Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, last night I was unable to be here when we had a tribute to our departed colleague, Henry Hyde. I just wanted to say this about Henry Hyde: It was a privilege and an honor to serve in this House with him.

I recall a conversation I had with him a number of years ago at which time I talked to him about sometimes did he ever get tired about the fact that people beat him up on the issue of abortion. And Henry thought a minute and he said, You know, as I get older and I think of my own mortality, I look forward to the time when I might be entering those gates into heaven and the voices of all those young children that we saved welcoming me there.

They're giving you a great welcome right now, Henry. We miss you.

Mr. Speaker, women brought to Northern California from China with false promises of life in a far-off land, only to be trapped in prostitution; Mexican women forced to serve up to 50 men each day in dingy brothels in New York; African teenagers held in servitude as nannies in Washington, D.C.; American women and girls lured on to the streets with promises of love and glamour, only to be held in prostitution through coercive force; the issue of human trafficking is a moral tragedy, perpetrated against the most vulnerable of our fellow human beings. Whether it be the sexual exploitation of children or the forced labor of young men in the drug trade recently chronicled in the London Economist, it is a transnational stain which should evoke the singular emotion of revulsion.

Human trafficking is tantamount to slavery, and therefore it is most fitting that H.R. 3887 be entitled be entitled the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, for, as we know, William Wilberforce, was a leader among English abolitionists and played a crucial role in the passage of both the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and the Slave Abolition Act of 1833, shortly before his death.

The promise of freedom and the prohibition against involuntary servitude enshrined in the 13th amendment to our Constitution is a clear statement of the opprobrium which we hold for the notion that some human beings should be used as chattel for exploitation by others.

In fact, our commitment to this first principle predates the Constitution, for it was Thomas Jefferson who penned those immortal words in the preamble of our Nation's foundational statement of political philosophy that there are certain inalienable rights with which we are endowed as human beings by our Creator, and it is this source of ours rights which render them inviolable.

This was affirmed by that other bookend of human freedom, the Gettysburg Address, where President Lincoln visualized the fulfillment of the Declaration with the admonition that ``All men are created equal,'' or, as we would put it today, all human beings are created equal.

Thus, Mr. Speaker, the specter of a modern version of slavery cuts against our national aspirations as people. The Wilberforce Act is thus an appropriate expression of our collective outrage over this more recent transgression of basic human rights. And although I might have crafted the response to some of the issues addressed in this legislation differently, we must not allow the perfect to overcome or be the enemy of the good.

H.R. 3887 provides resources so that nongovernmental organizations, Federal and local law enforcement, and faith-based entities can work together towards a common aim of justice. The bill holds forth the promise of a new birth of freedom for those coerced into sexual slavery and child exploitation.

Finally, I would be remiss were I to fail to add that the Wilberforce Act exemplifies what is possible when Members of this body are willing to cross the aisle in order to address real-life problems which compel a response from all of us.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask for a unanimous vote in support of the Wilberforce Act.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule.

People should understand that this is one of the single-most important issues we will deal with this year or this Congress, and yet it has been trivialized by the way it has been handled by the Rules Committee.

We were shown what purported to be the bill that we would be working on today 45 minutes before the Rules Committee convened, at which time we were supposed to present our amendments to this bill, draft our amendments to this bill. Maybe it made no difference because they had no intention whatsoever of allowing us any input by way of amendment.

This was startling to me because, having done two 1-hour Special Orders on this subject, I had a distinguished Member from their side of the aisle come to me and say: You know that provision you pointed out, that was placed into this bill as a result of a self-execution rule that actually grants greater protection to Osama bin Laden or anybody else than it would to an American citizen charged with a crime in America. You were right on that. We made a mistake, and we are going to change it.

So I look at this bill and it is still there.

What provision am I talking about? It is the provision that talks about treatment of inadvertent interceptions. If we have an electronic communication which we believed in the first instance was foreign to foreign but we find that it actually is foreign to someone in the United States, what happens? If we inadvertently collect a communication in which at least one party to the communication is located inside the United States or is a United States person, the contents of such communication shall be handled in accordance with minimization procedures adopted by the Attorney General. And that is fine. But then it goes on to say: that require that no contents of any communication to which the United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any purpose, or retained for longer than 7 days unless a court order under section 105 is obtained, or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates the threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.

Now, if Osama bin Laden in a conversation or communication with someone in the United States, which we inadvertently pick up because we thought we were listening to foreign to foreign and we hear this, and in that Osama bin Laden indicates where he is, we are prohibited by this provision in this section of the bill from being able to disseminate it to anybody, FBI or anybody else, or using it for any purpose unless we go to a court. That is absolutely absurd. So absurd that a Member of that side of the aisle, the chairman of the Constitutional Law Subcommittee of Judiciary said: You are right, we will take it out. It is not taken out.

That is just one of the problems when you have a rule that doesn't allow people to look at the bill you are going to present to them nor does it allow any amendments to be brought forward.

This not only points out the seriousness of this issue, but it shows that, when you play political games with bringing it to the floor, you might have unintended consequences.

Do I believe that side wants to give greater protection to Osama bin Laden than an American citizen charged with a crime in America? I hope not. But it is in this bill. I was told it was going to be taken out. It has not been taken out. We ought to defeat this rule for that reason whatsoever and defeat the bill if it remains in.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill, and I am sorry that I have to do that. I respect the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers). We have worked on many things together. I believe he is a prime time player, but I disagree with his statement that this bill is ready for prime time.

To just give one example, if you look at section 6 of this bill, section 6 of the bill differs with the way we handle minimization under current law by saying that if there is evidence of a crime, it cannot be disseminated to a criminal justice entity. Now, maybe there is a reason for that, but that has never been discussed whatsoever.

Secondly, I would say that in the two 1-hour Special Orders I gave, I raised the problem that exists in the underlying bill as we now see it, which is in the very beginning of the bill, and it deals with a section entitled ``treatment of inadvertent interceptions.''

It deals with a situation where the intelligence community believes in good faith that they are dealing with foreign-to-foreign, but inadvertently they capture communication that deals with foreign-to- domestic. And what we say here is that you cannot use that information for any purpose, any purpose. It cannot be disclosed. It cannot be disseminated. It cannot be used for any purpose or retained for longer than 7 days, unless what? A court order is obtained or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person, that the information indicates that.

I have stood on this floor on several occasions and said what that means is if we have a conversation or a communication involving Osama bin Laden, and everybody recognizes that might be the case, because in the manager's amendment we talk about Osama bin Laden, if in fact that occurs and the communication deals with someone within the United States, and he doesn't in that communication have information indicating a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person, but indicates where he happens to be, the exact cave where he is at, we cannot operate on that in a timely fashion.

I would challenge any Member on the other side of the aisle to read the language in the underlying merged text, page 3, entitled ``Treatment of Inadvertent Interceptions,'' and tell me that I am wrong. This is, whether it is by mistake or you intended it to happen, giving greater protection to a terrorist around the world than you give to an American citizen charged with a crime.

I have said it before and I will say it again: I don't believe you intended this, but it is in the bill. As a matter of fact, the gentleman from New York, the chairman of the Constitutional Rights Subcommittee, came to me after we had an exchange on the floor on the issue and said, ``You are right. We goofed up. We should get rid of it.'' Yet we are here with it on the floor. For that reason alone, we ought to defeat the bill.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Once again, I would ask my friends on the other side of the aisle: Can anyone explain why, on page 3, you give stronger rights to someone who is a suspected terrorist, even Osama bin Laden, if he has a communication we intercept believing it was going to be foreign-to- foreign, now foreign to someone in the United States, and in that he reveals where he is, why we cannot use that information as we are able to with a legal wiretap in the United States on an American citizen

charged with a crime who calls someone who is not a target of a crime? I do not understand it. Page 3. Is there anybody on your side who can explain why you would have that?

The silence has been deafening for a month now on this.

I would be happy to yield if the gentleman would tell me exactly what I just asked.

Reclaiming my time, because I asked you to specifically talk about the language in the bill. I have read it and read it and read it, and you have refused to respond to it, even though the chairman of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights told me that I was correct in my reading of the bill and that you folks were going to change it. You didn't change it. I expect that is because you forgot about it.

I would invite the gentleman from New York to respond to me, because he intellectually honestly told me just 2\1/2\ weeks ago that you folks were going to change it. Why haven't you done it?

Mr. Speaker, the silence I think speaks volumes. This is a bill that is not ready for prime time. It inadvertently protects Osama bin Laden with greater rights than an American citizen charged with a crime.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I ask the gentleman's words be taken down with respect to the use of the word ``deceit.''

Madam Speaker, let us suppose that I went out to buy a new car today, and I went to the dealer and I made a deal, saw exactly what I wanted, made an agreement on the price, and I called him up tomorrow and asked when it would be available, and I called him up the day after that, and I called him up the day after that, and after 140 days he finally said, you can come in and pick up your car. And when I went in to pick up the car he said, oh, by the way, we have this used car in the back that no one will buy, this clunker, this thing that won't work, and that's part of the deal. Now, you have to not only pay what it's worth, but you have to pay $9.7 thousand additional dollars for it.

Would you consider that fair? Would that be considered fair dealing? Would you really be concerned about the purchaser and what they're purchasing, or would it look like sharp practices? Would it look like kind of rope-a-dope? Would it look like a bait-and-switch?

What do we have here?

We have a bill that's been waiting for 140 days for us to vote on that we have almost unanimous agreement on, and what are they doing? They're tying a clunker to it.

Untie this, Madam Speaker, and allow us to get our business done.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this point of order that goes essentially to the question of unfunded mandates contained in this bill. It is very difficult to determine exactly what this bill is since it is nearly 300 pages and we received it last night.

