Special order speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), March 28, 2000

Special order speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), March 28, 2000
ILLEGAL NARCOTICS (House of Representatives - March 28, 2000)

[Page: H1468]
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ose). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House on the floor tonight to talk once again in regard to what I consider the most serious and devastating social issue facing not only the Congress but our entire Nation and that is the problem of illegal narcotics and the heavy toll they have taken on our Nation, particularly our young people.

Tonight, I am going to try to cover some material some may have covered before but I think in light of tomorrow's action on the proposal for an emergency supplemental in the House of Representatives, I will focus some on the story of how we got to an emergency situation, particularly as it involves narcotics and the primary source of those narcotics, Colombia, the country of Colombia, and the South American region where those illegal narcotics are coming from.

Then I hope to also touch upon some of my committee work for the benefit of my colleagues and the American people as chair of the Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee. I know the hour is late. Many folks are tired. But I hope that they will listen tonight, because the message I have is an important one for the Congress and again for the American people. It will really detail some of what has taken place, how we got ourselves into a situation where tomorrow the House of Representatives must bring forward a record funding emergency proposal to deal with a problem that has been festering, and I submit caused by very specific actions and policies and directives of this administration and now the American taxpayer will pay the bill.

It would not be bad enough if I just came here and talked about a price tag of $1.5, $1.6, $2 billion in emergency assistance that is going to go into an effort to stop the conflict, the trafficking, the production of most of the illegal hard narcotics coming into the United States. Talking about just that cost is bad enough. I have not translated that into the human toll in which we have in the last recorded year, 1998, I do not have the 1999 figures yet, 15,973 Americans dying as the direct result of illegal narcotics.

The toll is heavy. We are probably reaching 100,000 since the beginning of this administration. And I submit our action tomorrow will be just as important in shoring up the defense of this Nation for the many deployments that have been ordered by the chief executive but also to stop the biggest threat coming into our country. No American was killed in Kosovo in fighting there. Fifteen to 16,000 were killed last year in the streets, communities and schools of our Nation. No one died in Kosovo as a result of action of this Congress.

We tried our best to deal with this administration to stop death and destruction in that region of the world. It is in some of our national interest to do it, and if that is in our national interest to do it as far away as Kosovo where we have no direct American casualties and we did have disruption of that region and killing in that region, certainly an area to the south of us that produces the death and destruction of thousands and thousands of Americans annually, and the toll continues to rise.

We have imprisoned close to 2 million Americans in our jails and prisons across the country, and 60 to 70 percent, I am told, in some areas I am told even higher, 80 percent of those individuals are incarcerated because of narcotics-related offenses and many of them there for many felonies committed and crimes committed not only while under the influence but also trafficking in illegal narcotics. So again we have an area that is of extreme importance, an issue that is of extreme importance and we must deal with that tomorrow.

[Page: H1469]

[TIME: 2145]

The record, as I said, is a rather sad action of this administration. I will detail some of the time it has taken to get the supplemental from this President. I was interviewed on an NPR radio program this afternoon and they had, I believe, a Time or Newsweek reporter also on the program. They were citing that this administration did not act until the information they had, because a poll was conducted and found that Americans are alarmed. Maybe my colleagues have read about that poll that was conducted. That poll said that the Democrats could be held accountable in the election and that this administration would pay the penalty for not attacking and taking action on the drug war.

We finally had word that a proposal was coming back in the late fall last year and again, that was delayed; and finally, not until a few weeks ago did we receive the President's budget proposal for emergency assistance to Colombia. We will deal with that matter in just a second.

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely startling to me how the President of the United States can talk about everything except illegal narcotics and their impact on our young people. Most recently we had two incidents, and those incidents involved, first of all, a 6-year-old that killed a 6-year-old and took a gun to school; and the focus immediately was on legislation to impose trigger locks and a host of other peripheral laws to deal with the question of gun control.

