[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15213-15223]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF THE SENATE THAT ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO 
   GONZALES NO LONGER HOLDS THE CONFIDENCE OF THE SENATE AND OF THE 
                   AMERICAN PEOPLE--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume debate on the motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 14, 
which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A motion to proceed to the consideration of S.J. Res. 14, 
     expressing the sense of the Senate that Attorney General 
     Alberto Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate 
     and of the American people.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Republican leader shall control the time from 5 to 5:20, and the 
majority leader shall control the time from 5:20 to 5:30.
  The Senator from New York is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: The Republican 
leader controls the time from 5:10 to 5:20, as I understand?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, it is 
from 5 to 5:20.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that those of us in favor of 
this resolution be given a half hour to debate.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. DOMENICI. I object.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I understand there is a misunderstanding. 
They weren't supposed to start until 5:10, but the order says 5 
o'clock, which would only give us 10 minutes to debate this motion.
  Let me begin and not waste any further time. I rise in support of the 
motion to proceed to a vote of no confidence on Attorney General 
Alberto Gonzales. It is a fair measure. I know it is one with few 
precedents, but it is called for today because the dire situation at 
the Department of Justice is also without precedent. The level of 
disarray and dysfunction, the crisis of credibility, and the failure of 
leadership are all without precedent. It is a simple measure we have 
before us. Let me read it.

       It is the sense of the Senate that Attorney General Alberto 
     Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of 
     the American people.

  Are there any Members here who don't agree with that sentiment? If 
so, I haven't heard them. Senators are not a shy lot. Their silence on 
this point is deafening. So if Senators cast their votes with their 
conscience, they would speak with near unanimity that there is no 
confidence in the Attorney General. Their united voice would 
undoubtedly dislodge the Attorney General from a post he should no 
longer hold. But we may not have a unanimous vote here today, I am 
told. That is a puzzle because no matter what standard one applies, no 
matter what criteria one uses, the Attorney General cannot enjoy the 
confidence of the Senate. He certainly doesn't of the American people.
  The bill of particulars against the Attorney General is staggering. 
On the question of the Attorney General's credibility, the record 
speaks for itself. Repeatedly, the Attorney General has misled the 
Congress, misled the American people, and given incredible explanations 
for the U.S. attorney firings. The Attorney General's comments have 
been a series of shifting reactions and restatements. Is this 
confidence-inspiring conduct from the Nation's chief law enforcement 
officer?
  We learned that Attorney General Gonzales was personally involved in 
the firing plan after being told he wasn't. We learned that the White 
House was involved after being told it wasn't. We learned that Karl 
Rove was involved after being told he wasn't. We learned that political 
considerations were paramount after being told they weren't. Then, when 
the Attorney General finally had the opportunity to set the record 
straight on April 19, 2007, what did he do? More than 70 times he 
answered ``I don't know'' when asked the most basic questions about how 
he came to fire 10 percent of the Nation's U.S. attorneys. The Attorney 
General admitted he didn't know the reasons why several U.S. attorneys 
were fired but insisted in the very next breath that he knew they were 
not fired for improper reasons. Does that inspire confidence? One of 
our most mild-mannered Members, Senator Pryor, believes he was lied to 
directly by the Attorney General, and he has good reason to think so.
  Time after time, the Attorney General has shown he doesn't have the 
credibility to lead the Department. This is not a liberal or 
conservative assessment. This is not a Democratic or Republican 
assessment. It is a universal one. Listen to the words of the

[[Page 15214]]

conservative National Review magazine, which wrote on March 28:

       What little credibility Gonzales had is gone . . . Alberto 
     Gonzales should resign. The Justice Department needs a fresh 
     start.

  That is on credibility.
  On the Attorney General's lack of commitment to independence and the 
rule of law, the record is also disturbingly clear. The Attorney 
General has long shown that he misperceives his role. He forgets that 
he is the people's lawyer, not just the President's. If one needs a 
single image to symbolize the Attorney General's contempt for the rule 
of law, it is that of Alberto Gonzales bending over John Ashcroft's 
sickbed on the night of March 10, 2004. It is the picture of then-White 
House Counsel Gonzales trying to take advantage of a very ill man who 
didn't even have the powers of the Attorney General to approve a 
program that the Department of Justice could not certify was legal.
  That example, unfortunately, has plenty of company. Consider the 
image of Attorney General Gonzales in March of this year making Mrs. 
Goodling feel ``uncomfortable''--her word--by going through the 
sequence of events related to the U.S. attorney firings. How often do 
people comfort someone by reviewing their recollection of events that 
are subject to congressional investigation? Add to those examples the 
documented violations with respect to national security letters and 
other admitted abuses in connection with the PATRIOT Act. How can such 
leadership inspire confidence?
  Rule of law in the Gonzales regime, sadly, has apparently been an 
afterthought rather than a bedrock principle. Again, there is no 
liberal or conservative or Democratic or Republican position on the 
Attorney General's lack of independence and commitment to rule of law; 
it is virtually unanimous. Consider the words of the conservative group 
the American Freedom Agenda:

       Attorney General Gonzales has proven an unsuitable steward 
     of the law and should resign for the good of the country.
  On the question of whether the Department has been improperly 
politicized, the record is again clear.
  Attorney General Gonzales has presided over perhaps the most 
politicized Department in history. We have learned that under Alberto 
Gonzales, being a ``loyal Bushie'' was more important than being a 
consummate professional. We have learned that U.S. attorneys who were 
performing their duties admirably were apparently dismissed because of 
unfounded allegations by political figures, allegations that were never 
investigated or never proven. We have learned that an unprecedented 
voter fraud case was brought in Missouri on the eve of an election in 
clear violation of the Department's own policy. We have learned that 
deep suspicions about improper politicizing even at the entry level of 
the professional ranks were correct. We have learned from the Attorney 
General's own former senior counselor Monica Goodling that she 
``crossed the line'' in considering partisan affiliation in filling 
career positions at the Justice Department--career positions, not 
political positions.
  The Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of Inspector 
General have now opened investigations relating to the hiring of 
immigration judges, civil rights lawyers, and Honors Program attorneys. 
All of this, of course, occurred under the Attorney General's watch. 
Either the Attorney General knew about these potentially illegal 
activities and did nothing or he was oblivious to what was going on 
beneath his own nose. Either way, Mr. Gonzales is responsible for a 
deeply political culture at the Department, unprecedented in modern 
times. As former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey has said, these 
kinds of blows to the reputation of the Department will be hard to 
overcome. Does that kind of leadership inspire confidence?
  Finally, given all of this, on the basic question of competence and 
effectiveness, the Attorney General has proven himself to lack the 
leadership ability needed to right the Department. By every account, 
the Attorney General's handling of the U.S. attorney firings has been 
catastrophic. Morale at the Department is at an alltime low. How can we 
have confidence in an Attorney General who can't get his story 
straight? How can we have confidence in an Attorney General who still 
can't tell us why 10 percent of the Nation's U.S. attorneys were fired? 
How can we have confidence in an Attorney General who would allow his 
top staff to take the fall for his own failings? How can we have 
confidence in an Attorney General who allowed improper and possibly 
illegal political hiring to take place?
  Given the crisis of confidence and credibility, given the abysmal 
record of trampling the rule of law and longtime standards of 
nonpolitical hiring, the vote today should be an easy one. Some will 
claim they are opposing the motion because they say this vote was 
called for political reasons. This vote is not about politics. If this 
were all about politics, it would be easy to sit back, let the Attorney 
General remain, cast aspersions on him for the next 18 months, and reap 
the political benefits. But the Department of Justice is too important, 
and we have an obligation to do everything we can in a bipartisan way 
to demand new leadership.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Stabenow). The time of the Senator has 
expired.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, we have had some timing difficulties. 
We have only had about 10 minutes to debate this resolution.
  Might I ask the minority leader a question? What is his pleasure? I 
had been told he was coming at 5:10, but the agreement says 5.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, my understanding is I am to speak at 
5. I have a leadership meeting at 5:15. I have a time problem. I do not 
seek to get in front of the Senator from New York, but I really need to 
speak at 5 o'clock, at the time I was anticipating speaking.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
minority leader be given his 15 minutes now, that then I be given 
another 10 minutes to finish my remarks, and the Senator from Rhode 
Island be given 10 minutes to speak, and that we vote immediately 
thereafter.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, reserving the right to object, the 
Senator from Mississippi and I are going to--I guess the Senators from 
Texas and Mississippi and I are going to divide the 15 minutes. Madam 
President, provided that Senator Lott and I could divide the 15 
minutes, and Senator Hutchison could get an additional 4 minutes, then 
I would be agreeable to the request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would 
add to the request--Senator Reid wishes 10 minutes at the conclusion of 
the debate. So adding the 15 minutes for the minority leader, divided 
with the minority whip from Mississippi, and 4 minutes for the Senator 
from Texas, 10 minutes for myself, 10 minutes for the Senator from 
Rhode Island, and 10 minutes for the Senator from Nevada, I ask that we 
have that time and then we vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, reserving the right to object, when 
will the vote commence?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It will commence at 5:49.
  Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, there are four ways to become a 
Senator: by appointment, by special election, by winning an open seat, 
or by defeating an incumbent.
  My good friend from New York, who has been speaking, and I came to 
the Senate the same way: By defeating an incumbent. That way is often 
the hardest, so I am sure the Senator remembers his 1998 Senate race 
against our former colleague, Senator Al D'Amato.
  It was quite a race. The Senator from New York surely remembers one 
of his criticisms of Senator D'Amato: That Senator D'Amato had, in 
essence, abused his office.

