Mr. MCCOLLUM. Thank you very much, Mr. Director.

Mr. Conyers has just come in, I believe. Is he still here? Do you wish to make your opening statement? I submitted it for the record. I don't want to take more time than I have to, but if you wish, you are the ranking minority member and you certainly have the right.

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that, Mr. McCollum.

And I want to welcome our guests here today.

The first thing that I want to do is indicate that I am probably very nervous about us proceeding in the environment that we're in; namely, that we're grieving over the Oklahoma City bombing. We've sworn to take action, and we have moved rather expeditiously, but, you know, at the same time I may be the only member here that was around when we were worried about what J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI was doing in the spying on the NAACP and other civil rights activities. That wasn't that long ago. We then went through that period of Americans being harassed during the Vietnam War. And so what I'm concerned about is that we would allow Federal investigators to target Americans of particular political beliefs, and that takes us back to the bad old days. And we're here today not with a bill, but with a draft and with a statement of what we're going to do. So it's very hard for us to really talk about where we're going, but I just want to throw a note of caution in on where we're going.

The business of investigating political groups by the FBI is very strong in my memory, and so I worry about the problems that were raised at the last hearing because donating money and trying to figure out whether the group is peaceful, political, or has been named by a President is not the direction that I'm very anxious to go in.

I can't help but remember that if we had the kind of law that I heard about at the last hearing, making a contribution to the African National Congress, the ANC, would have resulted in possible prosecution because they were deemed terrorists because there were groups carrying out sporadic guerrilla actions, and a $10 contribution could have suggested that a person may have committed a crime. With the IRA-we have the same problem with which groups would be contributable and which ones would not.

So I don't want to open a path for FBI abuse that I hope has been closed. We're not that far out of that era, ladies and gentlemen, and I'm very concerned about it.

The Federal Government reported a substantial increase in domestic bombing incidents over the last decade. From 1983 to 1993, the number of bombings has tripled, and, yet, the last known request for surveillance in bombing, arson, or firearms occurred in a 1988 case. You put all that together and we could be operating very, very excitedly about the problems that have happened and the horror that is Oklahoma City, if we move too rapidly in expanding the powers or the resources. And I think Director Freeh has put that into some kind of perspective because we've got to separate that out. If you want more powers, let's list them. If you want more resources, let's list those. But when we come in here with a

draft of a bill copied on Republican models that I hope are some good, then I think we're moving in a very dangerous direction. And I thank the chairman.

Mr. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Conyers.

I'm going to be very restrictive, as I have to be, on the questions today, even though we want to particularly ask this panel the questions necessary for our legislative endeavors, but I want to yield myself 5 minutes and I'm going to try to get us through this panel by as close to 10:30 as possible because we have three panels, and it roughly allows us an hour to each panel plus the opening state

ments.

Dr. Freeh, I, first of all, want to ask you a question related to the regulations, to the guidelines that you have and that were involved in the Oklahoma City time frame and that you have to work with today. It looks like from the commentators that most concur with the statements I've been hearing today and read about what you said in the Senate, and that is that we don't really need to change the guidelines themselves, but we are concerned about the interpretation of those guidelines.

In the past few years, the last few months, or whatever, to your knowledge-I cover that because I'm not sure of the time frame— has the Bureau attempted to obtain from the Department of Justice a broader interpretation of these guidelines with regard to domestic surveillance and domestic organizations that might be conducting acts of violence or terrorism?

Mr. FREEH. Yes, sir. In November the Attorney General and I discussed the necessity of reviewing with an objective of changing the interpretation of the guidelines to give us not broader authority, but more confidence to use the authority already articulated in the guidelines. She asked me to make some recommendations to her. I did that in the fall, and we are at the point now where we agree on an interpretation of the existing guidelines which give us a lot more confidence to conduct and begin investigations, where in the past we were clearly not encouraged and, indeed, in some ways persuaded not to conduct some of these investigations because of the consent of all the Government agencies involved, including the Congress, that we should not be doing those things.

