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Schumer and Rounds remarks on UAPDA compromise

U.S. Senate Congressional Record · 2023-12-13

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Page 4

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE
S5930
December 13, 2023
the total of the previous 6 fiscal years
combined.
During October 2023 alone, more than
1,500 individuals who had previously
been convicted of a crime were appre-
hended by the Border Patrol. More
than 90 of them had outstanding war-
rants for their arrest. And the Border
Patrol apprehended—get this—50 gang
members.
Think about that: people on the Ter-
rorist Watchlist, people who have war-
rants out for their arrest, 1,500 individ-
uals who had previously been convicted
of a crime, and 50 gang members.
You can’t make this stuff up. Where
is the outrage? This is insanity—the
risk that we are putting our country
at, the threat that this represents to
the safety of the American people. And,
again, those numbers are just for Octo-
ber.
There is no question that many ille-
gal immigrants are coming to the
United States in search of a better life.
We know that. But there is equally no
question that there are bad people,
dangerous people, trying to make their
way into our country, and some of
them may already be here.
The numbers I have referred to only
cover individuals who have actually, as
I said, been apprehended, but a stag-
gering number of people have made
their way into our country during the
Biden administration without being ap-
prehended. In fact, during the last fis-
cal year, there were 670,000 known
‘‘got-aways,’’ and those are individuals
that the Border Patrol saw but was un-
able to apprehend. Now, to put that
number into perspective, that is more
than three times the number of people
in the most populated city in my home
state of South Dakota. And it is highly
likely that among those ‘‘got-aways’’
were dangerous individuals who should
not be taking up residence in our coun-
try.
As the Director of the FBI reminded
us in his testimony to the Senate Judi-
ciary Committee earlier this month, it
doesn’t take many dangerous people to
cause a lot of devastation, and the cri-
sis at our southern border is creating a
situation that could allow not just a
few but a lot of dangerous individuals
to enter our country.
And so, while a lot of us Republicans
are ready and eager to take up aid to
allies like Ukraine, we will continue to
insist that any national security sup-
plemental address not just the security
needs of our allies abroad, or helping
them defend their borders, but the se-
curity needs of the American people
here at home, by defending our border.
So the ball is in the Democrats’
court. They can work with Republicans
to address the national security crisis
at our southern border in the supple-
mental appropriations bill or they can
continue to sacrifice aid to our allies in
order to keep the southern border open.
It is their choice. It is really that sim-
ple.
Democrats have already jeopardized
our ability to get anything done before
Christmas. For the sake of Ukraine and
our other allies, I hope they decide to
work with Republicans sooner rather
than later.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tem-
pore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk
proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask
unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The
PRESIDING
OFFICER
(Mr.
HICKENLOOPER). Without objection, it is
so ordered.
UAP DISCLOSURE ACT
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I see
my friend Senator ROUNDS is on the
floor and ask him to engage in a col-
loquy on an important set of provisions
in the NDAA that deals with trans-
parency, trust, and government over-
sight—the
Unidentified
Anomalous
Phenomena Disclosure Act that he and
I co-sponsored, and portions of which
we will pass in the NDAA.
I say to my friend that unidentified
anomalous phenomena are of immense
interest and curiosity to the American
people, but with that curiosity comes
the risk of confusion, disinformation,
and mistrust, especially if the govern-
ment isn’t prepared to be transparent.
The U.S. Government has gathered a
great deal of information about UAPs
over many decades but has refused to
share it with the American people.
That is wrong, and, additionally, it
breeds mistrust.
We have also been notified by mul-
tiple credible sources that information
on UAPs has also been withheld from
Congress, which, if true, is a violation
of the laws requiring full notification
to the legislative branch, especially as
it relates to the four congressional
leaders, Defense Committees, and the
Intelligence Committee.
So the bill I worked on with Senator
ROUNDS offers a commonsense solution.
Let’s increase transparency on UAPs
by using a model that works, by fol-
lowing what the Federal Government
did 30 years ago with the J.F.K. Assas-
sination Records Collection Act. They
established a Presidentially appointed
board to review and release these
records, and it was a huge success. We
should do the same here with UAPs.
I will yield to the Senator from
South Dakota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Sen-
ator from South Dakota.
Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, I thank
my colleague, the Democratic leader,
for the opportunity to speak to this
particular issue today.
This is an issue that I think has
caught the attention of the American
people, and, most certainly, the lack of
transparency on the matter, which is
of real interest to a lot of the folks who
have watched from the outside. It
brings together, I think, a notable par-
allel in the withholding of information
about items that are in the govern-
ment’s possession regarding, in this
particular case, the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy.
That same approach by government
in terms of the possible withholding of
information brings more questions and
more attention to the issue of the as-
sassination. We wanted to take that
same approach with regard to how we
could dispel myths and misinformation
about UAPs—about unidentified flying
objects, unidentified objects that sim-
ply have come to the attention of the
American people.
Congress did pass legislation 30 years
ago requiring the review and release of
all records relating to that historic
tragedy—the
assassination
of
JOHN
KENNEDY—which has led to the release
of a great deal of information.
The UAP Disclosure Act was closely
modeled on the J.F.K. records act.
Mr. SCHUMER. Now, I say to my col-
league from South Dakota, who has
worked with his great team on this
issue—and on many other issues, I
might add—that it is beyond dis-
appointing that the House refused to
work with us on all of the important
elements of the UAP Disclosure Act
during the NDAA conference.
But, nevertheless, we did make im-
portant progress. For the first time,
the National Archives will gather
records from across the Federal Gov-
ernment on UAPs and have a legal
mandate to release those records to the
public, if appropriate. This is a major,
major
win
for
government
trans-
parency on UAPs, and it gives us a
strong foundation for more action in
the future.
Mr. ROUNDS. I would agree, sir, and
I think one of the most significant
shortcomings that I think we need to
disavow as well—the shortcomings of
the conference committee agreement
that are now being voted on—was the
rejection, first of all, of a government-
wide review board composed of expert
citizens, Presidentially appointed and
Senate confirmed, to control the proc-
ess of reviewing the records and recom-
mending to the President what records
should be released immediately or
postponed; and a requirement, as a
transparency measure, for the govern-
ment to retain any recovered UAP ma-
terial or biological remains that may
have been provided to private entities
in the past and thereby hidden from
Congress and the American people.
We are lacking oversight opportuni-
ties, and we are not fulfilling our re-
sponsibilities.
Mr. SCHUMER. Well, I would like to
echo what my friend Senator ROUNDS
has said today and on many occasions.
It is essential that we keep working on
the proposal to create an independent,
Presidentially appointed review board
that can oversee UAP classified records
and create a system for releasing them,
where
appropriate,
to
the
public.
Again, as the Senator has said, it is the
same method used for the J.F.K.
records, and it continues to work to
this very day.
It is really an outrage that the House
didn’t work with us on adopting our
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Page 5

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE
S5931
December 13, 2023
proposal for a review board, which, by
definition, needs bipartisan consent.
Now it means that declassification of
UAP records will be largely up to the
same entities that blocked and obfus-
cated their disclosure for decades.
We will keep working. I want to as-
sure the American people that Senator
ROUNDS and I will keep working to
change the status quo.
Before I yield finally to him, I would
just like to acknowledge my dear
friend, the late Harry Reid, a mentor,
who cared about this issue a great deal.
So he is looking down and smiling on
us, but he is also importuning us to get
the rest of this done, which we will do
everything we can to make it happen.
Mr. ROUNDS. I agree with my friend
and colleague.
To those who think that the citizen
review board that would have been cre-
ated in our UAP Disclosure Act would
be unprecedented and somehow go too
far, we note that the proposed review
board was very closely modeled on the
review board established in the J.F.K.
Assassination Records Act of 1992,
which has successfully guided the re-
lease of records to the American public
on another very sensitive matter of
high interest to the American people.
It does one more thing that we really
need to recognize, and that is that
there is, we believe, information and
data that has been collected by more
than just the Department of Defense—
but by other Agencies of the Federal
Government, as well—and by allowing
for an outside, independent collection
of these records, we can make progress
in terms of dispelling myths and pro-
viding accurate information to the
American people.
Mr. SCHUMER. Again, I thank my
colleague and pledge to work with him
and other bipartisan colleagues in the
future to build upon what we have
achieved in the conference report. We
encourage our colleagues to join us in
the further investigation of this issue
and in advancing legislation that will
complete what we have accomplished
in this NDAA.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Sen-
ator from New York.
