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.
“AMERICA'S NATIONAL SECURITY” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H7631-H7638 on Sept. 14, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
AMERICA'S NATIONAL SECURITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss an issue that is not getting the attention I feel it deserves in the current national debate between the major presidential candidates and Members from both parties running for Congress, the House and the Senate, and that is the issue of America's national security.
I want to start, Mr. Speaker, by focusing on the speech that President Clinton gave at Georgetown University just 2 weeks ago on the issue of national missile defense. The President gave the speech because when he signed my national missile defense bill into law over 1 year ago, the President said that he would sign into law, agree to move forward, on national defense, but then make a decision to go forward at some point in time in the future.
Mr. Speaker, let me go back and restate for our colleagues the facts in this area, the actions by the President, and then go through the President's speech in detail and attempt to give what I would consider to be our response to the President's speech.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, 5 years ago the CIA produced an intelligence estimate that told the Congress and the American people we would not expect to see a threat emerge that could hurt the U.S. directly from a long-range missile for at least 15 years.
Many of us on both sides of the aisle felt that that estimate was incorrect. In fact when we pressed the CIA, and I was the one who got the first classified briefing on that report because I was one of the requesters of it, the CIA eventually changed its mind and came to a conclusion that we all agreed to with Donald Rumsfeld and the Rumsfeld Commission that in fact the threat was not 15 years away, but that in fact the threat was here today and growing dynamically with every passing day. That major change caused a bipartisan group in the Congress to want to prod this administration to move forward in defending America, its people, and its troops.
Some would say, why would you want to do that? There has never been an attack on America. No country is going to attack us because we have such tremendous clout, we could wipe them out, and if they really want to harm us, they would use a truck bomb or use a car bomb or an explosive device.
Mr. Speaker, the facts just do not support that contention. In fact, Mr. Speaker, in 1991, 28 young Americans came home in body bags from Saudi Arabia because our country let those young men and women down. Twenty-eight young Americans came home in body bags because we could not defend against a low complexity scud missile. The scud missile was launched into our military barracks in Saudi Arabia, just as Saddam had launched missile after missile into Israel, raining terror on the Israeli families who were injured and killed by those attacks.
Mr. Speaker, that attack by Saddam on our soldiers, and they were both young women and young men, they were young wives and young fathers, because they were largely from reserve units, half of them from my State, showed the vulnerability of America to the emerging threat that missiles provide.
In 1991, this Congress vowed that that would never happen again, that we as Republicans and Democrats would never allow America's sons and daughters to be wiped out by a terrorist like Saddam or a Nation like Iran or North Korea that would use missiles to kill our people. So, as a result, Mr. Speaker, we began to work the process in the Congress to change the minds of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in terms of missile defense.
Now, let me state for the record, Mr. Speaker, that President Clinton and Vice President Gore categorically opposed missile defense through the first 7 years of their administration. Now, the President and the Vice President can spin this any way they want, but the facts are that for 7 years they opposed missile defense. They opposed the Congress when we said the threat was emerging. They opposed the Congress when Democrats and Republicans put more money into missile defense systems. They opposed the Congress when we said that the ABM treaty was not flexible enough to allow us to defend our homeland and our people. For 7 years, President Clinton and Vice President Gore said we do not have to worry about missile defense, we rely on arms control agreements.
Let me say this, Mr. Speaker. I am not against arms control agreements. In fact, I support most of the arms control agreements that America is a party to. But there is an interesting point about arms control, Mr. Speaker, and that is that if you do not enforce those agreements, if you do not abide by the requirements to penalize those entities that violate those agreements, they mean nothing, they are worthless pieces of paper.
That has been the record of this administration. Two years ago, Mr. Speaker, I did a speech on the House floor. I documented in that speech 37 violations of arms control agreements by China and Russia. Thirty-
seven times we caught Russia and China sending technology away from their country, which is illegal under the arms control agreements that we are party to with those nations.
Where did they send that technology? They sent it to a few countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan and India. Thirty-seven times we caught the Russians and the Chinese sending technology abroad. That is a violation of arms control agreements, and 37 times we should have imposed sanctions on those countries and on those companies in those countries that we caught violating those arms control acts.
Out of those 37 times that we caught the Russians and the Chinese transferring arms, we opposed the required sanctions two times; once when we caught the Chinese transferring M-11 missiles to Pakistan, and the second time when we caught the Chinese transferring ring magnets to Pakistan for the nuclear program. The other 35 times we pretended the transfers never occurred. We denied that we had evidence.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, it is so bad that in one case I was in Moscow January of 1996, one month after the Washington Post reported that we had caught, actually with the help of our allies in that area, we had caught the Russians transferring guidance systems to Iraq.
What are these guidance systems used for? They are used to make those missiles that killed our young people more accurate. They are used to make the missiles that killed Jews in Israel more accurate. The Washington Post said that we had caught the Russians giving this technology to Iraq, on the front page of their newspaper.
So I was in Moscow, and I was in the office of Ambassador Tom Pickering, who is currently the third ranking leader in our State Department. I said, ``Ambassador Pickering, what was the Russian response when you asked them about the fact that we caught them transferring these devices to Iraq, which is a violation of the missile technology control regime, an arms control agreement?''
He said, ``Congressman Weldon, I didn't ask the Russians yet.''
I said, ``Mr. Ambassador, why wouldn't you ask the Russians? The Washington Post reported it on the front page. They said it happened back in June. Why would we not demand the Russians stop this process and demand action on the part of sanctioning those Russian companies?''
