A Form of Torture By Senator Richard J. Durbin
End The War
Statement of Senator Richard J. Durbin on the nomination of Alberto R.
Gonzales to serve as Attorney General of the United States.
Mr. President, after every war, history is written. There are stories
of courage, compassion, and glory, and stories of cruelty, weakness,
and shame.
When history is written of our war on terrorism, it will record the
millions of acts of heroism, kindness, and sacrifice performed by
American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other nations. And it will
record as well the stunning courage of Iraqi men and women standing in
line last Sunday, defying the terrorist bullets and bombs to vote in
the first free election of their lives.
But sadly, history will also recall that after 9/11, and after the
invasion of Iraq, some in America concluded our Nation could no longer
afford to stand by time-honored principles of humanity, principles of
humane conduct embodied in the law of the land and respected by
Presidents of both political parties for generations.
Next to the image of Saddam Hussein's statue dragged from its pedestal
to the dirt below will be the horrifying image of the hooded prisoner
at Abu Ghraib, standing on a makeshift pedestal, tethered to electrical
wires.
Alberto Gonzales is a skilled lawyer. His life story is nothing short
of inspiring. I have the greatest respect for his success, for what he
has achieved, and for the obstacles he has overcome.
But this debate is not about Mr. Gonzales's life story. This debate is
about whether, in the age of terrorism, America will continue to be a
nation based on the rule of law, or whether we, out of fear, abandon
time-tested values. That is what is at issue.
The war in Iraq is more dangerous today because of the scandal at Abu
Ghraib prison. Our conduct has been called into question around the
world. Our moral standing has been challenged, and now we are being
asked to promote a man who was at the center of the debate over
secretive policies that created an environment that led to Abu Ghraib.
What happened at Abu Ghraib? What continues to happen at Guantánamo?
What happened to the standards of civilized conduct America proudly
followed and demanded of every other nation in the world?
Some dismiss these horrible acts as the demented conduct of only a few,
the runaway emotions of renegade night shift soldiers, the inevitable
passions and fears of men living in the charnel house of war. But we
now know that if there was unspeakable cruelty in those dimly lit
prison cells, there was also a cruel process underway in the brightly
lit corridors of power in Washington.
At the center of this process, at the center of this administration's
effort to redefine the acceptable and legal treatment of prisoners and
detainees was Alberto Gonzales, Counsel to President George W. Bush.
And with the skill that only lawyers can bring, Mr. Gonzales, Assistant
Attorney General Jay Bybee and others found the loopholes, invented the
weasel words and covered the whole process with winks and nods.
At the very least, Mr. Gonzales helped to create a permissive
environment that made it more likely that abuses would take place. You
can connect the dots from the administration's legal memos to the
Defense Department's approval of abusive interrogation techniques for
Guantanamo Bay, to Iraq and Abu Ghraib, where those tactics migrated.
Blaming Abu Ghraib completely on night shift soldiers ignores critical
decisions on torture policy made at the highest levels of our
Government, decisions that Mr. Gonzales played a major role in making.
If we are going to hold those at the lowest levels accountable, it is
only fair to hold those at the highest levels accountable as well.
Let's review what we know.
First, Mr. Gonzales recommended to the President that the Geneva
Conventions should not apply to the war on terrorism. In a January 2002
memo to the President, Mr. Gonzales concluded that the war on terrorism
"renders obsolete" the Geneva Conventions. This is a memo written by
the man who would be Attorney General.
Colin Powell and the Joint Chiefs of Staff objected strenuously to this
conclusion by Alberto Gonzales. They argued that we could effectively
prosecute a war on terrorism while still living up to the standards of
the Geneva Conventions.
In a memo to Mr. Gonzales, Secretary of State Colin Powell pointed out
that the Geneva Conventions would allow us to deny POW status to
al-Qaida and other terrorists and that they would not limit our ability
to question a detainee or hold him indefinitely. So, contrary to the
statements by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle,
complying with the Geneva Conventions does not mean giving POW status
to terrorists. Colin Powell knew that. The Joint Chiefs of Staff knew
that. Alberto Gonzales refused to accept that.
In his memo to Mr. Gonzales, Secretary Powell went on to say that if we
did not apply the Geneva Conventions to the war on terrorism, "it will
reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice ... and undermine
the protections of the law of war for our own troops ... It will
undermine public support among critical allies, making military
cooperation more difficult to sustain."
The President rejected Secretary Powell's wise counsel and instead
accepted Mr. Gonzales's counsel. He issued a memo concluding that "new
thinking in the law of war" was needed and that the Geneva Conventions
do not apply to the war on terrorism.
And then what followed? Mr. Gonzales requested, approved, and
disseminated this new Justice Department torture memo. This infamous
memo narrowly redefined torture as limited only to abuse that causes
pain equivalent to organ failure or death, and concluded that the
torture statute which makes torture a crime in America does not apply
to interrogations conducted under the President's Commander in Chief
authority. That was the official Government policy for 2 years.
Then relying on the President's Geneva Conventions determination and
the Justice Department's new definition of torture, Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld approved numerous abusive interrogation tactics for use
against prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, even as he acknowledged that some
nations may view those tactics as inhumane. These techniques have
Orwellian names such as "environmental manipulation."
The Red Cross has concluded that the use of these methods at
Guantánamo was more than inhumane. It was, in the words of the Red
Cross, "a form of torture."
We have recently learned that numerous FBI agents who observed
interrogations at Guantánamo Bay complained to their supervisors about
the use of these methods, methods which began at the desks of Alberto
Gonzales and the Department of Justice, moving through the Department
of Defense to Guantánamo Bay. In one e-mail that has been released
under the Freedom of Information Act, an FBI agent complained that
interrogators were using what he called "torture techniques." This is
not from a critic of the United States who believes that we should not
be waging a war on terrorism. These are words from the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.
Let me read the graphic language in an e-mail written by another FBI
agent about what he saw:
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee
chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair,
food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and
had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air
conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so
cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with
cold....On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off,
making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees.
The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair
next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out
throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature
unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the
room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand
and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor."
These are the words of an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
who viewed the interrogation techniques at Guantánamo, techniques that
flowed from the memo that came across Mr. Gonzales's desk to the
Department of Defense down to these dimly lit cells. And the Red Cross
and the FBI agree that they are torture.
The Commander of Guantánamo Bay's detention operations gave the
Guantánamo policies to senior officers in Iraq and they became the
"bedrock" for interrogation tactics in Iraq, according to a Defense
Department investigation.
The horrible images that emerged from Abu Ghraib have seared into our
minds the nature of some of these techniques, including the forced
removal of clothing, using dogs to intimidate detainees, and placing
detainees in painful stress positions.
There is no room for legal hair-splitting when it comes to the humane
treatment of detainees - not in a nation founded on the rule of law and
respect for human rights. The tortured debate about torture, conducted
at the highest levels of our government, sent a signal to our
commanders and troops that the law of war is an obstacle to be
overcome, not a bright line that should not be crossed.
For more than two years, the Justice Department's torture memo stood as
the official policy of this administration.
At the last moment, just hours before the start of the hearing on Mr.
Gonzales's nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the
administration officially repudiated its redefinition of torture - the
same administration, I might add, which last fall had resisted my
amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill to formally
restate our commitment not to engage in torture and other inhumane
treatment, and only weeks before had actually opposed my amendment to
the intelligence reform bill to do exactly the same. Facing the
inevitable questions in this Senate about Mr. Gonzales's role in this
embarrassing episode, the administration recanted, more than two years
after their efforts to redefine torture.
Mr. Gonzales now says he believes that all torture by U.S. personnel is
illegal. But notice what Mr. Gonzales does not say.
I asked Mr. Gonzales whether he believes the President could invoke his
authority as Commander-in-Chief to simply ignore the anti-torture
statute. Mr. Gonzales refused to answer, saying, "it is simply
implausible that I would ever be called upon to address" this question.
But Mr. Gonzales and this administration are the ones who raised this
"simply implausible" question. The Justice Department's infamous
torture memo, which Mr. Gonzales requested and approved, claims that
the President does have this authority.
I asked Mr. Gonzales whether U.S. personnel can legally engage in
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under any circumstances. Mr.
Gonzales's response was shocking. He claimed that it is legal for the
U.S. government to subject detainees to cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment. Specifically, he said, "There is no legal prohibition under
the [Torture Convention] on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with
respect to aliens overseas." But cruel, inhuman, and degrading
treatment are expressly prohibited by the Torture Convention, a treaty
that the U.S. has ratified and is bound to obey, not just by law but by
the rule of conscience. In an editorial entitled, "A Degrading Policy,"
The Washington Post called Gonzales's position "a gross distortion of
the law."
This explains why Mr. Gonzales and this administration opposed my
anti-torture amendment to the intelligence reform bill. My amendment
would simply have reaffirmed the U.S.' long-standing obligation not to
engage in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. This is the
law of the land.
But Mr. Gonzales claims that my amendment "would have provided legal
protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled." I
asked him what additional legal protections my amendment would have
provided. Mr. Gonzales refused to respond.
Now we know the legal protections that Mr. Gonzales opposes: the
long-standing prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment.
I asked Mr. Gonzales about media reports that U.S. personnel have used
abusive interrogation tactics such as simulated drowning, mock
executions, threatening detainees with dogs, forced nudity, forcing
detainees to assume painful, contorted positions for extended periods
of time, and the forcible injection of mood altering drugs. I gave Mr.
Gonzales an opportunity to repudiate these tactics and to make clear
that this administration will not tolerate such abuses.
He responded, as only a lawyer can, with a very carefully worded and
ambiguous answer. He said, "Some of these activities, at least under
certain factual assumptions, might very well be prohibited S Some might
likewise be permissible in specific circumstances." What a pack of
weasel words about torture techniques. Mr. Gonzales refuses to condemn
un-American and degrading conduct that, frankly, shocks the conscience.
I also asked Mr. Gonzales about reports that the U.S. has "outsourced"
torture by sending detainees to countries that systematically engage in
torture. The Torture Convention prohibits a government from sending
someone to a country if there are substantial grounds for believing
that he would be in danger of being tortured. As a party to the Torture
Convention, we are bound to abide by this prohibition.
Mr. Gonzales responded with another very lawyerly answer. He said that
"it is permissible in appropriate circumstances to rely on assurances
from a country that it will not engage in torture, and such assurances
can provide a basis for concluding that a person is not likely to be
tortured if returned to another country."
Based on this reading of the law, the Administration has reportedly
sent detainees to countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria,
which systematically engage in torture. These detainees have said
publicly that they were in fact tortured after they were transferred to
these countries. It is indefensible to send a detainee to a country
that regularly uses torture on the basis of hollow assurances that it
will not torture the detainee. Outsourcing torture is morally
equivalent to engaging in torture.
The bottom line is this. Mr. Gonzales says he is opposed to torture,
but he believes the President can invoke the Commander-in-Chief
exception to set aside the torture statute; and he believes it is
legally permissible to outsource torture.
He says it is Administration policy to treat detainees humanely, but he
believes it is legally permissible to subject detainees to cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment; he opposes my anti-torture amendment,
which would have reaffirmed the prohibition on cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment; and he refuses to condemn a host of abusive
tactics such as mock execution and simulated drowning.
These are not the principles on which our nation is based.
America is a nation founded on the ideals of freedom and justice. We
believe that no one is above the law, no one is outside the law, and no
government official should ever be invested with the power, real or
imagined, to ignore, bend or break the rule of law.
As our distinguished ranking member, the Senator from Vermont, has
said, Mr. Gonzales's assertion that a President is free to break any
law he regards as unconstitutional is as radical a definition of
executive power as any of us has ever heard.
Twisting words to try to justify torture betrays a profound ignorance
of, or indifference to, the history and character of our great nation.
America was founded by people fleeing governmental repression. Our
founders wanted to ensure that the United States would not oppress its
citizens - even during time of war. That is why they included a
prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in the Bill of Rights of
the Constitution.
During the Civil War - which some say were the darkest hours of our
nation - President Lincoln directed that a set of rules be drawn up to
govern the conduct of U.S. soldiers. The new rules, called the Lieber
Code, explicitly prohibited torture and other cruel treatment of enemy
troops. They became the foundation for the modern law of war.
After World War II, the United States and our allies - horrified by the
genocidal practices of Nazi Germany - created a new international legal
order based on respect for human rights. One of the fundamental tenets
was a universal prohibition on torture, as well as "cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment.'"
The prohibition is enshrined today in three international treaties to
which the United States and a majority of the nations in the world are
parties: The Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights, and the Torture Convention.
The prohibition against torture and cruel treatment is also codified in
the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Army Field Manual on
Intelligence Interrogation.
If conscience is not reason enough to prohibit torture anywhere, for
any reason, there are practical reasons to do so as well.
To begin with, torture is futile. Don't take my word for it. Refer to
the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation. It states:
"Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that
yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts,
and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants
to hear."
Torture places our own military personnel - they who are already in
grave danger - at even greater risk. Rejecting the use of torture, on
the other hand, protects our troops.
Let me tell you about former Congressman Pete Peterson, who spent 6
years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Pete is my friend. The moments
when we sat down and discussed his experiences as a POW in Vietnam are
moments that I will never forget. Here is what he wrote in a letter in
support of my anti-torture amendment: "From my years of captivity in
Vietnam, I know what life in a foreign prison is like. To a large
degree, I credit the Geneva Conventions for my survival S This is one
reason the United States has led the world in upholding treaties
governing the status and care of enemy prisoners: because these
standards also protect us S We need absolute clarity that America will
continue to set the gold standard in the treatment of prisoners in
wartime."
These are the words of Pete Peterson, a man who gave 6 years of his
life as a prisoner of war, telling us not to forget the Geneva
Conventions that protected him, as they should protect everyone. As the
great American patriot Thomas Paine said: "He that would make his own
liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression."
There is a third, practical reason to continue our long-standing
commitment not to engage in torture or other cruel treatment. Resorting
to torture will make it harder for us to defeat terrorism, not easier.
In the words of the independent 9/11 Commission, "Allegations that the
United States abused prisoners in its custody make it harder to build
the diplomatic, political, and military alliances the government will
need [to fight the war on terrorism]."
Justice Louis Brandeis warned us nearly a century ago: "The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
well-meaning, but without understanding."
I believe that Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, and those with whom they
worked in secret to justify torture and circumvent our treaties and
laws thought that they were somehow protecting our liberty.
Their "insidious encroachment" on our liberty and their disregard for
one of our most fundamental principles, the rule of law, was not meant
to hurt America. But it has hurt us badly. If I live a long life, I
won't outlive the hatred and distrust of America created by those
searing, awful images at Abu Ghraib.
That's why the nomination of Alberto Gonzales is opposed by retired
military leaders like General John Shalikashvili, the former Chair of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rear Admiral Don Guter, who was the Navy
Judge Advocate General for the first two years of the Bush
Administration, and Rear Admiral John Hutson, another former Navy Judge
Advocate General.
I worked closely with Admiral Hutson on my torture amendment. He served
his country for close to 30 years and I have great respect for his
judgment. So, I listened carefully when he testified before the
Judiciary Committee in opposition to the nomination of Alberto
Gonzales. He said:
"Advice given to the President by Judge Gonzales was not offered with
an eye to protecting American troops... In both the short term and the
long term, it doesn't protect our armed forces, it imperils them. It
enables them to engage in the sort of reprehensible conduct we have
seen, and it will enable our enemy to also engage in such conduct with
impunity... The strongest nation on earth can ill afford an Attorney
General who engages in sloppy, shortsighted legal analysis and doesn't
object when others do."
I am also troubled by Mr. Gonzales's Texas record and what appears to
me to be Mr. Gonzales's willingness, once again, to ignore serious
legal and constitutional concerns - even when a life is hanging in the
balance.
Texas, as everyone knows, executes more inmates than any other State.
As General Counsel for then-Governor Bush, it was Mr. Gonzales's duty
to review every file for every request for clemency by death row
prisoners in Texas and to make a recommendation to the Governor on the
appropriate action.
Mr. Gonzales coordinated 59 clemency requests from Texas death-row
inmates between 1995 and 1997.
I asked Mr. Gonzales: Of the 59 clemency cases he coordinated, how many
times did he either recommend clemency, a stay of execution, or further
investigation to resolve any doubts about a condemned inmate's guilt?
He replied that he could not recall what advice he may have given
then-Governor Bush on any of the 59 cases.
He also said he never once recommended clemency because he believed
that he and the Governor were obligated to follow the recommendations
of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Relying so heavily on the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles might not
be troubling if the board's record itself was not so troubling. Between
1973 and 1998, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles received more
than 70 appeals of clemency denials. In all those cases, the board
never once - not one time - ordered an investigation or held a hearing
or even conducted a meeting to try to resolve any possible doubts about
a case.
In fact, according to a 1998 civil suit, some board members do not even
review case files or skim correspondence they are required to read
before voting on clemency petitions. U.S. District Court Judge Sam
Sparks, who presided over that lawsuit, found, in his words:
There is nothing, absolutely nothing - that the Board of Pardons and
Paroles does where any member of the public, including the Governor,
can find out why they did this. I find that appalling.
