Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Senate Resolutions

Floor Speech

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, I reintroduce the Civilian Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, CEJA. The United States has huge numbers of Government employees and contractors working overseas, but the legal framework governing them is unclear and outdated. To promote accountability, Congress must make sure that our criminal laws reach serious misconduct by U.S. government employees and contractors wherever they act. The Civilian Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act accomplishes this important and common sense goal by allowing United States contractors and employees working overseas who commit specific crimes to be tried and sentenced under U.S. law.

Tragic events in Iraq and Afghanistan highlight the need to strengthen the laws providing for jurisdiction over American government employees and contractors working abroad. In September 2007, Blackwater security contractors working for the State Department shot more than 20 unarmed civilians on the streets of Baghdad, killing at least 14 of them, and causing a rift in our relations with the Iraqi government. Efforts to prosecute those responsible for these shootings have been fraught with difficulties. The Blackwater trial is only just now under way, seven years after this tragedy, and the defendants continue to argue in court that the U.S. government does not have jurisdiction to prosecute them.

I worked with Senator Sessions and others in 2000 to pass the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, MEJA, and then, again, to amend it in 2004, so that U.S. criminal laws would extend to all members of the U.S. military, to those who accompany them, and to contractors who work with the military. That law provides criminal jurisdiction over Defense Department employees and contractors, but it does not explicitly cover people working for other Federal agencies, like the Blackwater security contractors. Had jurisdiction in the tragic Blackwater incident been clear, it could have prevented some of the problems that have plagued the case.

Other incidents have made all too clear that the Blackwater case was not an isolated incident. Private security contractors have been involved in violent incidents and serious misconduct in Iraq and Afghanistan, including other shooting incidents in which civilians have been seriously injured or killed. MEJA does not cover many of the thousands of U.S. contractors and employees who are working abroad. The legislation I introduce today fills this gap.

Ensuring criminal accountability will also improve our national security and protect Americans overseas. Importantly, in those instances where the local justice system may be less than fair, this explicit jurisdiction will also protect Americans by providing the option of prosecuting them in the United States, rather than leaving them subject to potentially hostile and unpredictable local courts. Our allies, including those countries most essential to our counterterrorism and national security efforts, work best with us when we hold our own accountable.

In 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from the Justice Department and from experts in the area of contractor accountability about the many diplomatic and national security benefits of expanding criminal jurisdiction over American employees and contractors overseas. That hearing also explored how best to ensure that our Nation's intelligence activities would not be impaired by CEJA. The legislation I propose today has been carefully crafted to ensure that the intelligence community can continue its authorized activities unimpeded.

This bill would also provide greater protection to American victims of crime, as it would lead to more accountability for crimes committed by U.S. Government contractors and employees against Americans working abroad. The Committee has previously heard testimony from Jamie Leigh Jones, a young woman from Texas who took a job with Halliburton in Iraq in 2005 when she was 20 years old. In her first week on the job, she was drugged and gang-raped by coworkers. When she reported this assault, her employers moved her to a locked trailer, where she was kept by armed guards and freed only when the State Department intervened.

Ms. Jones testified about the arbitration clause in her contract that prevented her from suing Halliburton for this outrageous conduct. But criminal jurisdiction over these kinds of atrocious crimes abroad remains complicated and depends on the specific location of the crime, which makes prosecutions inconsistent and sometimes impossible. We must fix the law to help avoid arbitrary injustice and ensure that victims will not see their attackers escape accountability.

This legislation also provides another important benefit: It will lay the groundwork to expand U.S. preclearance operations in Canada--thereby enhancing national security and facilitating commerce and tourism with our largest trading partner. The United States currently stations U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, Officers in select locations in Canada to inspect passengers and cargo bound for the United States before they leave Canada. These operations relieve congestion at U.S. airports, improve commerce, save money, and provide national security benefits. The United States and Canada are in ongoing conversations about an expansion of land, rail, marine and air preclearance operations that would greatly benefit the U.S. economy. But one barrier in these discussions is that the United States lacks legal authority to prosecute U.S. officials engaged in preclearance operations if they commit crimes while stationed in Canada. CEJA would ensure that the U.S. has legal authority to hold our own officials accountable if they engage in wrongdoing, and thereby help pave the way to finalizing the expanded Canada preclearance agreement.

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