but with the broader issues related to illegal immigration and with issues dealing with Mexico. The tragic case of wrongly imprisoned Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean exemplifies the worst aspects of this attitude and this problem, and it will forever leave a black mark on this administration. President Bush has himself made decisions that directly led to this ongoing travesty, which sees these two Border Patrol agents languishing in solitary confinement. They could have been sent to a minimum security prison, but the decision was made at the highest levels, no, that would mean they would be treated differently than other prisoners. Of course, they are law enforcement officers. At a medium security prison, their lives are in danger, but they are not permitted, and this was made probably in the White House, they couldn't go to a minimum security prison. They would have to it stay in a medium security prison. One of them was attacked, as was very predictable, and beaten half to death, and now they have been sent to solitary confinement, a punishment that usually goes to horrible criminals and to terrorists. Even the terrorists in Guantanamo aren't treated like this. But yet Ramos and Compean, two men with perfect records, whose crime was they discharged their weapon at a fleeing suspect who they had interdicted while trying to put $1 million worth of drugs in this country, and they didn't report it right, which should have meant a reprimand, instead, the book was thrown at them. And not only was the book thrown at them, once they were in prison, the administration decided they would not be able to go to minimum security prison, which has led directly to the fact that they are languishing in solitary confinement and have been in solitary confinement almost a year. This is a disgrace. It is a horrendous, horrendous disgrace. In this clearly questionable case, President Bush deliberately dug in his heels to protect his good friend and young protege, prosecutor U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton. Rather than entertain the probability that a tangible injustice was in progress and to instruct the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to cooperate so that Congress could get to the bottom of this nightmare, this President has thumbed his nose at congressional concerns and initiated a policy of obstruction and denial in our efforts to get to the bottom of the Ramos and Compean case. Let's note here that Members of Congress have pleaded with President Bush personally on this issue. We in the House even voted to take money for Ramos and Compean's imprisonment out of the DOJ budget. Not only will President Bush not entertain the possibility that an injustice is being done, his administration has obstructed congressional inquiries and lied, let me repeat that, has lied to Congress on this matter. Since the Ramos and Compean case was brought to my attention in September of 2006, I have written over a dozen letters to this administration requesting various documents regarding the harsh, harsh prosecution of Ramos and Compean. I have been joined by several Members of Congress in this effort, in fact, many Members of Congress. In fact, a majority of Members of Congress have expressed themselves in the Ramos and Compean case, expecting that this travesty would not be permitted to go on. Some of the Members who are most active have been Congressmen Poe, Culberson and McCaul. These three Members from Texas, in fact they are all former lawyers, prosecutors or judges themselves, attended a briefing about the Ramos and Compean prosecution conducted by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's Office on September 26, 2006. At that briefing, serious questions were raised by these Members about the fundamental justification for the prosecution of Ramos and Compean. The President and his lapdog prosecutors would like us to believe that they had no discretion. But the actual charges being brought against Ramos and Compean were totally at the discretion of the prosecutors. What were the grounds for charging these men with crimes like attempted murder? Here is a drug dealer that they had just been in a physical altercation with who was escaping the scene of a crime, and they are charged with attempted murder for discharging their weapons at this fleeing suspect? Assault with a deadly weapon, the unlawful discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence and a civil rights violation. These charges have put Ramos and Compean in prison for a minimum of 11 years. These were the charges that were made, and the jury was not permitted to hear all of the evidence, and they were convicted. But what they were charged with was totally at the discretion of the prosecution. Did this fit the crime? Two men with a perfect record, two men who had an unblemished record. One of them, one of them, Officer Compean, it might have been Officer Ramos, but was up to be Border Patrol Agent of the Month. He was nominated for that the month that this incident took place. They had nothing on their record that showed any misuse of firearms. Yet they did not report the incident correctly. They had wounded a fleeing suspect, although they didn't know they had wounded him. And who was the suspect? He was someone who they had who was a drug dealer, an illegal alien drug dealer who was smuggling $1 million worth of drugs into our country and was now escaping the scene of his crime after assaulting a police officer who had intercepted him. This, again, was not someone who was out having a picnic; not some person they discharged their weapons and shot who was an illegal alien just trying to cross the border. This was a drug dealer who was trying to bring $1 million worth of drugs into the country. And although these laws were never intended by Congress to be applied to law enforcement officers, who have to carry a gun and have to make split-second decisions, the gun law mandatory prison sentence was applied to these police officers, these law enforcement officers. So, remember, we send a message not only to all the Border Patrol agents, but to law enforcement all around the country, that if in the middle