[[Page 15215]]

  My friend from New York said it was improper for Senator D'Amato to 
use his official Senate position to investigate the former first lady 
while Senator D'Amato was also chairman of his party's Senate campaign 
committee, the NRSC. My friend from New York said, in referring to 
Senator D'Amato:

       Do you know what he did right after he got elected? He 
     became chairman of the national Senate Republican Campaign 
     Committee, the most blatantly political position you can 
     hold. Then . . . he embarked on his partisan and political 
     inquisition of the First Family.

  According to the New York Times, the thing about Senator D'Amato's 
activities that my friend from New York appeared to find particularly 
galling was that his behavior was motivated by reelection concerns.
  Given the two hats my friend from New York currently wears, you can 
see why I obviously found the standard he set out in 1998 to be quite 
intriguing.
  We all talk to the media--some of us more than others--and we may 
make offhand comments we later regret, especially in the heat of a 
campaign. But the Senator from New York thought his conflict of 
interest charge was so important that he ran a television ad about it. 
The Buffalo News reported:

       Among the blizzard of attack ads running this weekend is 
     one in which Schumer charged that D'Amato used the Banking 
     Committee . . . to mount a 'vicious' partisan attack on first 
     lady Hillary Rodham Clinton three years ago.

  Now, New York is certainly an expensive media market. Yet because my 
good friend from New York was so concerned with Senator D'Amato's 
chairing the NRSC while he was investigating the First Lady, he spent a 
lot of money urging New Yorkers to remove Senator D'Amato from office. 
So he must have really thought it was a serious conflict for someone to 
lead his party's campaign committee while also leading an investigation 
into an administration of the opposite party.
  How times change, Madam President. Now my good friend is leading his 
party's principal campaign committee for the Senate, the DSCC. At the 
same time, he is leading an official Senate investigation into the 
Justice Department.
  He chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and 
the Courts.
  The media widely reports that he has been tapped by the majority 
leader to lead this investigation. The piece in the National Journal 
calls him the Democratic ``point man'' on this particular subject--our 
good friend from New York.
  He usually has chaired one of the numerous hearings the committee has 
already held on this subject. To borrow from the National Journal, you 
could say he is ubiquitous when it comes to this subject.
  The campaign committee he chairs has repeatedly used material derived 
from his investigation for partisan campaign purposes.
  He held a press conference before the ink was barely dry on the 
Schumer resolution. There, he predicted, amazingly, that we would go to 
this resolution immediately after immigration. And it looks as if the 
majority leader filed cloture on immigration to make sure we kept the 
schedule of my good friend from New York.
  Last, but not least, he is the author of the resolution we will be 
voting on in a little while.
  So I find myself perplexed about the application in these 
circumstances of the standard the Senator from New York set out in 
1998. We could call it the Schumer standard.
  It seems to me that Senator D'Amato's position in 1998 is like the 
current position of my friend from New York in all material respects.
  So given that the Senator from New York has said it is a serious 
conflict of interest for someone to lead his party's campaign committee 
while he uses his official position to lead an investigation of the 
administration of the opposite party, I cannot understand why it is not 
a conflict of interest for my friend from New York to lead his current 
investigation of the Justice Department.
  And given that the Senator from New York wanted Senator D'Amato 
removed from office under similar circumstances, I also cannot 
understand why my good friend should not at least recuse himself--
recuse himself--from the official investigation of the Justice 
Department that he himself has been leading.
  In conclusion, I hope it is not the case that our friend from New 
York wrote this resolution and pushed the Senate to spend its valuable 
time on this particular resolution for partisan political purposes. And 
if he did not do that, then I trust we will not see the campaign 
committee he is chairing using the Senate's vote on this resolution--
his own resolution--for campaign purposes.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, parliamentary inquiry: How much time do I 
have?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 9\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. LOTT. I have 9\1/2\ minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. LOTT. Thank you, Madam President.
  I had some passing remarks to make last week about believing we 
should find a way to move forward the immigration reform effort--to 
improve it, to change it, but to try to get it done--because it is an 
issue we should not just push aside.
  We ran into some difficulties, and there is no use in trying to 
recount how that happened. I think the important thing is we try to 
find a way to resurrect it, get it properly considered, amended, voted 
on, and concluded, if at all possible. But that goes to the heart of 
what I want to say today.
  Is this what the business of the Senate is really all about, a 
nonbinding, irrelevant resolution? Proving what? Nothing. If this 
should go forward, we would have hours, days--who knows, a week--
debating on whether to express our confidence or lack thereof in the 
Attorney General--to no effect.
  Now, I have been in Congress 35 years. I have been in the Senate 
since 1989. I do not recall anything of this nature having been 
proposed before. Maybe we should be considering a vote of no confidence 
in the Senate or in the Congress for malfunction, for an inability to 
produce anything. Yet this resolution would bring up this issue and 
have us spend time debating it.
  This is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become 
the British Parliament. Are we going to bring the President here and 
have a questioning period like the Prime Minister has in Great Britain?
  So I am very much concerned about this. A vote of no confidence of 
any Cabinet official would have no effect. The President makes that 
decision. And I suspect the ability of a Cabinet official to perform or 
not perform is in the eye of the beholder.
  But the main point is, that is not our job. We do not have authority 
to make that determination. So what are we going to accomplish today? 
This is all about partisan politics. Nobody is fooled by this. This is 
about trying to get a vote to try to put some people on the hot spot. 
That is what it is really all about.
  Now, by the way, you have not seen me running around making a big 
scene of expressing my confidence one way or the other in this Attorney 
General, or any other Attorney General, or the Justice Department, for 
that matter, regardless of who is the President of the United States.
  We are supposed to be here to pass laws, to get things done. When was 
the last time we did something like that? Not this year. Frankly, not 
over the last 3 years because of gymnastics like this--exercising to no 
effect. No. What should we be doing for the American people? We should 
be trying to find a way to have strong immigration reform for illegal 
and legal immigrants. We made a 2-week effort. Some people said: Oh, 
that is long enough. I can remember us spending weeks on a bill--I 
think 6 weeks on No Child Left Behind. I remember one time we spent a 
month on a tobacco bill, which we eventually had to pull down and move 
on.
  To spend in the Senate weeks on a very important issue, so Senators 
can express their views and offer amendments, and they can be voted on, 
is

