Rice Testimony

RICE TESTIMONY

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, honestly, I had come to the floor to submit a resolution on behalf of myself and 14 of my colleagues, including Senators KENNEDY, BYRD, LIEBERMAN, CLINTON, CORZINE, DODD, JOHNSON, HOLLINGS, REID from Nevada, LAUTENBERG, DORGAN, DURBIN, DASCHLE, and NELSON to ask the President to allow Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath and in public. I heard NBC News has announced she will do just that. So the resolution is moot. I will make a couple of points, though.

One is I suppose all of the protestation that this would violate separation of powers has gone by the wayside. We all knew that was just a smokescreen because this commission is not congressional, and the whole theory of separation of powers is congressional.

The bottom line is the real reason the administration did not want Condoleezza Rice to testify, that they did not want her out there speaking about this, is quite apparent and had nothing to do with separation of powers.

The second point I make is to compliment the Commission. The Commission has done an incredible job. I think when Tom Kean, the former Governor of New Jersey, a Republican, one known for integrity, said the only way she would testify was under oath-she has been on every talk show. She is on television 24/7. So she has plenty of time to go public and say what she wants, but not what the Commission will ask her under oath.

Her statements, her public statements contradicted some of Dick Clarke's. Dick Clarke's were given under oath. Dick Clarke's were given after considerable criticism and vituperation directed from the White House and the attack machine that we know about here in Washington, the Republican attack machine. He stood by his story. So we now all wait with bated breath to hear what Condoleezza Rice will say under oath.

Mr. President, people as diverse as Colin Powell, JOHN MCCAIN, CHUCK HAGEL-Republicans-have talked about Dick Clarke's character. I have known Dick Clarke for a long time. He is a principled man. He has been a registered Republican. Whenever he met me-and I met him under the Clinton administration-he said he was a Republican. His one passion was to make America safe.

When all the information he had and all the work he and his staff had done were ignored, he became more and more frustrated. Dick Clarke's book is not aimed at political retribution. Dick Clarke's book is aimed at the truth. Like everywhere else, the Scriptures are right: The truth will set us free.

I hope Condoleezza Rice fully testifies, testifies truthfully. The Commission's goal is not to point fingers or blame; the Commission's goal is to find out what went wrong so we don't do it again. No one feels that more keenly than the families in my State who have lost loved ones and who yearn for the truth; not so much because it will ever bring their loved ones back but because they, in a charitable, an eleemosynary gesture, want to prevent it from happening again.

This is a good step. We ought to trust this Commission. It is bipartisan. It has many people of integrity on it. Let it go forward without stonewalling. The truth, the truth will set us free.