[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23782-23783]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO SENATORS


                              Chuck Hagel

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I want to spend just a few minutes today 
talking about Chuck Hagel, the Senator from the State of Nebraska.
  I was raised in an environment where things were physical--football, 
baseball, boxing, fighting, and being tough. That was important. And as 
I have looked through the Senate over these years, there is no one that 
fits that bill more than Chuck Hagel. The senior Senator from the State 
of Nebraska is both physically and mentally very tough.
  Senator Hagel is a person who suffered multiple broken noses playing 
high school and college football and, as we read in his book, an 
occasional scuffle off the field. Senator Hagel is a man who won a 
football scholarship to go to college because of his athletic prowess 
but had to change his plans when injury left him with an uncorrectable 
pinched nerve in his neck.
  Senator Hagel is a man who risked his own life on many occasions, but 
on one occasion risked his own life and suffered terribly to save his 
brother's life in the jungle of Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict. 
Senator Hagel is a man who still carries shrapnel from his heroic 
uniformed service to our Nation.
  Senator Hagel tells the story in his book about his childhood, that 
when he and his brother Tom were growing up, the Hagel family moved 
around Nebraska to seven different houses in small Nebraska towns. The 
seven places he lived formed a loop around the State. So when Chuck 
first ran for the Senate in 1996, he could go almost anyplace in 
Nebraska and tell local crowds, ``it's good to be home.''
  When Chuck Hagel's draft number was called in 1967, he was given an 
order to ship out to Germany after being inducted. But he said: I don't 
want to go to Germany. The war is in Vietnam. So he asked to change his 
orders to go to Vietnam where the action was. What this young man from 
Nebraska believed was that fighting a war meant going to the front 
lines, not someplace thousands of miles away. So that is where he wound 
up.
  Since the Sullivan brothers' deaths in World War II, it was not very 
often that siblings found themselves in the same combat zone fighting, 
but that isn't what happened in this situation with the Hagel brothers. 
No one really knows how--they think it was a stroke of luck, but it 
remains a bit of a mystery--Chuck Hagel and Tom Hagel wound up in the 
same infantry, same fighting unit, fighting shoulder to shoulder in the 
jungles of Cambodia.
  Mr. President, in the span of less than a month, these two brothers 
each had the chance to save the other's life. Not only did they have 
the chance, but they took that chance and they were successful. Here is 
one account:

       One of the soldiers . . . hit a trip wire, setting off a 
     mine that had been placed in a tree so that it would detonate 
     at face level. Bodies, body parts and shrapnel were blasted 
     back into the ranks as the squad was crossing a stream. Tom 
     picked himself up and looked for his brother. What he saw was 
     a `geyser' of blood gushing from Chuck's chest. Tom, then 
     only 19, stanched the bleeding and bandaged the wound, only 
     then noticing that he'd been hit himself in the arm. Twenty-
     five days later, it was Chuck's turn to rescue Tom when their 
     troop carrier hit a hand-detonated mine as it emerged from a 
     village in the delta. Tom had been in the turret behind a 
     .50-caliber machine gun. He was unconscious, not obviously 
     alive, when his brother got to him. The blast had blown out 
     Chuck's eardrums and severely burned his left side, but 
     knowing the carrier might soon explode, he worked feverishly 
     to pull Tom from the wreckage, then threw his body on top of 
     Tom's as Vietcong fighters in ambush sprayed the area with 
     gunfire.

  For this remarkably courageous service, SGT Chuck Hagel was decorated 
with the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, the Army Commendation Medal, 
the Combat Infantryman Badge, and two Purple Hearts.
  After the war, Chuck Hagel came to Washington and worked on Capitol 
Hill. By the age of 26, he was chief of staff to Congressman John 
McCollister of Nebraska. Within 10 years, he was appointed by President 
Reagan to be the second highest ranking official in the Veterans 
Administration. But very typical of Chuck Hagel, after just a few 
months during his term of service, he spoke out against a cut in 
benefits to Vietnam veterans and quit the Department in protest. This 
was not the stepping stone to an impressive career in Washington, as 
some had thought, because Chuck Hagel spoke out against something he 
thought was wrong.

[[Page 23783]]

  When Senator Hagel left Capitol Hill, he scraped together whatever 
money he could find by selling a car and cashing in life insurance 
policies to invest in an upstart business that built networks for 
wireless phones. Within a few years, Chuck Hagel's company was one of 
the most successful cellular telephone providers in America. He entered 
the American system of free enterprise and was extremely successful. 
But after succeeding in business, Chuck returned his attention to 
politics and won a seat in the Senate in 1996.
  I have served with Chuck Hagel in the Senate for 12 years. One would 
be hard-pressed to find a more conservative Member than the senior 
Senator from Nebraska. Although our political philosophies differ, I 
know Chuck Hagel to be one of the bravest and most fiercely independent 
Members of this legislative body. He has been a deficit hawk when 
others in his party abandoned fiscal restraint.
  He crossed the aisle and worked with my predecessor, Senator Daschle, 
as well as Senator Kennedy and Senator Martinez on the Republican side, 
to seek a comprehensive immigration plan that would be both tough and 
compassionate but, above all, fair.
  He served the people of Nebraska well as a member of the Foreign 
Relations Committee, the Banking Committee, the Housing and Urban 
Affairs Committee, the Intelligence Committee, and the Rules Committee.
  I will be forever grateful for the courage Senator Hagel has shown on 
the Iraq war. He spoke out early against the war, he spoke out often, 
and he was right. As all Senators know, speaking up against a hallmark 
policy of one's own party is no easy task. With Senator Hagel's help, 
we were able to move the debate forward and to finally provide some 
oversight on the incompetent management of the war. Although Senator 
Hagel will not see the end of the war as a Member of this body, there 
is no doubt that his courage has brought us closer to that day.
  One of the most remarkable days in my political career was the time 
when we were working on how to do something to change the course on the 
war in Iraq. I went and visited Senator Hagel in his office. As you 
walk in, you see a picture of Tom and Chuck Hagel in a mechanized 
vehicle in the jungles of Cambodia--or Vietnam. I don't know exactly 
where it was, but Southeast Asia. He is very proud of his military 
career. But we visited, and I probably wouldn't be a very good 
salesman, selling automobiles or a house because it was hard for me to 
close the deal, saying: Chuck, will you vote with me? At home that 
night, he called me and said words to the effect: I listened to you; 
I'm going to vote with you.
  His vote made the difference. It allowed us to carry the day and send 
a bill to the President that the President vetoed. Senator Hagel didn't 
wait for me to close the deal, he closed the deal. I have great 
admiration and respect for him and what he did that night. I think he 
changed the direction of the country and how it felt about the war in 
Iraq, and it allowed the people in America to know that we could do 
something, that we are not powerless.
  It is well known that Senator Hagel has been considered on more than 
one occasion as a candidate for President or Vice President. Here is 
what he said, though.

       I don't have to be President. I don't have to be a senator. 
     I just have to live with myself.

  So whatever path Chuck Hagel follows next, he, his wife Lilibet, and 
their daughter Allyn and son Ziller, should have the deepest pride in 
the lasting impact of Senator Chuck Hagel's patriotism and service for 
the betterment of the Nation we love through both the military and the 
Senate, where he has served so gallantly.

                          ____________________