Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.),
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,
On Committee Consideration Of
Authorization
To Subpoena Office Of Legal Counsel Documents
September 25, 2008
The first item on our agenda remains the authorization for subpoenas
relating to the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of
Justice. As I noted last week, and have been saying for the better
part of eight years, this Office's work has largely been kept secret
from this oversight Committee, despite our efforts.
For the last eight years, the Bush-Cheney administration has
been having the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) write secret laws by
creating interpretations of the laws Congress has passed.
Keeping binding interpretations of such secret law from
Congress is wrong.
During this administration, OLC has been misused to provide legal
justifications for misguided policies. That advice has been
deeply flawed, sloppy, and flat out wrong – but it has been
permitted to happen because secrecy has prevented our oversight.
Unjustified secrecy continues to prevent the review by this
Committee that would provide a check and some control on how the
administration is interpreting the law that is Congress’s
constitutional responsibility to write. That obsessive secrecy even
prevents us from knowing the subject matter on which OLC has
written opinions.
There is no justification for keeping OLC legal interpretations secret
from this Committee, let alone the index I have long sought.
I seek this authorization after years of being rebuffed and
slow-rolled in our attempts to find out how this administration has
interpreted and applied the laws written by Congress.
I regret that Republican members have not rallied around our
oversight effort, but that is their choice.
Senator Kyl delayed action for the last week.
I can report that despite my willingness to meet, the
President’s counsel has shown no interest in meeting or resolving
this matter. In fact, in
his most recent letter response to me he bucked the issue back to
the Department of Justice – even though we all know it is the White
House that is calling the shots.
Their saying that they will “get back to us” after five years
of stonewalling, and as the sun sets on this administration is
hardly a reason to delay further.
I understand that Senator Specter is more
optimistic than I. He
also thought that the White House would eventually agree to
producing the witnesses and information we requested in connection
with our investigation into the U.S. attorney firing scandal and he
worked hard to make that happen.
Regrettably, that did not happen either and the White House
and Karl Rove remain in contempt.
After five years of being ignored with respect to the abuses at OLC, I
believe it is time for this Committee to act and authorize subpoenas
so that we can better perform our important oversight and
legislative responsibilities.
I ask for the Committee’s support and favorable action on the
subpoena authorization without further delay.
I said last week that when we make progress on the authorization, I
believe that we will be able to proceed through the rest of the
agenda fairly quickly. I still believe that to be the case.
But cooperation around here has become a one-way street, and
I have been granting request after request of the Committee’s
Republican members. A
bit of cooperation from them at this, our last meeting, will be
appreciated.
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