House Committee marks up bill calling for N. Korea’s re-listing as a terror sponsor

Last month, when it was introduced, I wrote about H.R. 5208, the House bill that would require the Secretary of State to acknowledge some of the extensive evidence — including final U.S. federal court judgments — of North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism, and to go on the record as to whether North Korea has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism. Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee took the next step on H.R. 5208, approving it in a committee markup. You can watch the whole markup on video:

At 35 minutes in, Rep. Ted Poe (R, Tex.), the bill’s author, speaks powerfully for the bill’s passage. Chairman Royce (R, Cal.), Ranking Member Engel (D, N.Y.), and subcommittee Ranking Member Brad Sherman (D, Cal.) also spoke in favor of the bill.

The bill that emerged from that markup, as an amendment in the nature of a substitute, is tighter than the original.* The committee staff’s challenge was that there is so much evidence of North Korea’s arms sales to terrorists, terrifying cyberattacks on civilian targets, and plots to kill or kidnap dissidents and activists abroad, that the bill could easily have been 20 pages long. As a rule, a bill’s speed through Congress is inversely proportional to its length. 

After some technical corrections, the bill will go to the Speaker’s office for placement on the congressional calendar. This being an election year, the odds against that would seem rather long, although I’m not quite as pessimistic as the Associated Press’s correspondent. If His Porcine Majesty acts up again, Congress might just reach for the first heavy object to throw at him, and this bill is now within easy reach. Given the bipartisan support for H.R. 5208 in yesterday’s markup, and the reversed polarity of Hillary Clinton espousing much tougher rhetoric on North Korea than His Orange Majesty, this one doesn’t seem so likely to cleave along partisan lines.  

Frankly, I’m pleasantly surprised that the markup went (1) forward and (2) smoothly despite this being an election year, with all the complications that brings (a truncated congressional calendar and the inevitable partisan divisions). Yet the full Committee’s Ranking Member, Elliot Engel, and the subcommittee’s Ranking Member, Brad Sherman, both spoke in favor of the bill. Engel also called Bush’s 2007 Agreed Framework II “a bad deal.” So even if H.R. 5208 doesn’t pass this Congress, much like H.R. 1771, we’re likely to see it again in the next Congress as bipartisan support for it builds.

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Another bill that was marked up yesterday also deserves attention — H.R. 5484, the State Sponsors of Terrorism Review Enhancement Act. The bill makes some necessary procedural reforms to the SSOT rescission (de-listing) process by (1) increasing Congress’s time to review a rescission from 45 to 90 days, and (2) requiring the President to certify that the state hasn’t supported terrorism for two years (currently, that period is a ridiculously short six months). You can read more about how the SSOT rescission process works at page 29 of my report. 

An additional provision, providing for a congressional resolution of disapproval of a SSOT rescission, could run into constitutional problems. I caught this issue immediately, and later saw that at the 38-minute mark in the markup, so did Rep. Alan Grayson (D, Fla.)). Chairman Royce correctly noted that there are similar provisions in existing laws, although Grayson responded that those provisions haven’t yet been challenged in court.

Grayson is something of an enigma. He has earned a well-deserved reputation for his bombastic rhetoric and personal conduct. Even Harry Reid loathes him openly. But Grayson has also earned my grudging respect for his intellectual rigor. He reads every word of every bill sent to him, and sometimes, he catches serious legal defects in them. (If Grayson would raise those issues privately instead of in full committee hearings, he might be more effective.) Also, despite Grayson’s own abrasive personality, his staffers are some of the nicest people on the Hill.

Despite the problem with one of its provisions, H.R. 5484 makes necessary reforms. Back in 2008, I wrote about my frustration with the ridiculously short congressional review process for SSOT rescission, when the Bush administration and the State Department cynically announced North Korea’s rescission from the terror list just before the summer recess in a presidential election year, which effectively nullified the 45-day review.

The biggest surprise about this bill is its author — Republican Ted Yoho of Florida. Yoho has a reputation as an isolationist and is a made member of the Ron Paul-inspired Republican Liberty Caucus. He was one of the few GOP members of the Foreign Affairs Committee who wasn’t among the 147 co-sponsors of H.R. 1771, the predecessor to H.R. 757. Two Liberty Caucus members, Tom Massie (R, Ky.) and Justin Amash (R, Mich.), were the only votes against H.R. 757. Clearly, then, not even all Liberty Caucus members agree with Doug Bandow‘s policy objections to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

H.R. 5484 stands almost no chance of passing in the current Congress. Ranking Member Elliot Engel didn’t oppose it, but he expressed discomfort that it could tie the administration’s hands in the future, and noted that the administration was opposed to it. Even so, the pressure for reforms to the terror listing process will continue to build as long as Congress thinks the State Department is abusing its discretion.

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* The legislative counsel will make a technical correction of the repeated language about one of the attempted hits on Hwang Jang-yop.