STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY, RANKING MEMBER, SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY OVERSIGHT HEARING

June 27, 2000

Attorney General Reno, thank you for your cooperation and your agreement to be here today. This session will more resemble an inquisition than an oversight hearing, but I expect that you are steeled for that eventuality. Before our Republican members begin the inquisition, I wanted to commend you for making a real difference in America, especially because this may be the last time you appear before this committee in your role as Attorney General. You have not only helped stop the steady increases in the crime rate but have worked aggressively with our Federal, State and local law enforcement officers to keep the violent and property crime rates in this country going down.

Under your leadership, and the programs established by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the nation's serious crime rate has declined for eight straight years. Murder rates have fallen to their lowest levels in three decades. Since 1994, violent crimes by juveniles and the juvenile arrest rates for serious crimes have also declined. According to the FBI's latest crime statistics, released on May 7, 2000, in just the last year, there has been a seven percent decline in reported serious violent and property crime from 1998 totals. Both murder and robbery registered eight percent drops, while forcible rape and aggravated assault figures each declined by seven percent from 1998. All Americans owe you an enormous thanks for a job well done.

Yet you have not simply rested on your laurels. I, for one, appreciate your tireless efforts to press for additional change to keep our schools and streets safe. This Congress has left much unfinished business that deserves and requires our attention.

Juvenile Justice Conference. Last year when you joined us for the oversight hearing of the Department we were all grieving for victims of school violence in Columbine. With your help, the Senate moved swiftly to pass the Hatch-Leahy juvenile crime bill with a strong bipartisan 73-vote majority, a bill that included a number of common sense measures on gun safety and school safety. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, your efforts and those of the President, the Republican majority will not convene the conference on that legislation to send a final bill to the President that can make a difference in the lives of Americans. If the roles were reversed and you were holding an oversight hearing on our performance, you certainly would have much to criticize.

Hate Crimes. Last year, you joined us just as the Committee was postponing hearings on hate crimes. Unfortunately, this committee never considered that legislation. Still, last Tuesday a strong bipartisan majority of the Senate, indeed a 57-vote majority that included a bipartisan majority from the members of this committee, adopted the Kennedy-Smith amendment incorporating the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act of 2000 into legislation before the Senate. Senate adoption of this hate crimes legislation is a significant step forward. We thank you for your support of that important effort. Bulletproof Vest Partnership Grant Act. I hope the Republican zeal for investigating, instead of legislating, does not further delay the committee's consideration of the bipartisan Bulletproof Vest Partnership Grant Act of 2000, which would reauthorize an double the funding for this highly successful Department of Justice grant program to provide our nation's law enforcement officers with life-saving body armor. The Department of Justice has already provided more than 90,000 bulletproof vests to law enforcement officers across the country under the 1998 law sponsored by Senator Campbell and me. I appreciate the Attorney General's support for the original Campbell-Leahy law and our reauthorizaton legislation.

Innocence Protection Act. I thank you for your recent comments on the importance of ensuring competent counsel for those charged in cases that can lead to the imposition of the death penalty. I agree. That is why perhaps the most important provisions of the Leahy-Smith-LaHood-Delahunt Innocence Protection Act are those seeking to assist the States in establishing standards for competent counsel and helping provide the resources needed to ensure a fair trial.

Domestic Violence. I also commend you for helping to stem the tide of domestic violence and for moving aggressively to help the victims of this abuse and to improve rights and services for crime victims in general. We are hopeful this week that the committee, at long last, will report the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. I would also like to see us report additional crime victims legislation without delay. Justice Department Nominations. I regret that the majority of this Committee and the Senate have stalled the many nominations for senior positions at the Justice Department, within law enforcement, and for the federal courts. That Dan Marcus, Randy Moss, David Ogden, and Bill Lann Lee have not been confirmed as the Associate Attorney General, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division is regrettable and inexcusable.

Independent Counsel Appointments. I wanted to make a few pertinent observations about your determinations not to call for the appointment of an independent counsel in connection with campaign finance but to pursue those matters through a Justice Department Task Force that has obtained more than 20 convictions and pleas – more in fact than were obtained by Kenneth Starr with all the FBI agents and more than $50 million at his disposal over a period of 5 years.