He said, ``That effort has got to come from the White House. It has got to come from Washington. I can't take that action as the ambassador here.''
So I came back to Washington and wrote to President Clinton a letter in January of that year, which he responded to in March of that year, and in that letter he said, ``Dear Congressman Weldon, I agree with you. We are very concerned that Russia may have transferred technology to Iraq that could harm Israel and could harm America, and if we find that that took place, we will impose the required sanctions under the treaty, we will take aggressive action. But, Congressman Weldon, we have no evidence.''
Mr. Speaker, over in my office at 2452 Rayburn, I have two devices. I have an accelerometer and a gyroscope, the heart of Soviet guidance systems that were taken off of Soviet missiles that we caught being transferred to Iraq, not once, not twice, but three times. Every time I travel around the country, and I have spoken to 10 or 15 AIPAC meetings, I have spoken to hundreds of defense organizations, I take my guidance systems.
I cannot tell you where I got them, but I can tell you it was through one of our agencies in this country. And I hold them up, and I say,
``Mr. President, here is the evidence that you said we didn't have.'' In fact, Mr. Speaker, we have over 100 sets of those guidance systems that we captured that were being transferred from Russia to Iraq on those three occasions, and we expect that Russia probably transferred hundreds of other systems to Iraq for the same purpose.
The point is this, Mr. Speaker: If we do not enforce arms control agreements, the arms control agreements mean nothing. This administration has the worst record in the history of arms control agreements in lack of enforcement.
How about a second situation? The President of Israel at the time, Mr. Netanyahu, came out publicly and said Israel had evidence that Russia was cooperating with Iran in building a new missile system that could directly hit Israel from anyplace in Iran called the Shahab-3 and Shahab-4. Israel came out with this publicly. It was a sensational story. All the Jews in America were upset, all Americans were upset, because here was a respected ally of America saying publicly that they had evidence that there were violations of arms control agreements by Russia giving technology to Iran that could threaten our friends and threaten Americans.
Well, the Congress was livid. Democrats and Republicans joined together. In fact, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) joined with Democrats in a bipartisan bill called the Iran missile sanctions bill. That bill was designed to force the administration to impose sanctions on Russia. That is required by the treaty.
But the Congress was so incensed that Democrats and Republicans said they do not get it, we are going to force them. Two hundred fifty Members of Congress in a bipartisan manner endorsed the Iran missile sanctions bill.
The bill was scheduled for a vote on the House floor. Three days before the bill was scheduled for a vote, my office got a call from the White House. We do not get many calls from the White House, Mr. Speaker, for obvious reasons. In this case it was Vice President Gore calling me to invite me to come to the Old Executive Office Building so that he could convince me that the bill was a bad idea.
Well, I respect the Vice President, so I said, sure, I will come down. So I traveled down to the Old Executive Office Building and went into a room where there were Members of the House and Senate from both parties sitting around a table. Let me see now, if memory is corrected, Carl Levin was there, John McCain was there, Bob Kerry was there, Lee Hamilton was there, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) was there, Jane Harman was there, John Kyl was there.
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About 14 Democrats and Republicans from the House and the Senate with Vice President Gore and Leon Fuerth, his National Security Adviser. For one hour, they lobbied us not to support the Iran missile sanctions bill. They said, if you bring this bill up on the floor of the House and if you pass it, it will undermine our relationship with Russia and Boris Yeltsin. When the Vice President finished, we said, Mr. Vice President, with all due respect, and we do respect you as a person, there is no longer a confidence in the Congress that you are enforcing arms control agreements and stopping proliferation.
Two days later, in spite of that personal lobbying by Vice President Gore and personal lobbying by President Clinton, this House passed the Iran missile sanctions bill with not just Republican votes. Mr. Speaker, 396 Members of Congress, 396 Members of Congress out of 435 voted to slap the President across the face because he was not enforcing the very arms control agreement he talks about so frequently.
We broke for the Christmas and religious holidays and came back in February of the next year. The Senate was going to take up the same bill, the Iran missile sanctions bill.
I get another call in my office, an unusual call, again from the White House inviting me back to the Old Executive Office Building. So I again went down. The same people were there, the same leaders of the House and the Senate from both parties. We sat around the table. Again, it was Vice President Gore, it was Leon Fuerth, and this time, a member of the National Security Council, Jack Caravelli. For 1 hour and 30 minutes they lobbied us against the Iran missile sanctions bill. They said, you cannot pass this in the Senate. You have passed it in the House; it is embarrassing to us. If you pass it in the Senate, it will cause further harm to our relationship with Russia.
When the Vice President finished, we said, Mr. Vice President, you do not get it. You have not stopped the proliferation. You are not enforcing the arms control agreements. The technology is still going to our enemies, and you are sitting on your hands. We do not want to cause conflict with Russia, but you have armed control agreements to stop proliferation, and if you are not going to enforce them, then these agreements are worthless pieces of paper.
With that, we left the Vice President's office. A week later the Senate voted the bill. Again, Mr. Speaker, the vote was 96 to 4. Mr. Speaker, 94 senators to 4, slapping the President and the Vice President across the face, because they did not get it. Arms control agreements are no good unless we enforce them, and an administration that basis its strategic relationships on arms control, but does not enforce those agreements, has no international security ability, and has no foreign policy. We passed that bill overwhelmingly, and the President had the audacity to veto it.