What the President failed to mention, and attention was not focused by the media on it, is this 6-year-old came from a crack house. The father was in jail. The gun was stolen. He lived in a pig sty. Now, this is the family setting that this child came from. We can put all the trigger locks in the world on, and we can pass all of the additional laws in other areas; but if we do not focus on the root of the problem, illegal narcotics, and I am certain that that is what destroyed that family. Illegal narcotics in that crack house sent that father, and drug dealing, sent that family into despair and disruption, and illegal narcotics provided a stolen weapon and access and a destroyed family for that child. Where is the thinking in the leadership of this Nation?

Then, most recently, we had a 12-year-old who brought a gun into school. This was in an elementary school in Lisbon, Ohio, I believe was the town, and the child, a 12-year-old, brings a gun into the school. He brought it in school and immediately it was broadcast across the country that this child had brought that gun there and we must immediately do something about, again, gun control.

Now granted, we may need to impose some additional laws and restrictions, but a simple look, even a simple examination of the situation, and let me read from the account: The boy said before that his biological mother was in jail and he wanted to visit her. Authorities did not release information on the mother's situation, but the Akron Beacon Journal said that the mother was in prison on a drug-related charge.

Where is the media? Where is the leadership of this country in ignoring the illegal narcotics problem? A 12-year-old taking his father's weapon into school, and it had been stored, according to this report, on a dresser top with a fully-engaged trigger lock. It was absolutely incredible to hear the Vice President of the United States commenting on this situation and then asking for more gun control.

Mr. Speaker, I have never in my life seen more diversionary tactics to get away from the root problem of 12-year-olds who have parents in jail, when they have their family disrupted, when the parent is in jail for drug trafficking, when there is no family structure to

support them. When we have had a society that has become tolerant of illegal narcotics trafficking, we will have, no matter how many laws this Congress passes, these situations. I still cannot believe that the media will not focus on this, nor will the leadership of this Congress or this administration.

Mr. Speaker, I really want to also focus tonight on a tale of two cities. I have had the opportunity to spend time since I took over chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Drug Policy a little over a year and several months ago now to look at again some of the problems we hear about in the media, and focus on what different communities are doing to deal with that problem.

Once again, I was absolutely stunned by a recent article by a columnist, Judith Mann, and Judith Mann, who I believe is the columnist in the Washington Post. She did a column that absolutely caused me to come unglued last week attacking, in her liberal fashion, Mayor Rudy Guiliani, without a hint of facts, just dealing in fiction, to try to put forth liberal propaganda and unsubstantiated fiction about what Mayor Guiliani has done.

Last year, after taking over this subcommittee, I called Mayor Guiliani in to testify. There had been comments and questions about what he had done in New York City and we held an entire hearing on what was happening there. At the time we had two cases, very controversial cases. I think it was the Diallo case and another case of police brutality that got tremendous national and international attention. We also were interested in what Mayor Guiliani had done, because his community had been successful in curtailing on an unprecedented basis the murders in New York City since taking office, in stemming crime in that community, and in developing innovative programs.

The first part of Judith Mann's recent piece, which was entitled `The War on Drugs Can't Help Run Amok,' which criticized New York City's mayor and the police force on their program. Again, I believe this is an affront to facts. It is manufactured fiction. In this article, in this little editorial piece, she had the audacity to try to say that murders were up in New York City under Mayor Guiliani. What she tried to do was take one comparison of 2 years, the last 2 years, and blow that into something that the mayor's program had not worked on.

In fact, this is the record of Mayor Guiliani as far as murders are concerned: just before he took office they were in the 2,000 range; right in the 2,000 range. He has brought murders down in New York City. In 1998 and 1999, between 629 and I think about 679 the last recorded year. She took the slight increase last year and tried to make it look like crime was out of control, like the police program that he instituted and zero tolerance program he instituted somehow failed.

Now, where is the liberal mentality when Mayor Guiliani has saved, since just from coming into office in 1993, somewhere on average of 1,000 lives, every one of these years; if we average this out, how many thousands of lives he has saved with his policy. People who live in New York City can now live and work in that community and have one of the lowest crime rates in the entire Nation. What the mayor did in New York City has had so dramatic an impact, they also impact even the national statistics. The gall of the liberal media is absolutely astounding.

