Floor Statements

Mr. President, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 1.69 million children in the United States live in households where firearms are kept unlocked and loaded. Tragically but not coincidentally, guns kill an average of nearly eight children and teenagers each day. In addition, the Children's Defense Fund estimates that at least four times as many are injured in nonfatal shootings. The vast majority of these shootings could be prevented if safe gun storage practices were more widely used.

Some parents believe that simply educating their children about the dangers posed by firearms is enough to keep them safe. Unfortunately, this is not the case. A new study shows that parents who keep guns in their home may have dangerous misperceptions about their child's familiarity with and access to guns.

The study, which was conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the San Francisco General Hospital, compared interview responses from 201 families who have guns in their homes. For each set of interviews, children were questioned separately from their parents. More than 70 percent of the children interviewed for the study said that they knew where to find a gun in their home. Surprisingly, 39 percent of the parents who said their children did not know the storage location of their firearms were contradicted by their children. Additionally, 22 percent of the parents who said their children had not handled their guns

were contradicted by their children. These discrepancies are troubling and indicate that simply trying to hide the location of firearms in the home is not enough to adequately protect children from injuring themselves or others with a gun.

According to recent published reports, an estimated 35 percent of homes nationwide include guns. Common sense tells us that when guns and ammunition are secured, the risk of children injuring or killing themselves or others with a gun is significantly reduced. Last year, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the risk of unintentional shooting or suicide by minors using a gun is reduced by as much as 61 percent when ammunition in the home is locked up. Simply storing ammunition separately from the gun reduces such occurrences by more than 50 percent.

While educating children about the dangers of guns is certainly necessary, the use of safe storage practices is critically important to the safety of children and families when guns are kept in the home. We should all urge firearms owners around the country to take steps to adequately secure their guns and ammunition.

Mr. President, although I may not agree with a judicial nominee on policy matters, I will support that nominee as long as his or her values are consistent with the fundamental principles of American law and there is no indication that the nominee is so controlled by ideology that ideology distorts his or her judgment. Regardless of their political views, I will support a nominee who demonstrates fairness and openmindedness and whose reasoning is straightforward, clearly expressed, and worthy of respect.

Brett Kavanaugh is, unfortunately, not such a nominee. Because Mr. Kavanaugh does not have a judicial record to review, evaluating his fitness for the bench is not easy. We do not have written opinions from him that would reveal whether he looks objectively at both sides of an issue before making a decision. Therefore, we must judge his temperament on how he has conducted himself in interviews before the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary and how he answered questions posed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Neither assessment gives me the confidence necessary to vote to confirm Mr. Kavanaugh to the DC Circuit.

In its 2003 assessment of Mr. Kavanaugh, the ABA record noted concerns with the breadth of Mr. Kavanaugh's professional experience. It was noted that he had never tried a case to verdict or judgment; that his litigation experience over the years was always in the company of senior counsel; and that he had very little experience with criminal cases. Specifically, the committee said: ``Indeed, it is the circumstance of courtroom experience that fills the transcripts that make the record before the Court of Appeals, and concerns were expressed about the nominee's insight into that very process.''

In its report on its recent reassessment of Mr. Kavanaugh, the ABA's Standing Committee on the Judiciary down-graded its rating of his qualifications. The report states that one judge who saw Kavanaugh's oral presentation in court said that Kavanaugh was ``less than adequate,'' and that he had been ``sanctimonious,'' and had demonstrated ``experience on the level of an associate.'' A lawyer in a different proceeding said: ``Mr. Kavanaugh did not handle the case well as an advocate and dissembled.''

According to the report, the 2006 interviews of Mr. Kavanaugh raised a new concern involving his potential for judicial temperament. Interviewees characterized Mr. Kavanaugh as, ``insulated,'' which one person commented was due to his current position as Staff Secretary to the President. Another interviewee questioned Mr. Kavanaugh's ability ``to be balanced and fair should he assume a federal judgeship.'' And another said that Kavanaugh is ``immovable and very stubborn and frustrating to deal with on some issues.''

A judge needs to be able to balance competing viewpoints and objectively determine a fair and equitable outcome. Mr. Kavanaugh's lack of judicial or courtroom or scholarly experience added to my doubts about his impartiality and lead me to vote no.

Mr. President, the CIA must at all costs avoid a repeat of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco, when CIA Director Tenet said the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a ``slam dunk,'' and then proceeded to distort and exaggerate underlying intelligence in order to support the administration's Iraq policy. The CIA needs an independent Director who will speak truth to power and provide objective assessments of a professional intelligence community, and not try to please policymakers by telling them what they want to hear.

General Hayden not only promises to be independent and objective, General Hayden has proven he has the backbone to do so.

For instance, General Hayden is perhaps the only high-level official who has criticized the Department of Defense policy office of Douglas Feith. That office, before the war began, undertook to use a direct pipeline to the White House for distorted intelligence assessments, bypassing mechanisms in place which are intended to produce balanced, objective assessments.

General Hayden has done more than speak openly of his concerns about the Feith operation. He acted upon them by placing a cautionary disclaimer on the reporting of his agency relative to the links that Feith and others were trying to create between Saddam Hussein and al- Qaida, so that his agency's reports could be misused for that purpose.

Again, speaking truth to power, General Hayden showed independence when he stood up against the positions being urged by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the recent reforms of the intelligence community.

As to the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, which General Hayden formerly led, many of us have concerns. But those concerns as to the legality and as to the decision to implement the alleged collection of phone numbers called by millions of Americans should be placed at the doorstep of the Attorney General and the White House.

I am one of those being briefed on the program, and I have a number of concerns. But my concerns are with the legality and privacy intrusions and effectiveness of the program authorized by the President, and given the legal imprimatur of the Attorney General. I know of no evidence that General Hayden acted beyond the program's guidelines as set up by the President and the Attorney General.