of an altercation they discharge their weapon because they think their life is in danger, they may end up in prison, maybe even in solitary confinement. Again, this is a travesty. The prosecutors knew that charging law enforcement officers in situations like this was not the intent of Congress, but they threw the book at the agents anyway. The charges made against Ramos and Compean, again, they require a 10-year mandatory imprisonment. Filing those charges was totally at the discretion of the prosecutors. They went ahead anyway. President Bush has supported these prosecutors and backed them up in this grotesquely wrong decision. He has backed them up even when they have crossed the line of both legality and propriety. Let me repeat that. President Bush has backed up his prosecutors even when they have crossed the line of legality and propriety. When Congressmen Poe, Culberson and McCaul in their official briefing asked why the most serious charges that could be leveled at the Border Patrol agents were initiated by the prosecutors and why the prosecutors took the word of the drug smuggler that he had no weapon, and by the way, the Border Patrol agents said that they thought he had a weapon, of course, the drug smuggler, who got away, claimed he didn't have a weapon, the prosecutors took the word of the drug smuggler. This was asked: Why would the prosecutors take the word of the drug smuggler over the word of two law enforcement officers? The Department of Homeland Security officials who were briefing the Congressmen said and proclaimed that this was a legitimate and righteous prosecution. These were, according to the Department of Homeland Security briefers, rogue cops. Remember, Ramos and Compean, clean records, and they are called rogue cops. In fact Johnny Sutton later went out and charged that they were corrupt cops. And as soon as he was, of course, brought to task, they said what corruption were they charged with, he had to backtrack on that, after he had already tried to smear these two guys in public. Yes, they were labeled as rogue cops. And the Congressmen being briefed were told that these guys had actually confessed. Ramos and Compean confessed that they knew the drug smuggler was unarmed and that the agents didn't feel threatened. Now, tell me, does that make sense? The agents are just going to say, Oh yeah, we shot at him, but we knew he didn't even have a gun and we didn't even feel threatened. Is that what the Department of Homeland Security was telling these three Members of Congress, all three of whom had been prosecutors or judges? Of course, the biggest lie of all came out at this point when the Department of Homeland Security briefers insisted that Ramos and Compean had told their fellow officers the day of the incident that they wanted to go out and shoot a Mexican. That charge raised eyebrows. Certainly, how could anyone believe that? Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean are themselves Mexican Americans, married to Mexican American wives with Mexican American children. Sure, they just wanted to go out and intentionally shoot some Mexicans. Sure they did. This is what Members of Congress were told at an official briefing. It takes a lot of chutzpa to give that kind of lie to Members of Congress. Asking for proof, the three Congressmen being briefed were told the charges were documented in the reports of the investigative officers. The Department of Homeland Security promised to provide these reports as proof that Ramos and Compean actually intended to go out that day and kill a Mexican. The proof, of course, never came. The Congressmen kept asking. The calls weren't returned. It is called stonewalling. The DHS stonewalled for 5 months. Members asked for copies of the completed report of investigation, which should have backed up these alleged facts that were being told to the Members of Congress during their September 26 briefing. Months passed, and nothing from the Department of Homeland Security. After several letters and public pressure, the Department of Homeland Security finally releases a redacted version of the official report in February 2007. Surprise, surprise, the alleged confessions by Ramos and Compean were not to be found. The documentation for the charge that they had brazenly proclaimed their intent to kill a Mexican was not there. How could this be? The Department of Homeland Security officials had assured Members that it was a solid prosecution and they were guilty, that they wanted to shoot a Mexican. But these were flat out lies told to Members of Congress. During a DHS Subcommittee hearing on February 6, 2007, DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner was questioned by Congressman Culberson about this issue. Under oath, Mr. Skinner acknowledged the information given to the Texas Congressman was in fact false, but smugly justified this blatant and willful lying by calling it ``a mischaracterization, unfortunately repeated at the briefing.'' No, Mr. Skinner, it wasn't a mischaracterization. It was a lie, no matter how colorful the euphemism. Ollie North was prosecuted for far less an egregious act. Ollie had given some misinformation to congressional staffers who were not even part of an official briefing to Congress. To this day, absolutely nothing has been done about this crime, the crime of lying to Congress. Administration officials deliberately misled Members of Congress in order to discourage them from pursuing the Ramos and Compean case, and no one has been held accountable for it. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton himself was publicly labeling these two brave men who risked their lives for us as corrupt. Johnny Sutton lives behind a gated community. Johnny Sutton, who has no track record of experience and service to his country as these two men who put their lives on the line for us every day, yet Sutton dishonestly claimed them to be corrupt. He also felt compelled to expose one of the men who had a family altercation a few years before that had nothing to do with his job; yet Mr. Sutton had to expose that family altercation of one of these, Ramos and Compean, to the public. Well, Ramos and Compean is a case that stank from day one, and that stench is coming straight from the White House. The President, instead of looking into this matter, has dug in his heels, permitting his appointees to slander these two agents. I would suggest that what we see in Ramos and Compean and the other issues that I brought up tonight demonstrate a pattern that is unacceptable. The American people should understand the attitude that is going on here in Washington. We should look closely, and we should demand a higher standard from this administration. Even worse, the President has personally made decisions that have resulted in these two agents languishing in solitary confinement. Again, to say this is a mean-spirited vindictive prosecutor is to put it mildly. Importantly, President Bush is backing this malicious and unjustified prosecution to the hilt. This case demonstrates why hearings are an integral part of the checks and balances system. It is in this venue that the Executive Branch is held accountable for their actions, under oath. It was only when an Administration official was under oath that the lies about Ramos and Compean were admitted. But this Administration has decided to thumb its nose at that obligation to make its case under oath at a public hearing. Chairman William Delahunt graciously approved my request to hold hearings on the Ramos and Compean case. In doing so, an official Subcommittee investigation into the case in preparation for the hearing was authorized. During the course of this investigation, the resistance from the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and State was consistent with the arrogance and obfuscation that flows through this Administration from the top down. Our hearing had to be postponed for months because of the Administration's refusal to provide requested documents or to send the necessary witnesses to testify before the Subcommittee, citing the Committee did not have proper jurisdiction. Therefore, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner or any of his investigators refused to appear. That decision was, clearly, made in the White House. Our government provided a flawed immunity agreement, free health care, and unconditional border crossing cards to an illegal alien criminal in exchange for testimony that sent border patrol agents Ramos and Compean to prison. Our government kept secrets from the jury that the drug dealer intercepted by Ramos and Compean had hauled another shipment of drugs across our border, this, while on a government issued border cross pass. Clearly, this is well within the jurisdiction of an oversight committee responsible for overseeing relations with other countries, including Mexico, including international drug smuggling. Clearly, the public has a right to know about these things. This Administration apparently believes there is no obligation to answer questions in public and under oath about actions and policies of the Administration. It's a travesty. How bad is it? In preparation for the Ramos and Compean hearing, we made request after request, countless phone calls and even a FOIA lawsuit by the watchdog group, Judicial Watch, and the Administration still refused to release copies of the border crossing cards issued to the drug smuggler in this case, claiming the smuggler is protected under the ``Privacy Act.'' I was instructed by the Justice Department to obtain a privacy waiver in order for that information to be released. A privacy waiver from an illegal alien criminal? This absurd contention is just another example of a condescending and dismissive attitude. Such obstructionism, however, is the rule, not the exception with this Administration. By the way, due only to a bureaucratic fluke we finally obtained those border crossing cards. Our repeated requests for documents were taken so nonchalantly that I actually received an official response letter from the Department of Justice, dated March 16, 2007, addressed to ``Congresswoman Rohrabacher.'' That was just one of several insulting form letters sent in response to Member letters regarding the Ramos and Compean case. Plea after plea from Members of Congress, for the President to intervene on behalf of Ramos and Compean by either pardoning or commuting their sentences, have been ignored. Last year, I personally reached out to the President to take the pressure and confrontation out of this issue. I suggested that the President direct the Justice Department to request that Ramos and Compean be permitted to remain free on bond, pending their appeal. Even common criminals get that kind of leeway. What was the response? A White House press release was issued the next day, proclaiming that the Administration opposed letting Ramos and Compean out pending appeal and that no special consideration would be granted to anyone, much less these two border patrol agents, sounds righteous--a position of not making any exceptions. Except, of course, for the fact that a short time later, White House aide Scooter Libby, had his sentence commuted by the President in a heartbeat. For the record, I believe it was proper to commute Scooter Libby's sentence. He got a raw deal. Unfortunately, this incident suggests that only the members of the President's clique gets such consideration. Of course, in the meantime, the President has pardoned or commuted the sentences of dozens of convicted criminals, including drug dealers. It is truly with a heavy heart Mr. Speaker, that I stand here reciting example after example of the maliciousness and condescending attitude exhibited by this Administration. It is a problem flowing from the top. When I hear my friends on the other side of the aisle accusing this Administration of stonewalling, of cover-ups, or of thwarting investigations, I sadly must concur with them. This White House exemplifies needless hostility, turf jealousy and obstructionism. The American people should know it, and should know that this charge comes not from a partisan Democrat, but from a lifetime conservative Republican.