Intelligence Committee Reorganization

INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE REORGANIZATION-CONTINUED

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, after conversation with the managers, I believe we have other issues to address. I think everybody is familiar with this issue. If it is agreeable to the managers, perhaps we could have an agreement.

How much time does the Senator from Connecticut want?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Five minutes.

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the McCain amendment. The McCain amendment is part of the package of legislation Senator McCain and I and others introduced on September 7 to implement all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. That is why I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the amendment.

Governor Kean, Congressman Hamilton, members of the Commission made clear to Congress that they had three major and most urgent recommendations. The first was to create a national intelligence director, the second was to create a National Coun ter ter ror ism Center, and the third was to reform the way in which Congress oversees intelligence.

The first two, the national intelligence director and coun ter ter ror ism center, we accomplished yesterday in passing the bill that came out of our Governmental Affairs Committee. Senator Collins and I joked along the way that maybe we got the easier assignment than Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, who had to deal with Congress's own internal organization. I believe they have done well.

I do want to say a few things, and I will have more to say about this in a bit.

With regard to homeland security, the legislation Senator McCain and I introduced embracing the 9/11 Commission said that Congress should either establish a new committee with sole jurisdiction over homeland security or give that jurisdiction to another existing committee.

Senator Reid and Senator McConnell and the working group chose to give that jurisdiction to the Governmental Affairs Committee on which I am privileged to serve. At the same time, it is significant to note that it is now going to be called the Committee on Homeland Security but at same time large chunks of the homeland security jurisdiction-the Coast Guard and Transportation Security Administration, now part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service-have been taken back by the other committees. That is the kind of action that encourages those who are cynical about this Chamber, and I hope we can try to do better on that.

With regard to the oversight of intelligence, the working group made a significant reform proposal which sponsors have described. But the McCain amendment embraces the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, which I still respectfully believe is the better course to follow, which is to combine the expertise of the intelligence community and their considerable staff in authorizing with the power to appropriate and in that sense to make sure that this most critical aspect of the war on terrorism, intelligence, has the most active and informed and aggressive oversight from Congress.

The enormous achievement that the legislation we adopted yesterday represents in reforming our intelligence and homeland security apparatus will not fully be realized, or may go astray, unless there is the strongest possible congressional involvement in oversight. I believe this amendment will provide for that. That is why I rise to support it.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. I rise to support this amendment. When the 9/11 Commission Report came out-and the Commissioners said the top three priorities were the creation of a national intelligence director; second, national coun ter ter ror ism center; and, third, reform of congressional oversight of intelligence and homeland security functions-a lot of cynics said none of this is going to be easy; maybe they will be able to reorganize the administrative branch of our Government, but they will never do the job themselves on themselves.

I am afraid the Senate is in the process of proving the cynics right, and it is a shame. We are creating a shell here. This is like a shell game. We are calling a committee a homeland security committee, but if you pick up the shell, there is not much homeland security under it.

I remember when the Department of Homeland Security legislation, in the aftermath of September 11, was brought before our committee and before the Congress. This was originally a recommendation of the Hart-Rudman Commission which some of us picked up and advocated here in the Congress.

During the legislative consideration of the Homeland Security Department, almost every agency that is now a part of the Department came to us and said: We can't go to this Department; it is too big; we can't work together. We appealed to them that they had to put their own interests aside, and in the aftermath of September 11, a national crisis which proved we were not organized to protect our homeland, they had to get together in one department and make it work for the public's benefit. We accomplished that in the Department, and they are now. It has not all been smooth, but I don't think there is anybody who would say we are not safer today than we were before the creation of the Department of Homeland Security because they are all working together.

That is why the 9/11 Commission said, if you want to do effective oversight of homeland security, if you want to make sure the Secretary of Homeland Security is not spending so much time jumping around from committee to committee up here in Congress but actually protecting the homeland, then create one homeland security committee of the Senate and the House.

I have no particular argument to be made about which committee that should be. In the legislation Senator McCain and I put in, we mirrored the report of the 9/11 Commission: Either give one existing committee all of the homeland security oversight legislatively or create a whole new committee on homeland security. The Senate is on a path to do neither and, therefore, not meet the challenge of the 9/11 Commission and the challenge of our current circumstances in the war on terrorism to create such a committee.

Here in this amendment, Senator McCain is trying to restore to the Governmental Affairs Committee, or being renamed the homeland security committee, the Transportation Security Administration. The total Department of Homeland Security has 175,000 employees. TSA has more than 51,000. Its functions are totally with regard to homeland security. Incidentally, the Coast Guard is totally within the Homeland Security Department. There may have been some misunderstanding about that here. Some of its functions are clearly not directed to homeland security. But TSA is totally homeland security. It belongs in the Department of Homeland Security, and it belongs in the committee designated here in the Senate to do oversight and authorization of homeland security.

