al troops to support carpetbagger governments. Clearly those circumstances of 1878 are no longer applicable today. Even if they were, this statute indicates a desire to have Congress act in this area. Yet the principle that the military should always be subservi ent to civilian officials is itself sound, and this principle is preserved in what the Armed Services Committee has approved.

This section of my amendment carefully provides that the military personnel would operate under the direction of civilian drug enforcement officers. Also, the military could only be used when the drug operation might fail without their assistance and only if military preparedness is unaffected. None of this would be done even, then, unless the Department of State approved. These narrowly defined parameters successfully balance the delicate separation of military and civilian law enforcement with society's overriding need to rid itself of one of its most devastating elements.

Over the years, Congress has not hesitated to allow direct participation by the military in matters of much lesser magnitude and importance. On at least 14 separate occasions, the military has been authorized to assist civilian law enforcement directly in areas such as the detention of vessels for customs collections and the enforcement of the 200-mile limit and a host of others. The infestation of drugs into our society compels us to act again, and this time in a major area of concern.

So the question before us is simple. Are we willing to make a commitment to stop drugs or are we going to wait until it shatters the health, the minds, and the lives of a generation of our youth?

Now, Mr. Chairman, I do not come before you as a person who is anxious to draw an interesting bill and to pass a bill that would bring honor upon myself. I come here as a person who has experienced the tragedy of drugs in my own family. My oldest born son is dead today because of drugs. I come here because I feel like I have to do whatever I can in my day to see that the most horrible thing that is happening to America, the greatest danger we have, is protected against.

I do not think we should allow any theoretical, liberal ideas or conservative ideas or anything to keep us from fighting the real enemy. I have been a member of the Armed Services Committee for 25 years or more. We have never had a worse enemy than this. I hope you will approve the amendment.

Mr. HUGHES. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. I know I speak for every member of this subcommittee, and the entire Congress, when I say that our hearts go out to you because of your personal tragedy. And we all share your concern over the drug problem in this country.

This particular subcommittee of the Judiciary is a relatively new one in that we have realigned jurisdiction within the Judiciary. I just recently assumed the chairmanship of this subcommittee, and we have spent a good deal of time discussing our priorities. Drug enforcement and the problems it presents to this country and the world are one of our first priorities, I can assure you.

And even before you showed the wisdom and the courage to advance this amendment, this committee was considering the posse comitatus law and its ramifications and how perhaps it might be a barrier to good law enforcement practice, to the kind of coopera

tion that we all seek between the law enforcement community and the military.

One of the concerns I have-and let me just indicate to you that both Hal and I are former prosecutors, and that we approach problems from a law enforcement perspective-is that we do maintain the separation that you alluded to between the military and the civilian in the area of law enforcement. It is a very important part of our own heritage.

Mr. BENNETT. It is important, but I don't think that the posse comitatus legislation is the foundation for it. Historically and legislatively, it had no intention of becoming a part of the Ten Commandments. It was a very modest proposal having to do with a specific thing at a specific time in history. The noble things that we both agree upon really are undignified by putting it into the Posse Comitatus Act.

Mr. HUGHES. I am inclined to agree with your historical perspective. As I understand it, Mr. Bennett, the Armed Services Committee rejected an amendment offered by Congressman Beard, which would have amended the DOD authorization bill by adopting language already in the Senate bill. I also understand that the only difference between your amendment and the one offered by Mr. Beard was section 375 of the bill.

Mr. BENNETT. That's all.

Mr. HUGHES. Is it your intent in section 375 to authorize the direct use of military personnel to make arrests and seizures?

Mr. BENNETT. Provided that it meets with the approval of the Department of the Defense and the Department of State.

Mr. HUGHES. The Department of Justice in its statement indicates that there is no need to provide direct arrest authority for the military. Do you think that the Department of Justice believes that it is not necessary to provide direct arrest authority to the military in that the law enforcement functions can be carried out without that specific authority?

Mr. BENNETT. The problem is very specific. I live in the State of Florida and have through almost all of my life, which is a long life. I know how many Coast Guard vessels there are. There are not anywhere near enough Coast Guard vessels to stop the traffic.

