Media Availability with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD); and Rep. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) Following 9/11 Commission

Federal News Service July 21, 2004 Wednesday

HEADLINE: MEDIA AVAILABILITY WITH HOUSE MINORITY LEADER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA); REP. STENY HOYER (D-MD); AND REP. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ) FOLLOWING 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT BRIEFING

LOCATION: U.S. CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:

REP. PELOSI: Good afternoon. Members of the leadership and ranking members of the appropriate committees of jurisdiction just received a briefing from Chairman Kean and from Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton. We were very impressed by the fact that the commission report came out unanimously, that it was a real service to our country, and that it will be available to the public.

For many of us who have been involved in intelligence matters and, of course, events surrounding 9/11 -- have always considered any consideration of this issue as sacred and hallowed ground-that we go into it with a mission to find answers for the families, to reduce risk to the American people. It's not about assigning blame, it's about preventing any future acts of terrorism to our country.

So I know I speak for all of my colleagues when I salute the commission for its excellent work, for its leadership, its patriotism, and its service to our country by being so thoughtful and putting forth such a useful document.

We were not presented with findings at the meeting. We will read those when the book is published. But we were presented with some recommendations which, I'm sure, the commissioners will present to you in their own press availability.

With that I want to yield to our-the Democratic whip of the House, Steny Hoyer.

REP. HOYER: Thank you, Madame Leader. I agree with all that you have said. We are very grateful to Governor Kean and to Congressman Hamilton for their leadership of this critically important commission. This commission was recommended some time ago by our leader, and she was correct then.

The discussions that we had were very positive and served to emphasize that our focus in the Congress and our focus as a nation needs to be on putting together the most successful and effective effort that we can possibly create which will ensure that 9/11 does not occur again, will ensure that this nation remains focused like a laser on confronting the terrorists and keeping Americans safe, and keeping the international community as safe as we can, for terrorism is a global threat.

This commission's report, I think, will be very important and useful and helpful in accomplishing that objective.

And we look forward to working with the members of the commission and with the members of Congress in a bipartisan fashion to ensure the safety and security of this country and its people.

REP. PELOSI: Thank you, Mr. Hoyer.

Our distinguished chair of our caucus, Mr. Menendez, has of course a national interest in this, but also being from New Jersey has a special interest in this report. Mr. Menendez.

REP. MENENDEZ: Thank you, Madame Leader.

Well, as a New Jerseyan and-who suffered the loss of over 200 of my citizens in my district who were lost on September 11th, but I'm proud of Governor Kean and his work. And as a former colleague of Lee Hamilton on the International Relations Committee-I'm proud of their collective work and their ability to bring a commission report that is unanimous in its vote, which I think is incredibly important.

Now I hope that what we'll take from that unanimity and that report is a sense of urgency. I think the report gives us an opportunity to understand the sense of urgency of responding to some of the recommendations and the findings that will come out because I think to some degree we may have lost that sense of urgency, and I think the report will be a catalyst for that.

And finally, I also hope that the Congress fully understands that it is the one independent entity that has the power to ultimately provide overview of our intelligence operations. And regardless of who sits in the White House, the Congress must understand that it has to exercise that function vigorously on behalf of the American people.

And lastly, let me just thank Nancy Pelosi, who, when she was our senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, had the foresight and the vision to offer an amendment to create this commission in the first place. Some ridiculed it at the time, but we now see the importance of her visionary effort in that regard.

REP. PELOSI: I thank our distinguished chairman for his remarks and his gracious thanks.

I would like to acknowledge the presence of our vice chair, Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who's been actively involved in our national security issues; Jim-our ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Jim Turner of Texas, another leader; and our ranking-our distinguished ranking member on the Appropriations Subcommittee for Homeland Security.

We're here as resources to answer any questions that you may have.

Q Madame Leader, the Republicans continue-they continue to express irritation with the 9/11 commission. Some of the things that have trickled out is, one, that the report's going to be available in bookstores before it's available to Congress.

The second is the report doesn't address the Patriot Act. I'm wondering if you learned the same thing in the briefing, and if that bothers you in any way?

REP. PELOSI: Well, first of all, I commend the commission for making it readily available to the American people, because indeed, that was part of the charge to the commission not only to make it available to the president and to the members of Congress, but also to the public. And in order to have it made available to the public, it had to be affordable to the public.

