Source: The Hill
By Susan Crabtree
Posted: 02/09/09 04:02 PM [ET]

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) wants to establish a truth commission to investigate allegations of wrongdoing in the Bush administration.

Leahy, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, announced the idea Monday during a wide-ranging speech at Georgetown University on the topic of “Restoring Trust in the Judicial System.” The commission, he said, could be headed by one person or a group of people known for being independent and fair-minded and look into everything from detainee and interrogation policies to the war in Iraq and the firing of nine U.S. attorneys for political reasons.

People who came forward with information would be granted immunity from prosecution, Leahy said.

“Congress has already granted immunity, over my objection, to those who facilitated warrantless wiretaps and those who conducted cruel interrogations,” Leahy said. “It would be far better to use that authority to learn the truth.”

Leahy offered the truth commission idea as a “middle ground to find the truth” between Democrats who want to investigate and prosecute Bush administration officials to the fullest extent of the law and President Obama, who has indicated that he may not want to rehash his predecessor’s alleged misdeeds.


House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) has not backed off attempts to hold Bush administration officials accountable. Conyers recently subpoenaed former Bush aide Karl Rove to try to continue to probe the U.S. attorneys scandal and what role, if any, Rove played in it.

Conyers also has introduced a bill creating a more narrowly focused truth commission to investigate the war in Iraq and whether Bush abused his war powers authority and individuals' civil liberties with his administration’s use of wiretapping laws.


In his remarks, Leahy repeated an earlier claim that the abuses at the Justice Department during the Bush administration were"worse than Watergate". He also referred to the Church Commission of the 1970s, when he first came to Congress, which investigated illegal intelligence gathering, as well as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was devoted to reviewing the country’s apartheid-era abuses.


“Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened,” he said. “Sometimes the best way to move forward is getting to the truth, finding out what happened, so we can make sure it does not happen again.”

Rep. Lamar Smith (Texas), the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, blasted Leahy’s suggestion as partisan politics as usual and repetitive of previous internal Justice Department investigations.

“No good purpose is served by continuing to persecute those who served in the previous Administration.” Smith said in a statement. “President Obama promised to usher in an era of ‘change’ and bipartisan harmony. Unfortunately, the continued effort by some Democrats to unjustly malign former Bush Administration officials is politics as usual.”
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A Note From Me:
I watched the cspan announcement of his plans for "Restoring Trust in the Judicial System.”
He has invited folks to contact him via email with your thoughts.
I will hope that people will at least send him a vote of confidence. I believe that he and Conyers MUST bring the Bush Criminals to Justice and work to restore America's Liberties and Freedoms and roll back the Unconstitutional Executive Powers.
I want to see something like this: