propriations to support from 1986 on. I can give you and I will give you a detailed breakdown on that.

In fact, when I came on board as Attorney General in August 1988, the Border Patrol was deep in the hole because of overcommitment to hiring that was not within the bounds that its appropriation would support.

Senator DECONCINI. But, Mr. Attorney General, if you put a freeze on-talk about history. I have only been here going on 14 years. Under the Carter administration, they would cut the Border Patrol. We would add it in appropriations. They would refuse to put in or put a freeze on. The same thing happened under the Reagan administration except in 1986, I believe, was the only year that they increased the Border Patrol. I may be off a year. All the other times they put a freeze on.

My concern is that they are the stepchild in the Justice Department, in my judgment. And I don't know whether you agree with that, but I wish you would pay some attention to it and see if you can help them a little bit more.

Let me just give you an example. The President's National Drug Strategy recommends 174 additional Border Patrol officers for the Southwest border. The budget summary issued by the White House requests 90 additional Border Patrol officers for the border. And under the Justice Department budget summary, you call for 174. What are we going to get?

Attorney General THORNBURGH. I think what we have called for is 202 Border Patrol agents, but, again, the freeze was necessary in order to bring the staffing level down to the budgetary limitations. We can't pay people who are on the payroll if we don't have the money to pay them. What we are seeking this year are 202 additional Border Patrol agents, and in addition

Senator DECONCINI. Well, you are talking about support staff, Mr. Attorney General. Here in your budget, the budget increase of 200 positions, it is 174 Border Patrol agents. That is on page 66. But my concern here is that you are calling for 174; the strategy is calling for 174; and the budget request is only 90. So did you lose? Are we only going to get 90, or are you going to prevail and get a budget change here to get the 174?

My concern is that I want to see you get them, and I just don't know what we can do to help you get them.

Attorney General THORNBURGH. The disparity may be as a result of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Program, which includes as a separate appropriation agents from a variety of different agencies.

But let me just mention one thing, Senator, just to allay your concerns that the border is going to be neglected. The President's national drug control strategy, pursuant to direction of the Congress, identified five major high intensity drug trafficking areas which are going to receive special attention. One of those is the Southwest border, not surprisingly.

Senator DECONCINI. I understand that.

Attorney General THORNBURGH. But we are now in the throes of trying to staff up an operation with an additional $25 million, an additional $50 million being sought in the fiscal year 1991 budget, to meet the very shortfall that you describe. Now, how that will

shake out in terms of specific allocations amongst DEA, FBI, Border Patrol, whatever, I can't tell you at the moment.

Senator DECONCINI. Under the budget, your budget does target some additional DEA and FBI, particularly DEA, and I applaud that. My concern is to get your focus on the Border Patrol.

Let me just quickly go to the Border Patrol vehicles. I don't know if you are aware that they lack a tremendous amount of vehicles on the Border Patrol. Your budget calls for a hefty increase of 600 or 2,000-I can't remember-vehicles for the DEA and little or none for the Border Patrol. And it really troubles me that we don't get some attention to the vehicles. They cannot do their work down there without the vehicles, and I just would hope that you would personally take a look at that.

Attorney General THORNBURGH. I am told the budget calls for $8 million for new vehicles for the Border Patrol. I don't know how that translates. It depends on the vehicle, I guess.

Senator DECONCINI. Well, if you have time to go look at the Border Patrol in the Southwest border area, you will see some of the most dilapidated equipment. You will see trucks that they have to take out with electric windows that don't work because they get dirt in them, and, you know, in the summertime, if the air-conditioner doesn't work or something, it is pretty miserable when you can't put the window up or down.

This is the kind of equipment-I am truthfully telling you this; I have seen it-that your Border Patrol people are having to use.

Attorney General THORNBURGH. Let me give you, as I indicated, a report on the problems with respect to staffing, because I think it is a little too complicated for even

Senator DECONCINI. OK. I appreciate anything you can give me. Attorney General THORNBURGH. And the second thing is we will certainly review, and I will ask Commissioner McNary to specifically review the vehicles.

