National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Oct. 5, 2004

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE REFORM ACT OF 2004

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

AMENDMENT NO. 3933

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I rise to thank the managers of this bill for their hard work and perseverance in trying to get the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission passed and their accommodation of many Members with various amendments. Obviously they have been working long before this time period, through the August recess and since we have come back, and now we are pushing towards the final stages.

I thank the managers of the bill for including a provision in the bill, a Cantwell-Sessions amendment dealing with the Visa Waiver Program and closing a loophole that I call the Ressam loophole. That is a loophole that allowed a terrorist to go from Algiers to France to Canada and then load up his car with explosives and head to the U.S.-Canadian border at the State of Washington with plans to set off those explosives, potentially, at LAX Airport or perhaps somewhere along the way of the west corridor.

What the amendment did was to basically say to those who are our partner countries that the United States wants to make sure that people coming into our country on visas meet certain biometric standards so we know who people are. If we actually knew Mr. Ressam's true identity when he left France to go to Canada, he would have been stopped at the Canadian border. He could have been stopped earlier in the process if we actually knew who this individual was.

So what this Cantwell-Sessions amendment did, and, again, I thank the managers for adding it, was to help us identify the types of technologies that we hope our partner visa waiver countries also adopt for their biometrics on visas allowing people into their country.

To put it simply, our borders will only be as strong as our partner countries' and as they adopt standards. The last thing we want to do in the United States is to have a process by which we are more sure of people we are giving visas to, only to have, then, individuals who are looking for ways to get access to the United States to go to Mexico or Canada or France or Germany and then find their way to easy entry into the United States by creating a new identity.

The estimates are that there are millions of passports that have been lost or stolen and that individuals easily create new identities. But if our partner countries in the Visa Waiver Program, such as Mexico, France, Germany, also create biometric on their visas for people coming into their countries, we will have a safer process of understanding and stopping terrorists at their point of origin as opposed to continuing to allow them to travel around the globe, creating new identities or possibly getting easy access to our neighboring countries and then easily sneaking across U.S. borders.

I thank the managers for their hard work and diligence on this issue and for working to accommodate so many Members on what are very challenging issues. We have done great work on making our borders more secure since 9/11. We have put resources there. We have tightened our programs. We have worked on the US VISIT implementation. But we need to continue to understand that our security will only be as good as the security of our partner nations, working in this battle to fight terrorism around the globe. I very much appreciate the managers being included in that.

If I could say, I am also pleased that the conference report on the JOBS bill is moving. It seems to be progressing. While we are working to finish up this 9/11 report and finish up the legislation that implements it, I am hopeful we will be successful in passing the FSC/ETI conference report before we leave for this recess that is scheduled for this Friday. That is very important legislation to help companies that want a level playing field on the trade front, helping large companies in my State or exporters such as Boeing and Microsoft-there are many more-to get a level playing field.

There is also tax fairness in this JOBS bill for Washingtonians and seven other States that have not been able to deduct their sales tax from the Federal income tax. I am glad to see that recision is in the bill. I hope we can move forward this week to give the fairness back to those States that have been unjustly penalized on that for about the last 18 years. While this 9/11 legislation is moving through, I hope we are also successful in moving the JOBS bill through and that we can continue to work diligently on that process.

As I see no other Members who are ready to offer amendments, I will say one more word of thanks to the incredibly hard work that is going on in the State of Washington by the U.S. Geological Survey. Many people realize that there is an imminent eruption of Mount St. Helens about to take place. We have seen the ash and steam of several smaller events occur in the last several days. But because of the investment this country has made in the Department Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey, we have so much more information at hand today.

In 1980, we heard the final cry of a U.S. Geological Survey worker who said, "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it." Then he ended up losing his life to the explosion, as did 57 other residents of the Northwest. The impact of that volcanic explosion was so significant it impacted various cities such as Yakima and Vancouver.

Today, because seismologists, geologists, meteorologists, and vul ca nol ogists also have been working together, we have much more data and we have been able to advise the larger community on the hazards we are facing with another eruption of Mount St. Helens. I thank the men and women who are doing terrific work in informing all of us so we can make great plans, so that aviation, transportation, and the health and security of the emergency management system can do their jobs, because we have good science and information.

I thank the managers of this bill for their hard work and perseverance on an issue that many times during this debate didn't seem to be very decisive, as Members have many different ideas about how we approach terrorism and what our country needs to do to harden our targets and to improve our intelligence operation. But I want to thank the diligence of these Members because they are doing the work to understand the details of this legislation. They have been doing that work for the summer while we were out on recess, and what they did is work to understand these amendments in detail. I appreciate their adoption of the Cantwell-Sessions amendment, which I do believe will help us not only make U.S. borders more secure but make our partner countries' borders more secure and stop terrorism at the point of origin. I thank the managers for their help and support for the passage of this amendment.

I yield the floor.