The facts are, since Mayor Guiliani took office, and this is murder, listen to the rest of these in the seven major crime areas in New York City: crime overall is down 57.6 percent. I would match that among any community of any size in the Nation. Murder is down

58.3 percent. Judith Mann should get a life. Rape is down 31.4 percent. Robbery down 62.1 percent. Think of the thousands and thousands of New York City residents and tourists and other people who visit from around the country and around the world. Robbery down 62.1 percent. Felony assaults are down 35.4 percent. Burglaries are down 61.7 percent. These are the facts, Judith Mann, Miss Liberal. These are the facts the American people should be paying attention to, the people in New York State should be paying attention to. Grand larceny down is 41.9 percent. Grand larceny auto is down 68.8 percent. These are some of the most dramatic figures, and rather than applauding someone who has accomplished so much, we see the liberal diatribe on Mayor Guiliani and the police of New York.

What is absolutely astounding is if there is any reason for a slight increase in murders last year, I can tie it directly to actions of this administration in failing to provide surveillance, failing to provide equipment, stopping the flow of assistance to Colombia in a repeated fashion, and helping to close down one of the most successful programs we have had in Peru, which has slashed 66 percent of the cocaine production in just a few years, and now is being sabotaged by withdrawal of U.S. surveillance information to Peruvians and a lack of equipment getting to Colombia. Even equipment we requested several years ago and appropriated several years ago still has not been adequately delivered to that country to combat the flow of illegal narcotics.

I am surprised it is not up more in New York City. In my community it is up slightly, even in central Florida, as a result of, again, this administration letting down its guard in stopping illegal narcotics at their source or interdicting them before they come to our shores is certainly a Federal responsibility.

Here is a local responsibility taken on in an unbelievable fashion. I hope every American, every Member of Congress can look at this chart and see how the policy of Mayor Guiliani, not just in this program, but in other innovative programs, has dramatically curtailed murders, robberies, rapes, every type of crime that I mentioned and the numbers that I mentioned.

Mr. Speaker, I have to again just be amazed at the liberal media and the trash that they peddle to the American people. Again, Miss Mann talks about a policy that has run amok and the drug war cannot help but run amok. Now, the facts are for Miss Mann and other die-hard liberals. Let me read from the testimony of Mayor Guiliani and just see historically where Mayor Guiliani fits in in this question of police brutality and incidents involving force or, again, violence from police officers.

[Page: H1470]

[TIME: 2200]

This is the testimony from our hearing when the mayor appeared last year after the Diallo case. This is Mr. Giuliani speaking:

`First of all, I do not think you have ever listened to my voice.' How prophetic for him to say that, and he could say it again. `I have said over and over again, including that--' he was responding to a question--`that was a long question. You've got to give me a chance to answer it, if you are being fair.' This was a question about police brutality at that time in the city.

Listen, again, to his testimony: `The fact is that I have over and over again said that police officers have to be respectful. We have taken action against police officers who have acted improperly. One of the cases that you mention, it was my administration that fired the police officer in question, even though he had been kept on by prior administrations. We have worked very, very hard to make this police department more respectful and more restrained. In your selective use of statistics,' and they did it to him last year, and people like Ms. Mann and others are doing it to him now, `you leave out the fact that incidents such as the one you are talking about have occurred in New York City for the last 20 to 35 years.' Again, with some 30,000 or 40,000 police officers historically, I just add that, those are not his words, you do have incidents of police misconduct.

Back to Mayor Giuliani's statement: `That police brutality and the issue of police brutality has not been an issue just exclusively of my administration, or while I have been mayor of New York City. You've got to start looking at, if you are interested in fairness rather than demagoguery, you have to look at the number of incidents. The number of incidents of police brutality, for example, are less in my administration,' he is speaking about the Giuliani administration, `than in the administration of Ed Koch or David Dinkins.'

