FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

We are submitting this joint testimony as envisaged by the letters of Deputy Secretary Eizenstat of April 12 to Committee Chairman Hyde and Subcommittee Chairman Smith in response to letters to Secretary Summers and Secretary Albright from Chairman Hyde, inviting them or their designees to testify before this subcommittee on April 13 concerning H.R. 3485, the "Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act." Deputy Secretary Eizenstat has worked extensively on this issue for the Administration over the past 18 months, and we, on behalf of our Departments, join him in presenting our views on this proposed legislation. We share your goal that U.S. victims of terrorism and their families receive justice and compensation for their suffering. We are actively engaged with the Congress in ongoing discussions to resolve the complex issues identified and to address the needs of victims of terrorism. We also appreciate the opportunity to submit this statement into the record.

Let us begin by expressing the Administration's and our own genuine and personal sympathy to victims of international terrorism -- an evil that this administration has led the world in combating. It is the responsibility of the United States Government to do everything possible to protect American lives from international terrorism and other heinous acts. People like Mr. Flatow, Mr. Anderson, Mr. Cicippio, Mr. Jacobsen, and Mr. Reed and their families, and the families of the Brothers to the Rescue pilots, deserve support in their goal of finding fair and just compensation for their grievous losses and unimaginable experiences. Those of us who have met with them have been touched by their suffering and impressed with their strength and determination to seek justice. We understand their frustrations and the frustrations that have led the sponsors of this legislation to introduce it. We are dedicated to working with the Congress to achieve the goal of obtaining compensation for the victims and their families. But we feel strongly that this must be done in a way that is consistent with the broad national interests and international obligations of the United States.

It is obvious that the states involved here -- states that we have publicly branded as sponsors of terrorism -- do not view the United States as a friendly environment in which to conduct financial transactions. As part of our efforts to combat terrorism, we impose a wide range of economic sanctions against state sponsors of terrorism in order to deprive them of the resources to fund acts of terrorism and to affect their conduct. Because of these measures, terrorism-list states engage in minimal economic activity in the United States. In many cases, the only assets that states which sponsor terrorism have in the United States are either blocked or diplomatic property. Such property should not be available for attachment and execution of judgments, for very good reasons involving the interests of the entire nation, which are described in detail below. As much as we join the sponsors of this bill in desiring to have victims of international terrorism and the heinous acts of the Cuban Air Force compensated, it would be unwise to ignore these reasons and prejudice the interests of all our citizens for this purpose.

This question is complex and fraught with difficulties. For this reason, last year, we proposed, among other things, that a commission be established to review all aspects of the problems presented by acts of international terrorism. Such a commission would have specifically studied the issue of compensation with the goal of recommending proposals to the President and to the Congress to help the victims and their families receive compensation in a manner that would not impinge upon important U.S. national interests. While this proposal was not taken up, we believe this approach still has merit.

H.R. 3485, though born of good intentions, is fundamentally flawed. The legislation would have five principal negative effects, all of which would be seriously damaging to important U.S. interests, and would, at the end of the day, result in substantial U.S. taxpayer liability.

First, blocking of assets of terrorist states is one of the most significant economic sanctions tools available to the President. The proposed legislation would undermine the President's ability to combat international terrorism and other threats to national security by permitting the wholesale attachment of blocked property, thereby depleting the pool of blocked assets and depriving the U.S. of a source of leverage in ongoing and future sanctions programs, such as was used to gain the release of our citizens held hostage in Iran in 1981 or in gaining information about POW's and MIA's as part of the normalization process with Vietnam.

Second, it would cause the U.S. to violate its international treaty obligations to protect and respect the immunity of diplomatic and consular property of other nations, and would put our own diplomatic and consular property around the world at risk of copycat attachment, with all that such implies for the ability of the United States to conduct diplomatic and consular relations and protect personnel and facilities.

Third, it would create a race to the courthouse benefiting one small, though deserving, group of Americans over a far larger group of deserving Americans. For example, in the case of Cuba, many Americans have waited decades to be compensated for both the loss of property and the loss of the lives of their loved ones. This would leave no assets for their claims and others that may follow. Even with regard to current judgment holders, it would result in their competing for the same limited pool of assets, which would be exhausted very quickly and might not be sufficient to satisfy all judgments.

Fourth, it would breach the long-standing principle that the United States Government has sovereign immunity from attachment, thereby preventing the U.S. Government from making good on its debts and international obligations and potentially causing the U.S. taxpayer to incur substantial financial liability, rather than achieving the stated goal of forcing Iran to bear the burden of paying these judgments. The Congressional Budget Office ("CBO") has recognized this by scoring the legislation at $420 million, the bulk of which is associated with the Foreign Military Sales ("FMS") Trust Fund. Such a waiver of sovereign immunity would expose the Trust Fund to writs of attachment, which would inject an unprecedented and major element of uncertainty and unreliability into the FMS program by creating an exception to the processes and principles under which the program operates.

Fifth, it would direct courts to ignore the separate legal status of states and their agencies and instrumentalities, overturning Supreme Court precedent and basic principles of corporate law and international practice by making state majority-owned corporations liable for the debts of the state and establishing a dangerous precedent for government owned enterprises like the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation ("OPIC").

As the Washington Post observed in a fall 1999 editorial, "Victims of terrorism certainly should be compensated, but a mechanism that permits individual recovery to take precedence over significant foreign policy interests is flawed." The proposed legislation would indeed seriously compromise important national security, foreign policy, and other clear national interests, and discriminate among and between past and future U.S. claimants.

For all these reasons, explained in more detail below, the Administration strongly opposes the proposed legislation.

1) Attachment of Blocked and Diplomatic Property and the Elimination of the Effectiveness of Our Blocking Programs

The Administration has grave concerns with the provisions of the proposed legislation that seek to nullify the President's waiver of the 1998 FSIA amendments and thereby permit attachment of blocked and diplomatic property.

The ability to block assets represents one of the primary tools available to the United States to deter aggression and discourage or end hostile actions against U.S. citizens abroad. Our efforts to combat threats to our national security posed by terrorism-list countries such as Iraq, Libya, Cuba, and Sudan rely in significant part upon our ability to block the assets of those countries.

Blocking assets permits the United States to deprive those countries of resources that they could use to harm our interests, and to disrupt their ability to carry out international financial transactions. By placing the assets of such countries in the sole control of the President, blocking programs permit the President at any time to withhold substantial benefits from countries whose conduct we abhor, and to offer a potential incentive to such countries to reform their conduct. Our blocking programs thus provide the United States with a unique and flexible form of leverage over countries that engage in threatening conduct.

The Congress has recognized the need for the President to be able to regulate the assets of foreign states to meet threats to the U.S. national security, foreign policy, and economy. In both the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Congress has provided the President with statutory authority for regulating foreign assets. On the basis of this authority and foreign policy powers under the Constitution, Presidents have blocked property and interests in property of foreign states and foreign nationals that today amount to over $3.5 billion.

The Supreme Court has also recognized the importance of the President's blocking authority, stating that such blocking orders "permit the President to maintain the foreign assets at his disposal for use in negotiating the resolution of a declared national emergency. The frozen assets serve as a 'bargaining chip' to be used by the President when dealing with a hostile country." Dames & Moore v. Regan, 453 U.S. 654, 673 (1981).

The leverage provided by blocked assets has proved central to our ability to protect important U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. The most striking example is the Iran Hostage Crisis. The critical bargaining chip the United States had to bring to the table in an effort to resolve the crisis was the almost $10 billion in Iranian Government assets that the President had blocked shortly after the taking of our embassy. Because the return of the blocked assets was one of Iran's principal conditions for the release of the hostages, we would not have been able to secure the safe release of the hostages and to settle thousands of claims of U.S. nationals if those blocked assets had not been available. This settlement with Iran also resulted in the eventual payment of $7.5 billion in claims to or for the benefit of U.S. nationals against Iran.

In the case of Vietnam, the leverage provided by approximately $350 million in blocked assets, combined with Vietnam's inability to gain access to U.S. technology and trade, played an important role in persuading Vietnam's leadership to address important U.S. concerns in the normalization process. These concerns included assistance in accounting for POWs and MIAs from the Vietnam War, accepting responsibility for over $200 million in U.S. claims which had been adjudicated by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, and moderating Vietnamese actions in Cambodia.

