Transcript of Senate Debate on Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program 2006

From the Congressional Record, debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate:
MAKING AVAILABLE FUNDS FOR THE LOW-INCOME HOME ENERGY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM, 2006 -- (Senate - March 02, 2006)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 2320) to make available funds included in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for fiscal year 2006 and for other purposes.


The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from Nevada is to be recognized. The Senate will be in order.

Mr. COBURN addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the pending bill, S. 2320, offered by the Senator from Maine, increases direct spending in excess of the allocation to the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Therefore, I raise a point of order against the bill, pursuant to section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.

Ms. SNOWE. Mr . President, pursuant to section 904(c) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable points of order. I move to waive the point of order under the applicable provisions of the rules and statutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion to waive is debatable. There is 30 minutes equally divided.

Who yields time? The Senator from Maine.

Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I rise today to ask the Senate to do the right thing and to oppose this budget point of order brought up against this legislation that will provide emergency funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

I thank the majority leader for his assistance in advancing this legislation. It is the culmination of his considerable efforts over the last few months to bring forward this legislation. I thank the minority leader as well for recognizing the importance and vitality of this issue, and promoting this amendment forward as well.

Mr. President, I know you are sitting in the chair, but you have been one of the leaders on this issue, trying to get additional commitment for funding for low-income fuel assistance, particularly for this winter, along with my colleague, Senator Collins of Maine. This legislation addresses a nationwide crisis by bipartisan consensus and fiscal responsibility. This legislation shifts the fiscal year for LIHEAP funding into the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which was already signed into law, from 2007 to 2006. This will provide an additional $1 billion for all those Americans who simply cannot wait any longer for relief from home heating fuel costs that have skyrocketed over last year's heating bill.

The vote we will be taking this afternoon is on the budget point of order against this bill. I would like to elaborate on why this legislation is absolutely vital to increasing the funding for low-income fuel assistance for all parts of the country that depend upon this program.

There has been a lot of misinformation with respect to exactly what this bill is all about. First of all, it is budget neutral. Don't take my word for it; it is the conclusion of the Congressional Budget Office. All of the funds under this bill have already been appropriated and accounted for within the budget. All this measure will do is shift the funds from fiscal year 2007 to 2006. There is no additional, there is no new spending.

This approach is not only fiscally sound and budget neutral, but, critically, it will allow States the flexibility to allocate funds to the residents who are struggling to pay for energy bills this year. The White House and our Senate leadership recognize this is the fiscally responsible solution to resolve this crisis.

I know some have said essentially we believe the LIHEAP program should be funded through contingency measures such as this legislation. That is what this legislation does, it utilizes the existing formula. It is not only cold weather States but also warm weather States that will benefit under this legislation.

I regret some of the misinformation that has been circulated with respect to LIHEAP as to who will benefit, which States will benefit under this legislation. I submit that in a year of high energy costs--and it has been a year of high energy costs, anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent--it has devastated our State of Maine, Minnesota, and all parts of the country that have had to rely on home heating oil or natural gas or whatever the alternative. But the fact remains, the prices have increased 30 percent to 50 percent over last year's, and last year's prices went up 20 percent to 30 percent. That factor is not in dispute.

The additional factor is that we are using the same distribution formula. I believe that needs to be understood

because I have seen some of the papers distributed as to which States will benefit. It is totally inaccurate. Nothing has changed with respect to that formula.

On the issues that are important to know about this increase in LIHEAP funding, No. 1, it is budget neutral; No. 2, it will not increase spending; and No. 3, the distribution formula remains the same. I regret that we have seen so much misinformation and mischaracterization with respect to the funding formula under this legislation.

Finally, we have heard: Well, it is a mild winter. I would like you to come to Maine, if you think it is a mild winter, and you ask all those people about the 30 percent to 50 percent increases. The current low-income fuel assistance program has not had an increase in real dollar terms since 1983. I happened to be in the House of Representatives when we created this program. It has not increased in real terms. If anything, it has been reduced. I regret that we have reached this point in time with respect to this vital program that so many low-income individuals depend upon who can barely make ends meet given the extent of the costs this winter with respect to home heating oil.

We are now talking about a program that has not increased in net terms since 1983, when oil was $29 a barrel. Today it is more than $60 a barrel. Eighty-four percent of the people qualified for LIHEAP funds--and 80 percent of my State--are dependent upon home heating oil. It is a crushing financial burden.

Let there be no mistake about the fact that this program is vital. It is significant. It is essential to so many of the families in my State and across the country. The urgency of this legislation has escalated to an emergency. Last year, Americans struggled because of the high cost of energy. This year, they continue to struggle. We know the personal terms in which people have been devastated by the increased costs of energy.

I hope the Senate would waive the budget point of order because this amendment, this legislation, is budget neutral, and it does depend upon the existing distribution formula. Both cold weather States and warm weather States stand to benefit. There has also been a mischaracterization and misinterpretation about the distribution of this funding under this legislation. In fact, it was the agreement that we reached before Christmas. That was essentially the agreement we reached before Christmas. The very distribution formula we agreed to, the one which has been the status quo, the one which we agreed to with those who represent warm weather States, is exactly what this legislation before us is all about. Nothing has changed. I deeply regret to see what has been distributed and circulated that would suggest otherwise because it simply is not true.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Will the Senator yield for a question?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.

Ms. LANDRIEU. The Senator from Maine has made a very passionate plea and one with which I tend to agree. I am a supporter of this program and a supporter of making the formula even more fair for the Southern States that have very high energy costs as well--different but high. But would the Senator agree that another way to bring down prices of oil and gas would be to increase the supply of oil and gas into our country? Would the Senator at least acknowledge that is another way to help people?

Ms. SNOWE. Mr . President, I would like to reclaim my time because I don't think we ought to debate the question here today. I don't think there is any question about that.

But in the meantime, we have to address an emergency, and that emergency exists in my State and many other States across the country, including the Senator's State. I think it is a matter of fairness and it is a matter of equity and it is a matter of balance.

I think indisputable about why we need this legislation and why we need this funding now. I hope Members of the Senate will recognize that. This is fairly distributed for warm and cold weather States. I hope we can increase the supply. But right now we have to deal with the emergency that is presented in my State and many other States across the country.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator. I don't want to take any more time. I am going to support bringing this bill up because I believe, as the Senator outlined, it is an emergency and something we need to do.

But I want to say for the Record that there are other ways we can lower the price. Louisiana and the gulf coast is prepared to do that. I hope, as we move on with this debate, we can get to that issue as well.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, first of all, I was in the meeting with Senator Snowe before Christmas. This is not the formula that we had agreed on in those meetings.

Second of all, the formula that she says will benefit the warmer States is not accurate. It is not historically accurate. It is not accurate with regards to the contingency funding. Contingency funds were released in January. There are 29 States that will be worse off under the Snowe proposal, if this money is put through the regular formula, the warmer States benefit. The whole formula was set up so that mostly colder States would benefit from the first dollars, and then if dollars are added, the warmer States would benefit.

But the way this amendment is set up that is, in fact, not what happens.

We have a budget point of order. People have to know that we are not voting on cloture on the bill or cloture on a motion to proceed to the bill, but we are actually voting on a budget point of order.

This has been described as a mild winter. There is plenty of evidence for that, especially on the east coast. I think the only two States that could arguably say it has been a harsher winter than normal are Oregon and Washington. And most of the rest of the country has had a fairly mild winter.

The point that somehow the Northeast needs this more because they have more higher heating expenses isn't true. Electricity in most of the country now is generated by natural gas. Because of the environmental concerns plants have switched over to natural gas. Air conditioning in the Southern States is just as critical as heat in Northern States. When it gets hot enough, people die from heat.

The LIHEAP formula was set up to be able to help warmer States and help low-income people in those warmer States. Frankly, this proposal does not do that. It does not do that fairly. If this money were all put through the regular formula this would be a fair proposal.

That is why the Senator from Louisiana's State would lose around $18 million if this formula were done differently, as she would like to see it done, versus the way Senator Snowe has this drafted.

I didn't think this is the time for us to be waiving budget points of order. We are facing difficult fiscal times, and we need to show some fiscal restraint around here. Hopefully, we can sustain this budget point of order.

I reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Nevada, frankly, I think the Senator from Louisiana made a very good point coming up and saying this makes sense. I had an amendment that would allow us to go into BLM lands to extract natural gas and for LNG plants. That was taken out in the highway bill up in Massachusetts.

It doesn't seem at all reasonable to me that you would support something such as this for electricity and at the same time turn around and oppose every effort we have to try to get more natural gas to bring to these homes.

I certainly agree. I had an amendment to do that. It doesn't look like there will be an opportunity to entertain that amendment. Without that, I think it is unreasonable to expect that we would be able to do this.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, there is no question that one of the reasons this was even in the bill--in the Defense bill--was because ANWR was in there to help pay for extra money for LIHEAP. One of the reasons they say this is paid for is because they are taking money out of 2007 and moving it into 2006. We know this is a phony argument. We have seen it done around here time and time again. They are budget games that are played so they can say things are budget neutral. How do you spend $1 billion and call it budget neutral? You are not taking something else and cutting spending someplace else. You are only shifting to the next year.

This budget point of order is real, and this budget point of order I think should be sustained.

Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, how much time remains on both sides?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine has 5 minutes 48 seconds.

Ms. SNOWE. I yield to my colleague, Senator Collins, 2 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I commend you and Senator Snowe for working so hard on this very vital issue.

I want my colleagues to understand exactly what is at stake here.

