[Congressional Record: February 26, 2008 (House)]
[Page H1065-H1072]





ADMINISTRATION NOT COOPERATING WITH CONGRESS

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is
recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I come to the floor tonight with a
heavy heart. The nature of the allegations I make speaks poorly of this
administration. In my heart of hearts, I have always wanted this
administration to succeed, but the issue at hand is of such magnitude
that the American people need to know what is being done and what
precedents are being set.

In my tenure as a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, both as chairman and ranking member of an investigative
subcommittee, I have witnessed firsthand behavior by the Bush
administration which I find deeply troubling.

The disdain and uncooperative nature that this administration has
shown toward Congress, including Republican Members, is so egregious
that I can no longer assume that it is simply bureaucratic incompetence
or isolated mistakes. Rather, I have come to the sad conclusion that
this administration has intentionally obstructed Congress' rightful and
constitutional duties.

Tonight I will discuss some serious examples of this administration's
contemptuous disregard for the authority delegated to Congress by the
Constitution. This bad attitude has consistently manifested itself in a
sophomoric resentment toward Congress' constitutional role as an equal
branch of government. The result has been an executive branch too
insecure to let Congress do its job, an executive branch that sees
Congress, even when Republicans held the majority, as a rival and a
spoiler, rather than as elected representatives of the American people
playing a rightful role in establishing policy for our great country.

Unfortunately, when the President of the United States rejects the
legitimacy of congressional prerogatives, there are serious
consequences. Tonight, I will provide examples of how this
administration for the past 7 years has undercut congressional
investigators, has lied to Members of Congress, and has forged ahead
with secret deals in spite of efforts and pleas by Congress to be
informed, if not involved.

In the last Congress, I was chairman of the Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In
that capacity, I learned that in the time immediately leading up to the
bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, convicted Oklahoma
City bomber and murderer Terry Nichols had been in Cebu City in the
Philippines. His stay in Cebu City coincided with another visitor to
that city, al Qaeda's terrorist leader Ramsey Yousef. Interestingly,
both Nichols and Yousef used similar bombs and methods just 2 years
apart to blow up two American targets. Yousef was the mastermind of the
first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Nichols was a
coconspirator in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in
1995.

By the way, I would like to acknowledge that today happens to be the
15-year anniversary of that first devastating attack on the World Trade
Center.

These individuals, one American and one Arab, were responsible for
planning two of the most lethal terrorist attacks on our countrymen in
our history. We are to believe that by coincidence they ended up in an
off-the-beaten-track city in the Southern Philippines? One doesn't have
to be a conspiracy nut to understand that this coincidence is certainly
worth looking into.

I started an official congressional investigation sanctioned by Henry
Hyde, then the chairman of the International Relations Committee, to
see whether Terry Nichols or his accomplice, Timothy McVeigh, had
foreign help in their murderous terrorist bombing of the Alfred Murrah
Building in Oklahoma City.

In light of the fact that Terry Nichols and Ramsey Yousef were both
in Cebu City at the same time prior to hauntingly similar terrorist
attacks, it was no stretch for a congressional investigative committee
to be looking into this matter. However, the Bush administration felt
quite differently. To those I had to deal with, it was ``case closed,
don't bother us.'' They had looked into the matter, and Congress should
simply and blindly accept their conclusion that there was no Nichols-
Yousef connection. ``Don't bother us.'' This was at times bureaucratic
laziness, and at other times it was clearly based on a disdain for
congressional investigations and authority.
During my investigation, I secured Ramsey Yousef's cell phone
records. The records were part of the phone calls that he made when he
was in that New York City area in the months just prior to the bombing
of the World Trade Center in 1993.
The phone records show that Ramsey Yousef made at least two phone
calls to a row house in Queens, New York.


That row house was occupied by the cousin of Terry Nichols' Filipina
wife. Let me repeat that. The terrorist bomber of the first World Trade
Center attack, the nephew of al Qaeda 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh
Mohammad, made phone calls to the same row house that was occupied by
Terry Nichols' cousins-in-law just 2 months before he exploded the bomb
in the garage of the World Trade Center 15 years ago. Another
coincidence?


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