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I would like to commemorate the passing of the prominent American scientist Dr. Robert Jastrow on February 8, 2008. Born in New York in 1924, Robert Jastrow worked in the U.S. lunar landing program, established and managed two scientific research centers, and played an active role in national public policy debates on national security and environmental policy. Robert Jastrow earned his Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics at Columbia University. He became an assistant professor at Yale before joining the staff at the Naval Research Laboratory. In 1958, Dr. Jastrow was chosen to head NASA's new theoretical division. Dr. Jastrow immediately set to work planning the future space science program and drawing a high level of scientific talent into NASA. Dr. Jastrow was convinced of the unique importance of the moon for understanding the origin of the earth and the other planets and was an early champion of lunar exploration. In 1958, he and Harold Urey, the Nobel Laureate chemist, made the case for NASA to build a significant program for lunar exploration, resulting in the establishment of the Ranger Project. With permission from NASA and in association with Columbia University, Robert Jastrow organized the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and became its first Director in 1961. Scientists at the Goddard Institute, a government laboratory which carried out research in astronomy and atmospheric science, played a key role in the Pioneer, Voyager, and Galileo planetary missions under Jastrow's guidance. In recognition of his work, Dr. Jastrow received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and the Arthur Fleming Award for Outstanding Service to the U.S. Government. Dr. Jastrow stayed at the helm of the Goddard Institute for 20 years before becoming joining the faculty at Dartmouth College, where he held the position of Professor of Earth Sciences until 1992. In that year he resigned to become Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mount Wilson Institute, which manages the Mount Wilson Observatory in California on behalf of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Dr. Jastrow retired as Director of the Mount Wilson Institute in January 2003. He also was a member of the Board of Governors of the National Space Society. With Drs. Frederick Seitz and William Nierenberg, Dr. Jastrow founded the George C. Marshall Institute in 1984 to conduct assessments of scientific issues affecting public policy. He was an influential figure in the public debates on ballistic missile defense and climate change. At the Institute, he worked to provide the Congress and successive Administrations with perspectives and interpretations of scientific and technical matters. Dr. Jastrow was a prolific author and public commentator on the space program, astronomy, earth science, and national security. He hosted more that 100 CBS-TV network programs on space science and was the special guest of NBC-TV with Wernher von Braun for the Apollo-Soyuz flights. Dr. Jastrow's articles have appeared in the New York Times, Time, Reader's Digest, Foreign Affairs, Commentary, Atlantic Monthly and Scientific American. His books include Red Giants and White Dwarves--the Evolution of Stars, Planets and Life; Until the Sun Dies: God and the Astronomers; The Enchanted Loom--Mind in the Universe; Astronomy--Fundamental and Frontiers; Journey to the Stars--Space Exploration Tomorrow and Beyond, How to make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete and Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem with William Nierenberg and Frederick Seitz. Dr. Jastrow's contributions to science will be missed, and I extend my condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I come to the floor tonight with a heavy heart. The nature of the allegations I make speaks poorly of this administration. In my heart of hearts, I have always wanted this administration to succeed, but the issue at hand is of such magnitude that the American people need to know what is being done and what precedents are being set. In my tenure as a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, both as chairman and ranking member of an investigative subcommittee, I have witnessed firsthand behavior by the Bush administration which I find deeply troubling. The disdain and uncooperative nature that this administration has shown toward Congress, including Republican Members, is so egregious that I can no longer assume that it is simply bureaucratic incompetence or isolated mistakes. Rather, I have come to the sad conclusion that this administration has intentionally obstructed Congress' rightful and constitutional duties. Tonight I will discuss some serious examples of this administration's contemptuous disregard for the authority delegated to Congress by the Constitution. This bad attitude has consistently manifested itself in a sophomoric resentment toward Congress' constitutional role as an equal branch of government. The result has been an executive branch too insecure to let Congress do its job, an executive branch that sees Congress, even when Republicans held the majority, as a rival and a spoiler, rather than as elected representatives of the American people playing a rightful role in establishing policy for our great country. Unfortunately, when the President of the United States rejects the legitimacy of congressional prerogatives, there are serious consequences. Tonight, I will provide examples of how this administration for the past 7 years has undercut congressional investigators, has lied to Members of Congress, and has forged ahead with secret deals in spite of efforts and pleas by Congress to be informed, if not involved. In the last Congress, I was chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In that capacity, I learned that in the time immediately leading up to the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, convicted Oklahoma City bomber and murderer Terry Nichols had been in Cebu City in the Philippines. His stay in Cebu City coincided with another visitor to that city, al Qaeda's terrorist leader Ramsey Yousef. Interestingly, both Nichols and Yousef used similar bombs and methods just 2 years apart to blow up two American targets. Yousef was the mastermind of the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Nichols