Early Tuesday morning, my State suffered a terrible tragedy--three people, including a woman and her 10-year-old son, died when their house caught fire and burned to the ground. There was the most deadly fire in Maine in 6 years. They lived in Limestone, ME, a town in northern Maine. On the night of the fire, temperatures were below zero. The family had run out of heating oil, and as a result, was using wood stoves to provide the heat. According to the firefighters, the fire started near one of the wood stoves in the kitchen.

This is literally a matter of life and death.

At Christmastime, when I was home in my hometown of Caribou, ME, two elderly women were hospitalized with hypothermia.

This is not theoretical. It is not theoretical when there is ice in the toilet and when our elderly and low-income are at risk of illness, disease, and, yes, even death because they cannot afford the high cost of home heating oil.

The least we can do in a country as wealthy as ours is to provide some modest assistance. And those who say that the winter is almost over, come to where I am from in northern Maine. Believe me, there is a lot more winter to come.

Maine has run out of its LIHEAP funding. It is time for us to provide this modest help.

Thank you, Mr . President. I thank my colleague from Maine.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, how much time do we have remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 20 minutes 43 seconds.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I agree with both Senators from Maine. Our goal is not to have additional LIHEAP funding. Our goal is to make sure we don't steal it from our grandchildren, robbing from the unborn and the young in this country to do something in the name of good. It is not moral at all.

What we are saying is pay for it. To say it is paid for, to say you are paying for it, there is $1 billion allocated for next year, we are going to take that away and that is going to have to be paid for by somebody. You know who is going to pay for it? Our grandchildren.

If we want to help the people of Maine, there are a couple of things we can do. No. 1, you can use your TANF money for LIHEAP right now. That is allowed under Federal law. There is no reason anybody in Maine doesn't have the LIHEAP funds. You have money in your TANF account right now that you can transfer to solve that problem in terms of the acute problem.

The second thing you ought to know is that there is $11.2 billion in unobligated funds in Health and Human Services right now that the administration could release for LIHEAP. We don't have to be doing this. If it truly is an emergency, the administration has the money right now to send to Maine to do that. Your Governor has the ability to take TANF money right now and support LIHEAP in Maine.

But it is unconscionable for us to steal from the next generation and steal from the next budget cycle saying that we have paid for it. We haven't paid for anything. What we are doing is sacrificing the standard of living for future generations in this country through this type of process.

If you want to bring the bill to the floor, which we have offered the Senator from Maine, come to the floor, offer to spend $1 billion and give us the cuts to pay for it. Let us make the hard decisions that we were charged with to make among priorities in this country.

The other point I would make is there was an offer by the chairman of the Budget Committee last year to put an additional $1 billion in this fund. The Senator from New Hampshire offered to put another $1 billion by taking a small percentage across the board from Health and Human Services. This body voted that down. This body said we don't want to take a little bit from everybody else to pay for additional LIHEAP. We wouldn't even vote for it.

Now, when we are going to steal it from our children--the people who can't defend themselves, the future taxpayers of this country--then we are going to say it is OK, I believe it is morally wrong.

The people who need help today can get it. They can get it from the TANF funds in the State of Maine and the Northeast. They can get it from Health and Human Services, unallocated and unspent money that is sitting there right now.

We are not for not helping people, and it is not true to characterize it that way. We want to help anybody who truly needs our help.

The distribution under this formula, if you were to divide the money by everybody who could be eligible under LIHEAP, comes to $35 a house.

The other point I would make, since LIHEAP started, we have averaged $160 million a year in weatherization. That is $3.2 billion in weatherization. There are some people who would suggest that multiple homes have been winterized multiple times. There has been no oversight on weatherization. There has been no oversight on how the money has been spent. We have not done our job in terms of oversight to make sure the money that goes for LIHEAP is spent in the proper way.

I believe it very noble that the Senators from Maine want to help their constituency. Let us help you help your constituency but let us not steal it from the next generation.

I reserve the remainder of our time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. COLLINS). The Senator from Maine.

Ms. SNOWE. Madam President, how much time remains?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 3 minutes 36 seconds.

Ms. SNOWE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have an additional 10 minutes on each side so we can make sure that everyone who wants to speak has a chance to speak on this issue.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, reserving the right to object, we have a lot of requests from folks who are trying to get out. I guess there are planes leaving. How about 2 minutes for each side.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Ms. SNOWE. Madam President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. COLEMAN. Madam President, I want to add my voice to this. This is not about theoretical discussions. I understand we have debates about oversight.

I held a hearing on this in Minnesota a couple of months ago.

By the way, winter is still there. And it is not just a matter of winter still being there. In Minnesota, we have some programs that allow heat not to be turned off and people have to pay that back through the course of the summer.

I had a mom come forward who has three kids, who is working and going to school, who is talking about having to give up going to school so she can pay the heating bill. I had a senior woman come forward who is paying 50 percent of her income for heat and medicine.

This is not a theoretical debate. This is about life and death. This is about suffering.

Clearly, we have an opportunity and an obligation. I hope we do it and simply do the right thing. This is a rich country. Those who need to be heard, those who are raising their voices and asking us to do the right thing in a way that is being paid for, we can debate that all we want. But the bottom line is we have the opportunity to do what is right.

I urge my colleagues to do the right thing and support the amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, I want to reiterate a little about what Senator Coburn talked about, whether this bill is paid for; if people want to truly pay for this legislation then we must cut other areas of spending. This is about priorities. If this is a priority--and a lot of people think it is, the Senator from Minnesota and the Senators from Maine and others from around the country believe it is a priority--then other sacrifices must be made to meet this priority. We need to set priorities in this country.

There are those of us who believe that deficits are real. They are absolutely real. People get up and talk about them all the time. But when it comes right down to whether you are willing to make tough choices instead of just increasing the spending and passing that debt on to the next generation, they aren't willing to offer other spending cuts so that we are not increasing the deficit.

That is the point that Senator Coburn and myself are trying to make. It is time to start being fiscally responsible around here instead of just passing this debt on to the next generation.

I reserve the remainder of our time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CHAFEE). Who yields time?

The Senator from Maine.

Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to the Senator from Rhode Island.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, we are here because people are suffering throughout the country, most particularly the coldest States.

Americans throughout this country--in the southland and in the northwest--understand that in Maine in the winter and in Washington State in the winter, people are freezing.

Senator Collins' very poignant and very telling story about what happens when people are desperately cold should be remembered by all of us.

I think it is astounding that we talk about poor people, trying to help them with a little bit of money for their heat and suggest that we take it from other poor people who use TANF money to feed their children so the other people can have heat.

We talk of being responsible and say: Now we have to cut the deficit. I didn't hear that message weeks ago when we were talking about huge tax cuts to benefit the wealthiest Americans. That was not being responsible.

We have a chance to help people, a last chance to help people this year who are literally freezing. It we do not take it, shame on us.

Mr. COBURN. How much time remains?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine has 3 minutes, and the Senator from Oklahoma has 7 minutes 20 seconds.

Mr. COBURN. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Alabama.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the budget point of order is not a technical budget point of order. It was a technical point of order with regard to the asbestos bill. This bill would provide $1 billion more in 2006 than the budget authorized. If we are going to spend $1 billion more than the budget authorized, how can that not be in violation of the budget?

There are two aspects: first, you say it is paid for in the future. That is irrelevant to whether the Budget Act is violated, even if it were paid for. Second, we have been around here long enough to know we are not going to cut LIHEAP next year by $1 billion. We know that.

As much as we would like to accommodate this spending--I can understand the desire of the Senators to do so--we should not do it because it violates the budget in a very fundamental way.

It clearly is an unfair allocation of funds compared to my State, which receives $17 million less if it were distributed according to the discretionary plan, as opposed to the fundamental formula.

I yield back my remaining time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. DODD. I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me add to the words spoken by others. With all due respect, we hear people talking about deficit financing, and I could not agree more. Twenty years ago I offered a pay-as-you-go bill that got 12 votes in the Senate. We ought to be doing that.

With all due respect, we have people in deep trouble, people not in a position to have resources to take care of themselves. Those here who live in the Northeast or the Midwest and the upper tier States understand this problem.

I cannot say how many times I have voted when matters affected the South or the West or when other parts of the country were devastated. I do so proudly. I tell my constituents in Connecticut that they are Americans, they are hurting, they need our help, and I give them my vote when they are in trouble.

I find it astounding when I listen to Members who say my constituents cannot get help in their time of need. That is what we are asking. It is cold where we live. We have a month and a half of winter left.

The Senators from Maine are asking for little consideration. The next time some Senator from some part of the country says they have a problem in the gulf States, we will not hear the Senators from Maine saying: I am sorry, we cannot deficit finance that. We will take care of our people.

That is what we are asking you to do today: Help us take care of our people. Support this, please.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

Mr. COBURN. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. LOTT . Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for yielding.

Mr. President, I have sort of a long history with this program. Years ago on my watch we started this temporary program, this emergency program called LIHEAP, energy assistance. Well, here we are, 10 years later, almost 10, it is still here, and it is growing.

I guess one thing that shocked me, and this is an admission against my interests, when I realized it went from being ``heating'' assistance to being ``heating and air -conditioning'' assistance, I began to think: How far will this go?

I was in the ninth grade before we had air -conditioning, and we survived. We did not suffocate. It was damn hot down there on the Mississippi gulf coast. You could not open your windows because mosquitos would come in because we did not have screens on the windows.

So, now, millions is going into air -conditioning. And then we have heat. What is it we are not going to give people for free? Is there any limit? Is there any limit to the amount of money? I thought we were having global warming. I thought it was a mild winter.

