Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. Inslee

Amendment No. 7: At the end of title IV add the following:

Offered By: Mr. Inslee

Amendment No. 16: At the end of title IV add the following:

Mr. Speaker, over the Labor Day weekend, I volunteered at the Houston Astrodome to assist in relieving the victims of Hurricane Katrina. On Tuesday, September 6, 2005, en route to Washington, DC, from Houston, a passenger on my aircraft attempted to commit suicide and the flight was temporarily rerouted to Nashville, TN. As a result, my flight was significantly delayed in landing at Dulles airport, causing me to miss votes for both H. Res. 360, commemorating the 60th anniversary of V-J Day and the end of World War II in the Pacific, and S.J. Res. 19, a joint resolution calling upon the President to issue a proclamation recognizing the 30th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act.

Had I been present in the House of Representatives, I would have voted in support of both resolutions, H. Res. 360 and S.J. Res. 19.

Mr. Speaker, last weekend I went to the floor of the Astrodome to work with some of the evacuees. I have never been so inspired by people of courage and grace and great dignity.

On the way home on the flight from Houston to DC, there were 10 evacuees headed for Florida. In the middle of the flight, a young man took out a razor

blade and slashed his wrists in a suicide attempt.

The pilot made the appropriate judgment. There were two MTs on board. They saved his life. Actually, it probably was not life threatening. We diverted to Nashville. We made a flight change in response to a problem.

Now this administration has to make a change in the flight plan about who and how FEMA is being run. It is a disaster in itself. We need a flight change, and this is not a matter of accountability. There are more hurricanes on the way.

FEMA's job in this disaster is not done. We do not have confidence in the people and the organization in the FEMA cockpit. It could crash again. This President needs to change FEMA, and we should be doing it in this debate today.

Mr. Speaker, this Labor Day weekend I flew from Seattle to Houston to join thousands of Texans to volunteer in the Astrodome to help these evacuees, and there I met an incredible family with such courage and grace, trying to keep their family together on the floor of the Astrodome.

A woman named Penny told me that her mother named Alice was trapped at a specific address on Bell Street in New Orleans, and I pitched in to try to help to get her rescued. For 3 days, the most powerful Nation in the world was incapable of going to a specific address on Bell Street and rescuing this 80-year-old lady named Alice.

While that was going on, a lot of the lower level FEMA people were working hard to effectuate that, but they were handicapped by a lack of senior leadership, senior leadership who failed to anticipate the breaching of the levees; senior leadership who failed to call for help, who waited 5 hours to call for help after landfall of the hurricane; senior leadership that allowed FEMA's job to protect us from hurricanes to be totally overwhelmed by the responsibility regarding terrorism.

This senior leadership led me to conclude, and millions of Americans to conclude, that we cannot have confidence in senior leadership at FEMA today. This is not a matter of finger-pointing or accountability. It is a matter of whether we have confidence in dealing with the next hurricane that is getting ready in the Atlantic Ocean right now. This is the middle. I heard one person say this is the third inning of a nine inning game of the hurricane season. We have to get this problem fixed now.

After the debacle at Pearl Harbor, America did not wait until the end of World War II to fix the problem that led us to be caught with our pants down at Pearl Harbor with such fatality, and we have suffered probably more fatalities here than we did at Pearl Harbor.

We need, on a bipartisan basis, to fix this problem now; and we need to help the President do that because of his attitude of saying, Brownie, you did a great job, it just will not wash with the American people. It is a shame that this rule will not allow Americans to get what they deserve, a working FEMA.

Mr. Speaker, too often, violence claims innocent lives in our world. We have seen suffering on our own soil, and all over the world in places like Indonesia, Israel, Palestine, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and recently, England. Amid this instability, for a Representative in the United States Congress to even hypothetically suggest that the United States would destroy Mecca, a holy site of one of the world's major religions, serves only to exacerbate the impression that U.S. actions in the Muslim world are part of a religious struggle--certainly a step backwards in national security. Sadly, such statements also perpetuate the unfortunate misunderstanding that an entire religion is responsible for the actions of a minority of religious extremists. These reckless comments do not reflect American values, and irresponsibly put American security at risk.

Mr. Speaker, it is truly sad that a Nation that produced the Apollo Moon Project today will produce something with the success of the Hindenberg.

The only thing that can be guaranteed about this bill is that it will fail. It is guaranteed that it will fail to reduce our dependence on Saudi Arabian oil.

According to the Department of Energy, our dependence will rise under this bill from 58 percent to 68 percent failure. It is guaranteed to fail to deal with global warming, and the reason is you took the money that should have gone to emerging high-tech industries that need the help, the Davids, and you gave 64 percent to the Goliaths of the oil and gas industry. Guaranteed failure.

It is guaranteed to fail, to send our jobs to Japan because you took out of the bill the provision that would bring these new fuel-efficient cars to be manufactured in America where they should be. Guaranteed failure.

The only success that this bill will have is an energetic fleecing of American taxpayers. And if you can find a reason that you can take money from your taxpayers and give to the most profitable business in America at $60 a barrel oil, good luck. I cannot explain it. I do not think you will be able to either.

Vote against this bill.

Mr. Speaker, there are better ways to solve this problem than to strip Americans of the right to trial by jury. Fundamentally, this bill takes the right of trial by jury of your peers away from Americans and gives that authority to politicians who have never heard any of the evidence.

Take this case about a 4-year-old girl I know from Yakima, Washington, named Nichole. Several years ago, she went in with a urinary tract problem. The doctors put in a foley catheter. When you do that, there is a balloon they put in your bladder that is inflated to hold the catheter. This was traumatic to this 4-year-old girl. When they went to deflate the catheter, it would not deflate. So they tried to deflate it by sticking a steel wire up through her urethra to try to puncture the balloon so they could pull the catheter out. They tried it many times. This was traumatic to this young girl. It did not work.

So they finally had to inject a solvent up her urethra to dissolve the rubber and it dissolved the rubber and it also dissolved part of her bladder and severely burned her bladder because of the malfunction of a negligently designed and manufactured foley catheter.

Now, who is better to make a decision for that 4-year-old girl about what is justice? Teachers, truck drivers, insurance salesmen sitting in a jury who have heard the evidence and who have looked at Nichole and understand the future dysfunction she may have and the trauma she had, or 435 politicians who are clueless about that specific case?

Where is the wisdom from the Creator that these politicians are vested in to tell us what Nichole went through? Nobody knows except maybe someone who was at that trial.

This is moving authority from jurors, citizens, the people who are sitting up in the gallery right here and taking it away from you and putting it in the pockets, first of Members of Congress, through the lobbyists for the drug companies and the medical companies. And by the way you, know what happened because of Nichole's case? That company cleaned up its act, and it started a new quality-control mechanism so that we will not have future Nicholes, because we had a medical negligence system that protected the Nicholes of this world.

There is a problem. This is not the best way to solve it. Respect America, democracy, and our jurors.

announcement by the speaker pro tempore

Mr. Speaker, as the sordid tale is unfolding about the Bush administration's outing of one of our covert intelligence agents, as that unfolds, there is an aspect that I just learned about, I wanted to share with my colleagues, last week.

Last week with some Senators, we had a hearing where we listened to former CIA agents about the impact of this event on our national security system, and these four agents spoke as one. And what they said was interesting to me, because what they said was the outing was bad enough where they destroyed the covert status of one of our spies, but what is almost as bad or worse is that the President has refused to take action to deal with whoever is responsible for that wrongful act.

And to them that was a message that the President just did not honor the trust we have to keep the secrecy of our spies secret. That makes it more difficult to recruit. We are trying to recruit people for cells in London right now. How are we going to recruit them when we out, the administration outs, a spy and does not take action to deal with that?

That is as disturbing as the outing originally. The President needs to act. We need to pass House Resolution 363 to get to the bottom of this.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight in part of a continuing discussion of our national energy policy, and I come specifically this evening to address some new science. There have been two new developments that are important to America in regard to our energy policy. One is some very new emerging science indicating that we need to change our energy policy and have one that is much more optimistic and visionary; and, two, the results of the energy policy bill that has come out of the House that is now in the conference committee that unfortunately has fallen very short of what this country needs.

And, third, I will finish with an optimistic note about a discussion of how this country can adopt a truly new technologically oriented, optimistic, can-do energy policy that can help our country break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil, stop global warming, and grow jobs in this country with these new energy sources that we need to develop.

But first I would like to start the discussion by talking about some emerging science. There really are three reasons that we need a new technologically oriented clean energy policy for America. We clearly need to break our addiction on Saudi Arabian oil that is a security threat to the United States. That is number one. And we can do it with a high-tech future.

Number two, we have to stop global warming, which is a real threat and the science that I will talk about is in that regard. And, three, we need to grow our economy by having the next generation of technological development to truly have a new breakthrough energy policy for this country.

But I would like to start tonight's discussion by talking about some new science that has come in just in the last several weeks that has a bearing on our need for a clean energy future in this country. This science has been accumulating for the last decade or so; but it is very interesting just in the last several weeks, we have had some very fundamentally profoundly disturbing scientific revelations that lead to the conclusion that our Nation needs to lead the world to a new energy future.

I would like to set the stage, if I can, to talking about some of the things that have been known, at least on a gross basis, that are happening in the world today. And basically what is happening in the world today is in a real sense, it is melting. I want to refer to a picture of the Upsala Glacier in Patagonia at the southern tip of South America, a picture here taken in 1928. This huge glacier at the tip of South America. You can see it here, pretty vast field of ice in 1928. Same picture taken in 2004, basically showing the disappearance of this enormous multisquare mile field of ice that in this photograph has disappeared and now is essentially a bay at the southern tip of South America, an incredibly rapid, rapid change since 1928. This picture unfortunately is very typical of what is happening in glaciers around the world due to the warming of the Earth.

