[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 67 (Thursday, May 25, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5222-S5223]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO THOMAS W. TAYLOR

 Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize and pay 
tribute to Thomas W. Taylor, the Senior Deputy General Counsel of the 
Army, for his exceptionally meritorious service to our country. Mr. 
Taylor will retire on June 3, 2006, having completed 36 years of superb 
military and Federal civilian service with the Department of the Army, 
the last 19 of which have been as a member of the Senior Executive 
Service. As such, he has been at the forefront of the most critical 
issues affecting our Nation and the military today. His commitment to 
upholding the rule of law in the service of the national defense has 
been the bedrock grounding many of the Army's mission successes. We owe 
him a particular debt of gratitude for the genuine and enduring concern 
he has demonstrated for the welfare of our men and women in uniform and 
their families, particularly in the face of the many sacrifices our 
Nation has demanded of them over the last decades.
  Mr. Taylor's remarkable career as a selfless and committed servant of 
the public trust culminated in his appointment in 1997 as Senior Deputy 
General Counsel, the Department's senior career civilian attorney. Mr. 
Taylor has long been the foundation of strategic leadership, vision, 
and continuity for the Army legal community. Over the course of his 
distinguished career, he has provided sage policy and legal advice to 
six Secretaries of the Army, seven Army General Counsel, and numerous 
other senior officers in the Army Secretariat, and Headquarters, 
Department of the Army, on a wide variety of operational issues, 
including military support to civilian authorities: during special 
events of national significance, such as the Olympic Games and 
Presidential Inaugurals; in responding to domestic disasters and civil 
disturbances; and in fighting drugs and weapons of mass destruction. 
His personnel law portfolio covered the full range of military and 
civilian personnel law: mobilization, recruitment, promotions, 
discharges, medical care issues, sexual harassment, and equal 
employment opportunity. Other practice areas included select aspects of 
criminal law, implementation of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of 
Defense Reorganization Act as applied to the Army, Secretarial and 
command authority, and application of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, 
as well as policies governing the release of information under the 
Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts in response to public, 
Congressional, and media requests for information about Army activities 
and investigations. Further, Mr. Taylor discharged the Department's 
legal responsibility for intelligence oversight, monitoring Army 
intelligence and counterintelligence operations worldwide and 
overseeing legal and policy aspects of special access programs and 
intelligence support to other Federal agencies. In 2001, he was the 
senior Army lawyer at the Pentagon site on September 11, providing 
advice enabling immediate on-scene military support to security and 
recovery operations. He has represented the Army and DoD in matters 
with Congress and other Federal agencies, as well as to foreign 
countries. Beginning in the Reagan administration and during extended 
transitional periods between successive administration appointees, Mr. 
Taylor often has been selected personally by Secretaries of the Army to 
discharge the duties of the General Counsel. Most recently, he has 
served in that capacity since July of 2005.
  Mr. Taylor was raised in Pilot Mountain, NC, and is a graduate of 
public schools in North Carolina. He earned a B.A. in history with high 
honors from Guilford College, Greensboro, NC, in 1966, and a J.D. with 
honors in 1969 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 
where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif and a staff member of 
the law review, which published three of his notes. After graduating 
from law school, he was commissioned as a Captain in the Judge Advocate 
General's Corps of the Army. He first served at Fort Wainwright, AK, 
followed by tours at Fulda and Darmstadt, Germany. Returning to the 
United States, Mr. Taylor taught from 1975 to 1978 in the law 
department of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, serving as 
professor to many of the Army's future leaders. Later, after tours of 
duty in the office of the Judge Advocate General in the Pentagon and in 
a nominative position as an Assistant to the Army General Counsel, he

[[Page S5223]]

left active duty to accept a civilian position with the office in 1982. 
In 1987 he graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. 
Throughout his years of civilian service, he continued to serve as an 
individual mobilization augmentee in the reserve component of the Army 
Judge Advocate General's Corps, retiring in 2000 in the grade of 
Colonel, having last served as the Director of the Academic Department 
of The Judge Advocate General's School.
  In his 26 years of selfless and dedicated Federal civil service, Mr. 
Taylor has received numerous honors and awards, including, on three 
occasions, the Army's Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service. He 
received the Presidential Rank Award as a Distinguished Executive in 
1996 and as a Meritorious Executive in 1993 and 2002. Notably, he has 
received honorary awards for lifetime contributions to his client 
communities including: the Knowlton Award for Excellence in 
Intelligence, presented by the Military Intelligence Corps; the Chief 
of Public Affairs Award for outstanding support and advice to the Chief 
of Public Affairs; designation as a distinguished member of The Judge 
Advocate General's Corps Regiment; and induction into the Order of the 
Marechaussee for service to the Military Police Corps Regiment.
  On leaving Federal service, Mr. Taylor will become a professor of the 
Practice of Public Policy Studies at Duke University. I know that he 
will continue to inspire others with his sense of honor, his love of 
the law, and his abiding belief in the nobility of public service and 
values for which our Nation stands. I join with all my colleagues in 
saluting Thomas W. Taylor and his wife Susan for their many years of 
outstanding service to the U.S. Army and to our country.

                          ____________________