Yes, my bills have gone up. Mine have gone up astronomically in my State because of the disaster.

I thank the Senators from Maine, particularly Senator Snowe, for this not being connected to the flood insurance proposal. Flood insurance is a completely different issue, and because people paid for this coverage, it has already been paid for, they paid the Government for their flood insurance, and now they are going to say: Gee, because the Senate once again does not do its job and is playing games with us, we are not going to get the checks for the coverage we already paid for? I don't understand that.

Second, Senator Coburn and others who are opposed to this LIHEAP proposal have acted responsibly. They could have been obstructionist, the way they have been on other bills around here, to insist on a vote on a motion to proceed. The Senators from Maine are going to make their case. Those who are opposed to it will make our case. We will have a vote. One side or the other will win, and then I recommend we go forward at that point.

I do think if we are going to have this program, we at least need a formula that is a national formula. I do not like the program. I would prefer not a nickel of it go to my State, but I would not be doing my job if I did not insist on a formula that is fair to all of us.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.

Ms. SNOWE. Just to make a few final points because, again, there has been a lot of misunderstanding, mischaracterizations, misinterpretations of the facts. The facts are, this program has not grown. That is indisputable.

Look at this chart and see where we are. The level of funding for LIHEAP is equivalent to 1983 buying power, when oil per barrel costs were at $29. Today it is more than $60. The buying power for any household that depends on low-income fuel assistance has decreased from 50 percent in 2001 down to 19.5 percent. Look at the cost of home heating oil. That is where we are today.

I go unchallenged when it comes to matching fiscal responsibility. There are a number of issues I have offered in the Senate to accomplish that. That has not occurred. I agree we have to do much more. But the fact is, this $1 billion was included in the Deficit Reduction Act that most Members voted for in this Senate last year that included this funding and included this formula. Those are the facts. The $1 billion and the formula were already included in the Deficit Reduction Act. This is not increasing spending. It is budget neutral. It is the same funding formula that everyone agreed to that would help both cold weather and warm weather States. That is indisputable.

I hope at least we could debate the true and accurate facts. That is what this is all about.

This is a national issue. It is not a regional issue, it is a national issue. It is a national crisis. I hope the Senate will vote to waive the budget point of order so we can provide the $1 billion that was allocated in 2007 and advance it to 2006.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 3 minutes remaining.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, first of all, the Senator from Connecticut makes a great point. This is not about regionalization. This is about paying for something.

The Senator from Maine is absolutely right. It was in the act we passed this last fall. But it was in there for next year. It was advance funding so we would pay for the money for next year.

So if in fact we take this money now and move it out of next year, we are going to have to come up with another $1 billion. You can play the games with the numbers all you want, but the fact is, we are going to have to come up with another $1 billion.

The other thing I point out, we are not in great financial shape. We added half a trillion dollars. I was one of the few Republicans who did not vote with the rest of my side in terms of the tax cuts this last time through. I have been straightforward in addressing the financial problems our country had.

I ask Members to look at this chart put out by NOAA that says, in fact, for every area seeking today, they are either above normal or much above normal in terms of their temperatures this year. My poor State, Oklahoma, is red hot. It was 92 degrees yesterday in Oklahoma. We set an all-time record. We had 20 or 30 days over 100 this past summer.

I am not debating whether we should help people. I am debating can we help people without killing our children. The offer was made several times to the people offering this amendment: We will help you find offsets to pay for this so we do not take it from future generations. That was rejected, straightforward.

The fact is, we have to be responsible. We are going to have to come to a point in time where we will have to make a hard choice. If we do not, here is what will happen. The international financial community is going to do it for us. Interest rates are going to go sky high. The value of the dollar will fall through the floor. Talk about leaving a heritage to our children. We will leave a heritage of poverty to our children.

It is time for us to make the hard decision. Let's support this point of order because it is right. If we do not support this point of order, the budget does not mean anything, nor do the budget rules mean anything, nor do the appropriations categories mean anything.

I yield back the remainder of our time, and I call for a vote.

Ms. COLLINS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.

The question is on agreeing to the motion. The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk called the roll.

Mr. MCCONNELL. The following Senator was necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mrs. Hutchison).

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. Boxer) and the Senator from Hawaii (Mr . Inouye) are necessarily absent.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 66, nays 31, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 30 Leg.] YEAS--66
Akaka

Baucus

Bayh

Bennett

Biden

Bingaman

Burns

Burr

Byrd

Cantwell

Carper

Chafee

Clinton

Cochran

Coleman

Collins

Conrad

Dayton

DeWine

Dodd

Dole

Domenici

Dorgan

Durbin

Feingold

Frist

Grassley

Harkin

Hatch

Jeffords

Johnson

Kennedy

Kerry

Kohl

Landrieu

Lautenberg

Leahy

Levin

Lieberman

Lincoln

Lugar

Menendez

Mikulski

Murkowski

Murray

Nelson (FL)

Obama

Pryor

Reed

Reid

Rockefeller

Salazar

Santorum

Sarbanes

Schumer

Smith

Snowe

Specter

Stabenow

Stevens

Sununu

Talent

Thune

Voinovich

Warner

Wyden

NAYS--31
Alexander

Allard

Allen

Bond

Brownback

Bunning

Chambliss

Coburn

Cornyn

Craig

Crapo

DeMint

Ensign

Enzi

Feinstein

Graham

Gregg

Hagel

Inhofe

Isakson

Kyl

Lott

Martinez

McCain

McConnell

Nelson (NE)

Roberts

Sessions

Shelby

Thomas

Vitter

NOT VOTING--3
Boxer

Hutchison

Inouye

The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the ayes are 66, the nays are 31. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to, and the point of order falls.

The Senator from Arizona.

AMENDMENT NO. 2899

Mr . KYL. Mr . President, I have an amendment at the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:


The Senator from Arizona [Mr. KYL], for himself and Mr. Ensign, proposes an amendment numbered 2899.


Mr. KYL. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To make available funds included in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 for allotments to States for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for fiscal year 2006)
Strike all after the first word and insert the following:

1. FUNDS FOR LOW-INCOME HOME ENERGY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM.

Section 9001 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 is amended--

(1) in subsection (a)--

(A) by striking ``for a 1-time only obligation and expenditure--'' and all that follows through ``2007'' the first place it appears and inserting ``$1,000,000,000 for fiscal year 2006'';

(B) by striking ``; and''; and

(C) by striking paragraph (2);

(2) by redesignating subsection (b) as subsection (c);

(3) by inserting after subsection (a) the following:

``(b) Limitation.--None of the funds made available under this section may be used for the planning and administering described in section 2605(b)(9) of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Act of 1981 (42 U.S.C. 8624(b)(9)).''; and

(4) in subsection (c) (as redesignated by paragraph (2)), by striking ``September 30, 2007'' and inserting ``September 30, 2006''.

Mr. KYL. Mr . President, let me briefly describe what the amendment does. I appreciate the fact that most of my colleagues are leaving, and we will have to have the debate next week. Since the budget point of order was not sustained, we are going to proceed to the consideration of the addition of $1 billion to the LIHEAP funding for low-income energy assistance. Of course, in the colder States, that generally takes the form of assistance in the heating oil bills to heat their homes. We have, however, in other States a crisis in the middle of the summer when it is so hot that folks have a hard time paying the air conditioner bills. The issue is essentially the same.

It has been pointed out by one individual that more people actually die as a result of heat than cold. In any event, we are pleased to see $2 billion already having been spent for the low-income energy assistance program in those colder States.

What we are talking about here is the addition of another $1 billion. We are saying, as to this other $1 billion, it should be spent pursuant to the formula in the law. What our amendment does is to say take this additional $1 billion, spend it pursuant to the formula under the law.

That formula is broken into two parts. The first is $250 million and the second is $750 million. The formula for the first $250 million disburses it a certain way, and for the last $750 million, it disburses it somewhat differently. That formula actually ends up getting money to all of the States but in a different mix than the first $2 billion, which is so-called contingency funding, which was almost all given to support folks in the Northeast part of the United States, in the colder part of the country.

The problem is that by the time we get to the summertime, almost all of the money is used, and anybody who needs it for air -conditioning assistance, of course, has nowhere to turn. Last summer, when we had the record-high temperatures in Arizona, we found that there was no money. We finally located about $183 million, if memory serves me, and by the time we located that funding, it was virtually too late to do very much good.

That is the reason, at this point in the year, if we are going to spend an additional billion dollars, we need to spend it pursuant to a formula under which all States can receive funding, that it is distributed fairly and spread out evenly so that the States that have air -conditioning problems will receive the benefit from it just as those States that have problems with the cold.

Mr. President, I suspect there is little point to further debating this amendment at this time. I hope that when Members return, we will be able to vote on this amendment. If we are going to add the additional billion dollars, at least let's do it in a way that is more fair. I think something like 38 States lose under the proposal of the Senator from Maine, and they would actually be made more whole if my amendment is adopted. I hope at that time we will act favorably on this amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama is recognized.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I rise in support of the proposal Senator Kyl has offered. I do believe it represents a step toward fairness. But I do reiterate that I believe the budget point of order should not have been waived, and that we actually spent, under this proposal that has been cleared so far, another billion dollars this year than we had within our budget. That is a bad thing. It is those kinds of steps that get us into real trouble in spending.