I will vote for General Hayden's confirmation.

Mr. President, last evening, during his press conference with Prime Minister Blair relative to Iraq, President Bush stated:

The formation of a new government represents a new

beginning for Iraq and a new beginning for the relationship

between Iraq and our coalition.

I hope that is not overly optimistic, but, frankly, I am afraid that it is because of the incompleteness of the Iraqi Government. Its two most important positions--the Minister of Defense and the Minister of the Interior--have not been filled. These are critical positions because numerous police and army units have been dominated by militia members who are loyal to sectarian or political leaders and not to the central Government, and because many militia members outside the police and the army are engaged in a rampage against innocent civilians.

While there have been disagreements on a number of issues related to Iraq, almost everyone has agreed that the new Iraqi Government would have to be a government of national unity with specific emphasis on independent nonsectarian choices for the positions of Minister of Defense and Minister of the Interior if there was to be a chance of quelling the sectarian violence and defeating the insurgency.

Our senior military leaders have been telling us for years that there is no military solution to the violence in Iraq and no way to defeat the insurgency without a political solution among the Iraqis themselves.

The Government that was announced last weekend and approved by the Iraqi Council of Representatives does not represent a political solution because it did not include the two most important ministries: the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior.

The plain truth is that the various Iraqi political actors were not willing to make the compromises necessary to bring about a government of national unity within the time allotted by the Iraqi Constitution. And they still haven't. We hope they will at any time, but they still haven't.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appearing on FOX News last Sunday, minimized the lack of selections for these two positions when she said:

People are dramatizing the fact that they didn't get

certain posts that they hoped to get.

She went on to say:

. . . let's give them three days or four days, or five or

six days, to come up with the best possible interior

ministry. You know, the five days that they will take to vet

people more thoroughly, to make sure they have the right

person, will be well worth it.

On ``Meet the Press'' that afternoon, Secretary Rice even spoke of that failure as a plus, a positive, saying:

. . . I think it actually shows some maturity that they

were able to go ahead with the formation of the government so

that they can start working, but that they can take a little

bit longer.

How is that a sign of maturity? In my view, both the mature and the necessary thing under the constitution of Iraq was for the Iraqi political leaders to make the compromises necessary to form the entire Government, including, in particular, the Minister of Defense and the Minister of the Interior, the two most important ministries.

It was also disappointing that neither President Bush nor our Secretary of State mentioned anything about the need to amend the Iraqi Constitution. General Casey noted in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

We've looked for the constitution to be a national compact,

and the perception now is that it's not, particularly among

the Sunni.

The Iraqi Constitution itself provides for the appointment of a committee to propose amendments to their constitution. That committee has 4 months to complete its work and to recommend amendments to the constitution to the full Parliament.

For a long time, I have been calling for President Bush and officials of his administration to put pressure on the Iraqis, to meet the timetables they have set in their own constitution to form a unity government and to make the changes in the constitution that would make it a unifying document. I have called for that pressure to be in the form of conditioning our continued presence in Iraq on Iraqis meeting their self-imposed deadlines.

The President told me in the presence of several Members of the Congress and in the presence of his own security team that position is actually helpful. For us to tell the Iraqis that our continued presence depends upon their doing what only they can do, which is to meet their self-imposed deadlines for a full government to be appointed and for them to amend their constitution to make it a unifying document.

These are critically important matters. There needs to be a government of national unity. We can't save Iraqis from themselves. We can't form a government of national unity. We can't amend their constitution. If they want a nation, it is up to them to get on with it according to their own constitutional deadlines.

It is not going to happen if we just tell the Iraqis we are there as long as they need us. That is an open-ended commitment which cannot stand because the American people will not stand for it and should not stand for it.

I hope the President and the Secretary of State and the U.S. Ambassador are saying privately what they haven't yet said publicly: that it is up to the Iraqis to determine their fate and to pull together a national unity government because that is the only hope they have of defeating the insurgency and avoiding civil war.

Mr. President, 5 years ago, the Enron Corporation, the seventh largest publicly traded corporation in America with a $100 billion in annual revenue, collapsed. Its sudden plunge into bankruptcy destroyed the savings of thousands, eliminated the jobs of tens of thousands more, and, more fundamentally, damaged Americans' faith in U.S. capital markets. In the years following, the extent of Enron's misconduct became clear--the dishonest accounting, nonpayment of taxes, excessive executive compensation, collusion with banks and brokers, the lies to the investing public and their own employees.

Many Enron executives have since pleaded guilty and accepted responsibility for their role in the Enron disaster. Enron's two most senior executives, however, did not. They spent the last 5 years denying responsibility and fighting all efforts to hold them accountable. But yesterday, a jury found Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling guilty of 25 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, false statements, and other misconduct. The jury held both men accountable for Enron's misdeeds.

Some want to portray those convictions as the end of an era of corporate corruption. They are already urging Congress to weaken the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the law enacted to prevent future Enron catastrophes. For example, they want to exempt 80 percent the publicly traded companies from rules requiring internal controls to ensure that their books accurately reflect their finances. They want to weaken or eliminate the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board that now polices the accounting industry. They want to weaken other corporate reforms as well, from rules requiring oversight of hedge funds to rules requiring mutual funds to have independent directors.

But corporate corruption is not over. Just this year, AIG, one of the country's largest financial firms, agreed to pay $1.6 billion to settte State and Federal allegations of securities fraud and bid-rigging. Fannie Mae, an American symbol of financial success and affordable housing, paid $400 million to settle allegations of accounting fraud. In April, the former chief executive of Computer Associates, a leading high tech company, pled guilty to securities fraud and obstruction of justice. Another 20 publicly traded corporations are currently under investigation for playing games with the timing of stock option grants to maximize the profits that their top executives could pocket. The list, unfortunately, goes on.

The message that should be taken from the Enron convictions is not that corporate oversight is too tough, but that corporate executives must and can be held accountable when they misuse funds, abuse their positions, and mislead the investing public.

I am told that some corporations are waiting for my good friend, Paul Sarbanes to leave the Senate before attacking the law that he championed. They want him out of the way first. But my friend fought too hard and too long for the corporate reforms embodied in Sarbanes- Oxley to be tossed aside or watered down. This country cannot afford more Enrons, and I, for one, believe the Senate cannot and will not turn back the clock on corporate oversight.

Mr. President, I wish to add one comment to Senator McConnell about Senator Byrd's comments about his holy marriage, a marriage which has inspired every person and every couple who is familiar with Robert and Erma Byrd.

My wife Barbara and I have been here now for 28 years. When we came here, we noted right away this wonderful love affair between Robert and his beloved wife Erma. Many things that Senator Byrd does inspires every one of us in the Senate--his love of this institution, his passionate commitment to this institution, and all the unique features of it, his love affair with the constitution of the United States. But I guess as powerful and potent as those two commitments are and remain and always will in his heart and in our hearts, hopefully, his relationship with his wonderful, extraordinary wife Erma tops them all.

I thank him for that inspiration and thank him for all those other things that he does which help to keep this body, this unique body in the history of the world.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Do the Write Thing Challenge, or DtWT, is a national program that gives middle school students the opportunity to reflect on and express themselves about youth violence in their communities. DtWT combines classroom discussion with a writing contest that focuses on personal responsibility in solving youth violence problems. Since it was created in 1994, more than 350,000 middle school students have participated in DtWT activities, and the program has grown to include participants from 28 different jurisdictions, including Detroit, MI.

In 2005, more than 32,000 students participated in the DtWT writing contest. To participate, students are asked to write an essay, poem, play, or song that addresses the impact of violence on their life, the causes of youth violence, and the things that they can do to prevent youth violence around them. As part of their participation in the contest, students are also asked to make a personal commitment that they will put their thoughts into action by working to help stop youth violence in their daily lives.

Each year, a DtWT Committee made up of community, business, and governmental leaders from each participating jurisdiction reviews the writing submissions of the students and picks two national finalists, one boy and one girl, from their area. I am pleased to recognize this year's national finalists from Detroit, Demetrius Adams and Tiffini Baldwin, for their outstanding work and dedication to the prevention of youth violence.

Both Demetrius and Tiffini wrote about the serious effect that guns, gangs, and drugs can have on the lives of teenagers. Their writings demonstrate a deep understanding of the impact that a single act of violence can have on an entire community. I am impressed by the maturity they have shown in their work and congratulate them on being selected as national finalists.

In July, Demetrius and Tiffini will join the other DtWT national finalists in Washington, DC, for National Recognition Week. During the week's activities, the national finalists will attend a recognition ceremony and have their work permanently placed in the Library of Congress. In addition, they will have the opportunity to share

their thoughts on youth violence with Members of Congress and other policymakers. In the past, students have had the opportunity to meet with the Secretary of Education, the Attorney General, and other representatives from the Department of Justice.

I know my colleagues join me in celebrating the work of all of the DtWT participants from around the country. I would also like to thank the DtWT organizers for their commitment to engaging with and educating children about nonviolence. Their important efforts help to increase awareness of the issue and facilitate the development of local solutions to the youth violence problem in our Nation.

While it is important that we recognize the hard work of the DtWT participants and organizers, it is also important that we support their efforts through our actions in the Senate. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting legislation that would help prevent youth violence by increasing the number of police officers on our streets, by increasing resources for school and community violence prevention programs, and by making it more difficult for children and criminals to acquire dangerous firearms.

Mr. President, it is with great pride that I pay tribute to the United States Coast Guard Cutter Icebreaker Mackinaw on her 62 years of exceptional service on the Great Lakes. The Coast Guard's largest cutter assigned to the Great Lakes, the Mackinaw will be decommissioned on Saturday, June 10, 2006. The power and majesty of the Mackinaw have made her a unique and awe-inspiring cutter, setting a high standard by which other icebreakers are measured.

Construction of the Mackinaw began on March 20, 1943, by the Toledo Shipbuilding Company of Ohio. With the Great Lakes serving as a vital link for industry and commerce, the Coast Guard needed a vessel that could accomplish in one pass what took smaller icebreakers three or four passes to accomplish. Out of this need was born the legendary ``Mighty Mac.'' At a length of 290 feet, a beam of 74 feet, a displacement of 5,252 tons, and a maximum speed of 16 knots, the Mackinaw was the most powerful icebreaker in the world when she was commissioned on December 20, 1944.

In the years since then, the Mackinaw has served proudly on the Great Lakes, with Cheboygan, Michigan, as her home port. In addition to her mission of breaking ice in the fall and spring, the Mackinaw has been called upon to serve as a buoy tender, carry fuel and supplies to light stations, serve as a training vessel and assist vessels in distress when necessary. The Mackinaw has completed all of these duties with distinction.

Along the way, the Mackinaw has captured the imagination of the people of the Great Lakes, and they call her by many names: ``The Mighty Mac,'' ``Big Mac,'' ``Ice Cream Machine,'' ``Great White Mother,'' ``Mack Attack,'' ``Guardian of the Eighth Sea,'' and ``Grand Lady of the Great Lakes.''

The great success of the Mackinaw is due, not only to the capabilities of the vessel herself, but also to her crew. Over the last 62 years, more then 3,000 men and women have served this country aboard the Mackinaw. These men and women should be saluted for their dedication, hard work, and tireless efforts in protecting and securing the safe passage of vessels on the Great Lakes.