Why is the question of unfunded mandates so important? Well, a great example would be exactly what is happening in my home State of California right now; the tremendous, tremendous pressure that my home State is under at the current time as a result of an unprecedented series of fires raging at the same time.

And that brings into question of those Members of Congress from my home State who are traveling today back home with the President of the United States in order to assess the damage, to show that the Federal Government is fully involved in concert with State and local governments. And we would ask that the consideration of this rule and this bill be postponed not only on this point of order but because of the circumstances that are occurring in our State at this time.

The majority leader said a little bit earlier that, well, things happen all the time and Members miss the opportunity to be here on the floor because they are back home, as if this is an everyday occurrence.

My home State has lost almost 1,500 residences, 1,500 destroyed. We have somewhere between half a million and a million people evacuated. That is not an everyday occurrence. That is an exceptional circumstance. And it just is beyond the sense of the cordial nature of the collegiality of this House that ought to prevail for us to be considering this.

Nearly 9,000 firefighters from all agencies on the fire lines of California over the last number of days. At least one confirmed death, 18 fires in seven counties, almost a half a million acres destroyed, 104 commercial structures destroyed.

The fact is that we ought to come together and work together on issues as important as responding to the natural disaster that is occurring in California just as we should be coming together, working together to try to solve the problem of the unmet needs of poor children and their health in this country.

Mr. Speaker, we have not been invited to the table to be able to present this. This point of order ought to be sustained technically on the question of unfunded mandates but really, philosophically on the fact that this is not the time for consideration of this particular rule or this bill.

Madam Speaker, as we listen to the comments of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, it is obvious that what they intend to do is to make this ``SCHIP Week'' and ``SCHIP Month.'' You kind of wonder why they are doing this.

Reflect back on last week when we had a most important vote scheduled for this floor that somehow was removed. It was called the FISA vote. It is the question of how we enable ourselves to protect us and our children and our grandchildren against the attacks of those who are terrorists around the world. We do it in many ways, but absolutely essential is intelligence.

Madam Speaker, the FISA bill, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, would have been destroyed by the bill placed on the floor last week by the majority, the so-called RESTORE Act. It actually gave greater protection to Osama bin Laden in a telephone conversation than an American citizen in the United States accused of a crime.

RESTORE: What does it mean? Repeal Effective Surveillance Techniques Opposing Real Enemies. Go out to NSA and see what they are doing. Understand what we need to do in this country and then bring a bill back to this floor that restores the ability of the United States to find out about our enemies before they attack.

Madam Speaker, according to the FBI testimony before our House Committee on Homeland Security: ``The European and American experience shows that prisons are venues where extremists have radicalized and recruited among the inmate population.''

Now, this is not just a theoretical concern. We all remember the case of Richard Reid, apprehended while attempting to detonate a bomb on a U.S.-bound commercial flight in December 2001. Well, that same Mr. Reid is believed to have been radicalized by an imam while incarcerated in Britain.

In 2005 we learned of the California prison-based case of the ``Assembly of Authentic Islam.'' These individuals were involved in almost a dozen armed gas station robberies in the Los Angeles area, with the goal of financing terrorist operations. They were indicted by a Federal grand jury for conspiracy to levy war against the U.S. Government through terrorism.

And in April of this year, in a hearing that we held out in Torrance, California, Sergeant Larry Mead of the Gang Intelligence Unit, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, testified that ``analysis shows that radicalization and recruitment in U.S. prisons is still an ongoing concern.''

Similarly, in a recent report, the NYPD noted that prisons are ``an excellent breeding ground for radicalization.''

The key to the success of stopping the spread of radicalization is identifying how radicalization begins and eliminating its breeding grounds. We know we have difficulties with this phenomenon in our prisons, but we don't know enough about it. We need to have collaboration between the Federal prison system authorities and the State prison system authorities and within the prison system authorities themselves. We need to bring together the best thinkers on this, the best people who have experience in dealing with this already at the ground level; and, in fact, this bill does that.

Radicalization is not that well understood, and through this bill we will take an in-depth look at how it occurs. The commission provided for in H.R. 1955 would give our government an in-depth, multidisciplinary look at radicalization. And why is that important? Because no one has the single answer on this.

Yes, we have the background of prisons as the general background to look at the radicalization in prisons, but how does it occur? Why does it occur? And why are we seeing a rise in this at this particular time when it is perhaps most dangerous to the American people?

Radical Islam and its advocates around the world are a threat to America, but we have to understand we might develop a threat within the United States, as evidenced already by certain actions that have occurred. And therefore I would suggest that we vote ``yes'' on H.R. 1955 so we can get the facts upon which we can plan for

prevention, not just taking care of the problem after it occurs.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, a vote on this legislation is long overdue. The need to regulate ammonium nitrate has been evident since the bombing of the Alfred Murrah building in 1995. This legislation is needed to protect Americans from those who seek to utilize this dangerous chemical in terrorist attacks. But as the chairman said, we must balance this threat to our Nation's security with the need for ammonium nitrate to remain accessible because it is a highly effective agricultural fertilizer and has other legitimate uses in industries like mining.

The legislation before us creates a system of regulation so that ammonium nitrate is available for legitimate use, but does not fall into terrorist hands; a system that keeps us safe, but does not burden farmers. I believe this legislation strikes that balance.

We originally took up this legislation in the 109th Congress and we approved it in the Committee on Homeland Security. But the 109th Congress ended before this legislation could be considered on the House floor, so I'm happy to see this legislation before us again in the 110th Congress. And I thank the chairman for bringing it to us at this time.

H.R. 1680 is a bipartisan bill. We worked with our colleagues across the aisle to strengthen the prevention of terrorism component of this bill by insisting on a registration requirement for those who purchase ammonium nitrate rather than just those who sell it.

We were happy to see the committee accept three Republican amendments to this bill. I introduced an amendment which requires the Department of Homeland Security to check the name of applicants for ammonium nitrate registration numbers against terrorist watch lists. This will prevent suspected terrorists from acquiring this deadly material and will alert law enforcement authorities of potential plots under way.

Other Republican amendments provide civil liability protection for the sellers of ammonium nitrate in the event they refuse to sell ammonium nitrate to suspect purchasers or make reports to law enforcement about suspect purchasers. No seller of ammonium nitrate should be afraid to deny sale of this dangerous material out of fear of legal action.

Ammonium nitrate is a legitimate chemical used to fertilize our crops; but its availability, accessibility, ease of bomb-making, cost, and history of prior use make it an obvious material for large explosives that could be employed in terrorist attacks.

We need only to look back in recent history to understand that ammonium nitrate can be the terrorist tool of choice: the al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; in November 2003 scores of individuals killed when terrorists detonated ammonium nitrate bombs in Istanbul; in March 2005 British anti-terror police seized a half ton of ammonium nitrate from suspects accused of being affiliated with Islamic terrorists; later that month, over 3,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate was stolen by armed terrorists in Thailand; the arrests last summer, June 2006, of 17 people in Canada on charges that they were planning on using ammonium nitrate to make an extremely powerful bomb.

Al Qaeda has an Internet hit on how to make ammonium nitrate bombs. An ABC News team last fall demonstrated

how easy it might be to acquire ammonium nitrate. With just $300, ABC interns managed to purchase 1,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate in 2 days in farm supply stores from North Carolina to the District of Columbia. No one questioned why they needed ammonium nitrate. No one asked for their identification. That ammonium nitrate was stored in a public storage facility just a few miles from where we stand today.

These events have demonstrated vulnerabilities that put us in the crosshairs of terrorist sights right where we live, work and travel. Here in the U.S., a few of our States, including California, have already begun to implement laws to secure the handling of ammonium nitrate. The chemical and farming industry developed important protections in their respective industries to keep this substance out of the hands of terrorists.

These are important efforts, but it creates a patchwork where all a terrorist has to do to build a ammonium nitrate bomb is to travel from New York to Pennsylvania to acquire it. Congress needs to step in to set a national policy. This legislation does just that. It sets a floor across the Nation so that ammonium nitrate is used as intended, that is, to grow our Nation's crops, not to create the next Oklahoma City bombing. We believe fair and proportionate regulations will allow ammonium nitrate to continue to be available to legitimate users who are not a security concern while at the same time preventing and deterring its acquisition by those who wish to do us harm.

By supporting H.R. 1680, we will take another step in upholding our responsibility to protect the lives and livelihood of our American citizenry.

And with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent), a member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Mr. Speaker, let me just use the balance of my time to say that I thank the chairman for the work he has done on bringing this to the floor at this time so we can complete action with the Senate and get it to the President's desk to be signed. I would also like to mention the ranking member of the full committee (Mr. King) who could not be here because he is still returning from the funeral for his mother who passed away this past week. Mr. King has done tremendous work on this, particularly the amendment for liability protection for the sellers of ammonium nitrate if they act in good faith to protect the American people. Mr. King has done yeoman work in this regard to this and other bills. I hope that we would recognize that at this time.

Again, Mr. Speaker, this is an example of a bipartisan approach to an issue that affects all Americans, Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever. It

is of the utmost importance. And once again, I thank all the members, Democrat and Republican, who worked on this, and I thank my chairman for bringing this to the floor and allowing us to vote on this time. I would ask for Members to have full support for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, there is no other issue more central to the core responsibility of government than the duty to protect the safety and security of the American people. The right not to be killed is foundational to all other rights. The actions we take with respect to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, better known as FISA, will reflect the level of seriousness with which we have assumed this fundamental obligation.

While I take a backseat to no one when it comes to the protection of civil liberties, it is essential to understand the proper context of the issue by us.

Mr. Speaker, the focus of the debate here relates to overseas intelligence, the implications for the privacy rights of Americans, talked about so loudly on the floor last week by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the implications for privacy rights of Americans where surveillance targets of non-U.S. persons overseas is minimal to nonexistent.