We have my colleagues who say they care about spending; oh, they care about spending. But time and time again, when a vote comes up that actually has something to do with our deficit, they are AWOL. I thought it was amusing that not long ago, a Senator referred to a vote he cast 15 years ago as if that is going to prove he is frugal. We have a vote right now. This was the vote. This was a clear vote. It had to do with whether we had any intention to be disciplined in the way we handle money. They say: Well, we need this money. But the truth is we have had the warmest January on record. This has been a very mild winter. For that, we can be most thankful.

Is this an emergency? Well, what happens next year if it really is an average or cold year and we don't have this billion dollars? It has already been spent this year. And they say the heating oil prices don't fall, they go up. They say the heating oil prices will go up again next year. Where are we going to come up with that billion dollars? We don't even have a proposal here to offset it.

With regard to the funding formula we have seen, if we can fund this billion dollars in the way that has been proposed, my State, which suffers from a lot of hot days--and in small houses and in mobile homes that are not cooled, people do die. That is a tough time. If we are going to have this fund, it is only fair that the poor people in my State have a chance to participate in it, not just a select group.

So I just return to the fundamental principle. We are indeed moving a piece of legislation that spends $1 billion more this year than we authorized in spending. The fact that it came from next year's money doesn't answer the question. We are spending a billion dollars more than we were authorized to spend under our budget. What good is a budget if we don't adhere to it?

What we have is some tax-and-spend people here. They vote against tax cut extensions, they vote to raise taxes, and they vote to raise spending. That is what it is about. They say they are frugal. They say they are responsible. Those of us who are trying to contain spending and maintain a low tax rate for the American people, they say somehow we don't care about our people. That is not correct.

We are at a point in time when our Federal budget is allowing for an increase in spending every year, and we will see again this year a very sizable increase. We will have before the Budget Committee an effort to contain just a little bit the growth of entitlements. Do you know what I am hearing, Mr . President? I am hearing we don't have the votes in the Budget Committee to even have a modest containment of spending on entitlement programs, which is where the growth is--about $870 billion for discretionary spending and $1.2 trillion for entitlements. The discretionary budget this year will come in almost flat this year, with little increase. But entitlement spending is going up at about a rate of 7 percent or so. It is just driving our deficits. We cannot even begin to discuss that, apparently, because people want to raise taxes and spend. They want to tax and spend. It is not the right way to go. That is not what this country was founded on.

When you look at the Europeans who have done tax and spend--look at Germany, with 11.5 percent unemployment, and France has 9.5 percent unemployment. That is what the statist Socialist economies produce. How did they get there? Because their congresses could not resist the demand to fund every feel-good program that comes along the pike. That is why. Then when you meet with a businessman from Germany, he says: I know we have to do something, Senator. Maybe we can cut back on this, but people are so dependent on these government programs, so used to them in Germany, that we cannot quite get the votes to stop it. We know if we don't do it, it can wreck our economy, but we cannot get the votes because people become addicted to it, they like it. They feel like anything they once received, if it is not received the next year, the demagogues say it is a big cut and you have been denied something you are entitled to.

So I just say that if I seem a bit frustrated, you can know that I am. We have had a lot of good discussion about how to contain the growth of entitlements--and I am not a bit sure that is going to bear fruit this year--just to maintain the current tax level and keep taxes from being increased next year. Now we come along on top of a generous LIHEAP program and add $1 billion more, in violation of the budget agreement. We just voted to waive the Budget Act and do it anyway with 66 votes. I am telling you, this is not the way to get spending under control in this country. It is the way to move our country to a statist economy. That is not our strength.

Our unemployment is not 11.5. Our unemployment is not 9.5. Ours is 4.7. In my State of Alabama, it is 3.5. We didn't get there by taxing and spending; we got there by reducing the burden of government on the private sector and allowing the private sector to flourish. Tax revenues are up in every city in the State, I do believe. I traveled 26 counties last week. Every mayor and county commissioner I talked to is seeing increases in sales tax revenues. Many are telling me they have a 14-, 15-, to 18-percent increase in taxes. Why? Because the economy is booming. Companies are hiring people. They are bidding up the wages. They cannot find people, and they have to pay higher wages. People are making more money, and they pay taxes on that. So revenue to the Federal Government is up. Yes, we have a deficit, but revenue is up.

People don't pay taxes to Uncle Sam if they don't make money. They are paying more taxes because they are making more money. We have a free market economy that allows growth and vitality. So I think this vote is an important vote for us as a people. It is a sad vote to me to see many people who claim to be frugal, claim to care about spending, but when the chips are down and we have a clearly dangerous bill like this one, a bill that we ought to be able to vote down overwhelmingly, we could not even get 40 votes to say no. We could not find 40 votes to say no to this plan. I don't blame Senators for trying to do this. They say that you in the South want help. Well, scrutinize the help we are asking for. If we are asking for something that is unfair, say so, vote against it. Don't come in here and vote for everything this one wants, everything that one wants, and everything that one wants, and then walk in here and say the deficit is too big and now we have to raise taxes. That is where we are headed. I think everybody here knows that. There are a lot on the other side of the aisle, and apparently some on this side, for whom that is a strategy. That is a strategy. The strategy is to increase spending and then say you cannot have lower taxes and we have to have higher taxes and we have to raise taxes. They don't want to say it publicly and openly, but that is what they are working toward.

That is a big divide in the Congress, as I see it. I hate that we have a dispute over this spending, but apparently we have. It is discouraging to see the vote. But I think, as we continue to talk about it, perhaps the American people will talk to their Senators and Congressmen. When I travel around, they talk to me about spending. Of course, they want their projects. They say: Oh, don't cut that. But overall, they want constraint.

I believe the American people fundamentally will respect us if we maintain some discipline. That means, on the discretionary account, staying within our budget figure, which is basically flat spending. When we are in a crisis, we try to keep our spending level. We have a deficit. We ought to stay level. We are not slashing anything. We have to stop going for more and more red ink, more and more new spending programs that we have not had before to fund heating oil in the warmest winter on record.

We are going to keep talking about it. There will be more votes in this Congress and in this Senate. We did pretty well last year. We did do some reduction--modest reduction in entitlements with the Medicaid Program. We limited the growth of Medicaid, and we were proud of ourselves. Over 5 years, it was going up 41 percent before we passed the cost-saving bill, and now it is going up 40 percent. We thought we were quite proud of ourselves to save a little money that way. If we would do that on the other accounts, like Medicaid and Medicare and some other accounts--just a little bit--we would have big numbers as we go along and make a real difference in what we are doing. But it looks like that may not happen.

So we are going to have to, I guess, reengage the American people, reengage the Members of Congress, and they are going to be asked by constituents: How did you vote? How did you vote on LIHEAP? Did you vote to spend another $1 billion? Maybe we can begin to have the American people talk some sense into those of us in Congress.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I have some remarks to make in tribute to a combat infantry and armored brigade from Mississippi which has returned from Iraq. I ask unanimous consent that I may speak as in morning business.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(The remarks of Mr. COCHRAN are printed in today's RECORD under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. SESSIONS). Without objection, it is so ordered.

The Dildo Diaries

How Neo-Cons Sabotaged Iran's Help on Al Qaeda

For IPS, Gareth Porter reports:

After the Sep. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for preparing for war in Afghanistan needed Iran's help to unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had organised resistance by the "Northern Alliance" and had provided arms and funding, at a time when the United States had been unwilling to do so.

"The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States," recalls Flynt Leverett, then senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council (NSC), in an interview with IPS.

In October 2001, as the United States was just beginning its military operations in Afghanistan, State Department and NSC officials began meeting secretly with Iranian diplomats in Paris and Geneva, under the sponsorship of Lakhdar Brahimi, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Leverett says these discussions focused on "how to effectively unseat the Taliban and once the Taliban was gone, how to stand up an Afghan government".

It was thanks to the Northern Alliance Afghan troops, which were supported primarily by the Iranians, that the Taliban was driven out of Kabul in mid-November. Two weeks later, the Afghan opposition groups were convened in Bonn under United Nations auspices to agree on a successor regime.

At that meeting, the Northern Alliance was demanding 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government, which was blocking agreement by other opposition groups. According to U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan James Dobbins, Iran played a "decisive role" in persuading the Northern Alliance delegate to compromise. Dobbins also recalls how the Iranians insisted on including language in the Bonn agreement on the war on terrorism.

The bureaucracy recognised that there was an opportunity to work with Iran not only on stabilising Afghanistan but on al Qaeda as well. As reported by the Washington Post on Oct. 22, 2004, the State Department's policy planning staff had written a paper in late November 2001 suggesting that the United States should propose more formal arrangements for cooperation with Iran on fighting al Qaeda.

That would have involved exchanging intelligence information with Tehran as well as coordinating border sweeps to capture al Qaeda fighters and leaders who were already beginning to move across the border into Pakistan and Iran. The CIA agreed with the proposal, according to the Post's sources, as did the head of the White House Office for Combating Terrorism, Ret. Gen. Wayne A. Downing.

But the cooperation against al Qaeda was not the priority for the anti-Iranian interests in the White House and the Pentagon. Investigative journalist Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" recounts that Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, who chaired an inter-agency committee on Iran policy dealing with issues surrounding Afghanistan, learned that the White House intended to include Iran as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in Bush's State of the Union message in January.

Hadley expressed reservations about that plan at one point, but was told by Bush directly that Iran had to stay in. By the end of December, Hadley had decided, against the recommendations of the State Department, CIA and White House counter-terrorism office, that the United States would not share any information with Iran on al Qaeda, even though it would press the Iranians for such intelligence, as well as to turn over any al Qaeda members it captured to the appropriate home country.