So I appeal to my colleagues, if you want to give this title to the Governmental Affairs Committee, fine. Senator Collins and I and members of our committee will do the best job we can. But if you are giving us the title, give us the responsibility to do the job right. If not, give it all to another committee or create a new committee. But right now, remembering the famous old saying about "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck," we are creating a committee that does not have the budgetary authorization for most of the Department of Homeland Security, does not oversee most of the employees of the Department of Homeland Security, and we are calling it the committee on homeland security. It is not. And I do not see a good reason for doing it other than business as usual here in the Senate.

So I appeal to my colleagues, let's do what is right for the country and put all of this in one committee. You can decide which one you want it to be. It does not have to be the one I happen to be ranking Democrat on. But let's do what is right and put it in one committee.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise, with a lot of respect for the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Vermont, to oppose this amendment. I do so because it continues the stripping away of jurisdiction from the newly designated
committee on homeland security over more and more of what constitutes the Homeland Security Department.

The recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to improve congressional oversight of homeland security and to allow the leadership of the Homeland Security Department to spend more time protecting our homeland and less time running from committee to committee here in Congress was to create one committee on homeland security with jurisdiction over all aspects of the Homeland Security Department.

The Homeland Security Department includes 175,807 employees. Now, employees are not the only measure of jurisdiction, but let's start with that number and then say that the bill brought before us by the working group immediately took out 45,000 from the Coast Guard, now under the Homeland Security Department, and 51,000 from the Transportation Security Administration. Add to that an amendment offered by my friends from the Judiciary Committee today which took back a good part of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Service Enforcement, which will be shared in some part with Homeland Security and Customs & Border Protection, and you are at a point where jurisdiction over well over half-heading toward almost all-of the Department of Homeland Security employees is no longer under the committee we are establishing to oversee the Department of Homeland Security.

I will repeat what I said earlier about the Transportation Security Agency authority. Our committee recommended the creation of a Department of Homeland Security after September 11. Why are we here? We are here because we were attacked on September 11, and we looked back and said: We were not ready. We were not organized to defend our people. So we proposed the creation of the Homeland Security Department.

Almost every agency we wanted to bring together in that Department protested: We want to be on our own turf. We want our own ground. But we pushed forward because there was a larger national interest. We prevailed, and we brought all these agencies together-one department. And it is working. We brought them together for the synergy of them working together to protect our national security in an age of terrorists who hate us more than they love their own lives and have shown that over and over again.

So here comes another amendment to take the Secret Service, which is in the Department of Homeland Security, away from the oversight and jurisdiction of what we are calling the Homeland Security Department. We are beginning to make the homeland security committee look like a house without rooms in it or not as many rooms as are supposed to be there, or like a shell, when you pick it up and there is not much under it even though it says "homeland security" on the top. That is a shell game, and this adds only to that trend.

Now, look, there are a lot of committees that could claim some relationship to different subparts of the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. LEAHY. Will the Senator yield on that point?

The fact is, they are a distinct entity within homeland security. We have carved out that distinct entity for the Secret Service because of their law enforcement role. The distinguished Senator from Connecticut had no problem with carving out the Coast Guard, and the Coast Guard-

Mr. LIEBERMAN. There is a problem.

Mr. LEAHY. But it has been done. It has been accepted.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Not done by me.

Mr. LEAHY. It was not objected to by you, and it was accepted.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. It was indeed, and we are still working on an amendment to try to see if we can right that wrong. I say to the Senator from Vermont, with all respect, I understand your question. The point is, if we were doing this right, everything in the Homeland Security Department would be overseen by the homeland security committee. That is what the 9/11 Commission called for.

Mr. LEAHY. If I might respond to that, if we were doing this right, we would not have brought out something put together behind closed doors. I am not accusing the Senator from Connecticut of doing that, but we suddenly have this thing plopped on our desks as people are leaving for the long-promised recess, and we are told: Here, we just have to put this all together right now. It is not the way to do it. We have not had hearings. We have not done anything like that. I think had we had those hearings, had we discussed it, you would have found a vast majority of Americans would assume the Secret Service carries out their law enforcement functions.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, if I may, here is the basic point. The Secret Service is now part of homeland security. The Homeland Security Department should be overseen by the homeland security committee. I was not behind those closed doors, if they existed. My understanding is the working group leadership spoke to the ranking members on each of the committees. I may be wrong. I did not do that. That is what I heard.

But let me explain. The Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Utah have cited context between the Judiciary Committee and the Secret Service. As I say, there are so many committees that can cite context in one way or another with different components of the Homeland Security Department. But let me tell you why the Secret Service was put into the Homeland Security Department.