The bottom line on your independent counsel decisions in 1998 and 1999 is that after 82 days of hearings, and investigation after investigation before a series of Senate and House Committees and with leaks and critics and all those out to undermine your authority, no one has been able to question your integrity and your independence in your decision-making. Not FBI Director Freeh, not Charles LaBella, not even Senator Specter has said that he believes that you sacrificed your integrity and your independent judgment to some corrupt influence. For that matter I should also note that Senator Specter has not said that the Vice President has done anything wrong. I understand that the Attorney General today will be asked about her decisions to appoint and not to appoint independent counsels. One focus, I have been told, will be on informal comments purportedly made in 1996 by Mr. Radek, the Chief of the Public Integrity Section, to FBI officials relating to whether he felt "pressure" because the Attorney General had not yet been reappointed to a second term. Mr. Radek, who met frequently with these officials, does not remember any conversation on this topic and acknowledges that he may have mentioned feeling pressure to do a good job. Mr. Radek has denied the claims of the FBI that the pressure he felt was in any way related to the Attorney General's job status. I understand that one focus of this hearing will be to explore this dispute further and I simply do not understand how any of this, if it happened at all, bears on this Attorney General's independent counsel decisions.

All of those who have appeared before this committee have repeatedly attested to the integrity of Attorney General Janet Reno and have repeatedly assured all of us that all decisions made by her were on the basis of her honest assessment of the facts and not the result of politics. Everyone, including those people who disagreed with her on some of the independent counsel decisions, has told us this. Let me remind everyone of what we have heard:

Charles LaBella: In his May 3, 1998, press release, Mr. LaBella said that "At the end of the process, I was completely comfortable with [the Attorney General's] decision not to seek an independent counsel and with the process by which she reached that decision." In August 1998, he told the House Government Reform Committee that the integrity and the independence of the Attorney General were "beyond reproach."

Just this last May, Mr. LaBella told the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts as part of this investigation that his perception was that the Attorney General "made no decisions to protect anyone."

FBI Director Louis Freeh: In August 1998, Director Freeh told the House Government Reform Committee: "I do not believe for one moment that any of her decisions, but particularly her decisions in this matter, have been motivated by anything other than the facts and the law which she is obligated to follow." Robert Litt: Just last week, in his statement to the Subcommittee, Robert Litt said: "The Department's deliberations in this matter have now been made public. The thousands of pages of memoranda analyzing this issue which have been released to the public make it abundantly clear that all of the Attorney General's decisions were made solely on the merits, after full – indeed exhaustive – consideration of the factual and legal issues involved and without any political influence at all."

Larry Parkinson: In response to whether he had any doubt about Attorney General Reno's integrity, FBI General Counsel Larry Parkinson responded: "No, I do not," at the May 24, 2000 Subcommittee hearing on this issue.

The endless oversight on the topic of independent counsels has confirmed over and over again that the process worked. Some may disagree with some of the ultimate decisions, but that should not be the focus of oversight. Rather, the object of oversight should be to make sure that the process worked; that decisions were made on the basis of facts; and that judgments were not influenced by politics. We know that the process worked and that the Attorney General's decisions were made in good faith, relying on good prosecutorial judgment and after full consideration of all the facts as well as of the conflicting opinions of many different advisors.

In the guise of "oversight," this committee has inappropriately politicized ongoing investigations. There should be no mistake about it: I believe that oversight by the committee can be of great importance. That oversight must be conducted in a careful and considered manner. I have expressed my concerns about this hydra-headed investigation on a number of occasions. I noted my concern when some on the committee precipitously sent staff to Texas, prompting Special Counsel Danforth to complain about this committee's interference with his investigation into what happened at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

I do not believe that line attorneys and line agents should be called to testify in oversight matters unless there are some sort of exceptional circumstances – like internal corruption. I worry about the long-term effects that some of the actions taken in these investigations may have. This Senate Judiciary Committee now issues subpoenas on a regular basis to hard-working and dedicated government employees. This committee has subpoenaed past and present line attorneys to talk about long-ago disagreements with supervisors – even though everyone recognizes that line attorneys are not the ultimate decision-makers. Members of the committee have launched personalized attacks on the credentials, integrity, capability and credibility of experienced and dedicated prosecutors. I am extremely concerned that these tactics have harmed individuals, the Justice Department as an institution, and as a result the American people.

