Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 - Resumed

Floor Speech

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on behalf of amendment No. 2669 that has been offered by Senator Graham, with Senators WEBB, MCCAIN, and myself as cosponsors. It is a pending amendment.

The purpose of this amendment is quite straightforward. It would prevent the use of any funds made available to the Department of Justice by this appropriations bill from being used to prosecute any individual suspected of involvement in the 9/11/01 attacks against the United States in an article III court--that means essentially a regular Federal court created pursuant to article III of our Constitution.

Why would we feel we need to do such a thing? It is because the current protocol governing the disposition of cases referred for possible prosecution of detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the current protocol of the U.S. Department of Justice governing the referral of these detainees from Guantanamo Bay, says as follows:

No. 2, Factors for Determination of Prosecution. There is a presumption that, where feasible, referred cases will be prosecuted in an Article III court in keeping with traditional principles of federal prosecution.

It is because we who are sponsoring this amendment think there is a fundamental error of judgment--in fact, in its way, an act of injustice--that these individuals, suspected terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, suspected in this case, according to our amendment, of having been involved in the attacks of 9/11 on the United States which resulted in the deaths of almost 3,000 people, that these individuals would be tried in a regular U.S. Federal court as if they were accused of violating our criminal laws. They are not common criminals or uncommon criminals; they are suspected of being war criminals. As such, they should not be brought to prosecution in a traditional Federal court along with other accused criminals.

Citizens of the United States have all the right to the protections of our Constitution in the Federal courts, article III courts of the United States. These are suspected terrorist war criminals who are not entitled to all the protections of our Constitution and whose prosecution should not be confused with a normal criminal law prosecution. They are war criminals. They ought to be tried according to all the rules that prevail for war criminals, including, of course, the Geneva Conventions.

This Congress has established a tradition and improved in recent times a system of military commissions, a system adopted by both Houses of Congress, signed into law by the President, which provides standards of due process and fairness in the trial of suspected war criminals, not just in compliance with the Geneva Conventions and the Supreme Court of the United States but well above the standards that have been required by both the Supreme Court and the Geneva Conventions.

Those who are accused of committing the heinous, cowardly acts of intentionally targeting unsuspecting, defenseless civilians in an act of war as part of a larger declared war of Islamic extremists against, frankly, anybody who is not like them--the most numerous victims of these Islamic terrorists around the world are fellow Muslims who don't agree with their extremism. They have killed many people of other religions. When they struck us in the United States on 9/11, they killed an extraordinary classically American diverse group of people. The only reason they were targeted was that they were in the United States. The terrorists, these people who are suspected of being terrorists participating in and aiding the attacks of 9/11, are war criminals, not common criminals. They should, therefore, be tried by a military commission system, which goes back as long as the Revolutionary War in the United States. There is a proud and fair tradition. We have upgraded and strengthened all the due process and legal protections of them after 9/11. So why would we take these war criminals, suspected war criminals, and bring them into the criminal courts of the United States and give them the rights of the Constitution. I don't understand.

Every Member of the Senate received a letter today from quite a large number of families of the victims of 9/11, 140-plus at last writing. I want to read briefly from the letter. The letter is in support of the amendment Senators GRAHAM, WEBB, MCCAIN, and I have offered.

The American people were rightly outraged by this act of war. Whether the cause was retribution or simple recognition of our common humanity, the words ``Never Forget'' were invoked in tearful or angry rectitude, defiantly written in the dust of Ground Zero or humbly penned on makeshift memorials all across this land.

The country was united in its determination that these acts should not go unmarked and unpunished.

Eight long years have passed since that dark and terrible day.

Remember, Mr. President, this is written by people who lost dear ones on 9/11.

They continue:

Sadly, some have forgotten the promises we made to those whose lives were taken in such a cruel and vicious manner.

We have not forgotten. We are the husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and other family members of the victims of these depraved and barbaric attacks, and we feel a profound obligation to ensure that justice is done on their behalf.

They continue:

It is incomprehensible to us that Members of the United States Congress would propose that the same men who today refer to the murder of our loved ones as a ``blessed day'' and who targeted the United States Capitol for the same kind of destruction that was wrought in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, should be the beneficiaries of a social compact of which they are not a part, do not recognize, and which they seek to destroy: the United States Constitution.

So they say:

We adamantly oppose prosecuting the 9/11 conspirators in Article III courts, which would provide them with the very rights that may make it possible for them to escape the justice which they so richly deserve. We believe that military commissions ..... are the appropriate legal forum for the individuals who declared war on America.

Mr. President, I know there will be further debate on this amendment, but I ask my colleagues to join in this. We are doing it not just because of the protocol I cited at the beginning but because of stories that are emanating that perhaps as early as next week, the Department of Justice will announce they are going to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man who planned the 9/11 attacks, who is in our custody, to trial in a Federal court. This man is, from all that I know, one of the devils of history, an evil man who wrought terrible destruction and suffering on our country, and he ought to be given due process, but he ought to be given due process in a forum reserved for suspected war criminals, and that is the military commissions.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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