was a coconspirator in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. By the way, I would like to acknowledge that today happens to be the 15-year anniversary of that first devastating attack on the World Trade Center. These individuals, one American and one Arab, were responsible for planning two of the most lethal terrorist attacks on our countrymen in our history. We are to believe that by coincidence they ended up in an off-the-beaten-track city in the Southern Philippines? One doesn't have to be a conspiracy nut to understand that this coincidence is certainly worth looking into. I started an official congressional investigation sanctioned by Henry Hyde, then the chairman of the International Relations Committee, to see whether Terry Nichols or his accomplice, Timothy McVeigh, had foreign help in their murderous terrorist bombing of the Alfred Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. In light of the fact that Terry Nichols and Ramsey Yousef were both in Cebu City at the same time prior to hauntingly similar terrorist attacks, it was no stretch for a congressional investigative committee to be looking into this matter. However, the Bush administration felt quite differently. To those I had to deal with, it was ``case closed, don't bother us.'' They had looked into the matter, and Congress should simply and blindly accept their conclusion that there was no Nichols- Yousef connection. ``Don't bother us.'' This was at times bureaucratic laziness, and at other times it was clearly based on a disdain for congressional investigations and authority. During my investigation, I secured Ramsey Yousef's cell phone records. The records were part of the phone calls that he made when he was in that New York City area in the months just prior to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The phone records show that Ramsey Yousef made at least two phone calls to a row house in Queens, New York. That row house was occupied by the cousin of Terry Nichols' Filipina wife. Let me repeat that. The terrorist bomber of the first World Trade Center attack, the nephew of al Qaeda 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, made phone calls to the same row house that was occupied by Terry Nichols' cousins-in-law just 2 months before he exploded the bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center 15 years ago. Another coincidence? I gave this information to the Department of Justice and since that time have repeatedly sought their help in investigating this matter. Time after time, my requests have gone unanswered or have just been flatly denied. I also asked the Department of Justice on numerous occasions to help me investigate the name Samir Khahil. This name is on a list of unindicted co-conspirators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, again in connection with Ramsey Yousef. It also is the name, by the way, of an Iraqi man in Oklahoma City who at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing employed an Arab immigrant who fits the description originally made by numerous witnesses as to John Doe II. This Oklahoma-based Iraqi lied, meaning the John Doe II look-alike, lied to the investigators about his whereabouts at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, yet there was little if any follow-up on this John Doe II look-alike. In fact, the FBI simply declared that John Doe II never existed. The existence of John Doe II, let it be remembered, was based on a sketch and sketches derived from witnesses on the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing and the truck rental company in which that bomb was placed on a truck from that truck rental company. Those witnesses described a man who, as I say, looked very much like Samir Khahil's employee. Now, I have repeatedly asked the Department of Justice to tell me if the Samir Khahil on the unindicted coconspirators list of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is the same Samir Khahil who employed a man originally identified as John Doe II, the bomber, the number two bomber in the Oklahoma City bombing. The Justice Department's answer: ``It would be too burdensome to find out if it was the same man.'' Further, we asked help in finding the Arab immigrant who looked like John Doe II and the man who was employed by Samir Khahil. We traced him to Boston, but we have had no support or cooperation in finding this very possible terrorist, or at least terrorist suspect. He may well have been working at Boston's Logan Airport on 9/11/01, the day that a plane took off from that airport and was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. Another weird coincidence to the Oklahoma City bombing. Another coincidence, yes. You don't have to be a conspiracy nut to believe that these things should be investigated. Instead, there has been no follow-through, no interest. The case is closed, forget it, both in terms of Samir Khahil and his Iraqi employer and employee; and both of these people, of course, reside in the United States right now. That is just a small taste of the deplorable lack of cooperation for a legitimate congressional investigation. And it was no fluke. I didn't just happen to snag some uncooperative Federal employee. No, this is the level of non-cooperation Congress has learned to expect from this administration. Yes, Departments and agencies do have limited resources, and I understand that. I used to work in the executive branch. So, yes, there may be some better uses for and some good uses for those limited resources and better uses for their time and investigators, rather than just following up on leads that are provided by Members of Congress. You can hear someone explaining that. But the lack of cooperation that we have had goes far beyond the fact that they are not going to give their limited resources or even use some of their investigators to track down what most of us would consider a very worthwhile lead, especially considering that the terrorist that we are asking to look into currently resides in the United States and may well have had something to do with the bombing of the World Trade Center and the bombing of the Oklahoma City building there. But, again, a lot of my requests don't require a lot of time and effort on the part of the executive branch, and I still have been stonewalled. For the past year, for example, I have repeatedly requested to interview the imprisoned terrorist Ramzi Yousef. He is in Colorado and in strict lockup. He has been there for 10 years. This would have taken no time and no resources from any executive branch or Federal employee. None. This request is well within my committee's jurisdiction as ranking member of the Investigative Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This request has been supported by the chairman of the Investigative Subcommittee, the chairman of the full Foreign Affairs Committee, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Such attention by Congress should be welcomed by this administration and every administration. The legislative branch can help bring new information to light and inform the public. Nevertheless, the Department of Justice, consistent with its treatment of congressional inquiries during the tenure of this President, has dismissed this valid request. This request has been treated with what can only be described as contempt and condescension. The point is, unfortunately, that this rejectionist attitude is typical. It is not that they don't have enough resources to help out, to look into an easy matter to look into. It is just that they do not want to cooperate with Congress, even when it's a Republican in Congress, even when the Congress was controlled by a Republican majority. So, why would this administration obstruct congressional inquiries such as this? Remember, Ramzi Yousef was the mastermind behind several devastating terrorist attacks and plots against America. He led the first murderous attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, as I say. After fleeing to the Philippines, he and two other terrorists plotted to kill thousands of Americans by blowing up 12 commercial airliners over the Pacific at the same time. It was known as the Bojinka plot. It was within 2 weeks of being executed when it was discovered and thwarted by Philippine police. Interestingly, the terrorist operation, the Bojinka plot, was to take place about the same time as the Oklahoma City Federal building bombing, perhaps on the same day. We don't know. Perhaps we should know. Perhaps we should ask Ramzi Yousef about that. Ramzi Yousef has been in Federal prison for over a decade. He is a prisoner with a unique understanding of the al Qaeda terrorist structure. He is the nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. In 2006, when I was the chairman of the House Oversight Investigations Subcommittee on the Foreign Affairs Committee, I was investigating Yousef's movements and activities not only in the United States but in the Philippines. I even traveled to the Philippines to question authorities who had captured Yousef's roommate and coconspirator in the Bojinka plot. In spite of that fact and in spite of the fact that I was looking into Yousef's terrorist activities and in spite of the fact that I had obtained new information about Yousef's phone calls right here in the United States and new information about his associates while he was in the United States, the Department of Justice still dismisses the effort and, more than that, they are obstructing a legitimate congressional investigation, refusing to permit this elected Member of Congress, a ranking member of a congressional investigating committee, to interview a Federal prisoner. They refused access to Yousef claiming that there is a ``ongoing investigation.'' This prisoner has been in jail for over 10 years. It is more likely that what we have here is an ongoing coverup and not an ongoing investigation. In fact, I have been told recently by a former member of the Justice Department that they were told routinely simply to give answers that there is an ongoing investigation even if no ongoing investigation was underway, but simply using it as a phrase to dismiss a request from Congress. Well, this is outrageous, but it's typical of this administration. This is a lot more than just a hurtful pride on my part of being turned down. This administration is setting a terrible precedent. What people have to understand, when I am turned down like this, is when there is a liberal Democrat in the White House, the President will have set that Members of Congress can simply be dismissed, and that when they are trying to do a congressional investigation need not be cooperated with, in fact, can be obstructed. Is that the type of President that we want? Is that acceptable? It shouldn't be acceptable to Democrats and it shouldn't be acceptable to Republicans. Doesn't Congress have a right to talk to Federal prisoners. Are these the rules of engagement? Is it really the rules of engagement that we want for our government that Members of Congress and the legislative branch don't have a right to talk to Federal prisoners? Well, that's apparently what the Bush administration is trying to establish as the executive authority, as executive authority, the right to deny congressional investigators access to Federal prisoners. The danger of this should be easy to understand, both on my side of the aisle, the Republican side, and the Democratic side of the aisle. Again, the attitude, apparent in the treatment of this request, is not an aberration or is it some sort of situation where this is not really a representative way the President has acted with his authority. No, I am afraid that's not the case. This request was first made and denied when the Republicans controlled the Congress and I was the chairman of the Investigative Subcommittee. Now Congress has a Democrat majority. In my position as ranking member of the International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I have seen it time and time again. Our subcommittee chairman, Bill Delahunt from Massachusetts, read in the newspaper that our President is negotiating a security agreement with the Iraqi Prime Minister that will govern the future relationship of our countries. Now let me say that again. The chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs Committee is getting the information about a hugely important foreign bilateral security agreement by reading the newspaper. So, Chairman Delahunt conducted a hearing about the status of such an agreement and invited the administration to send a witness to testify before Congress. How did the administration respond? They ignored the request. So the hearing was held with a private panel of witnesses, and, yes, the public has a right and an obligation to fully understand such commitments that are being made by the President in our name. In a democratic society, policy is made after having an open dialogue. George Bush was elected President, not king. In another attempt last month, our subcommittee held another hearing on the Iraqi security agreement and, again, our panel invited and pleaded with the administration to provide a witness. Their response? Silence. Our subcommittee held another, a third hearing on this topic. Again, our subcommittee invited the administration to attend and explain to Congress what kind of commitment our government has agreed to with the government of Iraq. Even our full committee chairman wrote letters asking for the administration to participate in the subcommittee hearing. All the requests to the administration by our committee and by the superiors in the full committee were ignored, except for one, and, in one instance, where the contact was made, and I am sad to say that once again this administration was less than honest on a matter of national importance, Chairman Dela- hunt's subcommittee was told by a White House staffer that the administration's unwillingness to participate in hearings was because ``There is nothing to talk about because we haven't put pen to paper'' on security, because they haven't put the pen to paper on the security agreement, supposedly. Well, when confronted with the fact that the New York Times had written a story saying that a 17-page agreement was being passed around, this White House staffer backtracked and quibbled. This is unacceptable, it's dishonest, and it's typical. It's like saying there is an ongoing investigation; don't discuss anything anymore with me. There is nothing going on here. Now, there is something going on, just as, instead of talking and trying to negotiate about what type of spokesman we could have at a hearing, instead, what we get is an undermining of the congressional right to oversee for the foreign policy decisions of this administration. This stonewalling prevailed until a few weeks ago, when Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a person and a leader who I deeply admire, testified at a hearing of the full International Relations Committee. When asked about this issue, about witnesses not showing up from the State Department and this administration to explain to us in public and to discuss in public these very important agreements that are being negotiated with Iraq, she pledged at that time that there would be future witnesses dealing with this Iraqi agreement. At least Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, feels secure enough in this administration to do what's right and to talk directly to Congress and to send her people over to talk to us. Unfortunately, we had to go all the way to the Secretary of State before we could get anybody in this administration to participate. Let me note, I am a supporter of the President's Iraqi policies. I have been a supporter since day one. I supported the surge, and I am not in favor of some of the propositions made by my friends on the other side of the aisle, which I consider would be a precipitous leaving of Iraq and would cause damage, I believe. But that's not the point. The point is, Congress has a legitimate oversight responsibility and that the President of the United States should be discussing in public so that the public could understand why policy is being made rather than trying to secretly arrange a policy agreement and then surprise everybody, you know, as a done deal. Sadly, this administration's antipathy to the constitutional responsibilities of the legislative branch of government does not stop and end with my efforts and those of my subcommittee on investigations. In October of last year, 22 of my colleagues and I wrote to the Acting Attorney General, Peter Keisler, regarding the pending lie detector test for former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. Madam Speaker, I submit for the Record, a copy of a letter concerning making that request of Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler. Washington, DC, October 10, 2007. Mr. Peter D. Keisler, Acting Attorney General, Department of Justice, Washington,

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, next week, on December 9, as we have mentioned today, the Port of Los Angeles, which I am proud to say is located in my district, will celebrate its 100-year anniversary. Yes, the Port of Los Angeles has had a long and distinguished history. It was the location of one of the first railroads in Southern California. We are also proud of the crucial role played by the Port of Los Angeles in the battle for the Pacific during the Second World War. Throughout its history, the Port of Los Angeles has been a harbinger of prosperity and economic growth, as well as an impetus for the engineering and technology development that we have noted. In August of 1958, for example, a cargo vessel named the Hawaiian Merchant delivered its first shipment of 20 cargo containers to the Port of Los Angeles, ushering in a cargo container revolution that has had an enormous impact on the world economy. Let us note on this 100th anniversary that there was someone who played an important role in providing the infrastructure to the ports and to the transportation systems that serve the ports. Let us pay homage to Congressman Glen Anderson, who helped provide, with his influence in this House as chairman of the Transportation Committee, such support that gave us the infrastructure we needed to have the great port complex of Los Angeles and Long Beach. When I first was a Member elected here, Glen Anderson was still serving here, and I was proud to call him my friend. He has left us a legacy that he can be proud