Improving America's Security Act of 2007

IMPROVING AMERICA'S SECURITY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - February 28, 2007)

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to follow up on the comments of my friend from California, who has legislation I am proud to cosponsor on the general issue of the fired U.S. attorneys.

Mr. President, it is said that ``where there is smoke there is fire.' As we look at the case of the U.S. attorneys, that is more and more likely to be true.

Today, according to the McClatchy Newspapers, one of the fired U.S. attorneys from New Mexico said that ``two Members of Congress separately called in mid-October to inquire about the timing of an ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order to benefit the Republicans.'

That is a quote in an article by Marisa Taylor of the McClatchy Newspapers. Frankly, it comes as no surprise to me. That is because David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney, told my staff the same thing the day before. He asked, in fact, that he be brought to Washington--was willing, rather, to be brought to Washington, under the power of subpoena, to tell his story. We have inquired of the fired U.S. attorneys. The overwhelming majority of them want to tell more but feel honor-bound not to do it, except if they were brought under the power of subpoena to Washington.

So I join certainly in the request of my colleague from California and others. I have already spoken to Senator Leahy, and we are examining how that can be accomplished. Senator Leahy is very mindful of the fact that the Judiciary Committee doesn't issue subpoenas willy-nilly. But given the fact that some of the U.S. attorneys expressed a desire to testify, and others said they would be willing to testify, and now with these new revelations, the fear many of us had that these U.S. attorneys were summarily fired not for no reason and not for a good reason but for a bad reason is coming closer to reality.

Mr. President, we must get to the bottom of this issue. The U.S. attorney is the lead enforcer of the law in his or her jurisdiction. Fortunately, for decades, the U.S. attorneys, almost without exception, have been insulated from the political process, even though they are chosen in part by the political process. So when six were fired in one evening, and when it later became clear in hearings I held that at least one, by the admission of the Deputy Attorney General, was fired for no reason, and a call from the White House to suggest a replacement who was someone with very little legal experience but someone who had worked for both Karl Rove and the RNC, I believe it was, you can imagine the concern that not only the Senator from California and I had but the concern throughout the country in law enforcement--nonpolitical, simply a desire to protect the integrity of the U.S. attorneys. So we must do two things now.

These new revelations are extremely troubling. They would show politics at its worst--the long hand of the Justice Department reaching out to fire U.S. attorneys who would not do what was politically asked. At least that is a very real suspicion. So we must get to the bottom of this. The only way to do that is to call before us the fired U.S. attorneys and hear their side of the story.

I remind my colleagues that we did have a briefing--the Senator from California was there, the Senator from Rhode Island was there--and then were shown the evaluation reports, the EARS reports, and almost to a person the fired U.S. attorneys received very good evaluations from their peers and from everybody else. If you read those evaluations, you would say: Oh, they will keep that person in office for as long as he or she wants to stay. But instead, they were fired.

In private conversations my staff has had with them, they have grave suspicions as to why--some of them more than grave suspicions. Today, Mr. Iglesias said publicly what he told my staff privately, that he has a very troubling view that he may well have been fired because he refused to bend his U.S. attorney's office to politics of the worst sort.

So there are two imperatives here. One, as I said, is to get to the bottom of this and get to the bottom of it quickly. The second is to pass legislation that restores the appointment of U.S. attorneys away or at least removes it somewhat from the political realm because when the Senate must confirm or when an independent judge must temporarily appoint, there is a check, there is a balance that was removed, unbeknownst to almost all of us, in the PATRIOT Act. The minute that passed, people were surprised and wondered: Why did it happen? The explanation from the administration didn't quite ring true. Then, on the evening of December 7, when six U.S. attorneys were called at once and fired and not given any reason, suspicions went further. The investigations my subcommittee has had, with the help of our chairman, the Senator from Vermont, and the Senator from California, who has taken a keen interest in this issue and is lead sponsor of the legislation, have gotten worse every day.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, the expression goes: Where there is smoke, there is fire. Every day, not only is there more smoke in this investigation of the firing of the U.S. attorneys, but there seems to be, unfortunately, a real fire. We will not rest until we get to the bottom of this matter, to see what happened, to see if possibly any rules, regulations, or even laws were broken. By bringing it to light, it will importune this body, the other body, and the White House to pass legislation so that it cannot happen again.

Mr. President, in sum, this is serious stuff. When U.S. attorneys are fired for political reasons, fired to stand in the way of justice rather than promote justice, it puts a dagger into the heart of the faith Americans have in their Government and in their system of justice. That faith, fortunately, is long and deep, but if we don't get to the bottom of this, if we don't change the law to make sure it doesn't happen again, we will be weakening permanently our system of justice and the faith the public has in it.

We will move forward in whatever way we can. Hopefully, we will find it is possible to subpoena these attorneys and subpoena them quickly and then take the necessary action in these cases and prevent future cases from occurring, which justice and the faith the people have in the American system demand.

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