U.S. SENATOR RON WYDEN HOLDS NEWS CONFERENCE FOLLOWING CLOSED POLICY LUNCHEON
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1826 Words
29 July 2003
Political Transcripts by Federal Document Clearing House
English
(Copyright 2003 by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.)

SPEAKERS: U.S. SENATOR RON WYDEN (D-OR) U.S. SENATOR BYRON L. DORGAN (D-ND)

WYDEN: I'm very glad that this morning the Department of Defense agreed to 
the request that I made with Senator Dorgan that they close their online 
terror marketing scheme. But I want to emphasize that much more needs to be 
done to reign in the runaway horse that is this terrorism information 
program. And let me be very clear they are going to be running programs 
--the terrorism information programs -- that is in affect an umbrella for 
more than 10 other programs. And together, if they were approved, it would 
constitute what amounts to the biggest surveillance program in the history 
of our country. And the fact is we still are in the dark with respect to how 
privacy would be protected.

On June 24, for example, I wrote to the head of the program. We've got a 
copy of the letter, asking a detailed set of questions with respect to 
privacy rights. We still have gotten no response to it.

But for example, one of the programs that they are going to be proposing to 
operate, it is called the next generation of face recognition program. And 
it would be tested with experimentation on databases of at least 1 million 
people.

And we would like to know, for example, whether U.S. persons are going to be 
included in this, and how their privacy rights are going to be protected.

So we are pleased with the news today that the one bizarre program is going 
to be closed. But much more needs to be done. We believe that it is possible 
to fight terrorism ferociously without gutting civil liberties. But it 
doesn't look like Mr. Poindexter yet agrees with that proposition.

So I'm very fortunate that Senator Dorgan will be on the Appropriations 
Committee. The Senate is going to continue its efforts to close the entire 
set of programs that make up terrorism information awareness. There are more 
than 10 of these programs, of which the one that has been closed today is 
only one.

And I want to turn this over to Senator Dorgan, who has joined me in a 
waste-fighting program. You look at that 9/11 report last week. That showed 
us that we weren't dealing with terrorism appropriately in the real world. 
And we wanted to stop these fantasy-land scenarios. We did stop one of them 
in the last 24 hours, but much more needs to be done. And Senator Dorgan 
will lead our fight in the Appropriations Committee.

DORGAN: Ron, thank you. A couple of hours after we disclosed yesterday the 
futures trading that is being proposed by the Department of Defense and 
showed their Web site, a couple of hours after we disclosed this to the 
American people, the Defense Department pulled this sheet off of their Web 
site, closed it down, and then this morning announced that they were going 
to kill the program.

But let me tell you why this is disgusting. We mentioned yesterday that it 
would allow people to bet -- place wagers or buy futures contracts on the 
questions of would King Jordan of -- would the king of Jordan, rather, be 
overthrown? Would Mr. Arafat be assassinated? Would there be a North Korean 
missile attack? On global security, you could place a wager on how many 
military deaths in the U.S. Army. In other words, you could actually place a 
wager on a Pentagon Web site that bets on how many U.S. soldiers would be 
killed in a certain time frame.

I'm telling you I think this is disgusting. And I think those who thought it 
up ought not only close down the program, they ought not be on the public 
payroll any longer.

Now, Senator Wyden and I are asking the Pentagon tell us what more exists. 
We know on the broad program of PIA, which is a large program to essentially 
sort through everyone's personal financial information. Senator Wyden has 
been working to shut that down.

We now know just by stumbling across this on the Internet that they were 
going to do essentially a casino by which people could bet on disgusting 
things that could happen in the area of terrorism.

The question is what more is being planned? What additional programs are 
there that we don't yet know about? And we are asking the Pentagon for a 
full report -- Mr. Poindexter especially -- for a full report on every 
single program they're working on and looking at that resembles this sort of 
thing.

DORGAN: This, as I indicated yesterday, is unbelievably stupid. It's 
offensive. It contributes nothing to this country's intelligence. And I'm 
pleased that the Pentagon has announced they're going to kill the program.

Now the question is will they get rid of the people that conceived the program.

QUESTION: Are you calling for Poindexter's ouster?

WYDEN (?): I will tell you what I told his boss, Dave. And I've met with him 
on several occasions.

Certainly, if you put somebody with Mr. Poindexter's background into this 
position, you raise the bar. You've got to be more sensitive to privacy 
rights. And they still don't understand that.

After my original law went into effect, which was that you couldn't deploy 
the technology without Congressional approval, you would have think they 
would have knocked off some of this ridiculous research that Senator Dorgan 
and I brought to light this week.

But they still don't get the message. And as of today, for example, as far 
as we can tell, they could still scour thousands of databases across this 
country. They say they're not going to have a centralized database. But they 
could still scour thousands of databases.

And they also claim that they ought to be able to look at any, quote, 
"legally collected" information. Well, that loophole is as big as everything 
under the sun. And you can be sure the government isn't going to stand up 
and say, We collected something illegal.

So Senator Dorgan said, We are going to insist on a full accounting of all 
of the many programs underneath the terrorism information awareness umbrella.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) if you hadn't intervened yesterday?

DORGAN (?): Well, sure. The sign up for this was to begin this Friday. They 
announced the sign up. They said October 1 we begin trading.

In The Wall Street Journal today, the person in charge of the program said 
after yesterday's announcement, we had a wild amount of enthusiasm, a lot of 
contacts by people who wanted to get involved. He said it's not going to be 
a problem at all signing up the first 100.

Of course, they were headed straight towards doing this. And the only 
reason, I think, that this program is killed today is because it was 
disinfected by sunlight yesterday.

I didn't know about this program. Senator Wyden didn't know about it. The 
American people didn't know about it. And the interesting thing is most 
people when you tell them about this say, Well, clearly, this is a hoax. You 
surely must be joking.

But it's not a joke. It's a harebrained idea at the Pentagon. I'd like to 
know who thought it up. I'd like that person to be earning a salary from the 
private sector, not the public sector.

WYDEN (?): There's another interesting question about Friday's program. 
Under the law that I originally wrote, they aren't allowed to deploy any 
technology without congressional approval. Now, they were clearly planning 
to go ahead with this program on Friday.

One of the legal questions that we need to examine is whether that would 
have been covered under the existing law, or they could have done it because 
it was being used by a private contractor.

But it's clear that the spirit of the law wasn't going to be honored on 
Friday. The Congress said you can't carry out these programs without 
congressional approval.

Now, there may be a legal loophole here that they could have gotten around, 
but Congress has been clear and they still don't seem to get the message.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

WYDEN (?): I can only tell you that the policy analysis market, which is the 
specific program that we have been talking about, and this gambling scheme 
that's been closed, it is part of Admiral Poindexter's office.

DORGAN (?): Let me make one final comment about this.

You know, we have men and women in our country's uniform in the field, 
fighting in Iraq. Daily, we hear of tragic deaths on the battlefield. And to 
have this, in which it says you can wager on U.S. military deaths, to have 
some sort of function by which people can actually make money by offering a 
wager on how many U.S. soldiers might die, in a futures market, it's 
obscene. This is the sort of thing that ought not ever be proposed, let 
alone implemented. And that's why I think the Pentagon had no choice but to 
say, We're going to kill this program.

But the question is are there other programs like this there. We want to 
know that.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

WYDEN (?): Yes, we know those sums. It's about $650,000. And then, the 
reason that we moved yesterday is they're requesting $8 million in the 
appropriations process over the next two years.

WYDEN (?): That's what we're going to be trying to kill. But it's about 
$650,000. The staff can give you of the exact amount.

QUESTION: Republican support on the appropriations process to shut down 
funding for the entire...

WYDEN (?): Well, when it passed the Senate, because the Senate's version of 
the legislation does close the entire program. Senator Stevens, of course 
the chairman of the committee, all, supported that. And I'm very hopeful 
that they will do so in conference.

The House does not close this program in its entirety. The Senate does. 
We're fortunate to have Senator Dorgan on the conference committee. Danny 
Inouye has been very supportive of our work, as well as has been Senator Byrd.

So that will be a question in the conference. Will they close the program? 
Will they stick with the law that I originally wrote requiring congressional 
approval? I think with Senator Dorgan leading the way on the conference, I 
think given a flagrant of these examples are, with the additional ones 
Senator Dorgan has brought to light yesterday, I think we can close this 
program, put the final nail into this program's coffin.

DORGAN: Thank you.

WYDEN: Thank you.