Iran Intelligence Oversight Act

Mr. President, we live in a dangerous time, and that is an understatement. The threats to our freedom are many. They range from terrorist attacks such as those that hit our shores on 9/11 to rogue nations with nuclear ambitions such as North Korea and Iran.

It is important that we, as a country, address each of these threats. Recent history is rife with examples of what happens if we fail to do so. The threats don't go away; they only get worse.

This is a fact we can see in today's headlines about North Korea's new missile tests--they have not fired a missile since 1998; and from all reports we have been able to pick up on the news, they are now fueling another missile just prior to launch--and also in Iran, where efforts to halt the country's nuclear program have been delayed and complicated by the administration's, I believe, failures in Iraq.

This weekend, the Washington Post reported that top Bush administration officials ignored an offer from Iran in 2003, when American leverage in the region was at its height. The offer from Iran was to curtail its nuclear activities. This is very troubling.

Paul Pillar, the former head of Middle East analysis for the intelligence community, said that the U.S. position regarding Iran is ``inherently weaker now'' because of Iraq, and that ``there have been a lot of lost opportunities.'' One expert analyst said the administration's mismanagement ``strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance.''

Today, I am introducing legislation which would improve Congress's oversight of the administration's efforts on Iran--the Iran Intelligence Oversight Act. The legislation will ensure that Congress is fully engaged in the Iran debate, and it will also push the Bush White House to develop and implement the right policy for dealing with Iran.

All of us are painfully aware of this Congress's unwillingness to hold this administration accountable for its mistakes and misjudgments. There has been virtually no oversight on anything.

I have said before that there has been a lack of a legislative branch of Government. The executive exists, the judicial branch exists, but the Founding Fathers' view to have three separate but equal branches of Government has not been in existence for the last 5\1/2\ years. The reason the President has not had to veto a single bill is he has gotten anything he wants from this Republican Congress.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has led the way in terms of stonewalling and rubber-stamping the Bush administration. Nearly 3 years into its investigation of the White House's politicization of Iraq intelligence, we still don't have a report.

Unfortunately, the committee record on Iran is not any better.

U.S. News and World Report had a quote earlier this spring from the committee's chairman, saying:

[W]e have not made the progress on our oversight of Iran

intelligence, which is critical.

U.S. News further said the panel had done only piecemeal scrutiny of the spy agencies' work on Iran, quoting a Republican staffer as saying:

There is no organized committee staff effort to look at

Iran right now. . . . It's all sort of on hold.

That is really too bad.

Perhaps Tehran will be kind enough to wait for them, but the Senate should not. The Senate must be engaged as we move our diplomacy forward with Iran. We must take seriously our responsibility to insist on a thorough review of the facts, a full debate of the threat, and full consultation as events move forward.

The legislation I am introducing today would put in place the rigorous oversight necessary to hold the administration accountable for its rhetoric and its all too frequent tendency to spin and distort the facts.

The act requires the administration to give Congress and the American people solid answers to three questions.

First, what is the judgment of the Government's professional intelligence analysts about the threat of Iran, and what tools are most likely to influence the Iranians to change their ways?

Second, what are the President's policy objectives with Iran, and what is his strategy for achieving these objectives?

Currently, we are only left to guess.

To the best of my knowledge, Congress has not yet been briefed on any of the key details of the deal offered to Iran a few weeks ago. The Iranians have been briefed, the Europeans have been briefed, the Russians have been briefed, the Chinese have been briefed--but not the U.S. Senate.

Congress needs to be in on the takeoff, not asked to board the plane for the crash landing.

Third, this legislation asks the question: What is the process for making sure that senior administration officials do not publicly mischaracterize the evidence and the challenge of Iran?

Much of what we heard from the administration in the run-up to Iraq about mushroom clouds, yellow cake, and aluminum tubes turned out to be overstated or based on intelligence that was known to be very, very suspect.

I am told that the most famous of the Vice President's speeches on Iraq--the August 2002 VFW speech that set the rush to war and dramatically overstated the threat from Iraq--was never even cleared by the intelligence community.

With my legislation in place, and with vigilance from Congress, we will be one step closer to ensuring this kind of misleading information does not happen regarding the threat posed by Iran.