A picture to show that it is not limited to South America. This is a photograph of the good old United States of America, one of my favorite national parks, Glacier National Park. On the left it shows a picture of the Grinnell Glacier in 1938. You can see it extends down into this basin, comes off this cliff, has a rather large area of flat glacier down in this area.

Same picture, same observation point in 1981. You see that this extent of the glacier has now totally disappeared. There is a lake where the glacier used to be. The Grinnell Glacier is rapidly receding. There were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park a hundred years ago. There are about 30 significant ones now. And the scientists project that in one of our most treasured jewels of our crown, we will have no glaciers of any significance in Glacier National Park 50 years from now.

So, in fact, what we see is that due to a national or a global phenomenon, some of the most pristine treasures of America are being destroyed by global warming, and so our grandchildren, in hopes of having some some day, our great grandchildren will have to say we will take you to the park formerly known as Glacier because it will not have glaciers anymore.

The point I would like to make is that this is not just an isolated regional occurrence happening at the southern tip of South America or in our treasured Glacier National Park. In fact, it is something that is happening all over the globe. We now know some information that shows the thickness of long-term perennial ice in the north, and we now have very, very conclusive evidence that that ice is melting significantly.

This is a graph showing the extent and thickness of the ice cover in the Arctic in various locations during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s compared to the thickness with observations taken in the last 15 years. The blue, for instance, at the North Pole, shows the meters, just under 4 meters of thickness of ice at the North Pole on average in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The brown bars show the thickness in the last 15 years. You see it has gone down to under 2\1/2\ meters of thickness, probably a 40 percent reduction in thickness at the North Pole.

It is not isolated. In the Nansin Basin there was about 4 meters of thickness. It has gone down to about 2.25 meters. In the Eastern Arctic, it is even more pronounced, from about 3.4 meters down to about 1\1/2\ meters. It is the same story all across the Arctic. The Arctic is melting. It is becoming less thick by factors of almost half. Just under half of the ice in the Arctic is gone as a result of global warming, something that we have grown up with, something that 15 years ago we could not have imagined could disappear.

It is not just the thickness and it is not just in the Arctic. If you look at Greenland, and Greenland for reasons I will talk about is one of the great question marks about what is going to happen to the world in the next century. Greenland is an enormous reservoir of ice, thousands of feet thick covering the continent. But what has happened in 2002, this is a map of Greenland, basically showing where the melt has been in 2002 in these red areas. And you see a rather pronounced area where you have had this very significant melting along the periphery of the Greenland ice sheet.

What scientists have found is a very disturbing phenomenon that has occurred in Greenland and that is that there have been these fissures or crevasses open up that allow this melt water to melt down which lubricates the glacier which hastens the seaward spread of the glacier which can even accelerate the melting even further. This is of tremendous concern. This may get technical but let me notice it.

This is a hidden time but when it comes to climate in Greenland. The reason is off of Greenland is the Atlantic current that operates because of the saltiness, what is called the Halcyon Cycle of cold salt water sinking that creates this current that warms northern Europe, warms the northern Atlantic States of America.

If this ice melts in Greenland it can shut down the Gulf Current. In fact it has done that thousands of years ago. It happened at least once before, shut that current down and actually precipitated, and here is one of the great ironies, a little ice age in the northern hemisphere. That is why the Europeans are terrified of what is happening in Greenland today of this ice melting, making the water fresher, possibly shutting down this Atlantic current, causing this enormous change in our climate factor, a situation in the north Atlantic.

I want to point out these are not hypotheticals, these are not theories. These are not suggestions. These are not abstractions. These are facts. The things I have talked about today are direct observations. No scientist in the world questions them. They are unequivocal and there is no use arguing about them.

So what we have is a rather pronounced worldwide melting of ice and the question now is why is that? Well, there is a clear reason that has now been answered by the scientific community from the international panel of scientists, of over 1,500 scientists from around the world, from every bent, from every philosophical standpoint, geophysicists, geologists, physicists, climatologists, you name it, in the largest gathering of world scientists ever dealing with a climatic issue.

They have said with great confidence that human factors are causing the climate to change, are a significant factor in that change. The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and I am proud of the United States of America, we are the world's greatest scientific authority in the world. Our National Academy of Sciences, the people to whom we trust the scientific intellectual treasure trove of America, a few months ago came out with a conclusion that human activities are a significant cause of the climate change that the world is now experiencing. These are not fruitcakes, crackpots or small granola eaters. These are the people that helped put us on the moon, develop nuclear energy, and basically are the reason the United States leads the world today. We need to listen to them when they tell us something very dangerous is going on in the world today.

What is that? It is global warming caused by gasses that we, all of us, put into the atmosphere, and I would like to talk about that for a moment.

There is a phenomenon that actually is a really good thing. The presence of carbon dioxide is really important for us to live. Right now, carbon dioxide, we need to reduce the amount we are putting in the air because carbon dioxide and methane and a few other gasses are causing this global warming. But do not forget it is actually vital to human life on the planet, because carbon dioxide warms the planet. If carbon dioxide and water vapor and other things were not in the air, we would live on a frozen planet. So having the right amount of carbon dioxide is very important. Too much is a problem and that is what we are experiencing now.

The reason this works, carbon dioxide, it is like a greenhouse. You have heard of the greenhouse effect. It very much is like a greenhouse. Carbon dioxide allows energy in but does not allow energy out. It is like a pane of glass. Just like a pane of glass it has a certain attribute. And scientists taught me this and I will share with you this trick, how this works.

CO2 is like glass in that it allows light energy to come in but not go out. It is like a one-way door. And the reason it is like that is that CO2 molecules block ultraviolet rays of light, light at a certain spectrum, excuse me, allows it in, allows ultraviolet rays from the sun in to the Earth, and that is the warming component coming in. But when light bounces back into space, it bounces back at a different frequency, at infrared frequencies.

It holds the energy in and that is good to a certain degree, but the problem is now is that the carbon dioxide levels in the air have gone up dramatically and so we have a thicker blanket on the Earth trapping this energy to a significant degree. Let me talk about now how significant that is.

The numbers I am now going to talk about are also fact. They are not abstractions or hypotheticals. This chart basically shows the CO2 concentrations in a red line. This is the most disturbing red line that I know of in the world today in the long term because what it shows is for the last thousand years what the carbon dioxide levels were on this red line, and that is expressed in parts per million, how many molecules of CO2 per million there are in the atmosphere.

If you see a thousand years earlier it was about 280, 278 parts per million on the left side of the chart. We know this because it is pretty amazing. We have air from that period, because there are trapped air bubbles that were trapped by these glaciers a thousand years ago. Scientists drill a core into the ice and they get those little air bubbles and they put them on a devices that measures the concentration of CO2 and you know exactly how much CO2 there was. So this is a very precise measurement.

So we know a thousand years ago CO2 levels were 278 or 280. You will see the next hundred years are about the same. The next hundred about the same. The next hundred there are some minor deviations 500 or 600 years ago. They are staying about the same. Then about a hundred years ago we started to see an uptick of CO2 levels starting to rise. Something happened about a hundred years ago or a little more than a hundred years ago causing carbon dioxide levels to rise.

What happened is we started to burn coal and oil. When we burn coal it puts carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So those levels of carbon dioxide started to go up, and they kept going up and now they are going up at a rate unprecedented in global history. As far as we know this is the fastest rate of CO2 acquisition or increase in global history. And what we see now is we are now up to about 370, I believe it is about 378 parts per million. So we have gone from about 275 a thousand years ago and just in the last hundred years we have gone up about half of that again up to about 373, 378 parts per million. So we were a third or half, depending on how you categorize that number, higher than we were and what are called pre-industrial times.

Now, why is that important? Well, it is pretty obvious. If CO2 captures heat and it traps heat and you increase the carbon dioxide, you are going to increase the energy that is trapped in the Earth and the temperature of the Earth if it is not used in some other fashion. And that is indeed what has happened. We see temperatures spikes shown in these blue areas. And the blue shows the variations and, of course, the temperature does vary to some degree from year to year and even decade to decade. But what we see is we have had a corresponding increase in temperatures on the Earth as well.

The scientific community has come together to tie those two together, and frankly it makes sense to me that if you increase carbon dioxide by a third, as much as you had in pre-industrial times, it is likely you are going to trap energy in the Earth, and that is exactly what has happened.

It is not just the last thousand years that this correlation has taken place. I want to show a chart which is also observational evidence. This is a chart that is very similar. It shows carbon dioxide levels again in the red line and temperatures in the blue only it goes back 400,000 years. It takes us back further in time. And what we see is that 400,000 years ago we were about 250 and the red line went down and went up and went down and it went down and it went up. And you will notice corresponding changes in the temperature at the same time. When carbon dioxide has gone down, the average temperatures have gone down. Notice we have had some deviation over the 400,000 years.

Carbon dioxide levels have gone up and down. But also notice this, they have never in the last 400,000 years been as high as they are. This is the highest they have ever been, number one. And, number two, the rate of increase is now on this graph essentially a vertical line. The rate of increase of the amount we are putting of carbon dioxide is unprecedented in global history.