Soon after that decision, hardliners presented Iranian policy to Bush and the public as hostile to U.S. aims in Afghanistan and refusing to cooperate with the war on terror -- the opposite of what officials directly involved had witnessed.

On Jan. 11, 2002, the New York Times quoted Pentagon and intelligence officials as saying that Iran had given "safe haven" to fleeing al Qaeda fighters in order to use them against the United States in post-Taliban Afghanistan. That same day, Bush declared "Iran must be a contributor in the war against terror."

"Our nation, in our fight against terrorism, will uphold the doctrine of 'either you're with us or against us'," he said.

Officials who were familiar with the intelligence at that point agree that the "safe haven for al Qaeda" charge was not based on any genuine analysis by the intelligence community.

"I wasn't aware of any intelligence support that charge," recalls Dobbins, who was still the primary point of contact with Iranian officials about cooperation on Afghanistan. "I certainly would have seen it had there been any such intelligence. Nobody told me they were harbouring al Qaeda."

Iran had already increased its troop strength on the Afghan border in response to U.S. requests. As the Washington Post reported in 2004, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Javad Zarif brought a dossier to U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan in early February with the photos of 290 men believed to be al Qaeda members who already been detained fleeing from Afghanistan.

Later hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees were repatriated to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and other Arab and European countries, according to news reports.

The hardliners would complain that the Iranians did not turn over any top al Qaeda leaders. But the United States had just rejected any exchange of information with the very officials with whom it needed to discuss the question of al Qaeda -- the Iranian intelligence and security ministry.

The same administration officials told the Times that Iran was seeking to exert its influence in border regions in western Afghanistan by shipping arms to its Afghan allies in the war against the Taliban and that this could undermine the interim government and Washington's long-term interests in Afghanistan.

But in March 2002, Iranian official met with Dobbins in Geneva during a U.N. conference on Afghanistan's security needs. Dobbins recalls that the Iranian delegation brought with it the general who had been responsible for military assistance to the Northern Alliance during the long fight against the Taliban.

The general offered to provide training, uniforms, equipment and barracks for as many as 20,000 new recruits for the nascent Afghan military. All this was to be done under U.S. leadership, Dobbins recalls, not as part of a separate programme under exclusive Iranian control.

"The Iranians later confirmed that they did this as a gesture to the United States," says Dobbins.

Dobbins returned to Washington to inform key administration officials of what he regarded as an opportunity for a new level of cooperation in Afghanistan. He briefed then Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld personally. "To my knowledge, there was never a response," he says.

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005.

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

At Consortium News, Nat Parry writes:



Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

“Senator,” a smiling Gonzales responded, “the President already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas.”

In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways – ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.

But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.

Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com “Upside-Down Media” or below.]

Detention Centers

Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]

Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.

“It’s hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars,” remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.

Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.

Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees,” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.

Farrell pointed out that because “another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge” of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”

Labor Camps

There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army Web site, about the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program “provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.”

The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a “rapid action revision” on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.

On its face, the Army’s labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the Attorney General to “establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him” and “make available … the services of United States prisoners” to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.

Though the timing of the document’s posting – within the past few weeks –may just be a coincidence, the reference to a “rapid action revision” and the KBR contract’s contemplation of “rapid development of new programs” have raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.

These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in “counter-terrorism” operations inside the United States.

Pentagon Surveillance

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.

The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States. [Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2005]

The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.

The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don’t seem to think that new laws are even necessary.

In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2006, the U.S. Army’s top intelligence officer wrote, “Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information.”

Drawing a distinction between “collecting” information and “receiving” information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that “MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime.” [See CQ.com, Jan. 31, 2006]

This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.

There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn’t discuss the details without breaking classification laws.

Tice added that the “special access” surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. [UPI, Feb. 14, 2006]

With this expanded surveillance, the government’s list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center’s central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a four-fold increase since the fall of 2003.

Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA.”

Homeland Defense

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, complained that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program.”

Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees “have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaeda or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place.”

The combination of the Bush administration’s expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.

A Defense Department document, entitled the “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support,” has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an “active, layered defense” both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to “transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland.”

The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us.”

But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges “threats” and who falls under the category “those who would harm us.” A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 “suspicious incidents” over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a “threat.”

The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.

A secret Pentagon “Information Operations Roadmap,” approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for “full spectrum” information operations and notes that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.”

“PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that “the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices.”

It calls for “boundaries” between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.

Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between “collecting” and “receiving” intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally “targeted,” any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.

The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential military adversary. The “roadmap” speaks of “fighting the net,” and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system.”

In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration’s perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.

“Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place,” Rumsfeld said.

The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched “heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans,” reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.

Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as “some of the most feared professional killers in the world,” Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater’s presence in New Orleans “raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here.”

U.S. Battlefield

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any non-citizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.

“The President decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian President,” wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. “He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general.”

For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what’s in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.

Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an “enemy combatant” and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.

But since the Court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration’s arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.

This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.

“In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield,” Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. [Washington Post, July 19, 2005]

Given Bush’s now open assertions that he is using his “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.

As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, “Can it be true that any President really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?”

In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the “rapid development of new programs,” which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.

Transcript of Democracy Now: Expose' of CIA's History of Torture & Interrogation, From Cold War to War on Terror

Democracy Now! takes a look at what lies behind the shocking images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison by turning to the history of the CIA and torture techniques. The International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International and other human rights groups say the recently released images of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib show a clear violation of international humanitarian law. The U.S. made a pledge against torture when Congress ratified the UN Convention Against Torture in 1994 - but it was ratified with reservations that exempted the CIA’s psychological torture method.

Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror,” a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological torture from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib, and also “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.” CIA mercenaries attempted to assassinate McCoy more than 30 years ago.

[see video of broadcast-256k stream or 128k stream]

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: A new expose gives an account of the C.I.A.’s secret efforts to develop new forms of torture, spanning half a century. It reveals how the C.I.A. perfected its methods, distributing them across the world, from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, uncovering the roots of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture scandals. The book is called A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, and we're joined by its author, Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We welcome you to Democracy Now!

ALFRED McCOY: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: And glad to have you with us, especially in light of your history. I first learned of you with your first book The Politics of Heroin: C.I.A. Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, for which you almost died. What happened then?

ALFRED McCOY: Oh, when I was researching that book in the mountains of Laos, hiking from village to village, interviewing Laotian farmers about their opium harvest, and they were telling me that they took it down to the local helicopter pad where Air America helicopters would land, Air America being a subsidiary of the C.I.A., and officers, tribal officers in the C.I.A.’s secret army would buy the opium and fly it off to the C.I.A.’s secret compound, where it would be transformed into heroin and ultimately wound up in South Vietnam. And while I was doing that research, hiking from village to village, interviewing farmers, we were ambushed by a group of C.I.A. mercenaries. Fortunately, I had five militiamen from the village with me, and we shot our way out of there, but they came quite close. Then later on, a C.I.A. operative threatened to murder my interpreter unless I stopped doing that research. And then when --

AMY GOODMAN: How did you know they were C.I.A.?

ALFRED McCOY: Oh, look, in the mountains of Laos, there aren’t that many white guys, okay? I mean, the mercenaries? First of all, the C.I.A. ran what was called the “Army Clandestine.” They had a secret army, and those soldiers that ambushed us were soldiers in the secret army. That, we knew.

AMY GOODMAN: The Laotian army?

ALFRED McCOY: The C.I.A.’s secret army.

AMY GOODMAN: The Laotian mercenaries?

ALFRED McCOY: Laotian mercenaries. That, everybody was clear about that. Nobody denied that. They said it was sort of an accident, but, no, it was very clear that it was intentional. And ultimately, when the book was in press, the head of covert operations for the C.I.A. called up my offices and my publisher in New York and suggested that the publisher suppress the book. They then got the right to prior review -- the publisher compromised.

AMY GOODMAN: C.I.A. prior review.

ALFRED McCOY: Prior review of the manuscript, and they issued a 14-page critique. The publisher’s legal department, HarperCollins’s legal department reviewed the critique, reviewed the manuscript, published the book unchanged, not a word changed.

AMY GOODMAN: And the contention of that book was that the C.I.A. was complicit in the global drug trade?

ALFRED McCOY: Right. In the context of conducting covert operations around the globe, particularly in the Asian opium zone, which stretched from the Golden Triangle of Vietnam and Laos all the way to Afghanistan, that in those mountains far away from home, when the C.I.A. had to mobilize tribal armies, the only allies were warlords, and when the C.I.A. formed an alliance with them, the warlords used this alliance to become drug lords, and the C.I.A. didn't stop them from their involvement in the traffic.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, you have not stopped looking at the C.I.A., and now you've written this new book. It's called A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Give us a history lesson.

ALFRED McCOY: Well, if you look at the most famous of photographs from Abu Ghraib, of the Iraqi standing on the box, arms extended with a hood over his head and the fake electrical wires from his arms, okay? In that photograph you can see the entire 50-year history of C.I.A. torture. It's very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are extended for self-inflicted pain. And those are the two very simple fundamental C.I.A. techniques, developed at enormous cost.

From 1950 to 1962, the C.I.A. ran a massive research project, a veritable Manhattan Project of the mind, spending over $1 billion a year to crack the code of human consciousness, from both mass persuasion and the use of coercion in individual interrogation. And what they discovered -- they tried LSD, they tried mescaline, they tried all kinds of drugs, they tried electroshock, truth serum, sodium pentathol. None of it worked. What worked was very simple behavioral findings, outsourced to our leading universities -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale and McGill -- and the first breakthrough came at McGill. And it's in the book. And here, you can see the -- this is the -- if you want show it, you can. That graphic really shows -- that's the seminal C.I.A. experiment done in Canada and McGill University --

AMY GOODMAN: Describe it.

