The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“PROTECTING VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS AND EMERGENCY RESPONDERS ACT OF 2014” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Senate section on pages S6470-S6480 on Dec. 10, 2014.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PROTECTING VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS AND EMERGENCY RESPONDERS ACT OF 2014
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of the message to accompany H.R. 3979, which the clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3979, an act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to ensure that emergency services volunteers are not taken into account as employees under the shared responsibility requirements contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Pending:
Reid motion to concur in the amendment of the House to the amendment of the Senate to the bill.
Reid motion to concur in the amendment of the House to the amendment of the Senate to the bill, with Reid amendment No. 3984 (to the amendment of the House to the amendment of the Senate to the bill), to change the enactment date.
Reid amendment No. 3985 (to amendment No. 3984), of a perfecting nature.
Reid motion to refer the message of the House on the bill to the Committee on Armed Services, with instructions, Reid amendment No. 3986, to change the enactment date.
Reid amendment No. 3987 (to (the instructions) amendment No. 3986), of a perfecting nature.
Reid amendment No. 3988 (to amendment No. 3987), of a perfecting nature.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with Senator Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, to bring to the floor H.R. 3979. This is the agreement between the Armed Services Committees of the Senate and House on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015. The House of Representatives passed the bill last week by a vote of 300 to 119. If we succeed in the Senate, it will mark the 53rd year in a row that we have enacted this bill that is so essential to the defense of our Nation and to our men and women in uniform and their families.
I thank all the members of the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, especially our subcommittee chairs for the hard work they have done to get us to the finish line on this bill. I thank Senator Inhofe for his close partnership. Before this Congress I had been fortunate to serve with a series of Republican chairmen and ranking members, including John McCain, John Warner, and Strom Thurmond. They understood and appreciated the traditions of our committee and the importance of the legislation we enact every year for our men and women in uniform. That is what this is all about. Jim Inhofe, our ranking Republican in this Congress, has upheld that tradition of bipartisanship and dedication to enacting this important legislation through particularly challenging circumstances.
Our bill includes hundreds of important provisions to authorize the activities of the Department of Defense and to provide for the well-
being of our men and women in uniform and their families. The bill will enable the military services to continue paying special pay and bonuses needed for recruitment and retention of key personnel. It strengthens survivor benefits for disabled children of servicemembers and retirees. It includes provisions addressing the employment of military spouses, job placement for veterans, and military child custody disputes. It addresses military hazing, military suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, and mental health problems in the military. It provides continuing impact to support military families and local school districts.
The bill includes 20 provisions to continue to build on the progress we are starting to make in addressing the scourge of sexual assault in the military. Key provisions will eliminate the so-called good soldier defense, give victims a voice in whether their case is prosecuted in military or civilian courts, give victims the right to challenge court-
martial rulings that violate their rights at the court of criminal appeals, and would strengthen the psychotherapist-patient privilege. Last week we received the welcome news that the number of incidents of unwanted sexual contact in the military is down and that more incidents are being reported so victims can receive the care and assistance they need and perpetrators can be brought to justice. With the enactment of the legislation before us and the commitment of military leaders, we hope to build on these trends.
The bill provides continued funding and authorities for ongoing operations in Afghanistan and for our forces conducting operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria called ISIS.
As requested by the administration, it authorizes the Department of Defense to train and equip vetted members of the moderate Syrian opposition and to train and equip national and local forces who are actively fighting ISIS in Iraq. It establishes a counterterrorism partnership fund that provides the administration new flexibility in addressing emerging terrorist threats around the world. In addition, the bill extends the Afghanistan Special Immigrant Visa Program, providing for 4,000 new visas, and addresses a legal glitch that precluded members of the ruling parties in Kurdistan from receiving visas under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The authority provided in this bill to train and equip local forces in Iraq and Syria to take on ISIS is particularly important because our military leaders and intelligence experts have uniformly told us airstrikes alone will not be sufficient to defeat ISIS. American air power has changed the momentum on the ground somewhat and given moderates in the region an opportunity to regroup, but ISIS cannot be defeated without an opposing force to take the fight to it on the ground. To do that, our Arab and Muslim partners must be in the lead because the fight with ISIS is primarily a struggle within Islam for the hearts and minds of Muslims. Training and equipping our moderate Muslim allies gives us a way to move beyond the use of air power to support them in this fight.
Our bill takes steps to respond to Russian aggression in Ukraine by authorizing $1 billion for a European Reassurance Initiative to enhance the U.S. military presence in Europe and build partner capacity to respond to security threats, of which no less than $75 million would be committed for activities and assistance to support Ukraine by requiring a review of U.S. and NATO force posture, readiness and contingency plans in Europe and by expressing support for both nonprovocative defense military assistance--both lethal and non lethal--to Ukraine.
The bill adds hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to improve the readiness of our Armed Forces across all branches--Active, Guard, and Reserve--to help blunt some--and I emphasize some--of the negative effects of sequestration. It includes provisions increasing funding for science and technology, providing women-owned small businesses the same sole-source contracting authority that is already available to other categories of small businesses, expanding the No Contracting With the Enemy Act to all government agencies and requiring governmentwide reform of information technology acquisition. Although we were unable to bring the Senate-reported bill to the floor for amendment, we established an informal clearing process pursuant to which we were able to clear 44 Senate amendments--roughly an equal number of Democratic and Republican amendments--and include them in the new bill which is before us.
I am pleased the bill also includes a half dozen provisions to address the growing cyber threat to critical information systems of the Department of Defense and the Nation. One provision which was added to the bill was the Levin-McCain amendment, which requires the President to identify nations that engage in economic or industrial espionage against the United States through cyber space and provides authority to impose trade sanctions on persons determined to be knowingly engaged in such espionage.
A second provision which arose out of a committee investigation of cyber threats to the Department of Defense requires the Secretary of Defense to establish procedures for identifying contractors that are operationally critical to mobilization, deployment or sustainment of contingency operations and to ensure that such contractors report any successful penetrations of their computer networks. Much more remains to be done, but these are important first steps as we begin to respond to the serious threat posed to U.S. interests by cyber attacks.
With regard to military compensation reform, we adopted a number of proposals to slow the growth of personnel costs in fiscal year 2015, as needed to enable the Department of Defense to begin to address readiness shortfalls in a fiscal environment constrained by sequestration-level budgets, while deferring further changes to be made in future years if sequestration is not adequately addressed.
In particular, the Department requested pay raises below the rate of inflation for 5 years. This bill provides a pay raise below the rate of inflation for fiscal year 2015, deferring decisions on future pay raises to later bills. The Department requested that we slow the growth of the basic allowance for housing by permitting adjustments below the rate of inflation for 3 years. This bill would slow the growth of the basic allowance for housing for fiscal year 2015, deferring decisions on future increases to later bills. The Department requested that we gradually increase copays for TRICARE pharmaceuticals over 10 years. This bill includes a proportionate increase in copays for fiscal year 2015, deferring decisions on future increases to later bills.
These are not steps any of us want to have to take; however, the Budget Control Act of 2011 cut $1 trillion from the planned Department of Defense budget over a 10-year period. Our senior military leaders told us they simply cannot meet sequestration budget levels without structural changes--canceling programs, retiring weapon systems, and reducing the growth in benefits--to reduce the size and cost of our military.