So if we look the projection is that if things remain the same we will be up to 550 parts per million by 2050, my kids' lifetime. And by 2100 we will be up to 1,280 parts per million taking a worst case projection. So however you slice it, we are going to have somewhere between a doubling of carbon dioxide and a quadrupling of carbon dioxide in the next hundred years compared to pre-industrial times.

This is bad news for the Earth because we have a system built on a climate regime consistent with somewhere around 300 part per million. And our crops, where our fish are, where we live, how much air conditioning we use, whether we are comfortable or hotter than heck will all change as these CO2 levels skyrocket.

Now, these are observational issues, observational facts as well that I have given you. Obviously, this is a projection but one that is based on the best available scientific evidence that we have.

Now it just in the atmosphere? No, it is not just in the atmosphere. One of the categorical things that our own oceanographic folks in the United States Government have been studying temperatures in the ocean as well because the ocean is a very efficient sink of energy. It is a storage battery for energy. What they have found is that ocean temperatures as well, and this graph is expressed in heat content rather than temperature, and that is watts per year per meters squared.

The ocean essentially going back from 1993 has had observational changes that have gone up dramatically, as this graph would show, to 2003 as well. And this is actually a piece that had fallen into the scientific puzzle to answer this question when we

have recently found huge amounts of energy essentially stored in the ocean.

Now, this is a concern because the ocean expands as it gets warmer. And if you live on the coastline as I do, the State of Washington, or around Florida or anywhere else for that matter, you need to be concerned about rising ocean levels, not like a tsunami but on a creeping basis, that could inundate significant parts of our coastline in the next hundred years. That expanding phenomenon of water is also increased by the melting of Greenland. And we have projections of anywhere from several centimeters to several meters in the next 100 to 150 years potentially inundating our coastlines. So we have not just the air but the water associated with these problems.

Now, I want to note how this, the things that have happened in the last 4 months that have nailed the nail in the coffin of debate about whether or not global warming has been caused by human, in part, by human-caused action.

Basically, I think that one of the major newspapers I was seeing had a headline that said ``The Debate is Over: It's Fact.'' And I think that pretty much summarizes the state of this situation.

Arguing about whether or not global warming exists right now is a little bit like arguing gravity. It is something you could do several hundred years ago, but not today. We have a lot of questions about the extent, the rapidity, the rate of change, how much coastline will be inundated, how fast the West Nile virus will move north, how fast the tundra will melt. There are a lot of questions about how much and how fast; but the fact it is occurring, clearly, number one, is true; and, second, it is great cause for concern.

These are not abstractions. Our lives are changing today because of this. The ski industry in the Cascade Mountains in Washington essentially was shut down this year. My son is a ski patrolman. He worked for 3 days this year. There was no snow. And having no snow is consistent with what the models predict will become a significant problem for us in the future. And it is not just skiing; we get our irrigation water from there. We run our power in the Pacific Northwest from there. We are experiencing these problems today.

I talked to a friend of mine who went fishing off the coast of Washington. Not many salmon, because the water is six to eight degrees warmer than it has ever been. In fact, we are getting species that have never been seen off the Washington coast. Tuna. Certain species of tuna never seen before off the Washington coast before are now moving north along the coastline because of these warming temperatures.

If you go to Alaska, you will see houses that are falling down because the tundra is melting. And that is significant because the tundra, and this is what is called a multiplier, a feedback effect, when the tundra melts because of warming, it releases enormous amounts of methane. Methane gas is frozen and stored in the tundra, and when it is released, methane gas itself is a global-climated gas. It is four times worse than CO2. So when you melt the tundra, you accelerate the rate of change. Just like when you melt the ice, you accelerate the rate of warming.

And that is why the North has warmed up so much, because the ice has melted and now the light is absorbed by the dark land rather than reflected back into space. It is called the feedback loop that accelerates the rate of warming that is going on. So we have the native populations in Alaska now having to move their villages because of the collapse of their coastline. And they are seeing the day when they may not be able to hunt for seals any more because the ice is not coming close to the shoreline to support the sea life.

West Nile virus. You have seen these maps that show where West Nile virus has invaded the United States. It is not an accident that some of these diseases are moving north that are carried by mosquitoes, because those insects are moving north. It is not an accident that you are seeing these horrendous fires in the western United States, because the trees have no moisture in them and they are also dying because of beetle infestations.

Why did these beetles all of a sudden show up? These trees have been there for eons. Why all of a sudden are these forests being killed by these insect infestations? Well, one thing we can say is that the milder winters allow these insects to live. So our forests are significantly affected by this situation.

The point I am making is that when you grow a garden in Seattle, Washington, right now, you notice that flowers are coming up earlier. That might be a good thing, but it is not so good a thing if it means we are not someday going to be able to grow wheat in southern regions of the Midwest because it will not support that type of vegetation. So the point is there are real things happening today; and, sadly, we are not responding to them.

Coming back to the pieces of the puzzle that have come into play very recently, there has been a lot of debate about global warming; and as many things in science do, we have advanced from questions to hypotheses to theories to observations to arguments to debates to consensus. There is a consensus in the worldwide scientific community that humans are now playing a role in climate change that is assuredly affecting the globe. And in the last several months, there have been several major studies by very well accredited organizations that have come up with pieces to that puzzle.

For instance, in the last 2 weeks, the Royal Academy of Science in Britain completed a study of the acidity in our world's oceans. Now, the acidity of our world's oceans are affected by the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is then dissolved in the ocean. Because carbon dioxide, through a chemical reaction, can make the world's oceans more acidic. They are a little bit alkaline-based now.

Now, the Royal Academy of Sciences goes back to Isaac Newton, I think. Talk about a prestigious group. How are you going to argue with this group? They have concluded that there is a very significant increase in the acidity of the world's oceans because of the increased carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. That amount, if I understand this correctly, is almost a 30 percent increase in the acidity. It is still alkaline, but it is becoming more acidic, and it is going down in a PH level from, and my numbers may not be correct, if you want to check this, you can go on a Web site called realclimate, it is either dot-org or dot-com, which should give you the numbers. But it is a logarithmic scale. You can see it has gone from 8.5 to 8.2 or 8.1.

Now, that does not sound like much, but it is a logarithmic scale, which means about a 30 percent change, which is significant. And that is significant because life in the ocean, our coral reefs or shellfish, or anything that makes calcium-based covering, like shells and corals, depends on that level of acidity to allow their life forms to exist.

Our coral reefs now are in deep trouble because of temperature. We have had massive bleaching, which is basically the death of coral reefs. They have a life form that builds the reef, and those have died just because of the warmer water. But the changes in the acidity levels, the PH levels, is also a means of mortality for our reef system. Many scientists are very concerned that this could greatly upset the balance of life in our oceans associated with anything that essentially uses calcium that is affected by the PH levels in the water.

So there is one thing that has changed. The National Academy of Sciences, secondly, America's most prestigious organization, and a pretty conservative group, not known for wild ideas, in the last several months came out and said that they had a consensus that human activity is a significant factor in global warming. A significant second thing.

Third thing. A study done of the world's oceans by a third group concluded that the salinity of our oceans is changing significantly because of this fresh water melt coming off from Greenland. When Greenland melts and the Arctic melts, that fresh water goes somewhere. It goes in the ocean and changes the salinity levels because that ice is melting.

Fourth. We have seen significant localized temperature differences of varying significant degrees, six to eight degrees off the coast of Washington, for instance. Those are just

things in the last several months that are occurring.

Now, what they add up to is a picture of a changing globe, one that we are partially responsible for and one that we do not know exactly where it is going. I talked to a scientist down in South America who is studying the rain forest; and he is finding that the vines, now this was in Panama, and he was one of the first guys that had a crane and they put these big cranes up and the crane goes around, they have a little basket and they can look at the top of the rain forests. I went up in one of those cranes. They cover about 2\1/2\ acres of ground. It is amazing being up there.

This scientist told me that in studying the rain forest, what they have found is that the type of vegetation in the rain forest is changing dramatically because of the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. What we see on this chart at first seems like an abstraction; but when you see these CO2 levels going up dramatically in the atmosphere, that is not just an intellectually interesting point. It means a change in our world.

What it means in the rain forest, this scientist told me, I think his name was George, though I cannot remember his last name, is that certain plants metabolize carbon dioxide better than others and they grow faster than others. What they found is the parasitic plants, the plants that basically use other plants for a structure, like vines, and the vines are called lianas, and the lianas are increasing their rate of growth explosively and are sort of taking over the canopy of the rain forests.

So when we went up there, you could see these places where the canopy of the rain forest was just covered with vines. He told me that 25 years ago that was simply not the case. So what we are seeing is major changes in vegetation patterns in certain places associated with carbon dioxide as well.

So what do we conclude from this? Well, I think that we need to exercise common sense. What this scientist told me, and I thought his characterization of this problem was one of the most sort of commonsense ones I have heard, he said we are now engaged in the largest experiment in human history, and we are the guinea pigs. And he meant by that that this whole global warming experiment that we are conducting in the world, we are the ones likely to be affected by it in ways we cannot fully predict.

In other words, we cannot fully predict the year we will not be able to grow wheat in the southern Midwest. We cannot predict that. We cannot predict the year we will not be able to power our electrical turbines in the Pacific Northwest because of the lack of snowpack, or the year that we will have a 20 percent reduction. We cannot predict when that will happen. We cannot predict the year that malaria will spread significantly north in various environments. We really cannot predict when that will be. We cannot predict when we will have to move the villages in the Arctic because of the receding shoreline. We cannot predict the dates those things will happen, but we are running this large craps game about what we are doing with our Earth by continuing in this course of putting carbon dioxide in the air in this steady curve.

