INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION (Senate - June 18, 1997)

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Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I wish to follow up on some comments that my colleague from Colorado made. First, however, I should like to address a subject briefly which has relevance to one of the bills we will be taking up, if not today, then later this week, and that is the intelligence authorization bill.

This is a bill which should not have a great deal of controversy surrounding it. It provides for the funding of the intelligence agencies of the United States and the substantive policy that governs our intelligence activities, but it is especially relevant and propitious, I think, that we take up that bill this week following the news accounts of the arrest and incarceration of a man whose name is Kanzi, ostensibly from Pakistan, who is the alleged perpetrator of a violent crime against employees of the CIA a few years ago here in the Washington, DC, area.

The reason I bring this up now is to make two points. One, we frequently hear the stories when things go wrong in law enforcement and in particular in operations involving our intelligence agencies. We try to learn from those lessons, but there have been bitter experiences with which we have had to deal. What we do not hear so much about are the many, many successes that go unreported, frequently because they involve law enforcement or intelligence activities that simply cannot be disclosed publicly. They involve classified material, sources, and methods of collection of information which we simply cannot discuss or we would be compromising those sources and methods.

So these stories are not told, and it is too bad because I think the American people, in order to support our law enforcement and intelligence agencies, need to appreciate the work that they do and the danger that they frequently face and the many times in which by their actions American lives are saved and yet we do not even know about it.

In this case, the details will have to come out later. We have been briefed, and certainly there is a very fine story to be told here. But the details will have to come out later. What we can say at this point is that this will be found to be yet another example of where American law enforcement officials played a key role in bringing to justice a terrorist, a person who at least allegedly has committed a heinous crime and hopefully, as a result of that information coming out, we will be supportive of agencies such as the FBI, such as the CIA, the DIA, and the other agencies, some of which we will be discussing in the intelligence authorization bill a little bit later.

The second point is that we will find, track down, take into our jurisdiction, and prosecute terrorists. They can run, but they cannot hide. And they should note that we do not rest until we bring these people to justice. If you look at the number of terrorist incidents over the last several years, in many, many cases we have found and we have gained jurisdiction over and in some cases already prosecuted the people who have perpetrated heinous crimes against society in general and frequently against Americans. We will continue to be successful in doing that and in protecting American people if we are able to adequately fund and provide proper policies to guide our law enforcement agencies.

So when we take that bill up later, I hope that my colleagues will be supportive and the American people will appreciate the continued necessity of providing that kind of support. In the end it is what will preserve our democracy as well as peace around the world.

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