Obviously, the Secret Service is best known for its mission in protecting the Nation's highest elected leaders as well as visiting heads of state. It is entirely appropriate that the department responsible for safeguarding the security of this Nation includes an agency which is responsible for protecting its top leaders who, tragically, in this age may be targets of terrorism.

Since 1998, when President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 62, the Secret Service has assumed responsibility for planning, coordinating, and implementing security operations at all national special security events. And what is the great fear at such events? Terrorism. These national events, like the Olympics or the political party conventions, are important to our country and, unfortunately, enticing targets to terrorists if they are not defended. It is the Secret Service that is responsible for planning, coordinating, and implementing those security operations-another obvious reason why it should be in the Homeland Security Department.

What has being there allowed the Secret Service to do? To draw on the expertise and resources of the different agencies within the Department of Homeland Security to support the Secret Service's protective missions as well, of course, as to share the Service's own expertise and experience with the other agencies in the Department to help them do their job better.

Some of the unique responsibilities of the Secret Service are particularly relevant to terrorism. The Secret Service has responsibility for identity theft in various forms and methods. This is one of the terrorists' primary tools, assuming identities not their own to break through the defenses our country sets up. The ability to identify and prevent the proliferation of false identifications is critically important to the Department's mission of identifying terrorists and stopping them before they strike us, and that is the Secret Service's responsibility.

The Secret Service also has responsibility for the protection of important national buildings, including the White House, the Vice President's residence, foreign missions, and other important buildings in the Nation's Capital which, tragically, sadly, in our age, are also prime targets for terrorists. Those are the reasons why the Secret Service has been placed in the Department of Homeland Security.

But again, I come back to the main point. Are we going to do what we say we are going to do or are we going to false advertise? We say we are going to respond to the 9/11 Commission's recommendations for a committee on homeland security. I have said before and I will say it again, the Governmental Affairs Committee has had some experience in homeland security so we are a natural place to put it. But I haven't sought it.

What I seek is the willingness to reorganize ourselves to the same extent that we have been willing to reorganize the executive branch, by creating the Department of Homeland Security and now a national intelligence director. With all respect to my friends on Judiciary, this is just another step to stopping us from achieving that mission, from meeting the challenge that the 9/11 Commission has set before us-and the request of the families of 9/11-to organize ourselves in a way that we can perform the kind of oversight that will mean we are doing everything humanly possible to prevent anything such as September 11 from happening again.

I hope we will draw the line on what is sucking out the insides of what we are calling a committee on homeland security.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, let me sum up. This amendment poses the question, Are we really going to do what the 9/11 Commission asked us to do, which is to create a committee to oversee the Department of Homeland Security? That is what it is all about.

We reorganized the Federal Government executive branch to better protect our homeland security. The Commission says we have to reorganize our oversight to be able to protect our homeland security. That is what the proposal of the Commission is all about.

We are getting to a point, as we begin to take all these pieces out, where it is a sham, as I have said before. What we are calling a homeland security committee is not really. It is as if you had a cat, and you put a little necklace around its neck with a sign that said, "I am a horse," and expected people to think the cat was a horse.

We are at a point now where we are calling this committee the homeland security committee, and it is not.

Let me go to the numbers in closing. There are 175,000 employees in the Department. The McConnell-Reid proposal takes out the Coast Guard and TSA. That is 97,000 of those 175,000 employees gone. Earlier today, my friends from the Judiciary Committee took back Immigration, Customs enforcement, Customs, and border protection, another almost 19,000 employees gone from what is supposed to be the oversight committee of homeland security.

It was said earlier that what is left is a lot in our committee-three of the four directorates. OK, I know the number of employees does not say everything, but it does say a lot. Three directorates left in the oversight responsibility of the committee we are calling the homeland security committee, three directorates from DHS: emergency preparedness, 4,800 employees; intelligence analysis and infrastructure protection, 700 employees; science and technology, about 200 employees. We have about 5,700 employees left in the three directorates that come under the new committee on homeland security from the Homeland Security Department. That is 5,700 out of a total of 175,000 in the Department.

Let me give this stunning statistic, Mr. President. Are you ready? The Secret Service itself has 6,381 employees. That is about 500 more employees than in the three directorates that are left clearly within the jurisdiction of the committee being called the homeland security committee.

As I have said, if you want to give the responsibility for oversight of homeland security to another committee, do it. If you want to create a new committee on homeland security, do it. But if you are going to call it a committee on homeland security, then give it jurisdiction over homeland security.

A lot of the reality of the promise has already been taken away. I hope my colleagues will draw a line here and say that the Secret Service, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security for very good reasons that I enumerated earlier, should remain under the jurisdiction for oversight of what we will call the Department of Homeland Security.

I thank the Chair.