Howard Berman: “my friend from New York claims this is not political. Forty-five minutes ago he, under the direction of his leadership…”

“my friend from New York claims this is not political. Forty-five minutes ago he, under the direction of his leadership, with the passionate support of his Republican members of the Committee on International Relations egging him on, pushed through that committee a subpoena of two of our Ambassadors, not to the select committee that we are creating for $1 million now, but to the committee on International Relations, notwithstanding the fact that the Secretary of State this very morning had called him and told him he would make these people available at any mutually agreeable time and wanted to do anything he could to cooperate with the committee's efforts. This is purely political. We talk about Iran and we hear these comments. I do remember a time when we gave lend-lease to the Stalinist thugs who had committed the purges and killed millions of people because we thought a national interest required us to do that. The country of Bosnia was about to go down. I remember my friend from Illinois speaking in the committee about article 51, the compelling moral and legal right to help somebody defend themselves from extinction. That was what was at stake in this particular issue. Mr. Speaker, I have not heard one word of any question of either the legality or the morality of this particular decision. Our options were not good, we had to make a decision based on the circumstances at the time. The administration made that decision. A country was saved.”