-Caveat Lector-
October 31, 2000
Top Hill Republicans reject Albright offer
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The House speaker and Senate majority leader yesterday
rejected an offer from Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright
for limited access to classified government documents concerning
a secret arms deal between Vice President Al Gore and his Russian
counterpart.
Mrs. Albright offered to let congressional leaders view �
but not copy � some of the documents as part of a congressional
investigation into a 1995 pact between Mr. Gore and Viktor
Chernomyrdin, the Russian prime minister.
"We categorically reject your proposal to allow solely the
four leaders of the House and Senate to read, but not retain, a
small fraction of the requested documents," Speaker J. Dennis
Hastert of Illinois and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of
Mississippi said in a letter sent yesterday.
Without the documents, the Republican leaders said, Congress
cannot properly investigate the matter.
"The elected representatives of the American people are
certainly entitled to the requested documents in order to assess
the extent of damage inflicted on America's credibility and
security interests by the vice president's ill-conceived and
counterproductive foray into the world of secret diplomacy.
"Madame Secretary, administration stonewalling and
obstructionism of legitimate requests for relevant documents must
stop," they wrote.
A group of 10 senators, including senior members and
leaders, had imposed a deadline of noon yesterday for the
documents, threatening to subpoena them if they were not
produced.
A spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said
yesterday that senators were still discussing whether to issue
subpoenas. "This is totally unacceptable," Marc Thiessen, the
spokesman, said of Mrs. Albright's latest offer.
The secret deal between Mr. Gore and Mr. Chernomyrdin was
intended to halt Russian conventional arms sales to Iran and in
exchange, the United State agreed not to impose penalties under
U.S. nonproliferation laws.
Lawmakers are also investigating a second document, a 1995
letter from Mr. Chernomyrdin to Mr. Gore that outlines Russia's
nuclear transfers to Iran and calls on the vice president to keep
the arrangement secret from Congress. The documents were first
disclosed by The Washington Times and the New York Times.
At closed House and Senate hearings last week, State
Department officials refused to provide the documents or discuss
their contents, angering members and prompting threats to
subpoena the material.
The Clinton administration is refusing to provide the
documents and has dismissed lawmakers' requests for copies of the
documents and detailed explanations of their contents as
election-year politics.
House and Senate members have said the secret dealings with
Russia appear to violate U.S. laws, including legislation on
conventional arms sales to Iran, nuclear transfers to Iran and
laws governing the submission of agreements to Congress.
"We have offered to provide the leadership of the Senate
with access to the key documents at their convenience, and we'll
see how that materializes," State Department spokesman Richard
Boucher told reporters.
Mr. Boucher said because the matters involve sensitive
diplomacy, the department is insisting on being "exceedingly
careful" about releasing the information to Congress.
He said publicizing the documents could undermine U.S.
efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.
"We have an obligation to sustain a policy that has improved
the national security of the United States over the last six
years by limiting the number and quality of weapons that are gone
to Iran," Mr. Boucher said. "We are trying to meet the
congressional requests in a manner that doesn't simultaneously
destroy our policy, which would not be in our national interest."
Mr. Hastert and Mr. Lott said in their letter that "it is
grossly inaccurate and misleading to assert, as your letter does,
that 'As a result [of the secret agreements], the security of
U.S. forces and those of our allies in the region has been
substantially enhanced.' "
"In fact the record of the past eight years demonstrates a
dramatic increase in the threat posed to U.S. military forces and
interests, and those of our friends and allies in the Middle
East, as a result of Iran's burgeoning nuclear, missile, and
conventional weapons capabilities � capabilities enhanced
primarily by Russian arms sales made in spirit of the
Gore-Chernomyrdin agreements."
The leaders requested that the documents be furnished to the
House and Senate oversight committees "immediately."
Portions of the 1995 Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement, called an
"aide memoire," were published by The Washington Times. A second
classified document, a letter from Mrs. Albright to the Russian
foreign minister sent in January, also was published by The
Times. In it, Mrs. Albright states that the 1995 aide memoire
kept the United States from imposing sanctions on Russian as
required by U.S. law.
Several senators have said the documents show the Clinton
administration appears to violate the law.
Numerous U.S. intelligence reports have shown that Russia is
continuing to sell conventional and nuclear technology and goods
to Iran despite the secret agreements with the United States.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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