This debate over FISA must not be morphed into an ideological crusade by those who have such a visceral dislike for President Bush that any perceived defeat for this administration is in some perverse way chalked up as a victory. The debate is not about President Bush; it is about protecting the lives of those who have sent us here to represent them.

And it is serious business. In my estimation, this is perhaps the most important issue that we will face here in the 110th Congress.

It has been my privilege to serve on both the Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees. It is my belief that we have made progress in protecting the homeland since 9/11. Under the leadership of both parties on the Homeland Security Committee, there have been disagreements about the particulars, but there has always been a bipartisan commitment to moving the ball forward to make our Nation safer.

To be brutally honest, we cannot rely on the prospect of getting it right every time someone might seek to come here to kill innocent Americans. The idea of having to construct a perfect defense in and of itself is not conceivable. However, this is where the role of intelligence comes into primary focus.

Developing a homeland security strategy must not be considered in isolation. Intelligence collection overseas is the crucial element in any strategy to secure the homeland. Otherwise, we fall prey to what I refer to as the Maginot syndrome. You remember the Maginot line. That is where the French learned a terrible lesson concerning the folly of relying on the idea that they could protect themselves with a focus on massive defense perimeter. Much more is required and, again, intelligence collection targeting non-U.S. persons can extend our homeland defense perimeter overseas.

Brian Jenkins of the RAND Corporation, a noted expert on terrorism, has stressed that our intelligence capability is a key element in our effort to protect our homeland. As he says, in the terror attacks since 9/11 we've seen combinations of local conspiracies inspired by, assisted by, and guided by al Qaeda's central leadership. It is essential that while protecting the basic rights of American citizens we find ways to facilitate the collection and exchange of intelligence across national and bureaucratic borders.

So how do we make sense out of what is taking place in this House with respect to our consideration of FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Foreign intelligence surveillance, I'd like to underscore.

The manner in which we address this crucial national security question is a clear measure of our level of seriousness about the threat posed to our Nation from another terrorist attack. The bottom line question to be asked is whether or not we are safer as a result of the action taken by this House concerning the collection of overseas intelligence.

As in the game of football, you're either advancing the ball or you are losing yardage. Does our action make America safer or does it impose obstacles in the path of the intelligence community which make their job more difficult? In making this determination, I would suggest that the line of scrimmage should be drawn with the Protect America Act. That is the act we passed in early August, on a bipartisan basis, responding to the request of Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence.

We should understand that that act represented a compromise reflecting what Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, identified as absolutely necessary, absolutely necessary to the task of protecting the

American people. Based upon his service to our Nation, I would suggest we should take his considered opinion with the seriousness that it deserves. As a career naval officer, former head of the National Security Agency under President Clinton for 4 years, and the current Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell has had a distinguished career in his service to our Nation.

Admiral McConnell and General Hayden came to the Congress with a larger package of needed changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last April. However, in order to close what Admiral McConnell described as gaps in our intelligence, that is, an inability for us to be able to actually find the dots that were out there, we had to act immediately. A compromise was, therefore, reached by this body this past August.

He defined the concept of ``gap'' to mean this: foreign intelligence information that we should have been collecting. In fact, Admiral McConnell indicated that prior to the enactment of our Protect America Act in August, we were not collecting somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of the foreign intelligence information which would have been collected were it not for the recent legal interpretations of FISA which required the government to obtain prior FISA warrants for overseas surveillance. In many cases, we couldn't obtain them. You have to have evidence to reach a standard that, frankly, at that stage you cannot reach.

Secondly, the volume of number of targets and the paperwork and, more than the paperwork, the intellectual work, the cost in time by taking analysts off the job of analyzing, to working up these requests for warrants, basically made it impossible for us to be able to go after these targets, which we'd always been able to go after in the context of FISA as it was passed in 1978.

What's the problem? The problem is that a definition of electronic surveillance constructed almost 28 years ago certainly has not kept pace with changes in technology. Ironically, when FISA was enacted, almost all international communications were wireless. Most local calls at that time were on a wire and fell within the definition of electronic surveillance requiring a warrant.

Today, it's just the reverse. Almost all international communications are transmitted by wire. Thus, international communications not intended to be covered by the warrant requirement in the 1978 act are now inadvertently covered because of the change in technology. This was never ever the intention in Congress.

Again, the act we passed in August closed the resulting national security gaps. However, less than 3 months later, here we are in the House of Representatives, the leadership of this House is now trying to reinvent the wheel. It will be one thing were we considering the other elements of a larger package which General Hayden and Admiral McConnell presented to us back in April, but that's not the case.

Rather, the leadership of this body is retreating from the provisions of the Protect America Act, which Admiral McConnell told us he needs in order to do his job. The so-called RESTORE Act undoes core provisions of this compromise that we were told was necessary to close the gaps in our intelligence.

That's why I call the RESTORE Act the Repeal Effective Surveillance Techniques Opposing Real Enemies Act, because that's what it does. It takes away the techniques that we allowed under the law that we passed last August in response to requests from Admiral McConnell based on his considered judgment that he was not able to do the job to protect the American people from the threat abroad.

Admiral McConnell affirmed that prior to the Protect America Act the intelligence community attempted to work under the law as interpreted by the court. Unfortunately, he found that as a result of working under those restrictions his agency was prohibited from successfully targeting foreign conversations, foreign conversations, that otherwise would have been targeted for possible terrorist activity.

Admiral McConnell has made it clear that although there remains elements of the larger package which would further enhance our ability to conduct surveillance against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the Protect America Act, that act that we passed in August which is now the law, has provided us with the tools, as he said, to close gaps in our foreign intelligence collection.

Then why are we seeking to make these critical changes in the Protect America Act before the ink is barely dry? Well, one thing is certain: the immediate reviews by the leftist blogosphere were hardly positive. Although Admiral McConnell has worked for both President Clinton and for President Bush, much of the criticism of the act in the wake of its passage seemed to stem from these objections, now, listen to this, that the White House was trying to influence the outcome of the negotiations which took place prior to its enactment. Imagine that.

When Admiral McConnell appeared before our Judiciary Committee, he faced questions along the lines of what did the White House know and when did they know it. Now, think of this: the idea that the White House would seek to have input on issues relating to the national security of the United States is about as startling as the discovery that gambling, yes, gambling, was taking place in Joe's bar during the movie ``Casablanca.''

This should not be the issue. Again, it's not about George Bush, whether you dislike him, love him or are indifferent to him. The only valid question is how best we can protect the American public from al Qaeda and others who seek to kill us.

Surveillance of foreign persons outside the United States is a central part of that effort, and the bill they presented on the floor last week, the so-called RESTORE Act, changed what we had done in August to make it difficult, in some cases impossible, to gain that information. Even if it is Osama bin Laden on the line calling into the United States, under the terms of the bill that was presented on the floor, we couldn't use information gathered from that conversation against Osama bin Laden unless we went to a court for a court order, unless the Attorney General could specifically show that information was leading to the death of a particular individual.

Now, I've said this on the floor before and I will say it again: that's just plain nuts. There's no other way to explain it. There is absolutely no other way to explain it; and perhaps with an ability to explain this kind of thinking on the floor, I would yield to the gentlelady from Tennessee to enlighten us as to her observations as to what is taking place on the floor on this important issue.

I thank the gentlelady for her comments. She mentioned a particular instance in which we brought lawyers into a situation that if you looked at it from the outside doesn't make much sense; you stop battlefield operations in order for lawyers to determine whether or not we can listen in on conversation between non-U.S. persons outside the United States.

When you look at the other side of the aisle's response to this problem, you see what they have done is they have elevated the judiciary to the primary role in these decisions. That is, in my judgment, a complete misunderstanding of the proper role of the courts.

Look, since Marbury v. Madison, the eminent case basically saying that the Supreme Court gets the last say on constitutional issues, there has been a misunderstanding by some that that means that the Supreme Court, the judicial branch, is somehow superior to the other two branches of government.

That is not the case in the area of war-making capacity or carrying out a war. If you look at the Constitution, you will see very, very clearly that the Constitution specifies specific powers in article I to Congress and in the executive branch in article II, and the United States Supreme Court has already told us that there are some matters, believe it or not they have said, better suited for disposition by the elected branches of government.

The War Powers Act, or, excuse me, the war power, the right to declare war, given to the Congress; powers of the purse, given to the Congress. The President possesses authority relating to his constitutional status as Commander-in-Chief as well as all executive authority.

So these are very, very distinct. What we have seen on the other side of the aisle is an elevation to the altar of judicial determination in these cases. This is not just the only thing. The leaders on the other side want to take now and give habeas corpus rights to those people we have at Guantanamo, those people we have taken off the battlefield.

That's a very basic thing we are dealing with, foreign intelligence.

Right.

Yes, absolutely.

Correct.

The law, prior to our change in August, did not permit us to, at least as determined by the FISA Court last year.

If I could just respond to that, let's remember, we are not talking about domestic terrorists. We are not talking about domestic criminals. We are not talking about American citizens. We are talking about non-Americans not in the United States. That's what we are talking about, and the American people need to understand that.

Let me also explain one bill. If

you look at the bill that the Democratic majority brought to the floor, they say, we take care of this problem. They say, if it's foreign to foreign, you don't need a warrant.

Here is the problem that Admiral McConnell explained to us. When you put a tap, or you somehow capture the communications, you only know the front end of the communications; that is, Osama bin Laden is calling somewhere and communicating in some way. You don't know where in the world he is going to end up on the other side of the communication. If, in fact, you have to say ahead of time, we can guarantee that none of those conversations will ever reach into the United States or to an American anywhere, you couldn't get a prior warrant, because you can't guarantee that.

