filibustered his nomination an only after that filibuster was rejected with an overwhelming vote of 70-29, judge hamilton was confirmed. the same republican senators that just a few years ago protested that such filibusters were unconstitutionals, as soon as president obama were there, that principled stand disappeared, abandoned all they said they had stood for and they joined together in an attempt to prevent an up or down vote on president obama's very first judicial nominee. in other words, the standard they said should be applied to every single president in the history of this country, every single president in the history of the country, the standard they said should apply, shouldly has changed when this president

comes in, and then they want to change the standards. it makes you wonder what it is about president obama which makes them want to change the rules for him, rules that have existed for every president prior to him. i wonder what could be the difference? since a filibuster of judge hamilton, senate republicans required the majority leader to file cloture on three more highly qualified circuit court nominees. of course, that's a far cry from the republican insistence that every nominee be required by the constitution to have an up-or-down vote, or even from the extraordinary circumstances republican senators now claiming to be the basis for a filibuster. the presiding officer: the senator has used his ten minutes. mr. leahy: mr. president, i would ask consent for five minutes more. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: there are 13 judicial nominations on the calendar that

the democrats are prepared to consider. each of these nominations should be considered without unnecessary delay. if we do them, we could reduce the judicial vacancies to 80 for the first time since july, 2009. in this case, we have an outstanding lawyer, jack mcconnell. the president has nominated him three times. he has more than 25 years of experience as a lawyer in private practice. he has the strong support of both rhode island senators. individuals and organizations across the political spectrum of rhode island have called for his confirmation. the providence journal endorses his nomination by saying in his legal work and community leadership, he has shown he has a legal intelligence, character, compassion and independence to be a distinguished jurist. leading republican figures in rhode island support him. now, some oppose him because he successfully represented plaintiffs, including the state

of rhode island itself, in lawsuits against lead paint manufacturers. some here in the senate may be wanting to support the lead paint industry. i support those who want to go after the people who poison children. that's what mr. mcconnell did. it seems he is to be punished because he wanted to stand up for children. well, i'll stand with the children against those who try to poison them with lead in their paint. mr. president, i appreciate the courtesy of my colleagues in giving me the extra time. the distinguished senior senator from delaware, the distinguished senator from connecticut, and i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: i'm always happy to yield a little more time to the chairman of the judiciary committee. i -- i just want to start off today -- i hadn't planned to say this, but i want to start off

today -- i'm here to talk about business, small businesses, and how to incentivize job creation and job preservation. before i do that, i just want to take a moment of personal privilege and just to talk about the navy seals. i'm a retired navy captain. i spent 23 years of my life as a naval flight officer. before that i was a midshipman, naval rotc midshipman out of ohio state. we would do our summer tour as midshipmen being trained to be naval officers. one of our tours was down in little creek where we learned a little bit about storming the beaches of virginia and learned how to become marines or pretend that we were. we also later on as a -- this is a -- lieutenant j.g. being out in coronado before we went to southeast asia and having a chance to see in both places, both the little creek naval station and over at -- on

coronado, north island naval station to watch the seals train, navy seals train. i remember talking to some of my come padres going -- compadres going through the training with us, saying we wouldn't want to mess with those guys. for good reason. they have made us proud. they have taken on an incredibly difficult task and i think handled themselves with -- splendidly. i just want to start off today to say how proud we are of them. i'm not quite as proud, however, when it comes to one of our responsibilities, and as a responsibility to provide a nurturing climate for job creation, job preservation. i talk a lot about small business folks. i talk in my work who run pretty big businesses, and one of the things i've heard again and again and again, not just this year but last year and the year

before, but large business is making a fair amount of money these days. a lot of them are sitting on a pile of cash. when you ask them why are you sitting on a pile of cash and not hiring people? what we hear from a lot of them is, well, businesses, particularly large businesses, but businesses like certainty, they like predictability. in too many areas, areas that we actually have something to do with, there is not the kind of predictability or certainty that those businesses need. for example, are we going to be serious about reducing our deficit? i hope so. i think the commission give us a good road map to take $4 trillion out of the deficit in the next ten years. i hope in the end we'll use that as a road map, not to use it with precision but to use it as a road map. but that's a big uncertainty. tax code, what about our tax code? we're on sort of a two-year extension of the previous tax code, but that ends at the end

of next year. what are we going to do about it? a lot of uncertainty there. we have worked long and hard to try to pass health care legislation. it's designed not just to exextend coverage to people who don't have it but also designed to get us to better health care outcomes, to achieve better health care outcomes for best money, or at least better health care outcomes for the same amount of money. we have the prospect of the federal courts. a number of litigations are under way around the country, either at the circuit court of appeals level or maybe someday at the supreme court level, taking apart pieces of the health care bill. we need some certainty there. we need the courts to act. i'm not a lawyer, but some of my friends are. some of them are a lot smarter than me on these things suggest that as far as they're concerned, we just need an answer and we need to get on with it. to the extend we need to change health care legislation to fix

it, to make it better, let's do that. there is a lot in the legislation that enables us to get better health care results for less money. we need to do more with what works. there is a lot of uncertainty with respect to transportation policy. on a series of extensions of transportation programs for this country. 9 -- the way it works, if you will, mr. president, just looking at my podium here, we'll just say right here is the transportation trust fund, and right here in the middle is the general fund for our country, our treasury, and over here is sources of capital from the rest of the world. we don't have enough money in our transportation trust fund over here to -- to build transportation projects. we end up borrowing from the general fund right here, moving over to the transportation trust fund. unfortunately, we don't have enough money in the general fund to run the government, so then we go overseas and we borrow money from everybody we can to replace the general fund in

order to put money in the general transportation trust fund. it's crazy. it's one of the reasons why we have a big budget deficit and we have uncertainty. we have been awarded -- our transportation system in this country has been awarded a grade d, as in delta. actually, a grade d as in decaying because that's what's going on with our transportation system. i think things worth having are worth paying for. we need to get on with it. that's a source of uncertainty. and the last one is energy policy. as we see runups in energy prices, the price of fuel at the pump, people want to know what are we going to do about it? part of what we try to do is to say we want more energy-efficient cars, trucks and vans to be built in this country. we changed the cafe legislation to raise the fuel efficiency for car construction, so by the end of 2016, the overall fleet average has to be 36 miles a gallon, a huge increase from where it has been since 1975. that's being ramped up. that will help, but beyond that, we don't really have the kind of energy policy that we need.

that's another uncertainty. so those are five reasons why large businesses especially are sitting on a pile of cash and not hiring. and one of our obligations here is to address those uncertainties. my hope is we'll do it, we have actually gotten off to a pretty good start this year in a couple of ways. number one, we passed f.a.a. reauthorization, federal aviation administration, and in doing so, we put -- we agreed on a revenue package agreed to by the industry to be able to modernize the air traffic control system, that's great, to be able to put some extra money toward airport construction. that's good as well as part of our infrastructure system. we have passed in the senate here patent reform legislation. we'll say if the presiding officer from montana were -- and he's a very clever fellow, but if he invents -- thinks he has invented a product or technology, he goes with the patent -- to the patent office under current law and files for a patent, i can come along even

if i had nothing to do with that technology or that product, and i can say, you know, hi that idea first. and draw him into a lawsuit and maybe make it difficult for him to actually get his patent, and we change that in this patent reform legislation. if he's the first one to file, he's the first one to file. a patent troll like me would not be able to get in the way and create miss chief and simply ultimately get bought out. the idea of changing that, i think that's very encouraging. we have a deficit reduction agreement for this fiscal year. we took about $40 billion or so out of our spending. that's -- that's encouraging. we have actually another piece of encouraging legislation that i think passed by unanimous consent in the last congress on small businesses and how to help small businesses do more innovative research and how to help them do -- use their

ability to do technology transfers. i think it passed by unanimous consent last year. and now so far this year -- we have been working on this legislation off and on since march, since the early part of march. we have a whole lot of amendments that have been offered to the bill. one of them from myself and senator vitter, senator coburn and senator mccaskill and senator begich and a bunch of other people that said it's not related to small business but it's certainly related to the deficit. what it does, it says -- the president mentioned this in his state of the union address -- we have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of pieces of surplus property that the federal government owns that we're not using. we pay money to keep them secure, we pay money for the utilities, for the upkeep. we're not using them. we ought to sell them. we can't give them away -- if we can't give them away to the state governments and homeless groups, we ought to sell them. that's going to be offered as an amendment to the small business bill. my hope is my colleagues will support it. senator landrieu who chairs the small business committee and

senator snowe who is the ranking republican, previously the chair, have worked on the underlying bill for something like six years, six years. it passed -- again, i'll say, pretty year by unanimous consent. we need to get it done. we need to get it done. my hope is that those of us who have amendments, especially those that are not controversial, will have an opportunity to offer our amendments to this bill, and yet we need to move on. i -- if you look at -- it's interesting, if you look at small businesses, an inordinate number of scientists actually work for small businesses. something like -- i want to say, mr. president, something like 40% of american scientists and engineers actually are employed by small businesses. and the -- we have got some studies that show the small business innovation research programs actually are responsible for something like 25% of our nation's crucial

innovation innovations over the past decade, and account for again something like 40% of america's patents. for us to be successful in the 21st century, we need to -- the president likes to say we need to outeducate, outinnovate and outcompete the rest of the world. part of what we need to do is to make sure that we're creating a world-class work force, that we are producing a world-class infrastructure, and finally we're making sure we're making research and development developments that will lead to products that can be commercialized, ideas argued that can be commercialized, turn into products that we can be making here in this country and selling around the world. i think if we can somehow figure out how to resolve our differences so that people who want to offer them -- especially those that are not controversial offer them to this bill, will debate them or maybe they could just be accepted, the stuff that's really controversial, let's save it to another day.

we probably agree on 80% of his stuff. we may disagree on 20%. the 20% we disagree on -- this is the enzi 80/20 rule. the 80% we agree on, let's agree on it, put it in the bill. the 20% we don't agree on, there is a fair amount of controversy, let's just work on it, save it, have additional hearings and deal with that later on. but in the meantime, why don't we pass this bill? why don't we make it easier for for -- for -- easier for small businesses to get r&d money? why don't we make it a little easier to be able to do technology transfers, in some cases to nonprofits to do new ideas, why don't we facilitate that and make that happen? if we do that kind of thing, we convince the american people this place isn't broken and we actual can work together to get stuff done, and, more importantly, we'll get stuff done and we'll help small businesses to get stuff done. we'll help them make money, enable to hire more people and in the end, some of those

people, some of those businesses will actually pay more taxes and that will help drive down the deficit. it's a pretty good outcome and it's one that's worth pursuing and i hope we can in n the days to come. i want to commend senator landrieu. i want to commend senator snowe for work on this legislation for six years. and we just need to put that good work to the test, to the vote and move o. -- and move o. mr. president, thanks for -- thanks for giving me this time today and i look forward to hearing the comments of my friend from connecticut, senator blumenthal. thank you. i yield back the floor. mr. blumenthal: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you, mr. president. and thank you to the distinguished senator from delaware for those very important and insightful comments, both on the navy expeelz on the small -- both on the navy seals and on the small business legislation that's pending before this body. i want to begin, first of all, by saying i have seven unanimous consent requests for committees to met during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders,

and i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to and that these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: thank you, mr. president. as my colleague and the distinguished senator from delaware has mentioned, over the last 36 or so hours, our nation and allies around the globe have rightly celebrated an extraordinary military triumph, a great victory in the war on terror, a turning point perhaps toward peace. osama bin laden, the heinous mastermind of the 9/11 attacks that murdered thousands of americans, has been final brought to justice -- has been finally brought to justice and we are rightly celebrating the extraordinary service, bravery, skill of the navy seals who was the tip of the spear, an

american military that has brought to justice one of the criminals, one of the war criminals of our time. and we celebrate not only, of course, the navy seals but all of the men and women who have given their lives and their service over the past years and their families, and we celebrate also the intellectual and intelligence community, the intellectual gifts that they have brought to bear, the intelligence that they have mobilized in support of this effort that were so crucial. even as these celebrations have been conducted, on one small beach in connecticut, this news has been greeted with solace and somber remembrance.

it is the beach at sherwood island, where connecticut is home to the living memorial for the connecticut victims of 9/11. a memorial to the 152 victims of this tragedy, this murderous act by the man brought to justice. it is a beautiful place, exquisitely and heartbreakingly beautiful. the skyline of new york is visible from this point justicing oujusticejut -- pointm west port, the place in could be seen in flames on 9/11. the place in provided a staging area for manufacture the relief efforts -- for many of the relief efforts that happened on that day and succeeding days. and now it is a place that the community of west port, the state of connecticut, and the

world can remember that tragedy and the 152 people who lost their lives. it is also the place that every year connecticut gathers to honor their memory and the families, many of them, of those 152 victims come, as some of them did yesterday, with very mixed feelings probably today. i know they are mixed feelings because i talked just a short while ago this morning with lee hansen, who is the father of peter and his wife su kim and their daughter christine, who lost their lives on that day. lee and eunice come to that place on the day that we recognize the connecticut victims of 9/11 and many other days, and they felt deeply the ambivalence, the mixed feelings,

the grief renewed again. on the memorial, a granite marker in west port, their reads the following: "the citizens of connecticut dedicate this living memorial to the thousands of innocent lives lost on september 11, 2001, and to the families who loved them." and today, while there are many voices who celebrate this victory -- and rightly so -- there are voices harder to hear, perhaps unheard, the victims and their families whose memory i wish to honor today and ask to place in the record the names of those 152 men and women of connecticut who died on september 11, 2001, as recorded on the memorial that honors

their legacy in sherwood island. i ask that their names be placed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: thank you, mr. president. the lives of those families have been changed forever. their children are young adults. some of them have their own children now. their lives have moved on. some have remarried and some have come to peace. but their lives, like the lives of the emergency responders who ran into the building, the firefighters and police and their families, have been changed forever. the lives of our veterans who have fought and served and sacrificed in the war on terror have been changed forever. and we owe it to them never to forget, even as we celebrate this victory, we owe it to our

veterans who have served and sacrificed to honor that service not just in rhetoric but in deed and to make sure that we leave no veteran behind in education and jobs and health care, to provide for them what we have obligated and promised to provide. and while we hope for peace from this day forward, we must do everything we can to support the brave men and women who continue to serve in the war on terror that now continues and those of our allies, whose relentless service and sacrifice have helped us to win this victory. and my hope is that the memory of the victims of 9/11 will

bring us together in a time of unity and purpose, just as that heinous act did on that day almost ten years ago. the heinous, brutal murder of september 11, 2001, hit the world trade center and they hit the pentagon but they missed america, as was remarked at the time, they missed what makes america great and they brought us together in a time that we can remember with pride because it was a time of resolve and unity. and i hope that the memory of those victims, the 152 from connecticut and thousands more from around the country, as well as their families, can bring us together now in a renewed sense of unity and purpose to face the

challenges that lie ahead. thank you, mr. president. mr. blumenthal: mr. president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes, it is. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent that that be vitiated. officer without objection. mr. reid: i a ask unanimous

consent at 2:15 p.m. today, there be up to 75 minutes on the resolution divided between the two leaders or their designees prior to a vote on the adoption of the resolution with the final 10 minutes reserved for the two leaders with the republican leader controlling five minutes and the majority leader controlling the final five minutes. further, upon disposition of the resolution, the preamble be agreed to, there be no amendments in order to either the resolution or the preamble. and that the motion to reconsider be considered and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the senate proceed to a period of morning business for morning business only with senators permitted to speak up to five minutes each. wthe presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: the vote on the adoption of the resolution will occur at 3:00 p.m. today. i encourage senators to vote from their detection. i would ask everyone to be in their seats 10 minutes before 3:30 so that we can vote at 3:30 in a dignified matter on this

most important resolution. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands in recess until 2:15 p.m. >> senator haves recessed for their weekly party lunch meetings. they will return at 2:15 eastern to continue general speeches. democratic leader harry reid said this morning he will bring up a resolution commending u.s. forces and intelligence community for killing of osama bin laden a vote is possible this afternoon. live coverage when senators return on c-span2