Senator DECONCINI. Mr. Attorney General, I want to submit to you some letters in support of Terrence Burke as not only the Deputy Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, but for the Administrator position. I don't know if you are aware that the Hispanic National Law Enforcement Association supports your consideration of putting him there, and the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association, and the Pima County Sheriff's Department, just to mention a few-and, of course, this Senator. And the reason this Senator is-and I hope this is not held against him-that he was the DEA agent in charge in Arizona, and we had never had such good coordination with DEA taking the lead in cross-deputization. Before you and Customs worked out this massive thousand agent cross-deputizations, Mr. Burke was able to make it work in Arizona. I hope you know that. I hope you take a look at this man, because in my opinion to fill John Lawn's shoes is going to take a big man. And Terrence Burke is that man. He is just outstanding.

I thank you, too, and compliment you on your efforts to crossdeputize some of these other law enforcement agents. I realize it has taken a long time, but it wouldn't have happened without you and Commissioner Hallett and Commissioner von Raab and Terry

Burke really believing we have to maximize this whole effort. And I compliment you for that.

Mr. Chairman, I have other questions, but I will wait.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Before I yield, we are going to, I am told, have a vote in 2 minutes at 11 o'clock and then one at 11:30 and then one at 12 o'clock. So what I am going to do is yield to my Republican colleague and then go vote, and come back here so that we will always have someone here prepared to question.

Now, have you all decided who is next?

Senator GRASSLEY. Yes, I am next.

The CHAIRMAN. The Senator from Iowa, Senator Grassley.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR GRASSLEY

Senator GRASSLEY. First of all, I want to welcome you here. It is always nice to have dialogue with you on these very controversial issues that face us. I want to also say I appreciate the fine job you are doing as Attorney General. I also want to say that I appreciate the additional resources that you were able to provide to the U.S. attorneys in my State in the war on drugs. We think we will be able to make good use of them and show that your faith in our U.S. attorneys is well put and the resources will be well spent.

As you know, Mr. Attorney General, several of my colleagues recently wrote to you about, as we put it, "pulling the plug" on the American Bar Association's role in judicial selection. In the wake of recent ABA's positions on a host of controversial issues, you had suggested-and I got this from a Wall Street Journal editorial, where it says that Attorney General Thornburgh said the ABA votes on abortion and civil rights bills give the organization-to quote you-"trappings of a conventional lobbying group." And it wonders whether judicial candidates must now "tow the line" on the ABA views.

Well, I want you to know that I agree with you except I would call them a "liberal" lobbying group.

So I want to ask you, don't you think it is about time that we simply thank the ABA for their past service, give them a gold watch, and then retire them?

Attorney General THORNBURGH. I am speechless.

Senator, you are quite correct in noting my concern about the continued role of the Standing Committee on the Judiciary of the American Bar Association in advising the President and Members of the Senate on the judicial qualifications of particular individuals, and it is a concern that I have raised with the leadership of the American Bar Association and hope to have them address.

My concerns are that by taking positions on issues that are as contentious as the issues of abortion, firearms, legislation, the death penalty, the various civil rights decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, the American Bar Association may be at least creating the appearance that their assessment of potential judicial candidates will rise or fall on the degree to which those candidates agree with or disagree with the American Bar Association's official positions in these areas. This comes perilously close to the kind of

litmus test which all of us agree is inappropriate in the assessment of potential judicial candidates.

You will recall that we had an extensive discussion with the American Bar Association leaders and, in fact, with you and your colleagues about the fact that they had included at the beginning of the 1980's an expansion of their professed role to go beyond the judgment with respect to character, integrity, and fitness to serve in a judicial capacity, to, in fact, examine areas of political or philosophic views of the candidate.

After our discussion, after the hearings which were held by this committee, that languages was stricken from the guidelines that the American Bar Association had established beginning in the 1980's. And I felt that we had at least achieved a breathing spell during which we could assess the performance of the standing committee on the judiciary in its proper, and I must say helpful, role of getting the views of local lawyers, judges, and citizens on the judicial temperament and the fitness of prospective candidates.