The crew of the Mackinaw is also to be commended for their volunteer efforts. Since 2000, the Mackinaw has taken on the special mission of acting as Chicago's Christmas Ship. Each December, the crew makes the 350 mile trip from Cheboygan, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois, bringing Christmas trees to be distributed to disadvantaged families in Chicago. Since its inception, this program has provided more than 6,000 trees to families in need during the holiday season.

On the eve of her decommissioning, I would like to praise the United States Coast Guard Cutter Icebreaker Mackinaw for her 62 years of service on the Great Lakes. And I thank the current and former crew of this great ship for their service and commitment. The Mackinaw will be long remembered for a job well done.

Mr. President, it is with great pride that I pay tribute to the United States Coast Guard Cutter Acacia on her 62 years of exceptional service on the Great Lakes. The ``Ace of the Great Lakes'' will be remembered for her strength, integrity, and rich maritime history. The Acacia is the last of the Coast Guard's classic World War II era 180 foot buoy tenders, and when she is decommissioned on Wednesday, June 7, 2006, it will be the end of an era.

The Acacia, constructed during World War II by the Zenith Dredge Company of Duluth, Minnesota, was launched on September 1, 1944. She was named after the U.S. Lighthouse Service Acacia, the only Lighthouse Service vessel sunk during World War II. In the years since her commissioning, the Acacia has served proudly on the Great Lakes, calling Charlevoix, Michigan, home port for the last 16 years.

Affectionately known as ``The Big A,'' the Acacia's primary duties have been the maintenance of more than 210 buoys, lighthouses and other navigational aids in the Great Lakes. Servicing these aids to navigation has required travel from as far south as Calumet Harbor to as far north as Little Bay De Noc. The Acacia's icebreaking capabilities were also vital to maintaining the safe passage of coal ships in the channels between Toledo, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan every winter through her participation in Operation Coal Shovel.

In addition, the Acacia has assisted in icebreaking and search and rescue operations on the Great Lakes and throughout the world. Internationally, the Acacia and her crew took part in operation Uphold Democracy in 1994, supporting the Department of Defense in patrolling the coastline of Haiti. Whether working on the Great Lakes or in international waters, the Acacia and her crew have completed all of their missions with class and integrity.

As we pay tribute to the Acacia, I want to recognize the contributions of her crew to her great success. The proud men and women who have served this country aboard the Acacia over the last 62 years are to be saluted for their commitment, hard work, and impressive skill in protecting and securing the safe passage of vessels on the Great Lakes.

On the eve of her decommissioning, I would like to praise the United States Coast Guard Cutter Acacia for her service on the Great Lakes. And I thank the current and former crew of this great ship for their service and commitment. The Acacia will be long remembered for a job well done.

Mr. President, I thank the chairman, Senator Specter, and Senator Leahy for accepting my amendment, which would help thousands of religious minorities who have come to the United States seeking relief from the persecution they faced in Iraq.

Currently in the United States, approximately 3,000 Christian Iraqis--about 2,000 of whom are in the metropolitan Detroit area--are in jeopardy of being deported. These are persons with no criminal record who came to the United States seeking asylum during the regime of Saddam Hussein. Due to the long delays in the immigration system, however, their cases were not heard before April 30, 2003, when the United States declared victory in Iraq. When these individuals finally had their day in court, the immigration judge denied their application because the government in Iraq that persecuted these individuals was no longer in power.

These Iraqi Christians had valid claims for asylum when the came here, they have been hard-working, law abiding residents over many years, and they have put down roots and raised families here. They should not be punished for the bureaucratic backlogs of the immigration judicial system.

My amendment would protect persecuted religious minorities who fled Saddam Hussein's oppressive government in Iraq and came to the United States with valid claims of asylum and for whom, despite the change in government regime, it is not safe to return to their homeland. The persecuted religious minorities are defined as someone who is or was a national or resident of Iraq, is a member of a religious minority in Iraq, and shares common characteristics with other minorities in Iraq who have been targets of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. My amendment would make these individuals eligible for legal permanent residency status and would supersede all previous judicial action on their cases.

I am pleased that we are able to provide relief to these individuals who deserve legal permanent residency on the merits of their cases but were unfairly denied it because of bureaucratic delays that were beyond their control.

I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, our immigration system is broken and needs to

be repaired. This bill is a strong step in the right direction. We need to protect our borders and look out for American workers, and we also need a responsible way to meet the need for temporary workers, particularly in the agricultural area, where they represent about 70 percent of the U.S. agricultural workforce, with a path to earned citizenship for hard-working, law abiding temporary workers. This bill, the product of bipartisan compromise, takes a commonsense approach to all of these issues.

The comprehensive immigration reform bill before us today would strengthen security at our borders through increased border patrol and heavier fines for employers who violate the law. It would create a sustainable temporary worker program to help fill the lowest wage jobs. It would enforce labor protections for U.S. workers by ensuring that the temporary workers who are certified do not adversely impact them. And it would provide a path to earned citizenship that does not bump anybody who has applied through the legal channels and has been waiting. Undocumented immigrants who have been here for years, set down roots, worked hard, and paid their taxes would go to the end of the line and earn citizenship after perhaps as many as 10 to 15 years.

I am pleased that we were able to include additional protections for U.S. workers in the bill. I supported an amendment introduced by Senator Obama that strengthens labor protections for U.S. workers and bars employers from hiring guest workers in areas with a high unemployment rate. This and other amendments will help ensure that we have a well-balanced, and workable guest worker program. In addition to these amendments, I am also pleased that we have maintained the AgJOBS provision within the bill. This provision is a commonsense fix to major problems being faced by those who have the least access to resources: low wage agricultural workers from exploitation which would adversely impact American workers.

I was pleased that the Senate recognized the significant implementation challenges associated with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and accepted an amendment that would extend its deadline. The WHTI requires anyone entering the United States via a U.S.-Canadian land border to have a passport or other acceptable alternative document by January 1, 2008. The amendment accepted by the Senate extends this deadline by 18 months to June 1, 2009.

My home State of Michigan, like other northern border States, enjoys a close economic and social relationship with Canada. The WHTI will play an important role in securing our borders, but it must be implemented in a reasonable, fair, and well thought out manner that minimizes negative impacts on trade, travel, and tourism. By voting to extend the deadline, we are giving the Departments of State and Homeland Security additional time to study and correct the various implementation issues related to the WHTI.

I am also pleased that the immigration bill addresses another key border issue: the security problem that is posed by trash trucks entering this country. My amendment, which was accepted by the bill managers, would stop the importation of Canadian waste if the Department of Homeland Security can not show that the methodologies and technologies used to screen these trash trucks for the presence of chemical, nuclear, biological, and radiological weapons are as effective as those used to screen for such materials in other items of commerce entering the United States by commercial vehicle.

Finally, I want to thank the managers of this bill for accepting my amendment that would protect thousands of individuals who fled religious persecution in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Due to delays in the immigration bureaucracy, many of these individuals have not yet had their day in court, and, of those who have, many have been denied asylum based on changed country conditions since the war. My amendment would make these individuals eligible for legal permanent residency if they would have received that status but for the bureaucratic delays.

The comprehensive immigration bill before us will make our borders more secure while creating a workable temporary worker program that protects U.S. jobs. I will support this bill and hope that the conference committee will return a final bill similar to it.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize and pay tribute to Thomas W. Taylor, the Senior Deputy General Counsel of the Army, for his exceptionally meritorious service to our country. Mr. Taylor will retire on June 3, 2006, having completed 36 years of superb military and Federal civilian service with the Department of the Army, the last 19 of which have been as a member of the Senior Executive Service. As such, he has been at the forefront of the most critical issues affecting our Nation and the military today. His commitment to upholding the rule of law in the service of the national defense has been the bedrock grounding many of the Army's mission successes. We owe him a particular debt of gratitude for the genuine and enduring concern he has demonstrated for the welfare of our men and women in uniform and their families, particularly in the face of the many sacrifices our Nation has demanded of them over the last decades.

Mr. Taylor's remarkable career as a selfless and committed servant of the public trust culminated in his appointment in 1997 as Senior Deputy General Counsel, the Department's senior career civilian attorney. Mr. Taylor has long been the foundation of strategic leadership, vision, and continuity for the Army legal community. Over the course of his distinguished career, he has provided sage policy and legal advice to six Secretaries of the Army, seven Army General Counsel, and numerous other senior officers in the Army Secretariat, and Headquarters, Department of the Army, on a wide variety of operational issues, including military support to civilian authorities: during special events of national significance, such as the Olympic Games and Presidential Inaugurals; in responding to domestic disasters and civil disturbances; and in fighting drugs and weapons of mass destruction. His personnel law portfolio covered the full range of military and civilian personnel law: mobilization, recruitment, promotions, discharges, medical care issues, sexual harassment, and equal employment opportunity. Other practice areas included select aspects of criminal law, implementation of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act as applied to the Army, Secretarial and command authority, and application of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, as well as policies governing the release of information under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts in response to public, Congressional, and media requests for information about Army activities and investigations. Further, Mr. Taylor discharged the Department's legal responsibility for intelligence oversight, monitoring Army intelligence and counterintelligence operations worldwide and overseeing legal and policy aspects of special access programs and intelligence support to other Federal agencies. In 2001, he was the senior Army lawyer at the Pentagon site on September 11, providing advice enabling immediate on-scene military support to security and recovery operations. He has represented the Army and DoD in matters with Congress and other Federal agencies, as well as to foreign countries. Beginning in the Reagan administration and during extended transitional periods between successive administration appointees, Mr. Taylor often has been selected personally by Secretaries of the Army to discharge the duties of the General Counsel. Most recently, he has served in that capacity since July of 2005.

Mr. Taylor was raised in Pilot Mountain, NC, and is a graduate of public schools in North Carolina. He earned a B.A. in history with high honors from Guilford College, Greensboro, NC, in 1966, and a J.D. with honors in 1969 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif and a staff member of the law review, which published three of his notes. After graduating from law school, he was commissioned as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the Army. He first served at Fort Wainwright, AK, followed by tours at Fulda and Darmstadt, Germany. Returning to the United States, Mr. Taylor taught from 1975 to 1978 in the law department of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, serving as professor to many of the Army's future leaders. Later, after tours of duty in the office of the Judge Advocate General in the Pentagon and in a nominative position as an Assistant to the Army General Counsel, he

left active duty to accept a civilian position with the office in 1982. In 1987 he graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. Throughout his years of civilian service, he continued to serve as an individual mobilization augmentee in the reserve component of the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, retiring in 2000 in the grade of Colonel, having last served as the Director of the Academic Department of The Judge Advocate General's School.

In his 26 years of selfless and dedicated Federal civil service, Mr. Taylor has received numerous honors and awards, including, on three occasions, the Army's Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service. He received the Presidential Rank Award as a Distinguished Executive in 1996 and as a Meritorious Executive in 1993 and 2002. Notably, he has received honorary awards for lifetime contributions to his client communities including: the Knowlton Award for Excellence in Intelligence, presented by the Military Intelligence Corps; the Chief of Public Affairs Award for outstanding support and advice to the Chief of Public Affairs; designation as a distinguished member of The Judge Advocate General's Corps Regiment; and induction into the Order of the Marechaussee for service to the Military Police Corps Regiment.

On leaving Federal service, Mr. Taylor will become a professor of the Practice of Public Policy Studies at Duke University. I know that he will continue to inspire others with his sense of honor, his love of the law, and his abiding belief in the nobility of public service and values for which our Nation stands. I join with all my colleagues in saluting Thomas W. Taylor and his wife Susan for their many years of outstanding service to the U.S. Army and to our country.

Mr. President, General Hayden's nomination for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency comes at a critical time. The Agency is in disarray. Its current Director has apparently been forced out, and the previous Director, George Tenet, departed under a cloud after having compromised his own objectivity and independence and that of his Agency by misusing Iraq intelligence to support the administration's policy agenda. The next Director must right this ship and restore the CIA to its critically important mission.

I will vote to confirm General Hayden because his actions have demonstrated on a number of important occasions the independence and strength of character needed to fulfill the most important role of the CIA Director--independence and a willingness to speak truth to power about the intelligence assessments of professionals in the intelligence community.

This nomination has been considered by me on two key issues: One, whether or not General Hayden will be independent--and I believe he will--and two, what judgment should be rendered about him based on what is known about the National Security Agency's surveillance program which he administered during his tenure as Director of the NSA. Again, the highest priority of the new Director must be to ensure that intelligence provided to the President and the Congress is objective and independent of political considerations. It was only a few years ago that then-CIA Director George Tenet shaped intelligence to support the policy position of the administration. There are many examples.

On February 11, 2003, just before the war, Director Tenet publicly stated, as though it were fact, that Iraq has ``provided training in poison and gases to two Al-Qaeda associates.'' However, we now know that the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, had assessed a year earlier that the primary source of that report was more likely intentionally misleading his debriefers, and the CIA itself had concluded in January 2003, before the Tenet public declaration that I have quoted, that the source of the claim that Iraq had provided training in poisons was not in a position to know if any training had in fact taken place.

On September 28, 2002, President Bush said that ``each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group.'' A week later, on October 7, 2002, a letter declassifying CIA intelligence indicated that Iraq was unlikely to provide WMD to terrorists or al-Qaida and called such a move an ``extreme step,'' a very different perspective from that which had been stated by the President. But the very next day after that declassification was obtained, Director Tenet told the press that there was ``no inconsistency'' between the views in the letter and the President's views on the subject.

His statement was flatly wrong. His effort to minimize the inconsistency or eliminate it not only revealed his lack of independence, but it damaged the credibility of the Central Intelligence Agency.

At a hearing in 2004, I asked Director Tenet about the alleged meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. He told us that the CIA had ``not gathered enough evidence to conclude that it had happened'' and that ``I don't know that it took place. I can't say that I did.'' What he neglected to say was that the CIA did not believe that the meeting had happened, a fact that he finally acknowledged publicly in July of 2004, after the war began, when he wrote that the CIA was ``increasingly skeptical that such a meeting occurred'' and that there was an ``absence of any credible information that the April 2001 meeting occurred.'' We determined later that that CIA skepticism dated back at least to June 2002, before the war.

Director Tenet also looked the other way when the administration publicly alleged that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. As a matter of fact, he had personally called the Deputy National Security Adviser to urge that the allegation be removed from the President's October 2002 Cincinnati speech. Director Tenet was silent after the President included the allegation in his January 2003 State of the Union speech. It was not until July of 2003, long after the war began, 2 months after President Bush declared major combat operations were over in Iraq, that Director Tenet finally acknowledged publicly that the allegations should not have been included in the State of the Union speech.

According to Bob Woodward's book ``Plan of Attack,'' when the President asked Director Tenet, following the CIA's presentation to him in December of 2002, about its intelligence relative to Iraq's suspected WMD programs, How confident are you in the intelligence about that, Director Tenet replied, ``Don't worry; it's a slam dunk,'' which it surely was not. But that is what the President wanted to hear. That is the message which Director Tenet presented to him, and that is the message that the President then presented to the American public.

It is essential that the new Director of the CIA stand up to the administration in power, no matter what administration it is, when the intelligence does not support the direction that the administration wants to go. We cannot afford another Iraq intelligence fiasco.

General Hayden has said that he will be an independent CIA Director. Based on his record, I believe him.

One piece of evidence in that Hayden record relates to a strategy that the administration used to bolster its case for war. The decision was made by the administration to put a set of what was called ``fresh eyes'' to look over the intelligence relative to the alleged links between Iraq and al-Qaida. The Secretary of Defense created a separate operation in a DOD policy office led by Douglas Feith. While the intelligence community was consistently dubious of the links between al-Qaida and Iraq, the Feith office scraped and scratched and cherry- picked the intelligence to produce assessments that said that there was a strong relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. And then Mr. Feith bypassed the CIA, bypassed the intelligence community, and briefed that analysis to senior policymakers at the National Security Council and the Vice President's office.

George Tenet told us that he was not aware of that prewar briefing by Mr. Feith, until I brought it to his attention in February of 2004. In making its case for war with Iraq, the administration used Mr. Feith's misleading intelligence to convince the country that Saddam and bin Laden were allies. There were few in the administration who had been willing to speak up against this bypass of the intelligence community process, a process whose very purpose is to provide balanced, objective assessments for the intelligence community. One of the few who has spoken up is General Hayden.

At his nomination hearing, I asked General Hayden whether, when he was NSA Director before the Iraq war, he was comfortable with what Douglas Feith was up to. My question to General Hayden was not just about Doug Feith. It was about whether the General was willing to speak the truth as he saw it, even if it went against the administration's case for war. General Hayden told the committee, relative to the Feith operation:

No, sir. I wasn't comfortable.