>> u.s. intelligence officials say multiple terrorist groups are operating out of pakistan and not just al qaeda. a house homeland security subcommittee is looking into that issue this afternoon. you can see live coverage starting at 2:00 eastern on our companion network, c-span3. >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs. weekly featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on "booktv". you can see past programs and get our schedules at our website. you can join in the conversation on social media sites. now the u.s. chamber of commerce hosting a discussion on the state of airport security in the u.s. with former government security officials and others. one of the speakers, robert poole, the reason foundation says congress ought to reexamine the transportation security administration which is up for

reauthorization this year. this portion of the meeting lasts about an hour. >> all right. i think we are ready to roll and i welcome, everyone back. of i will tell you this is the last panel of the day before our final afternoon keynote speaker, nick calio. but i wanted to first introduce our moderator, someone i consider to be a long-time friend and someone that i've known now since 1995 anyway, and that is don phillips, who is formerly the aviation and transportation reporter for "the washington post" as well as the international "herald-tribune". and i know many of you know don from his years here in the washington, d.c. area and he is back. and i know that a number of

you continue to read his writings and i feel happy and fortunate to be on his mailing list and get a lot of interesting articles, although most of them are about the railroads, and in that sense he promised me that he would wear his aviation hat today and not his railroad hat and so that, understanding had to be agreed to first but, don, you've always been very fair and i appreciate that and we are delighted that you're here. we know that you've got a fabulous panel and for this panel i even told them that they could use the dirty word that starts with the p, profile. so i hope this will be a lively and interesting panel on sensible security solutions and with that, i turn it over to you, don and it's all yours. >> all right. thank you.

when carol asked me to do this, i'm going to tell a little secret that i hope doesn't get her in trouble but i said, but, carol, i haven't flown from a us air port for five years and it is all bus of the tsa. i just had all i could take. i may not be exactly fair. as hard as i will try. and she said, i know. but, so, this will be a little lifely. but anyway i intend to do something that i probably will fail at miserably and nobody here is going to believe and try to keep myself out of this as much as possible and just ask questions and let them do the talking and be the moderator. but, i spent a little time in europe and talked to a

lot of, the top security people over there and they helped me understand a lot about why the united states was doing the things it was doing especially early on in security. it was a bad, bad, bad time in many ways. and then i would fly to europe and the tsa, their version of the tsa was very polite, easy-going, professional, all that sort of stuff and i talked to several friends and said, what in the world is going on here? all your people are polite and, and your citizens, your flyers will not put up with any crap. and they seem to know that. and they said, don, don, don.

let me explain something to you. your country is only a little over 200 years old. it's only had one war on its shores and in that one war it was you fighting you. and now you sing its praises for whatever reason and it made awe country. fine, so, but we have had people marching across our fields for centuries and centuries and we learned long before you were a country that at the end of the day, no matter how much violence, how terrible things were, what countries were taken over by who and how many deaths there were, the vast majority of us tonight will have a nice dinner, with a nice glass of wine. we understand that. your people don't understand

it yet. and i said, oh. but, so, let's get on with this and i want to ask a general question to start out with. and by the way from time to time i'm going to turn to the audience. i'm not going to wait until the end and pile everything on. i'm sure a lot of you have a lot of questions. the main thing i will say to the panelists and to the audience, everything, let's keep it short and to the point. we've only got an hour here. and the first question i want to ask are and it goes to everybody on the panel. and it may sound a little harsh and maybe it is but, the, just the tsa, after 10 years, still need to exist and if it continues to exist, where does it need to go now,

and if not, what would replace it? so let's just, oh, and i should say who is on the panel, shouldn't i. i knew i wasn't, i knew i was missing something here. we don't give, as you know, long, drawn out things. keep that question in mind and think about it. on my left is the gary wade, vice president for security at atlas worldwide. mo mcgowan with command consulting. ralph basham, also with command consulting. roger dow, ceo of the u.s. travel association. and bob poole with the reason foundation. and i can not resist one short story about bob. he is with an outfit that doesn't exactly always cater to passenger rail. this is the only time i'm going to mention that.

but he has a massive model train set in his basement and i have now decided to go down, probably this fall, and spend some time with him on it. i am impressed. so anyway, back to the question. we'll go to you first. >> don, i probably, that question wouldn't be asked if there hadn't been as many bad experiences that people have had in the past. from a cargo perspective, yes, they need to be in existence and they are doing a much better job working with the industry, the cargo industry now, in formulating regulations and policies that help us meet the threat, as opposed to doing it independently. nobody knows the aviation business like the aviation companies. we know what we, we do it every day and, in 150, 160 countries and 300 cities.

so we know how the freight moves. we know where the soft points are. we know where our vulnerabilities are. we just need their help to show us where the threat is. so short answer, yes. >> thank you. mo? >> i think absolutely. i don't know what you would replace with now. i would be afraid to suggest what that might be. i do think there is a genesis or a generational change in the air that needs to happen. anybody, regardless whether caused by an event, whether it is caused by the experience of friction that occurs at checkpoints or with what gary said with cargo and other elements of the industry, i think as it matures that it does need to change in terms of how to addresses the future, say 2015, et cetera. i don't think you could say tsas that to be replaced. but i do think there are

some fairly dynamic issues that have to be resolved and i don't think it can be resolved by a government agency, by the way. i think it will have to be resolved by the industry itself and people that use those modes of transportation. and it's time that we face that and we start talking, you know, you hear all the time people say that are let's take a risk-based approach. when you say that, be ready because you will have to fine the bottom line that risk-based, managing risk means something could happen. everybody needs to understand that. regardless of what system you put in place you have to understand that's the case. so sign that the doed line and let's look what we need to do. >> bob? >> i have a very simple thought on that. i guess until the president of the united states can look people in the eye in this country and say to them that they're no longer, there is no longer a threat to u.s. aviation, then tsa or something like tsa has to

exist. the american people expect to have that secure, the security and until we can assure them that there's no longer a threat, then, it is our responsibility to insure that they are safe and secure in, on those airplanes. >> okay. >> i concur with my colleagues, yes, there has to be a tsa but i believe in this world of technology, information, data, and in a country that put a man on the moon there has to the to be a better way. what we have to do is explore a better way. you can't treat every individual to the same degree of terrorists. we have to find better ways and i think it has to evolve but it has to exist. >> okay. >> i agree with roger on that point, certainly, that we need mo move toward a risk-based system rather than everyone treated likely to be a the there. i also think when we created tsa through the legislation

hastily enacted in fall of 2001. i was in some of the debates on the hill on that, that congress made a fundamental mistake. they combined aviation security regulation and policy with the provision of a piece of that, namely the passenger screening, passenger bag screening. and canada didn't do that. europe doesn't do that. in europe, in particular, screening responsibility has devolved to the airport level. under national government policy and regulation that's enforced and the airports, most of them can do it either in house with their own workforces or by hiring a federally-licensed, qualified private security firm that is far superior model in my view and would put the providers of security on the same arm's length basis with the security regulator, the successor to tsa, as the airport itself is, as airlines are. everybody else is regulated. when tsa screws up, they're

not objectively evaluating their own performance. we have evidence in fact they have tried to cover up the study that they commissioned on how their performance compared to the private screeners, and didn't like the results so they didn't publish it. it was only because gao did a report on this we even know that existsed. >> do you expect that to happen in this administration? >> well, i think i'm not sure. i've seen no initiative from this administration but april 15th, peter king and mike rogers, in homeland security in the house says they are growing to do a authorization, reauthorization of tsa this year, the 10th anniversary of 9/11. i think it is highly appropriate timing to raise that question this year. take a fundamental look, what did we do right, what did we do wrong. do we need to revise the legislation and change the nature what was created. >> roger, you came out with a report, not too long ago,

about recommending a trusted traveler program and doing some other things that would speed things through security. could you tell us a little bit about it, what it is, who should supervise it and if i might go one step farther, obviously this would did a lot for the frequent traveler and the businessman. what about one-time flying mommy with two screaming kids? what would you do for her? >> i think as you said we did put down a study which was basically a blue ribbon panel pulled together and headed by tom ridge, the first head of the cia --, cia. that is new guy coming up next week. no, first head of tsa and also congressman chertoff. we have david from fedex and know about moving things and

we even had security experts and we had civil liberty folks and every group look at it. we came the same conclusioning the panel did we have to have a trusted travel letter program. to have a trusted traveler program who will run it. it has to be government-run. you have to have the databases. you have to have the information. you also would like to agree here but my concern is one of the things we found is inconsistency. the problems you have is in one airport you have to do this. another airport you have to do that. so we do think that you've got to have a consistent program. maybe you could run it with the airports but we do think the government has the data. second thing, has to be voluntary littlery. civil liberties folks went berserk on a lot of things. bottom line i will give them my high school grades if they want them if it gets me through the line faster. not going doing away with security but changing level what you go through. lastly there has to be a real benefit. we can't treat everyone with the same with one size fits

all. i lit rally watched gerard arpey get patted down. i have seen colin powell get patted down the you have to say wait a minute. something is wrong here. first time traveler, i agree you have to profile. tough profile by experience. you have to profile by frequency, by background and all that and those kinds of things. once you have that data that first-time traveler probably has to go through a different security process because they're not the same as all of us who travel 50 times a year and we know an awful lot about us. >> anybody else want to discuss that point? >> first of all i would like to say the report, probably 85% of that report i am absolutely in agreement. i believe that the only way that we are going to succeed in the public attitude, first of all i would say, it is my, my thinking that it is the government's responsibility to insure the safety and security of the citizens of this country.

we've got to find a way to reduce the size of the haystack. >> right. >> and we've got to figure out a way to get information that is sufficient to give tsa and dhs the sense that the people that we are doing minimal screening on, represent the least threat to focus our attention, our resources on those individuals who we know could represent a threat. trusted traveler programs. advanced information. better data. better systems. better sharing of information is a critical piece of this. we have to address the legislation. the legislative issue, as you pointed out. i think, you know in terms of that report, there are many, most of that report i would be in total -- now, the problem is how do you bring that report and the

information in that report to fruition and put this in the hands of the men and women who are on the front lines? and you know, i've heard people say, you know, how can disney keep people standing in line for three hours, with a smile on their face, waiting to go into space mountain? well, those people in that line, for three hours, are not going to be faced with searching their personal belongings and i don't think there is any concern that someone is going to blow up space mountain. so it's a different, but you're absolutely, you're absolutely right. but, tsa has got a huge job on its hands and trying to be brief, you know -- >> i understand. >> i was part of the beginning of it. sa. as was mo. and i can tell you, it was probably the most difficult, i've been in government 40 years. that year-and-a-half was probably the most challenging.

john mcgall, who was the first administrator, had tremendous job ahead of him trying to do that. they're still young. we can't look at tsa like we look at the secret service or customs that has been around for hundreds of years. so there is some maturing that needs to go on and there needs to be some corrections. i flew yesterday. hit four airports. pretty happy experience, quite frankly. >> you and mo and i had a very interesting discussion out in the hall earlier and looking at it, i wonder if you could take us from the point you left us there, that is, you know, not exactly left us but, the beginnings, things, were kind of rough. and we sort of know what it went through a little bit later but, where is the tsa now in terms of what we, the

passenger, or at least they the passenger would see. and, where is it going? what is being emphasized now? >> you're asking -- >> both of you. >> i would just say first we have a short memory. we don't really remember what it was like on september the 10th, 2001. and people don't recognize that we were extremely vulnerable. it was proven on the very next day. the startup, if you remember, i will totally agree. this was rushed too, find a solution. we didn't have time to take a breath. starting with an agency from scratch and we're still, i think feeling the effects of that time trim. never had a chance to sit down and really think about and, we were trying to

change this aircraft engine while it was in flight. and that's a very challenging thing to do. >> first just to give you, first if we can digress just a second, in terms of trusted traveler i agree. what i'm not sure i agree that government should own it. and i think they absolutely have a responsibility as ralph said to protect the populace which they govern but i don't think that, what i do honestly believe is you can't protect a community without that community's involvement. so what i think is, you've got to get the people in the room to design the right program. you need to do it right. if you leave that to government to do in and of themselves i'm not sure you're going to get the kind of program you really need. i support it. tsa, when it was, ready to start, and people in this room i can see even with the bright lights there as well, you have to understand

understand, you walked in the door and there was small group of people, very small, sit in one room, answered all the phones and you had to decide, okay, we have to have how many security officers in the field? where are we getting uniforms and who will design them? you don't have time to do that. who has something we can get today and in volume of 380,000 uniforms. so it is not like you could build an organization from the top down with a lot of thought. the real tsa didn't start until july or august of 2002, when you started rolling out across the airports. i remember distinctly and i told this to others, one night about nine at night i was sitting in this room and the phone rings and it is a grandfather saying that his granddaughter was traveling to the middle us. he wanted to know if it was safe to travel. how in the hell he got me, i don't know. the truth of the matter is, we had no idea. and as much as we tried to

bring in, and the industry frankly was in flux because it had a huge impact on their operational capability and, their employees as well. so to find the people that understood aviation and transportation along with security experts it became heavy to security was frankly probably should have been but you just didn't have time to manage or direct the way that you knew you needed to because there was a congressional mandate, a deadline that you had to meet. and there was no excuses by the way. you didn't get to say, can we have earth no year -- another year. you didn't say could we have x, y, z. it was do it now and smile. i don't know how many ever tried to do that by formulating a work force of about 65,000 but the smiling part was hard. so, but, we got it done. and the in the end we got it done and i think everybody in the audience including those with tsa we always, that they could use

improvement. i've been out of the ring about two years so i'm rusty and i don't, you know, i'm not adept understanding today's policies and procedures and technology as i once was but, in my heart of hearts i believe that the american people really want those officers on the line. now how they treat people, how they act, what they do is up for debate. i think that -- >> was there a strategic mistake, just a quick follow-up, when this machine was put out there that seemed strip people naked? were you surprised, i gather, that the current tsa leadership was quite surprised at the uproar that came out of that. where did that uproar come from and again, were you surprised? >> i think that, event, points to another of the problems, that tsa faced.

if you remember right after 9/11, richard reid, with the shoe-bomber, that was totally unanticipated threat. so you many immediately had the responsibility of responding to that threat. and then in 2006, in august of 2006, with the liquids. that represent ad huge threat to the american flying public. there was a, had to be react the to. people said, my gosh, we've got to do something about this. and then abdul on christmas. i don't know whether he sat in 39-a purposefully to be some strategic point there so it is a reaction, a reactive process that tsa has had to go through. . . system that was going to break

every single and every threat days. it has to be threat days in what is likely or what is written. because if we did build a system that was going to avert every single possible, potential, for an attack on an aircraft, you couldn't be flying. because that's the only way to prevent it is to keep the airplane on the ground. and so -- but i think there's a lot that can be done. i think this report that you've put out and others who have made the suggestions here. but it has to a partnership. it has to be done in a mutual environment of cooperation and discussion. and it can't be this beating each other to death all the time. it's got to be setting down what's in the best interest of this country and the public and the industry itself. and the economy of the country. it's got to be done together. >> when you talk about the challenge that was faced just before the holidays with the new scanning machines, the reality is it was close to 1,000

machines and 4500-plus portals so you say to yourself, okay, if you're a terrorist and you know there's 3500 uncovered areas, you know, what is putting, you know, all the emphasis on those 1,000 machines is going to do? it's between the rock and the hard place there. they don't have the machines but yet they're trying to, you know, put forward a procedure like you have 1400 regimes and you don't and that's a big challenge because the machines don't pick up the explosives. >> how would you have -- if you're tsa, if you are the administration, how would you have responded to this new threat? i mean, because there was a demand that something needs to be done. and i'm not suggesting that was the right thing. >> my suggestion would have been to expand the watch-list, the people that mandated to have secondary screening, use a much

broader swath and use the a.i.t. machines for that purpose, for greatly expanded, secondary screening for people that you have a reason to think might be trying to bring of explosives on a plane and pretending you're going to do it to everyone and outfitting with the screening on that. >> when you go to the airport. i was going through dwi, and i said to the gentleman i said i'm not being critical and i'm just curious why you're not using the machine and he said it's labor. each machine is adding three to four people and we just don't have the work force to operate all those machines. >> it's interesting there. >> that one seems to be correlation with how long the lines are because it takes three or four times longer to put someone through that than to walk through a magnetometer.

