Executive Session

EXECUTIVE SESSION

NOMINATION OF MICHAEL CHERTOFF TO BE SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the nomination of Judge Michael Chertoff to be the new Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security.

Make no mistake, I believe the challenges facing Judge Chertoff at the 2-year-old Department are monumental. They include negotiating turf battles with other powerful Cabinet Secretaries and ensuring that 22 formerly disparate Federal agencies, with a combined workforce of 180,000 employees, work together under one central structure. In addition, Judge Chertoff will be responsible for protecting our Nation's critical infrastructure and for improving information sharing among law enforcement agencies--without intruding unnecessarily on individual privacy rights. It is a daunting assignment, but I believe Judge Chertoff is up to it.

When Senator Obama and I met with Judge Chertoff last week, we discussed several issues of concern to us, and Judge Chertoff assured us that he will address these issues. Among my key concerns are the new personnel rules for Department of Homeland Security employees. I believe the new rules are far too restrictive when it comes to collective bargaining, pay negotiations, and adjudicating grievances. The situation at DHS has become even more important since the Bush administration announced its intention to give agencies across the Federal Government the option of creating similar human resource policies. Judge Chertoff said he would sit down with the workers who will be affected by the rules to listen to their concerns and suggestions. It is important that he do so. As Judge Chertoff told Senator Obama and me:

It's important to have a happy and satisfied workforce. This is not going to work if people in the department feel like they're being wronged.

Another issue Judge Chertoff promised to look into is the effort to integrate the separate fingerprint data bases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. Merging these two systems into a single, integrated system is not simply a good idea, it is a congressional mandate. Yet, a recent report by the Justice Department's Inspector General concluded that the efforts to achieve a fully integrated biometric fingerprint ID system have stalled. As one who has pushed for such a system, I am deeply troubled by that assessment. More than three 3 years after 9/11, it is unacceptable that this critical improvement to our homeland security still had not been accomplished. Judge Chertoff said the American people ``would go ballistic if we can't get things to mesh.'' He is right and the American people have every right to be angry. This must get done. I take Judge Chertoff at his word when he says he will make development of an integrated biometric fingerprint ID system a priority.

Judge Chertoff also promised to look into another possible threat to our homeland security, and that is the apparent ease with which an ordinary citizen can obtain an airline pilot's uniform. This threat was documented recently by a Chicago TV reporter. Astonishingly, the reporter found that he could purchase an authentic pilot's uniform online--with no identification--and the uniform would be delivered to his doorstep in 48 hours. How can this happen in a post-9/11 world? Senator Obama and I have asked the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Transportation Security Administration to answer that question. We will be looking for answers.

I look forward to working with Judge Chertoff on several issues of particular importance to Illinois. Among them is a Microbial Risk Assessment Center, which has been proposed by the University of Chicago and would serve as the national clearinghouse to assess risks from anthrax, smallpox, plague, and other possible bioterror threats.

In addition, the city of Chicago has developed a state-of-the-art command center where personnel from the city's police, fire, and rescue departments and representatives of the city's business community work together in one room to monitor the city and, if necessary, respond jointly to disasters. I believe this command center could serve as a national model, and I encourage Judge Chertoff to examine its structure and successes.

My decision to support Judge Chertoff is the result of serious deliberation. While I am impressed by his record and his openness, I also have some concerns about the role Judge Chertoff played in developing certain administration policies while he served as the head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. In that capacity, Judge Chertoff helped to craft high-profile initiatives that explicitly targeted Arabs and Muslims and resulted in the detention of thousands of people. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Justice Department rounded up at least 1,200 immigrants, the vast majority of whom were Arab or Muslim. The Justice Department's Inspector General found that none of these detainees--not one--was charged with a terrorist-related offense, and that the decision to detain them was ``extremely attenuated'' from the 9/11 investigation. The Inspector General also found that detainees were subjected to harsh conditions of confinement and that some were subjected to ``a pattern of physical and verbal abuse.''

Judge Chertoff also was tangentially involved in the Justice Department's efforts to legalize abusive interrogation tactics. He reviewed the infamous Justice Department ``torture memo'' and provided advice on complying with the antitorture statute, but he told me that he did not provide advice on the legality of any specific interrogation methods.

The Justice Department's ``torture memo'' narrowly and, I believe, incorrectly redefined torture as limited only to abuse that causes pain equivalent to organ failure or death, and concluded that the antitorture statute does not apply to interrogations conducted under the President's so-called Commander in Chief authority.

This tortured effort to justify torture helped to create a permissive environment that made it more likely that abuses of detainees would take place and made it possible for the horrors we have since learned about at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. What happened in these places, I believe, has damaged our image and called into question our moral authority in some places and it has increased--not diminished--the dangers our troops and our citizens face in this age of terrorism.

Unlike many other administration officials, however, Judge Chertoff has acknowledged that the Government made mistakes in the aftermath of 9/11. He told me that he opposes ethnic and religious profiling and he is committed to treating all immigrants fairly and to complying with all laws regarding the humane treatment of detainees.

I take him at his word. I will expect Judge Chertoff, as Secretary of Homeland Security, to balance America's need for security and our respect for civil rights and our heritage as a nation of immigrants. There are practical reasons, in addition to the legal reasons, for seeking such balance. Detaining large numbers of Arab and Muslim immigrants involves a massive investment of law enforcement resources with little no return, and it creates fear and resentment of law enforcement in exactly the immigrant communities whose cooperation we need to defeat terrorism.

Finally, Judge Chertoff assured me that he will maintain open lines of communication with Congress so that Congress can fulfill its constitutional requirement to oversee whether, and how well, the Department is implementing the laws this body passes.

For all of these reasons and because of his record of public service and his candor during this confirmation process, I will support Judge Chertoff's nomination to be America's next Secretary of Homeland Security. I look forward to working with him to make America safer in ways that are consistent with our national values and heritage, and I wish Judge Chertoff the best of luck as he begins his important new assignment.

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