A year and a half ago when sequestration was first triggered, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified that sequestration
``will severely limit our ability to implement our defense strategy. It will put the nation at greater risk of coercion, and it will break faith with men and women in uniform.'' At a hearing this spring, he told us that ``delaying adjustments to military compensation will cause additional, disproportionate cuts to force structure, readiness, and modernization.''
The Department of Defense budget proposal also proposed to retire several weapon systems in an effort to meet sequestration-level budget ceilings. For example, the Department proposed to take half of the Navy's fleet of cruisers out of service and to retire the Army's entire fleet of scout and training helicopters. With regard to Navy cruisers, our bill allows the Navy to take two cruisers out of service this year, deferring a decision on additional ships until next year's budget. With regard to Army helicopters, the National Guard objected to the plan to consolidate Apache attack helicopters in the Active component so they can operate at the higher operational tempo needed to both fill their own mission and replace the Kiowa mission. The Guard maintains that the Army should be able to achieve needed savings and meet mission requirements without transferring Apaches from the Reserve components to the Active Army.
Our bill establishes an independent commission on the future of the Army to examine Army force structure and make recommendations as to the best way forward for Army helicopters. Because the Army needs the savings generated by the helicopter restructuring now, the bill would allow the transfer of 48 Apache helicopters--as called for in both the Army plan and the alternative National Guard plan--before the commission reports. Additional transfers would depend on the recommendations of the commission and subsequent Department or congressional action.
Sequestration is damaging enough to our military, but the damage will be far worse if we insist that the Department conduct business as usual without regard to the changed budget circumstances. The budget caps imposed by sequestration mean that every dollar we choose to spend on a program that we refuse to cancel or reduce has to come from another higher priority program. Our senior military leaders have told us that this will mean planes that can't fly, ships that can't sail, and soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who are not properly trained and equipped for the mission we expect them to accomplish. As the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told us in January, sending troops into harm's way without training, equipment, or the latest technology is a breach of trust with the troops and their families.
The painful measures included in this bill are just a downpayment on the changes that will be needed if sequestration is not repealed. Delaying these changes will only make the pain worse later on while damaging the readiness of our troops to carry out their missions when we call upon them.
I am disappointed that we were unable to make further progress in this bill toward the objective of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo, Cuba. The Senate committee-reported bill included a provision that would have allowed the Department of Defense to bring Gitmo detainees to the United States, subject to a series of legal protections, for detention and trial. The provision also included an amendment--this is the provision in the Senate committee-passed bill--
which was offered by Senator Graham that would require the President, before authorizing the transfer of any detainees to the United States, to present a plan to Congress and that Congress would be afforded an opportunity to disapprove the plan using expedited procedures. It would have been a joint resolution.
I continue to believe the Gitmo facility undermines our interests around the world and has made it more difficult to try to convict the terrorists who are detained there, and I am disappointed that the House leadership refused to consider this provision even with the Graham amendment.
Finally, our bill includes a lands package that Senator Inhofe and I agreed to include based on the bipartisan, bicameral request of the committees of jurisdiction and the overwhelming support of our colleagues. The contents of the lands package were worked out by the House Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will be managing that part of the bill on the Senate floor. We have been assured that all provisions have been cleared and that the package has been cleared by the chairmen and ranking minority members of the relevant committees.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a full list of the names of our majority and minority staff members, who have given so much of themselves and their families, be printed in the Record at this point.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Peter K. Levine, Staff Director, John A. Bonsell, Minority Staff Director, Daniel C. Adams, Minority Associate Counsel, Adam J. Barker, Professional Staff Member, Steven M. Barney, Minority Counsel, June M. Borawski, Printing and Documents Clerk, Leah C. Brewer, Nominations and Hearings Clerk, William S. Castle, Minority General Counsel, John D. Cewe, Professional Staff Member, Samantha L. Clark, Minority Associate Counsel, Jonathan D. Clark, Counsel, Allen M. Edwards, Professional Staff Member, Jonathan S. Epstein, Counsel, Richard W. Fieldhouse, Professional Staff Member, Lauren M. Gillis, Staff Assistant, Thomas W. Goffus, Professional Staff Member, Creighton Greene, Professional Staff Member, Ozge Guzelsu, Counsel, Daniel J. Harder, Staff Assistant, Alexandra M. Hathaway, Staff Assistant, Ambrose R. Hock, Professional Staff Member, Gary J. Howard, Systems Administrator.
Michael J. Kuiken, Professional Staff Member, Mary J. Kyle, Legislative Clerk, Anthony J. Lazarski, Professional Staff Member, Gerald J. Leeling, General Counsel, Daniel A. Lerner, Professional Staff Member, Gregory R. Lilly, Minority Clerk, Jason W. Maroney, Counsel, Thomas K. McConnell, Professional Staff Member, Mariah K. McNamara, Special Assistant to the Staff Director, William G. P. Monahan, Counsel, Natalie M. Nicolas, Minority Research Analyst, Michael J. Noblet, Professional Staff Member, Cindy Pearson, Assistant Chief Clerk and Security Manager, Roy F. Phillips, Professional Staff Member, John H. Quirk V, Professional Staff Member, Brendan J. Sawyer, Staff Assistant, Arun A. Seraphin, Professional Staff Member, Travis E. Smith, Chief Clerk, Robert M. Soofer, Professional Staff Member, William K. Sutey, Professional Staff Member, Robert T. Waisanen, Staff Assistant, Barry C. Walker, Security Officer.
Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, I have to say what a joy it is to work with Senator Levin. I know the public thinks that no Republicans like any Democrats and vice versa--at least those are the flames they try to fan--and that is not true.
I can only think of two issues on which Senator Levin and I disagreed with each other. He has been through 16 of the NDAAs as either chairman or ranking member. I am sure that is some kind of a record. But to work with someone who you know will be totally honest with you even when you have a difference of opinion is really a joy. I hope we can be an example for some of the other committees that don't have that much joy when they are working on an issue.
The long history he has had here and the integrity he has expressed will be sorely missed, I have to say to my good friend Senator Levin.
As Senator Levin said, we will have to get to the bill before we leave. This bill has passed for 52 consecutive years, and that really says something. But each year there is always a problem.
The comment that was made on the land package--I think the process is wrong regardless of the merits of the bill. As was pointed out by Senator Levin, it was supported in a bipartisan way by all the appropriate committees; however, that is not us, that is them. The process should not allow others to come in on this bill, so I think it is flawed. I don't think it will happen again. I really don't.
I talked to the people who will be involved in next year's NDAA, which, by the way, we will start working on in February of next year.
I will go over a couple of other reasons why we have to get this bill done. As I said, we have done this for 52 consecutive years, and I am sure we are going to be able to get this done.
We passed this bill out to the floor from our committee--the committee chaired by Senator Levin--on May 23, the day after it was done in the House committee. So we were ready to do this way back in May, and the problem was we could not get it on the floor.
I can remember coming down to the floor with Senator Levin and begging people to bring amendments to us. We have to have amendments down here because we can't expect the leader to bring this to the floor unless we know people will work with us on amendments. So eventually they did bring amendments, and we responded. We had many amendments. I don't remember exactly how many amendments were put forth, but I do remember we considered and put 47 amendments into this package--we did it through the big four method, which was the only thing left for us to do--47 amendments divided almost equally between Republicans and Democrats. We considered those amendments and put them in as a part of the bill.
Of course, despite pushing for months that the NDAA be considered under regular order, which we should have done, we find ourselves in the unfortunate situation we are in today. It is reminiscent of last year. Last year we went all the way up to December 26 before we finally passed it.
It would really be a disaster if we didn't pass it. People don't realize that if we don't pass this bill--our last chance is this week because the House will be out of there. There will be no way to have amendments or change anything now from the product we have. We already have a lot of the amendments in, but we can't make changes to them. We can't have another bill because we have run out of time. It will not happen unless it happens with this bill. I know a lot of people would prefer to have something else, although I know this bill is going to pass by a large margin. It is a good bill.
People wonder what would happen if we didn't pass this bill. It would be a disaster. Enlistment bonuses--a lot of these kids have been over there serving, and they have been told they will have certain things, and one of them is the bonuses. Well, all of a sudden, on December 31, if we don't have a bill, those expire and those kids will not have enlistment or reenlistment bonuses.
The incentives are important in order to keep troops with critical skills. We hear a lot about the SEALs and the great work they do. These critical skills incentives will go away on December 31.
There is also incentive pay for pilots. I have researched this because there is a lot of competition out there for our pilots--pilots for heavy vehicles, as well as strike fighters. Right now there is a competition with the airlines. Everyone wants to hire these guys, so there is competition out there. All of a sudden the flight pay would come out on December 31 if we don't pass this bill, and that means we will lose some of these guys. It is a $25,000-a-year bonus for these guys over a 10-year period, so it is $250,000. However, for each one who decides not to come back--to retrain someone to the status of an F-
22 would cost about $17 million. We are looking at bonuses that might be $25,000, but the alternative, if we don't get this done by December 31, would cost $17 million for each pilot who needs to be trained. So that is very significant. We have skill incentive pay and proficiency bonuses for all of those. So that singularly would be enough reason to say we have to have it; we just can't do without it. Stopping all military construction, which would be on December 31.
One of the areas where the chairman and I disagree is on Gitmo. We have had a friendly and honest difference of opinion on that. I look at Gitmo as one of the few resources we have that is a good deal for government. We have had it since 1904 and it only costs us $4,000 and half the time Cuba forgets to charge us, so it is a pretty good deal. There is no place else we can put, in my opinion, the combatants. People say bring them back to the United States. The problem is if we intermingle prisoners at Gitmo with the prison population--these people at Gitmo are not criminals, they are people who teach terrorists. So there are a lot of arguments against bringing Gitmo prisoners to the United States. That in itself would be a 2-hour speech, so I will not get into it now.
There are some areas where the chairman and I disagree and there were a lot of compromises because we knew we had to have the bill. If we don't pass this bill, there will be no European Reassurance Initiative to stand up against Russian aggression. I shouldn't have done this because I was on the ballot this year for reelection, but for the week prior to our election, I went over to see what was happening in Ukraine because Ukraine was having their elections the week before we had our elections. Not many people are aware that in Ukraine, Poroshenko--what happened in their election in Ukraine, a political party cannot have a seat in Parliament unless they get 5 percent of the vote. The vote took place 1 week before our vote. This will be the first time in 96 years that the Communist Party will not have one seat in Parliament. That is amazing. We have to understand what is happening with Putin.
I also went to Lithuania and Estonia and Latvia and those areas in the Baltics. That is another problem we have. They want to give us the assurance that it is not just Putin in Ukraine, but they are becoming aggressive. I coined the term for what Putin is trying to do, ``de-
Reaganize'' Europe, to try to take out all the freedoms that were there and try to put a coalition together. That is a huge issue, and it is addressed in this bill in a very aggressive way with the reassurance initiative.
Also, if we don't pass this bill, we would not have the Counterterrorism Partnership Fund, which I think we are all aware is so necessary with ISIL on the rampage they are pursuing.
So we have a lot of provisions. I think the chairman did a good job of covering them. A couple of them perhaps might have been overlooked or that I might add for my own personal interests. One is the support of the Aircraft Modernization Program. Historically, we have always had the best of everything, but now when we look at China and at Russia and what they are doing, it is a very difficult situation for us. We had the F-22; the President terminated that program his first year in office. So now we have all of our eggs in the basket in terms of the strike vehicles and the F-35. A lot of people don't like the F-35, but that is what we have to have and that is in this bill to continue with that.
The E-2D surveillance aircraft is one very few people know about. It is one of the ugliest airplanes in the sky, but it is one that is necessary for surveillance and other functions of government.
We have the KC-46 tanker aircraft. We have been using the KC-135 now for decades and we have to go toward a more modern vehicle, and we do have on the books that we will continue to do that, working with the KC-46. So several others--some improvements to the workhorse of the military, the C-130 aircraft, and other vehicles.
Without this bill, we are going to have to stop some of these projects, so think about the cost. We are in the midst of contracts right now that we could be in jeopardy of losing.
The construction on military and family housing is there. It is very significant.
So I think all of these pieces--and one piece I think people are interested in is this will end the reliance on Russian-made rocket engines. We hear a lot about that. This bill includes a timeframe for when the current contracts run out, so that we are going to be developing our own rocket engine. I have heard from a lot of outside experts. Tom Stafford is one of the famous astronauts from Oklahoma. He and I have talked at length about what we are going to be able to do with some of these rocket engines. So I think this is enough reason why we have to do this, and I think everyone realizes that.
We have heard a lot of talk that frankly is not true. Unfortunately, there are some groups that are kind of antimilitary groups that came out with some statements that weren't true and some of the talk show hosts I admire were given information that wasn't quite as accurate as it should have been.
Right now, if we can think of no other single major reason to pass this bill, it is to take care of those individuals who are in the field right now who are fighting. We have the exact count, to make sure we use accurate figures. As of today, 1,779,343 troops in the field or enlisted personnel. These are the ones who can be affected, 1.8 million of them. We would be reneging on the commitments we have made to them.
We have heard criticism that we are somehow cutting their benefits to put in a land package. That just isn't true. We don't need to talk about this because that is not our committee. That is the committee referred to by the chairman in his remarks--the Energy and Natural Resources Committees of the House and the Senate. But it is budget neutral. Over a 10-year period, the CBO says it is budget neutral. So there is no legitimate argument that we are using any of the funds that would otherwise go to the military on the land package.
I have to say the process was wrong. We have done this in the past and we are not going to do it again. We shouldn't have had a land package come in that has nothing to do with defense, but nonetheless it is there. I was offended by the process. Frankly--I have to confess, and it is good for the soul, I guess--I thought after reading it, it was a pretty good bill. If it would have been brought up outside of this bill, I would have still voted for it. But the process is wrong, and I think we all understand that. We did the best we could.
We have these things that are going on right now, and I think we can't take a chance on not having or, for the first time in 53 years, not passing an NDAA bill by the end of the year. It would be a crisis. The system could be criticized for the way it happened. Considering that we passed our bill out of the committee on May 23, we should have had it on the floor. We should have had it done in regular order. We will do everything we can in the future to try to make that happen. For two consecutive years now we have not been able to do that. We have had to go through the system of what they call the Big Four--the chairman and ranking member of the House and the chairman and ranking member of the Senate--to pass this bill. I think in this case we have come up with a good bill. We have been able to incorporate 47 of the amendments that have come from those that were filed to be added on the floor. So we have done the best we can. There is no other alternative now when we consider what will happen if for some unknown reason this would be the first year in 53 years that we don't have an NDAA bill.