What you need to do is to do it the way Admiral McConnell suggested and the way we put it in the law before. If it's a target that is a foreigner in a foreign country, for foreign intelligence purposes, as defined under the law, if that's the case, you don't need a warrant.

If, as you collect the communications in some way, you find that inadvertently a communication went into the United States or is with an American citizen, you do what we call, under the law, minimization, which means, if it has nothing to do with that individual on the other end that implicates that individual in any way, you don't use it. But you do use it against Osama bin Laden.

What they put in the bill was, very specifically, if we inadvertently capture a communication that involves an American on the other side, guess what we have to do? We cannot use it. We cannot disclose it. We cannot use it for any purpose, and we cannot keep it for more than 7 hours unless we go to a court and get another court order for a warrant.

Let's understand what we are talking about. I presume Osama bin Laden is sharp enough to realize that maybe he ought to have more than one phone line. You know what we have with bad guys in the United States, they use cell phone after cell phone after cell phone. They use it for maybe a day. They throw it away. They use another one.

Don't you think the bad guys trying to kill us are as smart as that? We have to be able to be sharp enough to find this stuff and turn on this information in a timely fashion to save us. We have to have the agility to do that. What has happened with the law we passed in August, according to the NSA, and I was out there yesterday, and according to Admiral McConnell, we are now able to do those things.

We now have the agility to do those things. If we were to adopt the bill that was on the floor last week, we couldn't do it. The American people have to understand, no matter what they say about it, the expert on it tells it, we would not be able to do it.

That is the absolute testimony of the experts who actually do it.

Against terrorist targets internationally, absolutely. In the process, we will grant more protection under the law to Osama bin Laden than we do to an American citizen accused of a crime in the United States. That is the utter insult in the whole process.

I don't think anybody could call that common sense. Only on the floor of the House of Representatives would one dare to call that common sense. I am not one person who dares, nor are my two colleagues here.

Unless that cell had already been identified by us, we knew who they were, we had already gotten legal permission to do that, we wouldn't be able to do that.

Absolutely. Let me tell you what happens in a criminal case. Let's say we have a legitimate wiretap on a member of the Mafia, and that person makes calls. We don't know who he is going to call. He calls his mother. He calls his barber. He calls the guy who delivers pizza.

Because he talks to that other person who was not the target, the legal target, doesn't mean that we cannot use that information against the legal target. We can't use it against that person if that person is someone we then find is a person of interest, and we would become a target. Then we have to go get a warrant against that person. That's all that we are saying we ought to do with the law and, in fact, that is what you would do with the law that you passed.

As a result, we have really put handcuffs in our ability to deal with terrorism far much more than people would argue that we would do in terms of law enforcement.

Let me just reclaim my time for a moment. And remembering last week when we had this bill on the floor and we went before the Rules Committee to ask for an opportunity for amendment and debate on our important issues and we were denied that by a gag rule, I would like to yield to the gentleman for purposes of a short debate, because I think this is what we should engage in and why I was so disappointed last week on the rule.

Well, if I could take back my time, if the gentleman would specifically say where we misstated, I would love to respond to that. But the gentleman can get his own time to talk about other things.

I will reclaim my time. The fact of the matter is that is true. I hope to get the language here in a moment. In the manager's amendment, in the second major paragraph of the amendment, it specifically refers to inadvertent capture of a conversation involving an American on one end. And in those cases it specifically said, if that is the case, you may not use it for any purpose, you may not disclose it, and you may not keep it for more than 7 days, unless you get a specific warrant with respect to that, or the Attorney General makes a specific finding that the information itself relates to the death of an American.

Now, the fact of the matter is that was picked up from language that's currently in FISA that has nothing to do with this, that has to do with inadvertent communications gained in another context. So I don't know whether it was inadvertent, it was bad draftsmanship, or it was intentional. But the fact of the matter is, on its face, that is exactly what it does, and that's why I can stand here and say, without fear of contradiction, that it gives greater protection to Osama bin Laden in that instance than we give to an American charged with a crime in the United States.

Again, I don't know what the purpose was in drafting it that way. That's one of the problems when you bring a bill to the floor and you have a closed rule that doesn't even allow us to question the language, to attempt to deal with it. And the gentleman can say it doesn't say that. I would suggest the gentleman go back and look at the specific language, because I was astounded when I first read it. I first looked at it and said, this can't possibly be the way. I presented it to the Rules Committee. Not a single person on the Rules Committee or a member of your side of the aisle on the Judiciary Committee or the Intelligence Committee contradicted what I had to say. No one pointed to where that was wrong. That happens to be in the bill. Now, if you want to change it, we ought to change it. But the fact of the matter is that's where it is.

Let me just reclaim my time to specifically quote Admiral McConnell on this point. He said in testimony before the Judiciary Committee: ``When you are conducting surveillance in the context of electronic surveillance, you can only target one end of the conversation. So you have no control over who that number might call or who they might receive a call from.'' He then said specifically: ``I'm talking about foreign-to-foreign and whether that takes care of the problem.''

These are his words. If you have to pre-determine that it's foreign- to-foreign before you do it, it is impossible. That's the point. You can only target one. If you're going to target, you have to program some equipment to say, I'm going to look at number 1, 2, 3, so targeting, in this sense, if you are targeting a phone number that is foreign. So that's the target. The point is that you have no control over who that target might call or who might call that target.

I'll be happy to yield in one second. I found that I did have the specific language to which I referred a moment ago. This is the proposed language in the bill: ``If electronic surveillance concerning foreign-to-foreign communications inadvertently collects a communication in which at least one party to the communication is located inside the United States or is a United States person, the contents of such communication shall be handled in accordance with minimization procedures adopted by the Attorney General.'' If that's all it said, that would be fine. But then it says: ``That require that no contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 7 days, unless a court order is obtained or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily injury.''

Reading that, as it is written, if Osama bin Laden, in a conversation, communication or whatever to someone who happens to be a U.S. person or is in the United States that is not then a target, under the regime that we have, doesn't implicate that individual whatsoever, but in the course of the conversation, reveals where he is, where he's going to be, we cannot act on that information under this specific language unless the Attorney General determines the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily injury. Telling where he is doesn't indicate a threat of death to anybody or serious bodily injury to anybody.

That's the language that your side has presented on the floor as a fait accompli. We could not amend it. We couldn't even discuss amending it on the floor because we had a gag rule.

And the gentleman is a distinguished attorney. He knows how to use words very, very well. You can't change the words that are on the printed page.

Let me yield to my friend from Missouri before I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Motion to recommit, yes.

Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or other terrorist groups and prevent attacks on the United States or Americans. That was the language. And I might say to the gentleman, it was never offered, we never got to that point. But rather than have a gag rule or follow the leadership we got from the Democratic side, of a gag rule, we also showed it to the other side way ahead of time. And the reaction was what? To pull the bill, or at least to stop in mid- debate on the bill, and we will bring it back.

Well, let me yield to the gentleman from New York. Perhaps the gentleman from New York can tell us when the bill is coming back to the floor.

I'd be happy to yield to the gentleman.

If I might take my time on that point. Promptly means it goes back to committee. It doesn't say it can't come back for 2 weeks. It goes back to committee.

Now, we have some rules here that require a few days. We also have something called waiver of rules that has happened virtually on every rule that we've had here, presenting a bill to the floor. And let me ask the gentleman, if, in fact, your concern was it would be a delay of a week or two, what are we doing now?

I would yield to the gentleman.

So it's the gentleman's statement that you're willing to accept the motion to recommit, and your side is the leadership.

Well, that's good to hear. Then we will expect to see that language in the bill when it returns.

I'm sure glad we're not delaying now. But go ahead.

The Senate was going to pass a bill. Not that bill.

I'll take back my time. That's precisely the problem. You have to get a warrant before you can take action. And if, in that conversation, something that Osama bin Laden said does not implicate the American whatsoever, does not indicate a threat of death or serious bodily injury to anybody else, but reveals where he is, you are prohibited from dealing with that.

The gentleman from New York, I appreciate it. But you know, the great political philosopher, Don Meredith, once said: ``If if and buts were candy and nuts, everyday would be Christmas.'' Now you may wish it. You may hope it. You may think it. These are the words that your side presented to us as a fait accompli. That's what it says. You can't get around it. And the gentleman, as a distinguished attorney, knows that when you go into court you've got to look at the words. We're not going to put people at risk in the CIA, in the FBI and the NSA, in all of those other agencies in the Department of Justice based on the fact that we ought to read these, as I think the gentleman said once before in debate, in a commonsense way.

There is no commonsense exception to this provision in the law.

I would be happy to yield to the gentlewoman from New Mexico.

Reclaiming my time, not only could we not disseminate, but this is the language: ``or used for any purpose.'' That's pretty broad, I would say.

I would be happy to yield after I make this one statement in reference to what the gentlewoman just said.

Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals put it this way: ``The aim of national security intelligence is to thwart attacks by enemy nations or terrorist groups rather than to punish the perpetrators after an attack has occurred. The threat of punishment is not a reliable deterrent to such attacks, especially when the attackers are fanatics who place a low value on their own lives and when the potential destructiveness of attacks is so great that even a single failure of deterrence can have catastrophic consequences. That is why,'' the judge says, ``when the government is fighting terrorism rather than ordinary crime, the emphasis shifts from punishment to prevention.''

The judge has put it fairly well in almost understandable terms, as the gentleman from Missouri would say.

And I yield to the gentleman from Missouri, who would not like to be described as an attorney.

That is true. And I would say it is similar to going to the doctor and the doctor's telling you that you need an operation to repair a faulty valve in your heart, and before you make the decision, you have to go to a judge to get permission to follow the doctor's order. I don't think that's what I would want to do.

I would be happy to yield.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say, because we keep hearing that we are not concerned about civil liberties and so forth and that courts ought to look at this rather than making decisions by the President of United States, many people fondly remember Justice ``Whizzer'' White on the United States Supreme Court, an appointee of President John F. Kennedy. And in the seminal case in the Supreme Court dealing with the question of privacy and wiretapping called Katz versus U.S., he said this: ``We should not require the warrant procedure and a magistrate's judgment if the President of the United States or his chief legal officer, the Attorney General, has considered the requirements of national security and authorized electronic surveillance as reasonable.'' Because the fourth amendment talks about protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and we never hear on this floor that qualification. It is reasonable.

So how do we protect American citizens in this? The process of minimization that we talked about that is followed by everybody in the NSA. And I would just show this to the gentleman. This chart shows the procedures already put into place at the NSA, National Security Agency, to implement the Protect America Act and ensure that Americans' civil liberties are protected by minimization.

Look at this: Internal oversight, they have training built on the foundation of compliance training. They have an annual requirement to read the legal compliance and minimization documents. They have advanced training and a competency test. Everybody out there has to take the test and pass or they can't be involved in the program. They have new training in the authority and the competency test. They understand the legislative changes, the documentation and the termination. They have spot checks and audits to assess compliance. They have somebody else come out within their organization and check up on individuals. And then they have an assessment of management controls.

In other words, they have multiple reviews on a regular basis of what's going on there. And in addition, what they have done is they are subjected to oversight by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice every 14 days, every 30 days, and every 60 days. And then on top of that, they have the Congress that can look at things.

That, the American people should understand, is the seriousness with which the agency is undertaking their responsibility to protect Americans from terrorists overseas and to make sure there is no inadvertent violation of the civil liberties of Americans.

Yes, I would be happy to yield.

That is correct.

I appreciate the gentleman's sentiments. And I would just say I don't think there is anybody in this Chamber that depreciates the experiences of 9/11 nor the threat that currently faces this country. That does not excuse anybody in this Chamber or us collectively for making either ill-informed decisions or just wrongheaded decisions. And when we have the expert experience and judgment of people like Admiral McConnell, who told us of the threat that we are currently facing and his inability to do the job that he has sworn an oath to do, and when we responded in a way which he said works, it is totally beyond belief that we would want to change that now.

And the other thing is, is there anybody in this Chamber that believes the threat is only until February or is only for 2 years, as was in the bill that was presented to us? This is a long-term threat which necessitates a long-term commitment on the part of the American people, on the part of the Congress, on the part of the entire Federal Government. And we have an obligation to make sure that that takes place. Otherwise, the American people have every right to say to us you have not done the job.

So I would hope that when we have this bill on the floor we have an opportunity to make it permanent so that we can tell our adversaries we will throw everything at you, not to convict you after a perpetration of an attack on us but to prevent it in the first place. The American people don't want prosecution. They want prevention first and foremost.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his words.

And let me just finish on these words. Justice Robert Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court once said, ``The Constitution is not a suicide pact.''

Mr. Speaker, I found the comments of my friend from Maryland very interesting. I would just remind the Speaker and all who have looked on the vote today about the veto of SCHIP that when we passed the continuing resolution, we passed a continuation of SCHIP. So no children should be affected adversely during these weeks as we work to reach the compromise that the President has said he is working for.

Mr. Speaker, I thought this should be called the ``FISA Week,'' Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act Week. But now because of the actions of the majority, we were not able to vote on that

particular bill as it was presented to us earlier this week. We already knew we would be prohibited from offering any amendments, as the Rules Committee granted a closed rule.

So let us call this the ``FISA Month,'' since we now know there is consideration for bringing the FISA bill back next week and the importance of FISA, foreign intelligence surveillance, cannot be overestimated.

Yesterday, the Speaker of the House took the floor in the debate on the rule and, in a diplomatic or parliamentary tour de force, managed to contradict the United States Constitution, every decision made by the United States Supreme Court on this issue, and the decisions made by the appellate court of FISA, the FISA Courts. And that was when she suggested that the Constitution does not grant any inherent authority to the President to involve himself or direct, that is, foreign intelligence. As a matter of fact, every Supreme Court decision since the beginning of the Republic has recognized that. With respect to exclusivity of the law, every Supreme Court decision has recognized that such a law cannot be exclusive, as does the FISA Court, the appellate court under the FISA structure itself.

Interestingly, however, when we do look at FISA, the bill that was brought forward to us as a result of a manager's amendment's being incorporated into the bill presented to us, it contains this language: This deals with the situation in which we have, everyone agrees, a constitutionally permitted wiretap or otherwise means of collecting communications between Osama bin Laden, a terrorist target in a foreign country, a foreigner in a foreign country. We have every right to gather that information under the law. There's no disagreement. But here is what happens under the bill presented to us:

If the electronic surveillance referred to in that paragraph dealing with what we presume to be foreign-to-foreign communications inadvertently collects a communication in which at least one party to the communication is located inside the United States or is a United States person, the contents of such communication shall be handled in accordance with minimization procedures adopted by the Attorney General, and, now, this is the important language, ``that require that no contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 7 days unless a court order'' is given, ``or,'' further it says, ``unless the Attorney General,'' and this requires him specifically, ``determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.''

Now, why is this unfortunate? It is unfortunate because it changes the way we handle minimization in the criminal justice context. If we have a legal wiretap on a mafioso member and he happens to call his sainted mother or a priest or someone else, and that, therefore, is someone who was not under the wiretap, you don't have to go back to a court to get another court order in order to use whatever he said, that is, the mafioso member, against his interest. And here we would say that if in this conversation Osama bin Laden said something that didn't implicate the American but did give us information as to where Osama bin Laden was located or where Osama bin Laden was going to move, we would be prohibited from using that information, disclosing that information, disseminating that information, or keeping it for more than 7 days unless we went to a court for a new court order.

That is nonsense. That gives Osama bin Laden more protection than an American citizen in the United States who is being investigated for a criminal offense. That is nuts. Not only is it nuts, it is dangerous to the American people because it creates a situation in which we would be blinded about information which would give us an ability, first of all, to find out what the dots are and then to connect the dots as to what the threat is against the United States. There is no rationalization for it, but it is part and parcel of what we have heard from the other side that we need to give now habeas corpus rights to those people we found on the battlefield around the world who are unlawful enemy combatants. It is part and parcel of a program that puts us at risk.

I would ask us to consider it seriously next week.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the recognition.

And I would say that this week ought to be known as ``FISA week.'' The reason I say that is because this week we will make an important vote on determining whether or not we will have the ability to defend our country, both now and in the future.

As we have moved on a bipartisan basis since 9/11 to attempt to meet the challenge of the threat internationally that is sometimes called the ``war on terror,'' sometimes called the ``war of Islamo-fascism,'' sometimes called the ``war on radical jihad,'' no matter what the name, the American people know what it is we are speaking of. We have, in this House, in the Senate and in the executive branch adopted an analysis which allows us to respond in the most effective way, and that analysis is a risk-based analysis. And simply put, broken down into its constituent parts, risk equals threat plus vulnerability plus consequence.

The interesting thing in this equation is that the knowledge base of the bottom two elements, vulnerability and consequence, are within our grasp. Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is vulnerability is our ability to assess how vulnerable our assets are that might be attacked by the enemy surrounding us. We can make educated judgments with respect to those assets, their value, how they could be attacked or destroyed, and how we can protect them against such attack or attempt of destruction.

Similarly, consequence is within our knowledge base. We know, with a successful attack, what the consequence would be. For instance, if the attack were lodged against a dam, a catastrophic event, a collapse of a dam as a result of an attack, we can measure what the consequences would be. How? Well, we know the number of people that would be in the way. We know the number of buildings that would be in the way. We can make a determination as to the overall destructive power of the surging water that would come through a destroyed dam. We can make an educated judgment as to the time by which those assets that would be destroyed, the time it would take to restore such assets, such as highways, byways, such as shopping malls, homes, hospitals, all of those sorts of things. So, within our risk assessment, we are capable, more or less, of determining what our vulnerability is and what the consequences of a successful attack would be.

There is a third element, threat, which is not as much in control of our already existing knowledge. Why? Because threat essentially is the intention of the enemy, the targets of the enemy, the timing of the enemy. That's what, in fact, a threat is. So, since that knowledge base is not within our power, essentially, how do we deal with that? How do we calculate what the threat is? We do so by utilizing intelligence. We gather intelligence. We find information from the other side, if you will, of the battle.

This is not a novel approach. It is recognized in the Constitution and the interpretations of the Constitution by the Supreme Court and other Federal courts from the beginning of this Republic in that it is recognized that the President of the United States was given Commander- in-Chief powers. Why? Because of the failure of the Continental Congress, because of the failure of the first Confederation of States when they found that you could not have multiple commanders in chief. You had to have a single executive, particularly in the area of war, defense of our country, or relationships with foreign governments.

Now, implicit in the ability or the capability of a Commander-in- Chief to exercise military strength on behalf of the Nation to defend itself, that is, to destroy those who would attempt to destroy us, yes, to give the President of the United States the power to exercise lethal action against the enemy, and that means, quite frankly, to wound or kill the enemy, to stop the enemy from destroying us, implicit in that authority is the authority to gather intelligence, the authority to gather foreign intelligence. In other words, one of the ways you find out what the enemy is to do on the battlefield is to find out what he is saying, the conversations that take place on the other side, the plans that they are developing, and the commands that they give to carry out their intended lethal action. That, essentially, is foreign intelligence.

And what we are going to vote on this week is something called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA. Now, the reason I bring this to the floor and I spell out these words is to remember what the focus of this bill is. It is on foreign intelligence, not domestic intelligence, not the ability to try and stop the mob from acting in the United States, not the ability to stop certain criminals in the United States from committing a crime or to investigate after they've committed the crime in order to prove up the case against them and to give them their just punishment, but rather, foreign intelligence, intelligence which deals with foreign governments, foreign powers, and associated organizations or people.

The FISA Act was passed by the Congress in 1978, intended to establish a statutory procedure authorizing the use of electronic surveillance in the United States against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers. FISA established two new courts. First, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes such electronic surveillance, and secondly, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which has jurisdiction

to review any denial of an order under FISA. These courts are made up of Federal judges from around the country, and they meet in secret session here in Washington, D.C.

I would note that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report that accompanied FISA in 1978 clearly expressed Congress' intent to exclude from coverage overseas intelligence activities. In other words, they never intended for the FISA court and procedure to somehow have authority over what is truly overseas intelligence activities dealing with foreign intelligence or intelligence of foreign governments or foreign organizations.

The report stated this: ``The Committee has explored the feasibility of broadening this legislation to apply overseas, but has concluded that certain problems and unique characteristics involved in overseas surveillance preclude the simple extension of this bill to overseas intelligence.'' In other words, it was not the focus of the 1978 act, rather, the act focused on domestic surveillance of persons located within the United States. The law was crafted specifically to exclude surveillance operations against targets outside the U.S., including those circumstances where the targets were in communication with Americans, as long as the U.S. side of the communication was not the real target. That's a very important thing to understand.

In the ability to be able to record these messages or in some way pick up these communications, you really have the ability to target one side of the communication. And so what we do is we target a foreign person in a foreign country.

Contrary to what Congress originally intended, due to the changes in technology and resulting interpretation of the FISA Act, warrants have been recently required in order to conduct surveillance against terrorists located overseas in some circumstances. Why? The technology changed in that, in 1978, most local communication was by wire, most international communication was wireless by satellite. We could take it basically out of the air, for want of a better description, and it was overseas. The 1978 act did not contemplate bringing those conversations, those communications within the ambit of FISA.

In the intervening years, we've had a revolution in technology by which most local communication now is by wireless and international communication basically comes by wire. And the fact of the matter is the nodes or the centers or the switching places, whatever you want to call it, not technical terms, happen to be, most of them, in the United States. And so suddenly the interpretation of FISA, now looking at the connection where you would try and somehow be able to capture this conversation that really was of someone overseas and not American, now, because it transited somehow the U.S., an interpretation by the FISA court was that a warrant was now needed.

Now, why would this present a problem for our intelligence community? Admiral McConnell, the former head of the National Security Agency, NSA, under President Clinton and now the current Director of National Intelligence, explained this to our Judiciary Committee. It takes about 200 man-hours to prepare a request for a court order in the FISA court for just one telephone number; 200 man-hours. As he explained to the judiciary in the other body, intelligence community agencies were required to make a showing of probable cause in order to target for surveillance the communications of a foreign intelligence target located overseas; then, they need to explain the probable cause finding in documentation and obtain approval of the FISA court to collect against a foreign terrorist located in a foreign country.

Frequently, although not always, that person's communications were with another foreign person located overseas. In such cases, prior to the Protect America Act, that's the act that we passed before we left in August, which I might add is not going to be allowed to be considered on the floor, at least the Rules Committee told us earlier today they would allow no amendments, the FISA's requirement to obtain a court order based on a showing of probable cause slowed, and in some cases, prevented altogether the government's ability to collect foreign intelligence information out serving any substantial privacy or civil liberties interests.

Again, as the legislative history of the 1978 FISA Act made clear, it was never the intention of the act to cover surveillance of non-U.S. persons overseas so long as the U.S. person located in the United States was not the real target of the surveillance. Yet prior to the enactment of the bill that we passed in August, which has a sunset in February of next year, that's the reason we have to consider it this week, our intelligence community was saddled with the requirement that they devote substantial resources for the preparation of applications required to be submitted to the FISA court.

As an economist might say, this substantial diversion of resources imposed opportunity costs measured in terms of the intelligence analysis which was not done because of the need to complete paperwork in order to surveil foreign intelligence assets outside the U.S. who were never intended to be covered by the old law. In other words, you had to take the analysts off the job of looking at current communications that might protect us against attacks in the United States or elsewhere by those who want to kill Americans, who have said, by the way, that they would be justified in killing 4 million Americans, 2 million of whom would be women and children. We take them off that pursuit and instead put them on this job of doing the intellectual work that would allow for the paperwork to be presented to the FISA Court.

Furthermore, in response to a question I posed to him, Admiral McConnell affirmed that prior to the Protect America Act, again, the act we passed just before we left in August, the intelligence community attempted to work under the laws interpreted by the court but found that as a result of working under those restrictions, his agency was prohibited from successfully targeting foreign conversations that otherwise would have been targeted for possible terrorist activity. Think of that: those kinds of conversations that we always were able to pick up before, before we ever had a FISA, after we had the 1978 FISA Act, we were not able to pick up anymore.

In fact, he said that prior to the enactment of the Protect America Act this past August, we were not collecting somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of the foreign intelligence information which would have been collected were it not for the recent legal interpretations of FISA requiring the government to obtain FISA warrants for overseas surveillance. To put it in graphic terms, we have put blinders on one of our two eyes as to the ability for us to look at those dots and connect those dots that the 9/11 Commission said we weren't finding and weren't connecting before 9/11.

The consequences of this for our Nation's security are very real. As Admiral McConnell explained to our committee: ``In the debate over the summer and since, I heard from individuals from both inside and outside the government assert that threats to our Nation do not justify this authority. Indeed, I have been accused of exaggerating the threats that face our Nation,'' said Admiral McConnell.

He continued: ``Allow me to attempt to dispel this notion. The threats that we face are real and they are indeed serious. In July of this year, we released a National Intelligence Estimate, commonly referred to as an NIE, on the terrorist threat to the homeland. In short, these assessments conclude the following: the United States will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next 3 years.'' Why 3 years? That is the total time of the NIE. They are not saying it will only just be 3 years, but in the time frame that they were supposed to assess, this threat will continue.

They say that the main threat comes from Islamic terrorist groups and cells, especially al Qaeda. Al Qaeda continues to coordinate with regional terrorist groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, across North Africa and other regions.

Al Qaeda will likely continue to focus on prominent political, economic, and infrastructure targets with a goal of producing mass casualties. Mass casualties. That means thousands, if not millions, of Americans if they were successful. Visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershock and fear among the

U.S. population. These terrorists are weapons proficient. They are innovative and they are persistent. Al Qaeda will continue to seek to acquire chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear material for attack; and they will use them given the opportunity. This is the threat we face today and one that our intelligence community is challenged to counter. So says Admiral McConnell.

This is the real issue, the 800-pound gorilla in the room, if you will, which remains the central question before us: How do we best protect America and the American people from another cataclysmic event? I do not believe it is good enough for us to say we are preparing to respond to an attack. I believe what we need to do is to prepare to prevent such an attack.

As I have suggested before, when you assess the risk which allows us a proper assessment to be able to determine how we best array our resources against such an attack, we need to have threat, plus vulnerability, plus consequence. And the only way you can assess threat is by having proper intelligence.

As the National Security Estimate makes clear, those who seek to kill us continue in their resolve to, once again, inflict mass casualties upon our Nation. The threat is still there. Although we have been successful in thwarting another attack since 9/11, there are no guarantees in this business. In fact, if you would look at the polls that I've seen most recently, you will find that something like 70 percent of the American people, in fact I believe it is 73 percent of the American people in the latest poll I saw, believe that we, that the U.S. Government, has been effective in forestalling a terrorist attack on our shores. However, 57 percent believe that we are less safe. So you put those two things together, you try and figure out what the American people are saying. I think what we are saying is they believe that many of the things that we have done in government with the support of the American people and the funding of the American people have been successful in forestalling a terrorist attack on American shores, but they know that al Qaeda and their affiliates and associates have not been deterred to the extent that they are still trying to do us harm.

So they see a continuing problem, and they expect us to see the continuing problem and bring us the efforts necessary to protect against a successful attack as seen from the other side.

Independent sources such as Brian Jenkins in the RAND Corporation have stressed that intelligence capability is a key element in our effort to protect our homeland. He states this: ``In the terror attacks since 9/11, we have seen combinations of local conspiracies inspired by, assisted by, and guided by al Qaeda's central leadership. It is essential that while protecting the basic rights of American citizens, we find ways to facilitate the collection and exchange of intelligence across national and bureaucratic borders.''

In this regard, Admiral McConnell came before us last August asking for changes in the 1978 FISA Act. When you think about it, a definition of ``electronic surveillance'' constructed almost 28 years ago certainly could not have kept pace with changes in technology. Ironically, as I said, when FISA was first enacted, almost all international communications were wireless. The cell phone did not even exist. Although the revolution in telecommunications technology has improved the quality of all of our lives, it has taken a quantum leap beyond the law.

When FISA was passed in 1978, almost all local calls were on a wire and almost all international calls were wireless. However, now the situation is upside down. International communications which would have been wireless 29 years ago are now transmitted by wire. While wireless radio and satellite communications were excluded from FISA's coverage in 1978, certain wire or fiber optic transmissions fell under the definition of electronic surveillance. Thus, changes in technology have brought communications within the scope of FISA which Congress never intended to cover in 1978.

Similarly, the rise of a global telecommunications network rendered irrelevant the premium placed on geographic location by the 1978 act. As Admiral McConnell explained to our committee, it is the Judiciary Committee, in the old days location was much easier. Today, with mobile communications, it is much more difficult.

So a target can move around. So the evolution of communications over time has made it much more difficult. So what we were attempting to do is get us back to 1978 so we could do our business and legitimately target foreign targets and keep track of threats and respect the privacy rights of Americans. Because a cell phone, he continued, for example, with a foreign number, GSM system, theoretically could come into the United States and you wouldn't appreciate it had changed. So you would have to now work that problem, and if you did then determine that it was in the United States and you had a legitimate foreign intelligence interest, at that point, you have to get a warrant.

