The 9/11 Commission Report

THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I am going to speak on two issues: first, the imminent release of the final report of the 9/11 Commission, and then on the three judges we are voting on shortly.

First, on the imminent release of the report: First, I thank the commissioners. They have done an incredible job. In this town, racked by partisanship, to come up with bipartisan recommendations is an amazing accomplishment in itself. But when you look at what the recommendations are and the thoroughness with which the Commission investigated the mistakes that were made in the past, the report assumes even greater magnitude.

We will have a real challenge in Washington, at each end of Pennsylvania Avenue, to make sure these recommendations are implemented.

The area I want to touch on right now is homeland security, but I do want to say the reforms that were recommended, in terms of intelligence gathering, were right on the money. Many of us were puzzled after 9/11, learning that the FBI knew this little piece of information and an agent in another part of the FBI knew another piece, and the CIA knew this piece and that piece. The question was, why weren't these pieces tied together, which might have drawn the picture of what was going to happen? And I underline the word "might." Who knows if it would have? But it certainly would have given us better odds.

The reason, as the Commission unveiled, is very simple: These intelligence agencies do not talk to one another. They regard the intelligence they have gathered, their work product, as so valued that they do not want to give it up to another agency. The recommendations of the Commis- sion are outstanding-outstanding-in terms of requiring the intelligence agencies to talk to one another.

I am very pleased the Commission did not engage in the blame game or finger pointing but, rather, looked at the facts-just the facts, ma'am; that seems to be their underlying view-and then looked at recommendations based on those facts so that another 9/11, God forbid, would never happen again.

There is a particular area that has not received too much focus that I want to mention today. That is homeland security. The Commission's report shows that while mistakes were made in intelligence gathering and while mistakes after September 11 have certainly been made in fighting the war overseas-we need a strong foreign policy, a muscular foreign policy to fight terrorism-those are mistakes of commission. In a brave new world, a post-September 11 world, anyone is going to make certain mistakes. The mistakes that have been made on homeland security, on protecting our Nation from another terrorist attack, are mistakes of omission. We are simply not doing enough. That is what the Commission's report is going to reveal when they release it at 11:30. I have been briefed on it already, and I guess many Members are being briefed today.

To win this war on terror-it is the same as a good sports team. We need a good offense, we need a good defense. Most of the focus has been on the offense. There has been verbiage devoted to homeland security, but the actual dollars, the actual focus, the actual changes that have to be made are not being made, plain and simple.

The bottom line is that in area after area, when billions of dollars are required, the administration recommends and Congress allocates tens of millions of dollars. They do not do nothing. They don't want to say we are not putting any money into port security, rail security, truck security, or improving security at the borders. But they do the bare minimum essential to get away with saying we are doing something.

It is frustrating to me, particularly coming from New York and knowing too many of the people who were lost on September 11, that we are not fighting a war-it is a war on homeland security-the way we are fighting a war overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is interesting is the technology is there. We know how to detect nuclear materials which, God forbid, might be shipped into this country. We know how to detect explosives if somebody were to walk into a railroad station or Disney World or somewhere else loaded with explosives that they might detonate. We know how to make our truck security more secure so people cannot use truck bombs. We know how to tighten up the borders.

The question is twofold: will and money. We are not doing either. As we stand here today, what are we doing in the Senate? We are debating three judges from Michigan who we know will not pass in a controversial and partisan way while Homeland Security appropriations languish. It has not been brought to the Senate. Why? What are our priorities? This is not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is not a liberal or conservative issue. This is an American issue. We want to preserve our homeland security. We want to make people secure. We want to make people safe.

Over and over again, we are not doing what we should be doing. The number of bills introduced and even passed out of committee to tighten homeland security are too many. It is not just homeland security legislation, it is legislation on ports, legislation on borders. Over these past few months, the Senate has been occupied by partisan political issues when nonpartisan and bipartisan issues that are far more important related to homeland security languish.

I hope the Commission's report is a clarion call. Let's get our act together. Again, this is not a partisan issue. This should not instigate fighting with one another. We should just do it.

I wish the White House in their budgets had allocated more money. When people in the Senate, both Democrat and Republican, said, We need to do this, that, and the other, had the President said, Yes, sir, right on-but we do not have that. We do not have leadership on homeland security. That is what the Commission's report shows.

Being a great leader and being a strong leader does not just mean fighting wars overseas in this brave new post-September 11 world; it means tightening things up at home. The bottom line is simple: Why aren't we protecting our airplanes from shoulder-held missiles which we know the terrorists have? Why aren't we saying more than 5 percent of the big containers that come to our ports on the east coast, the west coast, the gulf coast, should be inspected to see if they might contain materials that could hurt us? Why aren't we doing more to protect the borders? My State of New York has a large northern border. They have not allocated the dollars, the bottom line is they do not have enough manpower at the borders to prevent terrorists from sneaking in. They are doing a great job with the resources they have, but Lord knows they don't have them. We are not doing any of these things.

I point out one other thing the Commission has mentioned-here, Congress is as much to blame as the White House-and that is the allocation of homeland security funds. The Commission is very strong on this issue. The moneys that go to police, fire, and the others who are our first responders-we learned in New York how valuable they were. The report today will show the number of people who died below where the planes hit the World Trade Center towers was few-too many, but few-because of the great job the police and the firefighters did. Yet we are treating that money as pork barrel.

My State has greater needs than, say, the State with the smallest population, Wyoming. Yet Wyoming gets much more money on a per capita basis. To the credit of the administration, that did not happen the first year we allocated homeland security money. Mitch Daniels, a true conservative, the head of OMB, says he does not want to waste these dollars. He is sending dollars to the places of greatest need. I might have wanted more dollars, but at least the dollars that were allocated were allocated fairly. But now we have slipped away from that. Frankly, we do not hear the voice of Tom Ridge, who was the successor as we created a new Homeland Security Department, saying, allocate this money fairly. We do not hear the voice of the President, and we do not hear the voices of the House and Senate.

This wonderful report is very critical of what our Nation is doing on homeland security. It is saying we are not doing enough in area after area. I hope and pray this report will be a wakeup call. We do not want to be in the "what if" situation. God forbid there is another terrorist attack and the next morning we say: What if? What if we had done the job? What if the attack was by shoulder-held missiles? And we say: What if we had done the job. What if the attack was from ships and ports? We say: What if we had done the job on port security or on the rails? Or because someone got across our borders and shouldn't have? We do not want to be in a "what if" situation.