Mr. MCCOLLUM. Well, you made this request of her and made suggestions before the Oklahoma City bombing. Were those requests approved and did you have the broader interpretation in place prior to the Oklahoma City bombing?

Mr. FREEH. We have been working with the Criminal Division for the past few months in hammering out what the response is and what the interpretative letter should be coming back from the Attorney General, and we've completed that in the last several days.

Mr. MCCOLLUM. But you did not have it then in place prior to the Oklahoma City bombing. So you still were operating at that time, and prior to that time, under the more restrictive concerns that you've expressed; that is, more restrictive interpretations; is that not correct?

Mr. FREEH. That's correct, but, in fairness, a lot of those restrictions were self-imposed by the prior Directors on the agents because of a feeling that we could not interpret the guidelines

proactively, and the result was we interpreted them even internally very defensively.

Mr. MCCOLLUM. Well, didn't that mean, though, that even under your jurisdiction and this administration up through Oklahoma City, there were restraints that were placed in terms of being able to go out and actually—the comfort level of going out and actually infiltrating, say, a militia group that might have been involved in expressing open violent thoughts and deed without actually going forward with some act? Wasn't that a concern? I've heard you express that, and it doesn't seem to me that that was-that that's healthy for the future, but I want to make sure that's what we're talking about.

Mr. FREEH. I think we've mutually changed and consented to a change in that interpretation. We're going to be better able to conduct these cases more aggressively in the future, and I think the product of those discussions will give us the abilities that we need. Mr. MCCOLLUM. Well, I just want you to know that this chairman of this committee believes you need to go do that with those broader interpretations. We don't want any militia groups or other organizations that advocate violence in this country not to be looked into, not to have you place some intelligence operations in place to gain whatever information you need to have. I know there's the fine line of where, but when they advocate violence, when it's more than simply somebody going out and shooting at tin cans out there on the weekend as a group, when it's actually talk about going forward and doing something that would cause a violent act, it's somewhat like threatening the life of the President, it seems to me. It means that maybe they haven't committed a crime quite like you have when you just make a simple threat, but they certainly warrant your investigation.

Now let me ask you-I have heard that the FCC's reallocation of the radio spectrum bands has seriously impacted the communications ability of the public safety agencies. In light of your dayto-day work, do you have any views on this problem, Director Freeh?

Mr. FREEH. It's a problem that needs to be solved. I hope it is getting solved. I've raised this question. The Deputy Attorney General has raised the question within the administration. We've made proposals to the White House with respect to this. It's a very simple problem. Although there's a great need and a benefit, I'm sure, of selling spectrum, public spectrum, to private industry, there has to be a reservation of spectrum for Federal, State, and local police, as well as public safety agencies. If we sell all the spectrum and don't make any financial or operational provision for the police and public safety people to communicate, somebody's going to be paying a $10 billion bill 5 years from now, and I think those are grave issues that need to be solved.

Mr. MCCOLLUM. Ms. Gorelick, I'm not going to take a lot of time, but I want to ask a general question. You have stated in your testimony and have said before the Senate that there are a number of things that you want to see that we do in the law to change things that have been with respect to foreign counterintelligence, like the Fair Credit Reporting Act changes you mentioned, such as the hotel-motel operator making information available, to allow that.

Do you wish these changes you've listed today in your testimony to apply equally to foreign counterintelligence operations and the efforts of our Government in regard to these, as well as to domestic, or is this-do you see a distinction between the two in your request?

Ms. GORELICK. The request that we've made with respect to our foreign counterintelligence investigations are made because we do not have authority in the foreign counterintelligence and foreign terrorism area that we currently have with respect to domestic. So we are seeking to bring our national security powers up to the domestic criminal level. We have, with respect to those, the authorities that we need.

Mr. MCCOLLUM. Do you have the authority you need under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to get lead information, and you have the authority you need to be able to get hotel-motel operators and common carriers to provide records to you on all the domestic side?

Ms. GORELICK. That is correct. We are asking only for the authority, the additional authority, we need.

