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

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I appreciate Senator Levin allowing me to speak now. I know we are going back and forth. I appreciate that.

To my friend, Senator Durbin, it is my honest desire that as we move forward with what to do with Guantanamo Bay, we can find some bipartisanship and close the facility. I am one of the few Republicans who expressed that thought, simply because I have listened enough to our commanders to know--General Petreaus, Admiral Mullen, and others--that Guantanamo Bay has become a symbol for recruitment and propaganda usage against American forces in the war on terror.

It is probably the best run jail in the world right now, to those of us who have been down there. To the ground forces, I wish to acknowledge your patriotism and your service. It is a tough place to do duty because there are some pretty tough characters down there.

At the end of the day, I have tried to be helpful where I could, and I will tell you in a little detail why I am offering this amendment. But my hope was that when President Obama was elected, we could find a way to reform Guantanamo Bay policy, detainee policy, because I have been a military lawyer for 25 years. I do understand detainee policy affects the war effort. If we mess it up, if we abuse detainees, we can turn populations against us that will be helpful in winning the war.

One of the great things that happened in World War II is that we had over 400,000 German prisoners, Japanese prisoners housed in the United States. We took 40,000 hard-core Nazis from the British and put them in American military jails in the United States. So this idea that we can't find a place for 200 detainees in America, I don't agree with. We have done that before. These people are not 10 feet tall. They are definitely dangerous, but as a nation I believe we could start over.

By closing Guantanamo Bay in a logical, rational way, we would be improving our ability to effect the outcome of the war in the Mideast because we would be taking a tool away from the enemy.

President Obama and Senator McCain both, when they were candidates, agreed with the idea of closing Guantanamo Bay and reforming interrogation policy.

To most Americans, it is kind of: Why are we worried about what we do with these guys, because they would cut our heads off. You are absolutely right. It is not lost upon me or any other military member out there that the enemy we are dealing with knows no boundaries and they are barbarians and brutal.

The question is not about them but about us. The fact that we are a civilized people is not a liability, it is an asset. So when you capture a member of al-Qaida, I have always believed it becomes about us, not them. We need interrogation techniques that will allow us to get good intelligence and make the country safe. We need to understand we are at war, and the people we are dealing with are some of the hardest, meanest people known since the Nazis.

But if you try to say, in the same breath, that anything goes to get that information, it will come back to haunt you. So some of the interrogation techniques we have used that come from the Inquisition got us some information, but I can assure you it has created a problem. Ask anybody in the Mideast who has to deal with America. They will tell you this has been a problem. You don't need to do that to protect this country. You can have interrogation techniques that get you good information but also adhere to all your laws.

As to the trials, some people wonder: Why do we care about this? They wouldn't give us a trial. You are absolutely right. The fact that our country will give the worst terrorist in the world a trial with a defense attorney, for free; a judge who is going to base his decision on facts and law and not prejudice; a jury, where the press can show up and watch the trial; and the ability to appeal the result, makes us stronger, not weaker. So count me in for starting over with Guantanamo Bay, with a new legal process that recognizes we have had abuses in the past and we are going to chart a new course.

Regarding the Military Commission Act that just passed the Congress, I wish to say publicly that Senator Levin was a great partner to work with. The military commission system we have in place today has been reformed. I think it is a model justice system that I will put up against any in the world, including the International Criminal Court at the Hague, in terms of due process rights for detainees. It also recognizes we are at war. This military commission system, while transparent, with the ability to appeal all verdicts to the civilian system, has safeguards built in it to recognize we are at war and how you handle evidence and access the evidence and intelligence sources are built into that military system that are not built into civilian courts.

Since this country was founded, we have historically used military commissions as a venue to try suspected war criminals caught on battlefields. Why have I brought forth this amendment? I have been told by too many people, with reliable access, that the administration is planning on trying Khalid Shaikh Mohammed--the mastermind of 9/11, the perpetrator of the attacks against our country in Washington, Pennsylvania, and New York--in Federal court in the lower district of Manhattan. If that is true, you have lost me as a partner.

Why do I say that? It would be the biggest mistake we could possibly make, in my view, since 9/11. We would be giving constitutional rights to the mastermind of 9/11, as if he were any average, everyday criminal American citizen. We would be basically saying to the mastermind of 9/11, and to the world at large, that 9/11 was a criminal act, not an act of war.

I do believe in prosecutorial discretion and executive branch discretion. I introduced this amendment reluctantly but with all the passion and persuasion I can muster to tell my colleagues: Act now, so we will get this right later. Congress said we are not going to fund the closing of Gitmo. Well, is Congress meddling in the ability of the Commander in Chief to run a military jail? Hell, yes, because we don't know what the plan is. We have an independent duty as Members of Congress to make sure there is balance. This Nation is at war. It is OK for us to speak up. As a matter of fact, it has been too much passing--too many passes during the Bush administration, where Congress sort of sat back and watched things happen. Don't watch this happen. Get on the record now, before it is too late, to tell the President we are not going to sit by as a body and watch the mastermind of 9/11 go into civilian court and criminalize this war. If he goes to Federal court, here is what awaits: a chaos zoo trial.