Mr. Speaker, we could not override the veto that year, there was not enough time, so we came back in this session of Congress; and we passed the bill again in the House and in the Senate. And guess what the President did this time, Mr. Speaker, because he does this so well? He must have went like this, let us see, which way is the wind blowing today. Oh, the polls are showing that I better sign this, or I am going to be embarrassed and they are going to override my veto. So the President signed our Iran missile sanctions bill into law, after opposing it, after lobbying us and saying that we did not need it.
Mr. Speaker, that is why we have a problem. That is why we have nations that are now threatening Israel and our friends in the Middle East that we cannot defend against. Because this administration has allowed the technology to flow like running water down a riverbed. This administration, while not enforcing arms control agreements, has opposed us every step of the way on missile defense.
Now, the President gave us a great speech at Georgetown. He bit his lip, he tweaked his eye and did all of those things that make him so appealing on national television. But he did not tell the truth, Mr. Speaker; and that is the most important thing. He said, we are for missile defense.
Let us look at the facts, Mr. Speaker. Four years ago the President went before the AIPAC national convention. AIPAC is the group that represents the Jews in America who are concerned about issues affecting Israel's security. President Clinton stood on the podium in front of 2,000 Jews at an AIPAC convention, and he pounded his fist on the dais and he said this: I will never let the Jews in Israel feel like they are unprotected from the missiles that Iran and Iraq are now acquiring. I will support the Arrow program that Israel is trying to build.
Well, let us look at the facts, Mr. Speaker. That same year, the administration had requested no dollars for the Arrow program, which comes under my subcommittee. In fact, Mr. Speaker, because I formed a relationship with the Israelis and with the Israeli Knesset on a cooperative bilateral protection capability, we went to the Israelis and to AIPAC and said, how much money should we put in the defense budget for AIPAC? The number for the Arrow program that year did not come from the White House, it did not come from the Pentagon, it came from an inquiry that I made to AIPAC; yet the President said he was supporting the protection of the people in Israel. He also said he was supporting a program called THEL, Theater High Energy Laser, one of the most promising technologies to take out missiles like those being developed by the Iranians and the Iraqis. What the President did not tell the folks at AIPAC that year was that he had zeroed out funding for the THEL program for 3 straight years.
Mr. Speaker, one cannot continue to say one thing and do something else. When the President talked about delaying the deployment of missile defense at Georgetown last week, he failed to mention a few things. He said he was supported. Well, let us look at the facts, Mr. Speaker. I was very careful over the past 6 years in building a case for missile defense to base our case on facts, not rhetoric. I did not agree with the approach that was taken under the Reagan years, when I was not here, of a massive umbrella that would protect all America. I did not think it could work. That is not what we proposed. We proposed a system that would provide a thin layer of protection against those rogue threats that we know are there today, and that was our basis. We had over 150 classified and public briefings and hearings for our colleagues in this Chamber to learn the facts about the growing threats, to learn the facts about the technology, to learn the facts about what our allies would say.
After all of those briefings and all of those hearings, Mr. Speaker, I worked with my colleagues on the other side to put into place a bipartisan bill. In fact, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) was my cosponsor. That bill had bipartisan support. It simply said, we will deploy a missile defense system. Simple phrasing. One sentence. It is the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense system. The bill was scheduled for a vote a year ago in March. On the day the bill was coming up for a vote, President Clinton sent a letter, along with Al Gore, to every Member of this body, 435 Members. And the President said this: I oppose Curt Weldon's bill on missile defense. I urge you, Democrats and Republicans, to vote no on H.R. 4.
I knew the President was against missile defense all along. I knew Al Gore was against missile defense all along, so it did not surprise me. In fact, it was exactly what I wanted.
So we convened that day. I had already gone to Moscow with Don Rumsfeld and Jim Woolsey, who was Bill Clinton's CIA director. We had already briefed the Russians on what we were doing; we had already closed the House down for 2 hours and had a classified briefing on this floor where NINE members of the Rumsfeld Commission presented factual information. Mr. Speaker, 250 Members of Congress sat in these chairs with no staff here and heard the briefing that outlined the fact that the threat is here today to America and that we better do something about it. All of that took place.
On the day of the vote, I said this to my colleagues: it is a clear choice today, folks. If you support President Clinton and Al Gore, then vote against my bill. Oppose it. I will respect you, because I will respect you for your convictions of thinking we do not need this system. So vote against it, and we will still be friends. But if you agree with me, if you agree with the CIA and the revised threat assessment; if you agree with Donald Rumsfeld and Jim Woolsey, if you agree with those people who say the threat is here today, then vote for my bill, and vote against the President.
Mr. Speaker, we had a lot of debate that day. When the vote came, the President lost. Mr. Speaker, 103 Democrats voted with me, 102 Democrats voted with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and all but two Republicans voted with me. The vote was veto-proof; it was overwhelming. Mr. Speaker, 317 Members of Congress said once again to Bill Clinton, you just do not get it, President Clinton. We are going to force you to do something that you have been opposed to. The Senate passed a similar bill with 98 votes.
So guess what the President did, Mr. Speaker? He did what he did on the Iran missile sanctions bill. He read the polls. Well, the Congress is overwhelmingly in favor, and the American people say do it. I better find a way to support that bill, sign it into law, but to politically leave myself an out so I can get out from under this right before the election next year, and that is when he did. He signed the bill into law and unlike Bill Clinton, there was no Rose Garden signing ceremony; and if you know this White House, they do that more than we eat meals. There was no Rose Garden event where people came down and stood behind the President. Very quietly, with no one around, the President signed the bill into law, H.R. 4, because he knew he could not oppose it. We would overwhelmingly override his veto.
So the President said when he signed the bill into law, I will make my decision next year about whether or not we should deploy a system. He said, I am going to make it based on some factors, whether or not the threat is real, what our allied response is, and whether or not it is cost justified, and whether or not the technology is there. And that was the basis of his speech at Georgetown.
So, Mr. Speaker, let me analyze some of the facts in that speech. First of all, Mr. Speaker, the President himself acknowledged in his speech, the threat is here. He said, for the first time, the threat to America is here and it is growing. In 7 years and 10 months, or 8 months of Clinton-Gore administration, never once did they admit that the threat was here and growing. In the Georgetown speech 2 weeks ago, President Clinton acknowledged what we have said for 7 years: the threat is real and it is growing.
The second issue the President raised was, but I am not sure that technology is ready. We need more testing. Now, that was a great statement by the President: we need more testing. For 6 years, Mr. Speaker, this body has been plussing up funds for more testing of missile defense systems each year; in fact, has spent $1 billion each year more than what the President asked for. Now, you know what the President and Vice President did each year? They criticized the Congress when we put more money in for testing. Yet, in the Georgetown speech, the President said, we need more testing.
Now, he cannot have it both ways, Mr. Speaker. He cannot go to Georgetown and say I am for missile defense, I want more testing, even though for the past 6 years, I have opposed the funding for more testing. The President said, the technology is not ready yet. Well, Mr. Speaker, we all know that it is going to take 5 years before we can put a system into place that will meet the challenges of the threats that we see emerging.
Mr. Speaker, the President said, and I quote: ``The technology is not ready.'' Now, that was an absolute distortion. Either he was misinformed, or he lied. Now, why do I say that? Because, Mr. Speaker, over the summer we held hearings in my committee on the Committee on Armed Services where we had the President's experts on missile defense testify. Jack Gansler is one of the highest ranking officials in the President's Defense Department at the Pentagon. He is in charge of acquisition and technology, I think number three in the Pentagon.
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Jack Ganzler said in questioning in our committee, and I will provide a copy of it for the Record, that when I asked him, ``Is the technology to hit to kill a missile with a missile or a bullet with a bullet, is that technology achievable,'' his answer was, ``In my opinion, the technology is here. We have achieved the technology.''
General Kadish is a three-star general, a very capable leader. He is paid to represent our military in running the program. He is not Democrat, he is not a Republican, he is a paid military expert. He is respected by leaders in both parties.
General Kadish testified before our committee. We asked him,
``General, is the technology achievable to do this? Can we hit a bullet with a bullet?'' General Kadish said, ``In my opinion, the technology is here. We have done it. It is no longer a technology problem, it is an engineering challenge to put the systems together.''
The Welsh report. General Welsh is a retired Air Force general that the Clinton administration hired to survey our progress on missile defense. The Welsh report said unequivocally that the technology is here.
So we had Jack Ganzler, General Kadish, and General Welsh in the Welsh report all saying publicly, there is not a technology problem. What does President Clinton say at Georgetown? ``We have a technology problem.'' Either President Clinton does not listen well, he does not pay attention, or else he lies well, because his three top experts on this issue totally refuted what he said to the American people when he said that the technology was not at hand.
Now, there are challenges. There are engineering challenges. There are challenges to sort out decoys from the real bomb that may be coming in. But those challenges are achievable. In fact, the head scientist for the National Missile Defense Program, Dr. Peller, when he testified before our committee, I asked him, I said, ``Dr. Peller, how hard is it to build a system that can shoot down a missile with another missile?''
He said, ``Congressman, when I worked at Boeing, before I ran this program I ran their Space Station program. The challenge to build a Space Station is much harder and greater than the challenge I face on national missile defense.''
So all of the experts, Mr. Speaker, refute the comments the President made at Georgetown, yet the President got away with this grand national speech. He also said, ``I am making a decision to delay deployment today because I want to do more testing. I want to make sure it will work.'' The irony is, Mr. Speaker, the only thing that he did by delaying the decision with the Georgetown speech was the contract to begin to build a radar system on an island in Alaska.
That is the only thing we can do right now. The system will not be ready for 5 years. But by delaying the contract to build the radar in Alaska, we cannot do the additional testing that we need. That radar would have helped us better test the system that President Clinton told the American people he wanted more testing of.
Mr. Speaker, sometimes the statements coming out really disgust me because they are not being challenged, because the President can use the bully pulpit to say whatever he wants any time he wants without the benefit of someone else standing up and saying, ``Wait a minute, Mr. President. Let us look at the facts,'' because facts are difficult things to refute.
Now, the President also mentioned that he was delaying the decision on missile defense because our allies and other countries were being offended by what we were about to do. He cited Russia. He said that Russia was against missile defense. Russia will use this against us. China will use it. The European nations are against it.
Let us look at that also, Mr. Speaker, and let us look at the facts. Do the Russians trust us? No. Do I understand why the Russians do not trust us? Yes. Mr. Speaker, one of the other things I do in the Congress, as Members know, is I work Russia issues. My undergraduate degree is in Russian studies. I have been in that country 21 times. I co-chair the Interactive Caucus between their Duma and our Congress, so I am with Russians all the time. In fact, I was with the chairman of the International Affairs Committee just 1 hour ago, Mr. Ragosin from the Duma. I was with six other Russians earlier this morning. I meet with them every day.
