Kerry on the Record: Attacking U.S. Intelligence
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004
Editor’s note: This is Part 4 in a series revealing the Democratic front-runner's track record on the important issues of the day.
Part 1: POWs and MIAs
Part 2: Defense
Part 3: Ties With Vietnam
Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was lamenting on CBS’s “Face the Nation” the lack of money the intelligence establishment received despite its vital role in securing the nation:
“And the tragedy is at the moment, the single most important weapon for the United States of America is intelligence. It’s the single most important weapon in this particular war.”
The burning issue then and now: If intelligence is the weapon paramount to security, why did Kerry vote to cut intelligence appropriations over the last decade?
On the record these days, Kerry explains only that his votes and proposals were attempts to change the culture of our intelligence gathering:
“I was on the Intelligence Committee. What we were trying to do, some of us, was push the funding not into technical means. There was a fascination always with satellites, listening devices, not with human intelligence. I’ve always been somebody who has felt that we needed human intelligence, that’s our failure.”
But such a fine line is not so apparent from the record.
In 1994, Kerry proposed and voted to cut $1 billion from intelligence. Specifically, he proposed cutting that $1 billion from the budgets of the National Foreign Intelligence Program and from Tactical Intelligence, while freezing their budgets. The amendment was soundly defeated.
The rub here is that the major component of the National Foreign Intelligence program is the FBI’s nationwide counterterrorism programs. Potentially affected were scores of the bureau’s field offices, which serve as vital components of foreign counterintelligence and counterterrorism within the United States, economic espionage, and ANSIR (the Awareness of National Security Issues and Response program).
Furthermore, Tactical Intelligence is the entity responsible for providing vital, time-sensitive support for commanders and soldiers on the ground.
In 1995, Kerry was at it again, voting to cut $80 million from the FBI’s budget and introducing a bill that would have reduced the overall intelligence budget by $1.5 billion by the year 2000. Without targeting specific programs, Kerry’s bill sought to reduce the intelligence budget by $300 million in each of fiscal years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000.
Not Even Kennedy, Leahy or Boxer Would Touch It
Fortunately, there were no co-sponsors of the 1995 bill, which never made it to the floor for a vote.
In 1997, Kerry questioned the size of the intelligence community during a speech on the floor of the Senate:
“[W]hy it is that our vast intelligence apparatus, built to sustain America in the long twilight struggle of the Cold War continues to grow at an exponential rate? Now that that struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow even as government resources for new and essential priorities fall far short of what is necessary? Why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to roll on even as every other government bureaucracy is subject to increasing scrutiny and, indeed, to reinvention?”
Ignoring His Own Warnings
What makes Kerry's record even more unfathomable is the fact that he was so savvy to the rising tide of terrorism, in all its forms.
In his 1997 tome, “The New War,” Kerry notes his distress that in the case of the first attack on the World Trade Center, “all these terrorists were apprehended after the fact.”
“We were not sufficiently prepared for the first real wave of terror that broke out in America and we are not yet prepared for the next,” Kerry adds. “Along with crime, commerce, and communication, terror is going global.”
In a fit of remarkable prescience, Kerry writes years before the second attack on the WTC: “The terrorists of tomorrow will be better armed and organized. It will take only one mega-terrorist event in any of the great cities of the world to change the world in a single day.”
Nowadays on his Web site the candidate says: “John Kerry understands that intelligence information is the key to disrupting and dismantling terrorist organizations and that we need to improve our intelligence capabilities, both domestically and internationally, in order to win the war on global terrorism.”
As Kerry is fond of saying, “It’s time to move on.”
Part 5: Pro-abortion Militancy
newsmax.com
Editor's note:
Get the 2004 Bush vs. Kerry poll numbers before the White House! Click Here
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
2004 Elections
Sen. John Kerry
War on Terrorism
DNC
NewsMax Scoops |
