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“THE NECESSITY OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL STATUTE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H5163-H5164 on June 30, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE NECESSITY OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL STATUTE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuykendall). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), who is from my committee, for allowing me to interrupt his one hour special order.
Mr. Speaker, today the Independent Counsel statute expires. There has been a real heralding by many people in the legal community for the demise of this law. I would like to tonight talk just a little bit about that law and why something like it is absolutely necessary.
For the past 3 years my committee has been investigating illegal campaign contributions. We are now involved in investigating espionage and lack of security at our nuclear laboratories, and the possibility that these things had something in common.
One of the biggest problems that we have had has been a reluctance by the Justice Department, under Janet Reno, to cooperate with our committee. It has been extremely difficult to get the Justice Department to work with us to get to the bottom of these scandals.
If we have an administration that has broken the law, if we have an administration or people in an administration who have become corrupt, and we have an Attorney General who is appointed by the President who is blocking for the administration, how do we administer justice? How do we get to the bottom of illegal activities, if we have an administration that has broken the law and a Justice Department that is controlled by the administration who will not bring those who broke the law to justice?
I think that that is what we have today. We have had a number of people that have taken the Fifth Amendment. Our committee has faced over 121 people who have taken the Fifth Amendment or fled the country in the campaign finance scandal, 121 people. That is unparalleled in American history.
We have asked the Justice Department and Janet Reno time and time and time again to work with us to bring these people before the committee to explain to the American people why Communist China, Macao, Egypt, Taiwan, South American countries, have been giving campaign contributions to the Democrat National Committee and the President's reelection committee, and we have gotten absolutely no cooperation from the Justice Department.
In fact, if Members look at the administration and the Justice Department, we will find they have, in effect, erected a stone wall between what happened and the American people. How do we break through that stone wall? What mechanism do we use to bring people to justice who broke the law, who may have even endangered America's national security?
The only way we can do that is to have somebody outside the system investigate and prosecute those people who have broken the law. Unfortunately, now that we no longer have an Independent Counsel statute, we have no mechanism with which to do that.
Maybe the Independent Counsel statute was flawed, maybe there were some problems with it, but it should have been perfected, in my opinion, so there was a mechanism to investigate people in an administration that might be corrupt without going through the person that they appoint to be the Attorney General who might be blocking for them, as I believe has been the case with this Attorney General and this Justice Department.
So tonight I am one of those voices, I am sure, that is crying in the wilderness, because I believe we need something like an Independent Counsel statute to ensure that justice will be done in this country.
Right now, now that the Independent Counsel statute has expired, if we have a president now or in the future who breaks the law or if we have people in his administration who break the law, and the President has appointed an Attorney General who is willing to block for him and keep the facts from coming out where there might have been corruption, then there is nothing that can be done for the American people to count on to bring these people to justice.
So I would just like to say that although the Independent Counsel statute may have had some flaws, we should not have junked the whole thing, we should have found an alternative. I am sorry that we did not.
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