Providing for Consideration of H.R. 734 Expressing the Sense of the House Regarding Witholding of Information Relating to Corruption in Iraq
Floor Speech
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H. RES. 734 EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF THE HOUSE REGARDING WITHHOLDING OF INFORMATION RELATING TO CORRUPTION IN IRAQ -- (House of Representatives - October 16, 2007)
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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, House Resolution 741 provides for the consideration of House Resolution 734, expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the withholding of information relating to rampant corruption in Iraq, corruption that is being used with taxpayer money from our country. The rule provides for 1 hour of general debate controlled by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Resolution 734 expresses the explicit sense of the House that the State Department, our State Department, has abused its classification authority by withholding from Congress and the American people information about the extent of corruption in the Maliki government. The resolution further condemns the State Department for retroactively classifying documents that had been widely distributed previously as unclassified and by directing State Department employees not to answer questions in an open forum.
Madam Speaker, we are in the fifth year of this war. We have lost over 3,700 of our best young men and women. By the time this war is over, many experts anticipate that the cost to the taxpayers will exceed $1 trillion. General Ricardo Sanchez, a retired commander, last week described the situation in Iraq as an absolute nightmare with no end in sight.
This war started on the basis of bogus information: the threat of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Hard questions that should have been asked weren't asked. The war continued for years, until November of 2006, with a Congress that was a rubber stamp for whatever it was that the executive agencies wanted. Those days are over.
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been pursuing relentlessly article I powers of this Congress to accept its responsibility on behalf of the citizens of this country to ask questions and get answers; yet the State Department is refusing to allow relevant information to be disseminated to the members of that committee.
Madam Speaker, let me go through the history. On October 4, 2007, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing regarding the extent of corruption within the Iraqi Government. David Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States, and Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, testified that entrenched corruption in the Iraqi Government is actually fueling the insurgency, undermining the chances of political reconciliation, which, incidentally, was the whole point of the surge strategy of General Petraeus, and that this corruption is, in fact, endangering our troops.
The former Commissioner of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, testified that his own investigation documented at least $18 billion in money stolen by corrupt officials. He stated that Prime Minister Maliki personally intervened to prevent the investigation from continuing.
Each witness that day provided evidence suggesting that corruption within the Iraqi Government was tantamount to a second insurgency. Specifically, David Walker testified that widespread corruption undermines efforts to develop the government's capacity by robbing it of needed resources, some of which are used to fund the insurgency itself. Similarly, Mr. Bowen testified that corruption in Iraq stymies the construction and maintenance of Iraq's infrastructure, deprives people of goods and services, reduces confidence in public institutions, and publicly aids insurgent groups reportedly funded by graft from oil smuggling or embezzlement.
Judge al-Radhi testified that corruption in Iraq today is rampant across the government, costing tens of billions of dollars, and has infected virtually every agency and ministry, including some of the most powerful in Iraq. He further stated that the Ministry of Oil is effectively financing terrorism.
Madam Speaker, after hearing this testimony, which can only be described as shocking, the Oversight Committee heard from Ambassador Lawrence Butler, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Members of the committee asked the obvious questions, very simple, very straightforward: A, whether the Government of Iraq currently has the political will or the capability to root out corruption within its government; B, whether the Maliki government is working hard to improve the corruption situation so that he can unite his country; C, whether Prime Minister Maliki obstructed any anticorruption investigations in Iraq to protect his political allies. Simple questions; no answers.
Ambassador Butler refused to answer any of these questions at the hearing because on September 25, 2007, 7 business days before this hearing, the State Department instructed officials not to answer questions in open setting that called for, basically, answers. In the jargon of the State Department, you couldn't answer a question that called for ``broad statements or assessments which judge or characterize the quality of Iraqi governance or the ability or determination of the Iraqi Government to deal with corruption, including allegations that investigations were thwarted or stifled for political reasons.''
It is astonishing; $1 trillion, over 3,700 lives, a war that has no end in sight, that was based on misinformation. Now, with billions of dollars gone missing, no one is disputing this is as a result of corruption, not just bad decisions. The State Department is directing the people who have answers to deny answers to Congress and to the American people.
Madam Speaker, the thrust of this resolution is very simple. It is whether Congress has the right and the will to demand that it get answers on behalf of the American people about this most catastrophic foreign policy blunder.
In addition to preventing officials from answering questions about the corruption in Iraq, the State Department retroactively classified two reports written by the Office of Accountability and Transparency, one of the two primary entities established by the State Department to lead U.S. anticorruption efforts. So we turned the Office of Transparency into the ``Office of Obscurity.''
These reports were initially marked ``sensitive but unclassified,'' and they suddenly, by fiat of the State Department, became ``confidential.'' The State Department also retroactively classified portions of a report that was released and distributed at that October 4 hearing by Comptroller Walker. It addressed the commitment of the Iraqi Government to enforce anticorruption laws.
As a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, I and my colleagues witnessed firsthand the State Department's absolute, adamant, willful, and really intransigent refusal to testify about Iraqi corruption. That is why the committee believes so strongly in the support of this resolution.
The resolution states in very simple and plain language what every American, I think, believes they are entitled to. One, it is essential that Congress and the people of the United States know the extent of corruption in Iraq. Two, it was wrong, not right, but wrong, to reclassify documents that are embarrassing but do not meet the criteria for classification. Three, it is an abuse of the classification process to withhold from the American people broad assessments of the extent of corruption within the Iraqi Government. Four, the directive issued by the State Department on September 25, 2007, prohibiting its officials from discussing the state of Iraqi corruption should be, indeed must be, rescinded.
