Dan Burton: “I will not take much time, but there has been some disturbing things that have come to my attention in the past couple…”

“I will not take much time, but there has been some disturbing things that have come to my attention in the past couple of days that I think the Members ought to be aware of. One is that we sent subpoenas to the White House asking the President to give us the rationale for this pardoning exercise he has been involved in with these terrorists; and the second, we sent a subpoena to the Bureau of Prisons asking them for any information or transcripts of telephone calls that may have been made by these convicted terrorists to others that may have indicated that they were still involved or wanted to be involved or were advocating additional terrorist activities. I was informed that some people at the Justice Department have contacted us and said that the President and the Justice Department may claim executive privilege, and all I want to do is protest that because I think if they claim executive privilege, the American people will be kept in the dark about why these terrorists were pardoned. The President needs to make clear to the American people the reasons why these people were pardoned, number one; and, number two, we need to know if they were making telephone calls from the prisons advocating additional act of terrorism. If they were, they should not be on the streets under any circumstances.”