Something To Be Thankful For

Sen. Leahy has recognized that a duty of Congress is to engage in meaningful oversight.

Seeking information about detention of terrorism suspects, abuse of detainees and government secrecy, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are reviving dozens of demands for classified documents that until now have been rebuffed or ignored by the Justice Department and other agencies.

“I expect real answers, or we’ll have testimony under oath until we get them,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who will head the committee beginning in January, said in an interview this week. “We’re entitled to know these answers, and in many instances we don’t get them because people are hiding their mistakes. And that’s no excuse.”

Mr. Leahy, who has said little about his plans for the committee, expressed hope for greater cooperation from the Bush administration, which he described as having been “obsessively secretive.” His aides have identified more than 65 requests he has made to the Justice Department or other agencies in recent years that have been rejected or permitted to languish without reply.

This is not a witch hunt so much as it is making up for lost time. The Bush Administration has abused the trust of Congress repeatedly over the last six years. In 2002 you did not see a rush to conduct oversight, as the Democrats in charge of the Senate for that short period were willing to give a President fresh off an attack on the country the benefit of the doubt. We also had the most softball Majority Leader in history in Tom Daschle, and a caucus that was far less ideologically balanced, with a handful of conservative-leaning Senators from the South. But really this is about a Democratic Congress that is fed up with the deception and the secrecy, and concerned about how we've lost our morals and our way in the name of fighting terror.

With little more than two weeks gone since the elections that gave his party a majority in both houses, Mr. Leahy has already begun pressing the Justice Department for greater openness. In a letter last Friday, he asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to release two documents whose existence the Central Intelligence Agency, in response to a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union, recently acknowledged for the first time. Although their details are not known, the documents appear to have provided a legal basis for the agency’s detention and harsh interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects.

One document is a directive, signed by President Bush shortly after the September 2001 attacks, that granted the C.I.A. authority to set up detention centers outside the United States and outlined allowable interrogation procedures.

The second is a memorandum, written by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department in 2002, that is thought to have given the C.I.A. specific legal advice about interrogation methods that would not violate a federal statute on torture.

It's a shame that Democrats have to look backward at a time when the country needs to move forward. But we can walk and chew gum at the same time. And while we implement an agenda, it's vital that we understand the breadth of the damage done to the country and the office of the Presidency. Leaders do not typically give up their power, and so an executive branch that is allowed to claim such broad controls will sustain itself into the future unless those defenders of the Constitution and this divided system of government act. Honestly, they probably wouldn't if they hadn't been pushed up against the wall like this.