It was with this backdrop that we enacted the Protect America Act this past August. According to Admiral McConnell, this act has provided us with the tools to close our gaps in our foreign intelligence collection. Think of that. That is what the 9/11 Commission asked us to do, close those gaps. He found those gaps that were at least as wide and even wider following the decision by the FISA Court earlier this year. He said, and says, that the bill we passed in August has closed those gaps.

He described five pillars in the important new law. First, it clarified the definition of electronic surveillance under FISA that it would not be interpreted to include surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S. Under the law, it is not required for our intelligence community to obtain a FISA warrant when the subject of the surveillance is a foreign intelligence target located outside the U.S. This important element of the law is entirely consistent with the legislative history of the 1978 act. As I previously mentioned, it was not intended to reach foreign intelligence outside the U.S.

The second pillar of the act we passed in August establishes a role for the FISA Court in determining that the procedures used by the intelligence community are reasonable in terms of their capacity to determine that surveillance target is outside the U.S. The third pillar of the act provides the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence with the authority to direct communications providers to provide information, facilities and assistance necessary to obtain other information when targeting foreign intelligence targets outside the U.S.

The corollary of this obligation to provide intelligence information is the fourth pillar which establishes liability protection for private parties who assist the intelligence community when complying with a lawful direction under the law.

Finally, the law continues the requirement that the intelligence community must obtain a court order to conduct electronic surveillance or a physical search when the targeted person is located in the U.S.

Admiral McConnell defined the concept of the gap to be closed to mean foreign intelligence information that we should have been collecting. I am sure that most Americans would agree with the admiral that in a world with weapons of mass destruction there is no room for gaps in our intelligence capacity. Let me repeat: this is the considered judgment of a career officer in the U.S. Navy who headed the National Security Agency under President Clinton for 4 years and who now serves as the Director of National Intelligence. It is his considered judgment that the changes we made in the law in August were necessary.

Although it was scheduled to sunset 180 days after enactment on February 5, the ink was hardly dry before the left-wing blogosphere was going bananas. Now, don't get my wrong. I defend the right of any American to scrutinize and seek a different course concerning our national security policy. However, based on Admiral McConnell's service to his country to Democrat and Republican administrations, I would suggest that those who seek substantive changes in what he has told us to be necessary should face a heavy burden of proof. In fact, in his appearance before the Judiciary Committee while reserving the right to see the fine print, he indicated he himself was open

to discussions concerning changes in the end.

I would also make the observation that it is time for all of us to agree that this is not about President Bush. Whether you hate him or love him or don't have any feelings about him at all, that is not the issue here. We are talking about the security of our Nation, the safety of our people, the men, women, children, grandchildren we encounter in our districts at Little League games, Girl Scout meetings, and our town halls. Those who send us here to represent them are depending on us to protect their lives and the lives of their children. This is the context within which we must consider this ultimate matter of our responsibility.

While the law we passed in August, the Protect America Act, represents a major step forward in protecting the American people, there remain elements of the larger package unveiled by Admiral McConnell and General Hayden which should receive our prompt attention.

First and foremost, it is imperative for this body to extend liability protection to companies who responded to the entreaties of their government since the 9/11 attacks. That is why I am so disappointed when I appeared before the Rules Committee earlier today and we were told, as we walked in, as anybody walked in with an amendment, We will listen to you, but we have already decided it is going to be a closed rule. One of the amendments offered would have given this liability protection. At a time when our country was in peril, these companies responded to the call for help. In an earlier era, maybe in a simpler time, this might have been described as patriotism. But now, instead of kudos, what do they get? They receive a summons and a complaint. They were met by costly litigation because of their willingness to respond to our country in a time of need.

When we brought the issue up in our Judiciary Committee, one of the members on the other side of the aisle said, Well, these companies have millions dollars' worth of lawyers so they can defend themselves. Boy, that is the way we ought to do things. We are going to fight the war on terror with summonses and warrants.

We are going to sue them out of existence. Oh, I'm sorry. We are not suing the terrorists; we are suing the companies who helped us respond to the terrorists. Figure that one out.

Mr. Speaker, I would go so far as to suggest that regardless of what you think of the war in Iraq, regardless of what you may think of the war on terror, this violates all notions of fundamental fairness. It sends the worst possible message, not only to companies, but to the American public itself, that those who would come to the aid of their country are fools, and it is those on such an ideological crusade seeking to protect this Nation through lawsuits that are somehow the true American heroes. Rosy the Riveter of World War II fame has been replaced by lawyers in three-piece suits.

Some of you may be old enough to remember the standard text used in our typing classes. We would practice over and over again. Boy, I recall this, typing out the following sentence: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Of course it would have been better stated that: Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.

This was an ethos which went unchallenged. Believe me, in typing classes it wasn't a Republican idea, it wasn't a Democratic idea, it was an American idea, so noncontroversial, that it was standard text: Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.

Mr. Speaker, we must not send a message to our companies and the American people that if you respond to your government when our fellow citizens are threatened by a cataclysmic attack that the very government which sought your help will not be there for you when the ideologues come after you with lawsuits.

Even if you hate this President so much you can't see him to succeed in anything, at least consider the possibility that there will be a war down the line that you may support. Furthermore, those who drive around with 1/20/09 bumper stickers need to consider the fact that maybe, possibly there could be a new occupant in the White House more to their liking. He or she is going to need all the help that he or she can get.

Mr. Speaker, the war on terror is not going to end with the term of the current President. The new administration is going to need to call on the help of all Americans, including companies like those whose only offense was to respond to the tragedy of 9/11. By what? Serving their government.

Consider the additional downside of using litigation as an ideological weapon. As anyone who picks up the daily newspaper knows, there is always a story concerning the latest lawsuits. The litigation system can produce leaks of the most sensitive information. It is not the dissemination of information to the public which is even our principal concern. Rather, potential leaks of sensitive information to terrorists will better equip them with the ability to maneuver in the plan which they are committed to doing, killing innocent Americans.

Unfortunately, H.R. 3773, to be considered on this floor, the so- called RESTORE Act that we passed out of Judiciary Committee last week and passed out of the Intelligence Committee, and which is scheduled for floor action as early as tomorrow, fails to address this issue. It does nothing, zero, provides no protection for the companies who came to the aid of our Nation after 9/11. As a matter of fact, if you listen to what happened in the Rules Committee, if you heard the debate in the Judiciary Committee, I presume if you heard the debate in the Intelligence Committee, you would not consider these companies to be something valuable in the defense of our Nation. They are suspect. They are questioned. They are, in essence, patsies, if you really look at this.

Mr. Speaker, the Protect America Act does not contain retroactive liability protection; not because we didn't believe in it, but because Admiral McConnell agreed to delay discussion on the agreement in order to reach an agreement on the law we passed in August to enable us to close the critical gaps in our Nation's intelligence-gathering ability prior to the August break. Since by its own terms that law was to expire February 5, this was an issue to be resolved at this time.

Unfortunately, the RESTORE Act resolves it by ignoring it. It is, therefore, essential for this body to take the necessary action to ensure that those who responded to the call for help after 9/11 will not be fed to the litigators.

Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to yield to my friend from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson), a member of the Intelligence Committee, a former member of our military forces, and someone who has been probably the most articulate in explaining the need for the changes in the law that we passed in August and for making that permanent as we go forward.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I have referred to that section, that first section where they say you don't need it if it is foreign-to-foreign as the ``furtive fig leaf'' section of the bill, which appears to give Admiral McConnell what he needs, but because of the actual practicality of it, denies him the opportunity to do it, because essentially that was sort of the state of the law prior to the time we passed the law in August, and he told us it doesn't work.

If the gentlewoman would allow me to reclaim my time for a moment, evidently some on the other side of the aisle have listened to a little bit of our complaint here, so in the manager's amendment they have included what they consider to be the saving piece of that first section, which says if the electronic surveillance referred to in paragraph 1 inadvertently collects a communication in which at least one party to the communication is located inside the U.S. or is a United States person, the contents of such communication shall be handled in accordance with minimization procedures adopted by the Attorney General.

If that is all they did, that would be fine with me. But they then go on to say this, that require that no contents of any communication to which the United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 7 days, unless you get a court order or unless the Attorney General determines specifically in this case that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.

Now, Admiral McConnell has suggested to us that time frame, they say you can't keep it longer than 7 days, may not be practical within the contours of how we actually get that information, number one; and, secondly, you can't use that information. You can't give it to anybody. You can't disclose it to the FBI, even though the information doesn't make the person in the United States a target, the information contained in that conversation is all about Osama bin Laden calling into the United States and something he says that is important for our purposes. That is the extraordinary thing here, because it says no contents of any communication to which the United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated or used.

It is exactly contrary to what Admiral McConnell said, which is the law should be directed at the identity of the individual we are targeting. So in this case, because you now capture a conversation that has taken place with the foreign person in a foreign land into the United States, even though it doesn't give rise to anything that would make a target of that person in the United States, you can't use any of that conversation with respect to the target for which you don't need a warrant, even though that person could be Osama bin Laden or one of his top people.

That is nuts. With all due respect, I use the word ``nuts,'' but I think that is probably proper.

Unless they go to court and get an order, which requires all of the necessary preparation that Admiral McConnell has told us we cannot do.

Or his sainted mother or his brother, the priest.

I would like to pose this question to the gentlelady. The gentlelady has studied this issue for a long time and was one of the first people to raise certain points of considered alarm, trying to bring a sense of urgency to this House to respond to the threat that is out there.