Typically, Mr. Gonzales presented a clemency memo to Governor Bush on
the day that the inmate was scheduled to be executed. Mr. Gonzales
would spend about 30 minutes at some point during the day briefing the
Governor before this person was led to execution - 30 minutes.
Let me tell you about 2 of the 59 people whose clemency requests Mr.
Gonzales handled.
Irineo Tristan Montoya was a Mexican national executed in 1997. In
1986, in police custody, Mr. Montoya signed what he thought was an
immigration document. In fact, it was a murder confession. Mr. Montoya
could not read a word of it. He spoke no English.
Under the Vienna Convention of Consular Affairs, which the U.S.
ratified in 1969 and accepted as our law of the land, Mr. Montoya
should have at least been told that he had the right to have a Mexican
consular officer contacted on his behalf. He was never informed of this
right.
Mr. Gonzales's clemency memo mentioned none of these facts - not one.
News accounts say Mr. Montoya was convicted almost entirely on the
strength of this confession, a confession which he signed that he could
not read or understand.
Then there is the case of Carl Johnson. It has become infamous. Mr.
Gonzales's memo on Mr. Johnson's clemency request neglected to mention
that Mr. Johnson's lawyer had literally slept through much of the jury
selection.
Mr. Gonzales claims that omission of critical facts such as these do
not matter because "it was quite common that I would have numerous
discussions with the Governor well in advance of a scheduled
execution."
However, Governor Bush's logs generally show one, and only one,
30-minute meeting for each execution. Thirty minutes for each life. And
that meeting generally took place on the scheduled day of the
execution.
At the Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Gonzales said: If I were in
talking to the Governor about a particular matter and we had an
opportunity, I would say, "Governor, we have an execution coming up in
3 weeks. One of the bases of clemency I'm sure that will be argued is,
say, something like mental retardation. These are the issues that have
to be considered."
The Texas death house was a busy place when Mr. Gonzales was general
counsel. In the 6 days from December 6 to December 12, 1995, for
example, there were four executions. In the 9 days from May 13 to May
22, 1997, there were six executions. In the 8 days from May 28 to June
4, 1997, there were five executions. In the week from June 11 to June
18, 1997, there were four executions. And during one 5-week period from
May 13 to June 18, 1997, in the State of Texas, there were 15
executions.
Even if Mr. Gonzales found an opportunity, as he says, to mention
critical details of upcoming executions during meetings on other
topics, is that an appropriate or sufficient way to provide a Governor
with information he needs to make a life-or-death decision?
Did Mr. Gonzales really expect the Governor to be able to keep track of
these details that were discussed weeks in advance of a decision on
clemency? Is that reasonable when a person's life is hanging in the
balance?
Regardless of how one feels about the death penalty, no one -
absolutely no one - wants to see an innocent person executed. That is
not justice.
Over 2,000 years ago, Roman orator Cicero said: Laws are silent in time
of war. The men and women who founded this great Nation rejected that
notion. They understood that freedom and liberty are not weaknesses;
they are, in fact, our greatest strengths.
In times of war or perceived threat, we have sometimes forgotten that
basic truth. And when we have, we have paid dearly for it.
In the late 1700s, a war with France seemed imminent. Congress
responded by passing the Alien and Sedition Acts. These patently
unconstitutional laws empowered the President to detain and deport any
non-citizen with no due process and made it illegal to publish
supposedly "scandalous and malicious writing" about our Government.
President Lincoln, whom I regard as the greatest of all American
Presidents, suspended the great writ of habeas corpus during the Civil
War.
The first red scare during World War I accelerated into the Palmer
raids after a series of bombings on Wall Street and in Washington, DC.
Palmer, the U.S. Attorney, ordered roundups of suspected "reds" and
summarily deported thousands of aliens, often with little evidence of
wrongdoing and no due process.
We all know the tragic story of Japanese immigrants and U.S. citizens
of Japanese ancestry being rounded up and placed in internment camps
during World War II.
Another moment that I recall, as I stand here today, is when I served
in the House of Representatives and heard two of my colleagues who were
Congressmen at the time, Japanese Americans, come forward to explain
what happened to them, how they were literally told the night before in
their homes in California by their parents to pack up their little
belongings, put them in a suitcase, and be prepared to get on a train
in the morning. Bob Matsui was one of those. He just passed away a few
weeks ago.