In my hometown, there are 40 or 50 naval ships, very capablemuch better ships than the Coast Guard has, and the Coast Guard has only a very few. There is no way in which the Coast Guard with its present fleet can stop all of the drugs coming into Florida alone-no possible way.

Now with that situation being as it is, would we say, then, that the Coast Guard should have 400 or 500 more ships added or at least 100 or more or so ships added to it? It would take 10 years to build them, assuming we would get them through Congress, and at the end of the fight against the traffic of drugs, what would we do with them? Why not use the ships which are now in the ports of the coast for the purpose of making these seizures under proper regulations?

Now they might have Coast Guard personnel make the actual arrests. But there are not enough ships. So if you want, that is a regulation that the Department of Defense could make under this measure which I introduced. They could say that the arrests should

be made by the Coast Guard personnel. There are enough Coast Guard people to put a few of them on each of these military ships, so the arrests could be made by the Coast Guard. But not to use these very powerful, speedy, efficient ships in this circumstance where we have a real war is just sad-real sad.

Mr. HUGHES. I quite agree with you. I believe that particular problem will be covered by other sections of the bill that will permit the use of all types of equipment, as well as facilities, research, and training that might be necessary.

Mr. BENNETT. You think a ship could leave May Port, for instance, and run down a yacht coming in with heroin? I don't think it could without my amendment.

Mr. HUGHES. I would think that the Drug Enforcement Administration, where they were alert to traffic in a particular area, would still be the lead agency.

Mr. BENNETT. Under my legislation, it still would be.

Mr. HUGHES. If the Justice Department felt that they did not have sufficient personnel to make the arrests and the seizures or to conduct interrogations, that would be one thing, but the Justice Department indicates to us that they do not have that problem.

Mr. BENNETT. They don't have a problem of interrogating because we're not catching them.

Mr. HUGHES. That part of it is true, too, and I share your concern that the Coast Guard does not have sufficient equipment, and the present budget does not anticipate sufficient resources for the Coast Guard. They are only interdicting somewhere between 15 and 17 percent.

Mr. BENNETT. It would be well over $1 billion to do it. Since I am in the shipbuilding business in the Congress, I would say it would probably cost $5 billion. That is probably an underestimate of what it would cost to have an adequate Coast Guard fleet for the present drug traffic-$5 billion.

Mr. HUGHES. What is your view of S. 441, which is Senator Nunn's bill, and similar legislation in the House introduced by Congressmen Evans and Fascell? They are limited to assistance on drug violations.

Mr. BENNETT. So is mine. Not only limited to drug violations but to things that are ordered and actions that are ordered by the Federal Drug Administration.

Mr. HUGHES. It is your intent to limit it?

Mr. BENNETT. In the language I use-I could read it to you-but it is restricted to that. It is restricted to actions which are directed by the civilian drug enforcement agencies of the Federal Govern

ment.

Mr. SAWYER. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUGHES. I would be happy to.

Mr. SAWYER. I don't think that is quite accurate, Mr. Bennett. Mr. BENNETT. That is what I intended.

Mr. SAWYER. The portion that involves the use of personnel to make an arrest is restricted to drugs, but the use of equipment, the training, and all the other sections of the act are not, as I read it, restricted to drugs.

Mr. BENNETT. I wanted it to be restricted to drugs. That is an inartful action in the legislative drafting, if it goes further. I had

no intention of doing anything about anything except drug smuggling.

Mr. HUGHES. I wondered about that. Your statement indicates that your concern and the focus of what you endeavored to do dealt with drug-related offenses, and yet the language would suggest that it would be not so limited.

Mr. BENNETT. Then it is in error. I did not go to the legislative counsel to draft this. Perhaps I erred in the way in which I drafted it, but I think not.

Mr. HUGHES. The bills I referred to, S. 441, and the ones that were introduced on the House side by Evans and Fascell, would also limit assistance rendered to Federal officials. They would allow, of course, the sharing of assistance with State and local officials, but it would have to be through Federal officials.

Was it your intention to limit the sharing of those resources— whether it be equipment, facilities, or research-to Federal officials?

Mr. BENNETT. I only changed one section. I, myself, only wrote one section, about two sentences. Otherwise I do not change the Nunn bill. I really was looking at the Federal part of it. I only changed one section, section 375.

My memory of it is that it was to be only the Federal, because it has to be directed by a Federal Drug Administration order. In other words, that is one of the qualifications. So even if it helped somebody else, the order for the use of ships and all of that sort of stuff has to be approved and directed-and the activity has to be directed by a civilian branch of the Federal Government.

Mr. HUGHES. The language of the Bennett amendment, section 371, is: "The Secretary of Defense may provide to Federal, State, and local civilian law enforcement officials any information collected," et cetera.

Section 372: "The Secretary of Defense may make available any equipment, base facility, research facility of the armed forces to any Federal, State, local civilian law enforcement" whereas the pertinent sections of S. 441 in the Evans-Fascell approach would limit that information to any Federal drug enforcement official, and only then could it be transferred or loaned to others. But there would have to be a direct nexus to a Federal law enforcement agency.

Mr. BENNETT. I took the language that came out of the Senate. My amendment that I offered, in fact, before the Armed Services Committee was 100 percent what had passed the Senate except I added one section.

And then as we closed our hearings before the committee, there was a general grant given to the staff to redraft legislation to make it conform, or something like that. I never changed my opinion of what I offered, and if they in that redrafting have changed it from what had passed the Senate, they did so against my will.

So I am saying to you that if there is any change between the thing that passed the Senate and what is now before you, it was not intended by me. It was not voted on by the committee, except when they voted on a clean bill. So I would say to you that I prefer the thing that I originally drafted and until this moment thought that is what we had, which was exactly what passed the Senate,

plus this one session which has to do with actually using personnel and equipment, even arresting, providing it is done under civilian order. I cannot sustain something that really was not my position. Mr. HUGHES. As you noted, my staff is taking notes. You know that I share your philosophy on that subject.

Mr. BENNETT. I think we are all very blessed to have great staffs, but sometimes they think Congressmen go to their senility before they go.

Mr. HUGHES. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. You have been very helpful.

Mr. SAWYER. Addressing this section of the use of personnel, it would appear to me that the Justice Department's statement that they have adequate people and all that, is limited to only those occasions where the arrest could not be made without their assistance. So it would seem to me, if you do not need them, you do not need them, you are not authorized under the statute. But if you need them, you do have the authority, and I think it is a very ap propriate section.

I totally agree with you about the danger of this drug situation. I know, of course, that you are right in the hottest spot of it all, in the State of Florida. We have a lot of it even up in Grand Rapids, Mich. It manages to trickle north one way or another.

As the chairman is wont to say, they have yet to lose anybody in Atlantic City to the Soviets, but they are losing them all the time to the drug traffic. Certainly there is a high percentage of criminals that are in some way rooted in the drug traffic, either to feed their habits, in self-enforcement, and all kinds of other things.

So I congratulate you on the legislation. Once I learned what posse comitatus was, I did not like the way it was being construed. Thank you.

Mr. BENNETT. Thank you.

Mr. HUGHES. Mr. Fish, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. FISH. I have no questions, but I join in thanking and congratulating our colleague.

Mr. HUGHES. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. You have been helpful and we appreciate it.

Mr. BENNETT. Thank you all.

Mr. HUGHES. Our next witnesses will be a panel, William Howard Taft IV, General Counsel to the Department of Defense; Mr. Edward Dennis, Chief, Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice. They have worked with the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Weinberger, who was Deputy Director and then Director of the Budget.

Without objection, your complete and very impressive statements will be made a part of the record.

TESTIMONY OF EDWARD DENNIS, CHIEF, NARCOTIC AND DANGEROUS DRUG SECTION, CRIMINAL DIVISION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE; AND WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT IV, GENERAL COUNSEL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

[The complete statements follow:]