[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 20056-20058]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   HABEAS CORPUS--AMENDMENT NO. 5087

  Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President, I would like to address the habeas corpus 
amendment that is on the floor and that we just heard a lengthy debate 
about between Senator Specter and Senator Warner.
  A few years ago, I gave a speech in Boston that people talk about 
from time to time. In that speech, I spoke about why I love this 
country, why I love America, and what I believe sets this country apart 
from so many other nations in so many areas. I said:

       That is the true genius of America--a faith in simple 
     dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in 
     our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed 
     and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what 
     we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. . . .

  Without hearing a sudden knock on the door. I bring this up because 
what is at stake in this bill, and in the amendment that is currently 
being debated, is the right, in some sense, for people who hear that 
knock on the door and are placed in detention because the Government 
suspects them of terrorist activity to effectively challenge their 
detention by our Government.
  Now, under the existing rules of the Detainee Treatment Act, court 
review of anyone's detention is severely restricted. Fortunately, the 
Supreme Court in Hamdan ensured that some meaningful review would take 
place. But in the absence of Senator Specter's amendment that is 
currently pending, we will essentially be going back to the same 
situation as if the Supreme Court had never ruled in Hamdan, a 
situation in which detainees effectively have no access to anything 
other than the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, or the CSRT.
  Now, I think it is important for all of us to understand exactly the 
procedures that are currently provided for under the CSRT. I have 
actually read a few of the transcripts of proceedings under the CSRT. 
And I can tell you that oftentimes they provide detainees no meaningful 
recourse if the Government has the wrong guy.
  Essentially, reading these transcripts, they proceed as follows: The 
Government says: You are a member of the Taliban. And the detainee will 
say: No, I'm not. And then the Government will not ask for proof from 
the detainee that he is not. There is no evidence that the detainee can 
offer to rebut the Government's charge.
  The Government then moves on and says: And on such and such a date, 
you perpetrated such and such terrorist crime. And the detainee says: 
No, I didn't. You have the wrong guy. But again, he has no capacity to 
place into evidence anything that would rebut the Government's charge. 
And there is no effort to find out whether or not what he is saying is 
true.

[[Page 20057]]

  And it proceeds like that until effectively the Government says, OK, 
that is the end of the tribunal, and he goes back to detention. Even if 
there is evidence that he was not involved in any terrorist activity, 
he may not have any mechanism to introduce that evidence into the 
hearing.
  Now, the vast majority of the folks in Guantanamo, I suspect, are 
there for a reason. There are a lot of dangerous people. Particularly 
dangerous are people like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Ironically, those are 
the guys who are going to get real military procedures because they are 
going to be charged by the Government. But detainees who have not 
committed war crimes--or where the Government's case is not strong--may 
not have any recourse whatsoever.
  The bottom line is this: Current procedures under the CSRT are such 
that a perfectly innocent individual could be held and could not rebut 
the Government's case and has no way of proving his innocence.
  I would like somebody in this Chamber, somebody in this Government, 
to tell me why this is necessary. I do not want to hear that this is a 
new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that. I know that 
every time I think about my two little girls and worry for their 
safety--when I wonder if I really can tuck them in at night and know 
that they are safe from harm. I have as big of a stake as anybody on 
the other side of the aisle and anybody in this administration in 
capturing terrorists and incapacitating them. I would gladly take up 
arms myself against any terrorist threat to make sure my family is 
protected.
  But as a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of 
my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent 
to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were 
being held and being able to prove their innocence.
  This is not just an entirely fictional scenario, by the way. We have 
already had reports by the CIA and various generals over the last few 
years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo should not have 
been there. As one U.S. commander of Guantanamo told the Wall Street 
Journal:

       Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks.