>> and that's a discretionary call and, unfortunately, there are not enough people out there to thoroughly process the number -- and i read in your report where there is an expectation that this is going to increase in the next five years, whatever that number. so we had better be starting now to start thinking about redesign, trying to figure out how -- what's the through-put going to look like? i don't care what technology you have, you know, you're still going to have to go out and reconfigure these airports to accommodate these passengers. and the point about -- someone blowing themselves up in line waiting to go through the machines, i go back to rome and the red brigade. i mean, that's been an issue in airports for many years. this is not a new threat. >> not an unknown tactic. >> right. >> and i might add that living

in working in europe, i see the vast difference in the philosophy of their version of the tsa and this one. here, any failure is a total failure. congress will raise hell. there, their version of the tsa is recognized as the last possible. it's a gate with sives. anything can just about get through it. but if the intelligence section of their version of the tsa hasn't found it and, oh, by the way, this may disagree with something you say. they say, why do you people have so many people on your watch-list? we've got about 300. we know -- we know who they are. we watch for them. >> but, don, yet the europeans

are still loosy goosy they want share passenger name data in a truly effective transatlantic way. >> there's a lot of back and forth between europe. >> is it getting better? >> all right. i want to go to gary in a second but first does anyone out here have a question now? no hands? did you guys have some wine for lunch? [laughter] >> i'd like to ask you -- to ask you to pick up where you left off about transatlantic. what are some of the things that could be done to increase the transatlantic operation and make a system that would benefit both because you got more layers and

more people doing the right things? >> well, one of the -- one of the challenges that is faced -- i know it's very difficult for the airlines is the second screening, when someone continues on, so we've -- we've said we trust and comfortable that that passenger taking off in europe is not going to be a risk landing in new york or chicago. but when that person is going to go on to des moines, we don't trust what they went through so we have to put them through the process which is challenging. i think we have to figure that connection issue because i can't say how many letters we get of missed connections, missed cruises through stuff that we said it was okay in our minds when it left amsterdam, our friend wasn't but the bottom line that's one issue that transatlantic has to be addressed. >> you know, you have to understand honestly that you're dealing with a very complex system.

and then the complexity theory, the dynamic response, if you touch one thing, there's results to that throughout that system. if you're going to go through a federal inspection station coming into the country, then -- and you say you're going to miss connections, then you also have to think, okay, what are the scheduled airlines as well? and are there accommodating schedules associated with that? i remember all these things are connected. if you ask somebody -- a lot of that i see and by the way i'm a traveller right now so i see it a little bit differently, right? and what i think is that, that the -- people see airport experience as airport experience. they see it whether it's transatlantic or u.s. they don't -- many of them don't distinguish -- i actually met with when i was back doing this with -- i actually met with passengers and cities, and they

didn't even know who i was. we went through a program with them where we -- they helped design checkpoints for us. and you would ask them questions about security and they saw it as all one. some of them still thought the uniformed officers and checkpoints were still airline employees. so -- and this has been 10 years now, back then it was seven years. so -- so it's -- you have to understand anything you touch doesn't just -- it may fix that one piece but the results of that on the back end that you have to appreciate. and when that happened in the cargo world, whether it was in supply chain, along the coastisics, whether it's in passenger movement -- any of those things that happened is a very complex networks that are occurring. and when you touch them, there's a results of that -- if you don't calculate that as part of the result, you have to do it.

and i don't think that tsa has the answers to all that. i think people in this audience have the answer to all of that. and you have to sit down and think about anytime you touch anything, what are the results because a person is going to know in his world that the u.s. travel association is going to know in their world that the airline carriers is going to know in theirs. and you have to understand that. and on the point of regulatory body that separates -- i don't know. i don't have the answer to that. i think you can make it work, everybody wants to make it work in this country. >> maybe -- i might ask a question here myself here. i, too, just came in to atlanta and went through it. and i was curious as to why do i -- after having gone through a screening, you know, very, very efficient screening in a foreign

country and came in. but the problem i'm told unless you can create a totally sterile environment within that -- within that area where the passengers are going into those planes and then going into the u.s. system -- now, i'm not suggesting that is accurate or not, but i think that's a part of -- you know, secret service takes present to europe their securities. and so maybe you can help me with that one. >> well, it depends on, you know -- there are certain parts of the world you're going to be more comfortable than others. >> well, sure. >> and i've been to some, but the truth is then you -- then you begin to segregate what your accepting as the level of security that you feel is appropriate. and i can tell you, even some of

the countries where you think it may not be, that i have actually been through, some of them paid more attention than others. and because they don't want anything to happen. going through the federal inspection station, i have the same problem. and getting your bag and getting in and going through and having to check it, the carriers were trying to make it as easy as they possibly can outside of the federal inspection station where sometimes you can drop your bag and then you have to go up through a checkpoint. so if you can design a system in an international airport where you can process those people separately in a streamlined way probably would be the right answer. but that means -- so then you have to talk to airports, okay, we want you to change facilities you have. we want it to be changed and do some construction and change it this way because they're going to say, then you guys are paying for it, right? well, no, just do it out of the goodness of your heart.

so anytime you start down that path, you have to understand that there's -- that there's -- there's ramifications associated with it and until you see the level of complexity when you change those things -- i'm not saying they don't need to be. i'm saying again once you start -- you have -- everybody has to sign up. >> was your question as to whether or not it was improved with respect to the chain of information and the data between absolutely, i think, there were great strides made during the secretary chertoff's time at dhs negotiating, you know, agreements, particularly, in europe. and i think secretary napolitano has continued to work on trying to -- because they recognize that a big part of this is going to have to be to rely upon our

foreign partners out there to ensure that those passengers arriving from a foreign country have been screened, have been checked. they've been provided with the proper information to run the data, to see, as we said, someone used that dirty old word before, "profile." that we are targeting people that we should be targeting that the other 99.9% can pass through the checkpoints and get on their way and not go through that hassle. but it is about -- but, you know, a lot of these countries are very hesitant because of sovereignty issues, legal issues, of being able to provide the information that we feel we need for us to feel comfortable that that person is a, quote-unquote, trusted traveller. and so they're still working on that. that's a big part of the solution. as i said before, cutting down the size of the haystack

>> one more? >> i want to hit the reality. i said on this program and they've talked about by 2020 there will be a billion travelers and there will be three times by 2030. and if you look at 2004 there were 618 million passengers. last year there were 623 million. so there were 5 million more passengers but yet in that same time period tsa's budget went up by 70%. so we're hitting the point -- if those numbers are true of increasing, this system will just fall in on itself and i agree with what ralph -- ralph says he agrees with 85%. mo says he doesn't have all the answers. i agree. it has to be a huge priority of getting the experts together and work this thing out and make it a high priority so we just put out our report and say, hey, here's some thoughts from some smart people but i think it has to go with what these guys said, get the right people and make it a high priority because we can't

have with the level we have right now cover the sustainable. >> i'd like for you to -- in your report you talk about the privatization of the screening system. i mean, i'd be interested to know where you see the advantages to privatizing what i consider to be, you know, fundamental government responsibility. >> this is an ongoing long debate. i think there's a number of reasons -- for one thing, the little empirical evidence that we have in the united states shows that the screening performance measured by things like, you know, detecting fake images of guns is good or better with the private firms that have been certified by the tsa as the tsa's own screening. secondly, i think there's greater accountability. you can -- if a firm does not perform, you can fire it from

that airport. you can yank its certification so it can't be in that business any longer. that's very difficult to do when you have a one size fits all government, civil service, and now unionized group. that's some that we really don't have time -- don is eager to get on to another subject. >> you're answering the second question from now but go ahead. >> okay. all right. [laughter] >> you might as well finish that one off. >> and i think there's a potential -- >> i don't mean to be the moderator there. >> if we redesign the contracting to be a little less rigid and centralized in the way tsa does it. in other words, approve a set of how many firms can pass all the tsa's criteria as being acceptable for category x airports and this size and so forth, let the airports pick from the list of firms and hire them and fire them with the tsa, federal security director

overseeing the process, making sure they abide by all the regulations and so forth but that way you have more ability for the firms to innovate and come up with new things as long as they're, you know, still keep their tsa certification and are, you know, not doing anything that the federal security director says is out of line. there's a real potential and you hear this from airport directors that have the private firms. they feel frustrated. the private firms would like to do some things that the system is too rigid. that they can't do to innovate to try to be -- derive more value for the dollars that are being spent. >> let's go on to a fascinating, fascinating area. i talked with gary on the phone the other day. it was supposed to be a short chat about, you know -- to help me understand what questions to ask. an hour later i looked at my

watch. i had no idea that much time had passed. you help these people. you don't have the time we have -- and i don't even know what words to ask to ask the questions because i'm not sure what i would reveal if i didn't watch myself but so just talk to me about the coordinate problems or opportunities or whatever you want to call it -- the differences in coordination between government and the private sector and talk to us about risk management? now, the floor is yours because i think -- i think it's a fascinating subject. >> thank you. >> well, many of the issues you face in the cargo world you've heard described here earlier, growing differences that we can profile cargo without risk -- [laughter] >> they can't complain.

the word risk management is thrown around in every venue multiple times. the hard part of risk management -- the key to risk management is the threat-based part. you got to know what the threat is to formulate a risk management policy. so how do you find out what the risk is? so as administrator pistol in either cargo world is timely and accurate intelligence. and where there is a reluctance -- there is a reluctance on part of government to share that key information that we need to protect our carriers, our aircraft and our employees from terrorist acts. and we're working with the department of homeland security under the hand of secretary napolitano to change the

intelligence information-sharing paradigm so that the enforcement and intelligence community, tsa, dhs has a comfort level with the heads of security of all the airlines to reach out to them and share information that is actionable. above the terror line information is no good for us. that's -- you can read it in the "new york times" and the "washington post" before you can get it on the website. we need below the terror line, action 1 intelligence that says, here's the threat. we've gotten through whatever source information we're utilizing. and you need to go help us find and identify where that threat is. we have the heads of the security for the airlines we work together very closely in cargo in aviation and committees and all these guys have a lot of

experience. they all have secret clearances. they all have a lot of experience in handling, in sanitizing sensitive information. so we have hundreds -- each of the carriers have hundreds or thousands of employees out there that can work to look for those suspect passengers, suspect boxes, suspect cargo. and so it never gets onto the aircraft as opposed to 1028 when those packages actually made it on the aircraft. i don't want it on my aircraft. i want to help the government agencies find it before it gets somewhere else in the supply chain before it gets in the air. so we have the information to do that and we're working on projects to give -- give tsa, dhs and customs the information as far as the cargo shipper information as far in advance

and they can massage it and we can find out who the suspect shippers are. it may not be a suspect shipper by company. it may be a suspect area of the world that the threat is coming in from particularly now. >> uh-huh. and that may change the dynamics of the terrorists, they change all the time. so we need that information on a regular basis. so maybe it's -- maybe it's indonesia today. maybe it's somewhere else in the middle east tomorrow. but where there's hotspots and we can take a look at suspect cargo, suspect areas of the world. what we can't do as ralph suggested is look at cargo all around the world. last year, we shipped -- moved 2 billion pounds of cargo worldwide. how can i screen 2 billion pounds of cargo? and that number is small compared to what comes into the

united states on a yearly basis. we can't screen our way -- we can't x-ray our way out of this problem. it's got to be intelligence driven and it's got to be a collaborative where we push -- push it back up the supply chain so it doesn't get on the aircraft and we have to have -- we have to have that information to be able to do that. so if you kind of look at a triangle, don, and said, okay, the -- a trusted entity, a trusted shipper -- who's your most trusted shipper out there. they were kind of at the pointy end of the triangle and you would provide or apply the least level of screening to that. maybe screening -- maybe there will be a screening level, just notioningly, a screening level that didn't require opening the box. maybe a screening level would be at a trusted shipper say mercedes-benz. and they ship on atlas every

week or samsung or whomever and we know who they are. and they have a program to vet and do backgrounds on their employees and they have security personnel watching the packing of those boxes and they use tamper boxes. why should i look at. that should take my efforts when i should be looking at a suspect box against something that is really not a threat. as mo correctly said once you buy into threat-based mismanagement you buy in all the way. yes, nothing is 100%. but you're more likely to be successful if you focus our resources on the real threat, not things that aren't threats. >> uh-huh. anybody want to ask a question of gary before i ask -- okay. it's very easy to say we need

better intelligence and with you talked about cooperation and communication between the united states and other parts of the world. how the heck do you get the various branches of the united states government who are in possession of the intelligence to cooperate with each other so that somebody at some point can give it to the industry so that we could act on it as gary said and i know we've got some former government people on the panel. to me one of the biggest problems in the intelligence is getting cooperation among the government agencies to get the intelligence together in a timely fashion to get to the industry. it's not just good enough, i don't think, to say we need the intelligence. how do we get it? >> steve, one of the things that we did on our working groups, it's ultimately chaired by secretary napolitano is we made that point. that the -- there is an issue of government sharing information, critical information with the private sector. but the truth of the matter is,

they aren't sharing information amongst themselves. so sometimes tsa won't have the information we need to give it to you. we look at tsa why don't you give us the information? well, we didn't have it. well, that's the truth of the matter. one of the things that came out of our group on cargo security was -- i asked the government officials that were there -- i said, you know, when 1028 happened i didn't get a call. i learned about it from the newspaper or on the news. i didn't get a call, hey, you need to be looking out for this. i said, well, the packages weren't going to be on atlas air and i said well, i had a jet in due bithat i loading cargo but how do you know and how do i know that this wasn't -- to use the term of art a spectacular event where they were using multiple types of explosives and

multiple modes? i said it would have been nice for us to know that. so the exchange of information wasn't necessarily in the hands of the people that could tell me. that maybe would have told me at the time it never got transmitted to them or -- and it definitely didn't get transmitted to me. steve's right. we made a big point to sect napolitano there's not that sharing of the information of the government. they talk about sharing information but it just doesn't happen -- there's a lot of reasons for it. some are good and some aren't so good. a lot of it is source protection. there's only certain amount of people than this information that we need and they want to protect their sources. they want to protect their sovereignty so to speak. but we got to get over that. we're trying to -- we're not trying to solve crimes anymore and convict people in court. we're trying to stop

catastrophic events where people's lives are lost, aircraft are lost and employees are lost. >> as a reporter for 40 years, this is an ongoing story that has not changed for that entire 40 years. >> i want to take exception to the i.p., that there is not information-sharing. there has been in my last 10 years of my service as part of the tsa and secret service and u.s. customs and border protection, there was a realization that we needed to break down the stovepipes that have been created over years. and there's a tremendous effort, ongoing effort, to deal with this problem. but it's not sharing information it's controlling it once you've

shared it. and the assurances that that information is not going to -- i mean, we could all turn to wikileaks, i guess, and we'd all know everything with respect to information. but it's how you control the information once it gets out of your particular, you know, agency. and that's -- that's -- that is a very challenging issue to deal with. i'm not suggesting that it's not something that needs to have tremendous amount of work. but it's not so simple to say why don't we pick up the phone and call the cargo guys on the side and give them all the information we have. we don't know where that's going to go. >> you were in law enforcement, you know -- >> i just think -- i think it's a bigger challenge and there's more going on in this area than a lot of people realize. >> you know, i don't hear the two of you saying much different. i mean, you're saying this happens and something needs to be done about it.

you're saying there's a reason something happens and something needs to be done about it. >> industry and government to government. i was referring to both. >> there's different solutions for both problems. there is -- and that's the reason we suggested to secretary napolitano and her working group that we talk the heads of security for each airline, the vice president of the airline and give them a top secret clearance. if you're still uncomfortable -- if there's some area of discomfort there, then let's give them a course in handling sensitive and classified information and give them a course in how to sanitize that information. most of them already inherently know it from the prior jobs. but i understand that concern. as ralph said i was on that side of the road for 32 years and i understand source protection and i understand sensitivity to it. but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, if you don't

share that information, somebody is going to die? so what's more important here. a life or the information at the end of the day? >> yeah, there's two issues that i see. so i want to make sure that we distinguish between information and intelligence. 'cause intelligence is a different animal than information is. intelligence collection and information collection -- collection isn't the issue it's distribution of response. and information about it. intelligence is an entirely different animal. i would suggest if you're going to go top secret you can't stop there. you'll have to go sci will give you. top secret will give you much more than a secret clearance, frankly. so keep those two separate. think about it in terms of information that moves rapid once you know it that you can move it and it is distinguished that you can get it out there for the operators or the

industry to react in time because they do need to respond because the government can't respond to what gary is talking about. so intelligence is a whole different world of classification and how you move intelligence will be significantly different than information. information has to move very fast, very rapid to get to those that need it. >> and i see carol coming up to the podium but was there any reaction to what was just said? >> i agree with mo completely. >> okay. >> i usually do. we could go on for another hour or two. >> before you end this, don, i would just like to make a comment because at the time of 9/11, the -- at the end of the day, the ata came together and with the faa we worked all night and we came up with the new safety regulations that would allow the airlines to fly again.

and there was a complete and total sharing of information and we knew that the level of trust, whether people had a security clearance or not, had to be -- the information had to be shared and it was and that's what got us through that first hurdle. then the idea or the notion of creating a tsa came about. and when that happened, much to the disbelief of the ata and the airlines, they were not included in all of the sessions that were created to come up with the plan for tsa. and it was because they didn't trust us. we really got past that and then we had a variety of meetings. and as it turned out only those of us with a clearance could be in on the meetings which meant the ceos of the airlines who were directly impacted could not participate in those meetings. and we got around that for the

most part. that's never completely changed. and i think what gary says and what ralph says are both accurate but i still see a need to have better communication about sensitive information that does require a clearance. and all the security guys have those clearances. and if you're going to share the information with the airlines, passenger airlines, then you should certainly be sharing it with the cargo people as well. and we just -- i think, gary, what your doing is absolutely correct. you're working with the secretary, and i believe that this is such an important issue that has to be resolved for the long term because there's always going to be that hesitancy to share information that could be life threatening if we're not careful about it. so with that, i think this has been a fabulous panel.

everybody really has learned from it. don, great moderator, but the panel was fabulous. thank you. [applause] >> that session from last week. the u.s. senate is in session today. senators are in recess right now for their weekly party lunch meetings. >> a discussion now on the death of osama bin laden and the u.s. implications of iraq and afghanistan. we have congressman ron wittman. good morning

>> guest: good morning. >> host: and you are the chairman on the oversight subcommittee. >> guest: yes. >> host: you just returned a month ago from a trip to afghanistan and pakistan. and you met with president zadari of pakistan. >> guest: yes. >> host: what was your experience like there. >> guest: well, we had good discussions with president zadari. the time that we were there, there was a heightened sense of anti-american feelings there because of the raymond davis incident also because there was a recent predator drone strikes where there was some civilian casualties and the koran burning that was in florida. there was some concern and we stressed the importance of a strong u.s./pakistani relationship especially in what pakistan is doing on war on extremism. we emphasize that because we know in pakistan the haqqani network, and others are all significant contributors of extremism and terrorism exploits in afghanistan and we know we will not be successful in afghanistan without a strong

partner in pakistan. one of the things we stressed was the concern of the forces the pakistanis are committing to the battle of extremism or against extremism there especially in the northwest frontier provinces, those areas, north waziristan. those are significant concerns to us because of the activities that are going on there. and it seemed to us that their forces are being spread very thin where they couldn't continue to pursue in an offensive manner other forces or other extremist forces within the area. so we had some very candid discussions with both president zadar i didn't and general kiyani and talking to him about his concerns and, of course, they also from their standpoint strategically have concerns about india so many of their forces are deployed on the indian/pakistani border. so we were there to emphasize the importance of battling extremism especially the

haqqani, you know, and the others which we know are significant contributors as i said to that violence and efforts of extremism in afghanistan. those are the ones that are there fighting our men and women on the ground in both the eastern and southern regions of afghanistan. >> host: president zadari defends pakistan's road in a "washington post" op-ed today. it's the first time he's come out and talked about pakistan's role. how surprised were you that bin laden was found in a well-to-do suburb of islamabad? you were just in that country? >> guest: we were just there and we were just in islamabad. it is surprising. it is concerning that he was able to live there for a certain period of time undetected where you have a number of military retirees. you would think at some point somebody would look at that and have some suspicion about how that compound was placed, the activities in that compound. so i think it does bring up a number of questions that we need to answer and we need to approach the pakistanis about now. we want to make sure that they

are strong partners with us but an incident like this, i think, heightens our concerns about their efforts in combating extremism and also whether they're knowledgeable about what may be going on in their country. and i think from our standpoint we want to make sure that they are combating extremism, not just with their troops on the ground but also in the way they gather intelligence. and i understand that they have been somewhat helpful with us in gathering intelligence for this particular operation. but certainly not to the extent that you would expect them to do with osama bin ladin living in an area living such as this, an area where he would be easily detected or would be alert of the pakistanis about this particular compound. >> host: should we be sending as much aid as we have to pakistan? >> guest: i think we need to reevaluate of what pakistan is accomplishing there. i think it's always good to make sure we revisit our relationships with countries and

especially the amount of aid that we're sending there and the results of what that aid may be -- may be coming out with. so -- i think it's good for us to do that, to ask those questions, to ask the tough questions of the pakistanis about wheelchair doing and then looking very closely through congress in our spending decision business how that aid is being utilized. what's it doing to increase or bolster the u.s./pakistani relationships? and what is it being used for in the wore ar or extremism. >> host: what's your feeling and as you looked at what happened over the weekend, does it change your perspective at all with our relationship with pakistan? our goals in afghanistan even? >> guest: well, it raises my concern. i want to make sure before we quickly rush to judgment. i want to understand a little more of the details about what information we gleaned from the pakistanis, what they knew to have some more conversations. it's easy to rush to judgment but i think we ought to be more

measured in this. pakistan is a strong partner. they are a nuclear power. the reality is the u.s. and pakistan need to be strong partners. we can always, though, question that relationship and i think now is the time for us to be able to question that relationship and what the pakistanis are doing in concert with the united states and battling extremism. >> host: let's hear from becky in dayton, ohio. good morning. >> caller: good morning, thanks for taking my call. >> host: uh-huh. >> caller: my first question is about pakistan. do they feel that there should be some sort of sanctions against them once they investigate how much they didn't want to know about obama -- i mean, him being there? secondly, how would they have his dna to be able to determine for sure that it was him? and do you think that there's too much information revealed about -- like them taking the

computers and having all that information? don't they feel that in a way that could be detrimental to any further investigations? >> guest: well, becky, those are great questions. first of all, as far as them revealing the intelligence that they gathered there, i think it's purposeful. folks in the intelligence community are pretty thoughtful about what they reveal. and what this does, i believe, is to create that level of uncertainty within the al-qaeda network as to what information the u.s. has about their operations. i know that by human nature that will cause a hesitancy within al-qaeda with whatever efforts they may try to perpetrate after we have killed osama bin laden. so i know there's a purpose behind that. initially well, we shouldn't tell anybody. we haven't divulged the specifics of the intelligence that we gathered. only that we have a significant amount of intelligence which does create uncertainty for those folks. as far as the dna match i'm certain through the years that the intelligence community has gathered dna from their

intelligence gathering with osama bin laden. they probably had that on hand for intelligence gathering. what we ought to be having a very candid, thoughtful discussions with the leadership in pakistan. when i traveled there we had very frank and direct conversations with both general kiyani and president zadari about their efforts against extremism, what the country sees is their future role, what commitments they are going to make in working with the u.s. on those efforts so i do think, though, this is a time for us to pose those questions, those tough questions. if they're going to be a partner with us, there needs to be a level of trust there. and certainly this is a time where we need to be questioning wheelchair doing, whether they're doing everything as far as gathering intelligence in what they're doing in concert with the united states on these efforts. so i think it's a critical time

for us to reintroduce some of those very, very frank discussions. i think it falls short of sanctions. i always think conversations need to be productive, but frank in how we deal with pakistan. >> host: let's go to williamsburg, virginia. randy, a republican caller. good morning. >> guest: good morning, randy. >> caller: good morning, congressman wittman. congressman, i called your office last week because i have a real concern with some of the special education funds that are being spent in our schools and recently a grant that was given to the williamsburg school that was a physical fitness and health program grant. sadly here in williamsburg, that grant is not being afforded businesses like my own which is a s.w.a.m. certified businesses which had 1,000 school site visits and i often leave school with the children giving me a grade of a plus and the parents being very excited with the

health that their kids enjoyed that day. what i do is -- i bring mobile fitness centers to school. they have 30 stationary bikes to fit children as young as 3. and when i eliminate the capital staff, new staff, new staff training, heating, cooling, busing and actually have a measured outcome, and yet these programs are all mysteries because staff doesn't know what to do. they're spending all this money on consultants and excessive training that don't impact the classroom or the health of the children. >> host: okay, let's get a response from our guest. i think we understand what you're talking about. >> guest: sure, sure. well, randy, we want to make sure, obviously, on any federal grant that the money is being spent well and that it sounds it's producing results and it sounds like your efforts are producing a result. and how your efforts are being utilize in the region. we want to make sure, obviously, with the fitness of children,

addressing childhood obesity that we're looking at all the different options to increase physical activity but also to focus on diet. and it sounds like one of your efforts there is something that would be significant. so we're glad to look into that and also talk with the officials in that area. in fact, i had the opportunity yesterday to visit a facility there that was putting on this tiff training as part of that tiff grant. i want to understand what you're bringing to the table to ensure all these opportunities are being available for our youth. >> host: congressman ron wittman a republican of virginia. he represents the first district. he serves on the natural resources committee. he's also the chairman of the subcommittee on oversight in armed services. this story profiling navy seals in your state. this from the "washington times," the seals go unnoticed and like it that way. virginia beach proud of its heroes and it talks about the folks who are stationed at the naval station oceania at the

heart of virginia beach. it involved landing inside the compound in pakistan. with worldwide attention focused on the mission, the seals and particularly the highly trained highly skilled team 6 that executed the operation are getting an unusual dose of attention but it's really behind the scenes and people on virginia beach say there's not a public welcome for them because their operation and work is confidential. >> guest: team 6 we are so glad to have them in virginia and so proud to have them but they are a very, very distinguished group of warriors, but again, a group that doesn't want that notice. they're very humble. and they know that's their job and having been there to visit with them and to speak with them, they are extraordinary individuals, very, very focused on their mission but also knowing that they're not there for public notice. they're there to get the job done. so we're so glad to have them and i know that -- i know from a

security standpoint thereto, they're not having a lot of people know what they do or where they're doing it. so again, they're very humble warriors but extraordinarily effective as we can see see in the operation there in pakistan. >> host: a caller right here in washington, d.c. jeff joins us hi there. >> caller: yes. i was curious why is it so important to have a dialog with basically bedouin cultures that, you know, keep their people repressed and they don't educate them? and where do they get all their armament? i know that opium is a big deal there, but what is the importance of having this dialog with them? >> guest: well, i think if we want them to pursue education for their youth, if we want them to expand their scope and how they deal with other nations, i

think you have to have those dialogs. and, obviously, with us being an economic partner with pakistan, both through some limited trade but also in the foreign aid that we provide them, i think it's incumbent on us to have those discussions if we hope to improve the human condition there with them, then we have to have those discussions. so i do think that those things are productive. and, obviously, too, they are a nuclear power. we want to make sure we have productive conversations with them. we do not want to be on the outs with countries like pakistan or india. so i think it's critical for us to have those discussions. we may not always agree and i think in this situation, there's certainly many questions that rise after this operation there but it doesn't mean we should shy away from those discussions and shy away from engaging the pakistanis in what i believe is an opportunity for us in the future to help them move forward but also to move forward the cause of battle around extremism

in the world. >> host: we have a democrat from chicago. good morning. >> guest: hello, carl. >> caller: congressman, i want to have you relate something to your colleagues in congress. pakistan is a government -- they have potential heads of states who have no sense of their own security. >> guest: uh-huh. >> caller: i don't think you in congress would be talking about while questioning them when we've been for the last few years violating their national sovereignty with our predator drones and probably special forces units. we got what we wanted. instead of making them a public whipping horse, their a gift horse. just leave it alone and nothing else will be said about it. >> guest: well, we certainly want to acknowledge the times where they have helped us but also remember that the battle for extremism goes on. we certainly have gotten what we wanted with osama bin laden being killed, but there are other steps that need to be taken. you look in that country, look

at the haqqani network and there's a continual threat and that threat comes over the border into afghanistan and those folks are fighting our troops there, providing, i think, a significant challenge, a significant threat to the united states. so i think we have to continue to engage and make sure that the effort to battle extremism around the world is a joint venture and make sure that pakistan is making the proper commitments there, even though this is a significant milestone, it is certainly not the end. and in many instances i think folks feel it will reinvigorate al-qaeda in their efforts against free nations around the world, which means we have to heighten our efforts and our diligence to combat that extremism. >> host: abc news reported this morning that the white house is considering releasing photos of osama bin laden's body. should that be done? >> guest: i think you need to confirm in people's minds. i think folks need that closure to understand that, yes, this is indeed osama bin laden. you have to do that in a thoughtful and respectful way so

they're going to have to be very careful about how they release those photos. but this is -- this is an issue of such note that i think you have to have something to confirm in people's minds that this indeed did occur and that at least they know for themselves by some visual confirmation that osama bin laden was killed. >> host: talk us through how that would be done, would they release it publicly and then do you have concerns about people in places like pakistan being offended by the release of that photo? >> guest: it could be. you're going to have to do it, i think, in a very thoughtful manner. obviously, it needs to be revealed to members of congress so you can have folks there speak and say i saw the pictures and i can confirm it was osama bin laden. i did see the dna analysis to confirm that it was indeed osama bin laden. i think you at least start there. you have to be thoughtful about how you reveal the additional information. i understand that the photos are fairly graphic so as you said, you want to be respectful.

you don't want to incite more extremism by releasing these photos but i think, too, you want to provide a sense to not only u.s. citizens but folks around the world that indeed this was osama bin laden that was killed during this operation. >> host: and members of congress will go to a briefing today, a closed-door briefing. >> guest: yes. >> host: what do you want to hear out of that? do you want to see a picture at this point? what do you hope to come away with? >> guest: i do. i do want to get a full scope of confirmation that this indeed was osama bin laden. i'd like to learn a little bit more about the details about the operations. and then what the estimation is for the future challenges that we're going to face. in other words, what is this going to result in? where do we believe where al-qaeda will reemerge? where do we believe leadership will fill in? this as i said is a milestone. it's a point in the battle on terrorism. it is not a completion of that. so i want to hear not only about the specific information but also about what are the next steps? where are we going from here?

what are the administration's plans in the next step in the battle against extremism? >> host: judy in hyattsville, maryland. welcome. caller: hi i'm concerned about countries that burn my flag and regularly spit in my eye and deride americans the way karzai has done and we're giving him billions while regular americans cannot survive. i have a relative who lost their jobs, had to use her 401k, had to use her retirement money. the government is now after her for $12,000 and swiss banks are saying, guess what? we found 400 million. we know that gadhafi has billions of dollars. we know that karzai and his family are walking off with money. you know, how far do the american people have to go to say what the founding fathers said and that was don't get immeshed and embroiled in foreign politics?

>> guest: well, i tell you it's certainly a time to examine every place that we are involved in, just having come back from afghanistan, obviously, we are on the way to reducing our presence there. we have to do that. the engagement in libya, i think it's certainly something many of us in congress had questions about. you look at your initial assertion what are we doing in the efforts and resources we are placing around the world in relation to what we're doing here in the united states and you couldn't be more right in that we need to be focused here on the issues on the united states job creation, the economy. those are fundamentals of what this nation expects us to do. and then they expect us to be very assertive about where we are providing either assistance or whether we are asserting ourselves around the world. certainly the libya issue calls into question our involvement there. looking at our involvement in afghanistan, making sure that we are responsibly -- >> and release of the bin laden death photo is a likely topic this afternoon during the white

house briefing. here's spokesman jay carney. >> yeah. good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. i don't have any announcements to make so let's go straight to questions. >> jay, could you talk about the photo that you guys put out that shows the president and others watching in the situation room? what were they seeing in the moment that that photo was taken? >> as john brennan, the president's counterterrorism advisor explained yesterday, the president and his top national security aides in the situation room were -- had available to them minute-by-minute updates on the operation and that photograph was taken during the operation, and they were looking and listening to those updates. i can't get more specific than that. but this is during the operation and during those tense moments

that mr. brennan described yesterday and this morning on television. >> i mean, why can't you get more specific without, you know, revealing technology or anything? >> well, i think, specifically, we don't talk about with any great detail, you know, how we get our real time information for a variety of reasons. i mean, those meetings take place in the situation room for a reason. those rooms there are for secured communications. so i can't get more specific than that. i think it's been said so i can say that leon panetta the director of the central intelligence agency was on a screen and communicating with those in the situation room and the president. so he was present in that room in that sense as well. >> so they were looking at leon panetta? >> again, they were receiving real time minute-by-minute updates on the -- excuse me, on the operation taking place in pakistan at that moment. but they were receiving a lot of

information at once. >> okay. so brennan in his briefing yesterday made a couple of, i guess, misstatements or statements of what appeared to be somewhat incorrect such as the wife was shielding bin laden and it turned out it wasn't the wife and there may not have been a shield and it wasn't clear whether or not bin laden had a gun. are you guys in a fog of war in this or what gives? >> what is true is that we provided a great deal of information with great haste in order to inform you and through you the american public about the operation and how it transpired and the events that took place there in pakistan. and, obviously, some of the information was -- came in piece by piece and is being reviewed and updated and elaborated on. so what i can tell you -- i have a narrative that i can provide

to you on the raid itself. on the bin laden compound in pakistan. on orders of the president, a small u.s. team assaulted a secure compound in an affluent suburb of islamabad to capture and kill osama bin laden. it was conducted by u.s. personnel assaulting on two helicopters. the team methodically cleared the compound moving from room to room in an operation lasting nearly 40 minutes. they were engaged in a fire-fight throughout the operation and osama bin laden was killed by the assaulting force. in addition to the bin laden family, two other families resided in the compound. one family on the first floor of the bin laden building and one family in a second building. one team began the operation on the first floor of the bin laden house and worked their way to the third floor, a second team cleared the separate building. on the first floor of bin laden's building, two al-qaeda curiers were killed along with a woman who was killed in crossfi

crossfire. bin laden and his family were found on the second floor of the building. there was concern that bin laden would oppose the capture operation and indeed he did resist. in the room with bin laden, a woman, bin laden's wife rushed the u.s. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. bin laden was then shot and killed. he was not armed. following the fire-fight, the noncombatants were moved to a safe location as the damaged helicopter was detonated. the team departed the scene via helicopter to the uss carl vincent in the north arabian sea. on board the uss carl vincent the burial of bin laden along with islam precepts and practices. the deceased's body was washed and then placed in a white sheet. the body was placed in a weighted bag, a military officer red prepared religious remarks which were translated into arabic by a native speaker. after the words were complete, the body was placed on a

prepared flat board, tipped up and the deceased body eased into the sea. that's the narrative that i can provide to you today. >> in what way -- >> and i want to make clear that this is again information that is fresh and, you know, we will continue to gather and provide to you details as we get them and we're able to release them. the resistance was throughout. as i said, when the assaulter entered the room where osama bin laden was, he was rushed by one individual in the room and the resistance was consistent from the moment they landed till the end of the operation. yes. >> how did obama -- excuse me, osama bin laden resist -- if you didn't have a hand on his gun how did he resist? >> the information i have -- first of all, resistance does not require a firearm. but the information i gave you

is what i can tell you about it. i'm sure more details will be provided as they come available and we are able to release them. >> did he have any weapon? >> he was not armed is what i understand to be true. >> on the same thing to afghanistan, do you see the capture of bin laden do you think the timing of the u.s. withdrawal troops of afghanistan? >> no, i think that the president's plan is on track. it is -- you can see the operation that took place on sunday within the context of this plan that the president put in place for afghanistan and pakistan and within the context of his broader commitment as a candidate and as president to refocus our attention on the afpac region what they call al-qaeda was and very recently the home to the leader of

al-qaeda. the president was very determined as you remember when he ran for office and since he came in here to refocus our attention on that region, on al-qaeda. and as you recall in the very carefully deliberated upon plan that the president put forward for afghanistan, that the number 1 objective was to dismantle and eventually defeat al-qaeda. getting bin laden was very much a part of that plan. but it is not the only part. as john brennan and others have said, the president has said, we are continuing the fight against al-qaeda. every day. and the focus of that operation of the u.s. personnel in afghanistan is on al-qaeda. the operation continues. the july 2011 transition date for the beginning of a drawdown remains very much in place. the pace of that drawdown will be determined by conditions on

the ground. >> a final question, any updates on the plans to release video or images? >> i don't have any updates on that except to echo what john brennan said this morning, which is that we're obviously reviewing information. we've made a great deal available to the public in remarkable time. we're talking about the most highly classified operation that this government has undertaken in many, many years. and the amount of information we tried to provide to you in this short period of time is quite substantial. we will continue to review that and make decisions about the appropriateness in of releasing more information as that review continues on. >> the pakistani government put out a statement which said the isi has been providing information about the compound since 2009. whereas, all we know about it in terms of the media is that we've known about the compound since 2010.

could you explain the discrepancy and also has the isi been providing information about this compound? >> well, what i will do is point you to the comments that john brennan made and others have made which is that the pakistanis have in general been very helpful in many ways in the fight against al-qaeda. and that help has -- was of assistance in general in the gathering of intelligence and information that led to the successful operation on sunday. i'm not aware and i believe we have said we have been quite clear about our knowledge about the existence of this compound and about the communications we did not have with pakistani intelligence about this operation. >> it was said in a statement that many houses in that region occupied by the operations in the fatah region have high boundary walls as part of a

culture of privacy. so high walls in that region, obviously, you got the right house. i'm not questioning that. but is this your cultural understanding of the region that high walls are -- >> i think it's a unique property within the region. but he clearly successfully held in sight, at least our sight, for a very long time. and he is not the only high value target who did that by hiding in highly populated areas. obviously, there were some speculation for many years that he and other high value al-qaeda targets were hiding in caves or in the mountainous region, small villages or being -- or living a nomadic existence and, in fact, what we seem to have discovered over the course of these years of investigating and finding these high valued targets is that there's a preference for highly populated areas which understandably can sometimes be an easier place to hide.

>> and lastly, the previous administration did release photographs of high value targets. what would hold it back -- it seemed to gone relatively without a hitch right now. why would you not release the photos of bin laden. >> well, i'll be candid there's sensitivities of the appropriateness in of releasing photographs of osama bin laden and the aftermath of this fire-fight and we're making an evaluation about the need to do that because of the sensitives involved. and we do -- we review this information and make this decision with the same calculation that we do so many things which is what, you know -- what we're trying to accomplish and does it serve or in any way harm our interests?

and that's not just domestic but globally. >> is it because it's -- >> it's fair to say it's a gruesome photograph. >> that's inflammatory? >> it's certainly possible this was an issue that we are taking into consideration is that it could be inflammatory. i'm not going to get into who -- who's seen the photographs or where they are. yeah. >> since you said bin laden was not armed, why was the decision made to kill him? >> as mr. brennan made clear, we were prepared to capture him if that was possible. we expected a great deal of resistance and were met with a great deal of resistance. there was -- but there were many people who were armed in the region -- i mean, in the compound. there was a fire-fight. >> not in that room when he went in. >> dan, it was a highly volatile fire-fight. i'll point you to the department of defense for more details

about it, but it was. he resisted the u.s. personnel on the ground handled themselves with the utmost professionalism. and he was killed in an operation because of the resistaced that they met. >> everyone was getting real time information. was the decision to shoot and kill done by that unit or was there consultation -- was there information flowing back and forth and it was directed that they had to go to the kill at that point. >> operation was run from the ground or certainly not from the white house. and at the point i think mr. brennan described this yesterday at the briefing or perhaps on television or maybe in both places that at that point the folks in the situation were observers and listeners to an operation that obviously had been carefully thought out,

meticulously prepared for. the decision to go with the president, obviously, was a very weighty decision. once it began, however, obviously, it was up to those who were taking the action to execute the plan. >> yesterday, the white house put out a readout, the president's call to world leaders. any additional calls today and also have any of these world leaders expressed concern about the u.s. going into another country unannounced? >> we did provide a readout. i don't have any new calls to read out for you at this time. my understanding is that the calls were all included congratulations to the united states for their successful operation in capturing and killing osama bin laden. i'm not aware of any concern

expressed about the issue that you raised. i heard the president from pakistan has an op-ed in the "washington post," and they also congratulated us on this success. yes, chip. >> i think you said the assaulter was brushed when you were describing the situation when when bin laden was killed. was there just one assaulter in the room with bin laden? and were both shots fired in person. >> i don't have a detail on the shots and who fired them. my understanding they entered a room one at a time, this particular room, but beyond that, i don't know. you know, there was, obviously, a team in the compound but i don't want to venture a guess. i always find it better not to do that. so i would point you to the department of defense for that. >> okay. but you still believe that a

wife of osama bin laden was shot but not killed. >> shot in the leg. >> shot in the leg. not in that room? >> on the first floor. >> on the first floor. you said that it was, you know, a real gun battle. but my understanding of the 22 or so people in the room, 17 or so of them were noncombatants. so -- >> well, and a great number of people as you know were unarmed and safely made secure when they -- after the operation was complete and the helicopter had to be detonated but there was a fire-fight. >> do you know how many people were firing -- >> you'll have to -- again, we're providing you this information as it's made available for public release. the pentagon is working on this and will, i'm sure, continue to update the information as it becomes available. >> and the report sourced to the isi, the noncombatants had had their hands tied in preparation

for taking them away on the helicopter at which they could not do because one of the helicopters had been damaged. do you know anything about that? >> i don't. and i certainly haven't heard anything like that in this building. >> okay. finally, is there video of the burial at sea? >> again, i'm not going to get into the -- >> but -- >> no, i understand. the visual material that is being reviewed, decisions about it will be made about what, if any, of it can be released. i don't want to get into specifics about what -- what there is and what there isn't. i would just urge you to be patient given how much information has been released and understanding about why we need to review this and make the appropriate decision. i would also say there is not, as has been reported, there is not some debate here about this. there is simply a discussion about what the appropriate action should be. >> is the president involved in that discussion now?

>> the president is intimately involved in all aspects of this operation. >> do you have a timeline -- >> no, i don't have a timeline. >> would it be today? >> i don't have a timeline. jay, what's the status of the u.s.-pakistani relations today as the white house sees them? >> it's a complicated but important relationship. pakistan is a partner, a key partner, in the fight against al-qaeda and terrorism. they have been extremely helpful. and we look forward to cooperating into the future. we have been in contact at many levels with pakistan government, pakistani government. >> we're leaving the white house briefing at this point to return to live coverage of the u.s. senate. you can see the briefing in its entirety at c-span.org. senators returning to offer general speeches and at 3:30 they'll vote on a resolution commending u.s. forces in the intelligence community for the killing of osama bin laden. that vote will happen at 3:30. and now to live coverage of the u.s. senate.