In addition, blocked assets have helped us to secure equitable settlements of claims of U.S. nationals against such countries as Romania, Bulgaria, and Cambodia in the context of normalization of relations. These results could not have been achieved without effective blocking programs.

However, our blocking programs simply cannot function, and cannot serve to protect these important interests, if blocked assets are subject to attachment and execution by private parties, as the proposed legislation would permit. The need to deal with the increasing demands for information on assets, blocked and unblocked, of these terrorism-list governments as monetary judgments are awarded would seriously disrupt the operations of the Treasury Department in administering the blocking programs. These demands would greatly impair Treasury's investigative functions through the release of deliberative process and enforcement-related materials thereby divulging sensitive operational details and raising important issues of confidentiality with U.S. banks and others who provide information on assets. Additionally, the ability to use blocked assets as leverage against foreign states that threaten U.S. interests is essentially eliminated if the President is unable to preserve and control the disposition of such assets. Private rights of execution against blocked assets would permanently rob the President of the leverage blocking provides by depleting the pool of blocked assets.

In the Cuban and Iranian contexts, for example, the value of judgments (including both compensatory and punitive damages) won by the Brothers to the Rescue families exceeds the total known value of the blocked assets of Cuba in the United States, and the value of the judgment won by the Flatow family, or the former Beirut Hostages, exceeds the total known value of the blocked assets of the Government of Iran in the United States. Attachment of these blocked assets to satisfy private judgments in these and similar cases would leave no remaining assets of terrorism-list governments in the President's control, denying the President an important source of leverage and seriously weakening his hand in dealing with threats to our national security.

In addition, the prospect of future attachments by private parties would place a perpetual cloud over the President's ongoing control of all blocked assets programs. This would further undermine the President's ability to use such assets as leverage in negotiations, even where attachments had not yet occurred.

Put simply, permitting attachment of blocked assets would likely seriously undermine the use of our blocking programs as a key tool for combating threats against our national security and, in the Iranian context, would not even achieve the goal of full payment of the compensatory damages of all existing judgments against Iran.

The proposed legislation also could cause the United States to violate our obligations under international law to protect diplomatic and consular property, and would undermine the legal protections for such property on which we rely every day to protect the safety of our diplomatic and consular property and personnel abroad. Even though the current legislation arguably provides protection for a slightly broader range of diplomatic property than previous legislative proposals, it is still fundamentally flawed in its failure to permit the President to protect properties, including consular properties, some diplomatic bank accounts, diplomatic residences, and properties of foreign missions to international organizations, which international law obligates us to protect.

The United States' legal obligation to prevent the attachment of diplomatic and consular property could not be clearer. Protection of diplomatic property is required by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to which the United States and all of the states against which suits presently may be brought under the 1996 amendments to the FSIA are parties. Under Article 45 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations we are obligated to protect the premises of diplomatic missions, together with their real and personal property and archives, of countries with which we have severed diplomatic relations or are in armed conflict. This would include diplomatic residences owned by the foreign state.

Likewise, under Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the same protection is required for consular premises, property, and archives. Attachment of any of the types of property covered by the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations could place the United States in violation of our obligations under international law.

The proposed legislation would only permit the President to ensure the protection of a narrow portion of the property covered by the Vienna Conventions, and would thereby place the United States in violation of our legal obligations. In addition, the proposed legislation as drafted could cause us to breach our obligations to ensure the inviolability of missions to the United Nations, pursuant to the UN Headquarters Agreement and the General Convention on Privileges and Immunities.

Our national interest in the protection of diplomatic property could not be clearer or more important. [Underlined for emphasis] The United States owns over 3,000 buildings and other structures abroad that it uses as embassies, consulates, missions to international organizations, and residences for our diplomats. The total value of this property is between $12 and $15 billion.

Because we have more diplomatic property and personnel abroad than any other country, we are more at risk than any other country if the protections for diplomatic and consular property are eroded. [Underlined for emphasis] If we flout our obligations to protect the diplomatic and consular property of other countries, then we can expect other countries to target our diplomatic property when they disagree strongly with our policies or actions. Defending our national interests abroad at times makes the United States unpopular with some foreign governments. We should not give those states who wish the United States ill an easy means to strike at us by declaring diplomatic property fair game.