Let us analyze why the Russians are upset with what we are doing with missile defense, and let us see if missile defense is the problem or if Bill Clinton is the problem and Al Gore is the problem.
Why would the Russians not trust America? Do they think we are going to try to take them over? Some do. Why would they think that? Are they confused? Yes. Why would they think that?
Let us go back to 1992, Mr. Speaker. Boris Yeltsin was elected president of Russia, a new democratic free market Nation. In one of his first speeches he said ``I challenge America to work together with Russia on developing a missile defense system that could protect both people.''
George Bush was president back then. What was George Bush's response? George Bush says, ``I accept your challenge, President Yeltsin. Let us work together.'' So our State Department and the Russian Foreign Ministry began high-level discussions. They were called the Ross-
Mamedov talks, named after the Russian deputy foreign minister and our deputy secretary of state.
They met repeatedly. They were building confidence. They were having success in working together. Then things happened. The elections happened. Bush lost, and Clinton came in in 1993.
Within the first 3 months, what did Bill Clinton do, this man who believes that security is obtainable through arms control agreements alone? He canceled the discussions with the Russians. Without giving the Russians any reason, he canceled the Ross-Mamedov talks.
The Russians said, ``Wait a minute. You said you wanted to work with us, America. Now you are saying you do not want to work with us.'' That was the first bad signal sent by America to the Russians that we do not want their cooperation, that we do not want to work with them.
A second event happened in 1995, 1996, and 1997. We had one cooperative program with Russia on missile defense called the RAMOS project. The RAMOS project is being done by the Utah-Russian Institute in Utah and the Komyeta Institute in Moscow. They have been working together for months and years in developing confidence on a joint system of using two satellites with identical capability, to build confidence that both countries will know when a rocket is launched.
The Russians were very enthusiastic about this program. It had strong bipartisan congressional support. What about the Clinton-Gore team? Without any advance notice to the Russians or to Congress, they announced they were canceling the funding for the RAMOS program.
The Russians started calling me frantically. The former ambassador to America, Vladimir Lukhin, who chairs the Yablakov faction, wrote me a letter. The chairman of the ministry of atomic energy, Mikaelov, wrote me a letter. They said, ``You cannot let this happen. This is terrible. It undermines our relationship.''
Only because Members of Congress joined together, and in this case, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), joined by myself and Members of both parties, said to the White House, ``Oh, no, you don't. You are not canceling this program. It is too important for the confidence between America and Russia.''
What do Members think the Russians thought? Here in 1993 they cancelled the discussions between our two countries, in 1996 they cancelled the only cooperative program with America. What do Members think they are thinking? They are thinking that for some reason Clinton has some effort to not want Russia involved in missile defense.
Then came 1996 and 1997. What happened then? President Clinton decided that since he is a big arms control fan along with Al Gore, that instead of working to amend the ABM treaty, they are going to tighten the ABM treaty.
What is the ABM treaty? The ABM treaty is a relic of the Cold War. It was important at a time where we had two superpowers, the Soviet Union and America, each able to annihilate the other with their missiles, attacking each other. The theory behind it, which is where it got its name MYAD, was mutually-assured destruction. You attack us with your missile and we will wipe you out, if we attack you with our missile, we will wipe you out, neither side being able to build more than one defensive system around one city. That has been the basis of our relationship.
That treaty worked in the 1970s and 1980s when only two nations had that capability, the Soviet Union and America. How do we justify that treaty in the 1990s and the year 2000, when China now has at least 24 long-range ICBMs, when North Korea has at least two long-range ICBMs, when Iran will have within 5 years long-range ICBMs? How do we justify a theory of mutually-assured deterrence when those nations did not even sign the treaty?
What the President did, instead of working to defend our country, was he sent our negotiators to Geneva. They started meeting in Geneva to make the ABM treaty tighter as opposed to more flexible, a stupid decision on the face of it, but that is what they did.
Many of us in the Congress said, what in the world is the President doing? He and Al Gore have a negotiator in Geneva meeting with the Russians talking about making tighter changes to the ABM treaty. So Mr. Speaker, I did what none of our colleagues did, I went to Geneva. I flew over with a Navy escort. I got permission of the State Department. I said, I want to sit across from the Russians. I want to talk about what is going on here.
They let me, so we flew to Geneva and we went to the site where the meetings were taking place. I met the chief Russian negotiator, General Klotunov. I sat down across from him at a table for 2\1/2\ hours. I said, ``General Klotunov, I am a Member of Congress. I really have some questions about these negotiations between your side and our side over the ABM treaty, so can I ask a couple of questions?
``There are two issues evidently you are working on. One is you want to multilateralize the treaty; that is, to make a complicated story simple, you want to take a treaty between two countries, us and the former Soviet
Union, and you want to now include three other former Soviet States, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. So my question to you is, why would Russia want to include Belarus and Kazakhstan on a treaty when they don't have missiles? They gave all their missiles up? Why would you want them to be a player on a treaty where only us and Russia have these missiles, unless you want to expand it to include China or North Korea or these other nations?''
General Klotunov looked me in the eye, and in front of our negotiators and with a recorder taking all this down, said this publicly: ``Congressman Weldon, you are asking that question of the wrong person. We didn't propose multilateralizing the treaty, your side did.''
