[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 20, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H4325]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      CALLING FOR DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY TO RELEASE TAPE

  (Mr. EDWARDS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security 
has had to admit that it used Federal resources, Federal tax dollars 
last week to track the airplane of a Texas Democratic legislator. For 
the U.S. agency with the responsibility to protect our families from 
terrorists instead to use taxes, dollars and our resources to track the 
former speaker of the Texas House Pete Laney, flying from that hotbed 
of Islamic radicalism, Hale Center, Texas, to Ardmore, Oklahoma, is 
absolutely outrageous.
  Now that Federal agency is compounding its mistakes, if not its 
illegal actions, by refusing to release to the American public and 
press a tape in which the Texas Department of Public Safety talked to 
the U.S. Homeland Security agency, that conversation leading to the 
abuse and misuse of Federal tax dollars in this case.
  What is the Department of Homeland Security afraid of? What are they 
hiding? What is on that tape?
  It sounds to me, Mr. Speaker, like my years in Washington in the 
1970s when then President Nixon refused to let the public see or hear 
the tape of his White House conversations. We know why President Nixon 
did not want to release the tape, because it basically was responsible 
for finding him guilty of abuse of office. My question is, why would 
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security not release its tape? It owes 
it to the American people to do so.

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