Yes, we have taken people into Federal court before for acts of terrorism. We took the Blind Sheik--the first guy to try to blow up the World Trade Center--and put him in civilian court. We treated these people as common criminals. What a mistake we made. What if we had treated them as warriors rather than a guy who robbed a liquor store? Where would we have been in 2001 if we had the foresight in the 1990s to recognize that we are at war and these people are not some foreign criminal cartel; they are warriors bent on our destruction who have been planning for years to attack this country and are planning, as I speak, to attack us again?

We are not fighting crime. We are fighting a war. The war is not over. What happened in the Blind Sheik trial? Because it was a civilian court, built around trying common criminals, the court didn't have the protections military commissions will have to protect this Nation's secrets and classified information. As a result of that trial, the unindicted coconspirator list was provided to the defense as part of discovery in a Federal civilian criminal court. That unindicted coconspirator list was an intelligence coup for the enemy. It went from the defense counsel, to the defendant, to the Mideast. Al-Qaida was able to understand, from that trial, whom we were looking at and whom we had our eye on.

During the 1990s, we tried to treat these terrorist warriors as just some other form of crime. It was a mistake. Don't repeat it. If you take Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and put him in Federal civilian court, you will have learned nothing from the 1990s. You will have sent the wrong signal to the terrorists and to our own people.

Judge Mukasey, who presided over the Blind Sheik trial, wrote an op-ed piece about how big a mistake it would be to put the 9/11 coconspirators into Federal court. He went into great detail about the problems you would have trying these people in a civilian court. He became our Attorney General. So if you don't listen to me, listen to the judge who presided over the trial in the 1990s.

I don't know what they are going to do in the Obama administration. If I believed they were going to do something other than take Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to Federal court in New York, I would not introduce this amendment. I know this is not a cavalier thing to do. I have taken some grief for trying to help the President form new policies with Guantanamo Bay and reject the arguments made by some of my dear friends that these people are too dangerous to bring to the United States. We can find a way to bring them to the United States; we just have to be smart about it.

To our military men and women who will be administering the commission, my biggest fear has always been that the military commission system will become a second-class justice system. Nothing could be further from the truth. The men and women who administer justice in the military commission system are the same judge advocates and jurors who administer justice to our own troops. The Judge Advocate General of the Navy said the new military commission system is such that he would not hesitate to have one of our own tried in it.

We will gain nothing, in terms of improving our image, by sending the mastermind of 9/11 to a New York civilian court, giving him the same constitutional rights as anybody listening to me in America who is a citizen. The military commission system will be transparent. He will have his say in court. He will have the ability to appeal a conviction to our civilian judges. He will be defended by a military lawyer--or private attorney, if he wants to be. He will be presumed innocent until found guilty. It will be required by the ``beyond a reasonable doubt'' standard for him to be found guilty of anything.

For those who are wondering about military commissions, I can tell you the bill we have produced I will put up against any system in the world. To those who think it is no big deal to send Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to Federal court, I could not disagree with you more. What you will have done is set in motion the dynamic that led to criminalizing the war in the 1990s. You will have lost focus, yet again. You will have been lured into the sense that we are not at war, that these are just a bunch of bad people committing crimes. The day we take the mastermind of 9/11 and put him in Federal court, who the hell are you going to try in the military commission? How can you tell that detainee you are an enemy combatant, you are a bad guy? You are at war, but the guy who planned the whole thing is just a common criminal. What a mistake we would make.

It is imperative this Nation have a legal system that recognizes we are at war and that we have rules to protect this country's national security balance against the interests and the rights of the accused detainee. The military commission forum has created that balance. It is a system built around war, a system built around the rules of military law, a system that recognizes the difference between a common criminal and a warrior, a system that understands military intelligence is different than common evidence. If we do not use that system for the guy who planned 9/11, we will all regret it.

My amendment is limited in scope. It is a chance for you, as a Member of the Senate, to speak up about what you would like to see happen as this Nation moves forward and our desire to correct past mistakes and defend this Nation, which is still at war this very day. It is a chance for you to have a say, on behalf of your constituents, as to how they would like to see this Nation defend itself.

I argue that most Americans--not just the 9/11 families--would be very concerned to learn that the man who planned the attacks that killed 3,000 of our fellow citizens--who would do it again tomorrow--is going to be treated the same as any other criminal. No good will come from that. You will have compromised the military commission system beyond repair. You will have adopted the law enforcement model that failed us before, and we will not be a better people.

I, along with Senator Levin, was at Guantanamo Bay the day Khalid Shaikh Mohammed appeared before the Combat Status Review Tribunal. We were in the next room. We listened on a monitor. You could see him and could hear the chains rattle next door when he went through great detail about 9/11 and all the other acts of terrorism he planned against our country.