How in the world and why in the world would America want to make it more difficult to amend a treaty to let us protect our people? That is exactly what we did, Mr. Speaker. And Belarus, with a leader like Lukashenko, who is a crazy man, Belarus could object to a change in the treaty which would benefit us, and Russia could say, ``we agree, but Belarus objects,'' and we could not deal with that issue.
I didn't understand what the President's reasoning was, and therefore I came back and told my colleagues, ``I think this issue is a stupid issue and something we should not be doing with the Russians.'' But we agreed to it with the Russians. Bill Clinton agreed to it, and so did Al Gore.
The second issue I raised to Klotunov was demarcation. That is a long word, and very tough for somebody like me who is just a schoolteacher to understand what it meant. I had to get some people over to brief me. Demarcation was trying to decide what is a theater missile defense system versus national missile defense. For some reason, we picked a speed and a range that made a difference when one was theater and one was national.
If I live in Israel, a small country, a theater missile defense system is a national system, because it protects the whole country. For the State of Pennsylvania, a theater missile defense system really is a broader national missile defense system.
I could not understand how this difference was created. I asked General Klotunov, ``How did you arrive at the numbers that we and you agreed to on demarcation between these systems?'' He said,
``Congressman, that was some very serious discussion between your State Department and our ministry of foreign affairs.''
I said, ``Well, can you share with me the basis of it?'' He said,
``No, it is too complicated.'' I was not satisfied. I came back to our country and asked the military to explain it. They did not have any good answers, or did not want to give them to me, so I did not get a satisfactory answer on that issue until about a year later.
I am sitting in my office, Mr. Speaker, and reading press accounts from newspapers around the world, as I usually do, involving emerging threats to our security. Lo and behold, in a Tel Aviv newspaper I see a story with a headline, ``Moscow offers to sell Israel newest missile defense system.''
I read the story. It talks about a system I had not heard of called the ANTEI 2500, supposedly the best system in the world. I called the CIA, George Tenet. He is a very capable leader. I have a lot of respect for him.
I said, ``Mr. Director, do you know what the system is?'' He said,
``Congressman Weldon, I don't, but we have experts in the agency. Let me get someone to come over and brief you.'' About a week later, an analyst from the CIA comes over to my office to talk about the ANTEI 2500.
I say to him, ``Can you tell me about this system? I know most of the Russian systems. I know about the S300, S400, the system they are building, the SA10, the SA12. What is the ANTEI 2500?'' He says, ``It is a brand new system.'' I said, ``Do we know about it?'' He said,
``Yes, we know about it.'' He pulled out a brochure in English with beautiful color pictures: ``Here, this is for you.''
I said, ``What is this?'' He said it was a marketing brochure in English that the Russians gave out at the Abu Dhabi air show offering to sell the system to any Nation that wanted to buy it. I said, ``How good is it?'' He said, ``If it does what they say it will do, it is the best system in the world. On the back page of the brochure are all the criteria for this system.''
As I read through it and looked at the range, the speed, something clicks in my head. I say, ``Now, wait a minute.'' I looked at the analyst sitting across from me in my office.
{time} 1745
The range and the speed of the system are right below the threshold of the demarcation.
He starts shaking his head. He said, ``Yes, Congressman, you are right.''
I said, ``Are you kidding me?'' I said, ``What that means is, then, that we let ourselves get sucked into a negotiation by the Russians where they were building a system that we did not know about that they could market to our friends and our allies, yet we would limit our own ability to go beyond that.''
He said, ``Yes, that is exactly right.''
What a way to negotiate treaties, Mr. Speaker. No wonder this Congress and the other body said we will never support those two changes to the treaty.
But to get back to my original point of the confidence of the Russians. Bill Clinton, as our representative said to the Russians, we support these two changes. He knew he had to take them back, according to our Constitution, and have the Senate give their advice and their consent. That is a requirement that even Bill Clinton cannot get around.
Well, do you know what he did. Because he knew he could not get those two changes through the Senate, he did not bring them out for the Senate to consider for 3 years, for 3 years, after he convinced the Russians that those two changes were acceptable to America, the multilateralization and the demarcation. He left the Russians believing that America would support them.
So when the Russians passed START II just a couple of months ago, the Clinton administration had urged them to include both of those changes to embarrass the Senate. So that what they would not submit to the Senate 3 years ago they included as a part of START II so the Senate would have to vote down START II because those two changes were never submitted separately as required by the Constitution. Well, the Senate is not going to do that.
So for a third time, Bill Clinton convinces the Russians that we cannot be trusted.
Now, why would the President do this? Why would not he call the Russians when there are companies transferring technology? Why would he not be honest with the Russians?
Mr. Speaker, our policy for the past 8 years, under Bill Clinton, with Russia, has been based on the Clinton to Yeltsin personal friendship. That worked for the first 4 years.
As someone who has spent a lot of time in Russia, I supported the approach of helping Yeltsin succeed. I had the same hopes and dreams that all of us had and that Bill Clinton had.
But here is where we fell down. Instead of supporting the institution of the Presidency in Russia, the institution of a parliament in Russia, we supported a person. When that person became a drunken fool surrounded by corrupt oligarchs and bankers stealing money from the Russian people, we were still supporting him, the only people supporting him in the world.