And now I am going to come to what this Congress has to do with this. What the United States House of Representatives, and there are 435 people who work here, 100 over in the Senate, and there is one President and one Vice President, what that group has decided pretty much, at least the majority at the moment, what they have decided is that this explosion of carbon dioxide, this enormous ramp-up of carbon dioxide that has never happened before in the Earth's history as far as we know, that is having these prolific changes on life forms across the world is just hunky-dory and that we can just take our chances.

This U.S. Congress has decided to just roll the dice and let it happen, no matter what is going to happen. We do not have either the insight or the instinct or the willingness to do anything about this problem. And I stand here tonight to say that anybody that spends just a few minutes, just a few minutes acquainting themselves with the recent science on this issue will come away with the conclusion that inaction on this problem is massively irresponsible to our grandchildren and our great grandchildren, and in some parts of the world to ourselves.

That is the situation that is happening in the U.S. Congress because we do not pay attention enough to the science that has shown the conclusion that we have a problem on our hands. This Congress has done nothing about this problem. The President is not willing to deal with this problem. Disappointing. He ran for office saying he was going to support a carbon dioxide cap so we could put at least some limitation on the carbon dioxide we put out. He ran for President telling the American people he would do that, and he has not done a single thing about global warming in the 5 years he has been in office.

There is no excuse for that dereliction of duty. None. He owes us better. And we are capable of doing better because we are the smartest, most technologically oriented people in the world. We owe ourselves and our kids a solution to this problem.

Now what has the President said he was going to do about this problem. Here is what he said he is going to do. He says he is going to have a voluntary program where he will ask major players to volunteer to solve this problem.

Well, you can run a PTA bake sale on a voluntary basis, but you cannot reorient the energy policy of America on a volunteer bake sale. It is a joke. It is a sham. We would rather have the President just admit that he refuses to do anything about this problem. That would be straightforward. But this volunteerism is nothing but a scam. We need to act. We need to do some common-sense things to deal with this

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 59 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, July 21, 2005, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts. An issue I would like to address tonight is perhaps one of the most important ones. Of course, we all share the gentleman's admiration for our troops. I heard of a young man from Ohio who will be going back in a month or so for his fourth tour of duty in Iraq, so not only our admiration for our personnel there, but their whole families who are contributing to this effort, and it has been very, very difficult for them as well.

But I want to talk about how we can eventually be in a position to be able to bring our sons and daughters home, and that involves fulfilling an activity that might seem obvious to anyone who has thought about this, but, unfortunately, has not been fulfilled by the administration, and that is that we need to replace American troops with Iraqis.

We need to get our sons and daughters home and their responsibility for the security of Iraq needs to be assumed by Iraqis who will stand up and toe the line for their countries. And until that happens, we are going to continue to see the enormous losses that are being suffered by the Iraqis and our sons and daughters now.

And the reason I want to address this, and perhaps it seems obvious when I say that, but I wanted to share tonight the abject failure of the administration to do the very obvious things that need to be done to train the Iraqi security forces. It is obvious in this country that we need larger number of troops in the security forces now and in the future to allow the withdrawal of American troops. But we have found after doing an examination of what the civilian planners, and this is not a criticism of the military personnel because frankly it is the civilian personnel, from the Secretary of Defense up through the President, who have dropped the ball unfortunately, and what is required to train these Iraqi troops.

Four months ago an assessment showed that we had less than 40 percent of the training personnel that was anticipated to be in Iraq 6 months after the collapse of the Iraqi Army, less than half of the training personnel were there several months ago. And the result has been a spectacular failure to train and equip and stand up an Iraqi Army.

I remember the first time I ever heard the term stand up. It was from Secretary Rumsfeld. And he said we are going to stand up the Iraqi Army. This is before the war started. This army cannot get on its knees in Iraq right now.

Now, we have been told by the administration that there are 170,000 troops in Iraq. Well, there are 170,000 names on paper, and maybe there are 170,000 boots, but at most, at most, being generous, there are three battalions that can actually go out there and provide security in Iraq, less than 20,000 people. This army is a paper machet force and we, the administration, has not provided the infrastructures needed to train it.

Now why have they not done that? Why you would think immediately after the collapse of the Iraq Army, of course it did not help that the administration made what appears to be a major tactical blunder, which was to disband the Iraqi Army in the first place, without any security in Iraq to replace it, which led to this horrendous looting, if you will recall, looting that everyone predicted except the civilian leadership of the military here, knowing the history of Iraq, the violence in the ethnic groups. The fact that no security was supplied after the collapse of the Iraqi Army has put us behind the 8 ball.

In any event. At that point you would think the administration would push the alarm button to say we are going to speed forward as far as we possibly can to train and equip the Iraqi Army. Boy, were we wrong. In fact, it is this bad. In this chamber, when the defense bill came to the floor here the week before last for the appropriations bill, the majority party had put in a limitation on what could be spent to train the Iraqi military force. Now, it seems to me that ought to be the place we should not be scrimping money. We should not be trying to artificially limit. That is the place we should put the pedal to the metal and train these forces to replace our sons and daughters as soon as humanly possible. Now fortunately we passed an amendment that lifted that cap. I brought an amendment. I appreciate the Chair accepted it, and we actually got rid of that limitation. But this has been one of a long train of failures that follows from a fundamental misapprehension of the situation. And all of these mistakes that we have talked about flow from one basic misunderstanding by this administration, and that was the assumption that they made, that they could put on rose colored glasses and Baghdad would look like Paris in 1944 and the Shiias and the Sunnis would break bread together and sing Kumbaya and democracy would flower without standing up an Iraqi Army, without having security, without having armored HUMVEES, without having flak jackets for our troops, without having a provision for the National Guard, which is now so extented that the governors now, you know, the governors had a meeting just this week saying how are we going to fight our fires this summer when the National Guard is not here. This has been a continuation of the rose colored glasses syndrome that has now resulted in a continued failure to stand up an Iraqi Army.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

I just want to say that, you know, that is history. It is important to review. But the present and the future are disconcerting now too. For instance, we now know that we have this paper machet force in Iraq, and that is all it is, to provide security.

And until it becomes real, it is going to be difficult to get our troops home.

But even today, this administration, because they are so wedded to this go it alone policy, has rejected offers from adjoining nations in the region to train these Iraqi troops. Egypt, we are told, has made a specific proposal to train Iraqi troops to expedite that process so we can replace our people and get our people home and replace them with Iraqis. And this administration, because of their go it alone attitude has rejected that offer of other people in the region to train these forces.

Mr. Speaker, I have come to the Chamber this evening to address what many of us consider a very serious breach of our national security. The outing of a covert agent

serving the Central Intelligence Agency is something that should not have happened, and now this House needs to get to the bottom of why it happened and how it can be prevented in the future.

We have many agents serving in a covert or undercover capacity who are serving with distinction in the United States, as we speak, around the world. These are men and women who have contributed and honored us with their service to try to provide for our safety, our personal safety. They sometimes live in tough circumstances. When they are covert, undercover agents, they frequently take great personal risks. They play one of the most potentially fatal games, which is to attempt to obtain information for the United States to protect us safely in our homes in this country. I think it is fair to say that on a bipartisan basis we honor their service and we respect their service, and we ought to protect them by not divulging their identity to anyone.

Their identity is something that must be held closely for their personal safety, for their family's personal safety, for our ability to pursue our intelligence in an effective manner, and even for the safety of the people around the world with whom they deal. Because when one blows the cover of an undercover agent, they put not only potentially their own lives in danger, but they endanger everyone they have ever had lunch with in these foreign countries who now become suspected potentially CIA operatives of the United States as well.

So I think it is fair to say that the illicit wrongful outing of a CIA covert agent is something very serious, something the U.S. Congress needs to be concerned about. And in this particular sad and sordid affair, we need to be concerned about. And that is why I would like to address this evening in my comments what happened in the outing of a particular covert agent by the executive branch of the United States.

And as many people know now, we have experienced a case in the last 2 years where the executive branch of the United States Government, the people who work by, for and now very closely to President George Bush were apparently responsible for blowing the cover of an undercover agent who worked with distinction with the Central Intelligence Agency. This is a very serious matter not only for the safety potentially of this agent but for our ability to maintain the integrity of our security services of the United States. And on a bipartisan basis, we need to commit the U.S. Congress to see to it that those things do not happen again. And to start that process, we need to know how it happened in this case.

Briefly, if I can summarize, and many people know these facts, but for purposes of a summary, I would like to summarize what happened in this situation. What happened is that, leading up to the Iraq war, the President of the United States went before the American people to try to build a case for the Iraq war. And one of his assertions that he wanted Americans to believe was that Iraq was on the cusp of obtaining nuclear weapons, and he and his Secretary of State and others brought a specter of a mushroom cloud frequently. And one of the things he did in the State of the Union, he stood right behind me in the Chamber, addressing the Joint Session of Congress, and told the American people that, essentially Saddam Hussein, that murderous thug in Iraq, had obtained uranium yellow cake, the material from which one would build fissionable materials, the heart of a nuclear weapon. And he told the American people that our intelligence had learned that Iraq had obtained uranium yellow cake from Niger, a country in Africa. And he did not say this was questionable; he said it was a fact. And he issued 16 words that later turned out to be false. And some time thereafter, we found, through an article written in the New York Times by Ambassador Joseph Wilson, that, in fact, Ambassador Joseph Wilson had been sent to Niger at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. They requested Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had previously served in Africa and had knowledge of the African situation, to go to Niger to attempt to find out whether there was any truth to the fact whether or not Niger had sent uranium yellow cake to Iraq. And we subsequently learned and Ambassador Wilson had the courage, the foresight, the gumption to notify America that this was false, that, in fact, he had gone to Niger at the request of the CIA, fulfilled his patriotic duty; had the gumption to go into this difficult place, which is not exactly the Club Mediterranean, fulfilled his duty; and came back and reported to the CIA that this assertion that yellow cake came from Niger was, frankly, wrong, that it was highly unlikely that the documents were accurate that someone had relied upon to suggest this uranium yellow cake had come from Niger. And he reported that these were likely forgeries.

