[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 19 (Thursday, February 28, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H647-H648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES ARE OUT OF CONTROL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rose yesterday to discuss in a 5-minute 
Special Order about the horrendous miscarriage of justice that occurred 
in a case involving a man named Joseph Salvati in Massachusetts who was 
kept in prison for more than 30 years, despite the fact that the FBI 
and the Justice Department knew all along, from the beginning, that he 
was an innocent man. And even worse than keeping a totally innocent man 
in prison for more than 30 years, a man with a wife and four small 
children at the time he went into prison who had, through all of those 
years, to visit him in prison; even worse, the Justice Department was 
doing that to protect a man in the witness protection program named Joe 
``The Animal'' Barboza, one of the leading figures in organized crime, 
who, listen to this, was responsible, according to the FBI and the 
Justice Department and law enforcement officials, who was responsible 
for 26 murders.
  Mr. Speaker, I mentioned yesterday that I spent 7\1/2\ years as a 
criminal court judge in Tennessee prior to coming to Congress; and I 
tried the felony criminal cases, the murders, the rapes, the armed 
robberies, the burglary cases, the most serious cases. I have been a 
strong supporter of law enforcement. But it seems to me that we have 
allowed a government to get so big that it just gets totally out of 
control and then the government can somehow rationalize or justify 
almost anything.

[[Page H648]]

  Now, the Justice Department has convinced the President to stand 
behind a claim of executive privilege and refuse to release documents 
about this Salvati case, even though it has been on ``60 Minutes,'' 
even though it has been publicized all over the world, to keep these 
documents covered up, in spite of repeated requests or demands from the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), the chairman of the Committee on 
Government Reform. I want to say how much I admire and respect the 
courage of the gentleman from Indiana (Chairman Burton) in continuing 
to hold a series of hearings in regard to this Salvati case and other 
abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department, especially in regard to 
this witness protection program.
  I mentioned here yesterday that Chairman Burton's statement that he 
has now made twice in hearings before the Committee on Government 
Reform was to me the most shocking statement I have heard in a 
congressional hearing since I have served in the Congress. I am in my 
14th year. I serve on three different committees, five different 
subcommittees. I have participated in hundreds, possibly even several 
thousand committee and subcommittee hearings; and I think the statement 
that I am about to read was the most shocking statement I have ever 
heard a chairman or any Member, really, give in this Congress. Chairman 
Burton has said now at two of our hearings this statement: ``The United 
States Department of Justice allowed lying witnesses to send men to 
death row. It stood by idly while innocent men spent decades behind 
bars; it permitted informants to commit murder; it tipped off killers 
so that they could flee before they were caught; it interfered with 
local investigations of drug dealing and arms smuggling; and then when 
people went to the Justice Department with evidence about murders, some 
of them ended up dead.''
  This Salvati case, while I hope it is the worst example, is just the 
tip of the iceberg.
  I can tell my colleagues this: there needs to be some reforms within 
the Justice Department and the FBI. I think the problem has come about 
because we have expanded those agencies so much and given them so much 
money that they do not know what to do with all of it.
  Forbes Magazine, in 1993, had a cover article in which they said that 
we had quadrupled the Justice Department between 1980 and 1993 and that 
there were Federal prosecutors falling all over themselves trying to 
come up with cases to prosecute because they had so little to do, and 
that they were prosecuting businessmen and women who had violated 
obscure rules and regulations that they did not even know were in 
existence.
  We need to be funneling our law enforcement assets to the local law 
enforcement people who are fighting the real crime, the street crime 
that people want fought. Some of these Justice Department and FBI 
officials here in Washington never see a real criminal unless they are 
mugged on their way to their cars after work. But this idea, or this 
case, of keeping a man in prison for more than 30 years, even though 
they knew from the start of his innocence, they did not find out he was 
innocent after he had been in jail 25 years or so, they knew from the 
start that he was innocent. To do that to protect a man that had 
committed 26 murders is just, to me, mind-boggling. It is unbelievable.
  They told in this hearing that Barboza's defense lawyer was given 
great assistance by the Federal Government while the prosecutors were 
snubbed when they asked for help. A murder weapon in one case was 
conveniently lost by the FBI. Barboza's own lawyer called him one of 
the worst men on the face of the Earth.

                              {time}  1200

  When asked about the short prison term that Barbosa got in one case, 
one murder that he committed after he was in the witness protection 
program, his lawyer said that that was amazing, he figured out that 
must be how it worked when you had friends in the FBI.
  I can tell the Members, the people of this country need to know that 
we desperately need reforms at the Justice Department and the FBI. 
Joseph Califano, a former Cabinet member under President Carter and 
adviser to President Clinton, wrote in a Washington Post column a few 
days ago, ``In the war on terrorism, we need not to overlook the 
alarming rise in Federal police power that is going on, and not create 
some type of Federal police state that will abuse citizens in horrible 
ways.''

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