When Boris Yeltsin's cronies were stealing billions of dollars of IMF money, $18 billion that the Russian people were going to think helped them build roads and schools and bridges and community centers, Boris Yeltsin's friends and cronies stole that money and put it in Swiss bank accounts and U.S. real estate investments, and we went like this and like this.
Why would Bill Clinton do that? Because he did not want to embarrass his friend, Boris Yeltsin. When we caught the Russians doing stupid things like allowing transfers of technology to go abroad, we did not want to embarrass Yeltsin. When we caught them working with the Iranians, we did not want to embarrass Boris Yeltsin. When we caught them with the guidance systems to go to Iraq, it was the year Yeltsin was running for reelection.
In fact, we now have a secret cable that Bill Clinton sent to Boris Yeltsin which our colleagues and the American people can get if they buy the book ``Betrayal'' by Bill Gertz. In the back of that book is an appendix. In that appendix is a secret cable now released that President Clinton sent to Boris Yeltsin in 1996 saying, ``Dear Boris, I will make sure nothing happens to upset your election campaign.''
As a result, Mr. Speaker, the Russian people lost confidence in America. They thought our only purpose was to steal their money, embarrass them, and not be candid with them.
As a result, when Boris Yeltsin was about to leave office this time last fall, his popularity in every poll in Russia was less than 2 percent. Nobody in Russia trusted Boris Yeltsin. Bill Clinton did. Bill Clinton was still his best friend.
Imagine this, Mr. Speaker, and picture this visually, imagine the euphoria in America, in 1992, you have got Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank outside the Russian White House in Moscow, waiving a Russian flag with American flags all around him as thousands of Russians are chanting singing. Now they have overturned communism, and their newest ally and their friend is America. That was 1992.
Shift to 1999, last year in the fall. What is the picture out of Moscow, Mr. Speaker? I remember one picture last fall: 5,000 Russians standing outside of our embassy in Moscow, throwing paint at the American embassy, firing weapons in our embassy, and burning the American flag. It was so bad that our embassy had to tell Americans traveling in Moscow, do not speak English on the street.
That just did not happen, Mr. Speaker. It happened because the Russians no longer trusted who we are and what we were about. That was because this President had a foreign policy that was more like a roller coaster. Things were done to suit the political expediency of both President Clinton and President Yeltsin. That is why the Russians did not trust our movement on missile defense.
In fact, I have friends in Russia. One senior policy analyst who was doing an op ed with me entitled, ``From Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Protection.'' The Russians want to work with us. But they have no confidence in who we are as a people because of the policies of this administration.
The President worried about Russian response on the issue of missile defense. What about Kosovo, Mr. Speaker? Let us talk about Kosovo for a moment. President Clinton and Tony Blair went before the American and British people, interestingly enough, 30 days before a big NATO anniversary conference here in Washington a year ago in the spring.
Tony Blair and Bill Clinton said we are going to move NATO in a new direction. We are going to go in to Serbia. We are going to defeat Milosevic who is evil; who is corrupt. We are going to show that NATO has a new role in the world. We are going to bring Milosevic to his knees.
President Clinton said in justifying the use of our young people in Kosovo, when we are done, we are going to find massive graves. There are going to be hundreds of thousands of people who were killed by Milosevic and buried throughout Serbia because of what he has done to people. Well, that is what the President says.
Let us look at what happened, Mr. Speaker. Here we are, the Kosovo conflict is over. The CIA came in and testified before Congress just 3 months ago, and I asked the question, ``How many mass graves did we find because the President said there would be 100,000?''
The CIA said, ``We would never say that.''
I said, ``Well, I know you are not the White House, but how many did you find?''
He said, ``I think we found one grave.''
``Well, how many were in there?''
``Well, we do not know, maybe 1,000, maybe more. We do not know whether they were mass graves or just people buried together.''
So I said, ``Well, the basic justification of the Kosovo war by our President was massive atrocities. Are you telling me they did not occur?''
He said, ``Well, we do not have any evidence of mass graves.''
It turns out, Mr. Speaker, the allies probably killed more innocent people than Milosevic did up until the war started. When the war started, he became more of a madman and killed more people. The bottom line is, Mr. Speaker, after it put America's sons and daughters in harm's way, after spending billions of dollars, after President Clinton going on national TV with Tony Blair, why is Milosevic still in power?
What did we do, Mr. Speaker? Did we fail? Has President Clinton come before the American people and said, I am sorry I failed. Our policy was a disaster.
What about the billions of dollars we spent? What did we accomplish with Kosovo. We killed innocent people. We did not remove Milosevic. Now, it has just turned itself around. Is the ethnic cleansing still going on? Yes. But instead of the Serbs beating up the Kosovars, the Kosovars are beating up the Serbs.
President Clinton does not want to talk about that now because the NATO anniversary celebration is over. They had the parades through Washington. The President and Tony Blair gave their speeches, so we have gone on to other issues.
So what was accomplished in Kosovo? I can think of two things. We managed to alienate the Russians. It is the number one issue on the mind of every Russian how America did not bring Russia in to help solve the Kosovo problem.
The second, we alienated China, because the Chinese are still convinced we hit their embassy deliberately in downtown Belgrade. When the President repeatedly said we did not, they still believed that we did.
The irony of this President's administration relative to our foreign would-be adversaries, China and Russia, is that, in 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced a new strategic partnership, Moscow and Washington together working as one.
In 1999, Boris Yeltsin, as he is leaving office, and President Putin as he went into office in 2000, made different speeches. They announced a new relationship, Moscow and Beijing against America. That is the legacy of Clinton and Gore on international security issues.