He then reported to the American people that this was wrong. And it turns out that, actually, there were at least two other reports that had been circulated in the CIA suggesting that what the President said was wrong. So the American public learned that what the President said in the State of the Union Address was wrong; it was false.

At that point, the response from the administration was that Ambassador Joe Wilson was correct. It was wrong, and that it was a mistake, that this should not have been in the State of the Union Address. It was an error. It was, in fact, false, and that Ambassador Joe Wilson was correct. And now Secretary of State Rice and others were very candid at that point, saying that what the President said never should have been said. And they essentially admitted that Ambassador Wilson was correct in his report to the CIA.

But then, what did this administration do? It turns out that, instead of thanking Ambassador Wilson for his work, instead of calling him up and saying, Thanks, Joe, for your work in Africa, we are sorry we made a mistake, glad it got cleared up, what did they do? It turns out that someone in the executive branch of the United States with secret information about a secret agent of the United States Government blew the cover of Joe Wilson's wife, thereby potentially endangering an undercover agent, thereby destroying the integrity of our national security information, thereby jeopardizing others for whom Joe Wilson's wife had worked and possibly violating the criminal laws of the United States of America.

Not exactly the kind of response Joe Wilson got from the first President Bush, because in our disclosure, for a moment, I would like to introduce Ambassador Joe Wilson to those who may be listening about who this gentleman is. He is a fellow who served with distinction in the Foreign Service of the United States in several countries, including Africa. He was our last Foreign Service agent in Baghdad before the first Persian Gulf War. And he was a pretty gutsy guy when he was in charge of the affairs of our embassy in Baghdad; gutsy enough that when Saddam Hussein threatened to hang or execute any American who tried to get Americans out of the country, Saddam was going to threaten to hold them hostage, to try to prevent the attack on the forthcoming attack in the first Persian Gulf War, threatened to kill anyone who tried to preserve and protect Americans there, Ambassador Wilson's response was to hold a press conference with a noose around his neck and basically said, Come and get me, Saddam, I will be the first to challenge you because I am taking my people home safely. And Ambassador Wilson did. We did not lose a Foreign Service person, extricating them from Iraq before the first Persian Gulf War happened. And one of the reasons that happened, one of the reasons, is that we had Ambassador Joe Wilson on the job to challenge Saddam Hussein, to stand up to that murderous thug, and deliver his people back to America without a single loss of life. He showed some courage then.

In fact, the then President Bush, who effectively hired him, who gave a press conference, on October 22, 1990, telling the world that we had a very capable, effective person there, Joe Wilson, that Saddam can talk to. Later, on January 30, 1991, the first President Bush wrote a handwritten note to Ambassador Wilson, and it is in a book that the ambassador wrote; a handwritten note from the first President Bush said, ``Dear Joe, both Barbara and I appreciate your note of January 25. Even more, we

appreciate your service to your country and your courageous leadership while you were in Baghdad. Good luck. Many thanks.'' Signed personally, ``George Bush.''

The reason I note this is that, very unfortunately, we have seen a circumstance now where the people who could have been thanking Ambassador Wilson for bringing the White House's error to their attention and to the public's attention instead are running around, and I do not know how else to categorize them other than attack dogs, trying to destroy the credibility of Ambassador Wilson. And it is very unfortunate because this is a gentleman who was honored by the first President Bush, served with distinction, and really did not deserve to have his wife attacked, his wife's career damaged, if not destroyed, really did not deserve to have the entire force of the administration of the United States come down on him and now have these multiple attacks on his reputation going on across this country; a person who has supported Republicans in the past, gave money to the first Bush campaign, was a bipartisan person before someone in this President's administration tried to destroy his wife's career, and did so. And now we have this very unfortunate attack on Ambassador Joe Wilson going across this country.

Why is that? Well, the reason is that, fortunately, Ambassador Wilson had the temerity to tell the truth. He had the temerity to stand up to the administration and blow the whistle on something they did that was wrong. And what they did that was wrong was to tell Americans that Saddam had uranium yellow cake from Niger. They admitted that they were wrong but now are trying to attack the credibility of the person who told the truth. It is very unfortunate. And they are embarrassed by that; rightfully so. And how do we know that? Well, we know what the response has been for the last year and a half while questions have been asked as to whether or not the President's close confidants were responsible for this outrage of blowing the cover of a secret agent. How do we know that?

Let us look at what the White House has done, whether they feel some potential embarrassment about this. Has the White House been forthcoming and straight with us about the involvement of people, including the Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House? Let us find out. Let us look at some quotes by the President's spokesperson. His name is Scott McClellan. He is the official spokesperson for President George Bush. Mr. McClellan was asked on July 22, 2003, the question: ``Scott, has there ever been an attempt or effort on the part of anyone here at the White House to discredit the reputations or reporting of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, his wife, or ABC Correspondent Jeffrey Kofman?''

McClellan: ``John, I think I answered that yesterday. That is not the way that this White House operates. That's not the way the President operates. No one would be authorized to do that within this White House. That is simply not the way we operate, and that's simply not the way the President operates.'' Really?

Continuing, he was asked if Karl Rove did that, and Mr. McClellan responded, ``I haven't heard that. That's just totally ridiculous. But we've already addressed this issue. I just said, it's totally ridiculous.''

Was that a slip of the tongue by Mr. McClellan? No. In fact, Mr. Rove joined in that. On September 29, ABC News, Owen asked him, Mr. Rove: ``Did you have any knowledge or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press?'' Rove: ``No.'' At which point Mr. Rove shut his car door and bid adieu. Really?

On September 29, 2003, a question was asked to Mr. McClellan: ``Has the President either asked Karl Rove to assure him that had he nothing to do with this or did Karl Rove go to the President to assure him that he . . . ''

McClellan: ``I don't think he needs that. I think I've spoken clearly to this publicly . . . I've just said there's no truth to it.''

Question: ``Yes. But I'm just wondering if there was a conversation between Karl Rove and the President or if he just talked to you and you're here at his . . . ''

McClellan: ``He wasn't involved. The President knows he wasn't involved.''

Question: ``How does he know that?''

McClellan: ``The President knows.''

Well, the question is, as was famously put, what did the President know and when did he know it? Because for a year and a half now, this White House and this administration and this President have been telling us that neither the Deputy Chief of Staff nor anyone else he knows of was responsible for this outrage. Really?

So we continue with this litany.

Scott McClellan: ``I have made very clear from the beginning that it is totally ridiculous. I have known Karl for a long time, and I didn't even need to go ask, because I know what kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct.''

Continuing, September 30, 2003: When asked, ``What would George Bush do if he found out someone was responsible for this?'' And the President said, ``Listen, I know of nobody, I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it and will take the appropriate action.''

Well, we are waiting for the appropriate action, because we since have been told by the Deputy Chief of Staff's lawyer that, in fact, he told a press agent himself personally that Joe Wilson's wife was working for the Central Intelligence Agency shortly after Ambassador Wilson came forward and told the American people the truth, I think 3 days before Mr. Novak printed an article to that effect.

We now know that, in fact, the Deputy Chief of Staff was involved in a disclosure that Joe Wilson's wife was, in fact, working for the CIA. But it was not just a few of those comments. We look at Mr. McClellan's comments later on.

On October 10, Mr. McClellan was asked, Question: ``Scott, earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliott Abrams, nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wonder if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.''

McClellan: ``I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me that they were not involved in this. And that is where it stands.''

Question: ``So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?''

McClellan: ``They assured me that they were not involved in this.''

That was not the case. Mr. McClellan was either told inaccurately by at least the Deputy Chief of Staff, or Mr. McClellan has told us a story that is not true. We do not know what it is at this point, but we do know a couple of central facts that are pivotal here. We know that a war started. Mr. Speaker, 1,700 Americans-plus of our sons and daughters will never come home from the sands of Iraq. We know that the reason for that is the President of the United States told Americans that a mushroom cloud could be imminent because, in part, Iraq had uranium yellow cake. We know that that was false.

We know that Ambassador Joe Wilson, sent by the CIA to report on that told the CIA that that was false. We know that when he told the American people the truth, that, in fact, a falsehood that had been told that is partly responsible for a war that has resulted in 1,700 Americans dead and 13,000 of our sons and daughters seriously injured. We know that he has now suffered the slings and arrows of an outraged administration that blew the cover for his wife who was a covert agent for the CIA.

We know those central facts, because the Deputy Chief of Staff's attorney now has told us the truth after a year-and-a-half of falsehoods from this administration, of giving America false information about how this outrage occurred.

Now, that was wrong. We had to have a bipartisan consensus, and I think there is in this Chamber, that both Republicans and Democrats believe it is wrong to blow the cover of an agent. The reason we believe this is very simple. We think there is a bipartisan consensus in this Chamber and in this country that secret agents ought to remain secret, and no President of either

party or anyone working for the President with access to the secret information ought to blow that cover. That happened here.

