[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 39 (Wednesday, March 1, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S557-S558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Guantanamo Bay

  Madam President, I want to tell you about a young law student whose 
name is Leila Murphy. She was 3 years old when her father Brian was 
killed. Her oldest sister, Jessica, was only 5. It is a day Leila was 
too young to remember, let alone comprehend, but for the Americans who 
are old enough, it is a day we will never forget--9/11/2001.
  Leila grew up in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks. She recently wrote 
me a

[[Page S558]]

powerful letter about the failure of this country to deliver justice. I 
quote her:

       My father, Brian Murphy, worked on the 105th floor of the 
     World Trade Center. [He] was killed when the first plane 
     struck the North Tower. . . . Twenty-two years and four 
     [Presidents] later, there has been no accountability for his 
     death, nor the deaths of nearly three thousand [other 
     Americans that day].

  Leila and 3,000 other families like hers have been waiting for 
justice for 9/11 for almost 20 years, maybe longer. In those two 
decades, Leila has grown from a toddler to a law student. But the 
military commission trial against the five 9/11 codefendants in 
Guantanamo has never even started, 22 years later. Let me repeat that. 
More than two decades after the attacks, the 9/11 trial has never even 
started.
  In her words, she said:

       The parties are no closer to a trial date than when the 
     hearings began in 2012--

  More than a decade ago.

       In the meantime, many family members have died, and others 
     have given up hope. [They don't know that this] case will 
     ever end in their lifetime.

  Leila has traveled to Guantanamo to watch the military commission 
proceedings and came away frustrated and, in her words, ``ashamed''--
frustrated at the slow pace and makeshift nature of the proceedings and 
ashamed to learn how the defendants were actually tortured by her own 
government. Leila recognizes that because of this history, real justice 
is now unattainable.
  By setting up ad hoc military commissions rather than trusting our 
courts, by torturing detainees rather than securing evidence lawfully, 
we have made true justice for families like Leila's virtually legally 
impossible.
  If pretrial proceedings are still going on 20 years after the event, 
how many years do you think the actual trial would take? How many years 
of appeals would then follow? What are the chances that prosecutors can 
even convict men who were tortured at our hands for years? And if they 
did, what are the chances that those convictions would be upheld? How 
many family members would still be alive to see judgments of guilt, if 
they ever, ever come?
  The reality is that securing guilty pleas in the 9/11 case is at this 
point the only way to deliver a modicum of justice to the victims and 
their families. The Biden administration should step up to the plate 
and deliver the justice that three previous administrations have failed 
to provide.
  In Leila's words:

       The military commissions have failed to provide justice for 
     9/11 families. Plea deals are a way out--

  The only way out, maybe--

     [but the] thing standing in the way is political will.

  Leila says:

       It is time for that to change.

  She is not alone in recognizing that guilty pleas are realistically 
the only hope for justice.
  On the morning of 9/11, former Bush administration Solicitor General 
Ted Olson went to his office at the Justice Department, while his wife 
Barbara headed to Dulles Airport for a flight to Los Angeles. Barbara 
had planned to leave the day before, but she delayed her departure by a 
day so she could wake up with Mr. Olson, her husband, on his birthday.
  After the two planes hit the World Trade Center towers, Mr. Olson's 
thoughts turned to his wife's safety. At first, he was relieved when 
the assistant told him that she was on the phone, but she was calling 
from the back of the airplane to tell him that her plane had been 
hijacked. She asked what she could tell the captain--and, then, 
silence.
  At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, 
killing all 64 people aboard and 125 people in the Pentagon. Barbara 
was one of those victims.
  Like Leila, Ted Olson is still awaiting justice, but today he 
believes that true justice seems unattainable.
  By coincidence, I ran into him last night at a reception here on 
Capitol Hill. I went up and introduced myself to him, and I said I was 
going to talk about his statement and his wife on the floor. And he 
thanked me for it. He said: It is time for the American people to hear 
this straight from those of us who were directly impacted by 9/11.
  In a powerful column earlier this month, Mr. Olson wrote:

       I now understand that the commissions were doomed from the 
     start.

  He said:

       We tried to pursue justice expeditiously in a new, untested 
     legal system. It didn't work. The established legal system of 
     the U.S. would have been capable of rendering a verdict in 
     these difficult cases, but we didn't trust America's tried-
     and-true courts.

  He concluded:

       Nothing will bring back the thousands whose lives were so 
     cruelly taken that September day. But we must face reality 
     and bring this process to an end. The American legal system 
     must move on by closing the book on the military commissions 
     and securing guilty pleas.

  In the fearful days after 9/11, our Nation's leaders made a fateful 
decision to forsake our most trusted institutions and betray our 
cherished values. The decision to open Guantanamo in a rush for 
vengeance and swift justice instead robbed the victims of 9/11 and 
their loved ones of their right to true justice. It is time to salvage 
what justice we can by bringing the commission cases to an end. We must 
also bring an end to the shameful, shameful indefinite detention of 
detainees who have never been charged with a crime. More than two 
decades after the incident of 9/11, these detainees have never been 
charged with any crime.
  Eighteen of the thirty-two remaining detainees have never been 
charged with any crime and have been unanimously cleared for release--
18--by our national security and military leadership. Yet they continue 
to be detained indefinitely--day after day, year after year--for more 
than two decades.
  The administration must redouble its effort to transfer the men who 
have been cleared for release or served their sentences. The recent 
transfer of three longtime detainees were steps forward, but the 
administration needs to pick up the pace. Men who have served their 
time or been cleared for release should not be sitting in Guantanamo. 
Ending these abuses is a moral and national security imperative.
  Guantanamo Bay continues to serve the interest of America's worst 
enemies. Terrorist groups point to the history of torture and 
indefinite detention in their propaganda and recruitment videos. 
Autocrats point to Guantanamo to justify their own human rights abuses.
  Adding insult to injury, this moral stain on our Nation and national 
security liability continues to be funded by American taxpayers. The 
cost of Guantanamo is astronomic. We spend more than $540 million each 
year to keep Guantanamo open for just 32 detainees. Let me repeat that: 
$540 million a year in taxpayers' money to keep Guantanamo open for 32 
detainees. That is nearly $17 million a year for each detainee. It is 
an outrage. And 18 of those men have been cleared for release for a 
long period.
  We must not forget that Guantanamo was set up to be outside the reach 
of the law, outside the reach of the Constitution, outside the reach of 
the concept of habeas corpus, outside the reach of due process, and 
outside the reach of the Geneva Conventions. That is why it was chosen.
  We must not forget that the detainees were held incommunicado and 
actually tortured at Guantanamo. We must not forget that more than half 
the men there still continue to be detained indefinitely without any 
charge or any trial. In America, we must stand for something better 
than that.
  Guantanamo Bay, sadly, is a historic stain on America's long pursuit 
of the cause of justice. We have a responsibility to release detainees 
who have never been charged with a crime and have served their time, 
period, and we have a responsibility to deliver what little justice we 
still can to the victims of 9/11 and their families.
  So let's do what must be done. Let's finally salvage a small measure 
of justice and dignity for Leila, for Ted Olson, and for everyone else 
who lost a loved one on that terrible day.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). The Senator from Rhode Island.