The President talks about Russia's response to our missile defense. Cut me a break, Mr. Speaker. The President is just not being honest with the American people.
Should the Russians worry about what we were doing with missile defense? No way. They have the best missile defense in the world. If the Russians really believed that missile defense was not important or we could rely on deterrence, why would they have the only operational AB instrument in the world, and they have it today. The Russians have the world's only operational antiballistic missile system. They have one, and we do not.
Theirs surrounds Moscow, which is where 80 percent of their people live. So with one system, they protect the bulk of their population. Certainly all the people that matter to them are around Moscow. They protect all of them.
Their system has been upgraded three times. So if the Russians really believe in deterence, why do not we tell them to take down their system and be as vulnerable as we are. We in America who could build one system would never choose to protect one city over another. So we have no system.
So the irony is, Mr. Speaker, that the President said he did not go forward because Russia is concerned. Our allies are concerned, when the very reason they are concerned is because of the lack of a vision and the lack of statesmanship on the part of our White House, including our President and Vice President.
Where does this all come down to, Mr. Speaker? Well, what the President did by announcing his decision in Georgetown in his speech is going to cost us more money. The estimates are another $1 billion with a 1-year delay in missile defense, $1 billion that we are going to have to fork over. But more importantly, we are unprotected.
Now, some say, well, it is not going to happen. Let me remind my constituents and colleagues here in the Chamber. In 1991, 28 young Americans, half of them from Pennsylvania, came home in body bags because we let them down. We could not defend against a low complexity scud missile. Will that happen again? Well, I can tell my colleagues, in 1995, in January, because of Russia's problems in their military, when the Norwegians launched the weather rocket, a three-stage rocket for atmospheric sampling, the Russian system is in such bad shape, they misread the Norwegian rocket launch. They thought it was an attack from an American nuclear submarine.
What did they do? The Russians have acknowledged that, for one of the first times ever, they put their full ICBM system on alert. Well, what does that mean? That meant Russia had 15 minutes, 15 minutes to decide whether to launch a missile against the U.S. or call it off.
Boris Yeltsin has publicly acknowledged, and I will put in the Record, there was 7 minutes left, he overruled his Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and the general in charge of his command staff and called off the response.
Imagine that, Mr. Speaker, in January of 1995, we almost had Russia launch an ICBM at America because of a Norwegian rocket launch that they had been told about. What would we have done if that launch would have occurred? We could not defend it because we have no system. Well, we do. We probably sent up a radio signal to wherever the trajectory was of that city and tell them over the radio, you have 25 minutes to vacate your homes, because that is how long it takes for an ICBM leaving Russia to hit America. Twenty-five minutes to move, that is the only protection that we could provide to the American people.
What are we going to do if that happens? If an accident occurs, what do we do, have Putin apologize to us, say, ``Oh, we are sorry. We are sorry you lost 200,000 people in L.A. We are sorry that Atlanta, Georgia got bombed. We did not mean it. It was an accident.''
What do we do if North Korea says, ``We are going to test you, America. We are going to invade South Korea. If you interfere, L.A. is out the door.'' What do we do then, go in and bomb North Korea in advance, or do we wait until they launch their missile and then wonder whether we are going to attack North Korea later. What about the people in L.A.? Who is going to protect them?
Mr. Speaker, this President should not be allowed to get away with what he did. He lied to the American people. Our security is at risk. The same way he lied to the American people in the China technology transfer scandal.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I was a Member of the Cox committee. For 7 months, we sat through testimony and meeting after meeting with the CIA and the FBI. I saw all the evidence or most of it that the CIA and the FBI have relative to how the Chinese got technology from America.
Mr. Speaker, through all of that evidence that we saw, nine of us, four Democrats and five Republicans, nine decent people voted unanimously, nine to zero that America's security was harmed because of technology that was transferred to China.
Now, the administration would have us believe it was stolen. Wen Ho Lee, the poor man, just got released after 9 months. They said it was stolen. It was not stolen.
{time} 1800
It was not stolen. It was a wholesale auctioning off of America's technology.
What did they get in return? They got campaign dollars. The same man going around the country championing campaign finance reform obtained millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars for his campaign committee.
This is not the Republican gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) talking, Mr. Speaker. I would offer to my colleagues a letter that Louis Freeh, one of the people in this administration with integrity, the head of the FBI, hand picked by Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, Louis Freeh wrote a 90-page memorandum based on a factual investigation by his investigator, Charles Labella.
That 90-page memorandum went to Janet Reno. It is now available. I will give it to anybody that wants it, and they can read it for themselves, in Louis Freeh's own words. What did it say? It said: ``As the FBI Director of America, I have reason to believe that further investigation is warranted because four people may have committed felonies in campaign contributions being received with technology being left out of our country to go to a foreign nation.''
And Louis Freeh named the four people. Who were they? In Louis Freeh's own words: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Harold Ickes, who is running Hillary's campaign in New York State.
The scandal of this administration was not Monica Lewinsky. The scandal of this administration was the wholesale auctioning off of America's technology so that Clinton and Gore could get reelected.
And now we have the President giving a speech at Georgetown about how he is making the right decision for us on protecting our people.
The White House should be ashamed. America should be ashamed. And all of us had better look to the facts as opposed to the wink and the nod and the smile.
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Vitter). The Chair would remind Members that remarks in debate should not include charges against the President or Vice President.
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