[[Page 15216]]

quite normal. But, no, we are not doing immigration reform. We hope to 
be able to get to Defense authorization.
  Oh, and by the way, what happened to the appropriations bills? The 
majority leaders do know, I think, that if you do not begin the 
appropriations process in late May or early June, you are not going to 
make it. The majority leader has, appropriately, said we are going to 
pass all the appropriations bills in regular order. How does he intend 
to do that? We are not going to do a single one in June, and we will be 
lucky if we do four in July. It is not going to happen.
  We are going to wind up with a train wreck at the end of the fiscal 
year. We are going to have all these appropriations bills, once again. 
I cannot just blame Democrats. We have done the same thing: an omnibus 
appropriations bill with all kinds of shenanigans being involved in 
that, trying to lump all these bills together--put the Defense 
appropriations bill in there and irrelevant language and say: Here. 
Take the whole wad, Mr. President.
  Oh, yes, we did it to Clinton, and we have done it to President Bush, 
but it is not the way to do business. Can we do something about health 
care? Can we get this Energy bill done? Remember now, if you start 
these different cloture votes, being able to find a way to get an 
Energy bill done--not to mention other things we would like to do after 
that--they are going to be delayed or derailed completely. So this is a 
very disappointing spectacle here today.
  Now, the sponsor of the resolution--the fact is, he is chairman of 
the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He is in that position, 
and then he is taking these attack positions. So I do not think anybody 
has to be drawn a further picture to understand what is going on with 
this effort.
  So I urge my colleagues: Look, he has made his point, made his 
speech. We are going to have a vote in a few minutes. We ought to 
summarily punt this out into the end zone where it belongs. This is 
beneath the dignity of the Senate. How low will the Senate go? If we 
get into this for hours or days, pity how much it is going to debase 
this institution even further.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against the motion to invoke cloture on 
the motion to proceed, and let's move on to the business of the Senate 
and the business of the American people. The American people may not 
have particular confidence one way or the other in this Attorney 
General, but this is not an election of the Attorney General.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against cloture on the motion to proceed 
and let's get on with the business of the Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I rise to speak against this motion 
as well. I agree totally with the Senator from Mississippi in saying: 
What are we doing spending this whole day talking about a resolution 
which everyone knows will have no effect whatsoever, except probably on 
the nightly news, which I assume was the purpose of introducing it in 
the first place.
  We have talked about the judgment of the Attorney General in handling 
the U.S. attorney personnel issues. There is clearly a division. There 
has been a lot of discussion. A number of people have said what they 
think of the handling of that situation. But stating your opinion is 
very different from having the Senate address this matter. The 
President relieved almost all of his Cabinet when he changed into his 
second term. Why wouldn't he be able to replace U.S. attorneys who also 
serve at his pleasure in the same way he decided to change leadership 
in the Cabinet? That is the right of the President. The Senate has the 
right to confirm Cabinet officers and U.S. attorneys, and we have 
exercised that right. What the Senate should not be doing is passing 
meaningless resolutions that could only serve a political purpose.
  With the issues we have facing this country, how could we be spending 
a whole day, and possibly more if cloture is invoked, on a resolution 
that will have no impact? Why wouldn't we be talking about immigration, 
which we discussed last week and the week before that when we were in 
session? We were making headway. Immigration is a very important issue 
for our country.
  The Energy bill which is before us is a very legitimate, major issue 
for our country. We all want to bring gasoline prices down. But all of 
a sudden, thrust in the middle of the energy debate is a meaningless 
resolution of no confidence in the Attorney General. There has been no 
allegation that he has done something criminal or illegal, just that 
people disagree with his judgment.
  There were people who disagreed with the Attorney General serving in 
the previous administration--Janet Reno--when the Branch Davidian 
complex in Waco, TX was charged and people died. Many felt the Attorney 
General jumped the gun and took too drastic an action, when talking 
would have been better. Or the Elian Gonzalez issue. There was much 
disagreement about the handling of that issue. I didn't see Republicans 
running to the floor of the Senate seeking a resolution of no 
confidence in the Attorney General. I think, frankly, the majority is 
jumping the gun in doing something such as that here. I hope we will 
put this away by not invoking cloture on the motion to proceed. 
Frankly, I hope we will restore the reputation of this body by taking 
up the issues that affect our country, debating them, and having votes.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, first, in regard to my good friend from 
Texas, I think there is a little bit too much protestation here. We 
have spent less than 2 hours on this issue--just 2 hours--and now we 
are being told we don't have enough time to debate whether one of the 
most important Cabinet officers is up to the job. That doesn't hold 
water. They are not upset we are taking 2 hours away from debate. They 
have spent much more time on many more things that are of less 
consequence to this country.
  But let me say this: The minority leader and the minority whip have 
made my case better than I ever could. They failed to utter the words: 
We have faith in Attorney General Gonzales. They failed to state: We 
have confidence in Attorney General Gonzales. In fact, in the entire 
speech of both the minority leader and the minority whip, there was not 
a single word uttered in defense of the Attorney General. No wonder the 
other side doesn't want this resolution brought up. They know the 
Attorney General has failed miserably in his job. They know the 
President has clung stubbornly to keeping a man who virtually no one in 
America thinks is up to the job, who overwhelmingly has lost his 
credibility in his answers and nonanswers and ``don't knows.'' They 
can't defend him. So they do what somebody does when they don't have 
much of an argument--they seek diversions. We will not be diverted. The 
rule of law is too important. The rule of law is too sacred.
  Is it unusual to have a no-confidence resolution? Yes. But it is just 
as unusual--more unusual--to have an Attorney General not in charge of 
his department on a major issue facing his department--the firing of 
U.S. attorneys--to say he didn't know what was happening 70 times; to 
have an Attorney General contradict himself time after time after time. 
For me, it is unusual in whatever airport I go to around this country 
to have people come up to me--it has happened five or six times now--
and say: I work in the Justice Department. I am a civil service 
employee. Keep it up, Senator. Our Department is demeaned--one of them 
used the word ``disgraced''--by the fact that Alberto Gonzales is still 
Attorney General.
  So, yes, a no-confidence resolution is unusual, but this is not 
simply a policy disagreement. Oh, no. This is a major scandal. This is 
a series of inappropriate behaviors by a Cabinet officer. I don't have 
a single bit of doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot, my 
colleagues from the other side of the aisle would be complaining more 
loudly, more quickly than we have.
  What do you do when there is someone in an office who we all know

[[Page 15217]]

doesn't deserve to be in that office, and not a word--except for 
Senator Hatch--not a word of confidence has been spoken by the other 
side? We heard 19 minutes of speeches a minute ago. We don't hear the 
words: We support the Attorney General; we have confidence in the 
Attorney General; the Attorney General should be able to stay. It is 
because his record is indefensible.
  So, yes, this no-confidence resolution is unusual, but it rises to 
the highest calling of the Senate, to seek rule of law over politics, 
to seek rationality and fairness over stubbornness and political games. 
This is what we are supposed to do. We have a function of oversight. 
There is no question Attorney General Gonzales has failed on 
credibility, on competence, on upholding the rule of law.
  The Nation has been shocked by what he has done. He urged an ill John 
Ashcroft, on John Ashcroft's sickbed, to sign a statement that the 
Justice Department itself thought was not justified by the law in terms 
of wiretaps, and he is still Attorney General. John Ashcroft, who is 
hardly a liberal, hardly a Democrat, threatened to resign because of 
what then Counsel Gonzales attempted to do, and he is still in office.
  The bottom line is very simple. We have a sacred, noble obligation in 
this country to defend the rule of law. There was an article in the New 
York Times the other day about how some people are using elections to 
try to justify themselves staying in office in some less developed 
countries. But the public wasn't falling for it, because without rule 
of law, without democracy, without law being applied without fear of 
favor, there is no freedom. Our job is to be vigilant in protecting 
that freedom.
  Some of my friends tossed off charges of ``political''--to vote 
``no'' when one, in fact, agrees with the sentiment in the resolution 
is to cast a vote for the worst political reasons. A ``no'' vote 
ratifies the President's support for the Attorney General. A ``no'' 
vote condones the conduct of the Attorney General. A ``no'' vote 
condemns the Department to a prolonged vacuum in leadership and a 
crisis of morale.
  It is politics simply to cover for the President when you know on 
this issue he is wrong. It is politics to put blind loyalty to a 
political leader over the sacred century after century tradition of 
rule of law. It is politics to voice opposition to the Attorney General 
and then refuse to back one's conviction with one's vote. It is 
politics to know that Alberto Gonzales should not, must not, remain as 
Attorney General and then quietly, meekly cast your vote to keep him.
  I yield the floor, and I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized as 
part of the unanimous consent agreement.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator 
from Missouri.
  Mrs. McCASKILL. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Rhode 
Island for yielding a couple of minutes.
  There have been a couple of times in my career when I have walked 
into a room and have been humbled. Obviously, the day I walked in this 
place, I was humbled beyond words. But when I first walked into a 
criminal courtroom as an assistant prosecutor as a very young lawyer, I 
was also humbled by the responsibility that had been placed upon me by 
our system of justice. I remember talking to one of the older 
prosecutors in the office about what I should worry about. He said: 
Just remember, remember that woman with the scales of justice, Claire. 
Remember she has a blindfold on.
  That blindfold is what this is about today. Frankly, it doesn't 
matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, whether you were for 
George Bush or not for George Bush. What matters today is how those 
prosecutors out there in this country feel right now, and what this 
incident did to the way they feel about their jobs. Because there are 
thousands of professional prosecutors--some of them have been 
appointed, some of them have been hired, some have been elected--what 
they all have in common is they understand their job is not about 
politics, it is about the rule of law.
  When this whole incident unfurled in front of the American public, to 
all of those prosecutors it felt as though they were being cheapened, 
that somehow Gonzales and the rest of them were saying they were being 
judged on their politics and not on their professionalism.
  So I come here just for a moment to try to give a voice to those 
thousands of prosecutors out there. I know them. I have worked with 
them shoulder to shoulder for years. They care deeply about their work, 
they care deeply about the rule of law, and they care deeply about 
fundamental justice.
  On their behalf, I rise today for a moment to say this Chamber should 
vote unanimously a vote of no confidence against the Attorney General 
of the United States.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Missouri 
for her remarks. Like her, I have been appointed and elected as a U.S. 
attorney and as an attorney general. I ask all of my colleagues who are 
listening to take her at her word. Prosecutors across the country are 
horrified about what has happened. I applaud Senator Schumer for what 
he has done to push this forward.
  The Senate has an important oversight role. We have advice and 
consent responsibilities, and we have a Judiciary Committee on which 
Senator Schumer and I serve. I tell you, the U.S. Department of Justice 
is a precious institution in our democracy. It is under siege from 
within, and we need to take some action.
  This resolution is not about partisanship. It is not about scoring 
political points. It is about two very important things--one, letting 
the people of America know we care about an honest, independent, and 
truthful Department of Justice. That is not meaningless. It is also 
about letting the career people within the Department of Justice know 
that we hear them, we care about them, we know what has been done to 
this Department is shameful; that this ordeal for them will one day be 
over, and we will work hard as people who care about this country and 
about the Department of Justice to make that day come soon, so that 
once again truth and justice can be the stars that guide the Department 
of Justice. That, too, is not meaningless.
  Madam President, the bill of particulars against Attorney General 
Gonzales is long. First is the fact that he does not respect the 
institution he leads. Time-honored traditions and practices of the 
Department, vital to the impartial administration of justice, have been 
gravely damaged or destroyed on his watch.
  One, U.S. attorneys used to come from their home districts, where 
they were accountable to local people, where they knew the judges and 
the law enforcement officers. Not under this Attorney General. Now they 
fly them in from Washington where they will do President Bush's 
bidding.
  Two, U.S. attorneys were always put up for advice and consent. Not 
under this Attorney General. He presided over the statutory 
circumvention of our Senate confirmation process.
  Three, the list of people at the White House and the DOJ who used to 
be able to talk about cases with each other recently included only four 
people at the White House and only three at the DOJ. Not under this 
Attorney General, where 417 White House officials, including Karl Rove, 
can now have these formerly illicit conversations with the Department 
of Justice.
  Four, career attorneys were kept free of partisan interference. Not 
under this Attorney General. There are politics in the Honors Program, 
politics in career official appointments, politics in personnel 
evaluations, and politics in the appointment of immigration judges.
  Five, U.S. attorneys were almost always left in place to do their 
jobs once they were appointed, knowing that they had a higher calling 
than their political appointment. Not under this Attorney General. 
Simply put, a man who doesn't care about those institutions of

[[Page 15218]]

the Department of Justice is the wrong person to lead it back out of 
the mess he has put it in.
  He has politicized this Department to a degree not seen since the 
Nixon administration--U.S. attorneys fired for political reasons, with 
White House fingerprints all over the place, and Karl Rove and others 
passing on information to the Department of Justice about voter fraud 
to pump up interest in cases. DOJ policy is ignored, with no 
justification; written policy was ignored to bring indictments on the 
eve of a critical election in the State of Missouri; the White House 
Counsel chastising a U.S. attorney over mishandling a case. How does 
the White House Counsel know whether a DOJ attorney mishandled the 
case? Who is telling him what is going on in the DOJ? The DOJ even 
invented the position of White House Liaison--first time ever--who, by 
her own admission, screened applicants based on inappropriate and 
probably illegal political factors.
  Third, the Attorney General has set the bar for his office far too 
low. His stated definition of what is improper for him and his staff, 
believe it or not, tracks the legal standard for criminal obstruction 
of justice. Is that the kind of Attorney General we want? Is that the 
kind of accountability to himself we want? The Attorney General should 
do a lot better than that.
  There has been an almost unbelievable series of half-truths and 
obfuscations coming out of the Attorney General and his circle. They 
told us that the firings of U.S. attorneys were performance related. 
Not true. They told us the Attorney General was not involved and didn't 
discuss the plan to fire U.S. attorneys. Not true. They told us the 
White House was not involved. Not true. They told us these EARS 
performance evaluations were not relevant. Not true. They told us the 
Attorney General didn't discuss the substance of the testimony with 
other witnesses during the investigation. Not true. They told us the 
Chief of Staff of the Deputy Attorney General never made threatening 
calls to U.S. attorneys who were going to publicly discuss the matter. 
Again, not true.
  How many times can the Department of Justice say things that are not 
true?
  Fifth, the hypocrisy is almost unbelievable. The Attorney General's 
own incompetence and misjudgments fail the very test he claimed he set 
for the fired U.S. attorneys. As one of my colleagues said to Attorney 
General Gonzales at his hearing, ``Why should you not be judged by the 
same standards at which you judged these dismissed U.S. Attorneys?''
  Madam President, our Attorney General would fail that standard. How 
can he oversee our Federal Bureau of Investigation when the FBI 
Director had to warn FBI agents guarding the Attorney General not to 
obey his instructions, when he was White House Counsel scurrying over 
to the ailing Attorney General's hospital room to try to get his 
signature on a document?
  You can say this is just a partisan exercise, but it may take a 
decade to repair the damage Attorney General Gonzales has caused. Every 
day that passes without his resignation is one more day before the 
repair has begun. From the perspective of the Bush administration, I 
can see how a wounded, grateful Attorney General on a very short leash 
may be just as they want as they try to exit Washington without further 
indictments. But that is not the Attorney General America needs to 
maintain the best traditions of the Department of Justice through 
administration and administration and administration, through 
Republicans and Democrats alike, and to ensure the fair administration 
of justice in our country.
  As a former U.S. attorney who has profound respect for the Department 
of Justice and its thousands of career employees, I believe America 
deserves an Attorney General who will lead by example, who will set the 
very highest standard for himself and his staff, who will do his best 
to keep politics out of the justice system and will restore the 
country's faith and confidence in one of its most important 
institutions.
  Please set aside politics and let us stand up for the Department of 
Justice. Let us restore a vital institution in American life. Please 
let us vote for cloture and proceed to do what our duty calls for us to 
do.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I will vote in favor of cloture on the 
motion to proceed. After months of troubling and even shocking 
disclosures about the U.S. Attorney firings and the politicization of 
the Department of Justice, it is important for the Senate to go on 
record on the question of whether the Attorney General should continue 
in his post. This vote may end up being our only vote on this matter, 
but since the resolution itself is nonbinding, this vote, though 
procedural in nature, is sufficient to inform the Nation exactly what 
the Senate's position is. Those who vote against cloture plainly are 
comfortable with the Attorney General remaining right where he is. 
Those of us who vote for cloture are not.
  In January 2005, I voted against Alberto Gonzales to be the Attorney 
General because I was not convinced he would put the rule of law, and 
the interests of the country, above those of the President and the 
administration. Unfortunately, those concerns have been realized over 
and over. It is not just the U.S. Attorneys scandal. In recent months, 
the Department's Inspector General issued a very troubling report on 
National Security Letters. The Attorney General, of course, had assured 
us that the Department could be trusted to respect civil liberties in 
its exercise of the unprecedented powers it was given in the Patriot 
Act.
  Perhaps the Attorney General's biggest failure concerns the 
warrantless wiretapping program. When he came before the Judiciary 
Committee for his confirmation hearing, he gave very misleading 
testimony to a question I asked concerning whether the position the 
administration had taken with respect to torture might also allow it to 
authorize warrantless wiretaps. He called my question ``hypothetical.'' 
Just less than a year later, we found out that the administration had 
in fact taken precisely that position for years.
  His appearance before the Judiciary Committee last year to discuss 
the legal justification of the wiretapping program was one of the 
weakest and least convincing I have ever seen. And the recent testimony 
of former Deputy Attorney General James Comey concerning Mr. Gonzales's 
bedside visit to former Attorney General John Ashcroft raises serious 
questions about his veracity at that hearing. It also raises questions 
about his ethics, and, once again, his respect for the rule of law.
  But it is not just his commitment to the rule of law and his 
willingness to tell the truth to Congress that troubles me about this 
Attorney General's tenure. At his most recent appearance before the 
Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the U.S. Attorney firings, I 
questioned him about whether he did some of the most basic things that 
you would expect a manager to do if he delegated to his staff a major 
project like deciding which of 93 presidential appointees to top law 
enforcement positions to fire. He could not recall doing any of them. 
We know that the Attorney General was involved in this process and made 
the final decisions on the firing plan, but he can't seem to remember 
much beyond that, even though it was only a few months ago that this 
all took place. He has failed in a very significant way. He should 
resign.
  With the snowballing problems at the Justice Department, it could 
hardly be more plain that the Attorney General has lost the confidence 
of Congress and the public. As Mr. Comey said in response to my written 
question: ``This entire affair has harmed the Department and its 
reputation.'' The Department of Justice should always be above 
reproach. The AG should step down for the good of the country. Since he 
will not, the Senate should express its judgment, on behalf of the 
American people.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, as a former U.S. Attorney for 12 years 
and as an assistant U.S. attorney for over 2 years, I am well aware 
that U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President and that 
they are appointed

[[Page 15219]]

through a political process that involves home State senators 
conferring with the President of the United States before the 
nomination is made, and which involves confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
  As I have observed previously, the matter involving Attorney General 
Gonzales concerning the appointment and removal of certain U.S. 
attorneys arose because at some point there was interest in a 
substantial change in the persons holding the offices of U.S. attorneys 
throughout the country. Apparently, some wanted a large number of 
changes and others did not. To them, it may have seemed like an easy 
thing to do. The President would simply just remove them and appoint 
others.
  Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had no previous experience in the 
Department of Justice at any time in his career and seemed to have very 
little interest in who were serving as U.S. attorneys. This was an 
error on his part. Attorney General Gonzales simply did not understand 
that the removal of a U.S. attorney is always a delicate and difficult 
process. First, U.S. attorneys have Senatorial support. Their 
appointment was initially cleared by the U.S. Senator for that State 
and often the Congressman from that district. Secondly, they have local 
support among their friends and constituents and they often have built 
up strong support among local, State, and Federal law enforcement 
agencies. Those bonds are often strong and the removal of a U.S. 
attorney often causes concern among those law enforcement agencies and 
groups. They have also often gained support in the local community with 
childrens' advocacy groups, crime prevention groups, and victims' 
rights groups.
  Finally, almost every U.S. attorney will have one, sometimes more, 
sensitive cases that are ongoing at any given time. Anyone familiar 
with the process will know that removing a U.S. attorney who is in the 
process of handling some high profile criminal case will often result 
in quite a bit of political pushback, even if the U.S. attorney has 
very little hands-on involvement with the case.
  One of the problems that the Attorney General had was that he did not 
fully understand these dangers in removing U.S. attorneys because he 
had never been involved in it as a member of the Department of Justice. 
He simply did not comprehend the seriousness of the issue with which he 
was dealing. If he had, he would have spent a great deal more time on 
it than he did. He would not have delegated it to his assistants--many 
of them young and also not experienced--in the reality of this process 
either.
  As a result, there occurred an unseemly series of events that 
reflected poorly on Attorney General Gonzales and other members of the 
Department of Justice, and which has damaged the reputation of the 
Department of Justice. This was not a small matter but a very important 
matter. I think now he realizes the importance of this process and is 
sincerely apologetic for allowing it to develop the way it did. He is 
also apologetic for the way that he responded to the inquiries made 
about the proposed U.S. attorney changes.
  Let me insert, parenthetically, that much of the criticism leveled 
against the Attorney General, the President and his aides has been 
exaggerated and sometimes quite inaccurate. But, if it comes from a 
member of Congress or a Senator, that means you never have to say you 
are sorry. However, if the Attorney General, in responding to attacks, 
makes explanations that are in any way less than fully accurate one can 
expect that he will be attacked vociferously as attempting to mislead 
or worse. Unfortunately, there is a double standard and it often 
results in unfairness and this is one of those cases. Many of the 
complaints against Attorney General Gonzales have been very unfair and 
unfortunate.
  After this spasm developed, I was worried about the Attorney 
General's capacity to lead the Department of Justice effectively and 
expressed concern as to whether or not he would be able to assemble an 
able staff to complete his term and whether or not it would be, in sum, 
better for the Department of Justice that he step aside. I publicly 
suggested that he and the President meet together and discuss this 
issue with frankness. I quoted the Attorney General himself as saying 
that the matter was not about the Attorney General, but was really 
about what was best for the Department of Justice.
  It now appears that the Attorney General and the President have 
concluded that the Attorney General committed no offense, committed no 
crime for which he should be impeached, and has not made any error 
sufficient that he should no longer remain as Attorney General. The 
Attorney General's lack of experience in certain aspects of the 
Department of Justice were well known before he was confirmed by the 
Senate. In my personal view, there is no Cabinet member that requires 
more personal experience and detailed knowledge of the agency they will 
lead than the Attorney General. It is a very, very tough job and the 
Attorney General must be able to personally handle a large portfolio of 
issues and at the same time have a comprehensive grasp of complex legal 
issues and legal precedents involving the Department of Justice. For 
example, Attorney General Janet Reno was constantly struggling in the 
office. Before becoming the Attorney General, she had simply been a 
county district attorney and had never been involved in the kinds of 
issues she faced as Attorney General. In the future, I expect to be far 
more assertive in the confirmation process as I will insist that any 
Attorney General nominee have significant relevant experience.
  In conclusion, I conclude that there is not cause for any censure of 
Attorney General Gonzales and I conclude that there is no basis 
whatsoever for him to be impeached.
  It has been 120 years since a no-confidence vote has been had on any 
Cabinet member. That is something they do in Europe. It is not 
something we do in the United States. This no-confidence resolution is 
not necessary, it is harmful to our system, and should not be a 
precedent in the future. Frankly, it is driven by politics and not by 
what is best for the Department of Justice because this process will 
greatly magnify any errors that he has made and create a false 
impression. Attorney General Gonzales is a good man who sincerely wants 
to meet the highest standards of the Department of Justice.
  The process in our government is that the President nominates for the 
position of Attorney General, and the Senate votes to confirm them or 
not. After that confirmation, unless he is subject to impeachment, it 
is not good policy for the Senate to rush in and express formal 
opinions about the Cabinet officer and his or her performance. 
Therefore, I have, after considerable thought, concluded this 
resolution is bad policy and precedent, and is unfairly damaging to the 
Department of Justice. It is a political overreach and should not be 
passed. Therefore, I oppose the resolution.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, when Alberto Gonzales came before the 
Senate as the President's nominee for Attorney General, many of us were 
concerned that he would not be able to distinguish between his past 
role as White House Counsel and his new role as Attorney General. 
During his service as counsel to the President, he had assisted the 
President in promulgating a series of disastrous policies that ran 
roughshod over the rule of law and damaged the United States in the 
eyes of the world. He refused to give detainees the protections of the 
Geneva Conventions, calling them ``quaint.'' He facilitated the 
establishment of Guantanamo and denied other basic legal protections to 
detainees. He approved an interpretation of the law that was 
inconsistent with international agreements. He authorized the use of 
torture, a step that led to the horrors of Abu Ghraib. At every turn, 
he promoted an extreme view of the President's authority. Yet, when he 
came before the committee seeking confirmation, he assured us: ``With 
the consent of the Senate, I will no longer represent only the White 
House; I will represent the United States of America and its people. I 
understand the differences between the two roles.''