In the specific case of Iran, attachment of Iran's diplomatic and consular properties could also result in substantial U.S. taxpayer liability. Iran's diplomatic and consular properties in the United States are the subject of a claim brought by Iran against the United States before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. The Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal is an arbitration court located at The Hague in the Netherlands. It was established as part of the agreement between Iran and the United States that freed the U.S. hostages in Iran and resolved outstanding claims that were then pending between the United States and Iran. Pursuant to this agreement and awards of the Tribunal, Iran has paid $7.5 billion in compensation to or for the benefit of U.S. nationals. The Tribunal also has jurisdiction over certain claims between the two governments.

Although we are contesting Iran's claim vigorously, the Tribunal could find that the United States should have transferred Iran's diplomatic and consular property to it in 1981. If it does so and the properties are not available because they have been liquidated to pay private judgments, the U.S. taxpayer would have to bear the cost of compensating Iran for the value of the properties. Under the Algiers Accords, Tribunal awards against the governments are enforceable in the courts of any country, under the laws of that country.

We are also deeply concerned that the proposed legislation would frustrate equity among U.S. nationals with claims against terrorism-list states. It would create a winner-take-all race to the courthouse, arbitrarily permitting recovery for the first, or first few, claimants from limited available assets, leaving other similarly-situated claimants with no recovery at all. In fact, it would take away assets potentially available to them.

However, the Alejandre, Flatow, and Anderson cases do not represent the only claims of U.S. nationals against Cuba and Iran. No other claimants would benefit at all from the proposed legislation; indeed this legislation would seriously prejudice their interests.

In the case of Cuba, the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission ("FCSC") has certified 5,911 claims of U.S. nationals against the Government of Cuba, totaling approximately $6 billion with interest, dating back to the early 1960s. Contrary to statements made at the April 13 hearing, these include not just expropriation claims, but also the wrongful death claims of family members of two individuals whom the Cuban Government executed after summary trial for alleged crimes against the Cuban state. Other claims relate to the Castro Government's seizure of homes and businesses from U.S. nationals. These claimants have waited over 35 years without receiving compensation for their losses. This bill will not help them at all.

The same situation applies with respect to Iran. In addition to the Flatow and Anderson plaintiffs, who have judgments for compensatory and punitive damages totaling $589 million, former hostages who were held captive in Lebanon -- David Jacobsen, Joseph Cicippio, Frank Reed, and their families -- collectively have won a judgment against Iran totaling $65 million. Additional suits against Iran are currently pending in the Federal District courts.

Moreover, given the nature of these regimes, it remains possible that in spite of our substantial efforts to combat terrorism, foreign terrorist states will commit future acts in violation of the rights of U.S. nationals, which may give rise to claims against them. If such incidents occur, these claimants will also have an interest in being compensated.

Against this background, in which outstanding judgments for compensatory and substantial punitive damages far exceed available funds, the proposed legislation would permit the first claimants to reach the courthouse to deplete all the available assets of terrorism-list governments, leaving nothing for other similarly situated claimants to satisfy even compensatory damages they are awarded. Satisfaction of the judgments in the Alejandre, Flatow, and Anderson cases would come at the expense of all other claimants against Cuba and Iran, both past and future.

In sum, permitting the attachment of blocked and diplomatic properties in individual cases, as the proposed legislation would do, would undermine our ability to combat threats to our national security, violate our obligations under international law, place our diplomatic and consular properties and personnel abroad at risk, and lead to arbitrary inequities in the treatment of similarly-situated U.S. nationals with claims against foreign governments.

We are equally concerned about the provision of the proposed legislation that would permit garnishment of debts of the United States. Not only would this provision breach the long-established principle that the United States Government has sovereign immunity from garnishment actions, it would seriously undermine our Foreign Military Sales program, which is an important tool supporting U.S. national security policy and strategy, by creating an exception to the processes and principles under which the program operates that has not existed in the program's 40-year history.

By allowing plaintiffs to attempt to tap the FMS Trust Fund to satisfy their judgments, the entire FMS program would be jeopardized as foreign customers question whether funds they are required to pay under the FMS program might be at risk of diversion or attachment. H.R. 3485 would therefore inject a major element of uncertainty and unreliability into the FMS program.

Additionally, foreign governments make pre-payments into the FMS Trust Fund to ensure payment of U.S. suppliers for products and services provided to foreign governments in USG-approved sales of defense products and services. Under section 37 of the Arms Export Control Act, these funds are available solely for payments to U.S. suppliers, and for refunds to foreign purchasers in connection with such sales. If the FMS Trust Fund can be exposed to attachment through an act of Congress for purposes other than ensuring payment for arms sales, not only may foreign governments simply question the wisdom of engaging in such transactions with the United States, but payments to U.S. suppliers would be threatened.

The proposed legislation also will negatively affect our defense industrial base. If passed as currently written, not only will U.S. defense firms be uncertain about whether and when they will be paid, but our ability to maintain open production lines needed to support the U.S. military, which the FMS program greatly facilitates, also would be disrupted.

We have heard that the intent of the proposed legislation is to "make terrorist states pay." However, exposing the Iranian FMS Trust Fund account ("Iran FMS account") to attachment will not cause Iran to pay. Here too, at the end of the day, the U.S. taxpayer will bear this burden if this fund is tapped. The United States will have to pay Iran whatever amount in the Iran FMS account is held by the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal to be owed to Iran. The current balance of the Iran FMS account, which is approximately $400 million, is the subject of Iran's multi-billion dollar claim against the United States before the Tribunal, arising out of the Iran FMS program. Depleting Iran's FMS account through attachment by the plaintiffs in no way discharges any obligation to Iran the U.S. Government may ultimately be determined to have by the Tribunal. And if Iran prevails on its claims, it can seek to enforce its award against U.S. property anywhere in the world, since the awards of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal are enforceable in the courts of any country. Any Tribunal award that cannot be satisfied from the Iranian FMS account will have to be satisfied with U.S. government funds. Thus American taxpayers, rather than Iran, would actually pay under H.R. 3485. CBO's cost estimate for the bill has been confirmed that the legislation would cost the Treasury, and hence the taxpayer, $420 million, most of which is associated with the FMS Trust Fund.

This provision is also of particular concern because it would prevent the United States from meeting its obligations to make payments in satisfaction of awards the Tribunal renders against the United States. Instead, the proposed legislation would permit private parties to garnish the funds of the U.S. Government in order to collect such payments before they reach Iran. Even without this change in the law, there have been efforts in the Flatow case to garnish the payment of a $6 million Tribunal award in Iran's favor.

It is important to understand that allowing private litigants to garnish amounts we owe Iran under Tribunal awards would not discharge the U.S. Government's liability to Iran to pay such money. For example, if the efforts in the Flatow case had succeeded, the Flatow family would have received $6 million, but the United States still would have owed Iran $6 million under the unpaid award. And again because the awards of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal are enforceable in the courts of any country, Iran can seek to enforce awards against U.S. property in other countries if we do not pay them voluntarily. [Underlined for emphasis]

Permitting garnishment of the payment of such awards could thus result in the U.S. taxpayer paying twice: once when a private claimant garnishes the payment, and a second time upon Iran's successful enforcement of the still unsatisfied award against us abroad. Because the judgments against Iran received by these plaintiffs total in the hundreds of millions of dollars, permitting garnishment of debts owed by the United States to Iran as a means of satisfying these judgments could cost the U.S. taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars.

Finally, while we are vigorously contesting all of Iran's claims at the Tribunal, if we are unable to pay even the smallest awards against us, our position before the Tribunal in all other claims will clearly be undermined.

There are also significant problems with the provision of the proposed legislation that would change the way the FSIA defines a foreign state's agencies and majority -owned or controlled instrumentalities for terrorism-list countries where there is a terrorism-related judgment against it. This provision would overturn the Congress's own considered judgment when it passed the FSIA in 1976, as well as existing Supreme Court case law and basic principles of corporate and international law. In addition, it would prejudice the interests of U.S. citizens and corporations who invest abroad.

This provision would make corporations that are majority-owned or controlled by a terrorism-list foreign government liable for terrorism-related judgments awarded against that government. The Congress recognized the danger of this position when it passed the FSIA in 1976. The Conference Report to that bill observed that "[i]f U.S. law did not respect the separate juridical identities of different agencies or instrumentalities, it might encourage foreign jurisdictions to disregard the juridical divisions between different U.S. corporations or between a U.S. corporation and its independent subsidiary."

We are concerned that this proposal to disregard separate legal personality, although limited in the bill to terrorism-list states and their majority owned entities, could create the perception that the United States is unreliable as a location for banking or investment. Especially for companies with linkages to foreign governments, such a provision could be viewed as an expansion of U.S. economic sanctions. It could raise concerns about the United States as a safe financial center and about the likelihood of possible legal actions against their assets in the United States. This perception could undermine the competitive ability of U.S. financial firms to lead privatizations abroad and to attract banking business and investments to the United States.

In addition, if the United States were to "pierce the corporate veil" in this manner, there could well be similar actions in foreign countries. Foreign countries may enact similar changes to their law or foreign courts might disregard the separate status of private, U.S. owned companies in cases where a litigant had a judgment against the U.S. Government.

Compared to the billions of dollars the United States Government and private U.S. interests have invested abroad, the blocked assets of terrorism-list state entities, agencies, and instrumentalities located in the United States are small. In the case of Iran, we do not have a comprehensive picture of Iranian assets in the United States that might be affected by this proposed legislation. There is currently no blocking of Iranian assets in the United States (other than the residual of property blocked during the Hostage Crisis), and thus no obligation on the part of U.S. persons to report specific information on them.

U.S. citizens, corporations, the United States Government, and taxpayers have far more money invested abroad than those of any other country, and thus have more to lose if investment protections such as those provided by the presumption of separate status is eroded. [Underlined for emphasis] If we saddle the investors of other countries with the debts of foreign governments with which they are co-investors, as the proposed legislation would do, then we can expect U.S. investors and taxpayers to pay a considerably higher price when other governments follow our example.

Finally, disregarding separate legal personality as provided for in this proposal could possibly lead to substantial U.S. taxpayer liability for takings claims in U.S. courts and possibly before international fora.

We are grateful for this opportunity to address a very important subject involving the fight against terrorism, compensation for victims, and critical national interests. Unfortunately, however, the concerns raised here indicate that the 1996 amendment waiving sovereign immunity and creating a judicial cause of action for damages arising from acts of terrorism has not met its goals of providing compensation to victims and deterring terrorism. In fact, if blocked assets were exhausted to compensate the families, which would be the result of this bill, the leverage to affect the conduct of the terrorism-list states would be lost along with the blocked assets. We are not happy that these suits have not led to recovery for families who have brought cases under the 1996 amendment. A system that has to date left no recovery option other than one that conflicts with U.S. national interests and would result in substantial U.S. taxpayer liability is not an acceptable system.

We have been giving this a very hard look and have been working with several members of Congress to address this difficult problem. We are anxious to continue doing so. Together, we hope to formulate immediate and longer-term approaches that will address the concerns -- of compensation for terrorist acts and the U.S. national interests and international obligations -- that we all share in a much more satisfactory way. Most importantly, we believe that, for a workable and effective solution, we need a careful and deliberative review of the issues, informed by our experience since the 1996 amendment.

As mentioned earlier, we suggested last year that the Administration and Congress commit to a joint commission to review all aspects of the problem, and to recommend to the President and the Congress proposals to find ways to help these families receive compensation, in a way consistent with our overall national interests and international obligations. We believe that this is the best way to deal with these issues and that it therefore merits further consideration. We believe that such a commission should be one of stature and with the right expertise to confront all the hard issues we have discussed today -- including the lack of effective remedies in these cases because of sanctions against terrorism-list countries under U.S. law, which are absolutely necessary to maintain.

A fundamental principle for this joint commission -- by definition -- would be the need to inventory outstanding claims and develop an effective and fair mechanism for compensation of victims of terrorism. The commission should be encouraged to think broadly, including consideration of avenues other than the judicial one created by the 1996 amendment.

We hope discussions on the Commission and the broader issue of compensation for victims of terrorism will yield a solution that best addresses all parties' respective interests. Again, we are committed to working together with you, members of this Subcommittee, and others to find non-legislative and legislative means to achieve our shared goal of fair and just compensation for victims of terrorism.