Constitutional Law

Sen. Leahy Urges Examination Of Bush Era Controversies

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has called for an independent investigation into a string of Bush era controversies. In a speech at Georgetown University, Leahy said the firing of the U.S. attorneys, the politicization of the Justice Department and the Bush administration’s domestic wiretapping program are all worthy of examination. “Many Americans feel we need to get to the bottom of what went wrong,” Leahy said. “We need to be able to read the page before we turn it.” Leahy noted the Office of Legal Counsel’s legal opinions produced during the Bush administration that undergirded the domestic wiretapping program and harsh interrogations of military detainees, saying that, “The Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department is one of those institutions that was hijacked and must be restored. There must be review and revision of that office’s legal work of the last eight years, when so much of that of work was kept secret.”

Leahy said:

We need to get to the bottom of what happened – and why – so we make sure it never happens again. One path to that goal would be a reconciliation process and truth commission. We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair minded, and without axes to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth. People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble facts. If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers, and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecutions in order to get to the whole truth. Congress has already granted immunity, over my objection, to those who facilitated warrantless wiretaps and those who conducted cruel interrogations. It would be far better to use that authority to learn the truth.

Leahy’s entire comments are available here. Leahy was also a keynote speaker at the ACS 2008 National Convention, where he addressed recent Supreme Court decisions impinging civil liberties and hampering the ability of workers to challenge employers’ wrongdoing and undermining federal and state laws to protect the health, safety and economic well-being of Americans. Video and transcript of Leahy’s ACS address are available here.  

Full post as published by ACS Blog on February 10, 2009 (boomark / email).