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charged against the majority and the minority. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. under the previous order, the clerk will report the pending resolution. the clerk: s. res. 159, honoring the members of the military and intelligence community who carried out the mission that killed osama bin laden, and for other purposes. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from michigan.

mr. levin: mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. levin: mr. president, at 10:00 on sunday night, i was at the terminal at the detroit airport. i had gone through the usual airport security drills, shoes off, liquids in plastic bags and all the other inconveniences designed to keep us safe. it was at that same airport at christmas, 2009, that a would-be terrorist sought to bomb an airliner. so i was surrounded by reminders large and small of how the threat of terrorism has affected our lives when defense secretary gates called me with the momentous news that our forces had succeeded in raiding a compound in pakistan and killing osama bin laden. a few hours later, my wife barbara and i joined a different scene.

thousands of cheering young people waving american flags and singing patriotic songs in the early morning darkness outside of the white house, part of an outpouring of relief and emotion across the nation. what had happened is that osama bin laden could not avoid the long memory and the long arm of justice, and he could not hope to triumph against the indomitable spirit of the american people. the news that president obama delivered to the nation on sunday evening gives us many reasons to reflect. we should first turn to those who still carry the grief and loss of that september morning. about ten years ago, to those who have lost loved ones in the fight against terror and the years since, to those who carry wounds of body, mind or spirit from that war. the death of osama bin laden cannot bring back the lives lost

to his montana trust -- monstrous acts, but it can, i hope, bring some measure of relief from those losses. we first turn with thanks and admiration to the men and women of our armed forces and the intelligence community. for them and their families, the last decade has been one of long separations, uncertainty and danger, and yet time and time again, they have answered their nation's call with courage, with competence and with skill and once again have earned our utmost gratitude. we should also commend the president for his courage and for his care in ordering a military mission to capture or kill osama bin laden. there was no direct evidence that bin laden was in the compound that the c.i.a. had determined housed two al qaeda couriers. instead, the evidence was circumstantial and there were

differing views within the intelligence community as to the likelihood that bin laden or perhaps some other high-value target was there. moreover, the mission required the military helicopters to enter into pakistani airspace, to land in pakistan's sovereign territory and for navy seals to use lethal force on a compound in a city that was home to two pakistani armed registeriments. -- regiments. the president courageously directed the alternative options of a bombing missile, a missile mission or waiting until there was more evidence of bin laden's presence. he rejected both of those alternatives. with his bold decision and with the heroism and skill of our military and intelligence professionals, our nation struck a tremendous blow not just against a single depraved individual but against the

hateful ideology that he espoused, that there be no mistake, al qaeda is weaker today, its leader is dead and so is the myth surrounding him. osama bin laden sent his followers to hide in dank mountain caves and often to their own suicide from the comfort of his million dollar villa. his death has dealt al qaeda a major blow. the mystique of osama bin laden, of osama bin laden has been punctured. the victory over hate-inspired terrorism is not yet complete. our successful mission against bin laden will no doubt lead to al qaeda's remaining leaders to issue calls for retaliation. it is critical that our

intelligence and military strength continue to seek out those elements and franchises of al qaeda that remain in afghanistan, pakistan, the arabian peninsula, africa and other places such as al qaeda and the arabian peninsula in yemen. the threat may be diminished but it remains. further, it is critical that we ensure that our military and intelligence communities continue to adapt to the threat of our regular and unconventional enemy. the interagency cooperation that helped make this mission a success is impressive and it remains a potent weapon in our effort to weaken the al qaeda network. this is an effort worthy not just of this nation but of all nations, and that is why it is important that we find answers to the significant questions raised by the news from sunday night. 35 miles from the pakistani

capital and a qocial walk from the pakistani military's most important academy, in a town where the pakistani military and intelligence services own a large share of the property, al qaeda appears to have built a massive complex. ringed by walls as high as 18 feet, protected by barbed wire as the dedicated hiding place for osama bin laden.y it is difficult to believe this occurred without at least arousing the suspicions of spook's security forces or their local officials. the american people prof provided billions of dollars of aid to the pakistani government deserve to know whether elements of pakistan's military and intelligence services or local officials knew of bin laden's location over the five years or so he was there.

and if they did not know, how that could possibly be the case. hopefully, just as importantly, the pakistani people deserve these answers, for they have suffered greatly from al qaeda's violent extremism. assassinations, bombings, deaths of civilians and military personnel alike, all these losses show that al qaeda and its hate-filled terrorism and its terrorist allies threaten pakistan's very existence. i believe that some of pakistan's leaders know this to be true, and i was heartened by the reaction of prime minister gahlani to bin laden's death. he said i think it's a great victory and congratulate this death. close quote. but it is urgent that the pakistani government get answers to the questions about what its

military and intelligence agencies local officials knew and to share the answers with those questions with the world and with their own people. pakistan can be an important ally in the fight against terror. it has as much at stake, if not more, in that fight as anybody. all the more important that we openly and honestly address the questions which have been raised by the presence of terrorist number-one, public enemy number-one, the world's enemy number-one, the presence of that person in pakistan in such a central place for all these years. it is important that those questions be honestly answered so that we can continue this fight together. mr. president, i yield the floor and note absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call: ithout

objection, so ordered. mr. levin: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the time for debate on the resolution that's pending be extended by 15 minutes with the additional time being equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, with all other provisions under the previous order remaining in effect. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. levin: and with this agreement, the vote will now occur around 3:45 p.m. mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: tein: mr. presiden,

i suspect the situation is such that i can speak on the resolution. the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mrs. feinstein: i ask that the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. feinstein: i rise in strong support of this resolution and offer my congratulations to the men and women responsible for developing the intelligence and carrying out the operation that led to the death of osama bin laden. -- on sunday, may 1. this is perhaps the most

important and certainly the most stunning intelligence operation i've seen in my ten years on the intelligence committee. i want to congratulate, first and foremost, president obama. as he stated in his sunday night address to the nation, directed the leon panetta shortly after taking office to -- quote -- "make the killing or capture of bin laden the top priority of our war against al qaeda." when the effort to collect and analyze intelligence on this compound in abbottabad bore fruit, president obama made a gutsy decision to oord the strike. even though the intelligence community could not assure him with certainty that bin laden was there. at the operational level, the hunt for bin laden and the raid on his compound has shown the greatly improved collaboration

and cooperation across the intelligence community and, of course, the department of dwerchtion. -- the department of defense. the c.i.a. has seed and well-served the lion's share of the credit. the agency collected the human intelligence and carter out other missions that found and characterized the abbottabad compound and c.i.a. analysts took the lead in analyzing and reanalyzing that information. the c.i.a.'s counterterrorism center has a banner on the wall that read, and i quote, "today is september 12, 2001." end quote. it's been nearly ten years, but the perseverance and dedication has truly paid off. i want to also recognize the efforts of the national security agency, which provided signals intelligence, and the national geospatial intelligence arks which conducted the imagery

analysis on the compound. it was truly a team effort. i also commend and give thanks to the joint special operations command, or jsop, the team that flew to the compound under cover of night and conducted the raid. it was not a picture-perfect operation, and changes to the plan were necessary, as the lead helicopter was forced to land unexpectedly. but the highly trained and skilled members of the navy seal team adjust, they reach their target, they killed osama bin laden without taking any casualties themselves. i was first briefed on the compound and the possibility that it housed osama bin laden in the beginning of last december, along with senator kit bond, who was vice-chairman of the intelligence committee at that time. since then, the current vice-chairman, senator saxby

chambliss, and i have been regularly briefed and updated on the intelligence, and i thank director panetta and his team for keeping the intelligence committee leadership informed. as one who was regularly critical of our government's inability to keep secrets, it is very reassuring that this highly sensitive and sensational intelligence was kept under wraps for months. mr. president, there is no doubt that sunday's operation gives rise to a number of questions. among the most important of them are, one, what did pakistan know about bin laden's presence and this compound in the up to six years he was there? it has to be pointed out, this compound was eight times bigger than any home in the vicinity. it was just a quarter mile away from another home.

it was a mile away from a major military academy. it had raiser wire on the top -- it had razor wire on the top of very large walls and it was very large in itself. trashed wasn't picked up. it was burned. no one came in and out really except the two couriers that went about delivering messages from a distance from the compound. it should have been an issue of curiosity, and neighbors surely would have been interested. who lives there? why is it so big? what's going on there? but there was virtually no reaction. the second point is, what does bin laden's death mean for al qaeda and for the affiliate groups and lone wolves that he had inspired and led? as the chairman of the intelligence committee, i'll be looking for answers to those

questions and get more of the details of the operation itself. tomorrow morning in a joint classified hearing with the armed services committee, we will be looking into these and other issues. but this resolution is about commending the men and women of our intelligence community and the united states military for their dedication and years of work that led to 40 minutes of incredible success. it should also recognize the fact that since 9/11, intelligence has been stream 13 -- streamlined, stovepipes have been taken down, and analysts have greatly improved that their trade craft. the intelligence having to do with this one facility was red-teamed once, red-teamed twice, and red-teamed at least a third time, and the red-teaming

process gives the ability of other analysts to debunk the intelligence, to try to put tosh to indicate what might -- to try to indicate what might be a lapse, an inclusion, a false judgment. it is a very valuable process. this resolution also recognizes the measure of justice now delivered to those who mourn and remember the thousands of men, women, and children claimed as victims on 9/11 and in the another attacks carried out by al qaeda under osama bin laden both here and around the world. this won't end terror as we know it today, but it surely is a monumental step to be able to put an end to the man who championed the cause, the man who provided the inspiration, the man who raised the money,

and the man who was purely and simply the major leader. osama bin laden is no more, and the time is upon us -- and i hope the world will be listening -- to try to consider a better path, to move away from acts of terrorists, move away from the killing of innocent men, women, and children, and become parts of the councils of governments, whatever they may be, across the world, to debate, to discuss, to vote, and to put forward principled policies. i very much appreciate the efforts of the majority leader and the republican leader in bringing this resolution to the floor and urge its adoption. mr. president, i noticed my distinguished vic vice-chairmann the floor and i particularly want to thank him, senator chambliss, you, for all the cooperation that we have been able to effect together.

you truly have been wonderful. it's been a great joy for me to work with you, and i only wish i could give you a glass of california wine to salute this very special day. thank you very much, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. chambliss: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mr. chambliss: let me just say, california wine being a favorite of mine, i'm available anytime, madam chairwoman. thanks for those kind comments. mr. president, let me just say to my good friend from california what a pleasure it's been to work with her. the intelligence committee has always been a very bipartisan committee, and nobody exhibits that more so than our current chairman, dianne feinstein. she -- she is tough when she needed to be tough, and she's fair at all times. she and i have a unique relationship with regard to the other committees in the senate in that we jointly hire all of

our staff. and she has been streedgesly cooperative to me -- extremely cooperative to me in the hiring process, and again she's just been a pleasure to work with. and i have to say that diane and i have been on the committee foreseveral years. i am very proud of the work our committee has done and our relationship with the intelligence community, and one of the big reasons that we had the success that we had on sunday in the takedown of bin laden is because of the oversight that diane and others have carried out on the intelligence committee and because of our relationship with the community. it iit is not a exadive relationship. we -- it is not a combative relationship. we had the head of the d.n.i. and others both formally and informally.

those are the times that we find out the needs of the intelligence community and had you not provided the right kind of leadership, they wouldn't have had all the tools necessary to carry out this very important and sophisticated mission. so thanks for your great work. thanks for your friendship, and i look forward to that glass of california wine. mr. president, i rise today in support of this resolution with respect to the takedown of bin laden and also to praise the mism our intelligence and -- the men and women of our intelligence community with regard to the operation. we have been pursuing the world's most infamous terrorist for over a decade but it was the hard work and tireless dedication of these men and women that led to this significant achievement. i am always proud of our military men and women but most especially today i am truly proud of their great work. as we approach the ten-year

anniversary of september 11, i am thankful that the families and loved ones of the victims of 9/11 as we will as all americans can have some closure. the leader of al qaeda and murderer of thousands of americans and allies can never again sponsor a terrorist attack. it is also important to point out that this operation was made possible by information provided by enemy combatants that had been detained and interrogated by the united states. there has been a lot of debate in this country about our detention and interrogation policy but this is probably one of the clearest examples. extraordinary -- of the extraordinary value of the information we've been able to gather. if we had not had access to this information, osama bin laden would likely still be operating undetected today. it is because of the information gained from these detainees, pursued andage ieft and analyzee

years that led us to the compound. it is almost unimaginable that he was loablghted not in a cave in pack stains noman'sland but in a city just outside of islamabad with a large pakistani and government military presence. this is an amazing achievement, one that will remembered for decades. but we must remember that al qaeda is a decentralized network that continues to threaten americans both at home and abroad. a number of dangerous leaders associated with al qaeda including ayman al-zawahiri are still out there no doubt plotting their next attack as we speak. we also face a growing number of threats from other radical organizations and individuals including homegrown terrorists and extremists. although bin laden's death is an enormous blow to al qaeda, we must make sure that we remain

vigilant in all our efforts to defeat terrorism and never lose sight of our objectives, which is not the death of one man but the dismantling of our terrorist networks that seek to do us harm. in closing, i want to again thank our intelligence professionals and military personnel for their service and dedication. i also want to remind everyone that while this is our greatest success to date in our efforts to combat al qaeda, we still have a lot of work to do and cannot rest until all of that work is done. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. mccain: mr. president, i rise to speak in support of resolution 159 honoring the members of the military and intelligence community who carried out the mission that killed osama bin laden. i'm as happy to rise today as at any time in the past ten years, and it's been for the last ten

years that i have eagerly awaited the moment when my colleagues and i could take to this floor and celebrate the news we got this sunday, that we got osama bin laden. justice has been done, and the world has become a better place now that bin laden is no longer in it. this is a time for national unity and celebration. it's a time to finally close a painful chapter in the history of our nation even as our larger fight continues. and most of all, it's a time to give thanks and recognition to a distinguished group of our fellow citizens who will forever occupy an honored place in our history. i want to echo my colleagues in offering my humble thanks to the brave men who carried out this daring operation as well as to the men and women in uniform who enabled their success. i've been involved in national

security my entire life, and i'm hard pressed to come up with another military operation that demonstrated sufficient sophistication, such professionalism, such precise and lethal effectiveness to accomplish such a momentous and consequential objective. i am truly in awe of what these young men have accomplished, and i thank god that our nation continues to produce heroic warriors such as them who are willing to give everything, to sacrifice everything, to devote their lives not to the quest of wealth or fame but to the service of a just and noble cause that's greater than their self interests. we do not yet know their names, but we honor their achievements and we celebrate their heroism. they have made history and earned their place in it. i want to offer the same praise

for our intelligence professionals. it's a truism that intelligence fails in public and succeeds in private. so it's a great day indeed when we can celebrate such a public success of our intelligence professionals. there are men and women across our intelligence community who have devoted the past ten years and many more before that to finding bin laden. despite setbacks and sacrifice, despite the loss of leads and the death of friends; regardless of whether the trail was hot or cold, they woke up every day and carried on the fight. and tphoud we honor the -- and now we honor the fruits of their perseverance and sacrifice even as they themselves remain hard at work exploiting the new information we have recovered, analyzing the new data and setting up the next operation. i also want to offer my deepest

congratulations and appreciation to the president and his national security team. i credit them with making the elimination of osama bin laden their top priority and for accomplishing it so unprecedently. regardless of the myriad groups and parties and factions into which we americans divide ourselves on a daily basis, the killing of osama bin laden is a national triumph, and all americans should feel proud and appreciative of the leadership shown by president obama and his team on this matter. i specifically want to credit the president with ordering an air-borne assault by ground forces rather than aerial bombardment. it would have been a lot easier to simply turn bin laden's compound into a smoldering crater, but it would have denied us the certainty we now have that bin laden is dead. it took real courage to assume

the many risks associated with putting boots on the ground, and i strongly commend the president for it. i would be remiss if i did not also thank president bush and the many officials who labored with him for eight years to do what has now been done. i know that it is one of president bush's regrets that he could not eliminate bin laden on his watch, but he and his team should take solace in the knowledge that they laid the foundation for sunday's operation, and they deserve credit for that. finally i want to say a word to the many american families for whom this celebration is a bitter sweet, because it recalls memories of the mothers and fathers, spouses and siblings, sons and daughters who were stolen from them and from us all not just in the september 11 attacks, but in the many acts of mass murder for which osama bin

laden was guilty. no act of man can fill the aching emptiness of a loved one lost. for that there's only the grace of god. but it is my sincerest hope that the elimination of osama bin laden, this act of justice done, will help to ease the pain and bring closure to what has surely been a decade of torment as we were daily reminded that the world's most wanted terrorist was still free. i also want to credit the families of the victims of september 11, 2001. had it not been for their relentless efforts and advocacy, congress would not have established the 9/11 commission and adopted many of its important reforms of our national security establishment, reforms that no doubt were instrumental in facilitating the joint and collaborative operation to find and kill osama

bin laden. i could not imagine a greater contribution that the 9/11 families could have made. of course the death of osama bin laden does not portend the elimination of al qaeda or the end of terrorist plots and attacks against our country. we must remain vigilant in our pursuit of every enemy who would do harm to us and our friends and allies. and we shall do so. but there is no denying that the death of osama bin laden will have a significant impact in this long war. it will enable us to focus more of our time and attention and resources on others who would do us harm and perhaps are more importantly, it will enable our country to look more fully forward, to focus more completely on supporting the peaceful democratic awakenings that are sweeping the middle east and north africa, which are the greatest repudiation of al

qaeda that we ever could have imagined or hoped for. if there is any consolation in the fact that osama bin laden lived as long as he did, it is that he got to witness arabs and muslims by the tens of millions rising up to demand justice and dignity not through suicide bombings and mass murder, but through peaceful change, political freedom and economic opportunity, the very ideas that bin laden's perverse and murderous ideology seeks to destroy. that could be the truest death knell of al qaeda, and i for one am very happy that osama bin laden got to hear it just before a team of american heroes ended his wretched life. mr. president, i suggest the absence of a quorum.