of. We've come a long way in these last 50 years, with the help of people like Glen Anderson. Those initial 20 cargo containers have grown to over 8.5 million cargo containers just last year. And as we noted, the combination of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach represent the fifth largest port complex in the world. More than 43 percent of all goods arriving in the United States enter through this port complex. And I guarantee you that in every congressional district represented in this Congress, there is something there that has been brought through the international gateway, which is the Port of Los Angeles. There is a challenge in this new century, several challenges, however. Madam Speaker, our greatest challenge is to improve the way that containers are moved through the port complex of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Over 70 percent of the containers now arriving in our ports are headed inland from Southern California to destinations and localities within the United States. Every day, thousands of these containers are hauled by truck from the port to inland rail depots. This results in unsafe road conditions, traffic jams, dangerous health conditions, pollution, and our freeways and our roadways are unacceptably crowded. And yes, that is unacceptable now. As container traffic grows, the situation will get worse unless we act. If we continue with the current method of transporting those containers individually by truck system, the whole system will collapse as it pollutes and clogs Southern California's roads and freeways. That said, however, there is a new solution on the way, a new clean and efficient way of moving containers through the ports through inland railroad depot, a way that will revolutionize the process. This new approach has bipartisan support. That bipartisan support ranges from myself and Governor Schwarzenegger to my Democratic colleagues, Representatives Richardson and Oberstar. The cutting-edge technology to which I refer is an electronic cargo conveyor system. Instead of being loaded onto trucks to sit in traffic, containers will be quickly sent to an interior rail depot utilizing clean electric mag-levlike technology, an electronic conveyor belt system of sorts. With container traffic being removed from our roads and our freeways, traffic and health conditions will dramatically improve. We will be able to quickly and cleanly move the cargo out of our ports and to consumer outlets throughout the United States. And the best part, Madam Speaker, is that it will cost less to build and run a new system like I have just described than to continue to pay to have containers shipped individually by truck. The ports in Southern California will continue to prosper and lead the way as long as it is willing to innovate with the type of creativity reflected in the mag-lev system that I just discussed. I congratulate the Port of Los Angeles and its board of directors on their anniversary and the tremendous success of the last 100 years. We have other issues as well, and let me just note one other issue as we know, and Ms. Harman has played a major role in trying to develop the security that we need at our ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. There are security needs and other infrastructure needs that will cost money. Whenever you have any benefit, it will cost. We need to face the cost of these improvements with the same creativity that I just discussed technologically that we need to do in the cargo movement. The way that I would suggest, and I hope that on this anniversary that we note that, yes, Glen Anderson played an important role in getting Federal money for the ports. That is not an unending source of revenue. But if we were to charge a container fee and base our improvements in the ports, instead of on the taxpayers of the United States channeling money to our ports, that we instead charge those using the ports a reasonable container fee so that those who have set up manufacturing facilities in China and elsewhere will pay to utilize the ports, that container fee will not only be fair, but it will be something that will provide us a new source of revenue in order to provide the security and infrastructure needs of the future. So these two combination things, the new mag-lev technology conveyor belt system I described, and a new container fee which is basically a user fee for those using the ports, will be the type of innovation that will ensure that the Ports of Los Angeles, and yes, the port complex in Long Beach, has a great second 100 years, and that, again, this port complex will provide us with an example of innovation and forward thinking and economic prosperity that will serve all of the people of the United States. Again, I congratulate the Port of Los Angeles on their 100th anniversary.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. On the issue, first, I'd like to compliment the gentleman on obviously his vast knowledge and research that he had done on these energy issues. I am very impressed with the presentation tonight. Let me note that in California I worked very closely with Governor Schwarzenegger on a number of these energy issues. One of the new technologies that has emerged is the actual production of hydrogen on a portable basis. There is an inventor in California that has come up with an attachment that can go on any internal combustion engine that actually attaches to the alternator of the engine and creates electricity that goes into a liquid into the small container, which then, as we know, electricity through liquid produces hydrogen and oxygen gas, which is then put into the air intake of the engine. The Governor, when I described this to him, and we had a lot of trouble with private companies unwilling to actually test this product out, the Governor put it on his Hummer. He said, Dana, I am giving you my Hummer. Put it on the car and I will pay for the test. The Governor actually reached out. This type of creativity and what you're discussing tonight and a broad array of approaches to our energy challenge, I think, will carry us through. I want to compliment the gentleman on his great presentation tonight.