The committee has already heard from Wen Ho Lee's defense lawyers and we are now being drawn into that ongoing prosecution. I will not be surprised if other defense counsel, who have been monitoring Senator Specter's hearings, use those hearings as a basis for defense motions to undercut other prosecutions by the Campaign Finance Task Force of the Department of Justice. These are other risks of delving prematurely into ongoing criminal matters.

I had been warning over the last several months that this committee was crossing lines that it should not cross when it made subpoenaing of line attorneys and agents its practice and began interfering in ongoing criminal investigations. Last week and this represent the culmination of those errors as we now have a circumstance in which leaks and innuendo about an ongoing matter have led you to being called before this committee to be quizzed incessantly over open investigative matters that you cannot appropriately discuss.

I know that you will resist political pressure from any source, even this Committee, when it comes to your exercise of your prosecutorial judgment. You and I both recall that this Republican Senate has been trying to pressure you to appoint a special counsel since 1997. This Republican Senate has been telling you how to do your job and exercise your judgment, although it has not done a very good job of fulfilling its own legislative responsibilities to the American people. Sometimes I have wondered out loud whether it is because of their lack of an effective legislative agenda that this Republican Senate has chosen to investigate rather than legislate.

I had thought that I had seen it all. That is, until last week, when a Member of this Committee held a press conference to discuss rumors about confidential matters that may or may not actually be occurring at the Department of Justice. This Member stated on national television that his information did not come by way of "leaks" and that it had properly been disclosed to him in the course of the "official" oversight investigation. My request for a bipartisan briefing on this new supposedly "official" and non-leaked information has been summarily brushed aside. That is not how we operated when we conducted a successful bipartisan investigation into the events at Ruby Ridge. The partisan and political nature of these proceedings could not be more transparent.

The American public should know of the political influence this Republican investigation is attempting to assert on PENDING matters at the Justice Department because it is shocking. Consider some of the things that have already occurred:

-- a Republican member of this Committee questioned a sitting federal judge about a case (the Peter Lee case) in which the defendant has a motion to terminate his probation — the interrogation by this Republican Member could well be viewed as an improper attempt to influence the judge's upcoming decision on this motion;

– Republican Members of this Committee have publicly urged prosecutors to take certain positions at the upcoming sentencing of a defendant Maria Hsia in one of the pending campaign finance cases. United States Senators should not be pressuring prosecutors to take certain positions – we rely on prosecutors to exercise their considerable judgment in these matters. Of course, in this instance, since attorneys to both parties to that case – the Justice Department and Ms. Hsia - were present at that hearing, I am confident that each will take whatever steps necessary to protect the rights of both parties;

– Republican Members insisted on conducting "oversight" of the Wen Ho Lee matter even though they well knew an investigation was pending. Sure enough, this Committee has now received formal requests from Mr. Lee's defense attorney for the Republican report on the matter and for other documents generated during the course of this oversight. And this is just the beginning. It would not surprise me if we received more requests for information from Lee's attorney as that case proceeds;

– Republican staffers were sent to Waco to interview witnesses even before Senator Danforth had an opportunity to do so. This resulted in angry letters from Senator Danforth warning this Committee not to interfere in his investigation.

We have seen it over and over again – attempts to influence pending matters because of politics. Republicans insinuate that the Attorney General's decisions on campaign finance matters were somehow influenced by politics – yet everyone, even those who disagreed, have repeatedly and forcefully attested to her independence, her integrity and her dedication to relying on the facts and the law and nothing else. It is Republican Senators, not Attorney General Reno, who are trying to make this political and insist on behaving as partisans. It was not too long ago that Kenneth Starr and the House Republicans foisted a partisan, expensive and debilitating impeachment on the Senate and the country. The repeated misuse of the investigative and hearing apparatus of congressional Committees for political campaigning by other means is a troubling legacy of the Republican-led Congress that history will not forgive. It is all the more troubling when the political investigative and hearing machinery are injected into our justice system. It seems that some are intent on retreading that road for partisan political gain and have already forgotten the lessons of the last several years.