Madam Speaker, corruption within the Iraqi Government is unacceptable. It undermines the efforts of this country; it undermines the efforts of the honest people in Iraq to build a civil society. We have no recourse but to demand from the State Department that they tell us the facts and not withhold them because they are embarrassing and don't serve what has been a self-serving and misguided policy since its inception.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, before I yield to my friend from Massachusetts, I would like to just comment on a few of the observations and statements made by my friend from California.
First of all, I agree with him that Chairman Waxman and Ranking Member Davis have worked cooperatively and extremely well. And, in fact, there was an effort to maintain that tradition here when Chairman Waxman last Wednesday delivered a copy of the text of this resolution to the minority with specific heads-up that this resolution was going to be introduced on Friday and with the request that comments or edits be provided in a timely way so that the introduction could occur on that day.
The edits were not presented until Monday, just before the Rules Committee meeting. So the good news here is that that cooperative approach continued. Mr. Waxman, in his usual gentlemanly and collegial way, made apparent what his intentions were, provided the language and opportunity for response, and it was not forthcoming. So that's the story.
The gentleman from California will have an opportunity to respond on his own time, so I won't yield at this time.
Secondly, the premise that on a matter of enormous public importance where it is our lives, it is our money that is imperiled, that is being wasted, that Members of Congress could sacrifice their capacity to be a representative of the people that we represent by accepting a classified briefing on something that is profoundly public in nature is flat out rejected by the committee and by most Members of this Congress.
When we are asked to go get a private briefing up in the Intelligence SCIF with a requirement that we sign an oath that we can't reveal anything that we learned, it means that the State Department has succeeded in its goal of keeping secret information that should be made public. So that is not simply an option that makes any sense if we are going to move ahead.
Madam Speaker, at this time I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).
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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished Chair for joining us. I thank my friend from California for cooperating in this debate and giving his usual vigorous presentation of his side's point of view. I want to address a couple of things that came up.
One, my friend from California said basically that this is a resolution attempting to appease the Out of Iraq Caucus. And he used the word ``appease.''
It is not about that. But I will confess that I am a person who is strongly opposed to this war, believe it was the wrong decision, it was based on false information, and it is the single most terrible foreign policy blunder that our country has embarked upon. But this resolution has nothing to do with that profound question.
What this is about is not who favors corruption. Nobody favors corruption. But it is about who tolerates secrecy. If we tolerate secrecy while we criticize corruption, don't we, in fact, condone the corruption to which we avert our eyes?
How will we talk about the facts? How can we talk about the facts which my distinguished colleague from California says he wants to talk about when the State Department denies us the facts?
If we are going to root out corruption in Iraq, don't we have to destroy the wall of self-serving State Department secrecy here in our own government?
It has been said on the other side that corruption is everywhere. Human nature. No argument there. But if corruption exists elsewhere and it is their money and their future, that is one thing. If corruption exists in Iraq with our hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and our soldiers and their lives, then it is our problem. And we not only have a right, we have a responsibility, Madam Speaker, to do every single thing we can to get to the bottom of it and to stop it.
It was also said that in Iraq it is just another government with some corruption. We owe it not just to our own citizens, our own soldiers; we owe it to our allies and our friends in Iraq to do everything we can to help those good people who are there standing up to fight corruption back here. They need our help.
Let me just tell you some of the testimony that Judge Radhi presented to us about the incredible peril that folks in Iraq are subjected to when they try to fight for an honest government. Judge Radhi held that position for 3 years, until he finally resigned amid repeated death threats to himself, his family, and his staff.
He testified in our committee that 31 of his employees had been killed, not injured, killed, as well as at least 12 of their family members. Judge Radhi's home was attacked by rockets, by a sniper's bullet barely missing him as he stood outside his office. He testified about how one staff member was gunned down with a 7-month pregnant wife. He testified about how the father of a security chief was kidnapped and then literally found hung on a meat hook. He testified about how another staff member's father was killed; and when his dead body was found, a power drill had been used to drill his body with holes.
These are officials who are fighting corruption in Iraq, and they are being gunned down, they are being assassinated, they are being tortured; and we are supposed to be standing idly by.
When we ask questions of the State Department what is going on and they take a document that yesterday was unclassified and today make it classified, that is not acceptable. The State Department anticorruption efforts have been a mess. And basically what the State Department is doing is just enough so that they can claim they are trying to do something about corruption; but basically it is status quo, as it has been since the day this war began.
We have to make a decision as Members of Congress that is very simple: we are real, we are serious, or we aren't. And it is about tolerating secrecy, depriving us and the American people of information that we are entitled to, that we must have in order to do our job; or it is turning a blind eye to those folks in Iraq who are standing up on our side and finding their bodies of loved ones drilled with holes and hung on meat hooks. It is not acceptable. The American people know it is not acceptable.
We may have an administration that disregarded the vote of the American people in November when they said they wanted a new direction in Iraq. We may have an administration that disregarded the recommendations of an eminent bipartisan group in the Iraq Study Commission. And we may have an administration that has dismissed and disregarded votes in this House and the Senate, making it clear that we want a new direction even as we struggle to find what that is. But we cannot, any of us on either side of the aisle, accept being an enfeebled Congress that isn't entitled to get the information that our Congress needs to do its job. It is that simple.
And that is what this resolution is about. That is what the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is about. That is what Chairman Waxman is standing up to assert and defend, and that is our constitutional responsibility. Not just prerogative, but constitutional responsibility to do what is required to defend our Constitution, to protect our soldiers, to stand up for our taxpayers, and to restore democratic tradition in this country.
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