[[Page 15220]]

  That assurance has proven hollow. On issue after issue, Mr. Gonzales 
has singlemindedly served the President's agenda, without any respect 
for the broader responsibilities of the Attorney General. He has 
continued to promote an extreme view of the President's power as 
Commander in Chief to authorize warrantless eavesdropping in violation 
of the law, secret detentions, abuse of detainees, and violations of 
the Geneva Conventions. He believes that the President can issue 
signing statements that nullify duly enacted statutes whenever they 
might limit the President's discretion. As Attorney General, he has 
used the enormous power of his office to promote the agenda of the 
White House.
  The current U.S. attorney scandal has revealed the devastating legacy 
of Mr. Gonzales's tenure as Attorney General. We now have a Department 
of Justice that is wide open to partisan influence and has abandoned 
many of the basic principles that kept the Department independent and 
assured the American people that its decisions were based on the rule 
of law.
  As a result, the Department of Justice is now embroiled in a scandal 
involving the firing of U.S. attorneys, under a process controlled by 
inexperienced, partisan staffers in consultation with the White House. 
U.S. attorneys were targeted for firing because they failed to serve 
the White House agenda. Karl Rove and the President passed along to the 
Attorney General complaints that U.S. attorneys failed to pursue voter 
fraud. Over the past 5 years, the Department of Justice has actually 
pushed hard to prosecute voter fraud, but among the hundreds of 
millions of votes cast in that period, it has managed to convict only 
86 people nationwide. The pursuit of virtually nonexistent voter fraud 
at the ballot box is part of a Republican effort to suppress the 
legitimate votes of minority, elderly, and disabled voters. Other 
measures taken in this cynical scheme include photo ID laws and purges 
of voter rolls.
  The conclusion is inescapable that the firings of U.S. attorneys were 
part of an effort to put partisans in charge of U.S. attorney offices 
in key States. New Mexico, Washington, Arkansas and Nevada are all 
closely contested States. Add those States to which the Attorney 
General sent interim appointees from Washington in the past 2 years--
Florida, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota--and the pattern is clear. 
Attorney General Gonzales, more than any other Attorney General in 
memory, has tried to turn the Department of Justice into an arm of a 
political party.
  In addition, under his leadership, the Department's hiring procedures 
have been corrupted by partisan officials who rejected longstanding 
merit-based hiring procedures and placed political party loyalty ahead 
of legal merit in hiring career attorneys. His Department of Justice 
has tried to obliterate the distinction between political appointees 
and career civil servants.
  In his testimony before the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Gonzales has 
repeatedly made false statements. He told us the warrantless 
eavesdropping program could not be conducted within the limits of The 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Then, on the eve of an 
appearance before the committee, he told us that the program now fits 
within FISA. He told us that there had not been significant 
disagreement over that program, but we now know that as many as 30 
members of the Justice Department were prepared to resign if an earlier 
version of the program proceeded unchanged. He stated that he had not 
seen memoranda or been involved in discussions about the U.S. attorney 
firings, but it was later revealed that he did both. He told us that 
only eight U.S. attorneys had been targeted for firing, but it turns 
out the list was longer. He has said scores of times that he does not 
recall key meetings and events. With each misstatement and memory 
lapse, the Attorney General's credibility has faded until there is 
nothing left.
  In the years I have served in this body, I have had the privilege to 
work with many Attorneys General. The defining quality of the 
outstanding occupants of that office--both Democrats and Republicans--
has been an understanding that the law and the evidence trump loyalty 
to a political party or a president. Respect for the rule of law lies 
at the heart of our democracy. If our machinery of justice becomes just 
another means to preserve and promote the power of the party in office, 
we have corrupted our democracy. If the American people believe that 
partisanship is driving law enforcement, our system of justice cannot 
survive.
  We need a strong and credible Attorney General who believes deeply in 
our system of justice as we undertake the difficult and essential job 
of restoring the credibility of the Department of Justice. I urge my 
colleagues to support this resolution of no-confidence as a first step 
in rebuilding the faith of the American people in the Department of 
Justice.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, 28 months ago, on February 3, 2005, I voted 
against the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales to be the Attorney General 
of the United States. Hallelujah, Amen! Eight days before that, I was 
one of 13 Senators who voted against the nomination of Condoleezza Rice 
to be the U.S. Secretary of State. And, if the Senate had been 
permitted to vote on the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World 
Bank, I would have voted against that nomination, too.
  I am proud of my votes against confirmation of these failed 
architects of the unconstitutional war in Iraq. Their flawed policies 
have cost our Nation dearly. I shudder to contemplate the billions and 
even trillions of dollars and the decades of effort that it will take 
to correct their extraordinary errors in judgment. These are the same 
administration officials, led by Alberto Gonzales here at home, who 
have done everything they can to abolish our Nation's carefully 
calibrated separation of powers and to undermine Americans' civil 
liberties. Based on ongoing errors in judgment and mistakes made on his 
watch, I remain convinced that my vote against Alberto Gonzales was in 
the best interests of this country.
  It is, therefore, not surprising that I am pleased to be an original 
cosponsor of S.J. Res. 14. This resolution expresses the sense of the 
Senate that Attorney General Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of 
the Senate and of the American people. Frankly, he never held my 
confidence. Not from day one, and I will tell you why that is so.
  When President Bush nominated Alberto Gonzales to be the U.S. 
Attorney General, the President stated that Mr. Gonzales, as White 
House counsel, had a ``sharp intellect,'' and that it was White House 
counsel's ``sound judgment'' that had, in the President's words, 
``helped shape our policies in the war on terror.''
  Sharp intellect and sound judgment? I have heard of damning with 
faint praise, but applying those words to someone who has had a major 
role in the reckless and incompetent way in which this administration 
has waged its so-called war on terror is hardly a compliment.
  But don't expect Alberto Gonzales to take responsibility for what 
happened on his watch. Throughout his time in this administration, 
whenever Mr. Gonzales has been questioned about what he knows about 
improper conduct, his standard and repetitive response, in the words of 
the fictional Sergeant Schultz is simply: ``I know nothing.'' When 
questioned about who made the decision to fire U.S. attorneys for what 
appear to be purely political reasons, he implausibly states that while 
he signed off on the decision, he was not really responsible because he 
was out of the loop.
  At a press conference on March 13, Attorney General Gonzales stated 
that he knew nothing of the scandal surrounding the U.S. attorneys, 
because he was, in his words, ``not involved in seeing any memos, was 
not involved in any discussions about what was going on,'' and, he 
said, ``that's basically what I knew as the Attorney General.'' Mr. 
President, that is not an impressive response. Even the Attorney 
General now says his comment was ``too broad'' and that he 
``misspoke.'' He now admits that he did have some involvement. But he 
said this only after