So we have to ask, Were there excuses for that? Are there excuses that we should accept that? Are there excuses that we should buy? Are there excuses that allow our secret agents and our national security to be jeopardized? Well, some people are saying this should be excused, it should be swept under the rug, Congress should not look into it, we have no business asking hard questions of the administration. The White House has suggested they are not going to talk about it. They were happy to talk about it when they said they were not involved, but, boy, as soon as they found out they were involved, they do not want to talk about this and they want Congress to just shrink away and go home quietly and not find out what happened here.

We think we need to find out what happened here. So let us see what the excuses are that they have proposed. I have been listening carefully to the White House, people now working for the President. I have been listening carefully to their political allies around the country. What excuses do they proffer for this misconduct?

I really see three. First, they argue that because the Deputy Chief of Staff did not spell out the names, the letters of the name of this secret agent, that he should be excused from destroying her covert status, because he did not use the name Valerie Plame or Valerie Wilson, he did not use those letters. All he said was, it was Joe Wilson's wife.

Well, Mr. Speaker, when you think about it, unless Joe Wilson was a polygamist, we knew exactly who he was talking about. If somebody says your wife is an undercover agent, it is pretty clear to the neighbors in the neighborhood and where she works, you know who he is talking about. In fact, it is interesting that during my comments of the last few minutes, I have been referring to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House. I never said the name Karl Rove. Never spelled out the K and the R, but we know who I am talking about. That is why anyone who wanted to know whether Valerie Wilson is a secret agent knows exactly who we were talking about and anyone she has ever talked to in her covert capacity around this world knows exactly who we are talking about, and everyone who she had lunch with in her work, working on weapons of mass destruction in the CIA, knows who he was talking about. That dog just will not hunt.

It is, frankly, insulting to the American people that their administration and their political allies argue that it is okay to out a CIA agent, as long as you do not use their name or their Social Security number. You can tell them whose wife it is, you can tell them where they work, you can tell them where they live, you can show a picture of them, but as long as you do not spell out their name, it is hunky-dory with the American people. It is not. It is wrong. It is terrible. It is an abuse of democracy and the people who work for us as undercover agents, and it will not stand.

The second excuse they use, they say, well, the Deputy Chief of Staff was just being innocent here; he was just trying to clear up some confusion about who ordered or asked Mr. Wilson to go to Africa. We know it was the CIA and, frankly, how the CIA made a decision, I am not sure is of any particular importance to anyone. I mean, what importance is it who ordered Mr. Wilson to go to Niger? If it was one person, does that change the fact that we have 1,700 dead in Iraq? Does it justify the President in using false information to precipitate a war? Does that make it okay? I frankly do not understand what difference it made, except for an effort to damage Ambassador Wilson's credibility, which apparently was going on here, sadly.

But be that as it may, let us just ask ourselves, if the Deputy Chief of Staff wanted to clear it up and said it was not the Vice President who precipitated this expedition to Niger, he did not have to mention Joe Wilson's name, his wife's name or identify her. He simply could have said it was not the Vice President, it was someone else at the

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 14 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, July 18, 2005, at 12:30 p.m., for morning hour debates.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the House floor today as part of the ongoing effort of myself and some of my colleagues in an endeavor we style the Iraq Watch. The Iraq Watch is a group of Members who are committed to the principle that we should not forget the Iraq war, a war started based on false information and based on the principle that Members of Congress owe it to the American citizens to continue our inquiry, to continue our critique, continue to review the operations of the administration in the initiation and the prosecution of the efforts in Iraq.

We do so because we have a heartfelt and deep belief that we owe this to our troops in the field who are performing with valor and distinction in Iraq; we owe it to American citizens whose sons and daughters and wives and husbands have been called away to Iraq; we owe it to those who believe that the prosecution of war should not result in the reduction of American civil liberties; and we do it in the name of those who believe that even during the fear and anxiety caused by war that we still as citizens must demand our elected officials recognize and respect basic matters of American democracy.

In these issues, the effort we have been involved with for over a year now about once every couple of weeks, we believe that the administration regrettably has fallen very, very short of what American citizens ought to demand of their Federal Government. So today, in a continuing series of the Iraq Watch, we intend to talk about several aspects leading up to the war and a matter that has now become of very great public interest.

If I may note, it is with great sadness I note the passing of an American Marine today in operations in Iraq, to add that proud Marine to the names of over 1,750 Americans who have lost their lives in Iraq, the over 13,000 Americans who have had very serious injuries in Iraq and to those families who will not have their family members coming home. I know every Member of this Chamber of both parties, our thoughts, prayers and compassion are with every one of those families.

It is in part because of their continuing sacrifice in Iraq that we feel very strongly that Members of the House of Representatives have an obligation, a duty not to just let things slide by, to let this administration just sort of pass by unchallenged and uncriticized in the prosecution of this war. We believe this Chamber, which is the people's House, has an obligation to blow the whistle when things are done wrong, to force the administration to fess up to mistakes they have made, and to hopefully get back on track in this Nation where we are seriously off track at the moment.

What I would like to talk about in Iraq Watch today is a very serious issue that resulted in part on the initiation of this war, and that is that leading up to this war, the administration, the President of the United States, exercised their best efforts to convince Americans that Iraq had or was very close to developing a nuclear capacity and that this was a primary rationale for the President of the initiation of the war in Iraq.

Indeed, in the President's State of the Union address standing right behind me in this Chamber, the President of the United States addressed the joint session of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs, members of the Cabinet, and most importantly the American people; and he told the American people that our intelligence services had learned that Iraq had in fact obtained what is called uranium yellow cake, and he told the American people that this was well established. This yellow cake is a mineral from which uranium fissionable material can be developed, it is a precursor to an atomic weapon, and its acquisition would be of concern to the American people.

The President told the American people that this was a fact, that there was no doubt about this fact and that as a result of that, he led this Nation, against many of our positions against the war, myself included, in a war based on what turned out to be false information. We know it is false information for two reasons: one, because we have now gone through the most extensive search for weapons of mass destruction in human history in Iraq and found zero, zero yellow cake, zero precursors to nuclear weapons, zero triggering devices for nuclear weapons, zero indication that the things the President had told us were fact, in fact, turned out to be falsehoods and a war has resulted and 1,700 of our sons and daughters have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the sands of Iraq and that is continuing.

We had an earlier notice that this was false. The earlier notice we had was because the Central Intelligence Agency had concerns about this issue. Before the President's State of the Union address, they had received some suggestions that this was not fact and in fact was hyperbole at best and in fact that this claim about yellow cake may have been false.

So they dispatched a gentleman who had previously served with distinction in the Foreign Service, a gentleman named Joe Wilson, to Niger from which this yellow cake was supposedly obtained by Saddam Hussein, this brutal thug, this dictator who had caused so much damage in the world; and Joe Wilson, continuing in many of his patriotic duties, went to Niger to investigate this claim. What Mr. Wilson found was that this claim was, in laymen's terms, bogus. He came back to the United States and he reported to the agency that in fact this was a fraudulent claim, there was not a basis for it, it was highly unlikely that any such transaction took place and highly unlikely that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellow cake. He issued a written report in that regard, or a written report was generated from his report.

Yet despite the fact that an agent dispatched by our government went to Niger, the scene of this alleged crime, and reported back that this was a falsehood, the President of the United States told the American people that this was one basis that we had to send our sons and daughters into mortal combat in Iraq; and it was flat, plain false.

Why did that happen? Before I tell you a little bit about the story that occurred after that, I want to tell you just a little bit about Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson has served with distinction in the State Department. Joe Wilson is a guy who does not fit the mold of a person with sort of a pinstriped suit. He is a foreign diplomat who, to use the vernacular in the main street, has guts. Joe Wilson was the last American

State Department official out of Iraq before the Persian Gulf War; and he was responsible, according to the first President Bush who honored him for his work leading up to the first Persian Gulf war when he was stationed in Baghdad, he was honored for helping save scores of Americans to get them out of Baghdad before the first Persian Gulf war started because, as you recall, Saddam Hussein had threatened Americans, to kill them when the war started when they were still in Baghdad.

Saddam Hussein essentially threatened with death anyone who helped Americans get out of Baghdad before the first Persian Gulf war. Joe Wilson, who was sort of our agent in charge of the embassy in Baghdad then, went down and held a press conference with a rope around his neck and said, you can come get me first, Saddam, because I am taking my people home. That is exactly what he did. He faced down that brutal dictator at the cost potentially of his own life to help American lives.

It was interesting. I just met a woman by accident 2 weeks ago who served in the Foreign Service who told me that Joe once went, and just before the war, to take care of some children who had been moved back to Iraq from the United States, to try to save them before the war started at great risk to his own life. Joe Wilson is a guy with guts who stood up for American lives and did it when he went to Niger to report on this yellow cake, who reported accurately, who served his country; and the President of the United States, after he gave him the truth, got up, stood right there and told the American people that there was yellow cake from Niger and it was false. Joe Wilson is someone we owe a debt of gratitude to.

What has happened to Joe Wilson since he told the truth about the President's war in Iraq? Did this administration give accolades to this Joe Wilson the way the first President Bush did? No. Did they call him up and thank him for pointing out this error in the State of the Union address? No. Was a letter sent by the President of the United States to thank him for his courage in standing up to Saddam Hussein like the first President Bush did? No. Did the President of the United States or the State Department or Scott McClellan or anyone else thank Joe Wilson for his contribution for telling the truth to the American people? No.

