Speeches by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) and Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-New York) for withdrawn amendment to H.R. 4811, the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, July 12, 2000

Speeches by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) and Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-New York) for withdrawn amendment to H.R. 4811, the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, July 12, 2000

AMENDMENT NO. 4 OFFERED BY MR. BURTON OF INDIANA
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.

The text of the amendment is as follows:

Amendment No. 4 offered by Mr. Burton of Indiana:

Offered By: Mr. Burton of Indiana

In title I of the bill under the heading `EXPORT AND INVESTMENT ASSISTANCE-subsidy appropriation', after the first dollar amount insert `(decreased by $25,000,000)'.
In title II of the bill under the heading `BILATERAL ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE-Funds Appropriated to the President-development assistance', after the first dollar amount insert `(decreased by $49,500,000)'.
In title II of the bill under the heading `BILATERAL ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE-Funds Appropriated to the President-operating expenses of the agency for international development', after the first dollar amount insert `(decreased by $30,000,000)'.
In title II of the bill under the heading `BILATERAL ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE-Department of State-international narcotics control and law enforcement', after the first dollar amount insert `(increased by $99,500,000)'.

[TIME: 2130]

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), chairman of the Committee on International Relations.

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

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to join the gentleman from Indiana (Chairman Burton) in offering this $99.5 million counternarcotics aid amendment for Colombia.

The gentleman from Indiana (Chairman Burton) and I have long worked together to aid the nation of Colombia, source of most of the world's cocaine and more than 70 percent of the heroin sold or seized on our Nation's streets.

Mr. Chairman, the Colombian National Police, the CNP, has long led the fight against drugs and has been doing its work effectively, although with the limited tools that they have had.

We reluctantly went along with the recently-passed Colombian emergency supplemental because that is what the Colombian government and the Clinton administration wanted; specifically, more aid to the Colombian military to fight drugs.

In the end, however, everyone knows that it is going to be the CNP that is going to have to eradicate the coca leaf and move gasoline from the helicopters and spray planes along with the herbicide to the distant and hard-to-reach fronts in places like southern Colombia, to eliminate the thousands of hectares of coca once the army takes control of those areas.

Drug fighting is a police function, not a military one, both in our Nation and in Colombia. Today the CNP lacks any real capacity to move the massive amounts of fuel that they and the army counternarcotics battalions may need. In fact, they have but only one workable supply plane, an old 1950 DC-3.

Last year's foreign ops appropriation bill in the committee incorporated report language at our request directing the State Department to buy a more modern supply plane for the CNP, a Buffalo, which is a small version of the C-130 suitable for the jungles and remote runways in Colombia.

Predictably, the State Department ignored congressional advice and failed to act. In a recent operation near the Venezuelan border they have had to make so many fuel runs with small aircraft and their one DC-3 that they alerted the drug traffickers and narco guerillas of their plans, thereby losing their element of surprise.

Unless we in the Congress rectify this supply line situation, we are going to have dozens of good helicopters for which Congress has provided the sorely needed funds sitting idly on the ground in Colombia. We are going to have to have some of the world's most expensive flower pots growing weeds under them in Colombia unless we act appropriately.

Mr. Chairman, the CNP are the best anti-narcotics police in the Americas. Yesterday they seized three tons of cocaine headed for Mexico and ultimately toward our Nation. The CNP needs this modest aid proposed by the gentleman from Indiana (Chairman Burton), and we should be giving it to them, both for the CNP and the future for our youngsters in America.

This effort to fight drugs at the source is in our Nation's interest. I urge a yes vote for its adoption.

[Page: H5925]
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is simple in nature. It moves money from three accounts bloated with bureaucracy and into an account which helps fight the scourge of drugs which are devastating our society.

As the gentleman from New York (Chairman Gilman) just said, our allies, the Colombian National Police, just yesterday seized three metric tons of cocaine destined for the United States through Mexico. This is just the latest testament that the Congress has provided aid to the right people in Colombia.

With the six Black Hawk Helicopters the Congress provided to the CNP last year, the CNP has eradicated more opium, which is used to make heroin, than it did in 1998, and nearly as much as it did last year, and they have only had the Black Hawk Helicopters for 4 months.

Yet in the Colombia supplemental aid package, the Clinton administration chose to virtually ignore our CNP allies and start a duplicative Colombian army unit, providing only $100 million to the CNP while spending nearly $1 billion on an army unit.

Throughout the process, the gentleman from New York (Chairman Gilman) and I have tried to explain why there needed to be a more equitable distribution of aid between the two. Yet, despite our long involvement with Colombia, not to mention our role as authorizers, we were ignored.

To this end, I include for the Record a letter and a request which the gentleman from New York (Chairman Gilman) and I wrote to have the needs of the CNP addressed in the supplemental. I wanted to offer another amendment which would have directed funding to the CNP, but that amendment would have been subject to a point of order that I am sure my good friend, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), would have raised.

I hope that after I withdraw this amendment, the gentleman from Alabama (Chairman Callahan) will consider a more equitable distribution of funds in the conference with the Senate.

The letter referred to is as follows:

Congress of the United States,
Washington, DC, April 7, 2000.

Hon. J. Dennis Hastert,
Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Speaker: We were pleased to support your Colombian aid proposal last week, and we will continue to provide any assistance necessary to see that the package is enacted into law. To that end, senior committee staff members from both our committees have just returned from a bipartisan staff delegation to Colombia. They met with many Colombian officials, including our friend General Serrano, and were able to gather information about the current situation there, and about the Clinton Administration's Colombian aid proposal. Their analysis can help improve the efficiency of our aid package.

BLACK HAWKS
On a bright note, the Colombian National Police (CNP) have finally received all six Black Hawk utility helicopters that Congress provided for them under your leadership, and the last three are scheduled to begin missions next week. The earlier problems with the floor armoring have been resolved, and the weapons systems seem to be operational. The only concern remains that FARC terrorists likely have surface-to-air missiles, and these Black Hawks are not equipped with inexpensive flares and chaff, which provide the best protection against such attacks by diverting the missile away from the helicopter. Finally, the CNP appears to be able to absorb the two additional Black Hawks we provided to them in the supplemental appropriations package passed by the House. They are grateful!

The Black Hawks have already paid for themselves. On a recent mission FARC terrorists ambushed a squad of CNP officers just 30 miles from Bogota in La Pena. A single Black Hawk was able to land and extract 21 fully armed CNP officers, lifting them to safety. It is comforting to know that the Congress' efforts helped save the lives of these good men.

AMMUNITION
The .50 caliber ammunition supply appears to still be a problem. As you may remember, the State Department bought 2 million rounds of .50 caliber ammunition for the GAU-19 defensive weapons systems that were manufactured during the Eisenhower Administration, in 1952 (see photo). Even worse, the State Department purchased 5 million additional rounds of this aged and useless ammunition (spending a total of approximately $10 million). The 50 year-old ammunition was suitable for the weapons of the Eisenhower era, but according to the manufacturer, it cannot be safely used in the defensive rapid-fire weapons systems that we purchased for the CNP to protect our nearly $100 million U.S. taxpayer-financed helicopter investment.

The State Department insists it can operate the weapons at a reduced rate of fire. However the manufacturer has explicitly warned the State Department not to use this aged ammunition because of serious risk of endangering the operator and/or weapon. The manufacturer says only ammunition manufactured after 1983 is safe to use in this weapon. Clearly, this situation must be addressed immediately, before someone is injured or killed and/or an expensive weapon is damaged or destroyed. The easy answer is to buy new ammunition, instead of trying to do this on the cheap.

SUPPORT CAPACITY/SUPPLY LINE
The most disturbing revelation from the trip was the discovery that there had been little consideration given to how the push into southern Colombia would be supported. The only certainty is that increased levels of fuel and herbicide will have to be flown in due to the remote locations of the forward operating bases, where often even contracted commercial planes refuse to land or there is no commercial source to purchase gasoline. Possibly even more critical than defending the helicopters themselves is the ability to support and maintain a supply line to keep the helicopters flying. Otherwise many if not all, of the helicopters provided in this package will constantly be waiting for their next tank of gas or spare part.

Shockingly, the State Department plans to use the CNP's 2 aging DC-3's (their third is being cannibalized to keep the other two in the air) as the backbone of the support effort. These planes from the FDR/Truman era are 60 years old (see photo), do not have a reliable spare parts supply line, and have some sort of mechanical trouble on nearly every mission. Almost every flight is flown with the potential of engine failure on take-offs and landings due to a recurring malfunction in the electronics system--which has been ongoing for the last two years.

As you may remember, General Serrano requested a Buffalo transport plane over a year ago (in his 1999 $51 million priority list). Congress placed report language directing the
State Department to purchase the Buffalo supply plane in this year's House Foreign Operations Appropriations Report. However the State Department chose to ignore the report language, saying it was non-binding.

In order to sustain the operations tempo necessary to be the primary supplier of fuel and herbicide for the push into southern Colombia, the CNP needs to update and increase its number of supply planes. The Buffalo appears to be the best platform for the project.

One specific example of the need for increased supply plane capacity is a recent CNP operation that required 18 staging flights by inadequate fixed-wing aircraft, like the DC-3, to supply in advance a supposedly `secret' mission in Vichada to destroy a clandestine cocaine lab. The 18 staging flights (10 for fuel alone) cost the CNP the critical element of surprise. Unfortunately, FARC terrorists had already taken their cocaine and all incriminating evidence, and abandoned the lab well before the CNP was able to execute its mission. If the CNP had the Buffalo supply plane Congress directed the State Department to purchase, the 18 trips could have been decreased to one or two.

CRITICAL NEEDS
Mr. Speaker, we have been pleased to help gain the support needed to pass the supplemental appropriations bill, however there are a few things which have been over-looked in the construction of this package. General Serrano, when asked by committee staff if he needed anything further to support both the CNP Black Hawks and the Colombian Army's push into southern Colombia, favored the following modest list of items that he felt were critical to the CNP's ability to successfully execute the supply mission for Plan Colombia. It is our hope that the House would push for the following items in conference, if and when it occurs.

$52 million--to purchase 4 Buffalo transport/supply aircraft ($13 million each).

$3.5 million--to update the CNP sidearms with Sig-Arms for the DANTI, DIJIN, COPEZ, and CIP, the key units involved in the day-to-day struggle against narco-traffickers and their FARC terrorist allies.

$200,000--to purchase anti-missile defense kits for the 6 CNP Black Hawks to help protect them from surface-to-air missiles.

$10 million--to purchase new .50 caliber ammunition for CNP GAU-19 weapons systems.

$1.5 million--to purchase one additional two-seat T-65 Turbo Thrush spraying aircraft for CNP training purposes.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Dan Burton,
Chairman, Government Reform Committee.

Benjamin A. Gilman,
Chairman, International Relations Committee.

[Page: H5926]
Enclosures.
P.S. Just yesterday a newly modified Huey II was shot down by the FARC, who look 8 CNP officers hostage, including those wounded in the crash. This only further proves the point that we need to get the CNP the best equipment possible, including FLIR and capable defensive weapons systems, as this shows anything less is dangerous, penny wise and pound foolish.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Indiana?

There was no objection.

The CHAIRMAN. The amendment is withdrawn.

As of July 18, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H12JY0-403: