Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, if the Senator will permit me to do so, section 402 of the House Concurrent Resolution 95 of the 109th Congress, the fiscal year 2006 concurrent resolution budget, created a point of order against an emergency designation on nondefense spending. The amendment contains nondefense spending with an emergency designation. Pursuant to that section 402 of S. Con. Res. 95 of the 108th Congress, the fiscal year 2005 concurrent resolution on the budget, I make a point of order against the emergency designation contained in the amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have a package we have approved as managers of the bill. I ask unanimous consent that the Chair lay before the Senate amendments 1996, 1887, 1895, 2017, 1925, and 1889. It sounds as though I am reading birthdays. When the Chair is ready, I will propound a unanimous consent request when those amendments are before us.

Mr. STEVENS. We do not want to offer them en bloc. We want to offer them one by one.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask for approval of the amendment.

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

Mr. STEVENS. I call up amendment No. 2017 and send a modification to the desk.

Mr. STEVENS. This is Senator Bennett's amendment for chemical biological defense. We have accepted it as modified.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1925.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this is Senator Isakson's amendment for funds for environmental management. I ask for its consideration.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1889.

Mr. STEVENS. This is Senator Salazar's fallen hero compensation amendment, which we have agreed to.

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

Mr. STEVENS. I call up amendment No. 1895.

Mr. STEVENS. This is Senator Bingaman's amendment for field programmable gate array. I have a modification which I send to the desk.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 7:30 today, the Senate proceed to votes in relation to the following amendments in the order listed, provided further that no second-degree amendments be in order to the amendments prior to the votes. The first is the Warner amendment No. 1955, which is defense of germaneness; the second is Bayh amendment 1933; the next is McCain amendment 1977. Provided further that there be 6 minutes equally divided for debate prior to each of the above ordered votes.

Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senator from Illinois. (Several Senators addressed the Chair.)

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this is a difficult subject to discuss, and as the minority leader indicated, no one is more qualified to talk about this than the Senator from Arizona. It is with some trepidation that I try to explain to him the position of the administration and with which I happen to agree. The problem is not the goal of the Senator from Arizona; the problem is the way it would be carried out under this amendment. This amendment would require that the field manual be changed. Currently the field manual has a general description of the techniques of interrogation, and it allows flexibility to determine what will be used in terms of interrogation techniques based upon the circumstances that exist. We know that terrorists train their people to deal with the techniques of our interrogation, so those techniques change under various circumstances. One of the situations I would call to the attention of the Senator from Arizona is as we have visited with our people in the field, now we have a unique circumstance of having multinational and multiagency teams that are in the field. The question comes down to who has custody or effective control of a person. Particularly I remember one team we saw which had five different nationalities including the intelligence agencies and military agencies of those nations. If this becomes law, it is my opinion that those teams will be handled so that the United States does not have custody, does not have control, and the kind of treatment we seek will not be given to people who are made prisoners by multinational teams that are searching out terrorists throughout the world. This is a different war now. I believe we are seeing the beginning of a crusade against freedom from the militant terrorist Islamic entities throughout the world. We see the suicide bombers. We see the people who are inflicting terrible damage from Indonesia, the Philippines, to all throughout the Central Command, and we have teams out trying to find these people. Of course, one of their first jobs is to interrogate anyone they capture to try to see if we can find out where the rest of them are and how they are functioning. If this amendment passes, the United States will not have effective control of those people. It will be impossible to interrogate under the systems we have used in the past because we cannot list in a field manual all of the interrogation techniques that will be used. It takes thousands of pages anyway. But the techniques vary upon the circumstances and the physical location of the people involved. I have some memory from World War II in China when I witnessed some of our people--I was just a pilot, but I was conveying some of these people from place to place who had been tortured, and I can tell you they were brutally treated by the Chinese when we were taking these people from place to place and they had prisoners. Some of them were not Chinese. They were prisoners obviously of Japan. We had freed some of them, and they were--I have memory that those who were freed were still the responsibility of the United States. But as a practical matter, what do you do with regard to a law that says that all of the techniques must be listed in the field manual; regardless of nationality or physical location, if an individual is in the custody or physical control of the United States, they shall be subject to only the means of interrogation listed in the field manual. I appreciate very much what the Senator is trying to do. I think most of us have gone down to Guantanamo to satisfy ourselves that what is happening down there is in accordance with our concepts. Those people are totally under the custody of the United States, and certainly from my point of view what we saw when we were down there, we were convinced they were receiving the kind of treatment and the interrogations were not such that they would be affected by this amendment. It is the people in the field, not people really handling prisoner camps or handling interrogation of those persons who are seized by our forces and brought to a camp or brought to a place, a jail such as we all know has gone wrong in Iraq--but I am talking the people in the field now, multinational teams, and their job is to find out what these people who are captured know in order to prevent further acts of terrorism. It is a very touchy thing to deal with, I know, to really talk about it. The administration has told us that they are complying with all the constitutional, statutory, treaty obligations that apply to U.S. interrogation practices. They are telling us that they know the Convention Against Torture requires the United States to ensure that torture is a crime whether committed anywhere by a U.S. national or to prevent any of the entities that are under the control of the United States from any acts of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment. We totally agree with the efforts of the Senator from Arizona in that regard, and the President has directed the Armed Forces to treat any detainee humanely and comply with the appropriate and consistent military procedures that are consistent with the Geneva Conventions. That is a given. But this amendment goes further. This amendment will cover those entities with multiple nationalities, multiple agencies, and because of the circumstances our people in the past have taken control of these, and some of the activities of the other nationalities involved would not be consistent with this amendment. I say what will happen in the future is we will just not take control of them. This will be a deterrent to our people from taking the leadership, and as they do, they will do everything they can to comply with the Geneva Conventions. It is those circumstances, the new type of entities we use to combat terrorism that worries the administration. So I can say--and I know the Senator from Arizona understands--it is the position of the administration that this amendment goes too far. We will not make a point of order. There is no point of order that I know will apply to it anyway. But I do believe it is a matter that ought to be approached with caution. What does a multinational team do if they pick up a prisoner who they believe can give them information as to the location of terrorists who have committed severe acts of terrorism? The decision will be made, I am sure, that we not take custody. The custody will go to other nationalities involved in the team. We will have no control. I believe the amendment of the Senator from Arizona is going to carry, but I believe we have to give serious consideration to the implications I have just mentioned, and I hope the Senate will keep that in mind. I yield the floor.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this Senator doesn't agree with anything that has been said about the applicability of this provision to anyone in the military uniform. Most of the speakers have talked about men and women in the armed services. The amendment goes much further than that. But first, the problem is it requires the field manual to list every type and means of interrogation. Thousands of pages will be required. People will be prosecuted in military courts if they don't know every single one of them, if they even cross the line by accident. This idea of listing all of the possible ways to interrogate a person is impossible. I say that should be changed. Maybe they should issue from time to time additional items to go in the field manual. But to require that no one can use a means of interrogation not listed in advance when we are involved in a war on terror and we are dealing with terrorists is wrong. Beyond that, this deals with any person--not any military person. The Geneva Conventions were originally intended to deal with military prisoners. This is dealing with anyone who is intercepted now anywhere in the world who, regardless of nationality or physical location, is in custody or physical control of the United States because a person who is American happens to be there. Again, I mention these teams I have met with, and I respect multinational teams. This, in effect, says that an American is responsible for anything done by any member of that team. That, to me, is wrong. What is more, I think it is wrong to presume there is no place in this country or in the operation of this country where we should not have the ability to deal with terrorists on their own ground. These are vicious people, suicidal people. I do not think they should be accorded the rank and treatment of men and women in uniform from other nations. That is what this amendment does. I shall oppose it. I may be all alone, but I shall oppose it because I think there is a place in our operations against individuals involved in the war on terrorism where we deal with them as they deal with us. These are not military people. They may not even be American nationals who are working for us in an undercover way, but this says we are responsible for treating all these people according to the Geneva Conventions and according to processes listed in the U.S. Army Field Manual. That is wrong. That is all simply wrong, and I shall oppose the amendment. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I am informed there are objections from Members of the Committee on Armed Services to this amendment. I urge them to come over and defend their position. This Senator was prepared to accept the amendment. It may be subject to a point of order. I am not sure. I do believe there are detainee items in the House-passed bills that would be germane under the circumstances, but it is another example, I might say, of the problems we get into when items that pertain to legislation end up on appropriations bills. We are not really prepared to debate the amendment. I urge Members of the Committee on Armed Services who wish to do so to debate this amendment. My only question is--I know the Senator is an extremely good attorney--has the phrase ``unlawful enemy combatant'' been used in any other portion of our laws of the Geneva Conventions?

Mr. STEVENS. If the Senator will yield, has this matter been discussed in the Committee on Armed Services?

Mr. STEVENS. I say to the Senator, that is another question. We were prepared to accept the amendment because--I don't claim expertise in this area; it is not within our jurisdiction. It is legislation on an appropriations bill, but I don't intend to raise an objection to it. Has this been discussed, on a bipartisan basis, in the committee?

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I believe the Senator's amendment has real merit. I find no objection to it. It has been conveyed to me by the administration. We still have a very small difference--it sounds like a big difference--on the McCain amendment. But we have no difference on this amendment. We are prepared to accept it, unless someone comes over here and finds a way to articulate an objection.