[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 166 (Wednesday, December 15, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10301-S10302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO KEVIN LANDY

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I wish today to bid farewell and 
express my special thanks to Kevin Landy for his 13 years of 
extraordinary service on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 
Committee.
  Kevin, presently the committee's chief counsel and my longest serving 
committee staff member, is leaving the Senate this month. But I am 
happy to say he will continue his career in public service as the 
Director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of 
Detention and Policy Planning, an office responsible for formulating 
and implementing reforms at immigration detention facilities.
  As a Senator, I am privileged to work with dedicated Senate staffers 
like Kevin Landy, who want to take their talents, skills, and passions 
and put them to work for the American people.
  Thomas Jefferson once asked the question: ``What duty does a citizen 
owe to the government that secures the society in which he lives?''
  Answering his own question, Jefferson said: ``A nation that rests on 
the will of the people must also depend on individuals to support its 
institutions if it is to flourish. Persons qualified for public service 
should feel an obligation to make that contribution.''
  Kevin has answered his Nation's call and leaves the Senate with an 
exemplary record of achievement on behalf of the American people, on a 
wide range of issues. In particular, I'd like to highlight Kevin's role 
as my lead staff member on four bills that I count among my most 
important legislative accomplishments.
  In the 107th Congress, Kevin successfully and simultaneously 
stewarded to passage two very different pieces of legislation. One of 
those bills established a new framework for the government's uses of 
the Internet and passed after a great deal of careful consensus 
building; the other bill established the 9/11 Commission to 
independently investigate the circumstances of the terrorist attacks 
and was enacted after a vigorous and often contentious campaign to 
surmount the administration's resistance.
  First, Kevin drafted the E-Government Act, which I introduced in May 
of 2001, and which called for greater citizen access to government 
information, services, and regulatory proceedings over the Internet; 
better management of information technology; and greater protections 
for privacy and security.
  When Kevin began work on this initiative he was trained as a lawyer 
and had no government IT background. Yet he worked meticulously with 
every relevant group and constituency first to become fully informed 
and then to ensure their concerns were addressed. More importantly, 
Kevin spent months negotiating with OMB officials to overcome the 
administration's initial opposition. The work paid off when the 
legislation passed both the House and the Senate by unanimous consent 
on the same day, November 15, 2002, and was subsequently signed into 
law the next month.
  Some of Kevin's most significant work for our country was on 
legislation creating and reforming the institutions charged with the 
defense of our homeland from the terrorist threat.
  Soon after the tragic September 11 attacks, Senator McCain and I 
called for an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the 
circumstances surrounding the terrorist attacks and to provide 
recommendations designed to guard against future acts of terrorism. 
Kevin helped draft the legislation to establish the 9/11 Commission, 
which I introduced with Senator McCain on December 20, 2001.
  At first we had no other cosponsors, and faced the opposition of the 
administration. But over the next year Kevin worked closely with the 
families of the victims of 9/11, who lobbied arduously for our 
legislation both in the Halls of Congress and in the media, and the 
administration finally reversed its position the night before the 
Senate voted to approve the Commission by a vote of 90 to 8. 
Contentious negotiations with White House officials followed, but on 
November 27, 2002, the legislation establishing a 9/11 Commission was 
enacted.
  Kevin's effectiveness and his strong relations with 9/11 family 
members stood him in good stead when I asked him to lead an even 
greater challenge 2 years later: helping win enactment of legislation 
to implement the Commission's ambitious and wide-ranging 
recommendations.
  Following the release of the 9/11 Commission's report on July 22, 
2004, Kevin led the combined efforts of the staffs of four Senators to 
quickly draft legislation, S. 2774, that implemented all of the 
Commission's recommendations, covering not only comprehensive reform of 
the intelligence community and the creation of a National 
Counterterrorism Center but also information sharing, terrorist travel, 
border security, and secure identification, among other topics. Because 
of the determined efforts of Kevin and his colleagues, I was able to 
join with Senators McCain, Bayh, and Specter in introducing the 
legislation on September 7, just 6 weeks after the Commission's 
recommendations had been released.
  Kevin continued to play a leadership role as I worked with the 
committee chairman and my close friend, Senator Susan Collins, to draft 
legislation that focused on the Commission's intelligence reform 
recommendations, S. 2845. On the Senate floor, provisions of the two 
bills were merged as we faced a blizzard of amendments and tough votes, 
before we won an overwhelming

[[Page S10302]]

Senate victory. An arduous conference followed, as several House 
committee chairmen adamantly opposed the bill--through it all Kevin 
fought to uphold the principles laid down in our legislation. We 
prevailed, resulting in the historic enactment on December 17, 2004, of 
the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, IRTPA.
  We faced even more complex procedural hurdles in 2007, when Senator 
Collins and I led the efforts of multiple Senate committees to assemble 
and enact provisions that built on what we had accomplished with IRTPA, 
mandating counterterrorism improvements in areas such as terrorist 
travel, communications interoperability, and aviation and maritime 
security. By then the committee's chief counsel, Kevin had demonstrated 
his skills at legislative maneuvering in a variety of circumstances. I 
called on him once again to help coordinate our team as we pushed 
through a difficult markup, a lively Senate debate, and a fiercely 
contested conference, at which approximately 15 Senate and House 
committees claimed jurisdiction and joined the fray. Our work resulted 
in ambitious legislation, known as the ``Implementing Recommendations 
of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007,'' enacted on August 3, 2007.
  I have described his biggest accomplishments in the areas of national 
security and good government, but through his entire career Kevin has 
also shown a passion for the pursuit of justice, including justice for 
the powerless. Upon graduating from Amherst College, Kevin went to work 
defending the rights of prisoners to humane conditions in the Texas 
penal system. Then after graduating from Yale Law School, one of 
Kevin's jobs took him to Cambodia, where he worked with that nation's 
judges and prosecutors in an effort to help improve the rule of law as 
that nation struggled to emerge from its brutal totalitarian past.
  On the committee, Kevin has worked tirelessly to improve the 
treatment of asylum-seekers who often languish in county jails and 
other immigrant detention facilities as they pursue their claims. He 
drafted the first bill to address immigration detention reform, the 
Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act, and in 2007 we won Senate 
passage of the bill as an amendment to ultimately unsuccessful 
immigration reform legislation. Although legislative progress in this 
area has proven elusive, Kevin's work helped to bring greater attention 
to the need for reforms. He has now embraced the opportunity to support 
the detention reform initiatives being undertaken at the Department of 
Homeland Security.
  I have benefited greatly from Kevin's commitment to my goals and to 
the pursuit of excellence while achieving them. I want to thank him 
again for his hard work, his long hours, and selfless persistence in 
pursuit of worthy legislation.

                          ____________________