If I might, Mr. Chairman, just with respect to the issue of the guidelines, I want to be very clear because there's been some misinformation in the press about the guidelines. When Director Freeh raised the issue of how the guidelines were being interpreted in the field with the Attorney General in the fall, she was foursquare behind his effort to seek clarification of the guidelines to make sure that the agents in the field know the full measure of their current authority. This process has taken a couple of months because we have a 20-year history of a very restrained interpretation of the current guidelines. And given the first amendment implications of the guidelines and given the history of the guidelines, we have been very careful in making sure that as we construe them, we construe them accurately and appropriately. But make no mistake about it, there was no constraint by this Attorney General or this Justice Department of the FBI. We are absolutely together on this, that we need to have a more broad and appropriate interpretation of the current guidelines on the power of the Bureau.

Mr. MCCOLLUM. I understand what you're saying, and I comment both you and the Attorney General and Director Freeh for this, but at the same point is still one that I thought needed to be made, and that is that, as of the Oklahoma City bombing, that new interpretation had not been put in place, and, consequently, the hands of the some of the agents may have been more restricted at that point in time than you desire or desired even then.

Mr. Schumer.

Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have three areas of questions. I'll try to be brief in my questions and help you be brief in the answers.

First, I would direct this to Ms. Gorelick. It seems to me in a lot of these areas, where you have the history that you and Ranking Minority Member Conyers mentioned, but at the same time you have the need to not just be paralyzed because of that history, that what you've done in certain parts of the counterterrorism bill such as the deportation, asking for third-party review, whether it be an article III judge or some source either outside the FBI or Justice Department, makes some sense. It might make sense in deciding

what is a terrorist organization rather than running into just the idea that this President doesn't like this organization; this President doesn't like another organization. It might make sense in some of these other areas.

And the question I guess I have for both of you is: we've had a third-party review in a very fundamental area, wiretaps, for a long period of time. From either the law enforcement point of view or from the citizen's point of view in terms of the right to privacy and against intrusiveness, has this worked well and don't you see it as a model that we might use as we craft legislation that would allow us to do things we now feel we have to do without having a lot of the excesses that occurred when some GS-19 could make a determination let's do this or let's do that, or whatever, because he or she didn't like the smell of the organization or the individual?

Ms. GORELICK. I think all of us in the Department of Justice feel that the system for obtaining wiretaps, for example, where we must present an application showing probable cause to a court and satisfy the court is wholly appropriate and works extremely well. Mr. SCHUMER. Does it work—————

Ms. GORELICK. We are comfortable, completely comfortable, with the other branches of government knowing about and seeing what we do and playing their appropriate role.

Mr. SCHUMER. Has it been a restraint on law enforcement on your agents and operatives, Mr. Director Freeh?

Mr. FREEH. Not at all, Mr. Schumer, and, as Mr. Conyers pointed out, there really have been an extremely limited number of applications. Of the 946 which you mentioned, the majority of those were done by State and local authorities. The Federal Government only did a small portion of those.

Mr. SCHUMER. Wouldn't it be-I ask both of you, and just a quick answer wouldn't this model be a model that we could use to try and find some common middle ground here that satisfies our objectives in fighting this terrorism but avoids the danger of the abuses that we have seen in the past?

Ms. GORELICK. Mr. Schumer, in the legislation that we have proposed we have put in place judicial review at every place that we think it is appropriate. And, as I've said, I think there should be available judicial review of the designation of an organization.

Mr. SCHUMER. You did, and I think that's important. That's a change that I would think is commendable and, in fact, have spoken out for before.

The second area is for Director Freeh. Has there been a problem with thefts of explosives from military facilities? The bombs at Oklahoma City were a home-it seems to be, at least from the news reports-I don't know; you probably know more than me, hopefully-that that was sort of a home brew thing. But I've also heard reports that at military facilities explosives are not guarded enough and have been stolen.

Have you been looking into that? Can you give us some commentary? Do you have any current information on the amount of the thefts?

Mr. FREEH. I don't have any with me now, sir. I'll certainly get that for you.

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