Executive Session

Floor Speech

EXECUTIVE SESSION -- (Senate - March 12, 2009)

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to urge my colleagues to support the nomination of David Ogden to be our Deputy Attorney General. In doing so, I will make a few brief points.

First, Mr. Ogden is extraordinarily qualified as a lawyer. He has served as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division, as the Chief of Staff to Attorney General Janet Reno, as the Associate Deputy Attorney General, and as Deputy General Counsel over at the Department of Defense. He has a distinguished government record.

He has also been a distinguished lawyer in the private sector, as evidenced by his position as cochair of the Government and Regulatory Litigation Group at the law firm of WilmerHale. His qualifications for this important position as Deputy Attorney General are exemplified by the support of former Deputy Attorneys General of both parties.

Republican Larry Thompson said:

David is a person of honor who will, at all times, do the right thing for the Department of Justice and our great country. As a citizen, I am extremely grateful that a lawyer of David's caliber again offers himself for public service.

Democrat Jamie Gorelick wrote that David Ogden ``is a man of unusual breadth and depth who is as well prepared to help lead the Department as anyone who has come in at the outset of a new administration can possibly be.''

Second, now more than ever, the Department needs a competent Deputy Attorney General. I will not go back and review the long sad litany of problems--to put it mildly--we saw in the Bush Justice Department. But the incompetence and politicization that ran rampant through that building must never be repeated.

The Deputy Attorney General is the second ranking member at the Department, and some have compared the position to a chief operating officer. We need in that office a person who understands what makes the Department of Justice such an important and unique institution, who is committed to restoring the Department's honor and integrity, who will act independent of political pressure, and who understands the levers within the building that need to be pulled to get things done.

Based on my review of his background and based on his confirmation hearings and based on my personal conversations with David, I believe him to be such a man.

I commend Chairman Leahy for his determination to confirm as many Department nominees as quickly as possible. The Department has more than 100,000 employees and a budget exceeding $25 billion. It is also tasked with confronting the most complex and difficult legal challenges of our day. The Attorney General must have his leadership team in place as quickly as possible. It is March 12 and the Attorney General does not have his Deputy confirmed by this body. Despite some very unfortunate delay tactics that have taken place, Chairman Leahy is doing all he can to move these nominees in a careful, deliberate, and expeditious manner. I commend him for that effort and I look forward to supporting him in that effort.

I would also add that as a Senator I have found some of the comments that have been made about Mr. Ogden to be very troubling, and certainly not the sort of debate I had in mind when I ran to be a Senator. Everybody here who is a lawyer knows that a lawyer in private practice has a duty--a duty--to zealously advocate--to zealously advocate--the position of his client. What makes our system great is that you don't have to win a popularity contest as a client before you can get a zealous advocate for your position. Every lawyer is under a duty to zealously advocate their client's position.

So to take a lawyer who has served in private practice with great distinction and attribute to him personally the views of clients is plain dead wrong and strikes at the heart of the attorney-client relationship that is the basis of our system of justice. It is a terrible mistake to do that, and particularly to exaggerate those positions to the point where he has been accused of supporting things such as child pornography. It is an appalling misstatement. The major organizations that concern themselves with the welfare of children in this country support David Ogden. That should put these false claims to rest. However, I do very much regret that the level of debate over someone such as David Ogden in this historic body has come to a point where those sorts of charges are being thrown out, completely without factual basis and, in many respects, in violation of what we should as Senators understand to be a core principle, which is that a lawyer is bound to advocate for his client and to do so does not confer upon the lawyer the necessity of agreeing to those views.

As somebody who spent a good deal of time in public service as a lawyer and who has spent some time in private practice as a lawyer as well, I can tell my colleagues that one of the reasons people come to public service is so they can vindicate the public interest. David, as Deputy Attorney General, I have no doubt whatsoever will serve in a way that vindicates the public interest, that protects children, that protects our country, and that serves the law.

I appreciate the opportunity to say this, and I yield the floor.

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