I want to be clear: President Bush must take seriously the challenge of Iran, as I know he does, but the way to success will be a policy based on the facts. Under my legislation, the administration will be held accountable for anything less.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, we live in a dangerous time, and that is an understatement. The threats to our freedom are many. They range from terrorist attacks such as those that hit our shores on 9/11 to rogue nations with nuclear ambitions such as North Korea and Iran.

It is important that we, as a country, address each of these threats. Recent history is rife with examples of what happens if we fail to do so. The threats don't go away; they only get worse.

This is a fact we can see in today's headlines about North Korea's new missile tests--they have not fired a missile since 1998; and from all reports we have been able to pick up on the news, they are now fueling another missile just prior to launch--and also in Iran, where efforts to halt the country's nuclear program have been delayed and complicated by the administration's, I believe, failures in Iraq.

This weekend, the Washington Post reported that top Bush administration officials ignored an offer from Iran in 2003, when American leverage in the region was at its height. The offer from Iran was to curtail its nuclear activities. This is very troubling.

Paul Pillar, the former head of Middle East analysis for the intelligence community, said that the U.S. position regarding Iran is ``inherently weaker now'' because of Iraq, and that ``there have been a lot of lost opportunities.'' One expert analyst said the administration's mismanagement ``strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance.''

Today, I am introducing legislation which would improve Congress's oversight of the administration's efforts on Iran--the Iran Intelligence Oversight Act. The legislation will ensure that Congress is fully engaged in the Iran debate, and it will also push the Bush White House to develop and implement the right policy for dealing with Iran.

All of us are painfully aware of this Congress's unwillingness to hold this administration accountable for its mistakes and misjudgments. There has been virtually no oversight on anything.

I have said before that there has been a lack of a legislative branch of Government. The executive exists, the judicial branch exists, but the Founding Fathers' view to have three separate but equal branches of Government has not been in existence for the last 5\1/2\ years. The reason the President has not had to veto a single bill is he has gotten anything he wants from this Republican Congress.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has led the way in terms of stonewalling and rubber-stamping the Bush administration. Nearly 3 years into its investigation of the White House's politicization of Iraq intelligence, we still don't have a report.

Unfortunately, the committee record on Iran is not any better.

U.S. News and World Report had a quote earlier this spring from the committee's chairman, saying:

[W]e have not made the progress on our oversight of Iran

intelligence, which is critical.

U.S. News further said the panel had done only piecemeal scrutiny of the spy agencies' work on Iran, quoting a Republican staffer as saying:

There is no organized committee staff effort to look at

Iran right now. . . . It's all sort of on hold.

That is really too bad.

Perhaps Tehran will be kind enough to wait for them, but the Senate should not. The Senate must be engaged as we move our diplomacy forward with Iran. We must take seriously our responsibility to insist on a thorough review of the facts, a full debate of the threat, and full consultation as events move forward.

The legislation I am introducing today would put in place the rigorous oversight necessary to hold the administration accountable for its rhetoric and its all too frequent tendency to spin and distort the facts.

The act requires the administration to give Congress and the American people solid answers to three questions.

First, what is the judgment of the Government's professional intelligence analysts about the threat of Iran, and what tools are most likely to influence the Iranians to change their ways?

Second, what are the President's policy objectives with Iran, and what is his strategy for achieving these objectives?

Currently, we are only left to guess.

To the best of my knowledge, Congress has not yet been briefed on any of the key details of the deal offered to Iran a few weeks ago. The Iranians have been briefed, the Europeans have been briefed, the Russians have been briefed, the Chinese have been briefed--but not the U.S. Senate.

Congress needs to be in on the takeoff, not asked to board the plane for the crash landing.

Third, this legislation asks the question: What is the process for making sure that senior administration officials do not publicly mischaracterize the evidence and the challenge of Iran?

Much of what we heard from the administration in the run-up to Iraq about mushroom clouds, yellow cake, and aluminum tubes turned out to be overstated or based on intelligence that was known to be very, very suspect.

I am told that the most famous of the Vice President's speeches on Iraq--the August 2002 VFW speech that set the rush to war and dramatically overstated the threat from Iraq--was never even cleared by the intelligence community.

With my legislation in place, and with vigilance from Congress, we will be one step closer to ensuring this kind of misleading information does not happen regarding the threat posed by Iran.

I want to be clear: President Bush must take seriously the challenge of Iran, as I know he does, but the way to success will be a policy based on the facts. Under my legislation, the administration will be held accountable for anything less.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

I send a second-degree amendment to the desk.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, a lot of discussion has been going on in the Senate with regard to a shift that we are making that I don't entirely agree with. That is a shift off of the underlying bill--not literally off the bill but in terms of substance--addressing the issue of minimum wage that my colleague from Massachusetts has addressed.

Personally, as I have explained to my colleagues, I don't believe this is the appropriate bill on which to be addressing the minimum wage. We should be debating the war on terror and the progress that has been achieved in Iraq and the way we can further that success in the future.

We have agreed to set aside amendments so that the Senator from Massachusetts can offer an amendment on the minimum wage, and I second- degreed that amendment with a child custody protection amendment.

Our discussions have led to the understanding that after we figure out how we are going to address both the minimum wage and child custody protection over the course of this afternoon or tonight or tomorrow, we will get around to having a vote on the minimum wage issue.

There has been some discussion whether we had to file cloture on the minimum wage or on child custody protection, but we agree that, after further discussion, we will figure out the most appropriate manner to bring to the floor and address these issues over the next--I am not sure how long it will take, but figure out exactly how long that is. I do encourage our Members to come to the floor and to continue debating the underlying bill as well, the Department of Defense authorization bill.

Again, I wish that neither one of these issues that we just offered were going to be debated on this particular bill, but I understand it is the right of each Senator to come forward and offer those two bills.

Again, I will turn to my colleague from Massachusetts to make a statement as to whether that is the general understanding of where we are.

That is correct.

The challenge with the Department of Defense authorization bill is really just this, what is playing out; that is, for us to address what is the issue, I believe, that is most important to the United States today. That is supporting our men and women who are fighting so bravely and gallantly for us right now in this war on terror.

Thus, I believe that a minimum wage amendment should not be debated on this particular bill, but it looks like it will be debated on this particular bill. In the colloquy that was just entertained, it is clear we will be debating it on the bill.

It was clear last week the other side did not really want to stay on this issue of debating Iraq, surrounding Iraq. And by offering this amendment, they made it clear they do want to shift debate off to an entirely different issue, an issue that does have a time and a place that is more appropriate for it to be addressed. At that time, we should be debating the overall economy and the impact that it would have on small business and on jobs in this country.

We need to also have that debate on how to maintain, to continue the strong economic growth that we are seeing in this country today because of President Bush's strong progrowth economic policies which have created 5.3 million jobs in the last 3 years. We have unemployment that is down to 4.7 percent, which is lower than the average of the 1990s and 1980s and 1970s.

In order to keep the economy growing, we need to continue to debate how to open new markets, how to reduce the burden on our economy of taxation and regulation, how we make education more affordable, how we tackle health care costs--all of which are very important issues.

Again, I prefer not to debate all those issues on this important bill, the Department of Defense authorization bill. We need to look, at some point, at the issues surrounding our overall economy, a progrowth package, and look at the issues surrounding the minimum wage, but to do it in isolation on a totally unrelated bill I don't think is the way to go.

On this bill, I do believe America can do better.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendments.

I call up my amendment at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I thank the leader for his cooperation. As I understand what he is basically saying is that he will work out, I imagine with the Democratic leader, an appropriate time so at least the Senate will have an opportunity, before final passage of this legislation, that we will get a vote on my amendment or action on it related thereto. Am I right?

I thank the leader. Earlier in the day, I listened to the concerns of the leader about the appropriateness of my amendment on this legislation. I pointed out earlier, when I addressed the Senate, that I believe that our fighting men and women in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world are fighting for American values, and part of American values is economic fairness and economic justice, and part of economic fairness and economic justice is making sure we are going to treat American workers decently and fairly.

So I want to indicate both to the leader and, most particularly, to the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, we will work with him in every possible way to work out the appropriate timing on it so that other serious work of the committee can move ahead in a timely way.

I thank both leaders.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, what is the matter before the Senate at this time?

We are on the Defense bill, then?

Mr. President, at an appropriate time I will lay down an amendment. Right now I will just speak on it for a few minutes.

(The remarks of Mr. Reid pertaining to the introduction of S. 3536 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. President, the hour of 4 o'clock will be here in a couple minutes, and I have a few more minutes to speak. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to finish my statement using leader time, and that the 4 o'clock time for consideration of the judicial nomination be extended for probably less than 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I extend my appreciation to the distinguished Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner.

Yes, but I will do it at a subsequent time.

I want to talk to Senator Levin and the chairman before offering it.