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Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I know that it comes as no surprise to this House that I have been one very critical of this administration's policies on a number of different fronts, and I suppose that will be no different tonight. But Mr. Speaker, I guess I wanted to start out tonight by addressing the WikiLeaks issue. I know that a lot of people across America have looked upon this with interest, and I guess it's significant in my mind that what we've seen on the WikiLeaks issue is really more confirmatory than it is anything that's informative. In many ways what the WikiLeaks information has demonstrated is that this administration has practiced for a long time a foreign policy of appeasement, and I think it has been a disaster for our country, Mr. Speaker.
I suppose it goes without saying that the most pressing question is how a 22-year-old private first class in a remote location in Iraq could have gained access to so many of these documents, especially since they are far outside his scope of responsibilities. It represents, really, a glaring failure on parts of the State Department and even some parts of the Defense Department. And some of these commonsense security measures could have been implemented prior to this. The Pentagon has since announced that it will be implementing new policies, including a technology that makes it impossible to copy classified documents to portable storage devices. Now the fact is that it has taken too long for such a commonsense policy to sink in, and this administration certainly had lead time to consider this long before now, but I guess it is, in a sense, indicative of why bureaucracies are so inefficient most of the time. It took the leak of hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents before this government decided to get up to speed with the unique risks posed by one of the most basic modern conveniences, that being the computer.
Private Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army soldier suspected of leaking the documents, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hid behind the claim that the government's so-called 'lack of transparency' is unjustified. This is their main reason for justifying their own actions, Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, in that process they have provided a wealth of aid and comfort to groups that are at war with the United States of America. Of course Mr. Assange claims to be fighting for truth and transparency. The reality is that his desire to promote himself has outweighed his concern for scores and perhaps hundreds of innocent lives that he has endangered with his reckless publicity in this kind of a stunt in the guise of some greater cause.
But Mr. Speaker, it's telling that the foreign media sometimes is almost more comforting to justice than the American media sometimes. The American media willingly complied in disseminating this information and they are complicity, in my judgment, in any harm that will come to American service members or American personnel across the country as well.
Just to give you an example, Mr. Speaker, the same New York Times that was reticent to cover the story that's often referred to as 'Climategate' willingly ran the WikiLeaks cover story on the front page of their newspaper. Now this is a hypocrisy, Mr. Speaker, that I think is absolutely astounding. In other words, just to put it in perspective, I will just read what one of the bloggers there of The New York Times said. Andrew Revkin of The New York Times, he is actually a reporter, was one of the first ones to cover Climategate. And in his first story only a matter of a few hours after Climategate's blog posted, in his story he states, 'The documents'--this is the Climategate documents, Mr. Speaker--'appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they will not be posted here.' Well, how gallant, how noble of Mr. Revkin to want to protect some of his perhaps liberal friends from being exposed in some of the over-hyped notion of global warming, but yet when people's lives are at stake, when American national security is at stake, then all of a sudden The New York Times is all too willing to publish the WikiLeaks information in the interest of full disclosure and grand journalism, and I find that unbelievable, Mr. Speaker. If the Times reporters had felt such urges of chivalry when it comes to protecting the men and women who give up their lives so that we can all sleep peacefully at night, it's just a strange time for them to do that. And to cap it all off, Mr. Speaker, it is rumored that the leading candidate for Time magazine's 'Man of the Year' now is none other than WikiLeaks' Julian Assange.
Mr. Speaker, before I yield to one of my colleagues here, I would just like to say that, unlike authoritarian regimes across the world, democratic governments like ours hold secrets largely because citizens agree that they should in order to protect legitimate policy and national security. But this massive breach of our national security has endangered our ability to build trust and cooperation with our allies, it has certainly not served the public's interest, and most of all, it has strengthened and emboldened our enemies. Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks should be profoundly ashamed, and I think they should be pursued with whatever legal actions can be brought, and of course The New York Times, for their complicity in this effort, should be ashamed beyond measure.
With that, I would like to yield to my good friend, Congressman Lamborn from Colorado, to see if he has any thoughts.
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Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, thank you, Mr. Lamborn. It is my judgment that this would probably be a good time to transition to that. And we would also like to hear from Congressman STEVE KING from Iowa. STEVE, do you have any thoughts about this? Because some of these national security issues I know DOUG and I are kind of obsessed with them--for good reason, but we know that they care about national security in Iowa as well.
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Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I guess, Mr. Speaker, I would like to agree with the gentleman from Colorado because, you know, many of us, including the gentleman from Colorado, including the gentleman from Iowa, were very vociferous in saying that there would come a time where it would be obvious to the world that these civilian trials wouldn't work for enemy combatants that are terrorists that were taken off the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever it might be, because we knew that this would give al Qaeda and other terrorist groups a perfect opportunity, a staging ground, as it were, to be able to manipulate our system.
