Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Reserving the right to object, I intended to speak for 1 minute before the time had expired for morning business. Will the Senator yield for just one brief comment?

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this bill came to the floor on September 27. It was debated a few hours, the 28th and 29th similarly. On the 30th, it was debated about half a day. Yesterday, we started business on the bill sometime around noon. Today, we are voting cloture on the seventh calendar day, but probably less than 3 days of debate. I think this rush is unbecoming of the Senate. I shall oppose cloture, and I want the record to show I do not think this subject, reform of the intelligence community, has ever taken such a short period of time. We are acting under pressure primarily from two men whose business was through when they filed their report. I am appalled that we are moving at this pace.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I apologize for not being here earlier. I thank the managers of the bill, Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman, and their staffs for the work that has been done over the weekend, which we will be hearing about soon, trying to meet us halfway in terms of some of the objections we have raised to the bill. We will soon vote on amendment No. 3903, which the Senator from Maine has just discussed, declassification responsibility. This is an enormous step to take mainly because of the absolute lobbying and pressure from two people from the 9/11 Commission. I have talked to other members on the Commission who were not so keen about declassification of the entire intelligence budget other than Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Kean. Clearly, it is a massive step. From President Truman to President Bush, every President of the United States has said do not declassify the top line of our budget. We have voted in the Senate many times since I have been in the Senate as Members have tried to do this, and we have uniformly turned down such a proposal. Now it is in a bill for the first time. We must take it out. It requires 51 votes to take out. In the past, it took 51 votes to pass. We are in a different position now than we were before. Very clearly, because of the scope of this bill, we are doing something even more expansive than amendments that came before the Senate before. Again, I call the attention of the Senators who will vote to the scope of the definition of national intelligence under this bill. It is a sweeping definition. I ask that page 6, beginning on line 19, be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS. My point is this: Included in intelligence are the top secret plans of this country. They are the planning for future devices and concepts that deal with interception of information. They deal with the ability to identify individuals. They deal with so many classified areas that I may be violating some rules by mentioning the two I mentioned. All the money we put in this bill, hide in the intelligence bill, to stop anyone from knowing about it, has to be disclosed under this direction, to include everything, any program, project, or activity of any one of these agencies. I plead with Members to think about classification. This is not routine classification of who is an employee of the CIA. That is bad enough, come to think of it. These activities are so far reaching, and with so many agencies, including the defense agency that deals with research activities. It has projects it is working on, which are so far out that may prove to be viable. They are part of the intelligence budget. They are classified. They are down in the black portion of the bill and are kept classified because we do not want anyone to know what we are researching and what we are developing. It would be included in this. No amendment we ever looked at before would have done that, but because of the definition of intelligence in this bill it becomes all inclusive and there is no alternative. Sometimes I think maybe I am just not able to communicate totally what I am thinking about this bill. It is far reaching to the point of having the ability to destroy intelligence capability to plan for the future. There is no question about the right to know everything--except the secrets of the country. Aren't we allowed to have some secrets? Do we have to disclose a number that encompasses the financing of secret activities, some so classified they are not even top secret; they are code word? You have to be cleared for the word. You have to be totally cleared. And there are very few people cleared for these activities. I don't think there are many people in the Senate who are cleared for code word activities. Should we tell them what we are spending for code word activities? We do not even tell them the word--but we will have to print in the Record now, disclose in the top line of the intelligence budget, all of those activities. I will speak later about it. Again, I implore the managers of the bill to think twice about this precedent we would be setting, reversing the votes in the Senate--reversing because now it requires 51 votes to take it out. In the past, it was 51 votes to get it passed. This has shifted the burden from the intelligence people who want to protect the Intelligence Committee to the people who do not understand it, do not wish to really understand it. I am not being accusatory of my two friends. They have worked hard and are trying to understand, but some of us have lived a lifetime in trying to understand it. This amendment has to pass. If we want to disclose the budget to the extent that it is not classified in terms of top secret or above, that is another matter. We can disclose a portion of the budget that is in the secret category, but when we get to top secret and above--no. If we include that, count me out. I cannot believe we would do that. I hope the Senator will listen to us later.

Mr. STEVENS. I am delighted to yield.

Mr. STEVENS. The Senator is absolutely right.

Mr. STEVENS. The problem is, once we make available this top line they wish to disclose and then start through the budget on what you can find easily, pretty soon you come down to the portion of the budget that is in the classified sector, and then you start to pick it apart. You know what will happen. It will keep getting question after question after question. But the people who risk their lives, who are foreign nationals, are paid from this budget. We are really going to put in there how much we are paying people around the world to spy for us? Are we naive enough to think we are not paying people? It would be in there. Unless the Senator disagrees with me, there is one little exception: unless someone decides otherwise. I am not sure what that means because it only refers to that one section. It is related to national intelligence. Now, national intelligence is intelligence that is covered by section 5. It does not refer to counterintelligence or law enforcement activities conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It does not say it does not cover counterintelligence or activities of the CIA or the DIA, but it does for the FBI. I think the problem is, the definitions of these programs are so specific now to this bill. But this one covers the disclosure of the total amount. That is what I object to.