Now, I am sure that Ms. Mann would not want to deal with the facts, and reveal to her reading public or the people out there that deserve the truth and the facts that the number of incidents of police brutality are less in the Giuliani administration than the Ed Koch or David Dinkins. She wants to say that Giuliani's war on drugs has failed.

`That is something you did not mention,' again, I am quoting from the mayor, `1993 was the last year of David Dinkins' administration. I just happen to have these statistics with me.' He brought the statistics, and under oath to the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the House of Representatives, this is the testimony and the facts he submitted and we checked.

`There were 62 percent more shootings by police officers per capita in the last year of David Dinkins' administration than the last year, which was my administration.' Why does she not print that, Ms. Mann and other diehard liberals?

`Where were they when there were 62 percent more shootings by police officers under David Dinkins' administration? In every year of my administration, something you left out of your statement, in every single year of my administration the police officers have grown more restrained in their use of firearms, even as we have added 10,000 police officers and given them automatic weapons.'

He increased by 10,000 the number of police officers, gave them automatic weapons, and the record is one of less incidents, more constraint. Again, these are the facts that liberal reporters do not want to deal with, or those inclined to bad-mouthing the mayor's efforts and those who support zero tolerance in these

types of programs. These are the exact numbers.

`In 1993, there were 212 incidents involving police officers in intentional shootings. In 1994,' the mayor's first year, `there were 167.' He testified, I believe, in early 1999. `In 1998, it was down to 111, just about half the incidents from the Dinkins' administration. These are incidents involving police officers and intentional shootings.

Members will not read this in Ms. Mann's liberal column or any of the other liberal trash that is pumped out by the other side. They will be telling us, well, we have to introduce more gun laws, we have to introduce more laws in the Congress, we have to put trigger locks on for kids, and this will solve the problem.

We do not hear that with even a zero tolerance policy, that they were able to have less than half the number of incidents. Let me again continue with what Mayor Giuliani testified and the liberals will not listen to, or the media will not report.

`In 1993, David Dinkins' last year in office, there were 7.4 shooting incidents per officer.' That is 62 percent less per capita with Giuliani. We have to take it on a per capita basis. Also, we have to remember, again, Rudy Giuliani increased the police by some 10,000, probably a 20 percent increase in police officers in that city.

`Yes, we do have difficulties. Yes, we do have lots of things that we have to work on. Yes, I have spoken about it a hundred times or a thousand times. I was at a police graduation last week. I said to the 800 police officers that what we expect of them is restraint, almost an inhuman ability to be restrained when they have to be.'

Can Members imagine the incidents, can Members imagine the pressure on police officers in New York City, one of the most densely populated, probably the most difficult area to govern, not only in the United States but the entire world? Here is a record, and I take great offense at the trash the media pumps out, particularly Ms. Mann, who knows that Mr. Giuliani and everyone who supports a zero tolerance in a tough enforcement policy that we know works beyond a reasonable doubt.

The mayor not only had a zero tolerance policy that was successful and resulted in fewer murders, but let me just cite, and again this is part of the testimony that he submitted in February of 1999 to our subcommittee, facts that were submitted.

`In New York City in 1991, 1992, and 1993 when crime was at historic heights, narcotics arrests were at a 10-year low. In 1993, the city made just 65,043 narcotics arrests. Last year, with the city dramatically safer, that number had risen to 124,000, a 91 percent increase in arrests.'

Some people are confused by this statistical correlation. This is information that was given to me by the DEA former administrator Tom Constantine. It is an interesting chart because it shows narcotics arrests and the crime index comparison in New York City.

In 1993, the figures I spoke to, 64,000, or 65,000, this is the number, I believe, and let us make sure we have this, all other commands and the narcotics division. The narcotics arrests here again are low. As Mayor Giuliani takes office and he gets up to this point that we talked about, we see the index of crime, and this is where the crimes were 432,000 crimes, almost 433,000 crimes, start to drop.

If that does not show us a correlation, that as we increase narcotics arrests, the crime goes down, I am a monkey's uncle. It is absolutely unbelievable, again, that people do not look at what has been achieved by the most outstanding mayor this Nation has seen in this decade of death and destruction with illegal narcotics, and use this as a model.

Drug confiscations increased 166 percent between 1993 and 1998, rising from 11,470 pounds to 30,510 pounds. Surprise, Mr. Speaker. We seize illegal narcotics, we seize hard drugs, and the crimes go down. It is not a magic formula, it is a simple formula. It is just beyond me how the liberals can twist and turn. They will tell us that the war on drugs is a failure. That is their next line.

I tell the Members that the war on drugs was closed down by the Clinton administration in January of 1993, when they came into office. How can we fight a war on drugs when we first of all do not target the source or cut out the source programs, to stop drug production at their source?

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out where narcotics are coming from. Seventy-five percent of the cocaine and heroin, back in 1993 there was almost zero cocaine grown in Colombia, almost zero poppies which produce heroin in Colombia, and today it is up over the 70 percent range grown in Colombia. Again, it does not take a rocket scientist, it is coming out of Colombia.

So where would we target? We would spend a few dollars in international programs to target Colombia.

Let me take this chart first, which deals with, and again, we know where the drugs are coming from. It is not rocket science. That is why we are going to be here talking about Colombia, because the drugs are produced in Colombia.

This is the record of the Clinton administration. They came in in 1992-1993 here, and we have to remember, we still had a Democrat-controlled Congress in this period. We did not take over until somewhere in 1995. In 1995, we have to get or we are already with the budget passed by a previous Congress.

Look what they did. This chart is Federal drug spending for international programs. That is stopping drugs at their source, and the entire program is like $633 million back in 1999, $660 in 1992 under President Bush.

Tomorrow we are going to be talking about two and three times that for just the mistake they made in closing down these programs in Colombia. They closed them down. They closed down the international programs, the most cost-effective. We were spending the smallest amount of money. Every time we get away from the field where that peasant is getting a couple of pesos or less than a few dollars for the coca, for the poppy, for the raw material or even processed material down there, they stop the programs.

I have to bring this chart up. I wish I had an overlay. I need to get an overlay, because this chart shows, again under the Reagan administration, developing a war against drugs. They did a real war against drugs. They put resources in the source country, they started the Andean strategy. The Vice President's task force occurred. They went after drugs at their source, and they put some dollars behind the effort to eradicate crops there.

Do Members see what took place? Every year, and this is the long-term trend in lifetime prevalence of drug use. This is so important, because this is the measure of long-term drug involvement with our population.

We see this during the Bush administration, and we see a takeoff like a rocket with Clinton, here. If Members look back here, they will see the takeoff is a result of stopping the international programs. We have a flood, a supply.

I asked the question to somebody today, do you have an HDTV? They said, no. Most Americans do not have an HDTV. Why? Because there is not a supply and the price is high.

[Page: H1471]

[TIME: 2215]

This is, again, simple economics. We have flooding into this country an unprecedented amount of cocaine, which is only grown three places in the world: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia. Only three places, and it cannot transfer to that many other areas. There are a few other Andean locations. In the bill tomorrow at the insistence of the Speaker of the House, who had that responsibility who started the successful programs in Peru and Bolivia, where we have had 55 to 66 percent reduction when we had a program in effect, until the administration also messed that program up in the last year or so, we had dramatic decreases of cocaine flowing into this country. This is an incredible record.

But what should also be looked at is the interdiction. Stop drugs at their source and then stop them before they get to our borders. Is that or is that not a Federal responsibility? We see here again gutting of the figures for interdiction. Taking the military out. They have great offense to begin with for anything military in this administration, except to deploy them around when there is a lot deployment to demand it for some reason or another distraction.

But we see here an incredible pattern of slicing the spending. This is the slowdown. This is the sabotaging. This is the destruction of the war on drugs. Again, we take this, invert it and see what has happened to our young people. Look back at this chart and we can see what this Republican Congress has done with this light blip downward in some of the programs that we have instituted, again, in Peru and Bolivia that have been so successful.

I said I would tell the `tale of two cities.' We had heard the tale of New York City and we received the facts about New York City. I have talked quite a bit about the contrast in Baltimore and the liberal mayor that, thank God, they got rid of who is a disgrace to Baltimore, and what he did to Baltimore driving Baltimore into despair with his liberal policy. We saw the figures I showed for New York City with dramatic decreases. This is the liberal Judith Mann policy that drugs are okay, and this is a health problem. Do not pay any attention to it. The police are going to be brutal and it is going to be horrible, even though the actual facts show to the contrary.

Mr. Speaker, these are the facts. These are the dead in Baltimore, 312, 1998. In 1999, it is also 310, 308 range. This is a record of a liberal policy in which they went for needle exchange. They went for all of these liberal programs. I heard the new police chief say they did not participate in the high-intensity drug trafficking area on a basis in which they had entered into an agreement on. So they basically had let up enforcement, adopted a liberal policy and the slaughter in Baltimore has been horrible.

We heard from the new mayor, and thank God there is a new mayor, a new mayor that recognized that the liberal policy, and he testified to it, was a failure. That the lack of enforcement, he showed a playground with bullet holes in the door a few months before he took office and they have already started enforcement and starting to clean up 10 drug markets. Hopefully, they will even clean up additional open air markets. But this is the policy.

The testimony is absolutely astounding on the liberal policy of what it created for this city. It created a population of addiction almost unparalleled in the history of the United States. The statistics we have are from 40,000 back here with this chart in 1996 to somewhere between 60 and 80,000 drug addicts today in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the most historic, beautiful cities. It decimated the population of that city. Who

wants to live in Baltimore?

A judge, Judge Noelle, testified before our subcommittee in Baltimore that in fact his best success in rehabilitating individuals that he got into court and were involved in drugs was to get them out of Baltimore, because there is no hope there.

Who would invest? What individual, what businessperson would invest in Baltimore when we have murders and mayhem and disruption? The same thing is true in South America in Colombia. The peasants will never have jobs or opportunities and the right wing and the left wing will be killing each other down there. We have in Colombia, from that region, 20 percent of the oil supply that we have in the United States. We have 15,900-plus Americans who died from the drugs.

If we just took 75 percent of the illegal narcotics which we can trace to the fields in Colombia, we, in fact, know that those drugs are coming from there, we could attribute 75 percent of the deaths in my community, 75 percent of the deaths in Baltimore, and 75 percent of the deaths to the failed policy of this administration, which to this day still cannot get the equipment that this Congress asked for several years ago to Colombia.

This is an article, it would almost be a joke, `The Delay of Copters Hobbles Colombia in Stopping Drugs.' We acknowledge the drugs are coming from Colombia. It is not rocket science. We have the DEA Signature program which can identify the fields where the heroin is coming from. No heroin produced there in 1993; now coming in in droves.

What do we need to stop it? Helicopters that can get in there and do eradication and assist both the national police and the military, which President Pastrana has radically reformed in going after the people who are financing the disruption of that Nation on both the right and the left by drug trafficking.

Back in 1998, the helicopters that we requested and appropriated before still were not delivered. And it is almost farcical to announce to the Congress that after we did get a handful of these Blackhawk helicopters that can do the job, they were not provided with armor so they were not usable until just a few days ago. The ammunition was delivered to the back-door loading gate of the State Department during the holidays rather than to Colombia.

Then we requested let us get our surplus material to Colombia if we are going to have a war on drugs, and the administration reacted by getting some of the equipment there and only a fraction of the equipment. Some back to 1998 still was not delivered. I held numerous behind-closed-door meetings so as not to embarrass the administration asking when is the stuff going to be there? This almost became a joke last December, Colombia turns down dilapidated U.S. trucks. They sent trucks that were being used in the Yukon Territory, not suitable to Colombia.

So that is why we are here. That is why we are here tonight. That is why the Committee on Rules is meeting to develop a rule to bring forth a bill to be discussed on the floor of this House tomorrow about Colombia. That is the inheritance that this administration has provided this Congress, the American people. And it would not be so bad if they just learned by some of their mistakes. This is not only the gang that cannot shoot straight; this is the gang that could mess up a one-car funeral.

We asked, in order again to fight a real war on drugs, one has to have intelligence. We stop drugs where they are grown, so we have to have overflights and surveillance information. Why does some reporter or liberal person like Judith Mann not say, `Mr. Vice President, I understand you moved some of the AWACS out of that area to look for oil spills in Alaska'? Why does

some reporter not ask the President of the United States, `I understand you moved some of the surveillance capability over to your various deployments.' The information so critical getting to Peru and Colombia and Bolivia to go after the production of that stuff at its source, that is the most cost effective. And we do not even have to do that. All we have to do is give them the information. Give the country the information and they will do it.

Here is the latest. This is just March 23. I cannot believe this crowd. It says, it is a response from Claudio De La Puente, the Charge d'Affaires of the Embassy of Peru. It said, `In the past 4 years, Peru has decreased area production of cocaine by 66 percent.' Which I stated before. This was due to a strategy to strengthen borders against drug trafficking. The Peruvian Air Force intercepted 91 aircraft involving drug trafficking between 1992 and 1997. Key to these results was the provision of monitoring of U.S. intelligence information.'

Mr. Speaker, there was one period in here when Clinton came into office, they even stopped the surveillance stuff. We had to pass, Congress, and clarify the law to allow the information sharing, because some liberal attorney in one of the departments, Department of Defense or Department of Justice, had misinterpreted and said we cannot share that information. They might shoot somebody down. It was the intent of the Congress of the United States to shoot down people who were carrying death and destruction. When we gave that information to President Fujimora and to the Peruvian Air Force, they acted and shot down.

That may be tough for some people to deal with, but these people had death and destruction on those planes. They were given every warning, but they never succeeded in bringing that death and destruction to our borders.

What is absolutely stunning is that the United States, since 1998, it says, the Peruvian Air Force has not been able to continue its interdiction operations because of lack of monitoring formerly provided by the U.S. AWACS and other aircraft.

We saw in Mr. Giuliani's and my community we are having more murders, a few more murders in the past year. Here is 1998 when they stopped providing that information. Here is a report that our subcommittee asked from GAO about what was going on with DOD assets. Is there a war on drugs? They replied to me, the flying hours had declined from 1992 to last year 68 percent. The maritime tracking had gone down some 62 percent. This is the report. I did not produce it. We had GAO produce it.

So stopping drugs at their source is not a priority or interdicting drugs at their source and helping countries that are producing to deal with the problem.

Here is the United States ambassador. Let me read from this report. The United States Ambassador to Peru warned in an October 1998 letter to the State Department that the reduction in air support would have a serious impact on the price of coca. And then we see here in news reports the price of coca has gone down. That is because the supply is up. Again, a no-brainer. And we see murders and crimes up even slightly in those areas that have tough enforcement policies.

So this is a no-brainer. With 12 minutes left, I do want to try to cover a couple of the areas that I have not in the bill. Some people may say this is just a partisan Republican coming up and commenting tonight. And I will admit to being partisan. I do not think this drug issue is a partisan issue. I have tried to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I have tried my best, and heaven knows we have tried our best to work with this administration. Holding numerous closed door sessions so I would not embarrass them by revealing the bungling in this effort.

But we are here now on a very serious matter. This stuff is coming in. They have diverted assets. I spent 6 hours in Puerto Rico and met with DEA and Customs and other officials and all of the band that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the Speaker of the House, set up several years ago has been dispersed. Haiti, which we will be doing a hearing on in a few more weeks, has become the Atlanta for drug trafficking in the Caribbean. This is a country in which we spent billions and billions of taxpayers dollars building the police force and so-called `nation building' and judicial system and legislative building. The legislature does not even meet. We have replaced one dictator with another and turned Haiti, with all of this money, into one of the biggest trafficking points in the Caribbean.

The situation in Puerto Rico is back to disaster level, and again heroin flooding in through Haiti, the Dominican Republic, over to Puerto Rico. Once it is in Puerto Rico, it is in the United States and it is flying to our airports.

[Page: H1473]

[TIME: 2230]

Again, a record which is just incredible, a record which defies logic, but a record we are going to have to pay for with a very big price tag tomorrow as the House of Representatives considers this monumental piece of legislation to fund these programs.

Again, we know what it will take to stop illegal narcotics. We have asked GAO to look at what took place, and they tell us basically that the war on drugs is closed down.

Here is the facts. Assets DoD contributes to reducing the illegal drug supply have declined. Pretty clear. What is sad is, even those who are charged with trying to stop drugs again at their source are coming into the United States, interdicting them. In this case, it is SouthCom, the Southern United States Military Command. Again, they are not firing at anyone. They are not going after drugs. They are providing surveillance and basic information which we share with those countries.

We heard what is going on with the countries not getting the information. In the Clinton administration these past few years, we have seen the requests in this, I am a little color blind so it is either blue or purple here depending on one's ability to detect colors. But I definitely know this is red. The red is the assets provided by DoD declined. Requested and provided by DoD.

So we know that the job has not been done. We know that the Congress must intercede at this important juncture; that we must pass this. We must not get into a debate about getting this equipment here.

Unfortunately, the bill has been added to. We have had a series of natural disasters in North Carolina and other areas. We have had problems in agriculture. Certainly nothing has been more impacted than the military.

The reason why DOD assets have declined is because we have got them off in some dozen deployments that the President has chosen as a priority. The priority, I submit, is not to Kosovo today. The priority is in our own backyard. It is in our neighborhoods. It is in our school.

When I go to areas like Sacramento, where the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) lives and his family resides, and hear the stories of illegal narcotics and how parents in a community of 200,000, 600 abandon their children, there is a program to restore their children back to their families. Less than 5 out of 35 take their children back because drugs have so destroyed their minds and their lives and their capability even to care for their offspring. There is something wrong.

But we are going to take this message to the floor tomorrow. We are going to take this message to the American people during this campaign. I am going to conduct hearings across the country from now until the last day of my term in office this year.

We will get some results. We will make a difference. If Rudy Giuliani can do it in New York, if one wants to say a tough town, New York is a tough town with tough people. We can have a mayor with the success that he has had. But how disappointing it must be, how deflating it must be to him, he who has worked so hard, had made so many tremendous improvements, when we went to Baltimore, what did we use as a drug treatment example? The people from Baltimore asked to hear what they were doing in New York City in drug treatments. So not only was there success in stopping the murders, but in treating the individuals and successful programs they developed.

But it is not found on the liberal pages of the Washington Post and the other publications that want to demean the mayor of New York and others who are on the frontline who have successful programs. But they will not ask any questions to those who have left us behind and who have destroyed real war on drugs, who have dismantled any efforts to stop most cost effectively, before they ever get to the streets of our communities, illegal narcotics.

Well, we can have a Baltimore or we can have a New York City. We can have a nation. If we had 80,000 drug addicts in Baltimore with 600,000, a declining population, we can certainly have one out of eight Americans. Certainly that has a tremendous toll.

We can have people, like in California we heard in testimony at field hearings in the district of the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose), abandon their children. Is that what we want?

Well, the choice will be ours tomorrow. The choice will be ours in the next few months. Some serious mistakes have been made. If we do not learn by those mistakes, they will be the cries of the families and mothers and sisters and brothers and relatives of more than the 15,973 that were lost in 1998. They will be the cries and sadness of a whole nation.

We must move together on this. We must learn by the mistakes of the past. I know we can do a better job. Certainly that is our responsibility.

END

As of March 29, 2000, this document is also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H28MR0-409: