John Spratt: “I want to repeat the commendation of the last speaker to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Ryun), because he served a…”

“I want to repeat the commendation of the last speaker to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Ryun), because he served a purpose in raising this issue to the forefront. He caused us to take what he was proposing, to consider it in depth; and that was the genesis of the amendment we adopted unanimously today, the Cox-Dicks amendment. While it included other things, that was our initial purpose, to take the foreign visitors program and add strictures to it, but not stifle it so much that we would literally suffocate and kill it, because this particular proposal would simply wipe out the foreign visitors program except for perhaps a few singular individuals who might be certified into it. Now, what does that mean? What is the foreign visitors program? The foreign visitors program exists on reservations like Los Alamos, which is about the size of the District of Columbia. It is not just some small laboratory. It is a huge complex of facilities, an enormous site. It includes secure areas to which they do not have access and lots of other areas and labs and work spaces. It would include an Israeli scientist there working on solar energy, a Swedish chemist who has come to work on plutonium issues, because there is a lot we still do not know about plutonium. The Swedish chemist, an actual case, is one of the world's experts. We need his insights and advice into the nature of plutonium, how it ages and what its effects are.”