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last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding a series
of hearings under the general title, "Department of Justice
Oversight: Preserving Our Freedoms While Defending Against Terrorism."
In those sessions, Democrats have raised a number of questions about
the Bush Justice Department's antiterrorism policies — but
they have not seemed terribly interested in hearing from the Bush
Justice Department.
Last week, when committee chairman Patrick Leahy held his first
hearing on the topic, he did not invite anyone from the Department
to testify. Leahy added criminal-division chief Michael Chertoff
to the witness list only after receiving a request from a top department
official. As it turned out, Chertoff's appearance was the main event
of the hearing, as he faced a wide range of questions about administration
policy.
Now, the committee is holding a Tuesday afternoon hearing, chaired
by Wisconsin's Russell Feingold, (Leahy did not have time to chair
them all), which is scheduled to focus on the department's detention
of terrorist suspects and witnesses, its requests for voluntary
interviews, and its new policy of eavesdropping on the lawyer-client
conversations of a small number of terrorist suspects. No one from
the Justice Department was invited to testify.
On November 30, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Bryant wrote
Feingold saying, "Discussions with your staff indicated that
you were not planning to call a Justice Department witness. Given
that the stated subject of the hearing is Justice Department oversight,
it seems appropriate that a representative of the Justice Department
be present as a witness."
Bryant suggested Viet Dinh, head of the Department's Office of
Legal Policy, who has been deeply involved in policies that are
the subject of the hearing. "A Justice Department witness would
help to ensure a balanced and fair examination of the Department's
actions, and will aid committee members in preparing for the Attorney
General's testimony on December 6," Bryant wrote. Dinh was
added to the witness list.
All this has left Republicans wondering what is going on. "The
Justice Department had to write again," says one aide. "This
is the second time. This really isn't oversight. It's trying to
get four or five liberals to beat up on the administration."
Republicans also believe that the Democrats' actions suggest that
when it comes to Justice Department policy, critics are only interested
in hearing from Attorney General John Ashcroft, a longtime Leahy
target who will face hostile questioning in a media-heavy hearing
on Thursday.
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