ALFRED McCOY: Oh, it's very simple. Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University, a brilliant psychologist, had a contract from the Canadian Defense Research Board, which was a partner with the C.I.A. in this research, and he found that he could induce a state of psychosis in an individual within 48 hours. It didn't take electroshock, truth serum, beating or pain. All he did was had student volunteers sit in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones, earmuffs, so that they were cut off from their senses, and within 48 hours, denied sensory stimulation, they would suffer, first hallucinations, then ultimately breakdown.

And if you look at many of those photographs, what do they show? They show people with bags over their head. If you look at the photographs of the Guantanamo detainees even today, they look exactly like those student volunteers in Dr. Hebb’s original cubicle.

Now, then the second major breakthrough that the C.I.A. had came here in New York City at Cornell University Medical Center, where two eminent neurologists under contract from the C.I.A. studied Soviet K.G.B. torture techniques, and they found that the most effective K.G.B. technique was self-inflicted pain. You simply make somebody stand for a day or two. And as they stand -- okay, you're not beating them, they have no resentment -- you tell them, “You're doing this to yourself. Cooperate with us, and you can sit down.” And so, as they stand, what happens is the fluids flow down to the legs, the legs swell, lesions form, they erupt, they suppurate, hallucinations start, the kidneys shut down.

Now, if you look at the other aspect of those photos, you’ll see that they're short-shackled -- okay? -- that they're long-shackled, that they're made -- several of those photos you just showed, one of them with a man with a bag on his arm, his arms are straight in front of him, people are standing with their arms extended, that's self-inflicted pain. And the combination of those two techniques -- sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain -- is the basis of the C.I.A.'s technique.

AMY GOODMAN: Who has pioneered this at the C.I.A.?

ALFRED McCOY: This was done by Technical Services Division. Most of the in-house research involved drugs and all of the LSD experiments that we heard about for years, but ultimately they were a negative result. When you have any large massive research project, you get -- you hit dead ends, you hit brick walls, you get negative results. All the drugs didn’t work. What did work was this.

AMY GOODMAN: But when you talk about the ‘everyone knows the LSD experiments,’ I don't think everyone knows. In fact, I would conjecture that more than 90% of Americans don't know that the C.I.A. was involved with LSD experiments on unwitting Americans. Can you explain what they did?

ALFRED McCOY: Oh, sure. As a part of this comprehensive survey of human consciousness, the C.I.A. tried every possible techniques. And one of the things that they -- at the time that this research started in the 1940s, a Swiss pharmaceutical company developed LSD.

AMY GOODMAN: Which one?

ALFRED McCOY: I forget now. One of the major Swiss pharmaceutical companies. And Dr. Hoffman there was the man who developed it. The C.I.A. bought substantial doses, and they conducted experiments. One of the most notorious experiments was that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, inside the agency, spiked the drinks of his co-workers, and one of those co-workers suffered a breakdown, Dr. Frank Olson, and he either was -- I don't know whether he was pushed or jumped from a hotel here in New York City --

AMY GOODMAN: His son has never stopped pursuing this case?

ALFRED McCOY: Right, his son Eric Olson insists that his father was murdered by the C.I.A. Eric Olson believes that his father did a tour of Europe, and he visited the ultimate Anglo-American test site, black site near Frankfurt, where they were doing lethal experiments, fatal experiments, on double agents and suspected double agents, and that his father returned enormously upset by the discovery that this research was actually killing people, and that, therefore, Eric Olson argues his father was killed by the C.I.A., that he was pushed.

AMY GOODMAN: And didn't they do experiments in brothels in the San Francisco area?

ALFRED McCOY: They had two kind of party houses. They had one in the San Francisco Bay Area, another in New York City. And what they did in San Francisco was they had prostitutes who go out to the streets, get individuals, bring them back, give them a drink, and there would be a two-way mirror, and the C.I.A. would photograph these people.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the C.I.A. were running the brothel.

ALFRED McCOY: They were running the brothel. They were running all of these experiments, okay? They did that on Army soldiers through the Army Chemical Warfare Division.

AMY GOODMAN: What did they do there?

ALFRED McCOY: Again, they gave them LSD and other drugs to see what effect they would have.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did the soldiers think they were getting?

ALFRED McCOY: They were just told they were participating in an experiment for national defense.

AMY GOODMAN: Prisoners?

ALFRED McCOY: No, these were --

AMY GOODMAN: Right, but also on prisoners, were there experiments?

ALFRED McCOY: There were some in prisons in the United States and also the Drug Treatment Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The Federal Drug Treatment Center in Lexington, Kentucky, had this. All of this research, all this very elaborate research --

AMY GOODMAN: On unwitting Americans?

ALFRED McCOY: Unwitting Americans, produced nothing, okay? What they found time and time again is that electroshock didn't work, and sodium pentathol didn't work, LSD certainly didn't work. You scramble the brain. You got unreliable information. But what did work was the combination of these two rather boring, rather mundane behavioral techniques: sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain.

And in 1963, the C.I.A. codified these results in the so-called KUBARK Counterintelligence Manual. If you just type the word “KUBARK” into Google, you will get the manual, an actual copy of it, on your computer screen, and you can read the techniques [Read the report. But if you do, read the footnotes, because that's where the behavioral research is. Now, this produced a distinctively American form of torture, the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in centuries, psychological torture, and it's the one that's with us today, and it's proved to be a very resilient, quite adaptable, and an enormously destructive paradigm.

Let’s make one thing clear. Americans refer to this often times in common parlance as “torture light.” Psychological to torture, people who are involved in treatment tell us it’s far more destructive, does far more lasting damage to the human psyche than does physical torture. As Senator McCain said, himself, last year when he was debating his torture prohibition, faced with a choice between being beaten and psychologically tortured, I'd rather be beaten. Okay? It does far more lasting damage. It is far crueler than physical torture. This is something that we don't realize in this country.

Now, another thing we see is those photographs is the psychological techniques, but the initial research basically developed techniques for attacking universal human sensory receptors: sight, sound, heat, cold, sense of time. That's why all of the detainees describe being put in dark rooms, being subjected to strobe lights, loud music, okay? That’s sensory deprivation or sensory assault. Okay, that was sort of the phase one of the C.I.A. research. But the paradigm has proved to be quite adaptable.

Now, one of the things that Donald Rumsfeld did, right at the start of the war of terror, in late 2002, he appointed General Geoffrey Miller to be chief at Guantanamo, alright, because the previous commanders at Guantanamo were too soft on the detainees, and General Miller turned Guantanamo into a de facto behavioral research laboratory, a kind of torture research laboratory. And under General Miller at Guantanamo, they perfected the C.I.A. torture paradigm. They added two key techniques. They went beyond the universal sensory receptors of the original research. They added to it an attack on cultural sensitivity, particularly Arab male sensitivity to issues of gender and sexual identity.

And then they went further still. Under General Miller, they created these things called “Biscuit” teams, behavioral science consultation teams, and they actually had qualified military psychologists participating in the ongoing interrogation, and these psychologists would identify individual phobias, like fear of dark or attachment to mother, and by the time we're done, by 2003, under General Miller, Guantanamo had perfected the C.I.A. paradigm, and it had a three-fold total assault on the human psyche: sensory receptors, self-inflicted pain, cultural sensitivity, and individual fears and phobia.

AMY GOODMAN: And then they sent General Miller to, quote, "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. Professor McCoy, we’re going to break for a minute, and then we'll come back. Professor Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His latest book is called A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, author of a number of books. The Politics of Heroin: C.I.A. Complicity in the Global Drug Trade almost had him killed. Afterwards, the C.I.A. tried to have the book squelched, but ultimately it was published. Then A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation from the Cold War to the War On Terror is his latest book, and we're talking about the history of torture. Continue with what you were saying, talking about the Biscuit teams, the use of psychologists in Guantanamo, and then Geoffrey Miller, going from Guantanamo to, quote, “Gitmo-ize” Abu Ghraib.

ALFRED McCOY: In mid-2003, when the Iraqi resistance erupted, the United States found it had no intelligence assets; it had no way to contain the insurgency, and they -- the U.S. military was in a state of panic. And at that moment, they began sweeping across Iraq, rounding up thousands of Iraqi suspects, putting many of them in Abu Ghraib prison. At that point, in late August 2003, General Miller was sent from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, and he brought his techniques with him. He brought a CD, and he brought a manual of his techniques. He gave them to the M.P. officers, the Military Intelligence officers and to General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. Commander in Iraq.

In September of 2003, General Sanchez issued orders, detailed orders, for expanded interrogation techniques beyond those allowed in the U.S. Army Field Manual 3452, and if you look at those techniques, what he's ordering, in essence, is a combination of self-inflicted pain, stress positions and sensory disorientation, and if you look at the 1963 C.I.A. KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, you look at the 1983 C.I.A. Interrogation Training Manual that they used in Honduras for training Honduran officers in torture and interrogation, and then twenty years later, you look at General Sanchez's 2003 orders, there's a striking continuity across this forty-year span, in both the general principles, this total assault on the existential platforms of human identity and existence, okay? And the specific techniques, the way of achieving that, through the attack on these sensory receptors.

AMY GOODMAN: And Rumsfeld's comment, when asked if it was torture, when people were forced to stand hours on end, that he stands at his desk?

