Sean Patrick Maloney: “while there are still areas of this bill that need to be revised, I would like to commend the Conference Committee…”

“while there are still areas of this bill that need to be revised, I would like to commend the Conference Committee Members for including in this report $5 million for the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act's Interagency Working Group. This funding is vital to the work of the Interagency Working Group responsible for diligently reviewing documents regarding the atrocities of World War II and making those records available to the public. I applaud Senator DeWine for successfully securing this funding in the Senate version of the bill and then working with the Conference Committee to retain this funding. In 1994, I introduced the Nazi War Crimes and Disclosure Act with Chairman Steve Horn in the House and with the leadership of Senator DeWine in the Senate. After several hearings held by the Government Reform Committee and wide community support, this bill became law in 1998. Recently the Government Reform Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Horn, held a hearing to announce some of the findings from the Interagency Working Group's efforts. At this hearing, we heard first-hand how critical funding is to the future efforts of the Interagency Working Group as they begin reviewing classified documents regarding Japanese War Crimes. The Interagency Working Group has successfully released more than 1.5 million documents to the public. While this is an impressive accomplishment, the IWG has succeeded without the support of Congress.…”