The most recent developments undermine my confidence in our having resolved that issue, and it is for that reason that I have raised the matter anew with the American Bar Association. I am very concerned, having heard from many lawyers and judges and Members of both Houses of the Congress, that if the American Bar Association persists on staking out positions on highly controversial political issues, that they may erode and, indeed, may destroy their effectiveness in providing nonpartisan, nonpolitical assistance and support to the President and the Members of the Senate as they assess judicial candidates.

Now, I must say in all fairness that under Ralph Lancaster's leadership, the American Bar Association standing committee on the judiciary has provided a very helpful service to us in processing prospective judicial nominees for the President and for the Members. But my concern is, as I stated, that at the very least that effectiveness can be very seriously undermined by the appearance that the American Bar Association is as a group-not the committee but as a group-calling upon judicial nominees to tow the line with regard to the ABA position or else face a potential for nonconsideration as a judge.

Senator GRASSLEY. Well, I respect your judgment, but I am not so sure but what the answer you just gave me, since you are expressing that you are very concerned about it, that you aren't setting yourself up like you did before where they will give you some assurances. Assurances from the ABA don't reassure me any more, and I don't think they ought to reassure you any more. This is an organization that for many years has reassured us that they didn't take ideology into account, and then, you know, we caught them redhanded with what they are doing. Then they deny it, while they are curiously saying they wouldn't do it again. And I think we have another example that they have done it again.

You know, the assurances from the ABA remind me of what they say about people who are going through their third or fourth marriage. It is a triumph of hope over experience. And I am running out of hope, and I think we ought to learn from the experi

ence.

Well, let me go on to another matter that is closer to the people of my State. That is, we are all concerned about drug abuse. Obviously we all are. Coming from a largely rural State, of course, I am worried about drug abuse in rural America. Some critics of the national drug control strategy contend that it does not contain a rural action plan to lend the heartland the weapons that it needs to win the war against drugs. In fact, say these critics, the strategy mentions rural America only in passing and sends the signal that drug prosecution in the heartland is spotty, at best.

The people in my State are ready to fight this war. They are ready to use all of their own available resources. As for resources they cannot come up with themselves, they want to be sure that they receive a fair share. I would appreciate knowing what the Department is prepared to do to meet the commitment to fight the drug war in rural America, not just Iowa but rural America generally.

Attorney General THORNBURGH. Senator, you may recall that last August we issued a report prepared at my request by the U.S. attorneys in all 94 judicial districts on the business structure of the drug organizations in the United States, what we called our Dun & Bradstreet of drug trafficking organizations.

One of the central messages of that report, which we rendered to the President and to the Director of the National Drug Control 'Policy Office, was that this is a problem that is nationwide. It is not confined to our inner cities or our suburbs. It affects rural America. And to underscore that phenomenon, Chuck Larson, the distinguished U.S. attorney from Cedar Rapids, joined us at the event that surrounded the release of that report.

I can say that I have had recent occasion to visit in both Cedar Rapids and Des Moines and discuss with the U.S. attorneys there their concerns about effective participation in the effort to deal with the drug problem in Iowa, for example, as a more rural area, and met with Governor Bransford and spoke with the leaders of the State's efforts.

I think we all recognize that there is a very important partnership effort that has to be undertaken, that in many cases, the street level, smaller drug organizations simply are beyond the reach of Federal law enforcement capabilities, given the present levels of staffing. That is why the Drug Enforcement Administration has created and proposes to create under this year's budget additional joint State-local task forces which make use of DEA agents as a catalyst for more effective work by State and local agents. That is also why the President's budget this year and for the year upcoming proposes increases in the amount of funding available for use at the State level.

When I was in Iowa, as you know, I carried your message that the amount of Federal funding to aid in Iowa was being increased threefold during this year for use as the State saw fit.

I suppose I must acknowledge that there are bound to be efforts in this country which are going to feel short-changed, so long as there is not an infinite amount of resources to spend on the drug effort. But I can also say to you that, through travel and discussion with our U.S. attorneys and DEA and FBI people throughout the United States, I hope to keep as aware and attuned as possible to