ALFRED McCOY: Right, he wrote that in one of his memos. When he was asked to review the Guantanamo techniques in late 2003 or early 2004, he scribbled that marginal note and said, you know, “I stand at my desk eight hours a day.” He has a designer standing desk. “How come we're limiting these techniques of the stress position to just four hours?” So, in other words, that was a clear signal from the Defense Secretary. Now, one of the problems beyond the details of these orders is torture is an extraordinarily dangerous thing. There's an absolute ban on torture for a very good reason. Torture taps into the deepest recesses, unexplored recesses of human consciousness, where creation and destruction coexist, where the infinite human capacity for kindness and infinite human capacity for cruelty coexist, and it has a powerful perverse appeal, and once it starts, both the perpetrators and the powerful who order them, let it spread, and it spreads out of control.

So, I think when the Bush administration gave those orders for, basically, techniques tantamount to torture at the start of the war on terror, I think it was probably their intention that these be limited to top al-Qaeda suspects, but within months, we were torturing hundreds of Afghanis at Bagram near Kabul, and a few months later in 2003, through these techniques, we were torturing literally thousands of Iraqis. And you can see in those photos, beyond the details of the techniques that we've described, you can see how that once it starts, it becomes this Dantesque hell, this kind of play palace of the darkest recesses of human consciousness. That’s why it’s necessary to maintain an absolute prohibition on torture. There is no such thing as a little bit of torture. The whole myth of scientific surgical torture, that torture advocates, academic advocates in this country came up with, that's impossible. That cannot operate. It will inevitably spread.

AMY GOODMAN: So when, Professor McCoy, you started seeing these images, the first photos that came out at Abu Ghraib, the pictures we showed of the, you know, hooded man, electrodes coming out of his fingers, standing on the box, your response?

ALFRED McCOY: Oh, I mean, the reason I wrote this book is when that photo came out in April 2004 on CBS news, at the Times, William Safire, for example, writing in the New York Times said this was the work of creeps. Later on, Defense Secretary Schlesinger said that this was just abuse by a few people on the night shift. There was another phrase: “Recycled hillbillies from Cumberland, Maryland.” In other words, this was the bad apple thesis. We could blame these bad apples. I looked at those photos, I didn't see individual abuse. What I saw was two textbook trademark C.I.A. psychological interrogation techniques: self-inflicted pain and sensory disorientation.

AMY GOODMAN: We read our first headline today. It was about Maher Arar and the case – the judge has thrown out against him, the Canadian-Syrian man who was sent back to Syria -- the U.S. government calls it “extraordinary rendition,” and he was kept in an underground “grave-like” cell, he described, very small. He was held for almost a year. As you showed, and I looked at the book, the pictures of the places where prisoners are kept, and in speaking to Maher, he’s described this level of sensory deprivation. What about the shape and the size and the coffin-like nature of these rooms?

ALFRED McCOY: The details are often left to the individual interrogators, but the manuals basically describe how you control the process, you control the environment right from the start when you pick somebody up. So, for example, often times we see in Iraq of people when they're arrested, their arms are behind their back. They're made to kneel in very uncomfortable positions, and they're hooded right away. That's one of the things they always specify is the time and conditions of arrest. You begin to break them down. You create this artificial environment of control, and then the techniques always vary. It can be extreme darkness or it can be extreme light; it can be absence of sound or a bombardment of sound.

AMY GOODMAN: And that bombardment of sound is often joked about. ‘Oh, we played Britney Spears really loud,’ or whatever it is. I don't know if it was her. But that's become a joke when soldiers play loud music.

ALFRED McCOY: Well, though, actually, that's one of the problems of talking about this topic in the United States, is that we regard all of this panoply of psychological techniques as “torture light,” as somehow not really torture. Okay? And we're the only country in the world that does that. The U.N. convention bars – defines torture as the infliction of severe psychological or physical pain. The U.N. convention which bans torture in 1984 gives equal weight to psychological and physical techniques. We alone as a society somehow exempt all of these psychological techniques. That dates back, of course, to the way we ratified the convention in the first place.

Back in the early 1990s, when the United States was emerging from the Cold War, and we began this process of, if you will, disarming ourselves and getting beyond all of these techniques, trying to sort of bring ourselves in line with rest of the international community, when we sent that -- when President Clinton sent the U.N. Anti-Torture Convention to the U.S. Congress for ratification in 1994, he included four detailed paragraphs of reservation that had, in fact, been drafted by the Reagan administration, and he adopted them without so much as changing a semicolon. And when you read those detailed paragraphs of reservation, what you realize is this, is that the United States Congress ratified the treaty, but basically we outlawed only physical torture. Those photographs of reservation are carefully written to avoid one word in the 26 printed pages of the U.N. convention. That word is "mental." Basically, we exempted psychological torture.

Now, another problem for the United States, as well, was when the U.S. Army re-wrote the Army Field Manual in 1992, the same period, while, although let’s say the civil authorities were sort of skirting the law by exempting psychological techniques, the U.S. Army re-wrote their field manual with the intention of strictly observing the letter and the spirit of the U.N. Anti-Torture Convention and other similar treaties. So what happened is that when the Defense Department gave orders for extreme techniques, when General Sanchez gave orders for his techniques beyond the Army Field Manual, what that meant is when the soldiers were actually investigated, they had committed crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They would be prosecuted, and they’re all being sent to jail.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor McCoy, you wrote a piece, “Why the McCain Torture Ban Won't Work: The Bush Legacy of Legalized Torture.”

ALFRED McCOY: Right. Most Americans think that it's over, that in last year, December 2005, the U.S. Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act 2005, which in the language of Senator McCain, who was the original author of that amendment to the defense appropriation, the author of that act, it bars all inhumane or cruel treatment, and most people think that’s it, that it’s over, okay? Actually, what has happened is the Bush administration fought that amendment tooth and nail; they fought it with loopholes. Vice President Cheney went to Senator McCain and asked for a specific exemption for the C.I.A. McCain refused. The National Security Advisor went to McCain and asked for certain kinds of exemptions for the C.I.A. He refused.

So then they started amending it. Basically what happened is, through the process, they introduced loopholes. Look, at the start of the war on terror, the Bush administration ordered torture. President Bush said right on September 11, 2001, when he addressed the nation, “I don't care what the international lawyers say. We’re going to kick some ass.” Those were his words, and then it was up to his legal advisors in the White House and the Justice Department to translate his otherwise unlawful orders into legal directives, and they did it by crafting three very controversial legal principles. One, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, could override laws and treaties. Two, that there was a possible defense for C.I.A. interrogators who engage in torture, and the defenses were of two kinds. First of all, they played around with the word "severe," that torture is the infliction of severe pain. That's when Jay Bybee, who was Assistant Attorney General, wrote that memo in which he said, “’severe’ means equivalent to organ failure,” in other words, right up to the point of death. The other thing was that they came up with the idea of intentionality. If a C.I.A. interrogator tortured, but the aim was information, not pain, then he could say that he was not guilty. The third principle, which was crafted by John Yoo, was Guantanamo is not part of the United States; it is exempt from the writ of U.S. courts. Now, in the process of ratifying – sorry, passing the McCain torture – the torture prohibition, McCain’s ban on inhumane treatment, the White House has cleverly twisted the legislation to re-establish these three key principles. In his signing statement on December 30, President Bush said --

AMY GOODMAN: This was the statement that he signed as he signed the McCain so-called ban on torture?

ALFRED McCOY: Right, he emailed it at 8:00 at night from his ranch in Crawford on December 30th, that he was signing this legislation into law. He said, “I reserve the right, as Commander-in-Chief and as head of the unitary executive, to do what I need to do to defend America.” Okay, that was the first thing. The next thing that happened is that McCain, as a compromise, inserted into the legislation a provision that if a C.I.A. operative engages in inhumane treatment or torture but believes that he or she was following a lawful order, then that's a defense. So they got the second principle, defense for C.I.A. torturers. The third principle was – is that the White House had Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina amend McCain’s amendment by inserting language into it, saying that for the purposes of this act, the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay is not on U.S. territory, and last month --

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

ALFRED McCOY: So, and then in the last month, the Bush administration has gone to federal courts and said, “Drop all of your habeas corpus suits from Guantanamo.” There are 160 of them. They've gone to the Supreme Court and said, “Drop your Guantanamo case.” They have, in fact, used that law to quash legal oversight of their actions.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. I want to thank you very much, Professor Al McCoy, for speaking with us, professor of history at University of Wisconsin, Madison, his book A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War On Terror.

Abu Ghraib, Revisited

Abu Ghraib, in pictures:

Cheney Spearheaded Effort To Discredit Wilson

At TruthOut.org, Jason Leopold reports:

Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley led a campaign beginning in March 2003 to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for publicly criticizing the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, according to current and former administration officials.

The officials work or had worked in the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council in a senior capacity and had direct knowledge of the Vice President's campaign to discredit Wilson.
In interviews over the course of two days this week, these officials were urged to speak on the record for this story. But they resisted, saying they had already testified before a grand jury investigating the leak of Wilson's wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and added that speaking out against the administration and specifically Vice President Cheney would cause them to lose their jobs and subject their families to vitriolic attacks by the White House.

The officials said they decided to speak out now because they have become disillusioned with the Bush administration's policies regarding Iraq and the flawed intelligence that led to the war.

They said their roles, along with several others at the CIA and State Department, included digging up or "inventing" embarrassing information on the former Ambassador that could be used against him, preparing memos and classified material on Wilson for Cheney and the National Security Council, and attending meetings in Cheney's office to discuss with Cheney, Hadley, and others the efforts that would be taken to discredit Wilson.

