National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005-CONTINUED

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate for 5 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I join my colleague and ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, the Senator from Vermont, as well as my colleague, the Senator from Massachusetts, in expressing support for the amendment we will vote upon either tonight or tomorrow, and to express my displeasure that the documents that we have received are so inadequate in terms of what we have requested.

The first point I will make is, don't let anybody think that because this is a thick pile, it really has the nub of the matter. It does not.

The bottom line is that I would say that an ounce of disclosure is going to buy this White House a pound of problems. These documents raise more questions than they answer. The White House is better off coming clean and releasing all relevant and nonclassified documents.

In the Judiciary Committee, we have asked the administration for 23 specific documents as a starting point. Of the 13 the White House released today, only 3 are among those we asked for; 3 out of 23 is not a very good average. It is not even a good batting average, and we are pretty lenient there when we are above a third.

It seems painfully clear that this administration devised a strained-some would say tortured-new definition of torture. Then someone in the administration authorized the use of new "interrogation techniques" that would have run afoul of the old definition of torture but under the new definition were permissible.

Anybody who thinks those line soldiers at Abu Ghraib were acting on their own initiative must have his head in the sand.

It is absolutely unacceptable that the actions of a few in our military and our Government have brought shame on the 99.9 percent of our troops who serve us so honorably and well and are fighting for the freedom of the Iraqi people.

We must not compound that error by letting a few soldiers at the bottom of the line take the fall if authorities higher up gave them the green light.

This matter must be pursued no matter where it leads, no matter how high it goes. If anyone at the Cabinet level or in the White House opened the door to the kind of abuse we saw in those pictures from Abu Ghraib, it is time to own up to it.

The credibility of the administration is on the line and the release of a handful of documents simply doesn't do the job.

I will repeat that it is not enough to release a few inches of documents. The White House should publicly disclose all relevant and nonclassified documents. Relevant classified documents should be provided to the Judiciary Committee and Armed Services Committee so we can get to the bottom of this.

Mr. President, I am aware of the difficulties in these situations. We are in the post-9/11 world, a brave new world. Sometimes things do have to change and be adjusted. We don't know where the balance should be exactly. That is the difficulty. But one thing I know for sure is that there should be debate as to what methods of interrogation should be allowed and used because that deals with the fundamental balance of security and liberty, and that is the balance the Founding Fathers focused on probably more than any other. That is the balance; they wanted open debate.

So the thing I am sure of is not where you draw the line. I think anybody who says that is certainly making a mistake. Rather, the thing I am certain of is, if there is open debate and discussion between the executive and legislative branches, which is what the Founding Fathers most certainly intended, we will almost inevitably end up in these most serious and delicate matters with a very good solution.

The problem, of course, is this: The Justice Department and the Attorney General have a penchant for secrecy. They have avoided at all costs open debate and discussion. The results almost always inevitably boomerang on them, and they end up having to backtrack anyway, but in a way that doesn't do justice and do right for the people they represent and for America and the world.

So the bottom line is this: At the end of the day, if we don't know who authorized what, when it was authorized, and whether it explains why the detainees at Abu Ghraib were treated the way they were, then the job is simply not done.

I thank my colleagues from Vermont, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Illinois for their leadership on this issue and encourage my colleagues to support this amendment.

I yield back the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.