What did this administration do to this citizen who shared the truth with the American people? It is a sad story, but I am going to share it with you and you know it. What they did was to go after his wife to try to damage her, to hurt her career, to punish Joe Wilson for pointing out the truth. We should expect any administration, Democrat, Republican or whatever party, to punish lies, not to punish the truth. But this administration punished a truth-teller and frankly an American, maybe hero is too strong, but I think it approaches, a guy who showed some real courage under fire in Baghdad once before and in Niger a second time and they punished him. They punished him. They could not get to him, so they went after his wife.

I do not know what is a lower thing to do under the code of the West in American Western Civilization, to go after a truth-teller's wife, to punish them when he has told the truth and spoken the truth to power.

It is difficult to speak truth to power and Joe Wilson did it, and look at what he got as a result. What he got was essentially an outing of his wife who news reports suggest worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as a covert agent, an agent undercover, and what he got were press reports because of an administration we now know leaks intentional leaks to the media to disclose that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

What a ``thank you'' to an American who did something at the request of this administration. What a great note of appreciation to essentially, number one, destroy his wife's career because once one is outed in the CIA, of course, they cannot be a covert agent anymore, number one; number two, potentially jeopardize her safety when she has been a covert agent working on weapons of mass destruction issues; number three, jeopardize the people whom she worked with who now could be suspect in her covert operations; and, number four, damage the national security of the United States by compromising a CIA agent, which this administration did.

Now, who did this in this administration? There has been some suggestion about that. There has been some suggestion that one, at least of the administration people who did this, is the Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House, and that Deputy Chief of Staff, when questions were raised a long time ago about that, about whether the Deputy Chief of Staff had, in fact, disclosed this information, let us ask as Americans whether this administration upheld its obligation to us to tell the truth. We elect the President of the United States. It is an exalted and important position, but they do work for us, and they owe us the obligation of truth in matters of national security.

Let us find out what the President's officials and the administration officials told Americans about this subject in the last several years, whether the Deputy Chief of the White House was responsible for or involved in any way in this issue. We have a briefing on July 22, 2003, a briefing where Scott McClellan, who is the press secretary for the President, on July 22, 2003, in the White House, a question was asked: ``Scott, has there ever been an attempt or effort on the part of anyone here at the White House to discredit the reputations or reporting of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, his wife, or ABC correspondent Jeffrey Kofman?''

McClellan: ``John, I think I answered that yesterday. That is not the way that this White House operates. That's not the way the President operates . . . No one would be authorized to do that within this White House. That is simply not the way we operate, and that's simply not the way the President operates.''

We would like the administration not to operate that, to leak information about CIA agents, to punish somebody who told the truth. We will see a little later in this conversation whether they did.

July 23, 2003, answer by Mr. McClellan, when asked if Karl Rove did that, Mr. McClellan said, ``I haven't heard that. That's just totally ridiculous. But we've already addressed this issue. I just said, it's totally ridiculous.''

We go on to an interview with Mr. Rove on September 6, 2003, Andrea Owen of ABC asked Mr. Rove, ``Did you have any knowledge or did you leak the name of a CIA agent to the press?''

Rove: ``No.''

September 29, 2003, again to Mr. McClellan: ``Has the President either asked Karl Rove to assure him that he had nothing to do with this, or did Karl Rove go to the President to assure him that he . . . ''

McClellan: ``I don't think he needs that. I think I've spoken clearly to this publicly . . . I've just said there's no truth to it.''

Question: ``Yes. But I'm just wondering if there was a conversation between Karl Rove and the President or if he just talked to you and you're here at this . . . ''

McClellan. ``He wasn't involved. The President knows he wasn't involved.''

Question: ``How does he know that?''

McClellan. ``The President knows.''

We now have at least four instances where the President of the United States, through his spokesperson, has told us that the Deputy Chief of Staff was not involved in any way, in any way, at disclosing this information to destroy a CIA agent's career. But it is not just four times.

On September 29, 2003, question to Mr. McClellan: ``Weeks ago, when you were first asked whether Mr. Rove had the conversation with Robert Novak that produced the column, you dismissed it as ridiculous. And I wanted just to make sure, at that time, had you talked to Karl?''

Answer by McClellan: ``I've made it very clear from the beginning that it is totally ridiculous. I've known Karl for a long time, and I didn't even need to go ask Karl because I know the kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct.''

A question to the President. Essentially people are starting to ask what will the President do when he finds out who leaked this information. Well, let us find out what the President said he would do.

On September 30, 2003, question: ``Yesterday we were told that Karl Rove had no role in it . . . ''

The President: ``Yes.''

Question: ``Have you talked to Karl and do you have confidence in him . . .''

The President: ``Listen, I know of nobody--I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.''

October 1, McClellan: ``The President doesn't condone the activity that you're suggesting, absolutely he does not.''

October 7, and I will skip the question for a moment. McClellan: ``I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me that they were not involved in this.'' And that included Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams, and Lewis Libby. ``And that's where it stands.''

Question: ``So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?''

McClellan: ``They assured me that they were not involved in this.''

So the President subsequently said he would do what he should do if he found someone was involved in any way in leaking information. He said he would fire them. And when he was in Europe last week, when he was asked what he would do if he found that out, when asked if he would fire them, he said yes. So we have this situation where we now find, through hard evidence admitted by the lawyer for the Deputy Chief of Staff, that, in fact, Mr. Rove told Mr. Cooper, a news reporter, that, in fact, he told him that Joe Wilson's wife worked through for the Central Intelligence Agency.

And for 2 years now, the official position of the President of the United States telling the American people has said, My Deputy Chief of Staff had nothing to do with this, never mentioned it, never leaked a word, never hushed it, never gave an inclination about it, totally ridiculous. And now we know the sordid truth. And it is sordid. It is sad. We should be talking about some other things here rather than this. But we believe that the truth is important to the American people.

Americans deserve the truth. They deserve not to have an administration to punish Americans who stand up against power, and that is what they did.

We now find phase one a failure of the administration to hush this up and bury this story. They denied it for 2 years. They said it was ridiculous for 2 years. They tried to suppress this information for 2 years. They refused to be candid with the American people for 2 years, and that approach has failed. So what approach are they now using to try to wiggle out from this most terrible abuse of our national security? Let us go through their sort of defenses now.

By the way, it is interesting the White House now refuses to comment on this. That has not stopped the majority party talk machine from launching an all-out offensive against Mr. Wilson today. We can read-- they're still defaming Mr. Wilson today. They still have not given up thinking that if they can destroy Mr. Wilson that we will forget about the falsehood that the President used in starting this war. We are not going to forget because this really is not about Mr. Wilson. It is about our sons and daughters in Iraq. And it is about American democracy and our right to have the President tell us the truth. And we are not going to forget.

So let us see what strategies they are using now rather than just suppressing the truth. They are using the strategy that Mr. Rove did not use the name Valerie Plame. All he said was it was Joe Wilson's wife who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency; therefore, they think no harm, no foul. Whom do the Members think they are identifying if not Valerie Plame? Unless Karl Rove thought that Joe Wilson was a polygamist, had ten wives so we could not tell which one it was, it is pretty clear whom he was identifying.

Just like I started this Special Order today and I made reference to the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House, everyone knew whom I was talking about. I did not use his name, but we know who it was. That dog just will not hunt. It is embarrassing. It is embarrassing to try to fall back on that as some excuse for violating the security laws of the United States. So that one will not work.

Second, they argued that, well, it was unintentional, did not really intend to do this. That might be because we all make mistakes, we all make misstatements, we all misspeak on occasion, myself included. Perhaps we should just forgive and forget that. Except for one thing. It is clear it was not. It is clear it was not a simple accident. The reason we know it was not a simple accident is for 2 years they covered up the truth of what happened. When people act guilty and suppress the truth, frequently it means they were guilty. And this was not innocent conduct where for 2 years the White House was saying it was ridiculous that Karl Rove would be involved in this, ridiculous. I actually think it is ridiculous now that they are not taking responsibility and being accountable. We should not have to be arguing about this right now.

They say that they were just explaining, they were just explaining how Mr. Wilson happened to be in Niger. Mr. Rove could have just explained very easily by saying some people close to Mr. Wilson knew him and wanted to send him to Niger. That could have preserved the cover of this CIA agent, and there would have been no problem.

So what we are seeing is a collapse of excuses. This is a collapse of a fabricated effort to protect the Deputy Chief of Staff, which I understand. The Deputy Chief of Staff has been a loyal lieutenant and adviser to the President of the United States, and we can all, to some degree, respect loyalty. But when it comes down to a situation where the President is forced, through his spokesperson, to continue to not tell the truth to the American people, as it has happened here, it is unhealthy for the administration. It is unhealthy for America, and this boil needs to get lanced. It needs to get resolved. We cannot go on with this cloud hanging over the country. It needs resolution.

That is why in the next few days, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) and myself and other Members will offer a resolution of inquiry calling on the U.S. House of Representatives to get to the bottom of what happened in this situation. And this is a very simple thing that will simply request, actually require, the administration to provide answers to the American people of what happened here once and for all. We need to get this resolved and behind us. We need to find a way, a bipartisan way, to bring our troops home; to find some way to leave Iraq a stable place and bring our troops home. And we need to be involved in a bipartisan attempt to do this rather than arguing about this situation.