A former CIA official who has worked in the counter-proliferation division, and is familiar with the undercover work Wilson's wife did for the agency, said Cheney and Hadley visited CIA headquarters a day or two after Joseph Wilson was interviewed on CNN.

In the interview, which took place two and a half weeks before the start of the Iraq war, Wilson said the administration was more interested in redrawing the map of the Middle East to pursue its own foreign policy objectives than in dealing with the so-called terrorist threat.

"The underlying objective, as I see it, the more I look at this, is less and less disarmament, and it really has little to do with terrorism, because everybody knows that a war to invade and conquer and occupy Iraq is going to spawn a new generation of terrorists," Wilson said in a March 2, 2003, interview with CNN.

"So you look at what's underpinning this, and you go back and you take a look at who's been influencing the process. And it's been those who really believe that our objective must be far grander, and that is to redraw the political map of the Middle East," Wilson added.

But it wasn't Wilson who Cheney was so upset about when he visited the CIA in March 2003.

During the same CNN segment in which Wilson was interviewed, former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright made similar comments about the rationale for the Iraq war and added that he believed UN weapons inspectors should be given more time to search the country for weapons of mass destruction.

The National Security Council and CIA officials said Cheney had visited CIA headquarters and asked several CIA officials to dig up dirt on Albright, and to put together a dossier that would discredit his work that could be distributed to the media.

"Vice President Cheney was more concerned with Mr. Albright," the CIA official said. "The international community had been saying that inspectors should have more time, that the US should not set a deadline. The Vice President felt Mr. Albright's remarks would fuel the debate."

The officials said a "binder" was sent to the Vice President's office that contained material that could be used by the White House to discredit Albright if he continued to comment on the administration's war plans. However, it's unclear whether Cheney or other White House officials used the information against Albright.

A week later, Wilson was interviewed on CNN again. This was the first time Wilson ridiculed the Bush administration's intelligence that claimed Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger.

"Well, this particular case is outrageous. We know a lot about the uranium business in Niger, and for something like this to go unchallenged by US - the US government - is just simply stupid. It would have taken a couple of phone calls. We have had an embassy there since the early '60s. All this stuff is open. It's a restricted market of buyers and sellers," Wilson said in the March 8, 2003, CNN interview. "For this to have gotten to the IAEA is on the face of it dumb, but more to the point, it taints the whole rest of the case that the government is trying to build against Iraq."

What Wilson wasn't at liberty to disclose during that interview, because the information was still classified, was that he had personally traveled to Niger a year earlier on behalf of the CIA to investigate whether Iraq had in fact tried to purchase uranium from the African country. Cheney had asked the CIA in 2002 to look into the allegation, which turned out to be based on forged documents, but was included in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address nonetheless.

Wilson's comments enraged Cheney, all of the officials said, because they were seen as a personal attack against the Vice President, who was instrumental in getting the intelligence community to cite the Niger claims in government reports to build a case for war against Iraq.

The former Ambassador's stinging rebuke also caught the attention of Stephen Hadley, who played an even bigger role in the Niger controversy, having been responsible for allowing President Bush to cite the allegations in his State of the Union address.

At this time, the international community, various media outlets, and the International Atomic Energy Association had called into question the veracity of the Niger documents. Mohammed ElBaradei, head of IAEA, told the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003, that the Niger documents were forgeries and could not be used to prove Iraq was a nuclear threat.

Wilson's comments in addition to ElBaradei's UN report were seen as a threat to the administration's attack plans against Iraq, the officials said, which would take place 11 days later.

Hadley had avoided making public comments about the veracity of the Niger documents, going as far as ignoring a written request by IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei to share the intelligence with his agency so his inspectors could verify the claims. Hadley is said to have known the Niger documents were crude forgeries, but pushed the administration to cite it as evidence that Iraq was a nuclear threat, according to the State Department officials, who said they personally told Hadley in a written report that the documents were bogus.

The CIA and State Department officials said that a day after Wilson's March 8, 2003, CNN appearance, they attended a meeting at the Vice President's office chaired by Cheney, and it was there that a decision was made to discredit Wilson. Those who attended the meeting included I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October for lying to investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice related to his role in the Plame Wilson leak, Hadley, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and John Hannah, Cheney's deputy national security adviser, the officials said.

"The way I remember it," the CIA official said about that first meeting he attended in Cheney's office, "is that the vice president was obsessed with Wilson. He called him an 'asshole,' a son-of-a-bitch. He took his comments very personally. He wanted us to do everything in our power to destroy his reputation and he wanted to be kept up to date about the progress."

A spokeswoman for Cheney would not comment for this story, saying the investigation into the leak is ongoing. The spokeswoman refused to give her name. Additional calls made to Cheney's office were not returned.

The CIA, State Department and National Security Council officials said that early on they had passed on information about Wilson to Cheney and Libby that purportedly showed Wilson as being a "womanizer" and that he had dabbled in drugs during his youth, allegations that are apparently false, they said.

The officials said that during the meeting, Hadley said he would respond to Wilson's comments by writing an editorial about the Iraqi threat, which it was hoped would be a first step in overshadowing Wilson's CNN appearance.

A column written by Hadley that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on February 16, 2003, was redistributed to newspaper editors by the State Department on March 10, 2003, two days after Wilson was interviewed on CNN. The column, "Two Potent Iraqi Weapons: Denial and Deception" once again raised the issue that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger.

Cheney appeared on Meet the Press on March 16, 2003, to respond to ElBaradei's assertion that the Niger documents were forgeries.

"I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong," Cheney said during the interview. "[The IAEA] has consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past."

Cheney knew the State Department had prepared a report saying the Niger claims were false, but he thought the report had no merit, the two State Department officials said. Meanwhile, the CIA was preparing information for the vice president and his senior aides on Wilson should the former ambassador decide to speak out against the administration again.

Behind the scenes, Wilson had been speaking to various members of Congress about the administration's use of the Niger documents and had said the intelligence the White House relied upon was flawed, said one of the State Department officials who had a conversation with Wilson. Wilson's criticism of the administration's intelligence eventually leaked out to reporters, but with the Iraq war just a week away, the story was never covered.

It's unclear whether anyone disseminated information on Wilson in March 2003, following the meeting in Cheney's office. Although the officials said they helped prepare negative information on Wilson about his personal and professional life and had given it to Libby and Cheney, Wilson seemed to drop off the radar once the Iraq war started on March 19, 2003.

With no sign of weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq, news accounts started to call into question the credibility of the administration's pre-war intelligence. In May 2003, Wilson re-emerged at a political conference in Washington sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. There he told the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff that he had been the special envoy who traveled to Niger in February 2002 to check out allegations that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the country. He told Kristoff he briefed a CIA analyst that the claims were untrue. Wilson said he believed the administration had ignored his report and were dishonest with Congress and the American people.

When Kristoff's column was published in the Times, the CIA official said, "a request came in from Cheney that was passed to me that said 'the vice president wants to know whether Joe Wilson went to Niger.' I'm paraphrasing. But that's more or less what I was asked to find out."

In his column, Kristoff Had accused Cheney of allowing the truth about the Niger documents the administration used to build a case for war to go "missing in action." The failure of US armed forces to find any WMDs in Iraq in two months following the start of the war had been blamed on Cheney.

What in the previous months had been a request to gather information that could be used to discredit Wilson now turned into a full-scale effort involving the Office of the Vice President, the National Security Council, and the State Department to find out how Wilson came to be chosen to investigate the Niger uranium allegations.

"Cheney and Libby made it clear that Wilson had to be shut down," the CIA official said. "This wasn't just about protecting the credibility of the White House. For the vice president, going after Wilson was purely personal, in my opinion."

Cheney was personally involved in this aspect of the information gathering process as well, visiting CIA headquarters to inquire about Wilson, the CIA official said. Hadley had also raised questions about Wilson during this month with the State Department officials and asked that information regarding Wilson's trip to Niger be sent to his attention at the National Security Council.

That's when Valerie Plame Wilson's name popped up showing that she was a covert CIA operative. The former CIA official who works in the counter-proliferation division said another meeting about Wilson took place in Cheney's office, attended by the same individuals who were there in March. But Cheney didn't take part in it, the officials said.

"Libby led the meeting," one of the State Department officials said. "But he was just as upset about Wilson as Cheney was."

The officials said that as of late May 2003 the only correspondence they had had was with Libby and Hadley. They said they were unaware who had made the decision to unmask Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters.

George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, took responsibility for allowing what is widely referred to as the infamous "sixteen words" to be included in Bush's State of the Union address. Tenet's mea culpa came one day after Wilson penned an op-ed for the New York Times in which he accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence on Iraq. In the column, Wilson revealed that he was the special envoy who traveled to Niger to investigate the uranium claims.

Tenet is working on a book titled At the Center of the Storm with former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, which it is expected will be published later this year. Tenet will reportedly come clean on how the "sixteen words made it into the President's State of the Union speech, according to publishersmarketplace.com, an industry newsletter.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame Wilson leak for more than two years, questioned Cheney about his role in the leak in 2004. Cheney did not testify under oath, and it's unknown what he told the special prosecutor.

On September 14, 2003, during an interview with Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney maintained that he didn't know Wilson or have any knowledge about his Niger trip or who was responsible for leaking his wife's name to the media.

"I don't know Joe Wilson," Cheney said, in response to Russert, who quoted Wilson as saying there was no truth to the Niger uranium claims. "I've never met Joe Wilson. And Joe Wilson - I don't who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back ... I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him."