I never will forget when he told the military judge that he was a high-ranking commander in the al-Qaida military organization and he appreciated being referred to as a military commander. Some would say: You don't want to elevate this guy. What I would say is you want to understand who he is. If you think he is a common criminal, no different than any other person who wants to hurt people, you have made a mistake.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is bent on our destruction. He did not attack us for financial gain. He attacked us because he hates us. He is every bit as dangerous as the Nazis. These people we are fighting are very dangerous people. I am insistent they get a trial consistent with our values, that they do not get railroaded, that they get a chance to defend themselves. The media will see how the trial unfolds and you can see most of it, if not all of it. But I am also insistent that we not take our eye off the ball. It has been a long time since we have been attacked. For a lot of people--those who were on the front lines of 9/11--they relive it every night. It replays itself over and over every night of their lives.

For the rest of us, please do not lose sight of the fact that this country is engaged in an armed conflict with an enemy that knows no boundaries, has no allegiance to anything beyond their radical religion, and is conspiring to attack us as I speak.

When we try them, we need to understand that the trial itself is part of the war effort. How we do the trial can make us safer or it can make us weaker. If we criminalize this war, it would take the man who planned the attacks of 9/11 and put him in civilian court. It is going to be impossible with a straight face to take somebody under him and put him in a military court. And the day you put him back in civilian court, you are going to create the problems Judge Mukasey warned us against. You are going to have evidence compromised and you are going to regret it.

I hope to continue to work with the administration to find a way to close Guantanamo Bay, to create a transparent legal system that will allow every detainee their day in court, due process rights they deserve based on our law, not based on what they have done but based on who we are as a people.

The 20th hijacker said this in Federal court--the victims were allowed to testify about the impact of 9/11. They had a U.S. Navy officer talking about being at the Pentagon and the impact on her life and on her friends. During the testimony, the officer started to cry. Here is what the defendant said, Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker:

I think it was disgusting for a military person to pretend that they should not be killed as an act of war. She is military.

It was a Navy female officer.

She should expect that the people who are at war with her will try to kill her.

This is the 20th hijacker in civilian court:

I will never, I will never cry because an American bombed my camp.

If you have any doubt that we are at war, the one thing you ought to be certain of, they have no doubt that they are at war with us.

The one thing the men and women who go off to fight this war should expect of their government and of their Congress is to watch their back the best we can. We would be doing those men and women a great disservice if we put the mastermind of 9/11, who killed the friends of this Navy officer, in a civilian court that could lead to compromising events that would make their job harder. We would be doing them a disservice to act on our end as if we are not at war.

Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, they have a chance to speak. They have a chance to be on the record for their constituents to send a signal that needs to be sent before it is too late. Here is what I ask them to say with their vote: I believe we are at war and that the legal system we are going to use to try people who attacked this country and killed 3,000 American citizens should be a military legal system, consistent with us being at war. I will not, with my vote, go back to the law enforcement model that jeopardized our national security back in the nineties. I will insist that these detainees have a full and fair trial and that they be treated appropriately. But I will not, with my vote, take the mastermind of 9/11, the man who planned the attacks, who would do it tomorrow, and give him the same constitutional rights as an average, everyday American in a legal system that is not built around being at war.

If they will say that, we will get a good outcome. If they equivocate, we are slowly but surely going to create a legal hodgepodge that will come back to haunt us.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. GRAHAM. Colleagues, we are about to take a vote. It is a tough vote, and I regret we are having to do this, but at the end of the day, I have a view that this country is at war. I think most of you share it. Our civilian court system serves us well, but we have had a long history of having military commission trials when the Nation is at war. The military commission bill which this Congress wrote is reformed. It is new, it is transparent, and it is something I am proud of.

This amendment says that the six coconspirators who planned 9/11--Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at the top of the list--will not be tried in Federal court because the day you do that, you will criminalize this war.

In the first attack on the World Trade Center, the Blind Sheik was tried in Federal court, and the unindicted coconspirators list wound up in the hands of al-Qaida.

Military commissions are designed to administer justice in a fair and transparent way, but they know and understand we are at war. Our civilian courts are not designed to deal with war criminals; the military system is.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, didn't rob a liquor store; he didn't commit a crime under domestic criminal law; he took this Nation to war and he killed 3,000 of our citizens. He needs to have justice rendered in the system that recognizes we are at war.

Please support this idea of not criminalizing the war the second time around.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

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Mr. GRAHAM. To my dear friend, this is the biggest issue of the day: Are they criminals? Are they warriors? Does it matter? These people are not criminals, they are warriors, and they need to be dealt with in a legal system that recognizes that.

And to the 214 9/11 families who support my amendment, I understand that the people who killed your family members are at war with us. I hope the Senate will understand that so we don't have another.

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