[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 23807]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    THE FOX INSPECTING THE HENHOUSE

  (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that the theater 
of the absurd is opening a new farce. The plots of the old one, the 
fox, Mr. Ashcroft, is inspecting the henhouse, looking for someone who 
broke the law by revealing an alleged CIA employee to the press.
  Does anyone believe that they are going to use all the power of the 
Patriot Act, that they are going to go through the library records, the 
medical records, the visa records of everybody in the White House to 
find out who committed this crime? How can this Congress sit here with 
a straight face and allow that to be the way this issue is revealed? 
There ought to be an independent counsel. There is no way you can 
convince the American people that John Ashcroft, whose campaign manager 
was Karl Rove in the last election he lost, is going to do a real 
investigation of who broke the law in the White House.
  This Congress cannot let that go by because no intelligence agent is 
going to be safe in the United States if the fox has his way.

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