Not only does it give them the ability to have discovery where they are able to potentially undermine our security apparatus and gain information that is critical to protecting our agents in the field, but this also gives them the ability to claim all kinds of things before the world. And of course you know the security elements of it are astonishing. And of course they use our own court system and our own court rules to make it very possible for them to escape justice.
I thought, to paraphrase President Bush, he said something like this. He said, We should not allow our enemies to use, to destroy liberty by using the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself. And the reality is is that sometimes we can become victims of our own ostensible decency.
And this administration, in its kowtowing to terrorists, has been more committed to protecting terrorist rights than it has been to protecting the lives of American citizens. And I think that is profound beyond anything I could suggest.
Because it just tells me that somehow the administration has a philosophical bent that is going in a way that I think endangers American freedom and future generations. And I am hoping that somehow they will wake up in time. But yes, the gentleman is correct that WikiLeaks, among other things, has exposed once again this administration's effort to try to put these combatants in different countries to try to avoid the trap that they have set for themselves in America by insisting that this be done in civilian trials.
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Trent Franks (R-AZ) |
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Mr. LAMBORN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Let me point out that, to its credit, The Wall Street Journal did not accept he offer to disseminate these WikiLeaks latest round of documents from the diplomatic arena, and I think that that is to their credit. Unfortunately, The New York Times did not have the same scruples, which is extremely disappointing to me.
Representative Franks, as we look at some of the reports of what were contained in these diplomatic leaks, there are some really troubling national security implications that arise. One is that we find, for instance, that it is confirmed that Iran has received 19 advanced missiles from North Korea. Now we have long suspected that there have been ties on a covert basis between those two countries, we have some evidence of that; this just makes it more of a glaring issue. And our administration needs to be doing more, not just to stop WikiLeaks in the future from revealing our national secrets, but in stopping Iran and North Korea from the propagation of deadly nuclear and missile technology that they seem to be doing. The fact that Iran has received 19 advanced missiles from North Korea, each of which is capable of reaching Western Europe or even Moscow, is very troubling to me. These are our NATO allies that we are bound to defend if they are attacked, and I don't think our administration is doing enough to stop the propagation, the dissemination of deadly technology from North Korea to other countries.
When we are done talking about WikiLeaks, Representative, I would like to make sure we talk more about some of these national security implications as well.
I would like to yield back at this time.
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Mr. LAMBORN. I think this recent civilian trial of the person formerly who was in Guantanamo Bay, who was tried in New York City, I believe, who was found not guilty of about 250 counts of murder--although that's about how many people were killed in the terrorist attack on the embassy in Africa--but was found only guilty of conspiracy to destroy government property when over 200 people were murdered in that terrorist attack shows the weakness of using civilian trials to try these terrorists who are committing acts of war against our country.
And the WikiLeaks documents, getting back to those, show that this administration has been trying to place these Guantanamo detainees in other countries around the world, like Saudi Arabia. They are offering them money. They are offering them concessions if they'll take some of these people off of our hands so that the President can move closer to his goal of closing Guantanamo Bay. But that is a misguided policy from day one.
These people should not be released. I think Saudi Arabia said in one of the cables that was disclosed, or they said later on, that they would just release the people eventually if they were sent to their country and they would ultimately, as we know from cases in the past, many of them would find their way back to the battlefield where they would kill Americans or American allies.
So I think that the whole misguided policy of Guantanamo Bay being closed is exposed by some of these WikiLeaks documents. But still, these should have never been disclosed in the first place. This administration needs to find a way to punish those involved and make sure it never happens again. |
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Doug Lamborn (CO-R) |
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Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding and for managing this Special Order here tonight and for bringing this issue, Mr. Speaker, before the American people.
This is a critical national security issue. And I'm so grateful that we have individuals here in this Congress, as intended by our Founding Fathers, that focus on a variety of issues that could clearly see and be focused on the intelligence that can bring this before the American people in such a way that they can understand, Mr. Speaker, that you will turn your focus hopefully on this subject matter.
There has been a lot of discussion across the country now and in the news media about the WikiLeaks issue. And I look at this, and I think Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, a person who made his living as a hacker, a person who is proud of being able to crack anybody's security code and get in there and pull that information out and then dump it into the public arena, into the public media sphere. For what purpose? What possible constructive purpose could be achieved by an individual who is a product of Western civilization pouring forth state secrets from Western civilization itself? It has to be for either self-aggrandizement, for that or the combination of undermining Western civilization. An enemy, an enemy of the things that we believe in.
And I don't stand here with the intent to indict the Aussies. I love the Australians. They are a free spirited, strong free market, free will group of people. They had to also take a continent and settle a continent about the size of the United States itself and make a living down there in an environment that's sometimes beautiful and sometimes harsh. They have a spirit of their own. They remind me that in every conflict that the United States has been in they got there first, and some of them they've been in all of them. It's a pretty good thing to say about the relationship between the United States and Australia.
There's not much to say about their citizen--whom I wish today were an American citizen, and at that point I think he might be subject to charges of treason against the United States.
So as I listened to the speakers here, I reached into my dog-eared Constitution and took up this definition, the constitutional definition of treason, and it says--and I know that some have called for charges of treason to be brought against Mr. Assange. I know they apply to an American citizen. But this says, Article III, section 3: Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies--which certainly al Qaeda and the Taliban and the enemies of the terrorists who are lining up against us are our enemies--and giving them aid and comfort, giving aid and comfort to the enemies.
Well, Mr. Speaker, I think it's a subject that we wouldn't have much debate on here in this Congress that Mr. Assange has given aid and comfort to the enemy. He's empowered the enemy. He's put Americans at risk. He's put the allies of Americans at risk. And in this precarious situation around the globe, in this geopolitical-military-economic chess game that goes on constantly on the entire planet, he's taken away some of our advantage and he's given it to our enemies.
And I wish and I hope that there's a way that we can find a way to prosecute a man like that, that we can protect ourselves. And if we fail to do that, or even if we're successful in that and it exposes some other vulnerabilities, I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that this Congress take a look at some new legislation, a new structure of law, that's really not brought about because of the actions of Mr. Assange but brought about because of the actions of our enemies, our terrorist enemies.
And I have come to realize, and I think that there will be a significant number of Members of Congress that have come to realize, that we don't have the tools to fight these enemies; that the idea that we could catch terrorists like, for example, Osama bin Ladin's chauffeur, and we can't find a way to try that chauffeur and put him on trial with legitimate expectations of an effective prosecution and a conviction and a penalty.
We have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sitting down in Guantanamo Bay yet. Two years into the Obama Presidency, when President Obama said he was going to close Guantanamo Bay and try these terrorists in civilian courts, and now we found out what happens when you try these terrorists in civilian courts--a whole bunch of evidence that's essential to the conviction has been left out of the prosecution, and they were not successful in an effective prosecution and conviction of the last terrorist that was tried in civilian court.
So I look at this and I make the charge that I think our military tribunals are a useful way to do this and Guantanamo Bay is the best place on the planet to keep them. But we don't quite have the legislative tools. We don't have the judicial tools.
I'm hopeful that this Congress will consider a proposal that's rooted in this thought; that we will set up a special court like a FISA court, or perhaps even the FISA court, and ask them to immediately adjudicate when we catch somebody that's working against the United States, that's perpetrating terrorism against the United States, and be able to process them immediately through a special court, and have that court be able to rule that this was an attack against Americans or whether it was an attack against America's civilization that was designed to spread terror and fear here rather than a crime that was committed against individual Americans, and be able to rule that that individual then fit within the category of an enemy of the United States, an enemy in this war on terror that we have, and then instantly move them off of the shores of the United States and down to Guantanamo Bay or another jurisdiction that's even further removed from these courts, and under Article III, section 2, strip these Federal courts from the jurisdiction of ruling upon these decisions of terrorists that are attacking America.
If we do that--and it's a pretty sticky constitutional question on how we would deal with American citizens in that category, but it's not when we deal with someone like Julian Assange. An Australian citizen could be put into that category, moved over to a place offshore of the United States outside of the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, the civilian Federal courts in the United States, and adjudicated under a military tribunal in a fashion that was designed by this Congress and directed by this Congress. That's what I'm hopeful that we'll be able to do.
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Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona. And I reflect upon a trip that I made down to Guantanamo Bay I believe it was a year ago last Easter. And the trip was designed to fill me and a handful of other members on the Judiciary Committee in on the practices and the facilities that they had at Guantanamo Bay. And I think this is something that the American people have not had an opportunity to witness or actually hear about within the news, that there is a facility that's perfectly structured for the job that we have, which is to bring these terrorists to a location and legitimately try them and give some resolution to their circumstances.
And I don't remember the exact number of inmates that they had down there at the time, but it was down to the hard core of the hard core. They had already released those that could be released. And the rest of them were a danger to Americans, a danger to free people everywhere, and a danger if they were released to come back, and as Mr. Lamborn said, to attack Americans again, but also NATO troops and other people that represent the free world.
And as we are looking at that facility, oh, it's a pretty wonderful facility if you want to be in a jail and be a Muslim, for example. And you walk into these cells, first of all the temperature is set at 75 degrees. Seventy-five. My house is a lot warmer than that in Iowa in the summertime. Because 75 degrees, they argued, was their cultural temperature. And I don't know that that's true. I would think 140 degrees is more likely s |
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Steven King (IA-R) |
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Trent Franks, US Representative from Arizona |
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Doug Lamborn, US Representative from Colorado |
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Steve King, US Representative from Iowa |
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House Session, Nov 30, 2010 |
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