  We all know about the recent case of the Canadian man who was 
suspected of terrorist connections, detained in New York, sent to 
Syria--through a rendition agreement--tortured, only to find out later 
it was all a case of mistaken identity and poor information.
  In this war, where terrorists can plot undetected from within our 
borders, it is absolutely vital that our law enforcement agencies are 
able to detain and interrogate whoever they believe to be a suspect, 
and so it is understandable that mistakes will be made and identities 
will be confused. I don't blame the Government for that. This is an 
extraordinarily difficult war we are prosecuting against terrorists. 
There are going to be situations in which we cast too wide a net and 
capture the wrong person.
  But what is avoidable is refusing to ever allow our legal system to 
correct these mistakes. By giving suspects a chance--even one chance--
to challenge the terms of their detention in court, to have a judge 
confirm that the Government has detained the right person for the right 
suspicions, we could solve this problem without harming our efforts in 
the war on terror one bit.
  Let me respond to a couple of points that have been made on the other 
side. You will hear opponents of this amendment say it will give all 
kinds of rights to terrorist masterminds, such as Khalid Shaikh 
Mohammed. But that is not true. The irony of the underlying bill as it 
is written is that someone like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is going to get 
basically a full military trial, with all of the bells and whistles. He 
will have counsel, he will be able to present evidence, and he will be 
able to rebut the Government's case. The feeling is that he is guilty 
of a war crime and to do otherwise might violate some of our agreements 
under the Geneva Conventions. I think that is good, that we are going 
to provide him with some procedure and process. I think we will convict 
him, and I think he will be brought to justice. I think justice will be 
carried out in his case.
  But that won't be true for the detainees who are never charged with a 
terrorist crime, who have not committed a war crime. Under this bill, 
people who may have been simply at the wrong place at the wrong time--
and there may be just a few--will never get a chance to appeal their 
detention. So, essentially, the weaker the Government's case is against 
you, the fewer rights you have. Senator Specter's amendment would fix 
that, while still ensuring that terrorists like Mohammed are swiftly 
brought to justice.
  You are also going to hear a lot about how lawyers are going to file 
all kinds of frivolous lawsuits on behalf of detainees if habeas corpus 
is in place. This is a cynical argument because I think we could get 
overwhelming support in this Chamber right now for a measure that would 
restrict habeas to a one-shot appeal that would be limited solely to 
whether someone was legally detained or not. I am not interested in 
allowing folks at Guantanamo to complain about whether their cell is 
too small or whether the food they get is sufficiently edible or to 
their tastes. That is not what this is about. We can craft a habeas 
bill that says the only question before the court is whether there is 
sufficient evidence to find that this person is truly an unlawful enemy 
combatant and belongs in this detention center. We can restrict it to 
that. And although I have seen some of those amendments floating 
around, those were not amendments that were admitted during this 
debate. It is a problem that is easily addressed. It is not a reason 
for us to wholesale eliminate habeas corpus.
  Finally, you will hear some Senators argue that if habeas is allowed, 
it renders the CSRT process irrelevant because the courts will embark 
on de novo review, meaning they will completely retry these cases, take 
new evidence. So whatever findings were made in the CSRT are not really 
relevant because the court is essentially going to start all over 
again.
  I actually think some of these Senators are right on this point. I 
believe we could actually set up a system in which a military tribunal 
is sufficient to make a determination as to whether someone is an enemy 
combatant and would not require the sort of traditional habeas corpus 
that is called for as a consequence of this amendment, where the 
court's role is simply to see whether proper procedures were met. The 
problem is that the way the CSRT is currently designed is so 
insufficient that we can anticipate the Supreme Court overturning this 
underlying bill, once again, in the absence of habeas corpus review.
  I have had conversations with some of the sponsors of the underlying 
bill who say they agree that we have to beef up the CSRT procedures. 
Well, if we are going to revisit the CSRT procedures to make them 
stronger and make sure they comport with basic due process, why not 
leave habeas corpus in place until we have actually fixed it up to our 
satisfaction? Why rush through it 2 days before we are supposed to 
adjourn? Because some on the other side of the aisle want to go 
campaign on the issue of who is tougher on terrorism and national 
security.
  Since 9/11, Americans have been asked to give up certain conveniences 
and civil liberties--long waits in airport security lines, random 
questioning because of a foreign-sounding last name--so that the 
Government can defeat terrorism wherever it may exist. It is a tough 
balance to strike. I think we have to acknowledge that whoever was in 
power right now, whoever was in the White House, whichever party was in 
control, that we would have to do some balancing between civil 
liberties and our need for security and to get tough on those who would 
do us harm.
  Most of us have been willing to make some sacrifices because we know 
that, in the end, it helps to make us safer. But restricting somebody's 
right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make 
us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less 
safe.

[[Page 20058]]

  In Sunday's New York Times, it was reported that previous drafts of 
the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, a report of 16 
different Government intelligence agencies, describe:

       . . . actions by the United States Government that were 
     determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the 
     indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. . . .

  This is not just unhelpful in our fight against terror, it is 
unnecessary. We don't need to imprison innocent people to win this war. 
For people who are guilty, we have the procedures in place to lock them 
up. That is who we are as a people. We do things right, and we do 
things fair.
  Two days ago, every Member of this body received a letter, signed by 
35 U.S. diplomats, many of whom served under Republican Presidents. 
They urged us to reconsider eliminating the rights of habeas corpus 
from this bill, saying:

       To deny habeas corpus to our detainees can be seen as a 
     prescription for how the captured members of our own 
     military, diplomatic, and NGO personnel stationed abroad may 
     be treated. . . . The Congress has every duty to insure their 
     protection, and to avoid anything which will be taken as a 
     justification, even by the most disturbed minds, that 
     arbitrary arrest is the acceptable norm of the day in the 
     relations between nations, and that judicial inquiry is an 
     antique, trivial and dispensable luxury.

  The world is watching what we do today in America. They will know 
what we do here today, and they will treat all of us accordingly in the 
future--our soldiers, our diplomats, our journalists, anybody who 
travels beyond these borders. I hope we remember this as we go forward. 
I sincerely hope we can protect what has been called the ``great 
writ''--a writ that has been in place in the Anglo-American legal 
system for over 700 years.
  Mr. President, this should not be a difficult vote. I hope we pass 
this amendment because I think it is the only way to make sure this 
underlying bill preserves all the great traditions of our legal system 
and our way of life.
  I yield the floor.

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