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“THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CITY OF SALINE, MI AND THE TOWN OF BRECON, WALES AS SISTER CITIES” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S6107-S6108 on June 11, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CITY OF SALINE, MI AND THE TOWN OF BRECON,
WALES AS SISTER CITIES
Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the 30th anniversary of the successful partnership of the city of Saline, MI, and the town of Brecon, Wales in the Sister Cities Program.
Thirty-years ago next month, under the People-to-People Program established by President Eisenhower, a bond was forged between these two communities. In the words of Saline Mayor Patrick J. Little, ``We have become one community separated by a large body of water. Over two generations have had the pleasure of learning about each other's culture.''
To celebrate this occasion, next month approximately 50 members of the Brecon community will visit Saline, the highlight of which will be the first ever Celtic Festival on July 6. I would like to extend a warm welcome to our visitors from Brecon, and congratulate the citizens of both cities for their three decades of cooperation and friendship.
A CASE AGAINST INDEPENDENT COUNSEL
Mr. SIMON. Mr President, I supported the creation of the office of independent counsel and have voted for its reauthorization.
I am now convinced that is the wrong way to solve this particular problem.
My judgment is that we should look at the office of Attorney General with great care when a nomination is made. And if the nominee is too close, in any way, to the President, that nomination should be rejected.
And if the nominee has been active in political life beyond the normal type of engagement, that should be weighed. Such a person should not automatically be rejected, but there should be ample evidence that the person will serve with honor.
An ideal type of arrangement was when Ed Levi was chosen as Attorney General by President Gerald Ford. No one for a moment thought that the man who left as president of the University of Chicago to become Attorney General could be politically manipulated by the President, even if the President wanted to do that.
My impression is that Janet Reno is made of the same stuff and that her appointment was a good appointment.
When I was sounded out about John F. Kennedy appointing Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General I indicated to Bob Wallace, the Kennedy staff person who asked me about it, that I thought it was a mistake because the Attorney General should not be too close to the President. As it turned out, Bobby Kennedy did a good job as Attorney General, but as a precedent it was not good.
In the same way, Ed Meese was much too close personally and politically to Ronald Reagan to serve the Nation as effectively as he might have as Attorney General.
The Chicago Tribune had an editorial recently titled, ``A Case Against Independent Counsel.''
Their conclusion is that we should simply do away with the law.
I reluctantly believe their conclusion is correct.
But it will be correct only to the extent that we assure the American public that the Attorney General is of an independent bent. It may even be that we should appoint an Attorney General for a period of 10 years, subject to removal from office under conditions that are carefully spelled out in the law prior to ending that 10-year period.
But the Chicago Tribune editorial contains words that we should reflect on.
Mr. President, I ask that the article from the Chicago Tribune be printed in the Record.
The article follows:
A Case Against Independent Counsel
Remember Sam Pierce?
That's OK. Ronald Reagan didn't remember him either, even when Pierce was serving in his cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. (Reagan once greeted him in a receiving line as ``Mr. Mayor'').
Pierce and Reagan have been gone from Washington for almost eight years, but the effects of their presence continue to be felt. In Pierce's case, they are felt less in policy than in the work of an independent counsel, or special prosecutor, who is said to be tidying up loose ends in a probe of abuses and mismanagement in Pierce's agency during the Reagan years.
As of the end of March, this investigation had resulted in 17 convictions of former high-level officials and the associates to whom they steered contracts or directed favors. The most prominent of those convicted was James Watt, the blunt former secretary of the Interior in the Reagan administration, who in January pleaded guilty to attempting to mislead the grand jury in the HUD investigation. He was sentenced to five years of probation, 500 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine.
To obtain these results, the independent counsel has run up a tab of almost $21 million--an average of $1.2 million per conviction. That's offset somewhat by the $2 million in fines and $10 million in recovered HUD funds. But even so, the pursuit of justice in the HUD case has been an extremely costly affair.
The HUD probe is not even the most expensive by an independent counsel. Lawrence Walsh's Iran-contra investigation cost more than $40 million. Kenneth Starr's Whitewater probe bids fair to become the most expensive ever--by one estimate it already has cost $25 million. Altogether, special counsels have cost the taxpayers $100 million over the last 10 years.
This mounting expense, for results whose value more and more members of Congress consider dubious at best, has inspired a questioning of the independent counsel law that arguments from principle could not.
The logic behind the law (formally, the Ethics in Government Act) is simple and seems unassailable: When high-level officials in an administration are accused of serious breaches of the public trust, it takes an independent outsider to conduct a credible investigation. There is a built-in conflict of interest that makes it impossible for the normal Justice Department processes to work. Without a law, the president cannot be counted on to permit an independent investigation of his administration.
The only problem with this logic is that in the long scope of U.S. history, it has not been shown to be true. Most Justice Department officials and prosecutors behave honorably. In the one great historical instance in which the Justice Department's integrity was in serious question--Watergate--overwhelming political pressure forced President Richard Nixon to yield and accept an independent counsel.
An independent counsel law is a source of permanent temptation to political mischief. The Democrats in Congress used it to bludgeon the Reagan and Bush administrations. Now--after the Democrats insisted on renewing the law in Bill Clinton's first year in office--the Republicans are using it to bludgeon the Clinton administration. No fewer than four independent counsels are at work investigating issues from Whitewater to whether Henry Cisneros lied to the FBI about how much money he gave his former mistress.
As the figures on the HUD investigation suggest, independent counsels operate with none of the budget constraints that fetter ordinary prosecutors. And they can pursue their quarry indefinitely, meaning that individuals can remain under threat of prosecution for years, with devastating effects on their families, fortunes, careers and psyches. That's not fair.
Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) and Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.) each have proposed legislation to reduce the powers of independent counsels and make them more accountable to Congress.
Better that they should simply do away with the law. As the Nixon case demonstrates, when a president's behavior threatens the very constitutional order, the public will demand an independent counsel. Absent such an outrage, it's best to let normal legal processes work.
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