Congressional Record (07 May 1998) [Page: H2954]

• Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I want to take a few minutes to talk about some of the things that aren't being talked about enough. The war on drugs has come up several times today. I think there's some compelling evidence to show how the culture of obsessive secrecy that is part of covert action cultivates an actual and implied climate of impunity.

• The CIA's Inspector General, Fred Hitz, undertook a massive study into the CIA ties to drug traffickers. Upon completion of the first volume of the 600 page report, Hitz declared that they found `no evidence . . . of any conspiracy by the CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the United States.' Then he announced that hardly any of his findings would be publicly available, casting a long shadow of doubt as to the scope and conclusions of the investigation. A second volume is still in the works.

• The CIA's credibility when it comes to investigating itself was further brought into question when Hitz disclosed during recent testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that in 1982, the CIA and Attorney General William French Smith had an agreement that the CIA was not required to report allegations of drug smuggling by non-employees. Non-employees was explicitly interpreted to include unpaid and paid assets of the CIA, such as pilots and informants. The memorandum, dated February 11, 1982, states `no formal requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has been included in these procedures', referring to the procedures relating to non-employee crimes. I want to compliment the gentlelady from California, Ms. Waters, for her hard work on this topic and for obtaining this and other relevant memoranda. I ask you, though, is this the war on drugs that President Reagan launched?

• Nobody here who advocates cuts to the intelligence budget or reforming this intelligence system gone haywire doubts for one second that the U.S. needs reliable information about exports of Russian missile technology or the trade in bacteriological warfare technology. I am a veteran and I know how important intelligence is. But doesn't the above information illustrate why the integrity of our intelligence system is in doubt?

• The historical record shows that this culture of secrecy too often undermines our foreign and domestic interests.

• In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, headed by Senator John Kerry, found that `there was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zone on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contra supporters throughout the region.' Moreover, U.S. officials `failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua.'

• In other words, the drug war was subordinated to the cold war. This is right in line with what we've learned about the memorandum of understanding described above. I am inserting into the Record a list, compiled by the Institute for Policy Studies, which goes through other examples of the troubling history of our intelligence agencies.

Congressional Record (07 May 1998) [Page: H2962]

(Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, this debate is not what I would like, I say to the floor managers and chairman and ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, because in this 5 minutes back and forth, usually we do not get answered.

Let us understand that the Central Intelligence Agency's relationship with drug pushers has not even been mentioned here. It is as if we are in a universe where nobody knows about this except we read it in the paper or we get a GAO study every now and then, or somebody writes about Los Angeles and the introduction of cocaine, which creates a momentary flak. And then we come here to the annual ritual and what do we have? We have people saying the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is one of the most respected bodies in the world system, not the Congress. It is studied all over the world because these are sensitive people, understand. They are very sensitive about this subject. It is all secret. We do not know what is going on.

We do know that there was $26.7 billion appropriated. And then somebody snuck into the emergency supplemental appropriation, fiscal year 1998, an unknown amount of money.

[TIME: 1400]

Rumored, `Oh, never heard of that before.' Okay. Rumored, $260 million. Suspected a lot more. But nobody knows. And then this discussion my colleagues have passed off as an open, fair debate on this subject. Now, if I hear that the CIA is not perfect one more time, I am going to excuse myself from these proceedings. Of course it is not perfect. It is awful.

[Page: H2963]

Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. I will not yield to the gentleman from California. I will excuse myself from the proceedings after the debate on this measure is concluded.

But look, we know the CIA is not perfect. But that is not the question. The question is, how bad are they? `Oh, wow, that is an insult. We cannot talk like that.' They are not perfect. Why, any amateur historian knows that we had perfect knowledge that the Japanese were coming to Pearl Harbor. And a respected Member of this body gets up and says, well, it was military intelligence, if it had been stronger. Pearl Harbor is a perfect example of our intelligence system at work.

Now, the intelligence community failed in Iraq. I mean, for anyone to suggest that we won the war on intelligence, really they have not even been listening to the military much less to anybody else.

This committee has done us a great disservice, and then to fight hard to keep a 5 percent reduction from occurring. Let us really show them by a two-to-one margin that the American people want to keep this secret budget going full blast, whatever it is, and that the American people are approving of this.

Well, I think this does the body a disservice. I do not think that we should do it. I refer my colleagues to the GAO news release. `CIA kept ties with alleged traffickers.' And then we come here and debate about how they have got to do some more about drugs and we hear, `Let's give them another chance.' Did I hear that last year, the last year, the year before the year before, the year before, the year before? Of course. `Let us give them one more chance.'

Well, I think this is not the way to debate. There is a tangled web of the CIA's complicity in drug international trafficking that not one member of the Select Committee on Intelligence has even alluded to in debate, even referenced. It does not exist. We are here to get this secret budget through and that is it.

This document resides at http://speech.csun.edu/ben/news/cia/7May98/conyers.html