I will just repeat what I started off with; that is, what a joy it has been to work with Carl Levin over these years in the capacity of either the chairman or the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He will be sorely missed. Oddly enough, we also have the same situation happening over on the House side with Buck McKeon. I served with him when I served in the House. He is going to be retiring after this year as well. So we have two retiring chairmen of what I consider to be the most significant committees in Washington.
We are going to continue to work together for the rest of this bill. We have a good bill, and we are going to uphold our obligation to the 1,779,343 enlisted personnel in the field. We are not going to let them down.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, first let me thank Senator Inhofe for his friendship, most importantly, but also for the great partnership we have enjoyed. It has been a real pleasure working with the Senator from Oklahoma. I should perhaps also say we are confident our successors will carry on this tradition as well. Senator McCain, the new chairman, and Senator Jack Reed will be the new ranking member and they will be carrying on this tradition that we have done everything we know how to do to maintain.
I wish to again thank my good friend Jim Inhofe and his staff who worked so well with the staff on this side. We talk about this side of the aisle and that side of the aisle. In this bill obviously there will be differences--very rarely, by the way, on a partisan basis, even when there are differences. But the aisle sort of disappears when it comes to the Defense authorization bill, and that is the way it should be.
I yield the floor.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me reclaim my time just to make one other comment. The two people who are sitting here, Peter Levine on your side and John Bonsell on our side, their compatibility in working together is also unprecedented. It doesn't happen very often. I can't speak for the Senator from Michigan, but I can speak for myself, to say that without these two working together I sure could not have participated in a meaningful way. So I thank them as well.
Mr. LEVIN. The Senator from Oklahoma is speaking for both of us, I can assure him, with his comments and so many other comments he made.
I will yield to the Senator from Colorado, but first I wish to thank him for the great contribution he has made to our committee. I think he is planning on speaking on a different subject. He has played a major role on the Intelligence Committee. I look forward to reading, if not hearing, his remarks on the subject on which I know he has spent a good deal of time. Although he has had perhaps more visibility in terms of the Intelligence Committee, he has been a major contributor on the Armed Services Committee. I can't say we will miss him because I will not be here, but they will miss the Senator from Colorado.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Madam President, before I start my remarks on the historic day which was yesterday--when it comes to the publication of our long-in-the-making report on the CIA's torture program--I wish to thank the chairman for his leadership, his mentorship, and his friendship. I also am proud obviously to be a part of the Armed Services Committee and to have chaired the Strategic Forces Subcommittee. Again, I extend my thanks to the good men and women in uniform, as did my good friend from Oklahoma. The NDAA bill is a crucial task in front of us. I look forward to one of my last votes as a Senator from the great State of Colorado, and I look forward to casting a vote in favor of the Defense authorization bill.
Again, I wish to thank my two friends who have mentored me and who have led our committee with great elan and intelligence.
SSCI Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program
Yesterday was a historic day. Almost 6 years after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to conduct a study of the CIA's detention and interrogation program and nearly 2 years after approving the report, the American people will finally know the truth about a very dark chapter in our Nation's history.
My goal from the start has been twofold. First, I have been committed to correcting the public record on the CIA's multiple misrepresentations to the American people, to other agencies in the executive branch, the White House, and to Congress. Second, my goal has been to ensure that the full truth comes out about this grim time in the history of the CIA and of our Nation so that neither the CIA nor any future administration repeats the grievous mistakes this important oversight work reveals.
The process of compiling, drafting, redacting, and now releasing this report has been much harder than it needed to be. It brings no one joy to discuss the CIA's brutal and appalling use of torture or the unprecedented actions that some in the intelligence community and administration have taken in order to cover up the truth.
A number of my colleagues who have come to the floor over the past 24 hours and discussed this report have referred to 9/11. I, too, will never forget the fear, the pain, and the anger we all felt on that day and in the days that followed. Americans were demanding action from our government to keep us safe. Everyone, myself included, wanted to go to the ends of the Earth to hunt down the terrorists who attacked our Nation and to make every effort to prevent another attack. Although we all shared that goal, this report reveals how the CIA crossed a line and took our country to a place where we violated our moral and legal obligations in the name of keeping us safe. As we know now, this was a false choice. Torture didn't keep us safer after all. By releasing the Intelligence Committee's landmark report, we reaffirm we are a nation that does not hide from its past but must learn from it and that an honest examination of our shortcomings is not a sign of weakness but the strength of our great Republic.
From the heavily redacted version of the executive summary first delivered to the committee by the CIA in August, we made significant progress in clearing away the thick, obfuscating fog these redactions represented.
As Chairwoman Feinstein has said, our committee chipped away at over 400 areas of disagreement with the administration on redactions down to just a few.
We didn't make all the progress we wanted to and the redaction process itself is filled with unwarranted and completely unnecessary obstacles. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, what began as a bipartisan effort on the committee did not end as such, even after my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were repeatedly urged to participate with us as partners.
As my friends in the Senate know, I am a legislator who goes out of his way to form bipartisan consensus. However, it became clear that was not possible here and that is regrettable.
But all told, after reviewing this final version of the committee's study, I believe it accomplishes the goals I laid out and it tells the story that needs to be told.
It also represents a significant and essential step for restoring faith in the crucial role of Congress to conduct oversight. Congressional oversight is important to all of government's activities, but it is especially important for those parts of the government that operate in secret, as the Church Committee discovered decades ago. The challenge the Church Committee members discovered are still with us today: how to ensure that secret government actions are conducted within the confines of the law. The release of this executive summary is testament to the power of oversight and the determination of Chairman Feinstein and the members of this committee to doggedly beat back obstacle after obstacle in order to reveal the truth.
There are a number of thank-yous that are in order. I start by thanking the chairman for her courage and persistence. I also thank the committee staff director, David Grannis; the staff lead for the study, Dan Jones; and his core study team, Evan Gottesman and Chad Tanner. They toiled for nearly 6 years to complete this report. They then shepherded it through the redaction process, all the while giving up their nights, weekends, vacations, and precious time with family and friends in an effort to get to the truth of this secret program for the members of the committee, the Senate, and now the American people.
They have been assisted by other dedicated staff, including my designee on the committee, Jennifer Barrett. We would not be where we are today without them. I am grateful, beyond words, for their service and dedication. I want them to know our country is grateful too.
Let me turn to the study itself. Much has been written about the significance of the study. This is the study. It is a summary of the CIA's detention and interrogation program. I want to start by saying I believe the vast majority of CIA officers welcome oversight and believe in the checks and balances that form the very core of our Constitution.
I believe many rank-and-file CIA officers have fought internally for and supported the release of this report. Unfortunately, again and again, these hard-working public servants have been poorly served by the CIA's leadership. Too many CIA leaders and senior officials have fought to bury the truth while using a redaction pen to further hide this dark chapter of the Agency's history.
The document we released yesterday is the definitive, official history of what happened in the CIA's detention and interrogation program. It is based on more than 6 million pages of CIA and other documents, emails, cables, and interviews. This 500-page study, this document, encapsulates the facts drawn from the 6,700-page report, which is backed up by 38,000 footnotes.
This is a documentary that tells of the program's history based on the CIA's own internal records. Its prose is dry and spare, as you will soon see for yourself. It was put together methodically, without exaggeration or embellishment. This study by itself--using the CIA's own words--brings the truth to light, and that is what it was intended to do.
The study looked carefully at the CIA's own claims--most notably that the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on detainees elicited unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that disrupted terrorist plots and saved lives. It debunks those claims conclusively.