I don't know anything about the timing. I believe that that's not accurate. I believe that we will receive it from the Government Printing Office as soon as it is available. And sometime subsequent to that, it will be made available to the public.

We didn't talk about the Patriot Act in the meeting at this time.

Q Ms. Pelosi, can you say in your briefing right now if you got any sense that the commissioners felt that Iran was more problematic than Iraq was and if their report is going to reflect that --

REP. PELOSI: No.

Q Can you say-I know you can't get into-give us details about the recommendations. But were there any specifics about what reforms Congress might undertake in terms of term limits for the Intelligence Committee, fusing the House and Senate Intelligence Committees-a couple of these issues that came up yesterday when the Republican leadership met with them. Can you-at this point, can you say anything about those and where you and -- (inaudible) -- would stand on some of these issues?

REP. PELOSI: Well, let me say this. It is the commissioners presentation to make. We are just characterizing the meeting and expressing appreciation to them for their leadership and for briefing us, giving us a heads-up on the commission report. They will be making it public in the appropriate time, so I don't want to make their announcements for them.

But I believe I can say-if my colleagues would stop me if I shouldn't-that they did suggest some recommendations, and some of them did track with legislation that Congresswoman Jane Harman has taken the lead on as our ranking member on the Intelligence Committee now. They put forth some issues that should be put under consideration without hard-some had hard recommendations, and others said you should look at these areas, including, as Mr. Menendez referenced, the role of Congress and its oversight function.

All of these are very considered decisions that have to be made, and it's going to-the American people should be involved in these decisions. We should do it with an openness and a transparency and a period of public comment so when we go forward to create the balance between freedom and security that we must have in our country, the public knows why we are going forward, and when we assign responsibility, people know that they have to answer and be accountable for the responsibility they have been given.

Before, this was unpredictable, now it's predictable, and we all have a heightened responsibility to avoid another tragedy.

Q Madame Leader, the speaker told us yesterday that he fears that the allegations against Sandy Berger could cloud the 9/11 commission report. Do you share that concern?

REP. PELOSI: Well, if the speaker thinks that the allegations against Sandy Berger would cloud the 9/11 commission report, then he should speak to the administration, who had some very suspicious timing in the release of that information. I too think it may cloud it, but I think I would look to this executive branch to say why, when they had the information for nearly a year, when the 9/11 commission had the information for over six-at least six months, that the timing would be this very week, that the administration would leak this at a time when the 9/11 commission is coming out.

My colleagues? Does anyone wish to add anything on that subject?

REP. : I might add in response to your question, the chairman and the vice chairman made it very clear to us that nothing regarding the documents that are in question regarding Sandy Berger affected in any way the recommendations or the work of this commission. All documents were fully reviewed and available to the staff, to the commission. So to suggest that somehow it might have affected the work of this very fine commission, I think, is a great disservice to the work that's been done. The focus needs to be kept right where we all know it should be kept, and that is to regain that sense of urgency that we all must have to make this country safer. So that issue should not in any way cloud the significance of this report, and in no way did it affect what is in this report.

Q The speaker also yesterday -- (off mike) -- reiterated that he thought that there may not be time in this Congress to actually take up the recommendations and act on them legislatively. Do you share that opinion?

REP. PELOSI: We have one more day left before we adjourn for the summer, and then we come back and we have three or four weeks. There may be some recommendations that we can take up, but I think as we go forward we have to have a very thoughtful and complete and transparent discussion of these recommendations. That doesn't mean that we can't get started. We can task the committees of jurisdiction to begin the work, because the sooner we do that, the sooner the American people will be safer.

If I may say, that when the chairman and the vice chairman came-this is the most recent briefing. But on a number of occasions they have been here to talk to us about their progress, and on a previous visit-I think that day it was chairman-it was commission member Lehman acting as chairman, and Vice Chairman Hamilton came, and they reiterated what Chairman Kean had told us earlier and that is that their hope was to present the commission report to a-in a bipartisan way to the Congress. That occurred in the Senate; it did not occur in the House. That's a disappointment, because as we go forward we cannot have any partisanship in how we discuss the safety of the American people and the decisions that we make in Congress to minimize the risk and find answers for the American people.

Q (Inaudible) -- I want to ask on the other topics. Do you expect a tax-have you been told -- (inaudible) -- tax-cut vote on the tax extenders?