There is another troubling aspect of the bill to be brought to the floor. It has a sunset of December 31, 2009. So that would suggest to anybody looking from the outside that there is an end game or an end date at which the threat no longer exists. Can the gentlelady give us any advice, considered opinion, as to whether or not this threat is long lasting? Or should we limit this law just to the next 2 years?

Today I presented two amendments before the Rules Committee for consideration on this floor. Both were denied. One would have expanded the definition of foreign intelligence individuals or states to include nonstate actors who are involved in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The reason I did that is al Qaeda is not a state. There are free actors out there who would attempt to work with nation states or with organizations such as al Qaeda; and technically under the definition currently in the FISA law, they are not covered so that we couldn't do these sorts of things you talk about, listening in on their conversations without warrants, even though they may be as much a threat as a small nation state somewhere. But yet we don't even have an opportunity to discuss that on the floor of the House because that amendment and every other amendment was denied.

Let us return to the protections of Americans.

In the criminal justice system for years and years and years, somewhere between 30 and 50 years, we have done minimization, which means that if you have a wiretap on a Mafia member, and as I say, he calls his sainted mother or his priest, and the conversation has nothing to do with Mafia activities, that is minimized. That is, it is taken out of the data field and thrown away, essentially. If he says something in that conversation, while not implicating the other person in the conversation that is of benefit to our investigation, that is, he comments he is going to be going to Nashville and that's an important piece of information for us to know, we can use that. If the receiver of the conversation or communication, by what he or she says, indicates activity of an illegal nature such that that person becomes a target, it is at that point we require a warrant for that person.

Similarly, the way the law that we passed in August works is once you have the legal nonwarrant wiretap, or whatever you want to call it, catch of or capture of the communication because the target is a foreigner in a foreign country and you have reason to believe they are involved in some way that is covered under the law, that conversation or communication to someone within the United States is treated in the very same way.

If the conversation has nothing to do with terror, it is minimized. It is thrown out. If the conversation contained some information about the legal target that is of benefit, we can use that information against that target. If in fact the response or the statement made by the person in the United States, the American, is of a nature that gives us cause to believe that person is involved in terror, we then go get a warrant because that person becomes a target. Is that the gentlelady's understanding of how we operate?

I know we only have about 5 minutes left. This is testimony that Admiral McConnell gave before the Judiciary Committee. He was asked this directly by a Member from the other side of the aisle: How many Americans have been wire tapped without a court order?

The direct response by the DNI, none. He went on to say there are no wiretaps against Americans without a court order. None. What we are doing is we target a foreign person in a foreign country. If that foreign person calls in the United States, we have to do something with the call. The process is called minimization. It was the law in 1978. It is the way it is handled.

Is that your understanding?

We should recall the words of the United States Supreme Court in the Keith case which is the case that dealt with wiretaps in the United States. They said that while there was no warrant exception in domestic surveillance cases, it was not addressing the question of activities related to foreign powers and their agents. And in that unanimous opinion, the court noted that were the government to fail ``to preserve the security of its people, society itself could become so disordered that all rights and liberties would be endangered.''

Justice White, a John Kennedy appointment to the Court who personified the definition of a moderate, said this in his concurring opinion in the Katz v. U.S. case: ``We should not require the warrant procedure in a magistrate's judgment if the President of the United States or his chief legal officer, the Attorney General, has considered the requirements of national security and authorized electronic surveillance as reasonable.''

In other words, the court when it dealt with this issue those years ago recognized the difference between a criminal justice system and a system of intelligence and counterterrorism to protect our country from attack by those who would basically destroy everything, including our Constitution and our constitutional foundation.

The gentlelady is exactly correct, and let me suggest, to get down to basics, that when surveillance is directed overseas, legitimate concerns relating to purely domestic surveillance are not implicated. We should all be concerned about the protections of civil liberties, as the 9/11 Commission put it.

The choice between security and liberty is a false choice as nothing is more likely to endanger America's liberties than the success of a terrorist attack at home.

And I thank the gentlelady for her comments.

Madam Speaker, today I rise to bring your attention to Monticello Dam which is located at the very western border of California's Third Congressional District. This month marks the 50th anniversary of Monticello Dam, a part of the Federal Solano Project. The Solano Project is owned by the United States Bureau of Reclamation and is operated and maintained locally by the Solano County Water Agency. It serves a growing population of about 350,000 people and irrigated farm land of about 80,000 acres.

The beautiful Lake Berryessa was formed by Monticello Dam. Lake Berryessa is enjoyed year round for its recreational opportunities. Lower Putah Creek downstream of the dam provides a valuable fish and wildlife area and the Lower Putah Creek Coordinating Committee, made up of Yolo and Solano representatives, is involved in creek restoration projects to enhance the natural setting.

Monticello Dam is an integral part of the Federal Solano Project and is an example of how the Bureau of Reclamation was able to achieve environmental protection, restore and protect wildlife habitat, and at the same time provide much needed water for the people of this part of the state of California. It exemplifies how we can work responsibly to utilize the benefits of nature on behalf of all the people.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for the time.

Madam Speaker, we've heard a lot of comments from our friends on the other side of the aisle about what the President meant by his veto. Well, let's talk for a moment what we mean by the action we're going to take.

We're going to postpone action on the veto override. We're going to postpone for 2 weeks a significant decision which will allow us to begin, on a bipartisan basis, to answer this question. I'm not sure I have seen a more cynical move in the House in my 13 years here. Maybe there has been one, but none comes to mind here.

But we have such a priority to name post offices after eminent people this week, but we don't have the time to stay here to work on this issue. No, we're going to postpone our override of the President's veto because somehow we, in some silly way, say we need a time-out. We don't need a time-out. We need a time-in. We need to work.

There are many things the American people are concerned about. One is health care for those poor children. That's why this program was established some 10 years ago. But the American people are also concerned about budgets that are out of control, and one of the reasons you have a budget out of control is because we take worthy programs that were designed for a specific purpose and we expand them and distort them beyond all recognition and have a program that is sold as for the children, that in some States has more adults on it than children, has more adults before you've registered the children, has gone beyond focusing on the poor children, is a program that is going to bankrupt this country because you see that repeated again and again and again.

Cynicism, cynicism is postponing the action on this floor. Last time I checked, we're not going to be here tomorrow. Last time I checked, we're going to be out of here by 7 o'clock tonight, but we don't have time to deal with this veto override so we can get about the business of truly dealing with a bipartisan approach to dealing with children's health.

That's the message here, not defining what the President's veto is, but by our actions defining who and what we are.

Mr. Speaker, today in the Judiciary Committee we were supposed to mark up H.R. 2826. I was informed that the Judiciary Committee has postponed this to a time uncertain. This was also to be the day that that bill or

a similar bill was to be marked up in the Armed Services Committee. That was postponed as well.

The bill, H.R. 2826, was to deal with an issue that is unprecedented and, I would say, unnecessary. And while I am pleased that there was a postponement of consideration of the bill today, I would hope that those on the other side of the aisle who control the schedule both on this floor and in committees would reconsider this bill or any similar bill because this bill is an effort to extend habeas corpus rights to alien enemy combatants. It is a dramatic departure not only from the language of the Detainee Treatment Act, which was passed by this House and the Senate and signed by the President, but from longstanding principles in our Anglo-American legal tradition. As the United States Supreme Court recognized in the Johnson v. Eisentrager case, there is ``no instance where a court in this or any other country where the writ is known issued it on behalf of an alien enemy.''

What possible reason could we give to the American people and to our troops currently involved in combat for giving al Qaeda and Taliban detainees rights that have never been given to alien enemy combatants in the history of armed conflict? Never. I underscore ``never.''

Was the Greatest Generation wrong for its failure to accord habeas rights to the more than 425,000 enemy combatants held inside the United States during World War II? We held well over a million, I believe it was over 2 million POWs around the world. But we held 425,000 of them in the United States. Imagine if we had granted them the right to habeas corpus access to our Federal courts. Not only would it have cluttered all of the Federal courts in this land, but it would have had judges making decisions on combat issues rather than the Commander in Chief and our military as we have always recognized since the founding of this Republic.

In responding to the argument that the writ extends to alien enemy combatants, Justice Jackson of the Supreme Court said, ``No decision of this court supports such a view. None of the learned commentators on our Constitution has ever hinted at it. The practice of every modern government is opposed to it.''

So I want people to understand, Mr. Speaker, that when we are to consider this in the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee, we are doing something so fundamentally drastic, so different from anything that has ever been done in the history of this Nation. We are opening the gates to the full panoply of rights under the Federal habeas corpus statute. Complex evidentiary hearings, the rules of civil procedure, rules of evidentiary custody are understandable in relation to the protection of the constitutional rights of Americans where evidence and witnesses are more accessible.

But are we willing to force our men and women in uniform to cross- examination, to depositions or to interrogatories as outlined in the Federal habeas statute? The availability of the habeas corpus remedy may serve the interest of justice with respect to U.S. prisoners; however, it is a blunt instrument. As Justice Frankfurter observed in McCleskey v. Zant, ``The writ has potentialities for evil as well as for good. Abuse of the writ may undermine the orderly administration of justice.'' It has no relevance here and presents the prospect of abuse. It is for that reason that from time immemorial, habeas relief has not been extended to alien enemy combatants captured outside the realm of the sovereign.

We must reject the notion that we can fight the war on terrorism with platoons of lawyers. It was stunning to learn that prior to the Detainee Treatment Act, some detainee attorneys sought the wholesale disruption of interrogations. In a telling revelation, one detainee lawyer boasted in public that ``the litigation is brutal. It's huge. We have over 100 lawyers now from big and small firms working to represent the detainees. Every time an attorney goes down there, it makes it that much harder to do what they're doing. You can't run an interrogation with attorneys. What are they going to do now that we're getting court orders to get more lawyers down there?''

That is why we changed the law and to have two committees in this House now to say we should change it back is irresponsible. We should not do this.