REMARKS OF CONGRESSMAN FRANK DURING DEBATE ON REPUBLICAN RESOLUTION EXPRESSING UNQUALIFIED SUPPORT FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION,S FINANCIAL SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM.

U.S. House of Representatives
July 29, 2006

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, asked us to say where we disagree with this resolution. I would be glad to tell you that.

This resolution makes factual assertions that I do not believe any Member of the House can confidently and honestly make, and certainly not more than four or five could even pretend.

It says, for example, in the resolved clause that we know, those of us who would be voting for this, as a fact ``that the program has been conducted in accordance with all applicable laws, regulations, and executive orders; that appropriate safeguards have been used and been instituted to protect individuals' civil liberties.''

I don't believe any Member knows that. Maybe one or two will claim that. Do Members feel free to vote for things and say they know things which they don't?

It is also true in the whereases: ``Whereas the terrorist finance program consists of the appropriate and limited use of transaction information while maintaining respect for individual privacy.''

That may or may not be the case, but Members here don't know it. And let me talk about briefings, by the way. I am the senior Democrat on Financial Services, and I have been for 3 1/2 years. I was, about a month ago, asked to a briefing. I was asked to a briefing and told that this was about to be made public and, therefore, they were going to brief me. But that if I listened to the briefing, when it was made public I couldn't talk about it.

Yes, I did not accept that briefing. It was a briefing only because it was about to be made public, and then I could not talk about it. But even if I had had the briefing, I do not believe I could in good conscience say these things.

Now, there are Members here who may have such faith in their administration that they will claim to say things which I know they don't know. Yes, faith-based programs are very useful, but I don't think faith-based resolutions do our job.

So I don't know that these things are wrong, but I disagree with making factual assertions about the program that may not be correct.

There is another factual assertion that may not be correct. And I know there has been a lot of concern about the Times. In the Republican majority's resolution there is an attack on the Times. It doesn't mention them. Quite sensitively, it doesn't mention the Times, but it talks about one of the most damaging allegations I have seen about a leak.

It says, on the bottom of page 2: ``In 1998, disclosure of classified information regarding efforts to monitor the communication of Osama bin Laden eliminated a valuable source of intelligence information on al Qaeda's activities.'' Now, that is a serious accusation to make against the Times. It is, of course, the Washington Times. Somehow, that adjective sort of disappeared.

There has been a lot of talk about the New York Times. It is the Washington Times who is referred to in your own resolution, Mr. Speaker, as having done a far more damaging specific thing. But the Washington Post came to the defense of the Washington Times and said, no, that was already known. Well, that is in controversy.

I am not prepared to vote for the resolution which accuses and convicts the Washington Times of having foiled our efforts to find Osama bin Laden when I don't know that as a fact. The Washington Post says it is unfair to the Washington Times.

You may be prepared, Mr. Speaker, to condemn the Washington Times so clearly for undermining our efforts to find Osama bin Laden. I am not.

But we are only here partly about the specifics. This is an outrage, the procedure. I do not understand how Members can hold up their heads when they advocate this.

Well over half of the Democratic Members saw this resolution for the first time at 4:15. There was no consultation about the draft. It was drafted entirely in a partisan way. We looked at it and said, we agree with some of it and not others. Yes, I think almost all Democrats agree that we should track the financial doings.

We have a resolution which takes much of the language from the Republican resolution and says that. It says we are in favor of tracking things, and we condemn leaks. We think it is wrong for people to leak. So we would like to have that in there. But we don't want to have to say, at the same time, that the Bush administration has done everything perfectly. We don't want to make some of the criticisms of the media that you make, including this denunciation of the Washington Times.

We are asking for a chance, in a democracy, to put forward our resolution where we could make clear that we disagree with some of the leaking; where we make clear that we think you should track the financial records of the terrorists; but we do not want to have to say that we also agree with the administration. That would seem to me a reasonable choice.

Mr. Speaker, to the discredit of the Republican Party, you have denied us that choice. This is not democracy, this is plebiscitary democracy. You demand a ``yes'' or ``no.'' Mubarak and Peron and Hugo Chavez would be proud of your understanding of the democratic process.