But until the administration is candid with the American people and we know why an administration punished an American citizen for, number one, going to Niger as requested by the CIA; telling the truth to the administration, number two; three, having the courage to tell the public about it after the President stated a falsehood during his State of the Union address; and fourth, refusing to be intimidated, and I respect people who are not intimidated by power.

Joe Wilson is not intimidated by power. He was not intimidated in Baghdad, and he is not intimidated now. We will not be intimidated to get to the bottom of this sordid affair. That is why we hope that on a bipartisan basis we will pass a resolution of inquiry calling to get answers to what happened in this sorry situation. Americans deserve it. It will help us move forward to get to the issues that we need to do.

Now, let me also talk about why perhaps, today and the last 2 days, if you have happened to watch the press conferences at the White House, you have noticed Mr. McClellan has been besieged by people who wanted to provide Americans the truth as we now know it about what actually happened here. Now, after telling us for 2 years, being quite willing to talk about this, saying this is ridiculous, this was just a fishing expedition, and that we should not bother with those little people over there in the corner who want to know the truth about this, now, all of a sudden, Mr. McClellan does not want to talk about this anymore. Why is that?

You have to ask yourself why, after being so loquacious about this for 2 years, now they do not want to talk about it. Well, I think it is understandable when you think about it.

Think about this: Mr. McClellan told the American people that the President knows that the Deputy Chief of Staff was not involved in this, that it was ridiculous. The Deputy Chief of Staff says, no, I was not involved in this. The President of the United States says, no, he was not involved in this, and people who were, we would fire them.

Now, you take those three individuals, somebody is not telling the truth. Somebody is not being entirely candid with the American people. The Deputy Chief of Staff is not being candid with the President, perhaps, or the Deputy Chief of Staff is not being candid with the press secretary, perhaps, or the press secretary is not being candid with the American people, perhaps. There is a third possibility, and I am not even going to suggest it on the floor of this House. But somebody is not being candid with the American people about why an American was punished for doing his duty when he was asked to go to Niger.

I mean, you think about that. You imagine if the Federal Government tomorrow called you and said, I have this tough task. I want you to go to Africa where it is dusty and hot and a big day is when you get some sugar in your tea, and I want you to find out if there is yellow cake there because we are trying to decide whether to start a war or not. It is a big, big deal. And you go there, essentially out of retirement, and you bring back the truthful answer, and you give it to the administration. They then ignore your conclusion and put it in the State of the Union address anyway, a war is talked about to be started; you have the guts enough to write an op-ed in The New York Times telling America what you concluded, and, all of a sudden, the entire Federal Government comes after you and destroys your wife's career. That should not happen to any American of any political persuasion. And that principle is an important one.

This is not the only time this has happened in America. You recall back in the Vietnam era where there was an author who was critical of President Nixon's war in Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg; and he published in The New York Times some information that was critical of the President. So what did the President do? Did he thank him for sharing this information with the public? No. He had people burglarize Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in order to get information to destroy Daniel Ellsberg's credibility. That President tried to destroy their critic's credibility, and that is what happened here. A different way, a different strategy, a different effort, same goal: punish critics of the administration.

We went through a Revolutionary War to get rid of King George because we believed citizens rule the country and when citizens exercise their right of free speech and they tell the truth, nobody here in Washington, D.C. ought to be able to punish them. It was a principle worth going to the Revolutionary War about it. And in a small way, we are fighting it right here: that if you are a citizen and you tell the truth, nobody should be able to punish you, even the most powerful person in America. That is why we are filing this resolution of inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), who has provided great leadership and who was working on this subject last year to try to bring to the attention of the country this issue. He has shown a lot of courage on this. I thank the gentleman for joining us today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I have to say, one of the troublesome things to me now that this disclosure has come up, here the person, at least one, there might be more people who are responsible for this besides the Deputy Chief of Staff; there may be more than one, but at least one was a person who talks to the President at least several times a day. I cannot understand when this came out why the President did not demand his inner circle to give him an affidavit saying they were not involved in this, and get to the heart of this.

Instead, the President of the United States, who works across the desk from the gentleman who is at least one of the people responsible for this leak, the most powerful man in the world could not get a straight answer. Now, if he did not get a straight answer on this important thing, then the President should exercise what he promised the American people he would do, which is to send that person on to other pursuits, and we will see whether the President meant what he said in that regard shortly.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman and mention one other thing and ask for his response. There is one other excuse that we are hearing floated about this today, and I have heard some people defending the White House saying, well, this was not really that big of a deal. We might have said there was yellow cake in there anyway, because we really did not know; we would have thrown that up in the State of the Union address anyway.

So no harm, no foul. I want to read something that Secretary of State Rice said on July 26, 2003, ``My only point is that in retrospect, knowing that some of the documents underneath may have been, were indeed forgeries, and knowing that apparently there were concerns swirling around about this, had we known that at the time, we would not have put it in. And if there had been even a peep that the Agency did not want that sentence, or that George Tenet did not want that sentence in, that the Director of Central Intelligence did not want it in, it would not have been done.''

Here we have the person sent by the CIA to get this information, reported back these were forgeries, reporting back it is highly unlikely there is yellow cake there, but the President put it in anyway, and then Secretary Rice was candid.

She said we should not have put that in. So let us not let this sort of octopus defense of squirting ink around this thing obscure a central truth. The President gave false information to the American people, and for one reason or the another did not report what his own agent, the CIA, had sent, and then his administration punished that person.

This cries out for action by Congress.

Would it be fair to say that if these assertions are true, someone put political convenience ahead of national security? I will make that a rhetorical question.

Well, we would stand for the proposition that political pettiness does not justify a breach of national security. I hope we can have bipartisan consensus on that.

I would like to yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey).

I think you bring a very good point about Congress's obligation to investigate the executive branch. We do have a checks- and-balances system here. I think that is very important in this case, because essentially the President has said, as he said yesterday, look, this is a criminal investigation, so I have no responsibility whatsoever, he implied this, to find out what happened here.

He says, you know, there is a prosecutor here, so I have no responsibility to find out if people who work literally

in my office had outed a security agent for punishment for someone telling the truth.

Whether there was a crime or not, any President, and this President has said so, should fire a person who discloses secret information of a covert agent's identity in part to punish a person who told the truth in criticizing the administration.

Even if that is not a crime, it is a crime against the code of the west and the expectations of millions of Americans, where we do not allow our elected officials to punish us for criticizing the administration. We do not allow a President's agents to jeopardize a man's wife who is a secret agent, and expose their two young children, and this couple have two of the most delightful young children that you will ever meet in your life, and you can assume that this covert agent for the CIA mother has the same concerns about her children that you would when you are a covert agent and someone has blown your cover, and then they attack Mr. Wilson's wife.

The President has an obligation that goes beyond simply upholding this felony laws of America. His obligation to Americans is greater than that. And he ought to call these people in and say, did you have anything to do with this? And if they did, he needs to make a decision about their continued employment. And yet he refuses to do that. That is most troublesome. You know, there are fifth amendment privileges. There are all of these little technicalities in the law. This is not a technicality, we are standing up for the proposition that Americans should not be abused in this regard.

We are running out of time. I want to yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson).

I think the Congresswoman has brought up another point, and that is, the nature of this agent who is a covert agent operating under cover for her own protection, and those people, as the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) indicated, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) indicated, the people that she worked with, the people that she had lunch with in various countries around the world are now suspect.

But it was interesting in the litany of excuses for this misconduct that we have heard out of the White House for the last few days or at least their operatives around the country, one of the excuses I have heard is that the deputy chief of staff, Mr. Rove, did not know that this CIA agent was a covert agent. He just did not know that.

And, therefore, he wants to excuse that misbehavior since he did not know she was covert. Maybe she could have been just a receptionist at the front desk. There is a problem with that. When you out a CIA agent, you darn well better know whether they are covert or not before you violate your security clearance in outing that CIA agent.

And unless we hear a real good reason that Mr. Rove asked the CIA and was told inappropriately or something, there is no excuse for someone in the highest levels of government, with supposedly the sophistication working at the right hand of the President of the United States, not to know you did not out a CIA agent knowing they could be covert.

The damage that has been done here to our security, to Joe Wilson's spouse, to our trust in the Federal Government, was occasioned, regardless of the intention of the deputy chief of staff, one way or another there has been an abuse of both the family and our sense of national security.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for joining me.

I would like to conclude with a couple of comments. This is the greatest Nation on Earth, and it is the greatest because it works on a principle that our citizens should be in control of our democracy, not people in power.

It works on the assumption that that power will not be abused. It works on the principle that our elected officials will tell us the truth. It works on the principles that people's wives should not be attacked when a person fulfills their patriotic duty to go to Africa and ferret out the truth.

It works on the principle that people are human and they can make mistakes; but when they make mistakes, they ought to be candid and forthright with Americans. And the sooner the President of the United States is forthright and tells us what happened in this situation, the better off both for the White House and for us as a whole. And if it refuses to do that, which it is now stonewalling in its finest tradition of those who were caught red-handed, it is refusing to give Americans information.

That is why this House of Representatives needs to pass this resolution of inquiry so that we can have a bipartisan review of what happened here. Why? So that we can regain the bipartisan trust we need to go forward with and deal with our pressing problems in Iraq, our pressing problems with the threat of terrorism, and we can get back on track in this government.

Before I close, I want to thank the Wilson family for their courage in going to Africa. I want to thank Mrs. Wilson for her courage as an employee of the CIA. I want to thank them for their courage in standing up to the administration that has so willfully abused them. And I hope that the truth that they have worked so hard to bring to the American people will ultimately prevail in this affair.