[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7488-7489]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



        EXPRESSING SORROW AT THE UNTIMELY PASSING OF STEVE GREEN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this time to talk about a 
great loss to San Diego, a great loss to journalism and a great loss to 
our Nation, and that is the untimely passing of Steve Green of Copley 
Press.
  Steve had a long career in journalism. He worked as a reporter for 
the old Washington Star. He used to get the scoop on his better-
financed opposition and adversaries in the Washington Post. He later 
went on to the Washington Post and worked for them during the Watergate 
period and was the kind of guy who really knew how to get a scoop, how 
to follow a story until he got everything out of that story.
  He later went to work for Copley Press and was ultimately the bureau 
chief in the Washington Bureau of Copley Press, and it was there that I 
and the other members of the San Diego delegation and lot of other 
folks in politics in Washington, DC got to know Steve.
  The reason I am talking about Steve today is because I think that 
Steve

[[Page 7489]]

Green represented the very best of one of the most important aspects of 
this democracy, and that is journalism.
  Steve was a guy who was in the middle, in the heart of a lot of the 
very fundamental, earthshaking events in the last 34 years in 
Washington, DC, and he was in the middle of the Watergate scandal. He 
covered a lot of national stories that had a great deal of importance 
to this country and to this town.
  After he left the position of bureau chief for Copley, he went on to 
become the editor who covered the Pentagon and the U.S. military, a 
very, very important issue, especially for those of us from San Diego.
  Throughout this stint of covering very important issues, issues which 
often revealed the sordid side of politics, like the bribery scandals 
and, to some degree, the Watergate scandal, Steve Green was a real 
person, was a real human being.
  He was a guy who had a great sense of humor, a great sense of 
evenness, a great sense of decency. And those people, people with good 
hearts, are very important to this democracy, especially in a position 
in the center of journalism in Washington, DC.
  Mr. Speaker, I got to know Steve when he was covering the San Diego 
congressional delegation, and you noticed in Steve's stories, Steve was 
a guy who got all the details. You could not pull the wool over his 
eyes. He knew what was going on, and he always kind of knew the story 
behind the story.
  He also wrote those stories in a way that was very even, very fair-
handed, without an agenda, and I think with a little sense of humor 
also, and with a sense of civility.

                              {time}  1515

  With this entire city searching for civility and, of course, the 
President asking for it and using that as a trademark for this new 
administration, it is guys like Steve Green in Copley Press who really 
manifest that civility, because they do it in writing evenhanded 
stories and portraying to the great public out there what is really 
happening in Washington, DC.
  While sometimes there are sordid sides and bad sides for the story 
and stories that reveal some of the darker parts of human nature, he 
also liked to write a story that would reveal the better sides of human 
nature and justice and triumph in the end and the good things about 
America.
  To be able to cover this period in which a lot of journalists turn to 
cynicism when looking at Washington, DC and this great Capitol, this 
people's House, to remember Steve Green sitting here in the Speaker's 
lobby with his pencil and his paper out taking an interview after a 
vote on the floor or after something happened, and doing it in his 
evenhanded manner, his optimistic manner, always looking for the good 
aspect of the story was something that was very important to myself and 
to the other Members of the congressional delegation.
  So Steve passed away, Mr. Speaker. He leaves a great legacy for 
Copley Press and for anybody who wants to be a journalist and cover the 
great national theater of action which is in Washington, DC with the 
Congress and the President and all of the aspects of a new 
administration like the one that is in place right now.
  In fact, Alison, his daughter, sent me a few notes on Steve's life 
the other night, and I could tell from her conversation that she is 
kind of a chip off the old block. But he leaves Ginny. His widow is a 
wonderful lady. We all wish all the best to Steve's family.

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