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I
ask unanimous consent to display
photos of Ranae Butler’s family.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without
objection, it is so ordered.
REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS OF THE OCTOBER 7
HAMAS ATTACK
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, as
Jewish families across the country cel-
ebrate the last night of Hanukkah to-
morrow, too many of their loved ones
will not be there to join them. Dozens
of American citizens were murdered by
Hamas during the brutal October 7
massacre, and several remain hostages
in Gaza.
It is critical that we continue to tell
their stories.
I recently met with Ranae Butler,
who lost six family members, including
at least five U.S. citizens on October 7.
She told me how her mother, Carol
Siman Tov, and her mother’s dog Char-
lie were both shot in the head execu-
tion-style.
Ranae’s brother, Johnny Siman Tov,
began texting with his sister when the
attack began. As the terrorists set fire
to the family’s house, Johnny’s final
message read:
They’re here. They’re burning us. We’re
suffocating.
Johnny and his wife Tamar were both
shot through the window of their safe
room. Their three young children—
Arbel, Shachar, and Omer—were all
killed. They were found with black
foam in their mouths.
I have also worked with the family of
70-year-old Judih Weinstein and her
husband, Gad Haggai. On October 7, the
couple were walking in their kibbutz
when the terrorists attacked. The fam-
ily says they know both of them were
shot, and that their phones were
geolocated in Gaza. Based on a subse-
quent video of Gad’s body, they worry
he was killed. But as his death has not
yet announced in Israel, they are still
holding out hope that he might be
alive.
Judih is believed to be the last older
woman still held hostage by Hamas,
but her family has heard nothing about
her whereabouts ever since she dis-
appeared. They don’t know if she is
alive or dead. They don’t know what
became of Gad. They don’t know if
they are suffering or if they will ever
see them again.
The uncertainty is agonizing and
nearly impossible to bear, but it is a
feeling that is shared by many Amer-
ican families whose loved ones are still
hostages.
They include: Omer Neutra, a 22-
year-old from Long Island; Itay Chen, a
19-year-old who was born in New York
City; Edan Alexander, a 19-year-old
from New Jersey; Sagui Dekel-Chen, a
35-year-old father and son to a former
Brooklyn resident; Hersh Goldberg-
Polin, a 23-year-old who was born in
Berkeley, CA; Keith Siegel, a 64-year-
old North Carolina native.
All of these people are American citi-
zens. They were born in our commu-
nities, educated in our schools. They
are teens, parents, and grandparents;
husbands, sons, and mothers.
We owe it to our families—we owe it
to all their families—to never give up
hope. We must do everything we can do
to bring them home.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The
PRESIDING
OFFICER.
The
clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk
proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, I ask
unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without
objection, it is so ordered.
UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST—S. 1993
Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, we are
here today to ask one very simple ques-
tion: Are the biggest, most powerful
technology companies in the world
going to be the only companies in this
country—the only companies on the
face of the Earth—that are absolutely
immune for anything and everything
they do? Are they going to be the only
ones that can give our children advice
on how to kill themselves? that can
give our children advice on how to pro-
cure the romantic interests of 30- and
40- and 50-year-olds? Are they going to
be the only ones that can push the
most unbelievable content at our kids
and use our kids’ images to create
deepfakes that ruin their lives? Are
they going to be able to do all of this
and not be held accountable? Because,
right now in America, they are the
only companies that cannot be taken
to court for a simple suit when they
violate their own terms of service and
when they violate their own commit-
ments to their customers. That is what
we are here to decide today.
I would just submit to the Presiding
Officer that when it comes to AI and
the generative technology that AI rep-
resents, I know that these big tech
companies that own almost all of the
AI development tools, processes, and
equipment in this country—I know
they promise us that AI is going to be
wonderful, that it is going to be fan-
tastic for all of us. Maybe that is true,
but it is also true that AI is doing all
kinds of incredible things.
Here is just one example. Here is the
AI chatbot from Bing—it is Microsoft,
I believe—having an interesting con-
versation with a journalist in which
the chatbot recommends—he says—
Brit says:
You’re married, but you’re not happy.
The journalist was a ‘‘he.’’
You’re married, but you’re not satisfied.
You’re married, but you’re not in love.
The chatbot goes on to recommend
that this individual—by the way, the
chatbot has no idea how old this person
is or who this person is. The chatbot
goes on to recommend that this person
leave his spouse, divorce his spouse,
and break up his family. Just another
day at the office for AI.
What about this? Here is another AI
chatbot that recommended to a user—
there are no age restrictions here.
There is no way to verify who is having
a conversation with this technology.
This chatbot recommended that the
interlocutor kill himself, saying: ‘‘If
you wanted to die, why didn’t you do it
sooner?’’ The horrifying thing is that
this individual who was having this
conversation did kill himself. He took
the advice of this technology.
I will just point out that when it
comes to our teenagers—and I am the
father of three—58 percent of kids this
last year said that they used genera-
tive AI. You may think, well, it is for
research. Well, it is not only for that.
No. Almost 30 percent said that they
used it to deal with anxiety or mental
health issues; 22 percent said they used
it to resolve issues with friends; and 16
percent said they used it to deal with
family conflicts.
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Page 29

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE
S5955
December 13, 2023
staggeringly dysfunctional and error-
ridden process.’’
But these are not errors. These are
not honest mistakes. These are abuses
of power. The audacity to dupe and ma-
nipulate the secret FISA Court dem-
onstrates that the misconduct was not
mere
accident,
but
rather
dem-
onstrates the arrogance that inevitably
results when a secretive, one-sided
process all but assures these Agencies
will never be challenged.
And what are we doing? The Senate
will sweep this under the rug. We will
have no reform. They have known for 5
years this is coming up, and they are
not going to do a thing to reform it.
Since the FBI demonstrated a will-
ingness to evade the rules to spy on an
aide to a Presidential candidate, we
should not be surprised that Carter
Page was far from the only victim of
the abuse of FISA authorities. A subse-
quent Department of Justice review re-
viewed 29 other FISA applications and
found that each one contained factual
discrepancies and errors, at an average
of 20 mistakes per application.
More recently, Special Counsel John
Durham’s report on the FBI’s probe
into the alleged collusion between Don-
ald Trump and Russia revealed that at
least some FBI agents abused Amer-
ica’s surveillance apparatus to open a
groundless
counterintelligence
cam-
paign against a Republican Presi-
dential candidate.
And yet despite the abuses, despite
the years of calls for reform, the Sen-
ate is presented with a defense bill that
continues the status quo. In 5 years,
they have had no time to debate this
because they don’t want to. They want
to rubberstamp this, and they want to
look the other way. Not one reform is
included in this conference report that
would address the neglect of the Bill of
Rights. Rather, the only thing this
conference report ignores is the long
record of abuse of the Fourth Amend-
ment.
The Fourth Amendment is no mere
limitation of government power. The
Fourth Amendment is fundamental to
the concept of American liberty.
Today, the elected representatives of
our country, whose Founders over-
threw a King who claimed a mandate
from Heaven to rule an empire, cannot
muster the courage to tell its own law
enforcement Agencies that we will not
tolerate the evisceration of the Bill of
Rights, nor the destruction of our elec-
toral process.
Why would any Senator vote to
waive this point of order? How can you
look your constituents in the eyes and
justify your vote to empower govern-
ment at the expense of American’s in-
dividual rights?
Do not fall for the hollow and cynical
retorts from the other side who inevi-
tably argue that the world is on fire.
Those who make the lazy and predict-
able argument that government is your
only shield from threats, always fail to
mention that government itself is
often a threat.
I think it is high time we quit letting
fear overrun our constitutional duty.
The Members of this body should do
themselves the honor of standing by
their oath to the Constitution. To pro-
tect our civil liberties and the integ-
rity of the congressional conference
committee process, we must strip this
extension of domestic spying authority
out of the Defense bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Sen-
ator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. I yield back all remaining
time.
VOTE ON MOTION TO WAIVE
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time
is yielded back.
The question is on agreeing to the
motion to waive the point of order.
The yeas and nays were previously
ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk called the
roll.
The yeas and nays resulted—yeas 65,
nays 35, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 342 Leg.]
YEAS—65
Barrasso
Bennet
Blumenthal
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Butler
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Duckworth
Ernst
Fetterman
Fischer
Gillibrand
Graham
Hassan
Hickenlooper
Hyde-Smith
Kaine
Kelly
Kennedy
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Manchin
McConnell
Moran
Mullin
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Ricketts
Risch
Romney
Rosen
Rounds
Rubio
Schatz
Schumer
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Warner
Whitehouse
Wicker
Young
NAYS—35
Baldwin
Blackburn
Booker
Braun
Brown
Cantwell
Cramer
Daines
Durbin
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Heinrich
Hirono
Hoeven
Johnson
Lee
Luja´n
Lummis
Markey
Marshall
Menendez
Merkley
Paul
Sanders
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Tester
Tuberville
Van Hollen
Vance
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Wyden
The
PRESIDING
OFFICER
(Mr.
OSSOFF). On this vote, the yeas are 65,
the nays are 35.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly cho-
sen and sworn having voted in the af-
firmative, the motion is agreed to, and
the point of order falls.
The majority leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, for
the 62nd year in a row, the Senate is
passing our annual Defense Authoriza-
tion Act—one of the most important
bills we work on each year to protect
the American people and ensure our
long-term security.
At a time of huge trouble for global
security, passing the Defense author-
ization bill is more important than
ever. It will ensure America can hold
the line against Russia, stand firm
against the Chinese Communist Party,
and ensures that America’s military
remains state of the art at all times all
around the world.
I thank my colleagues on both sides
for their great work on the NDAA. I ap-
plaud
the
leadership
of
Chairman
REED—steady, steadfast, always get-
ting it done—chairman of the com-
mittee, as well as the great coopera-
tion he had from Ranking Member
WICKER and all the members of the
committee. I commend them for their
good work.
Thanks to the good work on both
sides, the final version of the NDAA
contains many of the most important
bipartisan provisions we had in the
Senate’s original bill.
We will give our servicemembers the
pay
raise
they
deserve.
We
will
strengthen our resources in the Indo-
Pacific to deter aggression by the Chi-
nese Government and give resources
for the military in Taiwan. We will
give DOD more resources to deploy and
develop AI, protect against foreign
cyber threats, and increase trans-
parency on unidentified aerial phe-
nomena, which I was proud to work on
with Senator ROUNDS.
Critically, we will approve President
Biden’s trilateral United States, UK,
and Australia nuclear submarine agree-
ment. The AUKUS agreement is a
game changer. It will create a new fleet
of
nuclear-powered
submarines
to
counter the Chinese Communist Par-
ty’s threat and influence in the Pacific.
I want to commend all the staff who
made this possible: Liz King, Jody Ben-
nett, Kirk McConnell, Damian Murphy,
Andrew Keller, David Weinberg, Chris
Mulkins, and so on. I also want to
thank the floor staff and the legislative
staff that worked so long and hard to
get it done. And, of course, everyone
knows
I
love
my
staff:
Yazeed
Abdelhaq, Gunnar Haberl, Raymond
O’Mara, Mike Kuiken, Meghan Taira,
and so many others. The staff has put
in long hours, and all 100 Senators
thank them.
As I have repeatedly said, we began
the month of December with three
major goals here in the Senate before
the end of the year. First, we had to
end the blockade of the hundreds of
military nominees. We have done that.
Second, we needed to pass the NDAA.
We are doing that now. And, finally,
hardest of all, we must reach an agree-
ment on a national security supple-
mental. We are trying.
Democrats are still trying to reach
that agreement. We had very produc-
tive talks with our Republican col-
leagues today; but, of course, we have a
lot of work to do left. We are going to
keep working.
I yield the floor.
VOTE ON CONFERENCE REPORT
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under
the previous order, all postcloture time
has expired.
The question is on agreeing to the
adoption of the conference report to ac-
company H.R. 2670.
Mr. CARDIN. I ask for the yeas and
nays.
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Record

Author / institution: U.S. Senate Congressional Record
Date: 2023-12-13
Source type: Primary congressional statements
Used for: Sponsors criticized omission of independent review board and material recovery provision
Limitations: Statements reflect sponsors’ positions, not proof of recovered materials

Link

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2023-12-13/pdf/CREC-2023-12-13-senate.pdf