19 



I would be glad to work with your committee, Mr. de la Garza, 

 and anybody else in trying to make sure that we can both help our 

 farmers as well as help the cause of peace and reduce the prospects 

 of nuclear proliferation. 



I thank you very much for allowing me to testify. 



[The prepared statement of Mr. Glickman appears at the conclu- 

 sion of the hearing.] 



Mr. Penny. Thank you, Mr. Glickman. You mentioned in your 

 testimony not only food sales, but food assistance. In what form 

 would you suggest that we offer the food assistance? Would that be 

 tied to the same conditionality as the credit sales? 



Mr. Glickman. Well, it could be. This bill explicitly offers the 

 conditionality for debt write-down. That's where their most press- 

 ing need is right now in order to allow them to then begin either 

 to buy more food and more equipment or whatever else they would 

 need. You would basically use the authority under existing statutes 

 giving the Commodity Credit Corporation the authority to provide 

 either food sales or technical assistance under the Freedom Sup- 

 port Act. I think the terms of existing legislative authority are 

 probably there to do just about anything that we want to do. 



I think what we don't want to do is to give them cash. That 

 would be adamantly opposed by the American people. It wouldn't 

 do them any good right now. I think what we do want to do is to 

 try to provide them, in terms of food assistance, both bulk commod- 

 ities to the extent that they need it, but more technical assistance 

 and help in logistics. 



Mr. Penny. It's been suggested that we could use food assistance 

 efforts in a fashion that would allow those goods to be monetized 

 in the local market, with those dollars, the proceeds, then going to- 

 ward these development assistance programs, technical assistance, 

 establishment of credit unions of some sort. Have you given any 

 thought to that sort of initiative? 



Mr. Glickman. That parallels, to some extent, what we have 

 done in the Third World, particularly in Latin America. We've al- 

 lowed some of these sales of commodities transferred to be mone- 

 tized to create some sort of networking economy there. Obviously, 

 they would also need technical assistance to help them set up the 

 institutions as well. 



Mr. Penny. In looking at our policy to date, what's your general 

 sense? I know you used former Secretary Baker's article in News- 

 week as a preface to your remarks, but in looking back over the 

 last couple of years, do you have a sense that the administration 

 was as focused in their policies toward Russia as Mr. Baker now 

 seems to be? 



Mr. Glickman. Probably not, but in all fairness, we were coming 

 out of a 50-year fixation of the Soviet threat as the evil empire, and 

 I think culturally it was difficult to modify our mindset of what 

 was going on there. Again, in my role on the Intelligence Commit- 

 tee, there has been some criticism that the information wasn't as 

 current and realistic and we weren't looking for the changes that 

 were happening there, but I suspect as much as anj^hing else we 

 thought the status quo would go on forever, and we were amazed 

 at the rapidity of change that happened over there. I mean, I think 



