Announcement By the Acting Chair

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISSA. 61, oddly enough.

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers).

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I wish my colleague had stayed for a little longer because I would like to change his mind as to why I am doing it, what I am doing, and what the purpose would be.

My office has been in pretty constant contact with many of the families--more than 10 of them--of the 13 who lost their lives in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many of the individuals, the family members have asked specific questions that have never been answered, and they continue to want to have specific questions answered, particularly and including, obviously, individuals, what we knew about them, how they came to be released, a lot of the activities that went on.

Now, some of it will have to be transmitted on a classified basis, but most of it can be given to the committees of jurisdiction openly.

Those families, the families of the 13 and the families of all of the others who have lost their lives, deserve closure. I believe that although the special IG and lots of other organizations have done a lot of good work, much of it is not yet available to Congress, and as a result, not available to the families or to the American people.

For that reason, I crafted this multipage amendment specifically and narrowly to ask for information that to a great extent has not yet been granted, which the Department of Defense has.

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I wish that the gentleman would come with me. On Monday night, I will have more than two dozen of the family members for dinner after votes, and you are invited. My treat.

The fact is, those unanswered questions are not because voluminous documents haven't been requested, and in some cases, many have been received. It is because when committees ask--and I have plenty of experience on oversight. When committees ask, they get told we will provide you such information as is appropriate to your request and we determine should be granted. That is short of when you pass a law.

The weight of this amendment in this act will, in fact, have a weight of law for compliance. That is a weight of law which is higher than a committee requesting or even a committee subpoena. That is the reason that this is different.

This will ensure that if someone says, look, we have already granted it all, they can either push a button and duplicate it, they can give us stacks from other reports or, in fact, they can look one more time for the information we have been asking for and be more complete, compliant with a law that will ultimately be signed by the President.

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me tell a quick story. Some years ago, we subpoenaed information from the Department of Justice. The Attorney General himself, then Eric Holder, came before me both in committee and personally up to and including the moment in which he was held in contempt, met with us in the Speaker's office, and assured us that if we would just take the 279 pages that was fully meeting all of our requests and accept that as a complete record and be done with it, that he would give them to us. Otherwise, he would withhold them.

We held him in contempt. We went to court, and many months later, Amy Berman Jackson, a Federal judge, said: Let me see the documents you are withholding, and all of them that you are claiming the executive privilege. All of them that, in fact, are responsive to his request.

We received thousands of pages that never went to Amy Berman Jackson because they had no merit. Then we received more than 10,000 more pages that did go through a review process; 279, 2,000, 10,000. The fact is, it is not new for administrations to give you some documents and not look thoroughly until there is a compelling law.

I do not want to go back through the process of going to a Federal judge or holding someone in contempt. This is a way to ensure that they either comply or honestly tell us they have already complied. I cannot take the word this lightly of any administration. I have been down that road before.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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