Has anyone else in the administration said that, spoken up and said that which is so obvious about the Feith operation?

There may be others, but General Hayden is the only one that comes to mind. This is what he then said to the committee at our hearing on his nomination:

It is possible, Senator, if you want to drill down on an

issue and just get laser beam focused, and exhaust every

possible--every ounce of evidence, you can build up a pretty

strong body of data, right? But you have to know what you're

doing, all right.

I got three great kids, but if you tell me go out and find

all the bad things they've done, Hayden, I can build you a

pretty good dossier, and you'd think they were pretty bad

people, because that was what I was looking for and that's

what I'd build up.

General Hayden said this:

That would be very wrong. That would be inaccurate. That

would be misleading.

Wrong, inaccurate, and misleading. That is a pretty good description of the Feith shop's prewar intelligence analysis. It is an indictment of the administration's use of that intelligence to make the case for war.

But what is interesting, in particular, is not just what General Hayden said at his confirmation hearing; it is what he did at the time that the Feith office was actually out looking for intelligence to try to prove their premise that there was a connection between Saddam and al-Qaida. General Hayden actually placed a disclaimer on NSA reporting relative to any links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, stating that SIGINT--or signals intelligence--``neither confirms nor denies'' such a link.

So while you had the administration claiming the link and Doug Feith scrapping around, scratching for any little bit of evidence that could prove his preordained conclusion that there was such a link, you had General Hayden saying SIGINT, signals intelligence, neither confirms nor denies that such a link exists.

In other words, we have in General Hayden more than just promises of independence and objectivity and a willingness to speak truth to power. We have somebody who has actually done so.

There is another significant way in which General Hayden has spoken truth to power. When we were considering reforming the intelligence community to fill the gaps and the cracks that existed prior to 9/11 and the Iraq War, there was a major effort to derail the proposal, in part because the legislation sought to shift some authority from Department of Defense components to the new office of the Director of National Intelligence. Although General Hayden is a four star general, he stood up to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on this issue. It took some backbone and strength of character for him to do so.

As to General Hayden remaining in active duty if he is confirmed, I would only make three points. One, he is not the first person to do so. Since the Central Intelligence Agency was established by law in 1947, three commissioned officers have held the tile of Director of Central Intelligence, RADM Roscoe Hillenkoetter, GEN Walter Bedell Smith, and ADM Stansfield Turner. I would also remind my colleagues that the Senate confirmed then LTG Colin Powell to be President Reagan's National Security Adviser even though there is no law that removes that position from the supervision or control of the Secretary of Defense.

Secondly, General Hayden has sent a letter to Senator Warner which states ``I do not intend to remain in active military status beyond my assignment as Director, Central Intelligence Agency (if confirmed).'' This is an added assurance of independence and that he will not be shaping intelligence to please the Defense Department in order to put himself in a better position for some future appointment in the military establishment.

Third, General Hayden's supervisor in his line of work as Director of the CIA will be by law Ambassador Negroponte, not Secretary Rumsfeld. So General Hayden would not be in the military chain of command but in the intelligence chain of command.

To eliminate any doubt of that, we are including a provision in the Defense authorization bill, which is awaiting Senate floor action, to make

that absolutely clear in law. Senator Warner and I think it is already clear, but we are going to make it doubly clear by putting that into the pending DOD authorization bill.

As I mentioned, the key issue relative to General Hayden's nomination is the President's domestic surveillance program. Over the past 6 months, we have been engaged in a national debate about the appropriate limits on the Government's authority to conduct electronic eavesdropping on American citizens.

General Hayden was Director of the National Security Agency when the President authorized the program, and many of our colleagues have raised concerns about that.

The administration has repeatedly characterized the electronic surveillance program as applying only to international calls and not involving any domestic surveillance. In February, for instance, the Vice President said:

Some of our critics call this a domestic surveillance

program. Wrong, that is inaccurate; it is not domestic

surveillance.

Ambassador Negroponte said:

This is a program that was ordered by the President with

respect to international phone calls to or from suspected al-

Qaida operatives and their affiliates . . . This was not

about domestic surveillance.

General Hayden found a way to signal that the administration has not described the entire program. When asked at his confirmation hearing whether the program the administration described is the entire program, General Hayden said he could not answer in open session. Presumably, if it were the entire program, he could have easily answered, ``yes.''

In addition, while Stephen Hadley, the President's National Security Adviser, has said relative to the reports that phone records had been provided to the Government under the NSA program, that it is hard to find a privacy issue here, General Hayden did not make that claim and instead acknowledged that, indeed, privacy was an issue, and surely whatever one thinks they believe about this program, privacy is an issue.

There may be some who, when they understand the program, believe the privacy concerns are overridden by the security advantage. There may be others who reach the other conclusion that whatever security advantages are achieved do not overcome the privacy intrusions that are reported to exist by those phone records being in the possession or being available to the Government, according to those press reports. But whatever one's conclusion is, there are clearly privacy concerns involved. And when the general was in front of us--he was honest enough--and said: I cannot say there are no privacy concerns here, he was telling us something which should be obvious to each one of us.

There are remaining for me a lot of unanswered questions about the NSA program, and I have been one who has been at least partially briefed. I am one of that subcommittee of seven for whom the briefing has begun. But the fact is, the legal opinions about this program are not General Hayden's, they are the Attorney General's. I am aware of no allegation that General Hayden took any action that went beyond what the President authorized or what the Attorney General advised was legal. There are legitimate grounds for criticism regarding this program, but such criticism should be aimed at the White House and the Attorney General.

The Intelligence Committee is in the middle of an inquiry into the program. Now that the full committee has been authorized to be briefed on the program, all of the members of the Intelligence Committee need to catch up to where seven of us are, which is about halfway through the briefings. We are still waiting for the administration to answer many questions that we have asked about the program.

I want to turn for a few moments to the issue of detainee treatment. I would have liked General Hayden to be more forthcoming on this issue at his hearing. In his testimony, General Hayden affirmed that the CIA is bound by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. In particular, General Hayden stated that this legislation's prohibition on the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment of detainees applies to all Government agencies, including the CIA. The Detainee Treatment Act also requires that no individual under the effective control of the Defense Department or in a DOD facility will be subjected to any interrogation technique that is not listed in the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogations. In response to my questioning, General Hayden agreed that the Army field manual would apply to CIA interrogations of detainees under DOD's effective control or in a DOD facility.

I was disappointed, however, that General Hayden repeatedly chose not to 12 respond in public to many other questions on detainee treatment, deferring his answers to the hearing's closed session. I believe that he could have answered these questions and related his professional opinion in the public hearing.

In response to Senator Feinstein's questions, General Hayden would not say publicly whether individuals held at secret sites may be detained for decades. He would not say publicly whether waterboarding is an acceptable interrogation technique whether the Agency has received new legal guidance from the Department of Justice since passage of the Detainee Treatment Act in December of last year. General Hayden would not answer my question whether the Justice Department memo on the legality of specific interrogation techniques, referred to as the second Bybee memo, remains operative, saying only that ``additional legal opinions'' have been offered. The problem is exacerbated because the administration continues to deny our requests for the second Bybee memo and other Justice Department legal memos which set out the legal boundaries for what constitutes permissible treatment of detainees.

Under the Detainee Treatment Act, we have established a single standard--no cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees. This standard applies without regard to what agency holds a detainee, whether the Defense Department or the CIA, or where the detainee is being held. Yet the administration will not say publicly whether this standard has the same meaning for the intelligence community that it has for our military. The Government's views on the standard for how we treat detainees remains cloaked in secrecy.

The Armed Services Committee has heard from the judge advocates general of our military services on what they believe the standard for detainee treatment is. The judge advocates general were asked about the use of dogs in interrogations; forcing a detainee to wear women's underwear during interrogation to humiliate him; leading a detainee around the room on all fours and forcing him to perform dog tricks; subjecting a detainee to provocative touching to humiliate or demean him; subjecting a detainee to strip searches and forcing him to stand naked in front of females as an interrogation method; and waterboarding. In each case, the judge advocates general said that such treatment is not consistent with the spirit or intent of the Army fie1d manual. As I mentioned earlier, with the enactment of the Detainee Treatment Act, the Army field manual applies to all interrogations of detainees under the effective control of the Defense Department and all interrogations conducted in DOD facilities.

General Hayden, in contrast, would not say in open session whether even waterboarding is even permitted. When the Senate Armed Services Committee's markup of the national defense authorization bill for fiscal fear 2007 comes to the floor later this year, the Senate will have the chance to demand some answers on the standard for the treatment of detainees. The new bill includes a requirement that the President provide Congress a definitive legal opinion, coordinated across government agencies, on whether certain specific interrogation techniques--including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of dogs in interrogations and nudity or sexual humiliation--constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. This provision would also require the President to certify to Congress that this legal opinion is binding on all departments and agencies of the U.S. Government, including the CIA, their personnel, and their contractors.

While I disagree with General Hayden's decision not to publicly state his

personal view, the general did affirm that the prohibition on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in the Detainee Treatment Act applies to all Government agencies, including the CIA.

We have asked the administration to clarify this matter. I would hope that the administration would, one, state clearly that waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions are unacceptable; two, state clearly that the standard in law prohibits the use of dogs in interrogations; and three, state clearly that acts like stripping a detainee for interrogation purposes or subjecting a detainee to sexual humiliation are prohibited. I also hope that the administration will state clearly that the International Committee of the Red Cross will be informed about all detainees held by the United States Government and adopt a policy of not rendering individuals in our custody where there is a reasonable possibility that the person will be tortured.

As I said at the time the Senate approved the Detainee Treatment Act, enactment of this legislation means the United States has rejected any claim that this standard--cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment--has one meaning for the Department of Defense and another for the CIA--one meaning as applied to Americans and another applied to our enemies, or one meaning as applied on U.S. territory and another applied elsewhere in the world.

I conclude by saying, in my view, General Hayden will be the independent Director of the Central Intelligence Agency that we so desperately need and that the country deserves. The record demonstrates his willingness to speak truth to power, and I will vote to confirm General Hayden.

I yield the floor.

Since I got there first, I insist upon being recognized first. I will be very brief. I will only say that there is no greater example of civility and decency and honor and integrity in the U.S. Senate than John Warner. It is a privilege and true honor to have served with him. He is the most accommodating of Senators. I will sum it up with one thing: as long as there are John Warners in the Senate, the Senate is in good hands.

(Applause, Members rising.)

Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 4106

Mr. President, I intend to vote in favor of the Ensign amendment to authorize the National Guard to assist in securing the southern border of the United States. The National Guard has been used in a State status to perform Federal missions in the past--for counterdrug and counterterrorism missions--but Congress provided express statutory authorization for these efforts.

I believe that it is essential that we provide a similar statutory authorization here. This authorization gives Congress an appropriate opportunity to define the circumstances in which it is appropriate to provide Federal reimbursement for the National Guard in State status and the types of activities for which Federal reimbursement will be provided.

The key to the Ensign amendment, in my view, is that it makes it clear that the National Guard of a State will perform this mission only if ordered by the Governor of the State to do so. This provision makes it clear that the Governors retain control of the National Guard when it acts in a State

status. For these reasons, I support the Ensign amendment and urge my colleagues to support it as well.