Bob Matsui understood what discrimination could really be. What was his
sin? He was born of Japanese American parents. That is a fact of life,
and it was a fact that changed his life dramatically. He and others
were taken off to internment camps without a trial, without a hearing,
simply because they were suspected of being unpatriotic.
During the Cold War, our Nation, fearful of communism, descended into a
red scare of McCarthyism, witch hunts, and black lists that destroyed
the lives of thousands of decent people.
In the 1960s, the Government infiltrated many organizations and
compiled files on its own citizens simply for attending meetings of
civil rights or antiwar organizations.
Some on the other side of the aisle have compared Mr. Gonzales to one
of our great Attorneys General, Robert Kennedy. With all due respect to
Mr. Gonzales, he is no Robert Kennedy. Unlike Mr. Gonzales, Robert
Kennedy understood the importance of respecting the rule of law to
America's soul and our image around the world.
Listen to this quote from a speech that Robert Kennedy gave at the
height of the Cold War and the civil rights movement. This is what he
said:
We, the American people, must avoid another Little Rock or another New
Orleans. We cannot afford them. It is not only that such incidents do
incalculable harm to the children involved and to the relations among
people, it is not only that such convulsions seriously undermine
respect for law and order and cause serious economic and moral damage.
Such incidents hurt our country in the eyes of the world. For on this
generation of Americans falls the burden of proving to the world that
we really mean it when we say all men are created equal and are equal
before the law.
Those were the words of Robert Kennedy, and if you replace Little Rock
and New Orleans with Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, those words ring true
today. Mr. Gonzales does not seem to understand, as Robert Kennedy did,
the impact such scandals have on America's soul and image.
Today is a critical moment for our Nation. Overseas, our Nation's
actions and character are being questioned by our critics and our
enemies. Here at home, we want to feel safer and more secure.
There are some who want to repeat the mistakes of our past. They think
the best way to protect America is to silence the law in this time of
war.
Let me tell you about one man who disagrees. His name is Fred
Korematsu. More than 60 years ago, Mr. Korematsu was a 22-year-old
student and was one of the 120,000 Japanese-American citizens and
immigrants who was forced from their homes into these prison camps,
internment camps.
After Pearl Harbor, Mr. Korematsu tried everything he could think of to
be accepted as American. He changed his name to Clyde, and even had two
operations to make his eyes appear rounder. He was still forced into
Tule Lake, an internment camp in California.
He challenged his detention, taking his case all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court. In a decision that remains one of the most infamous
decisions in the Court's history, the Supreme Court rejected Mr.
Korematsu's claim and failed to find the internment of Japanese
Americans unconstitutional.
It would be another 40 years until an American President, Ronald
Reagan, officially apologized for that terrible miscarriage of justice
and offered small restitution to its victims.
Today, Mr. Korematsu is nearly 85 years old. He is recovering from a
serious illness, but he still loves America and is deeply concerned
that we not again abandon our most cherished principles and values. So
he has raised his voice, warning his fellow Americans we should not
repeat the mistakes of the past.
I respect and admire Alberto Gonzales for his inspiring life story and
the many obstacles he has overcome. Some of my colleagues suggested his
life story embodies the American dream. But there is more to the
American dream than overcoming difficult circumstances to obtain
prominence and prosperity. We also must honor Fred Korematsu's dream
that our country be true to the fundamental principle upon which it was
founded: the rule of law.
Some of my colleagues have suggested that the opposition to Alberto
Gonzales's nomination is all about partisan politics. That could not be
further from the truth. This is about our ability to win the war on
terrorism while respecting the values that our Nation represents.
I cannot in good conscience vote to reward a man who ignored the rule
of law and the demands of human decency and created the permissive
environment that made Abu Ghraib possible.
When the history of these times are recorded, I believe that Abu Ghraib
and Guantánamo will join the names of infamous Japanese-American
internment camps such as Manzanar, Heart Mountain, and Tule Lake where
Fred Korematsu and over thousands of others were detained. I cannot in
good conscience vote to make the author of such a terrible mistake the
chief law enforcement officer of our great Nation and the guardian of
our God-given and most cherished rights.
So, Mr. President, I will vote no on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales
to serve as Attorney General of the United States. I yield the floor.