The CIA repeatedly claimed that using these enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees was the only way to yield critical information about terrorist plotting. But when asked to describe this critical information and detail which plots were thwarted, the CIA provided exaggerated versions of plots and misattributed information that was obtained from traditional intelligence collection, claiming it came from the use of interrogation techniques that are clearly torture.
This study shows that torture was not effective, that it led to fabricated information, and its use--even in secret--undermined our security and our country more broadly. Our use of torture and I believe the failure to truly acknowledge it continues to impair America's moral leadership and influence around the world, creates distrust among our partners, puts Americans abroad in danger, and helps our enemies' recruitment efforts.
Senior CIA leaders would have you believe their version of the truth--promoted in CIA-cleared memoirs by former CIA Directors and other CIA and White House officials--that while there was some excesses in its detention and interrogation program, the CIA did not torture. Their version would have you believe that the CIA's program was professionally conducted, employing trained interrogators to use so-
called enhanced interrogation techniques on only the most hardened and dangerous terrorists.
But as Professor Darius Rejali writes in his book ``Torture and Democracy,'' ``To think professionalism is a guard against causing excessive pain is an illusion. Instead, torture breaks down professionalism'' and corrupts the organizations that use it.
This is exactly what happened with the CIA's detention and interrogation program. Without proper acknowledgement of these truths by the CIA and the White House, it could well happen again.
In light of the President's early Executive order disavowing torture, his own recent acknowledgement that ``we tortured some folks'' and the Assistant Secretary of State Malinowski's statements last month to the U.N. Committee Against Torture that ``we hope to lead by example'' in correcting our mistakes, one would think this administration is leading the efforts to right the wrongs of the past and ensure the American people learn the truth about the CIA's torture program. Not so.
In fact, it has been nearly a 6-year struggle--in a Democratic administration no less--to get this study out. Why has it been so hard for this document to finally see the light of day? Why have we had to fight tooth and nail every step of the way? The answer is simple: Because the study says things that former and current CIA and other government officials don't want the American public to know. For a while I worried that this administration would succeed in keeping this study entirely under wraps.
While the study clearly shows that the CIA's detention and interrogation program itself was deeply flawed, the deeper, more endemic problem lies in the CIA, assisted by a White House that continues to try to cover up the truth. It is this deeper problem that illustrates the challenge we face today: reforming an agency that refuses to even acknowledge what it has done. This is a continuing challenge that the CIA's oversight committees need to take on in a bipartisan way. Those who criticize the committee's study for overly focusing on the past should understand that its findings directly relate to how the CIA operates today.
For an example of how the CIA has repeated its same past mistakes in more recent years, look at the section of the executive summary released yesterday that deals with the intelligence on the courier that led to Osama bin Laden. That operation took place under this administration in May of 2011. After it was over, the CIA coordinated to provide misinformation to the White House and its oversight committees suggesting the CIA torture program was the tipoff information for the courier. That is 100 percent wrong and signifies the Agency leadership's persistent and entrenched culture of misrepresenting the truth to Congress and the American people. This example also illustrates again the dangers of not reckoning with the past. So while I agree with my colleagues on the committee who argue that doing oversight in real time is critical, I believe we cannot turn a blind eye to the past when the same problems are staring us in the face in the present. Oversight by willful ignorance is not oversight at all.
In Chairman Feinstein's landmark floor speech earlier this year, she laid out how the CIA pushed back on our committee's oversight efforts. Thanks to her speech, we know about the history of the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes and about what motivated her and her colleagues to begin the broader committee study in 2009. We know about the CIA's insistence on providing documents to the committee in a CIA-leased facility and the millions of dollars the CIA spent on contractors hired to read, multiple times, each of the 6 million pages of documents produced before providing them to the committee staff. We know about the nearly 1,000 documents that the CIA electronically removed from the committee's dedicated database on two occasions in 2010, which the CIA claimed its personnel did at the direction of the White House. Of course we know about the Panetta review.
I turn to the Panetta review. I have provided more information on the events that led up to the revelation included in the Panetta review in a set of additional views that I submitted for the committee's executive summary, but I will summarize them.
From the beginning of his term as CIA Director, John Brennan was openly hostile toward and dismissive of the committee's oversight and its efforts to review the detention and interrogation program. During his confirmation hearing, I obtained a promise from John Brennan that he would meet with committee staff on the study once confirmed. After his confirmation, he changed his mind.
In December 2012, when the classified study was approved in a bipartisan vote, the committee asked the White House to coordinate any executive branch comments prior to declassification. The White House provided no comment. Instead, the CIA responded for the executive branch nearly 7 months later, on June 27, 2013.
The CIA's formal response to the study under Director Brennan clings to false narratives about the CIA's effectiveness when it comes to the CIA's detention and interrogation program. It includes many factual inaccuracies, defends the use of torture, and attacks the committee's oversight and findings. I believe its flippant and dismissive tone represents the CIA's approach to oversight--and the White House's willingness to let the CIA do whatever it likes--even if its efforts are armed at actively undermining the President's stated policies.
It would be a significant disservice to let the Brennan response speak for the CIA. Thankfully, it does not have to. There are some CIA officials and officers willing to tell it straight. In late 2013, then-
CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston answered a series of questions that I asked about his thoughts on the Brennan response as part of his Armed Services Committee nomination hearing to be General Counsel of the Defense Department.
His answers to the questions about the program contrasted sharply with the Brennan response. For instance, he stated matter of factly that from his review of the facts, the CIA provided the committee with inaccurate information regarding the detention and interrogation program. I have posted on line my questions to Mr. Preston, along with his answers.
Stephen Preston was not alone in having the moral courage to speak frankly and truthfully about the CIA's torture program. There were also other CIA officers willing to document the truth. In March 2009, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta announced the formation of a Director's review group to look at the agency's detention and interrogation program. As he stated at the time, ``The safety of the American people depends on our ability to learn lessons from the past while staying focused on the threats of today and tomorrow.''
The Director's review group looked at the same CIA documents that were being provided to our committee. They produced a series of documents that became the Panetta review. As I discussed in late 2013, the Panetta review corroborates many of the significant findings of the committee's study. Moreover, the Panetta review frankly acknowledges significant problems and errors made in the CIA's detention and interrogation program. Many of these same errors are denied or minimized in the Brennan response.
As Chairman Feinstein so eloquently outlined in her floor speech on March 11 of this year, drafts of the Panetta review have been provided by the CIA unknowingly to our committee staff years before within the 6 million pages of documents it had provided.
So when the committee received the Brennan response, I expected a recognition of errors and a clear plan to ensure that the mistakes identified would not be repeated again. Instead--this is a crucial point--instead, the CIA continued not only to defend the program and deny any wrongdoing but also to deny its own conclusions to the contrary found in the Panetta review.
In light of those clear factual disparities between the Brennan response and the Panetta review, committee staff grew concerned that the CIA was knowingly providing inaccurate information to the committee in the present day, which is a serious offense, and a deeply troubling matter for the committee, the Congress, the White House, and our country.
The Panetta review was evidence of that potential offense. So to preserve that evidence, committee staff securely transported a printed portion of the Panetta review from the CIA-leased facility to the committee's secure offices in the Senate. This was the proper and right thing to do, not only because of the seriousness of the potential crime, but also in light of the fact that the CIA had previously destroyed interrogation videotapes without authorization and over objections of officials in the Bush White House.
