Patrick Leahy

The very decision to initiate what amounts to a criminal investigation, whether or not it is formally designated as such, is too weighty to be outsourced to commissions operating outside of the constitutionally prescribed tripartite…

Only great countries, Mr. Chairman, confident in themselves, are prepared to look at their most serious mistakes.

A commission of the kind we are proposing is needed in order to arrive at an in-depth, unbiased, and impartial understanding of what happened, how it happened, and the consequences of those actions.

I am pleased and gratified that President Obama and his advisers recognized the need to take these actions and actually took them quickly.

I do not think we should let only one side define history on such important questions.

Your proposal is aimed at finding the truth, not settling scores.

There can be no doubt that we must fully understand the mistakes of the past in order to learn from them.

In my view, any effort to outsource any aspects of this power to entities operating outside of the structure of Government established by our Constitution is extremely troubling and must be strongly resisted by all who are concerned with…

The commission ought to be comprised of persons whose duty is to truth and to our Nation's founding principles.

It is not enough to say that America is discontinuing the policies and practices of the recent past.

I think that we are less safe as a result of the mistakes of the last administration's national security policies.

If you violate the Constitution in wiretaps and specific statutes, if you violate the law in not using the FISA Court...

If the United States is seen as doing an open and honest review of what happened, setting up policies if we find that we did not follow our own laws and our own policies, to make it very clear mistakes would not be made in the future, does…

I do believe, however, that a commission of whatever variety to investigate the Bush administration activities and its officials is a profoundly bad idea, a dangerous idea, both for policy but, even more importantly to me as a lawyer, for…

We must, as a country, take stock of where we have been and determine what was and is not acceptable.

I believe that a commission on the handling of detainees is vital to our country's future--to its security, to its standing in the world, and to our collective commitment as a people to honor, respect, and remain committed to our founding…

I do support the idea of an independent fact-finding commission as opposed to relying solely on the regular Committee structure.

We cannot turn the page unless we first read the page.

We need to do so again in these difficult economic times.

I believe that that might best be accomplished though a nonpartisan commission of inquiry.

I would also like to thank Senator Whitehouse and Senator Leahy for scheduling this hearing.

I would like, therefore, to thank Senator Leahy for introducing Senate bill 1653, the Federal Judgeship Act of 2009.

I urge the Committee to work to assure that residents of rural areas such as the area I represent receive satellite television at reasonable cost with programming relevant to the State of Vermont, the State in which they live.

Thanks to the Leahy provision added in the 2004 reauthorization, DirecTV subscribers in Bennington and Windham counties do have access to Vermont television stations.

Thank you very much. And, unfortunately, as Senator Specter was referring to, everybody has about five different committees going on at once, but Senator Specter and I have always worked together in putting up the agenda for this Committee.