Hearing on the Nomination of John Negroponte

From The New York Times - April 12, 2005

Page 27, Page 28

Questions By Senator, Jon Corzine

CORZINE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And let me welcome Ambassador Negroponte.

And let me also say that I think, for all of us, at least those people I represent, we want to express our gratitude for your long service to our nation, particularly your most recent efforts, both in Iraq and in the United Nations.

CORZINE: Also, I would be remiss if I didn't say one of the reasons you're sitting here certainly flows from a lot of the activities of people who come from my home state, Governor Kean, in particular, with regard to the 9/11 Commission; but maybe even more importantly, the families, some of whom were -- 700 who lost their lives. And I commend them because I do think this is the proper step in the direction that we're taking. And I do believe that you have the experience and the opportunity to really lead here.

But all that said, let me express a reservation that really flows -- my reservation -- and I'm not going to change my view on this -- but much of the analysis that we've seen from the 9/11 Commission, now the WMD, from the reports of this committee itself, dealt with collection and analysis. It seems to me that there is a third leg to that stool and it's the use of intelligence and how that is presented.

I thought Senator Levin's recital of a series of issues and intelligence that backed up the intelligence community's view as regard to the Mohammad Atta meetings gets at the point.

Isn't the right answer -- and I think you said crossing the bridge when we got there was the ultimate answer if there were public statements by senior public policymakers.

Shouldn't the right answer going to the senior policymakers when there is serious contradiction with the intelligence (inaudible) when we're making advocacy for policy? Some of that could be done behind closed doors, of course. Some can be done in Intelligence Committees so that we're not making policy decisions with erroneous decisions and we can avoid it.

But it seems to me that it is almost imperative that the director of national intelligence -- what's the term? -- speak truth to power or whatever the phrase is will be absolutely a requirement that those contradictions in analyses are presented in a way. Isn't that the response?

NEGROPONTE: And in answering Senator Levin, I think in part at least, Senator, I was trying to go to that. I was trying to say, from everything we've learned, from the experience we've had in the past several years, we don't want a repetition of this kind of situation. We don't want to have the Curveball situation again.

And one of the ways you're going to avoid it is to improve the quality of the analytical product, make sure it's comprehensive and lay the truth before the policymakers of our country, and try to avert the kind of -- the hypothesis he described.

CORZINE: Collection and analysis, the work and the organization, which is going to be an enormous task. And I more than believe you're up to that.

But the fact is that even when we come through with that process, sometimes there will be strongly held opinions that are colored by selectivity, colored by interpretation, potentially.

And isn't it the job of the independent arbiter of intelligence to make sure that the community that is most responsible for assessing those knows that those contradictions with what is said in public -- and maybe we'll never ever have that again; maybe because our collection and analysis will be so good that no one will ever have preconceived or group-think ideas come to fruition, that it will take -- but if they do, will it be the responsibility of the DNI to challenge that privately? I'm asking for political confrontation.

NEGROPONTE: Yes, I have no problem whatsoever with that. And I also, I believe, said in my statement that intelligence is not a panacea, nor is it policy. But should the DNI place before the president and others other decision-makers the fullest and best possible analytical accounting that is available and identify the gaps in knowledge and talk about judgments as to reliability or unreliability and the various gradations and all of that? Yes. It has to be put before the decision-makers.

CORZINE: I'll end here because I think this whole issue of independent analysis, and making sure that the testing of hypotheses and knowing where holes are and contradictory perspectives on unknowables, leads to probabilistic analysis. And if that is not practiced, we get into certainty.

And I hope that as time unfolds, this committee and others will ask, within those probabilistic kinds of analyses, these most difficult questions.

Tom Delay's Rap Sheet

Here is the rap sheet against Tom DeLay according to the Wall Street Journal. He offered to endorse outgoing Representative Nick Smith's son in a GOP primary if Mr. Smith would vote "yes" on the Medicare prescription-drug bill. (Mr. Smith declined the offer; his son lost the primary.) Mr. DeLay has since changed Committee rules so that it can no longer launch investigations on a party-line basis, and by packing the Committee with loyalists.

Next, there is the Texas business. Ronnie Earle, the district attorney for Travis County (which contains Austin), last year indicted three DeLay associates involved in his Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee for money laundering and illegal campaign contributions.