Mr. STEVENS. Let me tell the Senator one thing before I quit. I remember one morning I woke up and the New York Times had a picture of the Predator on the front page, and it disclosed that it was capable of carrying the Hellfire missile. If there was anything that was totally classified at that time, that was it, and there it was out there on the front page. Do you know what. About a week later, we missed several people in Afghanistan on whom we were trying to use the Hellfire missile. They knew it was already there. They knew it was armed by that time. Before that, it had not been armed and before that no one had the capability to arm it. But we developed a way to arm it, and there it was on the front page of the New York Times. Now, this concept of leakage of the intelligence community's activities starts from the top line. I do not understand why we should reverse the history of this Senate. The Senate has never voted to disclose the intelligence budget--never.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. STEVENS. But you are using foreign intelligence. This is national intelligence. He talked about foreign intelligence.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I believe this is another amendment that is sort of misunderstood. The powers of the national intelligence director under this bill are much broader than the CIA Director's. Under this bill he has the right to move money from any part of the intelligence community to another part without consent of the agency to whom we appropriated money and, really, without regard to the program activities or even the specifications Congress has put on that money. Take, for instance, reserve funds. Reserve funds are there in the event of emergencies for the specific agency involved. He can go in to take the reserve funds from one agency and move them entirely to another agency without any consent of the agency or the consent of the committees that appropriated the money for that reserve contingency. The Senator's amendment makes a lot of sense. Those of us who are cosponsors are very serious about our support.

Mr. STEVENS. I send a modification of my amendment to the desk.

Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senators from Maine and Connecticut for working with us on this amendment. It does stretch out the timeframe and makes much more sense.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, could we have order? Determining classification is the responsibility and duty of the chief executive of the United States, the President, who is also Commander in Chief. Presidents Truman through Bush has determined that the overall intelligence budget top-line figure is, and shall remain, classified, and I believe we should not overrule that judgment. The foundation of an effective intelligence capability, is secrecy. Secrecy protects not only the information that we collect, but also the brave people that put themselves at risk to do the collection of it. We are an open and a free society that generally abhors secret dealings by our Government. But in the case of intelligence collection and analysis, secrecy, is absolutely necessary. Some of my colleagues argue that the American people have a right to know how much of their money is being spent to defend their Nation's security through intelligence-gathering operations. I assert today that, through its elected officials, the public interests are being effectively served. Some argue that disclosing the total budget amount will instill public confidence and enable the American people to know what portion of the Federal budget is dedicated to intelligence activities. This bill recommends that the overall intelligence budget should no longer remain classified. I believe that the total budget figure is of no use to anyone but to those who wish to do us harm. For example, what do the numbers tell our adversaries or potential adversaries in the world? In any given year, perhaps, not a great deal. But while watching the changes in the budget over time, and using information gathered by their own intelligence activities, sophisticated analysts can indeed learn a great deal. Trend analysis, as you know, is a technique that our own analysts use to make predictions and to reach conclusions. There are hostile foreign intelligence agencies all over the world that are focused solely on gathering every bit of information that they can about our own intelligence-gathering operations and our capabilities. Their ultimate goal is to exploit weaknesses and to deny access and to deceive our own intelligence collectors. Denial and deception is already a serious concern for the intelligence community, and providing our enemies or potential enemies with any insight as to what we spend on intelligence will only make it worse, not better. No other nation, friend, or ally, reveals the amount that it spends on intelligence. It would set a terrible, dangerous precedent, because right after the aggregate budget was revealed, that number doesn't say much and so the calls would be quickly for more information. This is a slippery slope. Reveal the first number and it will be just a matter of minutes before there will be a call to reveal more information. I want to remind my colleagues that we voted on a similar measure in 1997--the amendment failed by a vote of 56-43. There have also been five votes in the House--all of which have failed. Let us not change our records now. The President of the United States and every President since Harry Truman has requested that the Senate not declassify the amount our country spends on intelligence. I believe we should listen to what he tells us. I have amended my original amendment to request that only a study be done on this important issue. That the national intelligence director have the time to investigate this important topic and let him, with the President, decide what the safety needs of our Nation are to be. Based on the recommendations of our colleagues here in the past, I hope you will accept this change and support this amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send a modification to the desk.

Mr. STEVENS. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. STEVENS. If I give notice of reconsideration of that vote, what happens under the cloture vote as set for tomorrow?

Mr. STEVENS. I give notice of reconsideration.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I regret seriously I was unable to make my statement in full. I was not notified of this time limit when I left on Friday. I came back and found it. The statement of my amendment there was not a statement of my amendment. It was a statement in opposition to my amendment. I was unable to tell the Senate that the statement of policy of the President of the United States supports this amendment. I think the Senate should reconsider tomorrow and think again about this amendment. Is there a time limit on me right now? Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have the floor. Is there a time limit?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, is that debatable?

Mr. STEVENS. I object.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3830. Several Senators addressed the Chair.