REP. PELOSI: We are told that if time permits that they may bring up the tax bills. We were also told that they have other plans for the evening, so they may not be able to bring them up in time. So we have not been informed one way or another as to whether the tax bill will come up today.

Q Do you expect support in your caucus for the tax extensions?

REP. PELOSI: We will have a response to the Republicans that is paid for. The Democrats are "pay as you go." And while we support some of the cuts that are there, we think that-for middle income families, we believe that they can be paid for by reducing some of the cuts for people making over a million dollars a year. That will be the nature-I'm giving you an abbreviated version. Mr. Rangel can best tell you what form the Democratic alternative will take.

Q The Republicans seem to be concerned that the report could be used against President Bush in the election. And I guess today (they ?) kept saying Bush was in office eight months, Clinton had been in office eight years. Do you --

REP. PELOSI: I don't know what the use -- (aside) -- Would you like to respond to that?

(Returning) I don't know what the use of going to that place is. We're trying to protect the American people. We're looking into the future. Yes, it happened on President Bush's watch, but this report was not there to assign blame, it was to say what is it in our communication within our security-our law enforcement and security entities, the FBI, the CIA, et cetera, what is it within their organizations that needs to be fixed to have accountability and communication?

What is it interagency that needs to be fixed in terms of communication between the CIA and the FBI, and again internally within the CIA, and the communication to policymakers and decision-makers in our government?

It's about reducing risk to the American people. It's about our national security. It's about the clear and present danger of terrorism that faces our country. That's what this is about. We should be going forward in a bipartisan way to work together to protect the American people and not give time frames as to who was president when. I think everyone knows when people were serving in office.

(To other representatives.) Any other comments on the follow-up on that?

REP. : I would just add, Madame Leader, that our concern should not be where blame is prescribed. Our concern should be on how do we use the commission's finding, a unanimous finding, to build upon and create an intelligence system that serves effectively the security of the United States. And that's the nature in which certainly we as Democrats expect the report to be released, and we would hope that the Republican majority would feel the same way; not about prescribing blame. And I would say that you can't get two better persons than Tom Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, a very thoughtful Democratic former chair of the International Relations Committee, to have brought a group of people, of Americans, who have one purpose in mind. And the only turf or consequence we should be worried about is our collective turf beneath our feet as a nation, and ensuring that the security of that nation is preserved and enhanced.

Now we have had failures, and those failures are part of the report that we will read, and responses to those failures. How we will be judged will depend upon where we go from here, and that is the nature in which we should accept the report.

Q How realistic are the recommendations? What are the chances that you see in Congress for adopting them?

REP. PELOSI: That was an earlier question, that we don't speak-the question was that the speaker said there probably won't be much time in this Congress to enact those. Well, if we have a lame duck there may be. But whatever amount of time it takes, it has to be a very thoughtful consideration with transparency and public comment, that the public knows what is happening because important decisions will be made about their public safety. And while we may not be able to complete the implementation of the recommendations, we certainly should begin reviewing them. We may not-you know, in the world that we live in, we may grow from them and find other suggestions that are useful with the collective wisdom of the members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

Q But aside-sorry-aside from the time you have to consider them or not, how realistic are the actual recommendations? What perception --

REP. PELOSI: Very realistic.

(To Rep. Turner (?).) Do you want to speak to those as-Jim?

REP. JIM TURNER (?) (D-TX): I think it's very clear, and-Democrats have been talking about the importance of improving our intelligence gathering, about securing our ports and our public transportation, and the investments that we should make to do that.

We're at a point in time, as we all understand, where we're being warned that al Qaeda may attack us again at any time. And what we hope will come from this report is not only some sense of closure to those families who lost loved ones on 9/11, but enable this Congress to regain the sense of urgency that we need to protect this country. And I think that this report will do that. It was a bipartisan report. It was one that should be read carefully and listened to.

And if you read the findings that will be within the pages of that document, you're going to find that we need to move even faster, we need to be even stronger in protecting this country against terrorists than we are today. And that's what I hope is accomplished by the release of this report.

REP. PELOSI: Mr. Sabo, do you want to add anything to that?

REP. SABO: No, I don't -- (off mike).

REP. PELOSI: With that, we thank you very much for your interest. I know we'll be having many more conversations about this very important issue once the report is made public. Thank you all very much.

Thank you, my colleagues.