the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: virginia.

mr. manchin: i ask the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. manchin: osama bin laden's death is an historic victory for this nation. while this is a profound victory, our thoughts must go to the thousands of innocent men and women although lost family members and whose lives were forever changed by the tragedies of september 11. the families of those lost in our nation as a whole can take great pride that our brave

service members and the intelligence community successfully carried out this mission. i cannot be more proud of the outstanding men and women of our military who put their lives on the line daily. each and every one of us has a deep convection -- deep connection to the tragedy of settlement 11. i remember staff coming into my office and they said, did you see what's going on? that's all they had-to-say. that's all they did say. so many americans have similar stories. we watched in horror as the second plane hit the world trade center live on television and i knew that something we could never anticipate and never imagine had just happened to our great country. we didn't know how our lives would change, wit but we knew ty would. in west virginia, we're still mourning those we lost. a former quarterback and an economics graduate were both killed in the world trade

centers, a parkersburg high school graduate and a marshal university doctor who had practiced and who was educated at the university of marshal medical school was killed when the airline he was on crashed into the pentagon. our thoughts and prayers will always be with them and with their families. just like our world changed that terrible day, it has changed yet again with the killing of osama bin laden. it means something different to each of us. osama bin laden's death cannot bring back the thousands of lives that were lost that fateful day or the ones that have been lost at the happens of al qaeda since -- at the hands of al qaeda since. it cannot repair the anguish so many have suffered as a result of the evil and hatred that osama bin laden espoused. but it is justice, and i hope that this nation and the families of those who were lost on september 11 can take solace in that fact. let me also say, mr. president, i am so proud of the resolve,

the strength, and the fortitude that this nation showed in purr surge the mission to the end. with the killing -- with the killing of osama bin laden bin ladebin laden, the unitedstatesd and clear. acts of terrorism against this nation will not go unpunished. if you seek to do harm to this country or if you plan to hurt the people of our great nation, we will find you, and i assure you justice will be served. while this success belongs to all of us, i especially want to thank the teams of people who united to accomplish this most important goal: our president, mr. brnlings and his advisors completed the mission. and i congratulate him for that. he was the one who made the difficult decision to order this mission, and he made the right call. and immense credit must also be given to all of the people in the intelligence community who are worked tirelessly to track

down the world's most wanted terrorist, and i also congratulate president presidenn and bush. finally, i hope that we sustain the spirit of unity we all feel at this moment to put politics aside and remind americans that has a great nation we become greater when we unite behind a common purpose. for those reasons, i strongly support senate resolution 159 and may god continue to bless the united states of america. mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: nt?

the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, i think most americans are proud that the man who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks and then ref led in the horror of that day is dead. today we recognize the dedicated work of the many intelligence professionals, law enforcement officials, and the many men and women of our armed services who brought us to this day. the pursuit of osama bin laden spanned over a decade. following the attacks of september 11, the senate voted

98-0 to authorize the use of force against al qaeda, an authorization that is still in force today. at the time, president bush enjoyed the support of a nation united behind his decision to pursue al qaeda and to drive the taliban from power. we should be equally united here today in honoring those brave americans who were committed to preventing further attacks upon our homeland. while bin laden and his followers were building their terror networks, we were patiently and diligently building our intelligence capabilities. and following the successful raid on sunday, those who remain committed to al qaeda and associated terrorist groups should know that one day they, too, will share bin laden's fate. some might think that the success of this raid means the end of the war on terror. but as the president has said,

the death of osama bin laden did not mean -- does not mean the death of al qaeda. and our intelligence community and armed services must keep up the pressure on al qaeda and associated terror networks. osama bin laden launched this war on the false assumption that america didn't have the stomach for the fight. on sunday night, he learned how wrong he was. and this week america showed the world that we meant it when we said we would not rest -- not rest -- until justice was done to those who carried out the 9/11 attacks. a generation of patriots has pursued al qaeda for more than a decade, driven by the idea that every day is september the 12th, 2001. that spirit must persist. so once again i want to commend the president on this decision to go through with this mission.

aboabove all, i want to thank te remarkable men and women who carried it out. not to be forgotten are the thousands of uniformed americans across afghanistan and across the globe defending america's interests as we consider this resolution today. the resolution reaffirms the senate's commitment to eliminating safe havens for terrorists in afghanistan and pakistan and i am reminded of the difficult work that remains. but today those who remember the horror of 9/11 take a certain satisfaction knowing that the last thing osama bin laden saw in this world was a small team of americans who shot him dead. the brave team that killed bin laden made their nation proud and they deserve the senate's recognition and its praise. mr. president, i yield the

floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: i thank the presiding officer for recognizing me. i stand, as every member of the senate does today, in support of this resolution and version everything this resolution -- and everything this resolution standed for. the elimination of osama bin laden as a symbol of murder, of tyranny, of repression is an important moment. it's a moment that came ten years after it should have. if we could have found osama bin laden ten years ago when we were looking for him, 9/11 might not have occurred, but it did occur, and the message to him for -- and the message to others was that you can -- you can't hide from the forces of freedom and democracy. this was a -- a moment when the

forces of freedom and democracy triumphed over the forces of repression. this was a moment when the symbol of one view of the future was eliminated with the violence that -- and the kind of violence that he himself had perpetrated on so many others. i think the president made a great decision to send this team of the best of the best into this compound to find osama bin laden, to know for sure face to face that either he was going to be captured by americans or in this case killed by americans, to be able to take the hard drive, the documents, the information that he had surrounding him will tell us a lot about his contacts and who knows what it might tell us about the network of al qaeda.

the president could have made a decision to bomb the compound, and i guess we would be sifting through the ashes today to see if osama bin laden was there or not, and we might have been able to confirm that but we wouldn't have been able to confirm all the information that the seal team was able to take with them. i think these were two important decisions made by the president, the decision to bury osama bin laden in an unknown spot but with the -- with the kind of respect that his own religion required was also i think another good decision, and i want to be supportive of the president in the decisions made. there are times, i would think, when the predator missile is the right things to use and there are times when it's not. one of the other things that we see from the death of -- of bin laden is that there is value to

capturing our enemies and getting information from them, and that threat of information that began maybe as much as nine years ago finally was able to unravel in a way that made the connection that needed to be made so that osama bin laden could be found, so that his -- that justice could be done, so that the price would be paid by him as it's been paid by so many others in defense of freedom. and certainly, mr. president, there are questions today about pakistan, but there is no question that pakistanis have died fighting alongside americans in the last decade. there is no question that pakistanis have been the victim of terrorism. hopefully this will be a moment that brings all of those who should want freedom to the same side. i just returned from a quick visit to egypt, which could very

well be on the right path for the middle east, a path where without violence, people stand up and want more freedom. they want -- they want democracy, and that's not the goal of the extremists in islamic that osama bin laden became the great symbol for. we don't believe that osama bin laden has been in control, in operational control of al qaeda for some time. it would be wonderful if we find out in the next few days he was and that the terror of al qaeda would be eliminated. i don't think we'll find that out but we do know that he is a symbol that was unique in the way he symbolizes this wrong view of the future, the way he symbolizes the wrong view of the requirement that everybody living together be exactly the same. and we, unlike any other country in the world, defy that view of

the future. we have proven like no other country has ever proven that people can live together in great diversity, that people can live together with different points of view and that you can live in a society that still flourishes. and so, of course, we're the enemy of a world view that that's not possible, and it's not because of anything that we have done to the extremists in the world community. it's because of who we are. and yesterday, the message of who we are was registered again in a powerful way as we all over this country and people all over the world talked about what had happened the evening before. and certainly, not only the seals that went into the compound to see that justice was done, but also all those who are willing to serve, those who would have been among the elite that went in or all those who

have served, the over 4,000 americans including many missourians whose lives have been lost in the last decade, in addition to the 3,000 lives that were brutally taken by the operatives of al qaeda and osama bin laden on september 11, 2001. and so this resolution that recognizes the courage to bring justice, that recognizes the evil that was done by osama bin laden and his followers, that recognizes the importance of freedom and democracy in a society is a resolution that i'm proud to support. i'm proud of what the men and women did for us who executed this well-planned mission, but also of everybody who serves every day, for all the families who have a missing place in

their family for someone whose life was lost serving the country, for all the families who live with someone with disability because of the kind of war we're in now. and so, mr. president, i am pleased to stand here representing my state but hopefully representing, as all of us do, the forces of freedom and democracy that will ultimate ly triumph over the forces of repression and murder and chaos that one world view would try to perpetuate, and we recognize today another step against that view of the world, and i yield back. mr. blunt: i question a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk

will call the roll. quorum call: sident?

the presiding officer: the leader. mr. reid: i ask consent the call of the quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i would ask there be order in the senate. the presiding officer: order, please. the leader. mr. reid: mr. president, those watching around the world may not be able to see on their screens the scene here in the united states senate today. we have all come to the floor in a way we rarely do. we've come here this afternoon to express with one voice our endless respect and admiration for the men and women of our military and our intelligence organizations. the resolution is an appropriate name for this legislation that's now before this body.

it honors the resolution to a problem that has lingered for nearly a decade, one whose weight has grown heavier each day on the shoulders of the families bin laden traumatized and the many more he terrorized. it honors the resolve with which our bravest stared down danger. the world is still absorbing america's astounding accomplishment, the mission to bring osama bin laden to justi justice, one that began more than 9 1/2 years ago and was accomplished just a little more than a day and a half ago. 9 1/2 years after the worst morning in our memory, we woke up yesterday morning to a world without osama bin laden and with a palpable sense of justice. our military and intelligence operatives are the best in the world at what they do. as they set out to kill or capture our most valuable target, they captivated us with their skill and expertise, their patriotism and their professionalism. a flood of thoughts and emotions and analysis has been shared over the past 36 hours by many.

as i said from this desk yesterday, the end of his life is not the end of this fight. it is a victory but it is not "the" victory. a lot has already been said about what bin laden's death really means. so before we vote on this resolution, i want to speak only briefly the american men and women who carried out this critical successful mission, a mission that was historically significant and tactically stunning. osama bin laden was the most-wanted and most-hunted man in the entire world. his was the face of our enemy and the face of evil. there were few faces more recognizable to the american people and to the citizens of the world. those who carried out the commander in chief's orders this weekend could not be more different. the world doesn't know their names. we wouldn't recognize them if we passed them on the street today. and that's exactly how they would want it. this is the newest proud page in a long story of the american hero, the unknown soldiers, the

unsung saviors who sacrificed for our country's flag and their countrymen's freedom. they don't ask for recognition. they don't ask questions. they just answer the nation when it calls. today the senate stands in awe of the countless men and women who have toiled in obscurity in the field in every corner of the world. professionals who gather one small shred of evidence here, unearth another clue there, pursue another lead somewhere else. the men and women who over the course of ten long years pieced together the most meaningful puzzles so that a few dozen of their fellow heroes could execute an operation the world will never forget. these heroes confronted fear with brilliance and bravery. they met the worst of humanity with the best of america. the terrorist who carried out the 9/11 attacks did so with cowardice. the americans who carried out this mission did so with unfailing courage. no one has asked how these men and women vote or what their politics are, and so we've come

here to the floor today to vote together on this resolution not as two parties, not even as a hundred senators but as one body representing one grateful country. mr. reid: mr. president, on this resolution, senator mcconnell and i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there is. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote: the presiding officer: any senators wishing to vote or to change their vote? the vote is 97-0. the resolution is agreed to. under the previous order, the

preamble is agreed to and motions to reconsider are considered made and laid on the table. the senate will proceed to a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each. mr. durbin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: madam president, i ask that the quorum call be di dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reed: madam president, i rise today in support of the nomination of john jack mcconnell to serve as judicial court judge in the state of rhode island. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order.

mr. reed: we have heard and we will hear a number of very strong statements about this nomination. i would argue they -- i would argue that many arguments that have been made are inaccurate and they're not shared by the legal and business community in rhode island. in fact, jack mcconnell is supported publicly and enthusiastically by the two former republican attorney generals of rhode island, arlene violate and jeff vine. he is supported by the greater providence of rhode island and he's supported by our legal community, our business community. he has received the strong endorsement of our leading newspaper, "the providence journal," which has a record of moderation, indeed, if not conservatism in terms of their judgments about judicial candidates and some issues, but

certainly moderation. now, later senator whitehouse and i will respond specifically to the assertions and concerns, but i think it's time at this juncture to make a few brief points about where we are at this senate. we are at a point where we might be crossing a bridge in which we can't return. that unlike our previous history, district judges will be subject routinely to cloture motions because one faction or another decides, not on the merits, but procedurally, they should not go forward. now, let me make a few points. senator whitehouse and i recommended mr. mcconnell to the president after publicly seeking applicants, talking to attorneys throughout our state, interviewing almost every single applicant. and we took this decision seriously as you would expect. and we know it's a reflection

both upon ourselves and upon our state. and from this pool of applicants we selected mr. mcconnell because we found him to be among the best attorneys in the state, a pillar of our community, one of the most generous philanthropists in our state and in most cases anonymously and in many cases, not simply writing a check, but standing in a superline -- soup line early in the morning handing out food to people who need it without acclaim, without fanfare. this is the character of an individual and a character i think ultimately is the test of a judge. and he has a true desire to serve this country. indeed, mr. mcconnell has practiced law for decades. he has never been subject to an ethics claim, a malpractice claim, a rule 11 motion, and, most importantly, he has never had a motions for sanctions filed against him concerning his conduct in any litigation he's been involved in.

he has a spotless record. moreover, we selected mr. mcconnell because we knew based on all of this, his personal background, his sworn testimony, that he will follow the precedence of the law and of the first circuit court of appeals and the united states supreme court. this is not something we take lightly and it's not something that mr. mcconnell takes lightly. and we know and he knows that when you step upon the bench, you assume a huge responsibility. you have to not only appear to be impartial, you have to in every word indeed go the extra mile to demonstrate that impartiality, that you're not favoring anyone. and he is prepared to do that. in fact, i think that is part an parcel of this -- the nature of this gentleman. now, we have to stop here and ask ourselves collectively, do we want to go ahead and take this step of cloture for

district court nominees? to we really want to add another front in the battle of partisan political gumption. do they want to cast aside, for example, the blue ship process which allows senators from a home state, particularly with a district judge to say yay or nay. the process that's been in this senate, in the informal culture of this senate for years and years and years. do they want to deny a nominee who's been reported out of committee on a bipartisan vote three times -- not once -- an up-or-down vote? i've heard and have heard for years, particularly on president bush, many people coming to this floor and claiming everyone who's been nominated and comes out of committee deserves a up-or-down vote, particularly in district court. especially district court. so, this is where we're poised, to reject all of that, to answer

a new dimension of controversy and conflict in the senate. we have a long history in the senate of precedents and tradition when it comes to nominations, particularly district court nominations. in my state, my predecessors, men like john chafee, claiborne pell, lincoln chafee clearly adhere to those and we have a strong record of judges in our state and they have come from different background. they have come from the practice of corporate law. they've come from being a former federal attorney. they've come from being a significant and principled attorney for a major insurance company. they've come from a vast array of legal background and professions. one thing they have had in common which is shared by jack mcconnell is integrity and commitment to the law. and that we insist upon.