Mr. Earle, a partisan Democrat, has a record of making suspect accusations: In 1993, he indicted newly elected Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on evidence so weak the case was never brought to trial. The indictments of Mr. DeLay's associates came just six weeks before November's elections; Mr. Earle's primary aim, it seemed, was to derail Mr. DeLay's ultimately successful efforts to achieve the first Republican majority in the Texas delegation to the U.S. House since Reconstruction. Still, the "odor" stuck; last year Mr. DeLay had to fend off a stiff challenge from a complete unknown to keep what otherwise would have been his safe seat.

Finally, there are the junkets, three in particular. In December 1997, Mr. DeLay visited the Northern Marianas Islands in the company of lobbyist pal Jack Abramoff, now under investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, who just happened to be representing the garment industry there. Mr. DeLay later led a legislative effort to extend the Islands' exemption from U.S. immigration and labor laws.

In May 2000, Messrs. DeLay and Abramoff took a $70,000 trip to the U.K. (including a golf outing to the St. Andrews course in Scotland) in the company of two House colleagues and some staff and spouses. Depending on which account you believe, Mr. DeLay's expenses were picked up either by an outfit called the National Center for Public Policy Research, on whose board Mr. Abramoff then sat, or by Mr. Abramoff directly, who later charged the trip to his clients, the gambling Mississippi Choctaw nation. Under House rules, members are not allowed to have their travel expenses covered by a lobbyist.

In August 2001, Mr. DeLay and several House colleagues (including four Democrats) visited South Korea on a trip sponsored by the Korea-United States Exchange Council, which has close ties to former DeLay staff chief Ed Buckham and was registered as foreign agent just days before the trip. House rules forbid members from traveling at their expense, but it is unclear whether Mr. DeLay or his colleagues were aware of the Korean Exchange Council's status at the time of their departure.

Taken separately, and on present evidence, none of the latest charges directly touch Mr. DeLay; at worst, they paint a picture of a man who makes enemies by playing political hardball and loses admirers by resorting to politics-as-usual.

The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets.

Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and Mr. Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.

Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.

'Trust Fund' Is Locked in Filing Cabinet

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

President Bush's visit Tuesday to a federal agency in West Virginia that holds the Social Security trust fund put the spotlight on a $1.7 trillion promise to the nation's retirees.

But it didn't settle the debate about the financial value of the trust fund.

Physically, the trust fund consists of 8-by-11-inch sheets of paper, fastened inside two notebooks and tucked in a drawer of a four-drawer filing cabinet at the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va. The drawer is secured by a combination lock.

"This is it," bureau official Susan Chapman told the president as they looked at the cabinet.

Social Security trust fund has built up IOUs because it currently collects more payroll taxes than it pays out in benefits. It gives the surplus to the Treasury to spend on other government programs. In return it gets interest-bearing Treasury bonds.

Social Security says that due to a swelling number of retirees, benefits will begin to exceed payroll taxes in 2017. At that point it plans to start cashing in the bonds to cover every retiree's monthly check. To pay the principal and interest on the bonds, Congress must raise taxes, borrow money from the private sector or cut spending on other programs.

The papers in the cabinet are computer-generated replicas of $1.7 trillion in Treasury bonds — the amount the government has promised to repay Social Security for spending payroll taxes that finance the retirement system on other programs such as defense and education.

The imitation bonds are signed by Chapman, division director of the Office of Public Accounting in the Trust Fund Management Branch of the Bureau of the Public Debt. The bureau is part of the Treasury Department.

Bush offered the filing cabinet as proof that "there is no trust fund — just IOUs."

The Congressional Budget Office estimates Social Security faces a $5.4 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years — $3.7 trillion in benefits that exceed projected tax collections, plus the $1.7 trillion that must be repaid to the trust fund by Treasury.

Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., a former investment banker, accused Bush of misleading the public. "U.S. Treasury securities have the ability to be paid under any circumstances based on the ability of the government to print money," he said.

"What did (Bush) expect to see there? Gold?" asked Dean Baker, a liberal economist who says Social Security does not face a financial crisis. "The trust fund contains government bonds that are just like any other government bonds."

But Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded Bush, saying he punctured a myth.

"The public is fooled into thinking there's actually a fund where deposits and interest sit in some vault in West Virginia," he said. Josten says the trust fund is unlike the federal highway trust fund, whose assets by law can be spent only on highways.

By contrast, Josten says, the government spends Social Security taxes on other programs but pretends the money is still kept in a trust fund.

Contributing: The Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-05-trust-fund_x.htm