In my view, the Panetta review is a smoking gun. It raises fundamental questions about why a review the CIA conducted internally years ago and never provided to the committee is so different from the official Brennan response and so different from the public statements of former CIA officials. That is why I asked for a complete copy of the Panetta review at a December 2013 Intelligence Committee hearing.
Although the committee now has a portion of the review already in its possession, I believed then, as I do now, that it is important to make public its existence and to obtain a full copy of the report. That is why I am here today, to disclose some of its key findings and conclusions on the Senate floor for the public record, which fly directly in the face of claims made by senior CIA officials past and present.
For example, as I mentioned earlier, on a number of key matters, the Panetta review directly refutes information in the Brennan response. In the few instances in which the Brennan response acknowledges imprecision or mischaracterization relative to the detention interrogation program, the Panetta review is refreshingly free of excuses, qualifications, or caveats.
The Panetta review found that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Congress, the President, and the public on the efficacy of its coercive techniques. The Brennan response, in contrast, continues to insist the CIA's interrogations produced unique intelligence that saved lives. Yet the Panetta review identified dozens of documents that include inaccurate information used to justify the use of torture and indicates that the inaccuracies it identifies do not represent an exhaustive list. The Panetta review further describes how detainees provided intelligence prior to the use of torture against them.
It describes how the CIA, contrary to its own representations, often tortured detainees before trying any other approach. It describes how the CIA tortured detainees, even when less coercive methods were yielding intelligence. The Panetta review further identifies cases in which the CIA used coercive techniques when it had no basis for determining whether a detainee had critical intelligence at all.
In other words, CIA personnel tortured detainees to confirm they did not have intelligence, not because they thought they did. Again, while a small portion of this review is preserved in our committee spaces, I have requested the full document. Our request has been denied by Director Brennan. I will tell you, the Panetta review is much more than a ``summary'' and ``incomplete drafts,'' which is the way Mr. Brennan and former CIA officials have characterized it, in order to minimize its significance. I have reviewed this document. It is as significant and relevant as it gets.
The refusal to provide the full Panetta review and the refusal to acknowledge facts detailed in both the committee study and the Panetta review lead to one disturbing finding: Director Brennan and the CIA today are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture. In other words, the CIA is lying. This is not a problem of the past but a problem that needs to be dealt with today.
Let me turn to the search of the Intelligence Committee's computers. Clearly the present leadership of the CIA agrees with me that the Panetta review is a smoking gun. That is the only explanation for the CIA's unauthorized search of the committee's dedicated computers in January. The CIA 's illegal search was conducted out of concern that the committee staff was provided with the Panetta review. It demonstrates how far the CIA will go to keep its secrets safe. Instead of asking the committee if it had access to the Panetta review, the CIA searched, without authorization or notification, the committee computers that the agency had agreed were off limits.
In so doing, the agency might have violated multiple provisions of the Constitution as well as Federal criminal statutes and Executive Order 12333.
More troubling, despite admitting behind closed doors to the committee that the CIA conducted the search, Director Brennan publicly referred to ``spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts.''
He even said such allegations of computer hacking were beyond ``the scope of reason.'' The CIA then made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice against the committee staff who were working on the study. Chairman Feinstein believed these actions were an effort to intimidate the committee staff, the very staff charged with CIA oversight. I strongly agree with her point of view.
The CIA's inspector general subsequently opened an investigation into the CIA's unauthorized search and found, contrary to Director Brennan's public protestations, that a number of CIA employees did, in fact, improperly access the committee's dedicated computers. The investigation found no basis for the criminal referral on the committee staff. The IG also found that the CIA personnel involved demonstrated a
``lack of candor'' about their activities to the inspector general.
However, only a 1-page unclassified summary of the IG's report is publicly available. The longer classified version was only provided briefly to Members when it was first released. I had to push hard to get the CIA to provide a copy for the committee to keep in its own records. Even the copy in committee records is restricted to committee members and only two staff members, not including my staff member.
After having reviewed the IG report myself again recently, I believe even more strongly that the full report should be declassified and publicly released, in part because Director Brennan still refuses to answer the committee's questions about the search.
In March, the committee voted unanimously to request responses from Director Brennan about the computer search. The chairman and vice chairman wrote a letter to Director Brennan, who promised a thorough response to their questions after the Justice Department and CIA IG reviews were complete. The Chair and Vice Chair then wrote two more letters, to no avail. The Director has refused to answer any questions on this topic and has again deferred his answers, this time until after the CIA's internal accountability board review is completed, if it ever is.
So from March until December, for almost 9 months, Director Brennan has flat out refused to answer basic questions about the computer search; whether he suggested a search or approved it; if not, who did. He has refused to explain why the search was conducted, its legal basis, or whether he was even aware of the agreement between the committee and the CIA laying out protections of the committee's dedicated computer system. He has refused to say whether the computers were searched more than once, whether the CIA monitored committee staff at the CIA-leased facility, whether the agency ever entered the committee's secure room at the facility, and who at the CIA knew about the search both before and after it occurred.
I want to turn at this point to the White House. To date, there has been no accountability for the CIA's actions or for Director Brennan's failure of leadership. Despite the facts presented, the President has expressed full confidence in Director Brennan and demonstrated that trust by making no effort at all to rein him in.
The President stated it was not appropriate for him to weigh into these issues that exist between the committee and the CIA. As I said at the time, the committee should be able to do its oversight work consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers, without the CIA posing impediments or obstacles as it has and as it continues to do today. For the White House not to have recognized this principle and the gravity of the CIA's actions deeply troubles me today and continues to trouble me.
Far from being a disinterested observer in the committee-CIA battles, the White House has played a central role from the start. If former CIA Director Panetta's memoir is to be believed, the President was unhappy about Director Panetta's initial agreement in 2009 to allow staff access to operation cables and other sensitive documents about the torture program.
Assuming its accuracy, Mr. Panetta's account describes then-
Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan and current Chief of Staff Denis McDonough--both of whom have been deeply involved in the study redaction process--as also deeply unhappy about this expanded oversight.
There are more questions that need answers about the role of the White House in the committee's study.
For example, there are the 9,400 documents that were withheld from the committee by the White House in the course of the review of the millions of documents, despite the fact that these documents are directly responsive to the committee's document request. The White House has never made a formal claim of executive privilege over the documents, yet it has failed to respond to the chairman's request to the documents or to compromise proposals she has offered to review a summary listing of them. When I asked CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston about the documents, he noted that ``the Agency has deferred to the White House and has not been substantially involved in subsequent discussions about the disposition of these documents.''
If the documents are privileged, the White House should assert that claim. But if they are not, White House officials need to explain why they pulled back documents that the CIA believed were relevant to the committee's investigation and responsive to our direct request.
The White House has not led on this issue in the manner we expected when we heard the President's campaign speeches in 2008 and read the Executive order he issued in January 2009. To CIA employees in April 2009, President Obama said:
What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it's hard--not just when it's easy; even when we are afraid and under threat--not just when it's expedient to do so. That's what makes us different.
This tough, principled talk set an important tone from the beginning of his Presidency. However, let's fast forward to this year, after so much has come to light about the CIA's barbaric programs, and President Obama's response was that we ``crossed a line'' as a nation and that
``hopefully, we don't do it again in the future.''
That is not good enough. We need to be better than that. There can be no coverup. There can be no excuses. If there is no moral leadership from the White House helping the public to understand that the CIA's torture program wasn't necessary and didn't save lives or disrupt terrorist plots, then what is to stop the next White House and CIA Director from supporting torture.
Finally, the White House has not led on transparency, as then Senator Obama promised in 2007. He said then this:
We'll protect sources and methods, but we won't use sources and methods as pretexts to hide the truth. Our history doesn't belong to Washington, it belongs to America.
In 2009 consistent with this promise, President Obama issued Executive Order 13526, which clarified that information should be classified to protect sources and methods but not to obscure key facts or cover up embarrassing or illegal acts.
But actions speak louder than words. This administration, like so many before, has released information only when forced to by a leak or by a court order or by an oversight committee.
The redactions to the committee's executive summary on the CIA's detention and interrogation program have been a case study in its refusal to be open. Despite requests that both the chairman and I made for the White House alone to lead the declassification process, it was given by the White House to the CIA--the same Agency that is the focus of this report. Predictably, the redacted version that came back to the committee in August obscured key facts and undermined key findings and conclusions of the study.
The CIA also included unnecessary redactions to previously acknowledged and otherwise unclassified information. Why? Presumably, to make it more difficult for the public to understand the study's findings. Content that the CIA has attempted to redact includes information in the official, declassified report of the Senate Armed Services Committee, other executive branch declassified official documents, information in books and speeches delivered by former CIA officers who were approved by the CIA's Publication Review Board, news articles, and other public reports.
It is true that through negotiations between the committee, the CIA, and the White House, many of these issues were resolved. However, at the end of the day, the White House and CIA would not agree to include any pseudonyms in the study to disguise the names of CIA officers. In 2009 the CIA and the committee had agreed to use CIA-provided pseudonyms for CIA officials, but in the summary's final version, the CIA insisted that even the pseudonyms should be redacted.
For an agency concerned about morale, this is the wrong approach to take, in my view. By making it less possible to follow a narrative threat throughout the summary, this approach effectively throws many CIA personnel under the bus. It tars all of the CIA personnel by making it appear that the CIA writ large was responsible for developing, implementing, and representing the truth about the CIA's detention and interrogation program. In fact, a small number of CIA officers were largely responsible.
Further, there is no question that the identities of undercover agents must be protected, but it is unprecedented for the CIA to demand--and the White House to agree--that every CIA officer's pseudonym in the study be blacked out. U.S. Government agencies have used pseudonyms to protect officers' identities in any number of past reports, including the 9/11 Commission report, the investigation of the Abu Ghraib detention facility, and the report of the Iran-Contra affair.
We asked the CIA to identify any influences in the summary wherein a CIA official mentioned by pseudonym would result in the outing of any CIA undercover officer, and they could not provide any such examples.
Why do I focus on this? The CIA's insistence on blacking out even the fake names of its officers is problematic because the study is less readable and has lost some of its narrative thread.
But as the chairman has said, we will find ways to bridge that gap. The tougher problem to solve is how to ensure that this and future administrations follow President Obama's pledge not to use sources and methods as pretexts to hide the truth.
What needs to be done? Chairman Feinstein predicted in March--at the height of the frenzy over the CIA's spying on committee-dedicated computers--that ``our oversight will prevail,'' and generally speaking, it has. Much of the truth is out, thanks to the chairman's persistence and the dedicated staff involved in this effort. It is, indeed, a historic event.
But there is still no accountability, and despite Director Brennan's pledges to me in January 2013, there is still no correction of the public record of the inaccurate information the CIA has spread for years and continues to stand behind. The CIA has lied to its overseers and the public, destroyed and tried to hold back evidence, spied on the Senate, made false charges against our staff, and lied about torture and the results of torture. And no one has been held to account.
Torture just didn't happen, after all. Contrary to the President's recent statement, ``we'' didn't torture some folks. Real actual people engaged in torture. Some of these people are still employed by the CIA and the U.S. Government. There are, right now, people serving in high-
level positions at the Agency who approved, directed or committed acts related to the CIA's detention and interrogation program. It is bad enough not to prosecute these officials, but to reward or promote them and risk the integrity of the U.S. Government to protect them is incomprehensible.
The President needs to purge his administration of high-level officials who were instrumental to the development and running of this program. He needs to force a cultural change at the CIA.
The President also should support legislation limiting interrogation to noncoercive techniques--to ensure that his own Executive order is codified and to prevent a future administration from developing its own torture program.
The President must ensure the Panetta review is declassified and publicly released.
The full 6,800-page study of the CIA's detention and interrogation program should be declassified and released.
There also needs to be accountability for the CIA spying on its oversight committee, and the CIA inspector general's report needs to be declassified and released to the public.
A key lesson I have learned from my experience with the study is the importance of the role of Congress in overseeing the intelligence community. It is always easier to accept what we are told at face value than it is to ask tough questions. If we rely on others to tell us what is behind their own curtain instead of taking a look for ourselves, we can't know for certain what is there.
This isn't at all to say that what the committee found in its study is a culture and behavior we should ascribe to all employees of the CIA or to the intelligence community. The intelligence community is made up of thousands of hard-working patriotic Americans. These women and men are consummate professionals who risk their lives every day to keep us safe and to provide the their best assessments regardless of political and policy considerations.
But it is incumbent on government leaders--it is incumbent on us--to live up to the dedication of these employees and to make them proud of the institutions they work for. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but as I have said before, for Director Brennan that means resigning. For the next CIA director that means immediately correcting the false record and instituting the necessary reforms to restore the CIA's reputation for integrity and analytical rigor.
The CIA cannot not be its best until it faces its serious and grievous mistakes of the detention and interrogation program. For President Obama, that means taking real action to live up to the pledges he made early in his Presidency.
Serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee for the past 4 years opened my eyes and gave me a much deeper appreciation of the importance of our role in the balancing of power in our great government. It also helped me understand that all Members of Congress, not only Intelligence Committee members, have an opportunity and an obligation to exercise their oversight powers.
Members who do not serve on the Intelligence Committee can ask to read classified documents, call for classified briefings, and submit classified questions.
This is my challenge today to the American people. Urge your Member of Congress to be engaged, to get classified briefings, and to help keep the intelligence community accountable. This is the only way that secret government and democracy can coexist.
We have so much to be proud of in our great Nation, and one of those matters of pride is our commitment to admit mistakes, correct past actions, and move forward knowing that we are made stronger when we refuse to be bound by the past.
We have always been a forward-looking Nation, but to be so we must be mindful of our own history. That is what this study is all about. So I have no doubt that we will emerge from a dark episode with our democracy strengthened and our future made brighter.
It has been an honor to serve on this committee, and I will miss doing its important work more than I can say.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Farewell to the Senate
Mr. WALSH. Madam President, I rise today to speak to this body and my fellow Montanans about service.
In preparing to leave the Senate, I add my voice to the voices of many other departing Members who have called for a return to civility in Washington, DC. Politics today is too full of pettiness. Public servants--you and I, as well as those elected to serve in the next Congress--should set the standard with better words and better actions, but we should also lead from the front. I am not saying anything that hasn't already been said, but more of us need to say it. If we are lucky, which we are, we are even blessed to stand in this room and do what we do on behalf of our fellow citizens.
Everyone in this Chamber has a unique story about their roots and their path to public service. Mine began in Butte, MT. I was the son of a union pipefitter in a struggling blue-collar town, and my path led to the military. I enlisted out of high school in the Montana National Guard and soon found a career serving my neighbors and family.
The National Guard--the great citizen wing of our Armed Forces--was a home for me. Leading my fellow soldiers into combat in Iraq in 2004-
2005 was a defining experience in my life. Overseeing two successful elections for the Iraqis added a new perspective to my view on democracy. Fighting insurgents drove home how fortunate we are to live in the United States of America and to enjoy the freedoms we often take for granted.
The men of Task Force GRIZ who unfortunately didn't come home with me and the men and women who came back with visible and invisible wounds have truly defined the cost of war for me, and they remind me every single day of the cost of public servants getting it wrong when it comes to our national defense. I have devoted much of my professional life since returning home to accounting for the true cost of war.
Today, from my perspective, the debts are stacked against the democratic process in America in many ways. There is too much money, too much noise, and too little commitment to finding common ground. Anonymous money masquerading as free speech can poison campaigns. It silences the voices of the majority of American citizens. The concentration of wealth in fewer hands is bad for our society, just as the ability for a handful of the wealthy to carry the loudest megaphones in our elections is bad for our democracy. Elections are starting to look much like auctions. Dark money and circus politics shouldn't prevent the U.S. Senate from honorably living up to the power we have been given.
Growing up in a little house that shook twice a day from the dynamite blasts at the copper mine nearby, I never thought I would be involved in public service. I aspired to have a decent job. I aspired to get an education. I aspired to having the time to fish the lakes and streams I fished with my father. Just the normal stuff. And that normal stuff is what I think most Americans still want today and too often can't achieve.
Public service--becoming a soldier--was my ticket to a better life: a job and a college education. After only a small taste, I discovered that I loved public service. I loved being devoted to something bigger than myself.
We should all remember that Congress can always use more Americans from more walks of life who have discovered public service through unlikely means.
It is the privilege of my life to serve the people of Montana in the seat of Senators Lee Metcalf and Max Baucus. Lee, along with Mike Mansfield, was my Senator while I was growing up in Butte, MT. The great citizen conservationist Cecil Garland said:
It was typical of Lee to fight to give the little guy a voice in government decisions.
In my time in this Chamber, I have tried to follow Lee's example.
The people who need a voice in this Chamber are the ranchers and hardware store owners like Cecil in towns like Lincoln and Dillon. The person who needs a voice in this Chamber is the mother in Troy, MT, who became the primary bread winner when her husband lost his job cutting timber. The person who needs a voice here is the young woman in Shelby, MT, who has done everything right--studied hard and earned her degree--
only to be squeezed by too much student debt and too few opportunities. The people who need voices are the servicemembers from Laurel and Great Falls, MT, who returned from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq with delayed onset PTSD and have fallen through the cracks at the VA. They are the entrepreneurs in Big Fork and Bozeman, MT, who have opened small distilleries and faced the tangle of redtape. They are the committed couples across Montana--your neighbors, my family, my friends--who are treated like second-class citizens because of whom they love.
So today I urge my colleagues to lend people like this in each of your States your voice as a Senator in this Chamber.
I am humbled by the number of challenges that face the next Congress. I urge my colleagues to continue to fight to protect Americans' civil liberties. I leave the Senate dismayed by the scope of government surveillance in our everyday life. Congress must always--and I emphasize always--protect the privacy of our citizens.
I remain deeply concerned about the National Security Agency's unconstitutional spying on Americans' communications, the secret backdoors into the Department of Commerce encryption standards, and the gag orders under the FBI national security letter program.
I urge my colleagues to continue fighting for rural America. We need stronger voting rights and more jobs in Indian Country to promote tribal sovereignty and prosperity. We need to keep our farm safety net strong and address brucellosis to protect the livestock industry. We need a stronger commitment to fund and reform the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program and its sister programs. Small county budgets, schools, and roads depend on them. These same rural communities need better management of our national forests--something Congress and the Forest Service need to focus on.
We need an honest conversation and urgent solutions to the incredible challenge posed by climate change. As I said earlier from this same podium, we cannot put our heads in the sand and continue with business as usual.
Members of Congress should be taking responsibility and upholding the oaths we all swore. We should agree with science--climate change is a clear enemy, and Congress must take steps to stop it.
The next Congress should be thoughtful about women and families--from health care decisions to paycheck fairness.
Finally, I implore all of Congress, all of you, to redouble your attention to the crisis of suicide among our veterans. Yesterday the House of Representatives passed the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act. That bill now sits before this body, and we have an opportunity to act. We have an opportunity to pass it. I mentioned the invisible wounds of war already, but if this country were losing 22 servicemembers a day on the battlefield, Americans would be on the streets protesting. Congress would be demanding action. But that is exactly the number of veterans who die by suicide each and every day from across our country. Veteran suicide is an urgent crisis facing our communities, and congressional action is long overdue.
I believe extending the eligibility for combat veterans at the VA is one essential way to address delayed-onset PTSD and reduce the suicide rate among our veterans. This simple fix and other solutions that improve access to mental health for veterans should continue to be a top priority for the next Congress.
It is fitting that in the last days of the 113th Congress, the Senate is sending the President a bill that carries on the public lands legacy of Senators Lee Metcalf and Max Baucus and the thousands of Montanans who worked together to find common ground.
In the words of Randolph Jennings, Senator Rockefeller's predecessor from West Virginia, Lee ``was a tireless champion of preserving and protecting our nation's natural heritage for succeeding generations to use and enjoy.''
After Lee's death, Max and the rest of the Montana delegation carried on his legacy by passing wilderness designations for the Absaroka-
Beartooth, Great Bear, and the Lee Metcalf wilderness areas. In the same spirit, I am honored to join Senator Jon Tester and Senator-elect Steve Daines in carrying on their legacy by passing the North Fork Watershed Protection Act and the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act. We took a page from Montanans. We sat down together, and we worked out an agreement that protected almost 700,000 acres of the Crown of the Continent. This is how democracy should work.
Forty-two years after the first citizen-driven wilderness, this week Congress is expanding the Scapegoat and Bob Marshall Wilderness areas in Montana. Thirty-eight years after the Flathead River was protected from schemes to dam it and divert it, this week Congress is protecting the Flathead and Glacier National Park forever from efforts to mine it and drill it. Montanans came together. Farmers, ranchers, small business owners, conservationists, hunters, anglers--all worked together to find common ground. Montanans went there first, and their representatives in Congress followed.
When Congress rewards the work of citizens who collaborate, when we finally reach the critical mass in this Chamber to be responsive, that is the day we earn the title of ``public servant.'' Montanans can be hopeful today that government by them and for them still works. They can still effect change. The Senate still listens and serves.
When President Eisenhower left office in 1961, Congress passed legislation at his request that restored his military title. He wanted to be remembered as a career soldier rather than the Commander in Chief.
My 33 years in uniform defined my life. I will always be a soldier. As a soldier, as a husband to my wonderful wife Janet, who has been my partner for 31 years, and as the proud dad of Michael and Taylor, as the father-in-law to my wonderful daughter-in-law April, and as the grandfather of a little girl named Kennedy, who will inherit this great Nation, I will return to civilian life with great hope for the United States Senate and for the United States of America.
I, along with millions of others, will be watching closely and imploring Members in this Chamber to check politics at the door and instead focus on the future. Honor veterans and their families who sacrifice so much. Honor seniors who have heard promises from you. Honor the most vulnerable amongst us. They are who we always should fight for.
Madam President, I am forever grateful to have served the people of Montana in this building standing side by side with each and every one of you. God bless each and every one of you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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