[[Page 15221]]

the Justice Department released e-mails and memoranda which showed that 
he had, in fact, been involved in discussions about the firings.
  He also claimed that he is not really responsible, because, in his 
words, ``in an organization of 110,000 people,'' he said, ``I am not 
aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of 
justice, nor am I aware of all decisions.'' Now that seems an odd 
assertion, considering that he is, in fact--if you will allow me to use 
the President's terminology--the top ``decider'' at the U.S. Department 
of Justice.
  When the Attorney General testified before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee on April 19, 2007, he continued to argue that he was simply 
out of touch--an assertion that has been disputed by the two employees 
he had charged with filling the U.S. attorney positions with party 
loyalists, D. Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling.
  On May 15, 2007, speaking before the National Press Club, Mr. 
Gonzales made yet another effort to shift the blame for any wrongdoing. 
But this time he chose a new victim. He said, ``You have to remember, 
at the end of the day, the recommendations [to fire the U.S. Attorneys] 
reflected the views of the deputy attorney general,'' meaning Paul 
McNulty. But the Associated Press reported immediately thereafter that 
documents released from the Justice Department showed that McNulty was 
not closely involved in picking all of the U.S. attorneys who were put 
on the list. Instead, it was a job mostly driven by the Attorney 
General's own, two hand-picked subordinates, Sampson and Goodling.
  I would invite those who believe that Alberto Gonzales did not know 
what was happening in his own Department to join me on a quick trip 
down memory lane. Let me recount a section of the speech that I 
delivered on the Senate floor just prior to voting against his 
confirmation to be Attorney General. I reminded my colleagues at that 
time that Judge Gonzales had admitted being physically present at 
meetings in his office to determine which acts against enemy combatants 
should be outlawed as torture.
  But at his confirmation hearing, he disavowed having any role in the 
administration's initial decision to define torture extremely narrowly. 
On January 6, 2005, he was asked by a member of the Judiciary Committee 
whether he had ever chaired a meeting in which he discussed with 
Justice Department attorneys the legitimacy of such interrogation 
techniques. He was asked if, in the meetings he attended, there was 
discussion of strapping detainees to boards and holding them under 
water as if to drown them. He testified that there were such meetings, 
and while he did remember having had some ``discussions'' with Justice 
Department attorneys, he simply could not recall what he told them in 
those meetings. He stated that, as White House counsel, he might have 
attended those meetings, but it was not his role but that of the 
Justice Department to determine which interrogation techniques were 
lawful.

  In other words, he was saying then, just as he is saying today: Don't 
hold me accountable! Don't blame me if mistakes were made! And, then, 
just like today, he didn't point the finger of blame at just one other 
victim. He spread the blame around. While he admitted he'd made some 
mistakes as White House counsel, he attempted to further deflect 
responsibility for his actions by saying that a number of what he 
called other ``operational agencies'' also took responsibility for 
making flawed decisions on prisoner interrogation techniques.
  At his confirmation hearing, he said:

       I have a recollection that we had some discussions in my 
     office, but let me be very clear with the Committee. It is 
     not my job to decide which types of methods of obtaining 
     information from terrorists would be the most effective. That 
     job responsibility falls to folks within the agencies. It is 
     also not my job to make the ultimate decision about whether 
     or not those methods would, in fact, meet the requirements of 
     the anti-torture statute. That would be the job for the 
     agencies . . . I viewed it as their responsibility to make a 
     decision as to whether or not a procedure or method would, in 
     fact, be lawful.

  Whether on the issue of torture or of firing U.S. attorneys, when it 
comes to Alberto Gonzales taking responsibility for his actions--as 
Yogi Berra would say--it's deja vu all over again. One wishes that 
Judge Gonzales could tell us, just once, what his job is, rather than 
always telling us only what it is not.
  Article II, section 3 of the United States Constitution, as head of 
the Executive Branch, the President has a legal duty to take care that 
the laws be faithfully executed. The Constitution does not say that the 
President or his officers ``should'' or ``may'' undertake that 
responsibility: It clearly states that the President ``shall take Care 
that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' The President and his Chief Law 
Enforcement Officer at the Justice Department must be held accountable 
not only when they fail to faithfully execute the law, but also when 
they or their subordinates attempt to undermine, ignore, or gut the 
law.
  The Attorney General has a credibility problem, and the American 
people know it. Despite his assertions to the contrary, he continues to 
contribute in large measure to the flawed policies and decision making 
that have flowed from this administration over the past seven years. 
For all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to support S.J. Res. 14.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I rise in support of S.J. Res. 14, a 
resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that Attorney General 
Gonzales has lost the confidence of Congress and the American people. 
This is a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.
  Now, Madam President, let me initially say that I was doing other 
things and was unable to listen to the remarks of some of my Republican 
colleagues. I apologize for that. I have had a briefing as to what they 
said. They have chosen to impugn the motives of the sponsor of this 
resolution, the senior Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer. I work very 
closely with this man. I have worked in government most all of my adult 
life. Rarely have I seen anybody--in fact, I have never seen anyone 
with the intellectual capacity of Chuck Schumer from New York and his 
ability to understand what is going on in the State of New York and in 
our country. Any suggestions that were made to impugn his integrity are 
unwarranted, out of line, and unfair.
  Senator Schumer is a member of the Judiciary Committee. He is a 
lawyer. As a member of that Judiciary Committee and as a lawyer who 
cares deeply about the rule of law and the reputation of the Justice 
Department, he had an obligation to do what he did. There are others 
who joined with him. Senator Feinstein was out front on this issue with 
Senator Schumer, as were others. The chairman of the committee, Senator 
Leahy, has been with them every step of the way.
  In my opinion, his work in this investigation has been commendable.
  Mr. LEAHY. Will the majority leader yield for a comment?
  Mr. REID. Yes, I am happy to.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I tell the leader and the senior Senator 
from New York, I know he has worked hard on this. Nobody has had more 
roadblocks thrown in front of him than the Senator from New York. He 
has asked legitimate questions. Many times, his legitimate questions 
were not answered by the Department of Justice. They refused to answer. 
We had to actually subpoena them to get answers that should have been 
sent to him by return courier. He has acted in the best sense of 
oversight. He has done what one should do in oversight. He should not 
be criticized for that.
  Maybe those who do the criticizing should ask why they allowed a 
rubberstamp Senate under their watch to continue for 6 years, with 
conduct that certainly borders on the criminal and certainly reflects 
the unethical goings-on at the Department of Justice, and they didn't 
say one word about it.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I appreciate very much the Senator from 
Vermont, the chairman of our committee, for standing up for what is 
right. That is what he is doing.
  The Senate has a responsibility to express its displeasure with a 
Cabinet

[[Page 15222]]

officer who has grossly mismanaged his responsibilities and failed the 
American people in the process. This is the one and only mechanism we 
have, short of impeachment, to address malfeasance of a high-ranking 
Federal official.
  Along with the Department of Defense and State, the Department of 
Justice is the most important Cabinet agency we have. The Attorney 
General is responsible for enforcing Federal law, protecting civil 
rights, and, most importantly, ensuring fidelity to the Constitution of 
the United States.
  Madam President, in my young days as a lawyer and public official in 
Nevada, during the 1960s, I saw the critical role the Justice 
Department can play in what is going on in a State. In those days--the 
early sixties--a person of color, a Black man or woman, could not work 
in a Strip hotel and could not work in downtown hotels. They weren't 
there unless they were a porter, a janitor--someplace where they could 
not be seen. Thousands of people, Black and White, protested that 
discrimination, but it didn't matter until the Justice Department 
stepped in. They stepped in and forced it. There was a consent decree 
entered into between the State of Nevada--I was there. I was Lieutenant 
Governor, and I helped negotiate that along with Governor O'Callaghan 
and the attorney assigned to do that. We worked on that for weeks and 
weeks. But for the Justice Department, that integration of those large 
hotels in Nevada would have taken place much later. That is what the 
Justice Department is all about. Major civil rights battles in Las 
Vegas over integrating the strip would never have been determined in 
favor of the people of color but for the Justice Department.
  You see, the Justice Department is color blind, and that is the way 
it is supposed to be. It wasn't a Democratic Department of Justice or 
Republican Department of Justice. It was an American, a U.S. Department 
of Justice. Its lawyers were fighting for the most American ideal--the 
right of all Americans to participate in our democracy.
  What a proud history this is. What a source of pride it is for our 
country what the Justice Department in decades past has done. But today 
under this President, President Bush, and under this Attorney General, 
Alberto Gonzales, the Department of Justice has lost its way.
  Now the Justice Department is just another arm of the Karl Rove 
political machine, where partisanship earns patronage and independence 
earns contempt.
  Today's Justice Department is dysfunctional. I so appreciate the 
statement made by the former attorney general of the State of Rhode 
Island, Senator Whitehouse. He laid it out. He has a feeling of what 
the Justice Department is all about. He spoke from his heart. The 
Department of Justice's credibility is shredded. Its morale is at an 
all-time low, and the blame for that tragic deterioration lies squarely 
on the shoulders of two people: The President of the United States and 
the Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales.
  We are here today to discuss Alberto Gonzales. Over the past 6 
months, congressional oversight has revealed the many ways the crass 
political calculations in that White House have pervaded the personnel 
and prosecutorial decisions of the Bush-Gonzales Justice Department. 
Remember, for 4 years, this was a big rubberstamp, this thing called 
Congress.
  The careers of many fine men and women, lawyers, have been destroyed. 
One of those is a man from Nevada by the name of Daniel Bogden, a 
career prosecutor. He worked his way up as a line prosecutor in Washoe 
County, Reno, NV, and became an assistant U.S. attorney. He--I have 
spoken with him--wanted to spend his life being a prosecutor, going 
after people who violate the law. That is over with. Once you are 
removed from being a U.S. attorney, you can no longer work as a deputy 
U.S. attorney.
  He, I repeat, was a career prosecutor. When my Republican friend and 
colleague, John Ensign, recommended him to be U.S. attorney for Nevada, 
he reached what he thought was the pinnacle of his career. Oh, was he 
mistaken. He has been humiliated, embarrassed, denigrated by this 
Justice Department for no reason. He worked hard. No one questioned his 
work ethic.
  My son was a deputy U.S. attorney with Daniel Bogden. They worked 
together. A fine lawyer is Daniel Bogden. He worked hard as our U.S. 
attorney to protect Nevadans from crimes, drugs and white-collar crimes 
and earned a wide respect from law enforcement agencies throughout the 
State.
  I repeat, he was fired. To this day, no satisfactory explanation has 
been provided to Dan Bogden and the people of Nevada.
  In light of this evidence, we learned that other U.S. attorneys had 
been fired at the same time because they failed to pursue partisan 
political cases. So without any question, there is every reason to 
believe Dan Bogden suffered the same fate. He was fired for 
administering justice in Nevada in an evenhanded, nonpolitical way, as 
he thought as a prosecutor he was supposed to do.
  I can remember as a young lawyer, I had a part-time job as a city 
attorney in Henderson, NV. It is now the second largest city in the 
State. It wasn't then. I prosecuted criminal cases. I came back to my 
law firm and I was bragging. That is the wrong word. I was saying: Man, 
that case, I can't imagine why that judge did that. That wasn't a very 
good case at all. One of the people I worked with said: Harry, that is 
not your responsibility.
  I will use leader time now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, he said: Your job is not to convict 
people. It is to do the right thing for the people of the State of 
Nevada, the city of Henderson, NV.
  That is a lesson somebody should have given Alberto Gonzales before 
he took the job as Attorney General. Dan Bogden was fired for doing his 
job exactly the way it is supposed to be done.
  When he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney 
General Gonzales couldn't even say why Bogden was included on the list 
to be fired. Think about that: A man's career ruined, and the man who 
fired him or had him fired didn't even know why he was fired.
  His lack of memory was astounding. He couldn't recall basic facts, 
even meetings with the President. Writing in the New York Times, 
Professor Frank Bowman, a former Federal prosecutor, said, talking 
about Gonzales:

       The truth is almost surely that Mr. Gonzales's 
     forgetfulness is feigned--a calculated ploy to block 
     legitimate congressional inquiry into questionable decisions 
     made by the Department of Justice, White House officials, 
     and, quite possibly, the President himself.

  If Albert Gonzales was not truthful with the Congress, he deserves to 
be fired--not Bogden but Gonzales.
  On the other hand, if the Attorney General was not involved in the 
decision to fire Bogden and others, he is guilty of gross negligence 
and deserves to be fired. He turned over the awesome power of his 
office to a handful of young, inexperienced ideologues and allowed them 
to carry out a political campaign from the once-hallowed halls of the 
Justice Department.
  But the Attorney General's misdeeds extend well beyond politically 
driven personnel decisions. As White House counsel, he presided over 
the development of antiterror tactics that have undermined the rule of 
law and made Americans less safe. We know now from former Deputy 
Attorney General Jim Comey the Attorney General tried to take advantage 
of John Ashcroft's serious illness--was sick in a hospital bed--to 
obtain Justice Department approval for an illegal surveillance program. 
He took papers there for him to sign.
  Time and time again, Alberto Gonzales has proven beyond a doubt his 
utter lack of judgment and independence is foremost in his mind. 
Whether it is tortured reasoning allowing torture or his support of 
domestic surveillance, firing unfairly U.S. attorneys, hiring 
immigration judges based on their political affiliation--there is a

[[Page 15223]]

long list. But let's talk about his being one of the masters of torture 
in our country.
  I have a law review article from Columbia Law Journal, one of the 
finest law schools in America, the name of which is ``Drop by Drop: 
Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts.'' This is an 
article written by Judge Evan Wallach, one of the foremost experts in 
the world on the law of the war. I am only going to read the last 
paragraph of this article. He goes into some detail in the article, 
talking about how this Attorney General's office, this White House 
counsel, this administration has allowed torture to be part of what 
Americans do with detainees and others.
  Here is what Judge Wallach said:

       If we remember what we said and did when our military 
     personnel were victims, if we remember our response when they 
     were perpetrators, how can our government possibly opine that 
     the use of water torture is within the bounds of law? To do 
     so is beneath contempt; it is beyond redemption; and it is a 
     repudiation of the rule of law that in our origins was the 
     core principle of governance which distinguished our nation 
     from the crowned dictatorships of the European continent.

  That is the legacy of this administration and this Attorney General, 
that law review articles are being written to talk about how awful this 
Attorney General is and what he has allowed to happen.

       To do so is beneath contempt; it is beyond redemption; and 
     it is a repudiation of the rule of law that in our origins 
     was the core principle of governance which distinguished our 
     nation from the crowned dictatorships of the European 
     continent.

  Alberto Gonzales is profoundly unworthy to hold one of the highest 
and most important offices of our great country. I urge my colleagues 
to support this resolution reflecting the facts before us. I urge 
Attorney General Gonzales to resign his office, to give the Department 
of Justice a chance it needs to recover from his catastrophic tenure. 
If he does not, I urge President Bush to finally remove him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
  Mr. REID. Have the yeas and nays been ordered?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The yeas and nays are mandatory.


                             Cloture Motion

  Under the previous order, pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays 
before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will 
report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 179, S.J. Res. 14, relating to 
     Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
         Harry Reid, Richard J. Durbin, Kent Conrad, Bernard 
           Sanders, Jeff Bingaman, Dan Inouye, Jon Tester, S. 
           Whitehouse, Debbie Stabenow, Byron L. Dorgan, Amy 
           Klobuchar, Sherrod Brown, Carl Levin, Chuck Schumer, 
           Barbara Boxer, Jack Reed, H.R. Clinton.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 14, a joint resolution expressing the 
sense of the Senate that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales no longer 
holds the confidence of the Senate and of the American people, shall be 
brought to a close? The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. The 
clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. STEVENS (when his name was called). Present.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden), 
the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Dodd), the Senator from South Dakota 
(Mr. Johnson), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are 
necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from 
Delaware (Mr. Biden) would vote ``yea.''
  Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: The Senator 
from Kansas (Mr. Brownback), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), 
and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 38, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 207 Leg.]

                                YEAS--53

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Brown
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Clinton
     Coleman
     Collins
     Conrad
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Inouye
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lincoln
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Salazar
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Sununu
     Tester
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--38

     Alexander
     Allard
     Bennett
     Bond
     Bunning
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Cochran
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Dole
     Domenici
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Kyl
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Roberts
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Warner

                        ANSWERED ``PRESENT''--1

       
     Stevens
       

                             NOT VOTING--7

     Biden
     Brownback
     Coburn
     Dodd
     Johnson
     McCain
     Obama
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, the nays 38, 
and one Senator responded ``present.'' Three-fifths of the Senators 
duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion 
is rejected.

                          ____________________