now, we've long recognized that these district judges serve a critical role, and we all recognize too, i think, here as senators is that this is a special role of the home-state senator. we understand that the circuit level when judges have to consider issues of constutionality, where major policy issues could be resolved, in fact finally resolved, at least for that circuit, we understand there's another add dimension. but in district courts we have traditionally recognized the judgment of not only local senators but the judgment of the local legal community. and once again here both the legal community around -- and i can't emphasize enough two former republican attorneys general that know him well, that have observed him closely have come forward of their own volition and enthusiastically supported his candidacy.

they know him as a lawyer, they know him as a man of integrity and honor and decency. now there are a number of my colleagues on the other side that recognize this, and they have been very forthright in making the point about the precipice that we are on and how that is not something a precedent we want to establish. and i thank them for that. i thank them for their consideration. they have literally adhered to consistently not just in the past but now, the notion that when a judge is given approval by the a.b.a., when a nominee goes to the committee and comes to this floor at the district level, that's when a vote should take place. and how you vote on final passage, that is a function of anything, your judicial philosophy versus their judicial

philosophy, your view of the responsibility they have and the responsibility of the district judge. we have, i think, again been involved in difficult debates, and they have been particularly difficult when it comes to the circuit court. and i do think we recollectively because of the nature of the circuit court, rather, there is a difference. this is the gateway, and many times the cases never go beyond the circuit court. and constitutional law, principles that apply to whole circuits are affirmed by these panels of judges. and there is a different standard. but we've never really applied that standard to the district court. we've relied -- all my colleagues have -- on the ability of home-state senators, together with their local lawyers, together with their local community to make recommendations to serve on the district court. let me point out how extraordinarily unusual the vote tomorrow will be.

from our records, talking to the congressional research service and the senate library, as far as we can consider, there have been only three cloture votes on senate nominees for district court in the history of the senate. three times. tomorrow will be the fourth. by the way, all three of these individuals ultimately received confirmation. it appears from our reconstruction that they were caught up in a procedural discussion of who should go first, this person shouldn't go first until others have been considered. all three were -- after the procedural votes on cloture, were confirmed. but it's quite clear that at least on the part of some that this cloture vote tomorrow is designed to stop and end the confirmation of mr. mcconnell.

that would be a first, as far as we know, in our reconstruction of the history of the senate. so we are facing this question, the question of whether we want to establish this precedent, whether we want to disregard the record of this individual who is a man of integrity and honor, who is strongly supported by our local business community, who is strongly supported by republican officeholders as well as democratic officeholders, who has gained the trust and the respect of those who know him best and who will serve with distinction and integrity on the district court in the district of rhode island. that is the big issue we face tomorrow. now, later i will -- we will come down and we will respond to

those issues of specific detail. but i can recall not too long ago when there was a group of republicans and democrats who came together and decided that these types of decisions should not be subject to procedural, but should be based on the merits. the gang of 14 worked. i'm trying to pull together a consensus on judges. i know also both senator reid and senator mcconnell working with a group of people on a bipartisan understanding regarding executive nominations. not judicial nominations but executive nominations. and these are very hopeful and positive signs. i hope we can build on that progress and not tomorrow take a step which i think historically is atypical, unique, in fact a step i think in the very wrong

direction. we will come back again and we will talk about the specifics of mr. mcconnell's nomination and these assertions. but all of these allegations cast again not only a cloud upon mr. mcconnell, but on the a.b.a. process, which looks very carefully at a candidate in terms of their judicial skill, but also their character, their integrity and their ability to serve, and the process here in the united states senate through the committee process. so i would hope that we can favorably consider -- in fact, i would hope as typically, we would move quickly to a final passage vote as we do with 99 out of 100 district court nominees. but, madam president, this is a serious issue. i fear that we are on the press pins of taking a -- precipice of taking a step that will come back repeatedly to haunt us and

undercut the custom and tradition in a sense of this senate, which is necessary to maintain not to abandon. with that, madam president, i would yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: madam president, i know i am in senator landrieu's time, and i appreciate my friend's willingness to allow me just a moment to associate myself with the eloquent and thoughtful remarks of my senior senator and to urge all of my colleagues, before we steer this body off the precipice that he referred to, to give his words their very careful and objective consideration. i thank the distinguished senator from louisiana, and i yield the floor. ms. landrieu: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana.

ms. landrieu: thank you, madam president. i'd like to speak for the next just few minutes as we're in morning business about the subject that has been before the senate now for over five weeks, in some ways unprecedented, that a bill of only 100 pages would actually take up five weeks of the senate's time. and, madam president, you know as a member of the small business committee how important, although only 100 pages and although only in law since 1982, this program is not just to the federal government but to the taxpayer that are relying on this to spend their money wisely on their behalf, and they're look to us to promote and extend the life of programs that actually work and return a great investment to them, particularly in these

challenging budget times and economic times. and, madam president, this program which was created by senator warren rudman for the specific purpose of stimulating technological innovation, encouraging greater utilization of small businesses to meet federal research and development needs and to increase private-sector commercialization of innovations derived from federal research and development is a bill that we must find a way to reauthorize, or law to reauthorize. we are well overdue. we have now passed the authorization point by six years we have been unable to reauthorize this important program. and it looks like we may be stuck again. although the major arguments

about this bill have been resolved. we're actually not arguing over the nuts and bolts of this bill. isn't that sad, that all of the arguments about what percentage venture capitalists should get, what percentage -- we have worked through all of those because we've worked in good faith, we've compromised, democrat, republican. the bill passed out of our committee, i believe, 17-1. 17-1. and authoring this piece of legislation is myself, the chairperson; senator snowe, a strong supporter of the underlying bill. let me get the other cosponsors. senator levin is a cosponsor. senator brown is a cosponsor. senator kerry, the former chair, is a cosponsor.

madam president, you are an original cosponsor, and i thank you. the new senator, senator cardin, senator pryor. we have a good number of democrat and republican senators. this is the bill. it's 100 pages. the sad thing is that in five weeks we've had over 180 amendments filed on this bill. very few of them have anything to do with this bill. that's more amendments than there are pages of the original bill. and you can understand why the majority leader, senator reid, cannot allow a vote on all 187 amendments. we might be here for another year, which isn't fair to the senate. it's not fair to congress. there are other important issues we have to get to. so we're trying to compromise. senator reid has been extremely patient trying to work with

republicans and democrats, and i think the last offer that is being considered has an equal amount -- 14 amendments -- an equal amount on both sides, most of which have nothing to do with this bill but that we'll accept votes on, and actually one big amendment, significant amendment that had nothing to do with this bill, has already been voted on, agreed to, detached from this bill and sent to the president, and he's already signed it. and we're still on this bill. and that was the repeal of 1099 which was unanimously, almost unanimously supported to repeal a very onerous provision of paperwork and regulation that was not properly put on the backs of small business. and i'm proud that i led with others the effort to repeal that. that's been done. and yet we find ourselves still not in complete agreement that

it's time to move on. so i just want to say a few more things. number one, every state will benefit when this program is reauthorized. most importantly, taxpayers will see significant results. and let me just tell you one that's quite startling but true, and i want it to be in the record. one company that participated in this program and received a small grant many years ago and then received another grant to help them get started, qualcomm, is now one of the most successful businesses in the world. that one company pays more taxes to the federal government every year than the entire budget of the small business administration. let me repeat, one company started in large measure, not

solely, but they testified on the record in large measure because of this program was created, it grew and grew and grew and now pays more in taxes annually to the federal government than the entire budget of the s.b.a. you would ask yourself, so what is the problem here? why can't we get this bill passed? i can only say that we have members that think that they need to have votes or a discussion on 187 amendments that have nothing to do with this bill. and they think that the majority leader is being unreasonable when he trys to bring this on two an end. now, as chair of this committee, i have to say again, ienl going to end -- and i'm going to end with this, this recession we're in will never end -- will never end. and the budget deficit that is

crushing the economic potential of this nation will never be eliminated if we do not create jobs in america. and, madam president, this program is a job-creating machine that is being shut down by this inability of us to come to terms over this debate. and it is a shame because everyone is counting on us, not just my committee, but the small business committee is one of the important committees here, to put this recession in the rear-view mirror. and i can't do it if i can't pass legislation. so if we want jobs, if we want innovation, if we want to create the kind of jobs that the sbir program, you can see here, awarded firms as many as five times as many employees. these are super companies,

they're the smartest, they're on the edge, they're the best, they have gotten the attention of many smart people in the government. yes, we do have smart people that work for the federal government. and these technologies and the federal government have become known and they say, jeez, this is the kind of technology that could change this situation, save taxpayer money and it has such commercial application, let's give it an award. we can't give it an award because we're stuck here talking about 187 amendments that have nothing to do with this program. now, i'm sorry, i cannot solve all the problems of the world in the small business committee. i am very sorry. cannot solve all the health care problems. i cannot resolve the debt situations. i cannot talk about sunset commissions and the bang of six and -- the gang of six and put every piece of legislation in this bill. we have to stay focused and we have been moving out some very good legislation out of this

committee completely with bipartisan support with a few little bumps here and there, the small business lending program, was not supported by the republicans. we only had two senators that crossed the aisle that gave us the 60 votes to do it. i understand it's controversial. not everything here is done so -- in such perfect precision, but we still have high hopes for that program. 600 banks have applied. we believe billions of dollars will be lent out and that debate is still going on as the administrators come up. but, other than that, everything we passed in this committee has been passed with bipartisan support. same with this bill, it comes out 17-1. i will finally say to the record and submit this to the record, i was asked by senator coburn, who has been cooperative, actually, although he's had quite a few amendments, he's been very open to negotiation here. but he sent me a letter on january 26, and it basically says and i'll submit for the

record, i would like to pass the sbir bill, but would you get it out of your committee clean because i don't want other extraneous things attached to it because there are quote, lesser programs attached to it. he said, senator, if you can get it out clean, then maybe i can support it on the floor. what what do i do? i tell all of my members, i'm sorry, you can't have the amendments in committee. i'm sorry, we can't attach anything to this bill because i'm trying to move a clean bill to the floor. only to get to the floor and 187 -- have 187 amendments that have nothing to do with this bill put on this bill under the guise of, well, we have to do it. we need time on the floor to debate our issue. and i've tried to be patient. i understand that. but i'll asking one last time, i'm asking my ranking member, i'm asking the other members of my committee, i'm asking my democratic colleagues and republican colleagues, please, in the next few hours please let

your voice be heard to your leaders, the minority leader, the majority leader and, please, try to come to some reasonable agreement. and i think what the cloture amendment is quite reasonable, the cloture petition that senator reid has put down, and if we could agree to that, get 60 votes or more, we could pass this reauthorization which is so important to job creation in america. we're six years behind schedule. not six months, not eight months, six years behind schedule. we've been operating this program, one of the best, every three months. people have to guess whether we're going to extend it or not. that's no way to run an airline or a train or a bus or a two-seated car for that matter. you have to have a long runway here to get good things done and to stop wasting taxpayer money and their time. so i'm going to ask, please,

let's try to get cloture and, finally, the states that are most affected, the senators that are -- that represent these states might want to be heads up, but colorado, maryland, virginia, california, ohio, pennsylvania, new york, and texas are among the states that benefit the most from this program. all of our states benefit, my own state of louisiana has received -- or companies, not state, in my state have received some of these awards and gone on to hire hundreds, if not thousands of people. but these other states have managed very good programs to actually get themselves to the front of the line. so i thank senator brown for his cosponsorship of this bill. i thank other senators from these states. but the texas senators, the new york senators, ohio and pennsylvania, particularly, and california at the top of the list have a lot to lose if we can't get this program reauthorized. so i yield the floor and i suggest the absence of a quorum.

the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: : madam president,

what's the pending business? the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. shelby: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. shelby: that i be allowed to proceed as if in morning business for eight minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. shelby: madam president, i rise today to thank my colleagues in the u.s. senate and countless others across the

country for their outpouring of support and offers of assistance to my state of alabama in this time of need. on april the 27th, this last week, an unprecedented tornado system struck the state of alabama claiming hundreds of lives and destroying thousands of homes and businesses. at last count 236 people in alabama alone were dead with thousands more injured and a lot missing. madam president, it will take many years a an potential -- and potentially billions of dollars for my state to fully recover from this catastrophic disaster. we have received calls from my fellow senators, many of whom recently experienced destruction in their own states due to floods and deadly storms for help. to those who have reach out, i want to offer my sincere gratitude on behalf of the people of alabama. i also want to thank president

obama and fema administrator craig fugate for their swift response and commitment to restoring our state. their words of encouragement to disaster victims helped ease the grief burdening local families. and their work with governor robert bentley, and alabama emergency director, has provided vital assistance during these difficult times. this continued level of federal coordination is critical to ensuring that alabama gets back on its feet as quickly as possible. madam president, i have never in my life seen such devastation to the extent that i saw during my visit to my home state of alabama recently. giant oaks lie flattened and splintered. homes throughout state were demolished leaving thousands homeless and relying on the red cross, the salvation army, and

others for shelter. at one point last week over one million alabama res residents we without power. almost a quarter of the state's population. it was gut wrenching to walk through scattered rubble and realize it was once the site of someone's home or someone's business. madam president, the scale and the magnitude of destruction can only be described as hell on earth. and in our state while larger cities like birmingham and tuscaloosa suffered damage, so did rural areas like pleasant grove, con card, rainsville, comb, and many others also incurred the wrath of the storm system and are now trying to assess the extent of their damage. in decab, marilyn and franklin

counties we have seen nearly 100 deaths. virtually every part of the state was touched by storms and all of us were affected. the pain and loss that families are experiencing are still fresh. many remain in shock. however, we must also recognize that my state of alabama was not the lone victim of the storm. a as we continue our cleanup and recovery efforts, so do the people of tennessee, mississippi, georgia, virginia, louisiana and kentucky. our thoughts and prayers are with all of the affected states. we stand willing and able to assist you as you have offered similar support to all of us in alabama. madam president, i want to take a moment to reassure the people of alabama and all the affected states that we will do on a federal level everything we can to restore life as it was

before. my staff and i are working with the state, fema and the other federal agencies to ensure as quick and efficient a recovery as possible. thousands of alabamians have opened their homes, donated supplies, clothes, made contributions and rushed to help in any way they could, and after witnessing the selfless generosity of complete strangers and the sheer resilience of those affected by the storms, i have never been more proud to call alabama my home. i am convinced that together we can overcome this terrible tragedy. it will take a lot of work and a lot of help from volunteers that have already volunteered. thank you, madam president, and i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i should look at who is presiding before i speak. i ask consent that the call of the quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to s. res. 160. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. res. 160, designating may 6, 2011, as military spouse appreciation day. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. reid: i ask consent the senate proceed to s. res. 161. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. res. 161, designating may, 2011, as national inventors month. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to proceed be laid on the table, any statements relating to this matter be placed in the record as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i ask consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10:00 a.m. on wednesday, may 4. following the prayer and pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for use later in the day. the senate then proceed to a period of morning business for debate only until 12:00 p.m. senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and the republicans controlling the next 30 minutes. further, the filing deadline for

all second-degree amendments be at 11:00 a.m. i ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote occur at 12:30 p.m. on wednesday. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: madam president, there will be two roll call votes at noon tomorrow. the first will be on the motion to invoke cloture on s. 493, the small business jobs bill. if cloture is not invoked on the bill, the senate will med immediately proceed to a roll call vote on the votings on john mcclellan to be united states district judge for the district of rhode island. if there is no further business to come before the senate, ski that it adjourn under the previous order. the presiding off