Statement Of Sen.
Patrick Leahy, Chairman,
Senate Judiciary Committee,
Hearing On Oversight Of The Department Of Justice
July 24, 2007
Three months ago, when Attorney
General Gonzales last appeared before this Committee, I said that
the Department of Justice was experiencing a crisis of leadership
perhaps unrivaled during its history. Unfortunately, that crisis
has not abated. Until there is independence, transparency and
accountability, it will continue. The Attorney General has lost the
confidence of the Congress and the American people. Through
oversight we hope to restore balance and accountability to the
Executive Branch. The Department of Justice must be restored to be
worthy of its name. It should not be reduced to another political
arm of the White House. The trust and confidence of the American
people in federal law enforcement must be restored.
With the Department shrouded in
scandal, the Deputy Attorney General has announced his resignation.
The nominee to become Associate Attorney General requested that his
nomination be withdrawn rather than testify under oath at a
confirmation hearing. The Attorney General’s chief of staff, the
Deputy Attorney General’s chief of staff, the Department’s White
House liaison and the White House Political Director have all
resigned, as have others. I would joke that the last one out the
door should turn out the lights, but the Department of Justice is
too important for that -- we need to shine more light there, not
less.
The investigation into the firing for
partisan purposes of United States Attorneys, who had been appointed
by this President, along with an ever-growing series of
controversies and scandals have revealed an Administration driven by
a vision of an all-powerful Executive over our constitutional system
of checks and balances, that values loyalty over judgment, secrecy
over openness, and ideology over competence.
The accumulated and essentially
uncontroverted evidence is that political considerations factored
into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States
Attorneys last year. Testimony and documents show that the list was
compiled based on input from the highest political ranks in the
White House, that senior officials were apparently focused on the
political impact of federal prosecutions, on whether federal
prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and
corruption cases, and that the reasons given for these firings were
contrived as part of a cover up.
What the White House stonewalling is
preventing is conclusive evidence of who made the decisions to fire
these federal prosecutors. We know from the testimony that it was
not the President. Everyone who has testified has said that he was
not involved. None of the senior officials at the Department of
Justice could testify how people were added to the list or the real
reasons that people were included among the federal prosecutors to
be replaced. Indeed, the evidence we have been able to collect
points to Karl Rove and the political operatives at the White
House. The stonewalling by the White House raises the question:
What is it that the White House is so desperate to hide?
The White House has asserted blanket
claims of executive privilege, despite officials’ contentions that
the President was not involved. They refuse to provide a factual
basis for their blanket claims, have instructed former White House
officials not to testify about what they know, and then instructed
Harriet Miers to refuse even to appear as required by a House
Judiciary Committee subpoena. Now, anonymous officials are claiming
that the statutory mechanism to test White House assertions of
Executive privilege no longer governs. In essence this White House
asserts that its claim of privilege is the final word, that Congress
may not review it, and that no court can review it. Here, again,
this White House claims to be above the law.
My oath, unlike those who have
apparently sworn their allegiance to this President, is to the
United States Constitution. I believe in checks and balances and in
the rule of law.
Despite the stonewalling and
obstruction, we have learned that Todd Graves, U.S. Attorney in the
Western District of Missouri was fired after he expressed
reservations about a lawsuit that would have stripped many
African-American voters from the rolls in Missouri. When the
Attorney General replaced Mr. Graves with Bradley Schlozman, the
person pushing the lawsuit, that case was filed and ultimately
thrown out of court. Once in place in Missouri though, Mr. Schlozman
also brought indictments on the eve of a closely contested election,
despite the Justice Department policy not to do so. This is what
happens when a responsible prosecutor is replaced by a “loyal Bushie”
for partisan, political purposes.
Mr. Schlozman also bragged about
hiring ideological soulmates. Monica Goodling likewise admitted
“crossing the line” when she used a political litmus test for career
prosecutors and immigration judges. Rather than keep federal law
enforcement above politics, this Administration is more intent on
placing its actions above the law.
The Attorney General admitted recently
in a video for Justice employees that injecting politics into the
Department’s hiring is unacceptable. But is he committed to
corrective action and routing out the partisanship in federal law
enforcement? His lack of independence and tendency to act as if he
were the President’s lawyer rather than the Attorney General of the
United States makes that doubtful. From the infamous torture memo,
to Mr. Gonzales’ attempt to prevail on a hospitalized Attorney
General Ashcroft to certify an illegal eavesdropping program, to the
recent opinion seeking to justify Harriet Miers’ contemptuous
refusal to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice
Department has been reduced to the role of enabler for this
Administration. What we need instead is genuine accountability and
real independence.
We learned earlier this year of
systematic misuse and abuse of National Security Letters, a powerful
tool for the Government to obtain personal information without the
approval of a court or prosecutor. The Attorney General has said he
had no inkling of these or other problems with vastly expanded
investigative powers. Now we know otherwise. Recent documents
obtained through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and reported in
The Washington Post
indicate that the Attorney General was receiving reports in 2005 and
2006 of violations in connection with the PATRIOT Act and abuses of
National Security Letters. Yet, when the Attorney General testified
under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in
April 2005, he said that “[t]he track record established over the
past three years has demonstrated the effectiveness of the
safeguards of civil liberties put in place when the Act was
passed.” Earlier this month, in responses to written questions I
sent to the Attorney General about when he first learned of problems
with National Security Letters, he once again failed to mention
these reports of problems.
Only with the openness and honesty
that brings true accountability will the Department begin to move
forward and correct the problems of the last few years. Instead, we
have leadership at the Department of Justice whose expressions of
concern and admissions that mistakes were made only follow public
revelations and amount to regrets that their excesses were
uncovered.
In the wake of growing reports of
abuses of National Security Letters, the Attorney General announced
a new internal program. This supposed self-examination, with no
involvement by the courts, no report to Congress, and no other
outside check, essentially translates to “trust us.” With a history
of civil liberties abuses and cover-ups, this Administration has
squandered our trust. Earlier internal reviews, like the
Intelligence Oversight Board and the Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board have been ineffective and inactive, failing to take
action on the violations reported to them. Only with a real check
from outside of the Executive branch can we have any confidence that
abuses will be curbed and balance restored.
A tragic dimension of the ongoing
crisis of leadership at the Justice Department is the undermining of
good people and the crucial work that it does. Thousands of honest,
hard-working prosecutors, agents, and other civil servants labor
every day to detect and prevent crime, uncover corruption, promote
equality and justice, and keep us safe from terrorism. Sadly,
prosecutions will now be questioned as politically-motivated and
evidence will be suspected of having been obtained in violation of
laws and civil liberties. Once the government shows a disregard for
the independence of the justice system and the rule of law, it is
very hard to restore the people’s faith. This Committee will do its
best to try to restore independence,
accountability, and commitment to the rule of law to the operations
of the Justice Department.
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Questions, Round One
Questions, Round Two
Closing Remarks
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