The Absurd Times: Kucinich

THE ABSURD TIMES

I had never seen the full text of an proposed impeachment, so I though there may be some of you who would like to see one too. Imagine all that the Decider has managed to do to merit this fine piece of prose. This is from the Congressional Record and was in pdf format, so conversion had a few problems.

H5088 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

NOTICE OF INTENTION TO OFFER
RESOLUTION RAISING A QUESTION
OF THE PRIVILEGES OF
THE HOUSE

Mr. KUCINICH. Madam Speaker, pursuant
to clause 2 of rule IX, I rise to
give notice of my intent to raise a
question of the privileges of the House.

The form of the resolution is as follows:

Resolved, That President George W. Bush
be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors,
and that the following articles of
impeachment be exhibited to the United
States Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the
House of Representatives of the United
States of America in the name of itself and
of the people of the United States of America,
in maintenance and support of its impeachment
against President George W.
Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.

CAMPAIGN TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE CASE

FOR WAR AGAINST IRAQ

The Department of Defense (DOD) has engaged
in a years-long secret domestic propaganda
campaign to promote the invasion and
occupation of Iraq. This secret program was
defended by the White House Press Secretary
following its exposure. This program follows

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5089

the pattern of crimes detailed in Article I, II,
IV and VIII.. The mission of this program
placed it within the field controlled by the
White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a White
House task-force formed in August 2002 to
market an invasion of Iraq to the American
people. The group included Karl Rove, I.
Lewis Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Karen
Hughes, Mary Matalin, Stephen Hadley,
Nicholas E. Calio, and James R. Wilkinson.

The WHIG produced white papers detailing
so-called intelligence of Iraq’s nuclear threat
that later proved to be false. This supposed
intelligence included the claim that Iraq had
sought uranium from Niger as well as the
claim that the high strength aluminum
tubes Iraq purchased from China were to be
used for the sole purpose of building centrifuges
to enrich uranium. Unlike the National
Intelligence Estimate of 2002, the
WHIG’s white papers provided ‘‘gripping images
and stories’’ and used ‘‘literary license’’
with intelligence. The WHIG’s white papers
were written at the same time and by the
same people as speeches and talking points
prepared for President Bush and some of his
top officials.

The WHIG also organized a media blitz in
which, between September 7–8, 2002, President
Bush and his top advisers appeared on
numerous interviews and all provided similarly
gripping images about the possibility of
nuclear attack by Iraq. The timing was no
coincidence, as Andrew Card explained in an
interview regarding waiting until after
Labor Day to try to sell the American people
on military action against Iraq, ‘‘From a
marketing point of view, you don’t introduce
new products in August.’’

September 7–8, 2002:

NBC’s ‘‘Meet the Press: Vice President
Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively
to develop nuclear weapons over the
past 14 months to add to his stockpile of
chemical and biological arms.

CNN: Then-National Security Adviser Rice
said, regarding the likelihood of Iraq obtaining
a nuclear weapon, ‘‘We don’t want the
smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.’’

CBS: President Bush declared that Saddam
was ‘‘six months away from developing a
weapon,’’ and cited satellite photos of construction
in Iraq where weapons inspectors
once visited as evidence that Saddam was
trying to develop nuclear arms.

The Pentagon military analyst propaganda
program was revealed in an April 20, 2002,
New York Times article. The program illegally
involved ‘‘covert attempts to mold
opinion through the undisclosed use of third
parties.’’ Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
recruited 75 retired military officers and
gave them talking points to deliver on Fox,
CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and MSNBC, and according
to the New York Times report,
which has not been disputed by the Pentagon
or the White House, ‘‘Participants were instructed
not to quote their briefers directly
or otherwise describe their contacts with the
Pentagon.’’

According to the Pentagon’s own internal
documents, the military analysts were considered
‘‘message force multipliers’’ or ‘‘surrogates’’
who would deliver administration
‘‘themes and messages’’ to millions of Americans
‘‘in the form of their own opinions.’’ In
fact, they did deliver the themes and the
messages but did not reveal that the Pentagon
had provided them with their talking
points. Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green
Beret and Fox News military analyst described
this as follows: ‘‘It was them saying,
‘We need to stick our hands up your back
and move your mouth for you.’’’

Congress has restricted annual appropriations
bills since 1951 with this language: ‘‘No
part of any appropriation contained in this
or any other Act shall be used for publicity

or propaganda purposes within the United
States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.’’

A March 21, 2005, report by the Congressional
Research Service states that ‘‘publicity
or propaganda’’ is defined by the U.S.
Government Accountability Office (GAO) to
mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public
officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or

(3) ‘‘covert propaganda.’’
These concerns about ‘‘covert propaganda’’
were also the basis for the GAO’s standard
for determining when government-funded
video news releases are illegal:

‘‘The failure of an agency to identify itself
as the source of a prepackaged news story
misleads the viewing public by encouraging
the viewing audience to believe that the
broadcasting news organization developed
the information. The prepackaged news stories
are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable
from news segments broadcast to
the public. When the television viewing public
does not know that the stories they
watched on television news programs about
the government were in fact prepared by the
government, the stories are, in this sense, no
longer purely factual—the essential fact of
attribution is missing.’’

The White House’s own Office of Legal
Council stated in a memorandum written in
2005 following the controversy over the Armstrong
Williams scandal:

‘‘Over the years, GAO has interpreted ‘publicity
or propaganda’ restrictions to preclude
use of appropriated funds for, among other
things, so-called ’covert propaganda.’ ...
Consistent with that view, the OLC determined
in 1988 that a statutory prohibition on
using appropriated funds for ‘publicity or
propaganda’ precluded undisclosed agency
funding of advocacy by third-party groups.
We stated that ‘covert attempts to mold
opinion through the undisclosed use of third
parties’ would run afoul of restrictions on
using appropriated funds for ‘propaganda.’’’

Asked about the Pentagon’s propaganda
program at White House press briefing in
April 2008, White House Press Secretary
Dana Perino defended it, not by arguing that
it was legal but by suggesting that it
‘‘should’’ be: ‘‘Look, I didn’t know look, I
think that you guys should take a step back
and look at this look, DOD has made a decision,
they’ve decided to stop this program.
But I would say that one of the things that
we try to do in the administration is get information
out to a variety of people so that
everybody else can call them and ask their
opinion about something. And I don’t think
that that should be against the law. And I
think that it’s absolutely appropriate to provide
information to people who are seeking
it and are going to be providing their opinions
on it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that
all of those military analysts ever agreed
with the administration. I think you can go
back and look and think that a lot of their
analysis was pretty tough on the administration.
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t
talk to people.’’

In all of these actions and decisions, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President and Commander
in Chief, and subversive of constitutional
government, to the prejudice of the
cause of law and justice and to the manifest
injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by
such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense
warranting removal from office.

ARTICLE II.—FALSELY, SYSTEMATICALLY, AND
WITH CRIMINAL INTENT CONFLATING THE ATTACKS
OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 WITH MISREPRESENTATION
OF IRAQ AS AN IMMINENT SECURITY
THREAT AS PART OF A FRAUDULENT JUSTIFICATION
FOR A WAR OF AGGRESSION.

In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation

of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, together with the Vice President,
executed a calculated and wide-ranging
strategy to deceive the citizens and Congress
of the United States into believing that
there was and is a connection between Iraq
and Saddam Hussein on the one hand, and
the attacks of September 11, 2001 and al
Qaeda, on the other hand, so as to falsely
justify the use of the United States Armed
Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner
that is damaging to the national security
interests of the United States, as well as
to fraudulently obtain and maintain congressional
authorization and funding for the use
of such military force against Iraq, thereby
interfering with and obstructing Congress’s
lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs
and declaring war.

The means used to implement this deception
were and continue to be, first, allowing,
authorizing and sanctioning the manipulation
of intelligence analysis by those under
his direction and control, including the Vice
President and the Vice President’s agents,
and second, personally making, or causing,
authorizing and allowing to be made through
highly-placed subordinates, including the
President’s Chief of Staff, the White House
Press Secretary and other White House
spokespersons, the Secretaries of State and
Defense, the National Security Advisor, and
their deputies and spokespersons, false and
fraudulent representations to the citizens of
the United States and Congress regarding an
alleged connection between Saddam Hussein
and Iraq, on the one hand, and the September
11th attacks and al Qaeda, on the
other hand, that were half-true, literally
true but misleading, and/or made without a
reasonable basis and with reckless indifference
to their truth, as well as omitting to
state facts necessary to present an accurate
picture of the truth as follows:

(A) On or about September 12, 2001, former
terrorism advisor Richard Clarke personally
informed the President that neither Saddam
Hussein nor Iraq was responsible for the September
11th attacks. On September 18,
Clarke submitted to the President’s National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice a memo
he had written in response to George W.
Bush’s specific request that stated: (1) the
case for linking Hussein to the September
11th attacks was weak; (2) only anecdotal
evidence linked Hussein to al Qaeda; (3)
Osama Bin Laden resented the secularism of
Saddam Hussein; and (4) there was no confirmed
reporting of Saddam Hussein cooperating
with Bin Laden on unconventional
weapons.
(B) Ten days after the September 11th attacks
the President received a President’s
Daily Briefing which indicated that the U.S.
intelligence community had no evidence
linking Saddam Hussein to the September
11th attacks and that there was ‘‘scant credible
evidence that Iraq had any significant
collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.’’
(C) In Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary
No. 044–02, issued in February 2002, the
United States Defense Intelligence Agency
cast significant doubt on the possibility of a
Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda conspiracy:
‘‘Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is
wary of Islamic revolutionary movements.
Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance
to a group it cannot control.’’
(D) The October 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate gave a ‘‘Low Confidence’’ rating to

H5090 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

the notion of whether ‘‘in desperation Sad-
dam would share chemical or biological
weapons with Al Qaeda.’’ The CIA never informed
the President that there was an operational
relationship between Al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein; on the contrary, its most
‘‘aggressive’’ analysis contained in Iraq and
al-Qaeda-Interpreting a ‘‘Murky Relationship’’
dated June 21, 2002 was that Iraq had
had ‘‘sporadic, wary contacts with al Qaeda
since the mid-1990s rather than a relationship
with al Qaeda that has developed over
time.’’

(E) Notwithstanding his knowledge that
neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq was in any
way connected to the September 11th attacks,
the President allowed and authorized
those acting under his direction and control,
including Vice President Richard B. Cheney
and Lewis Libby, who reported directly to
both the President and the Vice President,
and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
among others, to pressure intelligence analysts
to alter their assessments and to create
special units outside of, and unknown to, the
intelligence community in order to secretly
obtain unreliable information, to manufacture
intelligence or reinterpret raw data in
ways that would further the Bush administration’s
goal of fraudulently establishing a
relationship not only between Iraq and al
Qaeda, but between Iraq and the attacks of
September 11th.
(F) Further, despite his full awareness that
Iraq and Saddam Hussein had no relationship
to the September 11th attacks, the President,
and those acting under his direction
and control have, since at least 2002 and continuing
to the present, repeatedly issued
public statements deliberately worded to
mislead, words calculated in their implication
to bring unrelated actors and circumstances
into an artificially contrived reality
thereby facilitating the systematic deception
of Congress and the American people.
Thus the public and some members of
Congress, came to believe, falsely, that there
was a connection between Iraq and the attacks
of 9/11. This was accomplished through
well-publicized statements by the Bush Administration
which contrived to continually
tie Iraq and 9/11 in the same statements of
grave concern without making an explicit
charge:
(1) ‘‘ [If] Iraq regimes [sic] continues to
defy us, and the world, we will move deliberately,
yet decisively, to hold Iraq to account
. . . It’s a new world we’re in. We used
to think two oceans could separate us from
an enemy. On that tragic day, September the
11th, 2001, we found out that’s not the case.
We found out this great land of liberty and of
freedom and of justice is vulnerable. And
therefore we must do everything we can—everything
we can—to secure the homeland, to
make us safe.’’ Speech of President Bush in
Iowa on September 16, 2002.
(2) ‘‘With every step the Iraqi regime takes
toward gaining and deploying the most terrible
weapons, our own options to confront
that regime will narrow. And if an
emboldened regime were to supply these
weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks
of September 11th would be a prelude to far
greater horrors.’’ March 6, 2003, Statement of
President Bush in National Press Conference.
(3) ‘‘The battle of Iraq is one victory in a
war on terror that began on September the
11, 2001—and still goes on. That terrible
morning, 19 evil men—the shock troops of a
hateful ideology—gave America and the civilized
world a glimpse of their ambitions.
They imagined, in the words of one terrorist,
that September the 11th would be the ‘beginning
of the end of America.’ By seeking to
turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists
and their allies believed that they could destroy
this nation’s resolve, and force our retreat
from the world. They have failed.’’ May
1, 2003, Speech of President Bush on U.S.S.
Abraham Lincoln.

(4) ‘‘Now we’re in a new and unprecedented
war against violent Islamic extremists. This
is an ideological conflict we face against
murderers and killers who try to impose
their will. These are the people that attacked
us on September the 11th and killed
nearly 3,000 people. The stakes are high, and
once again, we have had to change our strategic
thinking. The major battleground in
this war is Iraq.’’ June 28, 2007, Speech of
President Bush at the Naval War College in
Newport, Rhode Island.
(G) Notwithstanding his knowledge that
there was no credible evidence of a working
relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al
Qaeda and that the intelligence community
had specifically assessed that there was no
such operational relationship, the President,
both personally and through his subordinates
and agents, has repeatedly falsely represented,
both explicitly and implicitly, and
through the misleading use of selectively-
chosen facts, to the citizens of the United
States and to the Congress that there was
and is such an ongoing operational relationship,
to wit:
(1) ‘‘We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have
had high-level contacts that go back a decade.
Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan
went to Iraq. These include one very
senior al Qaeda leader who received medical
treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has
been associated with planning for chemical
and biological attacks. We’ve learned that
Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-
making and poisons and deadly gases.’’ September
28, 2002, Weekly Radio Address of
President Bush to the Nation.
(2) ‘‘[W]e we need to think about Saddam
Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work,
to not leave fingerprints behind.’’ October 14,
2002, Remarks by President Bush in Michigan.
(3) ‘‘We know he’s got ties with al Qaeda.’’
November 1, 2002, Speech of President Bush
in New Hampshire.
(4) ‘‘Evidence from intelligence sources, secret
communications, and statements by
people now in custody reveal that Saddam
Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including
members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without
fingerprints, he could provide one of his
hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them
develop their own.’’ January 28, 2003, President
Bush’s State of the Union Address.
(5) ‘‘[W]hat I want to bring to your attention
today is the potentially much more sinister
nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda
terrorist network, a nexus that combines
classic terrorist organizations and modern
methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a
deadly terrorist network. . .’’ February 5,
2003, Speech of Former Secretary of State
Colin Powell to the United Nations.
(6) ‘‘The battle of Iraq is one victory in a
war on terror that began on September the
11, 2001—and still goes on. . . . [T]he liberation
of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al
Qaeda.’’ May 1, 2003, Speech of President
Bush on U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
(H) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Report on Whether Public Statements
Regarding Iraq By U.S. Government
Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence
Information, which was released on June 5,
2008, concluded that:
(1) ‘‘Statements and implications by the
President and Secretary of State suggesting
that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a partnership, or
that Iraq had provided al-Qaeda with weapons
training, were not substantiated by the
intelligence.’’
(2) ‘‘The Intelligence Community did not
confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi
intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the
Vice President repeatedly claimed.’’

Through his participation and instance in
the breathtaking scope of this deception, the
President has used the highest office of trust
to wage of campaign of deception of such sophistication
as to deliberately subvert the
national security interests of the United
States. His dishonesty set the stage for the
loss of more than 4000 United States service
members; injuries to tens of thousands of
soldiers, the loss of more than 1,000,000 innocent
Iraqi citizens since the United States
invasion; the loss of approximately $527 billion
in war costs which has increased our
Federal debt and the ultimate expenditure of
three to five trillion dollars for all costs covering
the war; the loss of military readiness
within the United States Armed Services due
to overextension, the lack of training and
lack of equipment; the loss of United States
credibility in world affairs; and the decades
of likely blowback created by the invasion of
Iraq.

ARTICLE III.—MISLEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BELIEVE
IRAQ POSSESSED WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION,
SO AS TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE CASE
FOR WAR

In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, together with the Vice President,
executed instead a calculated and wide-
ranging strategy to deceive the citizens and
Congress of the United States into believing
that the nation of Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction in order to justify the use
of the United States Armed Forces against
the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to
our national security interests, thereby
interfering with and obstructing Congress’s
lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs
and declaring war.

The means used to implement this deception
were and continue to be personally
making, or causing, authorizing and allowing
to be made through highly-placed subordinates,
including the President’s Chief of
Staff, the White House Press Secretary and
other White House spokespersons, the Secretaries
of State and Defense, the National Security
Advisor, and their deputies and
spokespersons, false and fraudulent representations
to the citizens of the United States
and Congress regarding Iraq’s alleged possession
of biological, chemical and nuclear
weapons that were half-true, literally true
but misleading, and/or made without a reasonable
basis and with reckless indifference
to their truth, as well as omitting to state
facts necessary to present an accurate picture
of the truth as follows:

(A) Long before the March 19, 2003 invasion
of Iraq, a wealth of intelligence informed the
President and those under his direction and
control that Iraq’s stockpiles of chemical
and biological weapons had been destroyed
well before 1998 and that there was little, if

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5091

any, credible intelligence that showed otherwise.
As reported in the Washington Post in
March of 2003, in 1995, Saddam Hussein’s son-
in-law Hussein Kamel had informed U.S. and
British intelligence officers that ‘‘all weapons—
biological, chemical, missile, nuclear
were destroyed.’’ In September 2002, the Defense
Intelligence Agency issued a report
that concluded: ‘‘A substantial amount of
Iraq’s chemical warfare agents, precursors,
munitions and production equipment were
destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of
Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM actions
. . . [T]here is no reliable information
on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling
chemical weapons or whether Iraq has-or
will-establish its chemical warfare agent
production facilities.’’ Notwithstanding the
absence of evidence proving that such stockpiles
existed and in direct contradiction to
substantial evidence that showed they did
not exist, the President and his subordinates
and agents made numerous false representations
claiming with certainty that Iraq possessed
chemical and biological weapons that
it was developing to use to attack the United
States, to wit:

(1) ‘‘[T]he notion of a Saddam Hussein with
his great oil wealth, with his inventory that
he already has of biological and chemical
weapons . . . is, I think, a frightening proposition
for anybody who thinks about it.’’
Statement of Vice President Cheney on
CBS’s Face the Nation, March 24, 2002.
(2) ‘‘In defiance of the United Nations, Iraq
has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons,
and is rebuilding the facilities used to
make more of those weapons.’’ Speech of
President Bush, October 5, 2002.
(3) ‘‘All the world has now seen the footage
of an Iraqi Mirage aircraft with a fuel tank
modified to spray biological agents over wide
areas. Iraq has developed spray devices that
could be used on unmanned aerial vehicles
with ranges far beyond what is permitted by
the Security Council. A UAV launched from
a vessel off the American coast could reach
hundreds of miles inland.’’ Statement by
President Bush from the White House, February
6, 2003.
(B) Despite overwhelming intelligence in
the form of statements and reports filed by
and on behalf of the CIA, the State Department
and the IAEA, among others, which indicated
that the claim was untrue, the President,
and those under his direction and control,
made numerous representations claiming
and implying through misleading language
that Iraq was attempting to purchase
uranium from Niger in order to falsely buttress
its argument that Iraq was reconstituting
its nuclear weapons program, including:
(1) ‘‘The regime has the scientists and facilities
to build nuclear weapons, and is
seeking the materials needed to do so.’’
Statement of President Bush from White
House, October 2, 2002.
(2) ‘‘The [Iraqi] report also failed to deal
with issues which have arisen since 1998, including:
. . . attempts to acquire uranium
and the means to enrich it.’’ Letter from
President Bush to Vice President Cheney and
the Senate, January 20, 2003.
(3) ‘‘The British Government has learned
that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa.’’
President Bush Delivers State of the Union
Address, January 28, 2003.
(C) Despite overwhelming evidence in the
form of reports by nuclear weapons experts
from the Energy, the Defense and State Departments,
as well from outside and international
agencies which assessed that aluminum
tubes the Iraqis were purchasing
were not suitable for nuclear centrifuge use
and were, on the contrary, identical to ones
used in rockets already being manufactured
by the Iraqis, the President, and those under
his direction and control, persisted in making
numerous false and fraudulent representations
implying and stating explicitly that
the Iraqis were purchasing the tubes for use
in a nuclear weapons program, to wit:

(1) ‘‘We do know that there have been shipments
going . . . into Iraq . . . of aluminum
tubes that really are only suited to—high-
quality aluminum tools [sic] that are only
really suited for nuclear weapons programs,
centrifuge programs.’’ Statement of then National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on
CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, September
8, 2002.
(2) ‘‘Our intelligence sources tell us that he
has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons
production.’’ President Bush’s State of
the Union Address, January 28, 2003.
(3) ‘‘[H]e has made repeated covert attempts
to acquire high-specification aluminum
tubes from 11 different countries,
even after inspections resumed. . . . By now,
just about everyone has heard of these tubes
and we all know that there are differences of
opinion. There is controversy about what
these tubes are for. Most US experts think
they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges
used to enrich uranium.’’ Speech of
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to
the United Nations, February 5, 2003.
(D) The President, both personally and acting
through those under his direction and
control, suppressed material information, selectively
declassified information for the improper
purposes of retaliating against a
whistleblower and presenting a misleading
picture of the alleged threat from Iraq, facilitated
the exposure of the identity of a
covert CIA operative and thereafter not only
failed to investigate the improper leaks of
classified information from within his administration,
but also failed to cooperate
with an investigation into possible federal
violations resulting from this activity and,
finally, entirely undermined the prosecution
by commuting the sentence of Lewis Libby
citing false and insubstantial grounds, all in
an effort to prevent Congress and the citizens
of the United States from discovering
the fraudulent nature of the President’s
claimed justifications for the invasion of
Iraq.
(E) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Report on Whether Public Statements
Regarding Iraq By U.S. Government
Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence
Information, which was released on June 5,
2008, concluded that:
(1) ‘‘Statements by the President and Vice
President prior to the October 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical
weapons production capability and activities
did not reflect the intelligence community’s
uncertainties as to whether such
production was ongoing.’’
(2) ‘‘The Secretary of Defense’s statement
that the Iraqi government operated underground
WMD facilities that were not vulnerable
to conventional airstrikes because they
were underground and deeply buried was not
substantiated by available intelligence information.’’
(3) Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee Jay Rockefeller concluded: ‘‘In
making the case for war, the Administration
repeatedly presented intelligence as fact
when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted,
or even non-existent. As a result,
the American people were led to believe that
the threat from Iraq was much greater than
actually existed.’’
The President has subverted the national
security interests of the United States by
setting the stage for the loss of more than
4000 United States service members and the
injury to tens of thousands of US soldiers;

the loss of more than 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi
citizens since the United States invasion; the
loss of approximately $500 billion in war
costs which has increased our Federal debt
with a long term financial cost of between
three and five trillion dollars; the loss of
military readiness within the United States
Armed Services due to overextension, the
lack of training and lack of equipment; the
loss of United States credibility in world affairs;
and the decades of likely blowback created
by the invasion of Iraq.

ARTICLE IV.—MISLEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BELIEVE
IRAQ POSED AN IMMINENT THREAT TO THE
UNITED STATES

In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, together with the Vice President,
executed a calculated and wide-ranging
strategy to deceive the citizens and Congress
of the United States into believing that the
nation of Iraq posed an imminent threat to
the United States in order to justify the use
of the United States Armed Forces against
the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to
our national security interests, thereby
interfering with and obstructing Congress’s
lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs
and declaring war.

The means used to implement this deception
were and continue to be, first, allowing,
authorizing and sanctioning the manipulation
of intelligence analysis by those under
his direction and control, including the Vice
President and the Vice President’s agents,
and second, personally making, or causing,
authorizing and allowing to be made through
highly-placed subordinates, including the
President’s Chief of Staff, the White House
Press Secretary and other White House
spokespersons, the Secretaries of State and
Defense, the National Security Advisor, and
their deputies and spokespersons, false and
fraudulent representations to the citizens of
the United States and Congress regarding an
alleged urgent threat posed by Iraq, statements
that were half-true, literally true but
misleading, and/or made without a reasonable
basis and with reckless indifference to
their truth, as well as omitting to state facts
necessary to present an accurate picture of
the truth as follows:

(A) Notwithstanding the complete absence
of intelligence analysis to support a claim
that Iraq posed an imminent or urgent
threat to the United States and the intelligence
community’s assessment that Iraq
was in fact not likely to attack the United
States unless it was itself attacked, President
Bush, both personally and through his
agents and subordinates, made, allowed and
caused to be made repeated false representations
to the citizens and Congress of the
United States implying and explicitly stating
that such a dire threat existed, including
the following:

H5092 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

(1) ‘‘States such as these [Iraq, Iran and
North Korea] and their terrorist allies constitute
an axis of evil, arming to threaten
the peace of the world. By seeking weapons
of mass destruction, these regimes pose a
grave and growing danger. They could provide
these arms to terrorists, giving them
the means to match their hatred. They could
attack our allies or attempt to blackmail
the United States. In any of these cases, the
price of indifference would be catastrophic.’’
President Bush’s State of the Union Address,
January 29, 2002.
(2) ‘‘Simply stated, there is no doubt that
Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
He is amassing them to use
against our friends our enemies and against
us.’’ Speech of Vice President Cheney at
VFW 103rd National Convention, August 26,
2002.
(3) ‘‘The history, the logic, and the facts
lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein’s regime
is a grave and gathering danger. To
suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence.
To assume this regime’s good faith is
to bet the lives of millions and the peace of
the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a
risk we must not take.’’ Address of President
Bush to the United Nations General Assembly,
September 12, 2002.
(4) ‘‘[N]o terrorist state poses a greater or
more immediate threat to the security of our
people than the regime of Saddam Hussein
and Iraq.’’ Statement of Former Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to Congress, September
19, 2002.
(5) ‘‘On its present course, the Iraqi regime
is a threat of unique urgency . . . it has developed
weapons of mass death.’’ Statement
of President Bush at White House, October 2,
2002.
(6) ‘‘But the President also believes that
this problem has to be dealt with, and if the
United Nations won’t deal with it, then the
United States, with other likeminded nations,
may have to deal with it. We would
prefer not to go that route, but the danger is
so great, with respect to Saddam Hussein
having weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps
even terrorists getting hold of such
weapons, that it is time for the international
community to act, and if it doesn’t act, the
President is prepared to act with likeminded
nations.’’ Statement of Former Secretary of
State Colin Powell in interview with Ellen
Ratner of Talk Radio News, October 30, 2002.
(7) ‘‘Today the world is also uniting to answer
the unique and urgent threat posed by
Iraq. A dictator who has used weapons of
mass destruction on his own people must not
be allowed to produce or possess those weapons.
We will not permit Saddam Hussein to
blackmail and/or terrorize nations which
love freedom.’’ Speech by President Bush to
Prague Atlantic Student Summit, November
20, 2002.
(8) ‘‘But the risk of doing nothing, the risk
of the security of this country being jeopardized
at the hands of a madman with weapons
of mass destruction far exceeds the risk of
any action we may be forced to take.’’ President
Bush Meets with National Economic
Council at White House, February 25, 2003.
(B) In furtherance of his fraudulent effort
to deceive Congress and the citizens of the
United States into believing that Iraq and
Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat
to the United States, the President allowed
and authorized those acting under his direction
and control, including Vice President
Richard B. Cheney, former Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, and Lewis Libby,
who reported directly to both the President
and the Vice President, among others, to
pressure intelligence analysts to tailor their
assessments and to create special units outside
of, and unknown to, the intelligence
community in order to secretly obtain unreliable
information, to manufacture intelligence,
or to reinterpret raw data in ways
that would support the Bush administration’s
plan to invade Iraq based on a false
claim of urgency despite the lack of justification
for such a preemptive action.

(C) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Report on Whether Public Statements
Regarding Iraq By U.S. Government
Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence
Information, which was released on June 5,
2008, concluded that:
(1) ‘‘Statements by the President and the
Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein
was prepared to give weapons of mass
destruction to terrorist groups for attacks
against the United States were contradicted
by available intelligence information.’’
Thus the President willfully and falsely
misrepresented Iraq as an urgent threat requiring
immediate action thereby subverting
the national security interests of the United
States by setting the stage for the loss of
more than 4,000 United States service members;
the injuries to tens of thousands of U.S.
soldiers; the deaths of more than 1,000,000
Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion;
the loss of approximately $527 billion in
war costs which has increased our Federal
debt and the ultimate costs of the war between
three trillion and five trillion dollars;
the loss of military readiness within the
United States Armed Services due to overextension,
the lack of training and lack of
equipment; the loss of United States credibility
in world affairs; and the decades of
likely blowback created by the invasion of
Iraq.

ARTICLE V.—ILLEGALLY MISSPENDING FUNDS TO
SECRETLY BEGIN A WAR OF AGGRESSION

The president used over $2 billion in the
summer of 2002 to prepare for the invasion of
Iraq. First reported in Bob Woodward’s book,
Plan of Attack, and later confirmed by the
Congressional Research Service, Bush took
money appropriated by Congress for Afghanistan
and other programs and—with no Congressional
notification—used it to build airfields
in Qatar and to make other preparations
for the invasion of Iraq. This constituted
a violation of Article I, Section 9 of
the U.S. Constitution, as well as a violation
of the War Powers Act of 1973.

ARTICLE VI.—INVADING IRAQ IN VIOLATION OF
THE REQUIREMENTS OF H.J. RES. 114.

(1) H.J. Res. 114 contains several Whereas
clauses consistent with statements being
made by the White House at the time regarding
the threat from Iraq as evidenced by the
following:
(A) H.J. Res. 114 states ‘‘Whereas Iraq both
poses a continuing threat to the national security
of the United States and international
peace and security in the Persian Gulf region
and remains in material and unacceptable
breach of its international obligations by,
among other things, continuing to possess
and develop a significant chemical and biological
weapons capability, actively seeking
a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting
and harboring terrorist organizations;’’; and
(B) H.J. Res. 114 states ‘‘Whereas members
of Al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility
for attacks on the United States, its
citizens, and interests, including the attacks
that occurred on September 11, 2001, are
known to be in Iraq;’’.
(2) H.J. Res. 114 states that the President
must provide a determination, the truthfulness
of which is implied, that military force
is necessary in order to use the authorization,
as evidenced by the following:
(A) Section 3 of H.J. Res. 114 states:
‘‘(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.—
In connection with the exercise of the authority
granted in subsection (a) to use force
the President shall, prior to such exercise or
as soon thereafter as may be feasible, but no
later than 48 hours after exercising such authority,
make available to the Speaker of
the House of Representatives and the President
pro tempore of the Senate his determination
that—

(1) reliance by the United States on further
diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either
(A) will not adequately protect the national
security of the United States against
the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is
not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant
United Nations Security Council resolutions
regarding Iraq; and
(2) acting pursuant to this joint resolution
is consistent with the United States and
other countries continuing to take the necessary
actions against international terrorist
and terrorist organizations, including
those nations, organizations, or persons who
planned, authorized, committed or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September
11, 2001.’’
(3) On March 18, 2003, President George
Bush sent a letter to Congress stating that
he had made that determination as evidenced
by the following:
(A) March 18th, 2003 Letter to Congress
stating:
Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization
for Use of Military Force Against
Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107–243),
and based on information available to me,
including that in the enclosed document, I
determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further
diplomatic and other peaceful means alone
will neither (A) adequately protect the national
security of the United States against

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5093

the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B)
likely lead to enforcement of all relevant
United Nations Security Council resolutions
regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and
Public Law 107–243 is consistent with the
United States and other countries continuing
to take the necessary actions
against international terrorists and terrorist
organizations, including those nations, organizations,
or persons who planned, authorized,
committed, or aided the terrorist attacks
that occurred on September 11, 2001.
(4) President George Bush knew that these
statements were false as evidenced by:
(A) INFORMATION PROVIDED WITH ARTICLE I,
II, III, IV AND V.
(B) A statement by President George Bush
in an interview with Tony Blair on January
31st 2003: [WH]
Reporter: ‘‘One question for you both. Do
you believe that there is a link between Sad-
dam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who
attacked on September the 11th?’’

President Bush: ‘‘I can’t make that claim’’

(C) An article on February 19th by Terrorism
expert Rohan Gunaratna states ‘‘I
could find no evidence of links between Iraq
and Al Qaeda. The documentation and interviews
indicated that Al Qaeda regarded Sad-
dam, a secular leader, as an infidel.’’
[InternationalHeraldTribune]
(D) According to a February 2nd, 2003 article
in the New York Times: [NYT]
At the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
some investigators said they were baffled by
the Bush administration’s insistence on a
solid link between Iraq and Osama bin
Laden’s network. ‘‘We’ve been looking at
this hard for more than a year and you know
what, we just don’t think it’s there,’’ a government
official said.

(5) Section 3C of HJRes 114 states that
‘‘Nothing in this joint resolution supersedes
any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.’’
(6) The War Powers Resolution Section
9(d)(1) states:
(d) Nothing in this joint resolution—
(1) is intended to alter the constitutional
authority of the Congress or of the President,
or the provision of existing treaties; or
(7) The United Nations Charter was an existing
treaty and, as shown in Article VIII,
the invasion of Iraq violated that treaty.
(8) President George Bush knowingly failed
to meet the requirements of HJRes 114 and
violated the requirement of the War Powers
Resolution and, thereby, invaded Iraq without
the authority of Congress.
In all of these actions and decisions, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President and Commander
in Chief, and subversive of constitutional
government, to the prejudice of the
cause of law and justice and to the manifest
injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by
such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense
warranting removal from office.

ARTICLE VII.—INVADING IRAQ ABSENT A
DECLARATION OF WAR

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 (the War
Powers Clause) makes clear that the United
States Congress holds the exclusive power to

decide whether or not to send the nation into
war. ‘‘The Congress,’’ the War Powers Clause
states, ‘‘shall have power . . . To declare war
. . .’’

The October 2002 congressional resolution
on Iraq did not constitute a declaration of
war or equivalent action. The resolution
stated: ‘‘The President is authorized to use
the Armed Forces of the United States as he
deems necessary and appropriate in order to
1) defend the national security of the United
States against the continuing threat posed
by Iraq; and 2) enforce all relevant United
Nations Security Council resolutions regarding
Iraq.’’ The resolution unlawfully sought
to delegate to the President the decision of
whether or not to initiate a war against Iraq,
based on whether he deemed it ‘‘necessary
and appropriate.’’ The Constitution does not
allow Congress to delegate this exclusive
power to the President, nor does it allow the
President to seize this power.

In March 2003, the President launched a
war against Iraq without any constitutional
authority.

ARTICLE VIII.—INVADING IRAQ, A SOVEREIGN

NATION, IN VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER

AND INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW

(1) International Laws ratified by Congress
are part of United States Law and must be
followed as evidenced by the following:
(A) Article VI of the United States Constitution,
which states ‘‘This Constitution,
and the Laws of the United States which
shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all
Treaties made, or which shall be made, under
the Authority of the United States, shall be
the supreme Law of the Land;’’
(2) The UN Charter, which entered into
force following ratification by the United
States in 1945, requires Security Council approval
for the use of force except for self-defense
against an armed attack as evidenced
by the following:
(A) Chapter 1, Article 2 of the United Nations
Charter states:
‘‘3. All Members shall settle their international
disputes by peaceful means in such
a manner that international peace and security,
and justice, are not endangered.

‘‘4. All Members shall refrain in their
international relations from the threat or
use of force against the territorial integrity
or political independence of any state, or in
any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes
of the United Nations.’’

(B) Chapter 7, Article 51 of the United Nations
Charter states:
‘‘51. Nothing in the present Charter shall
impair the inherent right of individual or
collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs
against a Member of the United Nations,
until the Security Council has taken
measures necessary to maintain international
peace and security.’’

(3) There was no armed attack upon the
United States by Iraq.
(4) The Security Council did not vote to approve
the use of force against Iraq as evidenced
by:
(A) A United Nation Press release which
states that the United States had failed to
convince the Security Council to approve the
use of military force against Iraq. [UN]
(5) President Bush directed the United
States military to invade Iraq on March
19th, 2003 in violation of the UN Charter and,
therefore, in violation of United States Law
as evidenced by the following:
(A) A letter from President Bush to Congress
dated March 21st, 2003 stating ‘‘I directed
U.S. Armed Forces, operating with
other coalition forces, to commence combat
operations on March 19, 2003, against Iraq.’’
[WH]
(B) On September 16, 2004 Kofi Annan, the
Secretary General of the United Nations,
speaking on the invasion, said, ‘‘I have indicated
it was not in conformity with the UN
charter. From our point of view, from the
charter point of view, it was illegal.’’ [BBC]
(C) The consequence of the instant and direction
of President George W. Bush, in ordering
an attack upon Iraq, a sovereign nation
is in direct violation of United States
Code, Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 118, Section
2441, governing the offense of war crimes.
(6) In the course of invading and occupying
Iraq, the President, as Commander in Chief,
has taken responsibility for the targeting of
civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances,
use of antipersonnel weapons including
cluster bombs in densely settled urban
areas, the use of white phosphorous as a
weapon, depleted uranium weapons, and the
use of a new version of napalm found in
Mark 77 firebombs. Under the direction of
President George Bush the United States has
engaged in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian
populations, including but not limited
to blocking roads, cutting electricity and
water, destroying fuel stations, planting
bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses,
and plowing over orchards.
(A) Under the principle of ‘‘command responsibility’’,
i.e., that a de jure command
can be civilian as well as military, and can
apply to the policy command of heads of
state, said command brings President George
Bush within the reach of international
criminal law under the Additional Protocol I
of June 8, 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of
August 12, 1949, and Relating to the Protection
of Victims of International Armed Conflicts,
Article 86(2). The United States is a
state signatory to Additional Protocol I, on
December 12, 1977.
(B) Furthermore, Article 85(3) of said Protocol
I defines as a grave breach making a civilian
population or individual civilians the
object of attacks. This offense, together with
the principle of command responsibility,
places President George Bush’s conduct
under the reach of the same law and principles
described as the basis for war crimes
prosecution at Nuremburg, under Article 6 of
the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunals: including
crimes against peace, violations of
the laws and customs of war and crimes
against humanity, similarly codified in the
Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court, Articles 5 through 8.
(C) The Lancet Report has established
massive civilian casualties in Iraq as a result
of the United States’ invasion and occupation
of that country.
(D) International laws governing wars of
aggression are completely prohibited under
the legal principle of jus cogens, whether or
not a nation has signed or ratified a particular
international agreement.

H5094 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

ARTICLE IX.—FAILING TO PROVIDE TROOPS WITH
BODY ARMOR AND VEHICLE ARMOR

While engaging in an invasion and occupation
of choice, not fought in self-defense, and
not launched in accordance with any timetable
other than the President’s choosing,
President Bush sent U.S. troops into danger
without providing them with armor. This
shortcoming has been known for years, during
which time, the President has chosen to
allow soldiers and marines to continue to
face unnecessary risk to life and limb rather
then providing them with armor.

ARTICLE X.—FALSIFYING ACCOUNTS OF U.S.

TROOP DEATHS AND INJURIES FOR POLITICAL

PURPOSES

The White House and the Department of
Defense (DOD) in 2004 promoted a false account
of the death of Specialist Pat Tillman,
reporting that he had died in a hostile exchange,
delaying release of the information
that he had died from friendly fire, shot in
the forehead three times in a manner that
led investigating doctors to believe he had
been shot at close range.

A 2005 report by Brig. Gen. Gary M. Jones
reported that in the days immediately following
Specialist Tillman’s death, U.S.
Army investigators were aware that Specialist
Tillman was killed by friendly fire,
shot three times to the head, and that senior
Army commanders, including Gen. John
Abizaid, knew of this fact within days of the
shooting but nevertheless approved the

awarding of the Silver Star, Purple Heart,
and a posthumous promotion.

On April 24, 2007, Spc. Bryan O’Neal, the
last soldier to see Specialist Pat Tillman
alive, testified before the House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee that he
was warned by superiors not to divulge information
that a fellow soldier killed Specialist
Tillman, especially to the Tillman family.
The White House refused to provide requested
documents to the committee, citing
‘‘executive branch confidentiality interests.’’

The White House and DOD in 2003 promoted
a false account of the injury of Jessica
Dawn Lynch, reporting that she had
been captured in a hostile exchange and had
been dramatically rescued. On April 2, 2003,
the DOD released a video of the rescue and
claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet
wounds, and that she had been slapped about
on her hospital bed and interrogated. Iraqi
doctors and nurses later interviewed, including
Dr. Harith Al-Houssona, a doctor in the
Nasirya hospital, described Lynch’s injuries
as ‘‘a broken arm, a broken thigh, and a dislocated
ankle.’’ According to Al-Houssona,
there was no sign of gunshot or stab wounds,
and Lynch’s injuries were consistent with
those that would be suffered in a car accident.
Al-Houssona’s claims were later confirmed
in a U.S. Army report leaked on July
10, 2003.

Lynch denied that she fought or was
wounded fighting, telling Diane Sawyer that
the Pentagon ‘‘used me to symbolize all this
stuff. It’s wrong. I don’t know why they
filmed [my rescue] or why they say these
things.... I did not shoot, not a round,
nothing. I went down praying to my knees.
And that’s the last I remember.’’ She reported
excellent treatment in Iraq, and that
one person in the hospital even sang to her
to help her feel at home.

On April 24, 2007 Lynch testified before the
House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform:

‘‘[Right after my capture], tales of great
heroism were being told. My parent’s home
in Wirt County was under siege of the media
all repeating the story of the little girl
Rambo from the hills who went down fighting.
It was not true. . . . I am still confused
as to why they chose to lie.’’

The White House had heavily promoted the
false story of Lynch’s rescue, including in a
speech by President Bush on April 28, 2003.
After the fiction was exposed, the President
awarded Lynch the Bronze Star.

ARTICLE XI.—ESTABLISHMENT OF PERMANENT

U.S. MILITARY BASES IN IRAQ
In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed,’’ has violated an
act of Congress that he himself signed into
law by using public funds to construct permanent
U.S. military bases in Iraq.
On January 28, 2008, President George W.
Bush signed into law the National Defense
Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008 (H.R.
4986). Noting that the Act ‘‘authorizes fund

ing for the defense of the United States and
its interests abroad, for military construction,
and for national security-related energy
programs,’’ the president added the following
‘‘signing statement’’:

‘‘Provisions of the Act, including sections
841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements
that could inhibit the President’s
ability to carry out his constitutional
obligations to take care that the laws be
faithfully executed, to protect national security,
to supervise the executive branch, and
to execute his authority as Commander in
Chief. The executive branch shall construe
such provisions in a manner consistent with
the constitutional authority of the President.’’

Section 1222 clearly prohibits the expenditure
of money for the purpose of establishing
permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. The
construction of over $1 billion in U.S. military
bases in Iraq, including runways for aircraft,
continues despite congressional intent,
as the Administration intends to force upon
the Iraqi government such terms which will
assure the bases remain in Iraq.

Iraqi officials have informed Members of
Congress in May 2008 of the strong opposition
within the Iraqi parliament and
throughout Iraq to the agreement that the
administration is trying to negotiate with
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The
agreement seeks to assure a long-term U.S.
presence in Iraq of which military bases are
the most obvious, sufficient and necessary
construct, thus clearly defying Congressional
intent as to the matter and meaning
of ‘‘permanency.’’

ARTICLE XII.—INITIATING A WAR AGAINST IRAQ

FOR CONTROL OF THAT NATION’S NATURAL RE

SOURCES

The White House and its representatives in
Iraq have, since the occupation of Baghdad
began, attempted to gain control of Iraqi oil.
This effort has included pressuring the new
Iraqi government to pass a hydrocarbon law.
Within weeks of the fall of Saddam Hussein
in 2003, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAid) awarded a $240 million
contract to Bearing Point, a private U.S.
company. A Bearing Point employee, based
in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, was hired to
advise the Iraqi Ministry of Oil on drawing
up the new hydrocarbon law. The draft law
places executives of foreign oil companies on
a council with the task of approving their
own contracts with Iraq; it denies the Iraqi
National Oil Company exclusive rights for
the exploration, development, production,
transportation, and marketing of Iraqi oil,
and allows foreign companies to control
Iraqi oil fields containing 80 percent of Iraqi

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5095

oil for up to 35 years through contracts that
can remain secret for up to 2 months. The
draft law itself contains secret appendices.

President Bush provided unrelated reasons
for the invasion of Iraq to the public and
Congress, but those reasons have been established
to have been categorically fraudulent,
as evidenced by the herein mentioned Articles
of Impeachment I, II, III, IV, VI, and

VII.
Parallel to the development of plans for
war against Iraq, the U.S. State Department’s
Future of Iraq project, begun as early
as April 2002, involved meetings in Washington
and London of 17 working groups,
each composed of 10 to 20 Iraqi exiles and
international experts selected by the State
Department. The Oil and Energy working
group met four times between December 2002
and April 2003. Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, later
the Iraqi Oil Minister, was a member of the
group, which concluded that Iraq ‘‘should be
opened to international oil companies as
quickly as possible after the war,’’ and that,
‘‘the country should establish a conducive
business environment to attract investment
of oil and gas resources.’’ The same group
recommended production-sharing agreements
with foreign oil companies, the same
approach found in the draft hydrocarbon law,
and control over Iraq’s oil resources remains
a prime objective of the Bush Administration.

Prior to his election as Vice President,
Dick Cheney, then-CEO of Halliburton, in a
speech at the Institute of Petroleum in 1999
demonstrated a keen awareness of the sensitive
economic and geopolitical role of Middle
East oil resources saying: ‘‘By 2010, we
will need on the order of an additional 50
million barrels a day. So where is the oil
going to come from? Governments and national
oil companies are obviously controlling
about 90 percent of the assets. Oil remains
fundamentally a government business.
While many regions of the world offer great
oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-
thirds of the world’s oil and lowest cost, is
still where the prize ultimately lies. Even
though companies are anxious for greater access
there, progress continues to be slow.’’

The Vice President led the work of a secret
energy task force, as described in Article
XXXII below, a task force that focused on,
among other things, the acquisition of Iraqi
oil through developing a controlling private
corporate interest in said oil.

ARTICLE XIII.—CREATING A SECRET TASK FORCE

TO DEVELOP ENERGY AND MILITARY POLICIES

WITH RESPECT TO IRAQ AND OTHER COUNTRIES

A Government Accountability Office (GAO)
Report on the Cheney Energy Task Force, in

August 2003, described the creation of this
task force as follows:

‘‘In a January 29, 2001, memorandum, the
President established NEPDG [the National
Energy Policy Development Group]—comprised
of the Vice President, nine cabinet-
level officials, and four other senior administration
officials—to gather information, deliberate,
and make recommendations to the
President by the end of fiscal year 2001. The
President called on the Vice President to
chair the group, direct its work and, as necessary,
establish subordinate working groups
to assist NEPDG.’’

The four ‘‘other senior administration officials
were the Director of the Office of Management
and Budget, the Assistant to the
President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy,
the Assistant to the President for Economic
Policy, and the Deputy Assistant to
the President for Intergovernmental Affairs.

The GAO report found that: ‘‘In developing
the National Energy Policy report, the
NEPDG Principals, Support Group, and participating
agency officials and staff met
with, solicited input from, or received information
and advice from nonfederal energy
stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal,
nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industry
representatives and lobbyists. The extent to
which submissions from any of these stakeholders
were solicited, influenced policy deliberations,
or were incorporated into the
final report cannot be determined based on
the limited information made available to
GAO. NEPDG met and conducted its work in
two distinct phases: the first phase culminated
in a March 19, 2001, briefing to the
President on challenges relating to energy
supply and the resulting economic impact;
the second phase ended with the May 16, 2001,
presentation of the final report to the President.
The Office of the Vice President’s
(OVP) unwillingness to provide the NEPDG
records or other related information precluded
GAO from fully achieving its objectives
and substantially limited GAO’s ability
to comprehensively analyze the NEPDG
process. associated with that process.

‘‘None of the key federal entities involved
in the NEPDG effort provided GAO with a
complete accounting of the costs that they
incurred during the development of the National
Energy Policy report. The two federal
entities responsible for funding the NEPDG
effort—OVP and the Department of Energy
(DOE)—did not provide the comprehensive
cost information that GAO requested. OVP
provided GAO with 77 pages of information,
two-thirds of which contained no cost information
while the remaining one-third contained
some miscellaneous information of
little to no usefulness. OVP stated that it
would not provide any additional information.
DOE, the Department of the Interior,
and the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) provided GAO with estimates of certain
costs and salaries associated with the
NEPDG effort, but these estimates, all calculated
in different ways, were not comprehensive.’’

In 2003, the Commerce Department disclosed
a partial collection of materials from
the NEPDG, including documents, maps, and
charts, dated March 2001, of Iraq’s, Saudi
Arabia’s and the United Arab Emirates’ oil
fields, pipelines, refineries, tanker terminals,
and development projects.

On November 16, 2005, the Washington Post
reported on a White House document showing
that oil company executives had met
with the NEPDG, something that some of
those same executives had just that week denied
in Congressional testimony. The Bush
Administration had not corrected the inaccurate
testimony.

On July 18, 2007, the Washington Post reported
the full list of names of those who had
met with the NEPDG.

In 1998 Kenneth Derr, then chief executive
of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience,
‘‘Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas,
reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.’’
According to the GAO report, Chevron provided
detailed advice to the NEPDG.

In March, 2001, the NEPDG recommended
that the United States Government support
initiatives by Middle Eastern countries ‘‘to
open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign
investment.’’ Following the invasion of
Iraq, the United States has pressured the
new Iraqi parliament to pass a hydrocarbon
law that would do exactly that. The draft
law, if passed, would take the majority of
Iraq’s oil out of the exclusive hands of the
Iraqi Government and open it to international
oil companies for a generation or
more. The Bush administration hired Bearing
Point, a U.S. company, to help write the
law in 2004. It was submitted to the Iraqi
Council of Representatives in May 2007.

USE AND EXPOSURE OF CLASSIFIED INFORMA

TION AND OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE IN THE

MATTER OF VALERIE PLAME WILSON, CLAN

DESTINE AGENT OF THE CENTRAL INTEL

LIGENCE AGENCY

(1) suppressed material information;
(2) selectively declassified information for
the improper purposes of retaliating against
a whistleblower and presenting a misleading
picture of the alleged threat from Iraq;
(3) facilitated the exposure of the identity
of Valerie Plame Wilson who had theretofore
been employed as a covert CIA operative;
(4) failed to investigate the improper leaks
of classified information from within his administration;
(5) failed to cooperate with an investigation
into possible federal violations resulting
from this activity; and
(6) finally, entirely undermined the prosecution
by commuting the sentence of Lewis
Libby citing false and insubstantial grounds,
all in an effort to prevent Congress and the
citizens of the United States from discovering
the deceitful nature of the President’s
claimed justifications for the invasion of
Iraq.
In facilitating this exposure of classified
information and the subsequent cover-up, in
all of these actions and decisions, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary
to his trust as President, and subversive
of constitutional government, to the
prejudice of the cause of law and justice and
to the manifest injury of the people of the
United States. Wherefore, President George

W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from
office.
ARTICLE XV.—PROVIDING IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION
FOR CRIMINAL CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ
In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation

H5096
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

U.S. law, and international law.
Lewis Paul Bremer III, then-Director of
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance
for post-war Iraq, on June 27, 2004,
issued Coalition Provisional Authority Order
Number 17, which granted members of the

U.S. military, U.S. mercenaries, and other
U.S. contractor employees immunity from
Iraqi law.
The Bush Administration has chosen not
to apply the Uniform Code of Military Justice
or United States law to mercenaries and
other contractors employed by the United
States government in Iraq.

Operating free of Iraqi or U.S. law, mercenaries
have killed many Iraqi civilians in a
manner that observers have described as aggression
and not as self-defense. Many U.S.
contractors have also alleged that they have
been the victims of aggression (in several
cases of rape) by their fellow contract employees
in Iraq. These charges have not been
brought to trial, and in several cases the
contracting companies and the U.S. State
Department have worked together in attempting
to cover them up.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to
which the United States is party, and which
under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution is
therefore the supreme law of the United
States, it is the responsibility of an occupying
force to ensure the protection and
human rights of the civilian population. The
efforts of President Bush and his subordinates
to attempt to establish a lawless zone
in Iraq are in violation of the law.

In all of these actions and decisions, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President and subversive
of constitutional government, to the
prejudice of the cause of law and justice and
to the manifest injury of the people of the
United States. Wherefore, President George

W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from
office.
ARTICLE
XVI.—RECKLESS MISSPENDING AND
WASTE OF US TAX DOLLARS IN CONNECTION
WITH IRAQ CONTRACTORS

In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, together with the Vice President,
recklessly wasted public funds on contracts
awarded to close associates, including
companies guilty of defrauding the government
in the past, contracts awarded without
competitive bidding, ‘‘cost-plus’’ contracts
designed to encourage cost overruns, and
contracts not requiring satisfactory completion
of the work. These failures have been
the rule, not the exception, in the awarding
of contracts for work in the United States
and abroad over the past seven years. Repeated
exposure of fraud and waste has not
been met by the president with correction of

systemic problems, but rather with retribution
against whistleblowers.

The House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform reported on Iraq reconstruction
contracting:

‘‘From the beginning, the Administration
adopted a flawed contracting approach in
Iraq. Instead of maximizing competition, the
Administration opted to award no-bid, cost-
plus contracts to politically connected contractors.
Halliburton’s secret $7 billion contract
to restore Iraq’s oil infrastructure is
the prime example. Under this no-bid, cost-
plus contract, Halliburton was reimbursed
for its costs and then received an additional
fee, which was a percentage of its costs. This
created an incentive for Halliburton to run
up its costs in order to increase its potential
profit.

‘‘Even after the Administration claimed it
was awarding Iraq contracts competitively
in early 2004, real price competition was
missing. Iraq was divided geographically and
by economic sector into a handful of
fiefdoms. Individual contractors were then
awarded monopoly contracts for all of the
work within given fiefdoms. Because these
monopoly contracts were awarded before
specific projects were identified, there was
no actual price competition for more than
2,000 projects.

‘‘In the absence of price competition, rigorous
government oversight becomes essential
for accountability. Yet the Administration
turned much of the contract oversight
work over to private companies with blatant
conflicts of interest. Oversight contractors
oversaw their business partners and, in some
cases, were placed in a position to assist
their own construction work under separate
monopoly construction contracts. . . .

‘‘Under Halliburton’s two largest Iraq contracts,
Pentagon auditors found $1 billion in
‘questioned’ costs and over $400 million in
’unsupported’ costs. Former Halliburton employees
testified that the company charged
$45 for cases of soda, billed $100 to clean 15-
pound bags of laundry, and insisted on housing
its staff at the five-star Kempinski hotel
in Kuwait. Halliburton truck drivers testified
that the company ‘torched’ brand new
$85,000 trucks rather than perform relatively
minor repairs and regular maintenance. Halliburton
procurement officials described the
company’s informal motto in Iraq as ’Don’t
worry about price. It’s cost-plus.’ A Halliburton
manager was indicted for ‘major
fraud against the United States’ for allegedly
billing more than $5.5 billion for work
that should have cost only $685,000 in exchange
for a $1 million kickback from a Kuwaiti
subcontractor. . . .

‘‘The Air Force found that another U.S.
government contractor, Custer Battles, set
up shell subcontractors to inflate prices.
Those overcharges were passed along to the

U.S. government under the company’s cost-
plus contract to provide security for Baghdad
International Airport. In one case, the
company allegedly took Iraqi-owned forklifts,
re-painted them, and leased them to
the U.S. government.
‘‘Despite the spending of billions of taxpayer
dollars, U.S. reconstruction efforts in
keys sectors of the Iraqi economy are failing.
Over two years after the U.S.-led invasion of
Iraq, oil and electricity production has fallen
below pre-war levels. The Administration
has failed to even measure how many Iraqis
lack access to drinkable water.’’

‘‘Constitution in Crisis,’’ a book by Congressman
John Conyers, details the Bush Administration’s
response when contract abuse
is made public:

‘‘Bunnatine Greenhouse was the chief contracting
officer at the Army Corps of Engineers,
the agency that has managed much of
the reconstruction work in Iraq. In October

2004, Ms. Greenhouse came forward and revealed
that top Pentagon officials showed
improper favoritism to Halliburton when
awarding military contracts to Halliburton
subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR).
Greenhouse stated that when the Pentagon
awarded Halliburton a five-year $7 billion
contract, it pressured her to withdraw her
objections, actions which she claimed were
unprecedented in her experience.

‘‘On June 27, 2005, Ms. Greenhouse testified
before Congress, detailing that the contract
award process was compromised by improper
influence by political appointees, participation
by Halliburton officials in meetings
where bidding requirements were discussed,
and a lack of competition. She stated that
the Halliburton contracts represented ‘‘the
most blatant and improper contract abuse I
have witnessed during the course of my professional
career.’’ Days before the hearing,
the acting general counsel of the Army Corps
of Engineers paid Ms. Greenhouse a visit and
reportedly let it be known that it would not
be in her best interest to appear voluntarily.

‘‘On August 27, 2005, the Army demoted Ms.
Greenhouse, removing her from the elite
Senior Executive Service and transferring
her to a lesser job in the corps’ civil works
division. As Frank Rich of The New York
Times described the situation, ’[H]er crime
was not obstructing justice but pursuing it
by vehemently questioning irregularities in
the awarding of some $7 billion worth of no-
bid contracts in Iraq to the Halliburton subsidiary
Kellogg Brown Root.’ The demotion
was in apparent retaliation for her speaking
out against the abuses, even though she previously
had stellar reviews and over 20 years
of experience in military procurement.’’

The House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform reports on domestic
contracting:

‘‘The Administration’s domestic contracting
record is no better than its record
on Iraq. Waste, fraud, and abuse appear to be
the rule rather than the exception....

‘‘A Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) cost-plus contract with NCS
Pearson, Inc., to hire federal airport screeners
was plagued by poor management and
egregious waste. Pentagon auditors challenged
$303 million (over 40%) of the $741 million
spent by Pearson under the contract.
The auditors detailed numerous concerns
with the charges of Pearson and its subcontractors,
such as ‘$20-an-hour temporary
workers billed to the government at $48 per
hour, subcontractors who signed out $5,000 in
cash at a time with no supporting documents,
$377,273.75 in unsubstantiated long
distance phone calls, $514,201 to rent tents
that flooded in a rainstorm, [and] $4.4 million
in ‘‘no show’’ fees for job candidates who
did not appear for tests.’ A Pearson employee
who supervised Pearson’s hiring efforts
at 43 sites in the U.S. described the contract
as ‘a waste a taxpayer’s money.’ The
CEO of one Pearson subcontractor paid herself
$5.4 million for nine months work and
provided herself with a $270,000 pension. . . .

‘‘The Administration is spending $239 million
on the Integrated Surveillance and Intelligence
System, a no-bid contract to provide
thousands of cameras and sensors to
monitor activity on the Mexican and Canadian
borders. Auditors found that the contractor,
International Microwave Corp.,
billed for work it never did and charged for
equipment it never provided, ’creat[ing] a
potential for overpayments of almost $13
million.’ Moreover, the border monitoring
system reportedly does not work....

‘‘After spending more than $4.5 billion on
screening equipment for the nation’s entry
points, the Department of Homeland Security
is now ‘moving to replace or alter much
of’ it because ‘it is ineffective, unreliable or

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5097

too expensive to operate.’ For example, radiation
monitors at ports and borders reportedly
could not ‘differentiate between radiation
emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally
occurring radiation from everyday material
like cat litter or ceramic tile.’ ...

‘‘The TSA awarded Boeing a cost-plus contract
to install over 1,000 explosive detection
systems for airline passenger luggage. After
installation, the machines ‘began to register
false alarms’ and ‘[s]creeners were forced to
open and hand-check bags.’ To reduce the
number of false alarms, the sensitivity of the
machines was lowered, which reduced the effectiveness
of the detectors. Despite these
serious problems, Boeing received an $82 million
profit that the Inspector General determined
to be ‘excessive.’ ...

‘‘The FBI spent $170 million on a ‘Virtual
Case File’ system that does not operate as
required. After three years of work under a
cost-plus contract failed to produce a functional
system, the FBI scrapped the program
and began work on the new ‘Sentinel’ Case
File System....

‘‘The Department of Homeland Security
Inspector General found that taxpayer dollars
were being lavished on perks for agency
officials. One IG report found that TSA spent
over $400,000 on its first leader’s executive office
suite. Another found that TSA spent
$350,000 on a gold-plated gym....

‘‘According to news reports, Pentagon
auditors . . . examined a contract between
the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) and Unisys, a technology and consulting
company, for the upgrade of airport
computer networks. Among other irregularities,
government auditors found that Unisys
may have overbilled for as much as 171,000
hours of labor and overtime by charging for
employees at up to twice their actual rate of
compensation. While the cost ceiling for the
contract was set at $1 billion, Unisys has reportedly
billed the government $940 million
with more than half of the seven-year contract
remaining and more than half of the
TSA-monitored airports still lacking upgraded
networks.’’

ARTICLE XVII.—ILLEGAL DETENTION: DETAINING

INDEFINITELY AND WITHOUT CHARGE PERSONS

BOTH U.S. CITIZENS AND FOREIGN CAPTIVES

In a statement on Feb. 7, 2002, President
Bush declared that in the US fight against
Al Qaeda, ‘‘none of the provisions of Geneva
apply,’’ thus rejecting the Geneva Conventions
that protect captives in wars and other
conflicts. By that time, the administration
was already transporting captives from the
war in Afghanistan, both alleged Al Qaeda

members and supporters, and also Afghans
accused of being fighters in the army of the
Taliban government, to US-run prisons in
Afghanistan and to the detention facility at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The round-up and
detention without charge of Muslim non-
citizens inside the US began almost immediately
after the September 11, 2001 attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
with some being held as long as nine
months. The US, on orders of the president,
began capturing and detaining without
charge alleged terror suspects in other countries
and detaining them abroad and at the
US Naval base in Guantanamo.

Many of these detainees have been subjected
to systematic abuse, including beatings,
which have been subsequently documented
by news reports, photographic evidence,
testimony in Congress, lawsuits, and
in the case of detainees in the US, by an investigation
conducted by the Justice Department’s
Office of the Inspector General.

In violation of US law and the Geneva Conventions,
the Bush Administration instructed
the Department of Justice and the
US Department of Defense to refuse to provide
the identities or locations of these detainees,
despite requests from Congress and
from attorneys for the detainees. The president
even declared the right to detain US
citizens indefinitely, without charge and
without providing them access to counsel or
the courts, thus depriving them of their constitutional
and basic human rights. Several
of those US citizens were held in military
brigs in solitary confinement for as long as
three years before being either released or
transferred to civilian detention.

Detainees in US custody in Iraq and Guantanamo
have, in violation of the Geneva Conventions,
been hidden from and denied visits
by the International Red Cross organization,
while thousands of others in Iraq, Guantanamo,
Afghanistan, ships in foreign off-shore
sites, and an unknown number of so-called
‘‘black sites’’ around the world have been denied
any opportunity to challenge their detentions.
The president, acting on his own
claimed authority, has declared the hundreds
of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to be
‘‘enemy combatants’’ not subject to US law
and not even subject to military law, but
nonetheless potentially liable to the death
penalty.

The detention of individuals without due
process violates the 5th Amendment. While
the Bush administration has been rebuked in
several court cases, most recently that of Ali
al-Marri, it continues to attempt to exceed
constitutional limits.

In all of these actions violating US and
International law, President George W. Bush
has acted in a manner contrary to his trust
as President and Commander in Chief, and
subversive of constitutional government, to
the prejudice of the cause of law and justice
and to the manifest injury of the people of
the United States. Wherefore, President
George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of
an impeachable offense warranting removal
from office.

ARTICLE XVIII.—TORTURE: SECRETLY AUTHORIZING,
AND ENCOURAGING THE USE OF TORTURE
AGAINST CAPTIVES IN AFGHANISTAN,
IRAQ, AND OTHER PLACES, AS A MATTER OF
OFFICIAL POLICY

sonally and acting through his agents and
subordinates, together with the Vice President,
violated United States and International
Law and the US Constitution by secretly
authorizing and encouraging the use
of torture against captives in Afghanistan,
Iraq in connection with the so-called ‘‘war’’
on terror.

In violation of the Constitution, US law,
the Geneva Conventions (to which the US is
a signatory), and in violation of basic human
rights, torture has been authorized by the
President and his administration as official
policy. Water-boarding, beatings, faked executions,
confinement in extreme cold or extreme
heat, prolonged enforcement of painful
stress positions, sleep deprivation, sexual
humiliation, and the defiling of religious articles
have been practiced and exposed as
routine at Guantanamo, at Abu Ghraib Prison
and other US detention sites in Iraq, and
at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The
president, besides bearing responsibility for
authorizing the use of torture, also as Commander
in Chief, bears ultimate responsibility
for the failure to halt these practices
and to punish those responsible once they
were exposed.

The administration has sought to claim
the abuse of captives is not torture, by redefining
torture. An August 1, 2002 memorandum
from the Administration’s Office of
Legal Counsel Jay S. Bybee addressed to
White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales
concluded that to constitute torture, any
pain inflicted must be akin to that accompanying
‘‘serious physical injury, such as
organ failure, impairment of bodily function,
or even death.’’ The memorandum went on
to state that even should an act constitute
torture under that minimal definition, it
might still be permissible if applied to ‘‘interrogations
undertaken pursuant to the
President’s Commander-in-Chief powers.’’
The memorandum further asserted that ‘‘necessity
or self-defense could provide justifications
that would eliminate any criminal
liability.’’

This effort to redefine torture by calling
certain practices simply ‘‘enhanced interrogation
techniques’’ flies in the face of the
Third Geneva Convention Relating to the
Treatment of Prisoners of War, which states
that ‘‘No physical or mental torture, nor any
other form of coercion, may be inflicted on
prisoners of war to secure from them information
of any kind whatever. Prisoners of
war who refuse to answer may not be threatened,
insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant
or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.’’

Torture is further prohibited by the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the
paramount international human rights
statement adopted unanimously by the
United Nations General Assembly, including
the United States, in 1948. Torture and other
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment is also prohibited by international
treaties ratified by the United
States: the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention
Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
(CAT).

When the Congress, in the Defense Authorization
Act of 2006, overwhelmingly passed a
measure banning torture and sent it to the
President’s desk for signature, the President,
who together with his vice president, had
fought hard to block passage of the amendment,
signed it, but then quietly appended a
signing statement in which he pointedly asserted
that as Commander-in-Chief, he was
not bound to obey its strictures.

The administration’s encouragement of
and failure to prevent torture of American
captives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and in the battle against terrorism, has undermined
the rule of law in the US and in the

H5098 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

US military, and has seriously damaged both
the effort to combat global terrorism, and
more broadly, America’s image abroad. In
his effort to hide torture by US military
forces and the CIA, the president has defied
Congress and has lied to the American people,
repeatedly claiming that the US ‘‘does
not torture.’’

In all of these actions and decisions in violation
of US and International law, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President and Commander
in Chief, and subversive of constitutional
government, to the prejudice of the
cause of law and justice and to the manifest
injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by
such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense
warranting removal from office.

ARTICLE XIX.—RENDITION: KIDNAPPING PEOPLE
AND TAKING THEM AGAINST THEIR WILL TO
‘‘BLACK SITES’’ LOCATED IN OTHER NATIONS,
INCLUDING NATIONS KNOWN TO PRACTICE TORTURE

The president has publicly admitted that
since the 9–11 attacks in 2001, the US has
been kidnapping and transporting against
the will of the subject (renditioning) in its
so-called ‘‘war’’ on terror—even people captured
by US personnel in friendly nations
like Sweden, Germany, Macedonia and
Italy—and ferrying them to places like
Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and to prisons
operated in Eastern European countries,
African Countries and Middle Eastern countries
where security forces are known to
practice torture.

These people are captured and held indefinitely,
without any charges being filed, and
are held without being identified to the Red
Cross, or to their families. Many are clearly
innocent, and several cases, including one in
Canada and one in Germany, have demonstrably
been shown subsequently to have
been in error, because of a similarity of
names or because of misinformation provided
to US authorities.

Such a policy is in clear violation of US
and International Law, and has placed the
United States in the position of a pariah
state. The CIA has no law enforcement authority,
and cannot legally arrest or detain
anyone. The program of ‘‘extraordinary rendition’’
authorized by the president is the
substantial equivalent of the policies of ‘‘disappearing’’
people, practices widely practiced
and universally condemned in the military
dictatorships of Latin America during
the late 20th Century.

The administration has claimed that prior
administrations have practiced extraordinary
rendition, but, while this is technically
true, earlier renditions were used
only to capture people with outstanding arrest
warrants or convictions who were outside
in order to deliver them to stand trial or
serve their sentences in the US. The president
has refused to divulge how many people
have been subject to extraordinary rendition
since September, 2001. It is possible that

some have died in captivity. As one US official
has stated off the record, regarding the
program, Some of those who were
renditioned were later delivered to Guantanamo,
while others were sent there directly.
An example of this is the case of six Algerian
Bosnians who, immediately after being
cleared by the Supreme Court of Bosnia
Herzegovina in January 2002 of allegedly
plotting to attack the US and UK embassies,
were captured, bound and gagged by US special
forces and renditioned to Guantanamo.

In perhaps the most egregious proven case
of rendition, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen
born in Syria, was picked up in September
2002 while transiting through New York’s
JFK airport on his way home to Canada. Immigration
and FBI officials detained and interrogated
him for nearly two weeks, illegally
denying him his rights to access counsel,
the Canadian consulate, and the courts.
Executive branch officials asked him if he
would volunteer to go to Syria, where he
hadn’t been in 15 years, and Maher refused

Maher was put on a private jet plane operated
by the CIA and sent to Jordan, where he
was beaten for 8 hours, and then delivered to
Syria, where he was beaten and interrogated
for 18 hours a day for a couple of weeks. He
was whipped on his back and hands with a 2
inch thick electric cable and asked questions
similar to those he had been asked in the
United States. For over ten months Maher
was held in an underground grave-like cell—
3 × 6 × 7 feet—which was damp and cold, and
in which the only light came in through a
hole in the ceiling. After a year of this,
Maher was released without any charges. He
is now back home in Canada with his family.
Upon his release, the Syrian Government announced
he had no links to Al Qaeda, and the
Canadian Government has also said they’ve
found no links to Al Qaeda. The Canadian
Government launched a Commission of Inquiry
into the Actions of Canadian Officials
in Relation to Maher Arar, to investigate the
role of Canadian officials, but the Bush Administration
has refused to cooperate with
the Inquiry.

Hundreds of flights of CIA-chartered planes
have been documented as having passed
through European countries on extraordinary
rendition missions like that involving
Maher Arar, but the administration refuses
to state how many people have been subjects
of this illegal program.

The same U.S. laws prohibiting aiding and
abetting torture also prohibit sending someone
to a country where there is a substantial
likelihood they may be tortured. Article 3 of
CAT prohibits forced return where there is a
‘‘substantial likelihood’’ that an individual
‘‘may be in danger of’’ torture, and has been
implemented by federal statute. Article 7 of
the ICCPR prohibits return to country of origin
where individuals may be ‘‘at risk’’ of either
torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment.

Under international Human Rights law,
transferring a POW to any nation where he
or she is likely to be tortured or inhumanely
treated violates Article 12 of the Third Geneva
Convention, and transferring any civilian
who is a protected person under the Fourth
Geneva Convention is a grave breach and a
criminal act.

In situations of armed conflict, both international
human rights law and humanitarian
law apply. A person captured in the zone of
military hostilities ‘‘must have some status
under international law; he is either a prisoner
of war and, as such, covered by the
Third Convention, [or] a civilian covered by
the Fourth Convention. . . . There is no intermediate
status; nobody in enemy hands
can be outside the law.’’ Although the state
is obligated to repatriate Prisoners of War as
soon as hostilities cease, the ICRC’s com

mentary on the 1949 Conventions states that
prisoners should not be repatriated where
there are serious reasons for fearing that repatriating
the individual would be contrary
to general principles of established international
law for the protection of human
beings Thus, all of the Guantanamo detainees
as well as renditioned captives are protected
by international human rights protections
and humanitarian law.

By his actions as outlined above, the President
has abused his power, broken the law,
deceived the American people, and placed
American military personnel, and indeed all
Americans—especially those who may travel
or live abroad—at risk of similar treatment.
Furthermore, in the eyes of the rest of the
world, the President has made the US, once
a model of respect for Human Rights and respect
for the rule of law, into a state where
international law is neither respected nor
upheld.

In all of these actions and decisions in violation
of United States and International
law, President George W. Bush has acted in
a manner contrary to his trust as President
and Commander in Chief, and subversive of
constitutional government, to the prejudice
of the cause of law and justice and to the
manifest injury of the people of the United
States. Wherefore, President George W.
Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from
office.

ARTICLE XX.—IMPRISONING CHILDREN
In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, authorized or permitted the arrest
and detention of at least 2500 children
under the age of 18 as ‘‘enemy combatants’’
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo
Bay Naval Station in violation of the Fourth
Geneva Convention relating to the treatment
of ‘‘protected persons’’ and the Optional
Protocol to the Geneva Convention on
the Rights of the Child on the Involvement
of Children in Armed Conflict, signed by the
US in 2002 . To wit:
In May 2008, the US government reported
to the United Nations that it has been holding
upwards of 2,500 children under the age of
18 as ‘‘enemy combatants’’ at detention centers
in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo
Bay (where there was a special center, Camp
Iguana, established just for holding children).
The length of these detentions has frequently
exceeded a year, and in some cases
has stretched to five years. Some of these detainees
have reached adulthood in detention
and are now not being reported as child detainees
because they are no longer children.
In addition to detaining children as
‘‘enemy combatants,’’ it has been widely reported
in media reports that the US military
in Iraq has, based upon Pentagon rules of engagement,
been treating boys as young as 14
years of age as ‘‘potential combatants,’’ subject
to arrest and even to being killed. In
Fallujah, in the days ahead of the November
2004 all-out assault, Marines ringing the city
were reported to be turning back into the
city men and boys ‘‘of combat age’’ who were
trying to flee the impending scene of battle—
an act which in itself is a violation of the
Geneva Conventions, which require combatants
to permit anyone, combatants as well
as civilians, to surrender, and to leave the
scene of battle.

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5099

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to
which the United States has been a signatory
since 1949, children under the age of 15
captured in conflicts, even if they have been
fighting, are to be considered victims, not
prisoners. In 2002, the United States signed
the Optional Protocol to the Geneva Convention
on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement
of children in Armed Conflict,
which raised this age for this category of
‘‘protected person’’ to under 18.

The continued detention of such children,
some as young as 10, by the US military is a
violation of both convention and protocol,
and as such constitutes a war crime for
which the president, as commander in chief,
bears full responsibility.

ARTICLE XXI.—MISLEADING CONGRESS AND THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT THREATS FROM
IRAN, AND SUPPORTING TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
WITHIN IRAN, WITH THE GOAL OF OVERTHROWING
THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT

The National Intelligence Estimate released
to Congress and the public on December
4, 2007, which confirmed that the government
of the nation of Iran had ceased any efforts
to develop nuclear weapons, was completed
in 2006. Yet, the president and his
aides continued to suggest during 2007 that
such a nuclear threat was developing and
might already exist. National Security Adviser
Stephen Hadley stated at the time the
National Intelligence Estimate regarding
Iran was released that the president had
been briefed on its findings ‘‘in the last few
months.’’ Hadley’s statement establishes a
timeline that shows the president knowingly
sought to deceive Congress and the American
people about a nuclear threat that did not
exist.

Hadley has stated that the president ‘‘was
basically told: stand down’’ and, yet, the
president and his aides continued to make
false claims about the prospect that Iran was
trying to ‘‘build a nuclear weapon’’ that
could lead to ‘‘World War III.’’

This evidence establishes that the president
actively engaged in and had full knowledge
of a campaign by his administration to
make a false ‘‘case’’ for an attack on Iran,
thus warping the national security debate at
a critical juncture and creating the prospect
of an illegal and unnecessary attack on a
sovereign nation.

Even after the National Intelligence Estimate
was released to Congress and the American
people, the president stated that he did
not believe anything had changed and suggested
that he and members of his administration
would continue to argue that Iran
should be seen as posing a threat to the
United States. He did this despite the fact
that United States intelligence agencies had
clearly and officially stated that this was
not the case.

Evidence suggests that the Bush Administration’s
attempts to portray Iran as a
threat are part of a broader U.S. policy toward
Iran. On September 30, 2001, then-Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld established
an official military objective of overturning
the regime in Iran, as well as those
in Iraq, Syria, and four other countries in
the Middle East, according to a document
quoted in then-Undersecretary of Defense for
Policy Douglas Feith’s book, ‘‘War and Decision.’’

General Wesley Clark, reports in his book
‘‘Winning Modern Wars’’ being told by a
friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that
the list of governments that Rumsfeld and
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
planned to overthrow included Iraq, Iran,
Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia. Clark
writes that the list also included Lebanon.

Journalist Gareth Porter reported in May
2008 asking Feith at a public event which of
the six regimes on the Clark list were included
in the Rumsfeld paper, to which Feith
replied ‘‘All of them.’’

Rumsfeld’s aides also drafted a second
version of the paper, as instructions to all
military commanders in the development of
‘‘campaign plans against terrorism’’. The
paper called for military commanders to assist
other government agencies ‘‘as directed’’
to ‘‘encourage populations dominated by terrorist
organizations or their supporters to
overthrow that domination.’’

In January 2005, Seymour Hersh reported
in the New Yorker Magazine that the Bush
Administration had been conducting secret
reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least
since the summer of 2004.

In June 2005 former United Nations weapons
inspector Scott Ritter reported that
United States security forces had been sending
members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq
(MEK) into Iranian territory. The MEK has
been designated a terrorist organization by
the United States, the European Union, Canada,
Iraq, and Iran. Ritter reported that the
United States Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) had used the MEK to carry out remote
bombings in Iran.

In April 2006, Hersh reported in the New
Yorker Magazine that U.S. combat troops
had entered and were operating in Iran,
where they were working with minority
groups including the Azeris, Baluchis, and
Kurds.

Also in April 2006, Larisa Alexandrovna reported
on Raw Story that the U.S. Department
of Defense (DOD) was working with and
training the MEK, or former members of the
MEK, sending them to commit acts of violence
in southern Iran in areas where recent
attacks had left many dead. Raw Story reported
that the Pentagon had adopted the
policy of supporting MEK shortly after the
2003 invasion of Iraq, and in response to the
influence of Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s
office. Raw Story subsequently reported
that no Presidential finding, and no
Congressional oversight, existed on MEK operations.

In March 2007, Hersh reported in the New
Yorker Magazine that the Bush administration
was attempting to stem the growth of
Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically
the Iranian government and Hezbollah
in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni organizations,
without any Congressional authorization
or oversight. Hersh said funds had
been given to ‘‘three Sunni jihadist groups
. . . connected to al Qaeda’’ that ‘‘want to
take on Hezbollah.’’

In April 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported
that conflicts with insurgent groups
along Iran’s borders were understood by the
Iranian government as a proxy war with the
United States and were leading Iran to support
its allies against the United States’ oc

cupation force in Iraq. Among the groups the

U.S. DOD is supporting, according to this report,
is the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan,
known by its Kurdish acronym, PEJAK. The
United States has provided ‘‘foodstuffs, economic
assistance, medical supplies and Russian
military equipment, some of it funneled
through nonprofit groups.’’
In May 2008, Andrew Cockburn reported on
Counter Punch that President Bush, six
weeks earlier had signed a secret finding authorizing
a covert offensive against the Iranian
regime. President Bush’s secret directive
covers actions across an area stretching
from Lebanon to Afghanistan, and purports
to sanction actions up to and including the
funding of organizations like the MEK and
the assassination of public officials.

All of these actions by the president and
his agents and subordinates exhibit a disregard
for the truth and a recklessness with
regard to national security, nuclear proliferation
and the global role of the United
States military that is not merely unacceptable
but dangerous in a commander-in-chief.

ARTICLE XXII—CREATING SECRET LAWS
In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, together with the Vice President,
established a body of secret laws
through the issuance of legal opinions by the
Department of Justice’s Office of Legal
Counsel (OLC).
The OLC’s March 14, 2003, interrogation
memorandum (‘‘Yoo Memorandum’’) was declassified
years after it served as law for the
executive branch. On April 29, 2008, House
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers
and Subcommittee on the Constitution,
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Chairman
Jerrold Nadler wrote in a letter to Attorney
General Michael Mukasey:
‘‘It appears to us that there was never any
legitimate basis for the purely legal analysis
contained in this document to be classified
in the first place. The Yoo Memorandum
does not describe sources and methods of intelligence
gathering, or any specific facts regarding
any interrogation activities. Instead,
it consists almost entirely of the Department’s
legal views, which are not properly
kept secret from Congress and the
American people. J. William Leonard, the
Director of the National Archive’s Office of
Information Security Oversight Office, and a
top expert in this field concurs, commenting
that ‘[t]he document in question is purely a
legal analysis’ that contains ‘nothing which
would justify classification.’ In addition, the
Yoo Memorandum suggests an extraordinary
breadth and aggressiveness of OLC’s secret
legal opinion-making. Much attention has
rightly been given to the statement in footnote
10 in the March 14, 2003, memorandum
that, in an October 23, 2001, opinion, OLC
concluded ‘that the Fourth Amendment had
no application to domestic military operations.’
As you know, we have requested a

H5100 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

copy of that memorandum on no less than
four prior occasions and we continue to demand
access to this important document.

‘‘In addition to this opinion, however, the
Yoo Memorandum references at least 10
other OLC opinions on weighty matters of
great interest to the American people that
also do not appear to have been released.
These appear to cover matters such as the
power of Congress to regulate the conduct of
military commissions, legal constraints on
the ‘military detention of United States citizens,’
legal rules applicable to the boarding
and searching foreign ships, the President’s
authority to render U.S. detainees to the
custody of foreign governments, and the
President’s authority to breach or suspend

U.S. treaty obligations. Furthermore, it has
been more than five years since the Yoo
Memorandum was authored, raising the
question how many other such memoranda
and letters have been secretly authored and
utilized by the Administration.
‘‘Indeed, a recent court filing by the Department
in FOIA litigation involving the
Central Intelligence Agency identifies 8 additional
secret OLC opinions, dating from August
6, 2004, to February 18, 2007. Given that
these reflect only OLC memoranda identified
in the files of the CIA, and based on the sampling
procedures under which that listing
was generated, it appears that these represent
only a small portion of the secret OLC
memoranda generated during this time, with
the true number almost certainly much
higher.’’

Senator Russ Feingold, in a statement during
an April 30, 2008, senate hearing stated:

‘‘It is a basic tenet of democracy that the
people have a right to know the law. In keeping
with this principle, the laws passed by
Congress and the case law of our courts have
historically been matters of public record.
And when it became apparent in the middle
of the 20th century that federal agencies
were increasingly creating a body of non-
public administrative law, Congress passed
several statutes requiring this law to be
made public, for the express purpose of preventing
a regime of ‘secret law.’ That purpose
today is being thwarted. Congressional
enactments and agency regulations are for
the most part still public. But the law that
applies in this country is determined not
only by statutes and regulations, but also by
the controlling interpretations of courts and,
in some cases, the executive branch. More
and more, this body of executive and judicial
law is being kept secret from the public, and
too often from Congress as well. . . .

‘‘A legal interpretation by the Justice Department’s
Office of Legal Counsel . . . binds
the entire executive branch, just like a regulation
or the ruling of a court. In the words
of former OLC head Jack Goldsmith, ‘These
executive branch precedents are ‘‘law’’ for
the executive branch.’ The Yoo memorandum
was, for a nine-month period in 2003
until it was withdrawn by Mr. Goldsmith,
the law that this Administration followed
when it came to matters of torture. And of
course, that law was essentially a declaration
that few if any laws applied . . .

‘‘Another body of secret law is the controlling
interpretations of the Fo reign Intelligence
Surveillance Act that are issued by
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
FISA, of course, is the law that governs the
government’s ability in intelligence investigations
to conduct wiretaps and search the
homes of people in the United States. Under
that statute, the FISA Court is directed to
evaluate wiretap and search warrant applications
and decide whether the standard for
issuing a warrant has been met—a largely
factual evaluation that is properly done behind
closed doors. But with the evolution of
technology and with this Administration’s

efforts to get the Court’s blessing for its illegal
wiretapping activities, we now know that
the Court’s role is broader, and that it is
very much engaged in substantive interpretations
of the governing statute. These interpretations
are as much a part of this
country’s surveillance law as the statute
itself. Without access to them, it is impossible
for Congress or the public to have an
informed debate on matters that deeply affect
the privacy and civil liberties of all
Americans . . .

‘‘The Administration’s shroud of secrecy
extends to agency rules and executive pronouncements,
such as Executive Orders, that
carry the force of law. Through the diligent
efforts of my colleague Senator Whitehouse,
we have learned that OLC has taken the position
that a President can ‘waive’ or ‘modify’
a published Executive Order without any
notice to the public or Congress simply by
not following it.’’

In all of these actions and decisions, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President, and subversive
of constitutional government, to the
prejudice of the cause of law and justice and
to the manifest injury of the people of the
United States. Wherefore, President George

W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from
office.
ARTICLE XXIII—VIOLATION OF THE POSSE
COMITATUS ACT

In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, repeatedly and illegally established
programs to appropriate the power of
the military for use in law enforcement. Specifically,
he has contravened U.S.C. Title 18,
Section 1385, originally enacted in 1878, subsequently
amended as ‘‘Use of Army and Air
Force as Posse Comitatus’’ and commonly
known as the Posse Comitatus Act.

The Act states:

‘‘Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances
expressly authorized by the Constitution
or Act of Congress, willfully uses
any part of the Army or the Air Force as a
posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the
laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
not more than two years, or both.’’

The Posse Comitatus Act is designed to
prevent the military from becoming a national
police force.

The Declaration of Independence states as
a specific grievance against the British that
the King had ‘‘kept among us, in times of
peace, Standing Armies without the consent
of our legislatures,’’ had ‘‘affected to render
the Military independent of and superior to
the civil power,’’ and had ‘‘quarter[ed] large
bodies of armed troops among us . . . protecting
them, by a mock trial, from punishment
for any murders which they should
commit on the inhabitants of these States’’

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s intent,
and in contravention of the law, President
Bush:

(a) has used military forces for law enforcement
purposes on U.S. border patrol;
(b) has established a program to use military
personnel for surveillance and information
on criminal activities;
(c) is using military espionage equipment
to collect intelligence information for law
enforcement use on civilians within the
United States; and
(d) employs active duty military personnel
in surveillance agencies, including the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In June 2006, President Bush ordered National
Guard troops deployed to the border
shared by Mexico with Arizona, Texas, and
California. This deployment, which by 2007
reached a maximum of 6,000 troops, had orders
to ‘‘conduct surveillance and operate detection
equipment, work with border entry
identification teams, analyze information,
assist with communications and give administrative
support to the Border Patrol’’ and
concerned ‘‘. . . providing intelligence, inspecting
cargo, and conducting surveillance.’’

The Air Force’s ‘‘Eagle Eyes’’ program encourages
Air Force military staff to gather
evidence on American citizens. Eagle Eyes
instructs Air Force personnel to engage in
surveillance and then advises them to ‘‘alert
local authorities,’’ asking military staff to
surveil and gather evidence on public citizens.
This contravenes DoD Directive 5525.5
‘‘SUBJECT: DoD Cooperation with Civilian
Law Enforcement’’ which limits such activities.

President Bush has implemented a program
to use imagery from military satellites
for domestic law enforcement through the
National Applications Office.

President Bush has assigned numerous active
duty military personnel to civilian institutions
such as the CIA and the Department
of Homeland Security, both of which
have responsibilities for law enforcement
and intelligence.

In addition, on May 9, 2007, President Bush
released ‘‘National Security Presidential Directive/
NSPD 51,’’ which effectively gives the
president unchecked power to control the entire
government and to define that government
in time of an emergency, as well as the
power to determine whether there is an
emergency. The document also contains
‘‘classified Continuity Annexes.’’ In July 2007
and again in August 2007 Rep. Peter DeFazio,
a senior member of the House Homeland Security
Committee, sought access to the classified
annexes. DeFazio and other leaders of
the Homeland Security Committee, including
Chairman Bennie Thompson, have been
denied a review of the Continuity of Government
classified annexes.

WITHOUT A COURT-ORDERED WARRANT, IN VIO

LATION OF THE LAW AND THE FOURTH AMEND

MENT

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE
H5101

subordinates, knowingly violated the fourth
Amendment to the Constitution and the Foreign
Intelligence Service Act of 1978 (FISA)
by authorizing warrantless electronic surveillance
of American citizens to wit:

(1) The President was aware of the FISA
Law requiring a court order for any wiretap
as evidenced by the following:
(A) ‘‘Now, by the way, any time you hear
the United States government talking about
wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a
court order. Nothing has changed, by the
way. When we’re talking about chasing down
terrorists, we’re talking about getting a
court order before we do so.’’ White House
Press conference on April 20, 2004. [White
House Transcript]
(B) ‘‘Law enforcement officers need a federal
judge’s permission to wiretap a foreign
terrorist’s phone, or to track his calls, or to
search his property. Officers must meet
strict standards to use any of the tools we’re
talking about.’’ President Bush’s speech in
Baltimore Maryland on July 20th 2005.
[White House Transcript]
(2) The President repeatedly ordered the
NSA to place wiretaps on American citizens
without requesting a warrant from FISA as
evidenced by the following:
(A) ‘‘Months after the Sept. 11 attacks,
President Bush secretly authorized the National
Security Agency to eavesdrop on
Americans and others inside the United
States to search for evidence of terrorist activity
without the court-approved warrants
ordinarily required for domestic spying, according
to government officials.’’ New York
Times article by James Risen and Eric
Lichtblau on December 12, 2005. [NYTimes]
(B) The President admits to authorizing
the program by stating ‘‘I have reauthorized
this program more than 30 times since the
September the 11th attacks, and I intend to
do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing
threat from al Qaeda and related
groups. The NSA’s activities under this authorization
are thoroughly reviewed by the
Justice Department and NSA’s top legal officials,
including NSA’s general counsel and
inspector general. Leaders in Congress have
been briefed more than a dozen times on this
authorization and the activities conducted
under it.’’ Radio Address from the White
House on December 17, 2005. [White House
Transcript]
(C) In a December 19th 2005 press conference
the President publicly admitted to
using a combination of surveillance techniques
including some with permission from
the FISA courts and some without permission
from FISA.
Reporter: It was, why did you skip the
basic safeguards of asking courts for permission
for the intercepts?

The President: . . . We use FISA still—
you’re referring to the FISA court in your
question—of course, we use FISAs. But FISA
is for long-term monitoring. What is needed
in order to protect the American people is
the ability to move quickly to detect. Now,
having suggested this idea, I then, obviously,
went to the question, is it legal to do so? I
am—I swore to uphold the laws. Do I have
the legal authority to do this? And the answer
is, absolutely. As I mentioned in my remarks,
the legal authority is derived from
the Constitution, as well as the authorization
of force by the United States Congress.’’
[White House Transcript]

(D) Mike McConnel, the Director of National
Intelligence, in a letter to to Senator
Arlen Specter, acknowledged that Bush’s Executive
Order in 2001 authorized a series of
secret surveillance activities and included
undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless
surveillance of e-mails and phone
calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.
‘‘NSA Spying Part of Broader Effort’’ by Dan
Eggen, Washington Post, 8/1/07.
(3) The President ordered the surveillance
to be conducted in a way that would spy
upon private communications between
American citizens located within the United
States borders as evidenced by the following:
(A) Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications
technician, submitted an affidavit
in support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s
FF’s lawsuit against AT&T. He testified
that in 2003 he connected a ‘‘splitter’’
that sent a copy of Internet traffic and
phone calls to a secure room that was operated
by the NSA in the San Francisco office
of AT&T. He heard from a co-worker that
similar rooms were being constructed in
other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los
Angeles and San Diego. From ‘‘Whistle-
Blower Outs NSA Spy Room,’’ Wired News, 4/
7/06 [Wired] [EFF Case]
(4) The President asserted an inherent authority
to conduct electronic surveillance
based on the Constitution and the ‘‘Authorization
to use Military Force in Iraq’’
(AUMF) that was not legally valid as evidenced
by the following:
(A) In a December 19th, 2005 Press Briefing
General Alberto Gonzales admitted that the
surveillance authorized by the President was
not only done without FISA warrants, but
that the nature of the surveillance was so far
removed from what FISA can approve that
FISA could not even be amended to allow it.
Gonzales stated ‘‘We have had discussions
with Congress in the past—certain members
of Congress—as to whether or not FISA
could be amended to allow us to adequately
deal with this kind of threat, and we were
advised that that would be difficult, if not
impossible.’’.
(B) The fourth amendment to the United
States Constitution states ‘‘The right of the
people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable
cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,
and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be
seized.’’
(C) ‘‘The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act of 1978 unambiguously limits warrantless
domestic electronic surveillance,
even in a congressionally declared war, to
the first 15 days of that war; criminalizes
any such electronic surveillance not authorized
by statute; and expressly establishes
FISA and two chapters of the federal criminal
code, governing wiretaps for intelligence
purposes and for criminal investigation, respectively,
as the ‘‘exclusive means by which
electronic surveillance . . . and the interception
of domestic wire, oral, and electronic
communications may be conducted.’’ 50
U.S.C. 1811, 1809, 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(f).’’ Letter
from Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe
to John Conyers on 1/6/06.
(D) In a December 19th, 2005 Press Briefing
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated
‘‘Our position is, is that the authorization to
use force, which was passed by the Congress
in the days following September 11th, constitutes
that other authorization, that other
statute by Congress, to engage in this kind
of signals intelligence.’’
(E) The ‘‘Authorization to use Military
Force in Iraq’’ does not give any explicit authorization
related to electronic surveillance.
[HJRes114]
(F) ‘‘From the foregoing analysis, it appears
unlikely that a court would hold that
Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized
the NSA electronic surveillance operations
here under discussion, and it would
likewise appear that, to the extent that
those surveillances fall within the definition
of ‘‘electronic surveillance’’ within the
meaning of FISA or any activity regulated
under Title III, Congress intended to cover
the entire field with these statutes.’’ From
the ‘‘Presidential Authority to Conduct
Warrantless Electronic Surveillance to
Gather Foreign Intelligence Information’’ by
the Congressional Research Service on January
5, 2006.

(G) ‘‘The inescapable conclusion is that the
AUMF did not implicitly authorize what the
FISA expressly prohibited. It follows that
the presidential program of surveillance at
issue here is a violation of the separation of
powers—as grave an abuse of executive authority
as I can recall ever having studied.’’
Letter from Harvard Law Professor Lawrence
Tribe to John Conyers on 1/6/06.
(H) On August 17, 2006 Judge Anna Diggs
Taylor of the United States District Court in
Detroit, in ACLU v. NSA, ruled that the
‘‘NSA program to wiretap the international
communications of some Americans without
a court warrant violated the Constitution.
. . . Judge Taylor ruled that the program
violated both the Fourth Amendment and a
1978 law that requires warrants from a secret
court for intelligence wiretaps involving people
in the United States. She rejected the administration’s
repeated assertions that a
2001 Congressional authorization and the
president’s constitutional authority allowed
the program.’’ From a New York Times article
‘‘Judge Finds Wiretap Actions Violate
the Law’’ 8/18/06 and the Memorandum Opinion.
(I) In July 2007, the Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals dismissed the case, ruling the plaintiffs
had no standing to sue because, given
the secretive nature of the surveillance, they
could not state with certainty that they
have been wiretapped by the NSA. This ruling
did not address the legality of the surveillance
so Judge Taylor’s decision is the
only ruling on that issue. [ACLU Legal Documents]
In all of these actions and decisions, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President and Commander
in Chief, and subversive of constitutional
government, to the prejudice of the
cause of law and justice and to the manifest
injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by
such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense
warranting removal from office.

ARTICLE
XXV.—DIRECTING TELECOMMUNICATIONS
COMPANIES TO CREATE AN ILLEGAL
AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL DATABASE OF THE
PRIVATE TELEPHONE NUMBERS AND EMAILS
OF AMERICAN CITIZENS

The President requested that telecommunication
companies release customer
phone records to the government illegally as
evidenced by the following:

‘‘The Stored Communications Act of 1986
(SCA) prohibits the knowing disclosure of
customer telephone records to the government
unless pursuant to subpoena, warrant
or a National Security Letter (or other Administrative
subpoena); with the customers
lawful consent; or there is a business necessity;
or an emergency involving the danger

H5102 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

of death or serious physical injury. None of
these exceptions apply to the circumstance
described in the USA Today story.’’ From
page 169, ‘‘George W Bush versus the US Constitution.’’
Compiled at the direction of Representative
John Conyers.

According to a May 11, 2006 article in USA
Today by Lesley Cauley ‘‘The National Security
Agency has been secretly collecting the
phone call records of tens of millions of
Americans, using data provided by AT&T,
Verizon and BellSouth.’’ An unidentified
source said ‘The agency’s goal is to create a
database of every call ever made within the
nation’s borders.’’

In early 2001, Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio
rejected a request from the NSA to turn over
customers records of phone calls, emails and
other Internet activity. Nacchio believed
that complying with the request would violate
the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
From National Journal, November 2, 2007.

ARTICLE XXVI.—ANNOUNCING THE INTENT TO

VIOLATE LAWS WITH SIGNING STATEMENTS,

AND VIOLATING THOSE LAWS

In June 2007, the Government Accountability
Office reported that in a sample of
Bush signing statements the office had studied,
for 30 percent of them the Bush administration
had already proceeded to violate the
laws the statements claimed the right to violate.

ARTICLE XXVII.—FAILING TO COMPLY WITH CON

GRESSIONAL SUBPOENAS AND INSTRUCTING

FORMER EMPLOYEES NOT TO COMPLY

Subpoenas not complied with include:

A House Judiciary Committee subpoena for
Justice Department papers and Emails,
issued April 10, 2007;

A House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee subpoena for the testimony

of the Secretary of State, issued April 25,
2007;

A House Judiciary Committee subpoena for
the testimony of former White House Counsel
Harriet Miers and documents, issued
June 13, 2007;

A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena
for documents and testimony of White House
Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, issued June 13,
2007;

A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena
for documents and testimony of White House
Political Director Sara Taylor, issued June
13, 2007 (Taylor appeared but refused to answer
questions);

A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena
for documents and testimony of White House
Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, issued June
26, 2007;

A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena
for documents and testimony of White House
Deputy Political Director J. Scott Jennings,
issued June 26, 2007 (Jennings appeared but
refused to answer questions);

A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena
for legal analysis and other documents concerning
the NSA warrantless wiretapping
program from the White House, Vice President
Richard Cheney, The Department of
Justice, and the National Security Council.
If the documents are not produced, the subpoena
requires the testimony of White House
chief of staff Josh Bolten, Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales, Cheney chief of staff David
Addington, National Security Council executive
director V. Philip Lago, issued June 27,
2007;

A House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee subpoena for Lt. General
Kensinger.

ARTICLE XXVIII.—TAMPERING WITH FREE AND

FAIR ELECTIONS, CORRUPTION OF THE ADMIN

ISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Toward this end, the President and Vice
President, both personally and through their
agents, did:

Engage in a program of manufacturing
false allegations of voting fraud in targeted
jurisdictions where the Democratic Party
enjoyed an advantage in electoral performance
or otherwise was problematic for the
President’s Republican Party, in order that
public confidence in election results favorable
to the Democratic Party be undermined;

Direct United States Attorneys to launch
and announce investigations of certain leaders,
candidates and elected officials affiliated
with the Democratic Party at times calculated
to cause the most political damage

and confusion, most often in the weeks immediately
preceding an election, in order
that public confidence in the suitability for
office of Democratic Party leaders, candidates
and elected officials be undermined;

Direct United States Attorneys to terminate
or scale back existing investigations of
certain Republican Party leaders, candidates
and elected officials allied with the George

W. Bush administration, and to refuse to
pursue new or proposed investigations of certain
Republican Party leaders, candidates
and elected officials allied with the George
W. Bush administration, in order that public
confidence in the suitability of such Republican
Party leaders, candidates and elected
officials be bolstered or restored;
Threaten to terminate the employment of
the following United States Attorneys who
refused to comply with such directives and
purposes;

David C. Iglesias as U.S. Attorney for the
District of New Mexico;

Kevin V. Ryan as U.S. Attorney for the
Northern District of California;

John L. McKay as U.S. Attorney for the
Western District of Washington;

Paul K. Charlton as U.S. Attorney for the
District of Arizona;

Carol C. Lam as U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of California;

Daniel G. Bogden as U.S. Attorney for the
District of Nevada;

Margaret M. Chiara as U.S. Attorney for
the Western District of Michigan;

Todd Graves as U.S. Attorney for the Western
District of Missouri;

Harry E. ‘‘Bud’’ Cummins, III as U.S. Attorney
for the Eastern District of Arkansas;

Thomas M. DiBiagio as U.S. Attorney for
the District of Maryland, and;

Kasey Warner as U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of West Virginia.

Further, George W. Bush has both personally
and acting through his agents and subordinates,
together with the Vice President
conspired to obstruct the lawful Congressional
investigation of these dismissals of
United States Attorneys and the related
scheme to undermine and tamper with the
conduct of free and fair elections, and to corrupt
the administration of justice.

Contrary to his oath faithfully to execute
the office of President of the United States
and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect,
and defend the Constitution of the
United States, and in violation of his constitutional
duty to take care that the laws
be faithfully executed, George W. Bush has
without lawful cause or excuse directed not
to appear before the Committee on the Judiciary
of the House of Representatives certain
witnesses summoned by duly authorized subpoenas
issued by that Committee on June 13,
2007.

In refusing to permit the testimony of
these witnesses George W. Bush, substituting
his judgment as to what testimony was necessary
for the inquiry, interposed the powers
of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas
of the House of Representatives,
thereby assuming to himself functions and
judgments necessary to the exercise of the
checking and balancing power of oversight
vested in the House of Representatives.

Further, the President has both personally
and acting through his agents and subordinates,
together with the Vice President directed
the United States Attorney for the
District of Columbia to decline to prosecute
for contempt of Congress the aforementioned
witnesses, Joshua B. Bolten and Harriet E.
Miers, despite the obligation to do so as established
by statute (2 USC §194) and pursuant
to the direction of the United States
House of Representatives as embodied in its
resolution (H. Res. 982) of February 14, 2008.

In all of these actions and decisions, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5103

contrary to his trust as President and Commander
in Chief, and subversive of constitutional
government, to the prejudice of the
cause of law and justice and to the manifest
injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by
such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense
warranting removal from office.

ARTICLE XXIX.—CONSPIRACY TO VIOLATE THE
VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed,’’ has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, has willfully corrupted and
manipulated the electoral process of the
United States for his personal gain and the
personal gain of his co-conspirators and allies;
has violated the United States Constitution
and law by failing to protect the civil
rights of African-American voters and others
in the 2004 Election, and has impeded the
right of the people to vote and have their
vote properly and accurately counted, in
that:

A. On November 5, 2002, and prior thereto,
James Tobin, while serving as the regional
director of the National Republican Senatorial
Campaign Committee and as the New
England Chairman of Bush-Cheney ’04 Inc.,
did, at the direction of the White House
under the administration of George W. Bush,
along with other agents both known and unknown,
commit unlawful acts by aiding and
abetting a scheme to use computerized hang-
up calls to jam phone lines set up by the New
Hampshire Democratic Party and the Manchester
firefighters’ union on Election Day;
B. An investigation by the Democratic
staff of the House Judiciary Committee into
the voting procedures in Ohio during the 2004
election found ‘‘widespread instances of intimidation
and misinformation in violation
of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights
Act of 1968, Equal Protection, Due Process
and the Ohio right to vote;’’
C. The 14th Amendment Equal Protection
Clause guarantees that no minority group
will suffer disparate treatment in a federal,
state, or local election in stating that: ‘‘No
State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws.’’ However,
during and at various times of the year 2004,
John Kenneth Blackwell, then serving as the
Secretary of State for the State of Ohio and
also serving simultaneously as Co-Chairman
of the Committee to Re-Elect George W.
Bush in the State of Ohio, did, at the direction
of the White House under the administration
of George W. Bush, along with other
agents both known and unknown, commit
unlawful acts in violation of the Equal Protection
Clause of the 14th Amendment to the
United States Constitution by failing to protect
the voting rights of African-American
citizens in Ohio and further, John Kenneth
Blackwell did disenfranchise African-American
voters under color of law, by
(i) Willfully denying certain neighborhoods
in the cities of Cleveland, Ohio and Columbus,
Ohio, along with other urban areas in
the State of Ohio, an adequate number of
electronic voting machines and provisional
paper ballots, thereby unlawfully impeding
duly registered voters from the act of voting
and thus violating the civil rights of an unknown
number of United States citizens.

a. In Franklin County, George W. Bush and
his agent, Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth
Blackwell, Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney
Re-election Campaign, failed to protect the
rights of African-American voters by not
properly investigating the withholding of 125
electronic voting machines assigned to the
city of Columbus.
b. Forty-two African-American precincts
in Columbus were each missing one voting
machine that had been present in the 2004
primary.
c. African-American voters in the city of
Columbus were forced to wait three to seven
hours to vote in the 2004 presidential election.
(ii) Willfully issuing unclear and conflicting
rules regarding the methods and
manner of becoming a legally registered
voter in the State of Ohio, and willfully
issuing unclear and unnecessary edicts regarding
the weight of paper registration
forms legally acceptable to the State of
Ohio, thereby creating confusion for both
voters and voting officials and thus impeding
the right of an unknown number of United
States citizens to register and vote.
a. Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth
Blackwell directed through Advisory 2004–31
that voter registration forms, which were
greatest in urban minority areas, should not
be accepted and should be returned unless
submitted on 80 bond paper weight.
Blackwell’s own office was found to be using
60 bond paper weight.
(iii) Willfully permitted and encouraged
election officials in Cleveland, Cincinnati
and Toledo to conduct a massive partisan
purge of registered voter rolls, eventually
expunging more than 300,000 voters, many of
whom were duly registered voters, and who
were thus deprived of their constitutional
right to vote;
a. Between the 2000 and 2004 Ohio presidential
elections, 24.93% of the voters in the
city of Cleveland, a city with a majority of
African American citizens, were purged from
the voting rolls.
b. In that same period, the Ohio county of
Miami, with census data indicating a 98%
Caucasian population, refused to purge any
voters from its rolls. Miami County
‘‘merged’’ voters from other surrounding
counties into its voting rolls and even allowed
voters from other states to vote.
c. In Toledo, Ohio, an urban city with a
high African-American concentration, 28,000
voters were purged from the voting rolls in
August of 2004, just prior to the presidential
election. This purge was conducted under the
control and direction of George W. Bush’s
agent, Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth
Blackwell outside of the regularly established
cycle of purging voters in odd-numbered
years.
(iv) Willfully allowing Ohio Secretary of
State John Kenneth Blackwell, acting under
color of law and as an agent of George W.
Bush, to issue a directive that no votes
would be counted unless cast in the right
precinct, reversing Ohio’s long-standing
practice of counting votes for president if
cast in the right county.
(v) Willfully allowing his agent, Ohio Secretary
of State John Kenneth Blackwell, the
Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election
Campaign, to do nothing to assure the voting
rights of 10,000 people in the city of Cleveland
when a computer error by the private
vendor Diebold Election Systems, Inc. incorrectly
disenfranchised 10,000 voters
(vi) Willfully allowing his agent, Ohio Secretary
of State John Kenneth Blackwell, the
Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election
Campaign, to ensure that uncounted and provisional
ballots in Ohio’s 2004 presidential
election would be disproportionately concentrated
in urban African-American districts.

a. In Ohio’s Lucas County, which includes
Toledo, 3,122 or 41.13% of the provisional ballots
went uncounted under the direction of
George W. Bush’s agent, the Secretary of
State of Ohio, John Kenneth Blackwell, Co-
Chair of the Committee to Re-Elect Bush/
Cheney in Ohio.
b. In Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, which includes
Cleveland, 8,559 or 32.82% of the provisional
ballots went uncounted.
c. In Ohio’s Hamilton County, which includes
Cincinnati, 3,529 or 24.23% of the provisional
ballots went uncounted.
d. Statewide, the provisional ballot rejection
rate was 9% as compared to the greater
figures in the urban areas.
D. The Department of Justice, charged
with enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection
Clause, and other voting rights laws in the
United States of America, under the direction
and Administration of George W. Bush
did willfully and purposely obstruct and
stonewall legitimate criminal investigations
into myriad cases of reported electoral fraud
and suppression in the state of Ohio. Such
activities, carried out by the department on
behalf of George W. Bush in counties such as
Franklin and Knox by persons such as John
K. Tanner and others, were meant to confound
and whitewash legitimate legal criminal
investigations into the suppression of
massive numbers of legally registered voters
and the removal of their right to cast a ballot
fairly and freely in the state of Ohio,
which was crucial to the certified electoral
victory of George W. Bush in 2004.
E. On or about November 1, 2006, members
of the United States Department of Justice,
under the control and direction of the Administration
of George W. Bush, brought indictments
for voter registration fraud within
days of an election, in order to directly effect
the outcome of that election for partisan
purposes, and in doing so, thereby violated
the Justice Department’s own rules
against filing election-related indictments
close to an election;
F. Emails have been obtained showing that
the Republican National Committee and
members of Bush-Cheney ’04 Inc., did, at the
direction of the White House under the administration
of George W. Bush, engage in
voter suppression in five states by a method
know as ‘‘vote caging,’’ an illegal voter suppression
technique;
G. Agents of George W. Bush, including
Mark F. ‘‘Thor’’ Hearne, the national general
counsel of Bush/Cheney ’04, Inc., did, at
the behest of George W. Bush, as members of
a criminal front group, distribute known
false information and propaganda in the
hopes of forwarding legislation and other actions
that would result in the disenfranchisement
of Democratic voters for partisan purposes.
The scheme, run under the auspices of
an organization known as ‘‘The American
Center for Voting Rights’’ (ACVR), was funded
by agents of George W. Bush in violation
of laws governing tax exempt 501(c)3 organizations
and in violation of federal laws forbidding
the distribution of such propaganda
by the federal government and agents working
on its behalf.
H. Members of the United States Department
of Justice, under the control and direction
of the Administration of George W.
Bush, did, for partisan reasons, illegally and
with malice aforethought block career attorneys
and other officials in the Department of
Justice from filing three lawsuits charging
local and county governments with violating
the voting rights of African-Americans and
other minorities, according to seven former
senior United States Justice Department
employees.

H5104 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

I. Members of the United States Department
of Justice, under the control and direction
of the Administration of George W.
Bush, did illegally and with malice
aforethought derail at least two investigations
into possible voter discrimination, according
to a letter sent to the Senate Rules
and Administration Committee and written
by former employees of the United States
Department of Justice, Voting Rights Section.
J. Members of the United States Election
Assistance Commission (EAC), under the
control and direction of the Administration
of George W. Bush, have purposefully and
willfully misled the public, in violation of
several laws, by;
(i) Withholding from the public and then
altering a legally mandated report on the
true measure and threat of Voter Fraud, as
commissioned by the EAC and completed in
June 2006, prior to the 2006 mid-term election,
but withheld from release prior to that
election when its information would have
been useful in the administration of elections
across the country, because the results
of the statutorily required and tax-payer
funded report did not conform with the illegal,
partisan propaganda efforts and politicized
agenda of the Bush Administration;
(ii) Withholding from the public a legally
mandated report on the disenfranchising effect
of Photo Identification laws at the polling
place, shown to disproportionately disenfranchise
voters not of George W. Bush’s
political party. The report was commissioned
by the EAC and completed in June
2006, prior to the 2006 mid-term election, but
withheld from release prior to that election
when its information would have been useful
in the administration of elections across the
country
(iii) Withholding from the public a legally
mandated report on the effectiveness of Provisional
Voting as commissioned by the EAC
and completed in June 2006, prior to the 2006
mid-term election, but withheld from release
prior to that election when its information
would have been useful in the administration
of elections across the country, and keeping
that report unreleased for more than a year
until it was revealed by independent media
outlets.
For directly harming the rights and manner
of suffrage, for suffering to make them
secret and unknowable, for overseeing and
participating in the disenfranchisement of
legal voters, for instituting debates and
doubts about the true nature of elections, all
against the will and consent of local voters
affected, and forced through threats of litigation
by agents and agencies overseen by
George W. Bush, the actions of Mr. Bush to
do the opposite of securing and guaranteeing
the right of the people to alter or abolish
their government via the electoral process,
being a violation of an inalienable right, and
an immediate threat to Liberty.

ARTICLE XXX.—MISLEADING CONGRESS AND THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE IN AN ATTEMPT TO DESTROY
MEDICARE

of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, together with the Vice President,
pursued policies which deliberately
drained the fiscal resources of Medicare by
forcing it to compete with subsidized private
insurance plans which are allowed to arbitrarily
select or not select those they will
cover; failing to provide reasonable levels of
reimbursements to Medicare providers,
thereby discouraging providers from participating
in the program, and designing a Medicare
Part D benefit without cost controls
which allowed pharmaceutical companies to
gouge the American taxpayers for the price
of prescription drugs.

The President created, manipulated, and
disseminated information given to the citizens
and Congress of the United States in
support of his prescription drug plan for
Medicare that enriched drug companies
while failing to save beneficiaries sufficient
money on their prescription drugs. He misled
Congress and the American people into
thinking the cost of the benefit was $400 billion.
It was widely understood that if the
cost exceeded that amount, the bill would
not pass due to concerns about fiscal irresponsibility.

A Medicare Actuary who possessed information
regarding the true cost of the plan,
$539 billion, was instructed by the Medicare
Administrator to deny Congressional requests
for it. The Actuary was threatened
with sanctions if the information was disclosed
to Congress, which, unaware of the information,
approved the bill. Despite the fact
that official cost estimates far exceeded $400
billion, President Bush offered assurances to
Congress that the cost was $400 billion, when
his office had information to the contrary. In
the House of Representatives, the bill passed
by a single vote and the Conference Report
passed by only 5 votes. The White House
knew the actual cost of the drug benefit was
high enough to prevent its passage. Yet the
White House concealed the truth and impeded
an investigation into its culpability.

ARTICLE XXXI.—KATRINA: FAILURE TO PLAN
FOR THE PREDICTED DISASTER OF HURRICANE
KATRINA, FAILURE TO RESPOND TO A CIVIL
EMERGENCY

In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, failed to take sufficient action
to protect life and property prior to and in
the face of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, given
decades of foreknowledge of the dangers of
storms to New Orleans and specific forewarning
in the days prior to the storm. The
President failed to prepare for predictable
and predicted disasters, failed to respond to
an immediate need of which he was informed,
and has subsequently failed to rebuild
the section of our nation that was destroyed.

Hurricane Katrina killed at least 1,282 people,
with 2 million more displaced. 302,000
housing units were destroyed or damaged by
the hurricane, 71% of these were low-income
units. More than 500 sewage plants were destroyed,
more than 170 point-source leakages
of gasoline, oil, or natural gas, more than
2000 gas stations submerged, several chemical
plants, 8 oil refineries, and a superfund
site was submerged. 8 million gallons of oil
were spilled. Toxic materials seeped into
floodwaters and spread through much of the
city and surrounding areas.

The predictable increased strength of hurricanes
such as Katrina has been identified
by scientists for years, and yet the Bush Administration
has denied this science and restricted
such information from official reports,
publications, and the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Agency’s website. Donald
Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science, wrote in
2006 that ‘‘hurricane intensity has increased
with oceanic surface temperatures over the
past 30 years. The physics of hurricane intensity
growth . . . has clarified and explained
the thermodynamic basis for these observations.
[Kerry] Emanuel has tested this relationship
and presented convincing evidence.’’

FEMA’s 2001 list of the top three most
likely and most devastating disasters were a
San Francisco earthquake, a terrorist attack
on New York, and a Category 4 hurricane
hitting New Orleans, with New Orleans being
the number one item on that list. FEMA
conducted a five-day hurricane simulation
exercise in 2004, ‘‘Hurricane Pam,’’ mimicking
a Katrina-like event. This exercise
combined the National Weather Service, the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane
Center and other state and federal
agencies, resulting in the development of
emergency response plans. The exercise demonstrated,
among other things, that thousands
of mainly indigent New Orleans residents
would be unable to evacuate on their
own. They would need substantial government
assistance. These plans, however, were
not implemented in part due to the President’s
slashing of funds for protection. In the
year before Hurricane Katrina hit, the President
continued to cut budgets and deny
grants to the Gulf Coast. In June of 2004 the
Army Corps of Engineers levee budget for
New Orleans was cut, and it was cut again in
June of 2005, this time by $71.2 million or a
whopping 44% of the budget. As a result,
ACE was forced to suspend any repair work
on the levees. In 2004 FEMA denied a Louisiana
disaster mitigation grant request.
The President was given multiple warnings
that Hurricane Katrina had a high likelihood
of causing serious damage to New Orleans
and the Gulf Coast. At 10 AM on Sunday 28
August 2005, the day before the storm hit,
the National Weather Service published an
alert titled ‘‘DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED.’’
Printed in all capital letters, the
alert stated that ‘‘MOST OF THE AREA
WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS
. . . PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE
HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES
WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE.
. . . POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR
WEEKS. . . . WATER SHORTAGES WILL
MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE
BY MODERN STANDARDS.’’

The Homeland Security Department also
briefed the President on the scenario, warning
of levee breaches and severe flooding. According
to the New York Times, ‘‘a Homeland
Security Department report submitted
to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29,
hours before the storm hit, said, ‘Any storm
rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead
to severe flooding and/or levee breaching.’’’
These warnings clearly contradict the statements
made by President Bush immediately
after the storm that such devastation could

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5105

not have been predicted. On 1 September 2005
the President said ‘‘I don’t think anyone anticipated
the breach of the levees.’’

The President’s response to Katrina via
FEMA and DHS was criminally delayed, indifferent,
and inept. The only FEMA employee
posted in New Orleans in the immediate
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Marty
Bahamonde, emailed head of FEMA Michael
Brown from his Blackberry device on August
31, 2005 regarding the conditions. The email
was urgent and detailed and indicated that
‘‘The situation is past critical . . . Estimates
are many will die within hours.’’ Brown’s
reply was emblematic of the administration’s
entire response to the catastrophe:
‘‘Thanks for the update. Anything specific I
need to do or tweak?’’ The Secretary of
Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, did
not declare an emergency, did not mobilize
the federal resources, and seemed to not even
know what was happening on the ground
until reporters told him.

On Friday August 26, 2005, Governor Kathleen
Blanco declared a State of Emergency
in Louisiana and Governor Haley Barbour of
Mississippi followed suit the next day. Also
on that Saturday, Governor Blanco asked
the President to declare a Federal State of
Emergency, and on 28 August 2005, the Sunday
before the storm hit, Mayor Nagin declared
a State of Emergency in New Orleans.
This shows that the local authorities, responding
to federal warnings, knew how bad
the destruction was going to be and anticipated
being overwhelmed. Failure to act
under these circumstances demonstrates
gross negligence.

ARTICLE XXXII.—MISLEADING CONGRESS AND
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, SYSTEMATICALLY UNDERMINING
EFFORTS TO ADDRESS GLOBAL CLIMATE
CHANGE

In his conduct while President of the
United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute
the office of President of the United
States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section
3 of the Constitution ‘‘to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed’’, has both personally
and acting through his agents and
subordinates, together with the Vice President,
ignored the peril to life and property
posed by global climate change, manipulated
scientific information and mishandled protective
policy, constituting nonfeasance and
malfeasance in office, abuse of power, dereliction
of duty, and deception of Congress
and the American people.

President Bush knew the expected effects
of climate change and the role of human activities
in driving climate change. This
knowledge preceded his first Presidential
term.

1. During his 2000 Presidential campaign,
he promised to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
2. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, a global body of hundreds of
the world’s foremost experts on climate
change, concluded that ‘‘most of observed
warming over last 50 years (is) likely due to
increases in greenhouse gas concentrations
due to human activities.’’ The Third Assessment
Report projected several effects of climate
change such as continued ‘‘widespread
retreat’’ of glaciers, an ‘‘increase threats to
human health, particularly in lower income
populations, predominantly within tropical/
subtropical countries,’’ and ‘‘water shortages.’’

3. The grave danger to national security
posed by global climate change was recognized
by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced
Planning Research Projects Agency in October
of 2003. An agency-commissioned report
‘‘explores how such an abrupt climate
change scenario could potentially de-stabilize
the geo-political environment, leading
to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to
resource constraints such as: 1) Food shortages
due to decreases in net global agricultural
production 2) Decreased availability
and quality of fresh water in key regions due
to shifted precipitation patters, causing
more frequent floods and droughts 3) Disrupted
access to energy supplies due to extensive
sea ice and storminess.’’
4. A December 2004 paper in Science reviewed
928 studies published in peer reviewed
journals to determine the number providing
evidence against the existence of a link between
anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide
and climate change. ‘‘Remarkably,
none of the papers disagreed with the consensus
position.’’
5. The November 2007 Inter-Governmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment
Report showed that global anthropogenic
emissions of greenhouse gasses have
increased 70% between 1970 and 2004, and anthropogenic
emissions are very likely the
cause of global climate change. The report
concluded that global climate change could
cause the extinction of 20 to 30 percent of
species in unique ecosystems such as the
polar areas and biodiversity hotspots, increase
extreme weather events especially in
the developing world, and have adverse effects
on food production and fresh water
availability.
The President has done little to address
this most serious of problems, thus constituting
an abuse of power and criminal neglect.
He has also actively endeavored to undermine
efforts by the federal government,
states, and other nations to take action on
their own.

1. In March 2001, President Bush announced
the U.S. would not be pursuing ratification
of the Kyoto Protocol, an international effort
to reduce greenhouse gasses. The United
States is the only industrialized nation that
has failed to ratify the accord.
2. In March of 2008, Representative Henry
Waxman wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen
Johnson: ‘‘In August 2003, the Bush Administration
denied a petition to regulate
CO2 emissions from motor vehicles by deciding
that CO2 was not a pollutant under the
Clean Air Act. In April 2007, the U.S. Supreme
Court overruled that determination in
Massachusetts v. EPA. The Supreme Court
wrote that ‘If EPA makes a finding of
endangerment, the Clean Air Act requires
the agency to regulate emissions of the deleterious
pollutant from new motor vehicles.’
The EPA then conducted an extensive investigation
involving 60–70 staff who concluded
that ‘CO2 emissions endanger both human
health and welfare.’ These findings were submitted
to the White House, after which work
on the findings and the required regulations
was halted.’’
3. A Memo to Members of the Committee
on Oversight and Government Reform on
May 19, 2008 stated ‘‘The record before the
Committee shows: (1) the career staff at EPA
unanimously supported granting California’s
petition (to be allowed to regulate greenhouse
gas emissions from cars and trucks,
consistent with California state law); (2) Stephen
Johnson, the Administrator of EPA,
also supported granting California’s petition
at least in part; and (3) Administrator Johnson
reversed his position after communications
with officials in the White House.’’

The President has suppressed the release of
scientific information related to global climate
change, an action which undermines
Congress’ ability to legislate and provide
oversight, and which has thwarted efforts to
prevent global climate change despite the serious
threat that it poses.

1. In February, 2001, ExxonMobil wrote a
memo to the White House outlining ways to
influence the outcome of the Third Assessment
report by the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. The memo opposed the
reelection of Dr. Robert Watson as the IPCC
Chair. The White House then supported an
opposition candidate, who was subsequently
elected to replace Dr. Watson.
2. The New York Times on January 29, 2006,
reported that James Hansen, NASA’s senior
climate scientist was warned of ‘‘dire consequences’’
if he continued to speak out
about global climate change and the need for
reducing emissions of associated gasses. The
Times also reported that: ‘‘At climate laboratories
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, for example,
many scientists who routinely took calls
from reporters five years ago can now do so
only if the interview is approved by administration
officials in Washington, and then
only if a public affairs officer is present or on
the phone.’’
3. In December of 2007, the House Committee
on Oversight and Government Reform
issued a report based on 16 months of investigation
and 27,000 pages of documentation.
According to the summary: ‘‘The evidence
before the Committee leads to one inescapable
conclusion: the Bush Administration
has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate
climate change science and mislead
policy makers and the public about the dangers
of global warming.’’ The report described
how the White House appointed
former petroleum industry lobbyist Phil
Cooney as head of the Council on Environmental
Quality. The report states ‘‘There
was a systematic White House effort to minimize
the significance of climate change by
editing climate change reports. CEQ Chief of
Staff Phil Cooney and other CEQ officials
made at least 294 edits to the Administration’s
Strategic Plan of the Climate Change
Science Program to exaggerate or emphasize
scientific uncertainties or to de-emphasize
or diminish the importance of the human
role in global warming.’’
4. On April 23, 2008, Representative Henry
Waxman wrote a letter to EPA Administrator
Stephen L Johnson. In it he reported:
‘‘Almost 1,600 EPA scientists completed the
Union of Concerned Scientists survey questionnaire.
Over 22 percent of these scientists
reported that ‘selective or incomplete use of
data to justify a specific regulatory outcome’
occurred ‘frequently’ or ‘occasionally’
at EPA. Ninety-four EPA scientists reported
being frequently or occasionally directed to
inappropriately exclude or alter technical information
from an EPA scientific document.
Nearly 200 EPA scientists said that they
have frequently or occasionally been in situations
in which scientists have actively objected
to, resigned from or removed themselves
from a project because of pressure to
change scientific findings.’’
In all of these actions and decisions, President
George W. Bush has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President and subversive
of constitutional government, to the
prejudice of the cause of law and justice and
to the manifest injury of the people of the
United States. Wherefore, President George

W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from
office.

H5106 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 9, 2008

ARTICLE XXXIII.—REPEATEDLY IGNORED AND
FAILED TO RESPOND TO HIGH LEVEL INTELLIGENCE
WARNINGS OF PLANNED TERRORIST
ATTACKS IN THE US, PRIOR TO 911

The White House’s top counter-terrorism
adviser, Richard A. Clarke, has testified that
from the beginning of George W. Bush’s presidency
until September 11, 2001, Clarke attempted
unsuccessfully to persuade President
Bush to take steps to protect the nation
against terrorism. Clarke sent a memorandum
to then-National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice on January 24, 2001, ‘‘urgently’’
but unsuccessfully requesting ‘‘a
Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending
al Qaeda attack.’’

In April 2001, Clarke was finally granted a
meeting, but only with second-in-command
department representatives, including Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz,
who made light of Clarke’s concerns.

Clarke confirms that in June, July, and
August 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) warned the president in daily briefings
of unprecedented indications that a major al
Qaeda attack was going to happen against
the United States somewhere in the world in
the weeks and months ahead. Yet, Clarke
was still unable to convene a cabinet-level
meeting to address the issue.

Condoleezza Rice has testified that George
Tenet met with the president 40 times to
warn him that a major al-Qaeda attack was
going to take place, and that in response the
president did not convene any meetings of
top officials. At such meetings, the FBI
could have shared information on possible
terrorists enrolled at flight schools. Among
the many preventive steps that could have
been taken, the Federal Aviation Administration,
airlines, and airports might have
been put on full alert.

According to Condoleezza Rice, the first
and only cabinet-level meeting prior to 9/11
to discuss the threat of terrorist attacks
took place on September 4, 2001, one week
before the attacks in New York and Washington.

On August 6, 2001, President Bush was presented
a President’s Daily Brief (PDB) article
titled ‘‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike
in U.S.’’ The lead sentence of that PDB article
indicated that Bin Laden and his followers
wanted to ‘‘follow the example of
World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef
and ‘bring the fighting to America.’’’ The article
warned: ‘‘Al-Qa’ida members—including
some who are US citizens—have resided in or
traveled to the US for years, and the group
apparently maintains a support structure
that could aid attacks.’’

The article cited a ‘‘more sensational
threat reporting that Bin Laden wanted to
hijack a US aircraft,’’ but indicated that the
CIA had not been able to corroborate such
reporting. The PDB item included information
from the FBI indicating ‘‘patterns of
suspicious activity in this country consistent
with preparations for hijackings or
other types of attacks, including recent surveillance
of federal buildings in New York.’’
The article also noted that the CIA and FBI

were investigating ‘‘a call to our embassy in
the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin
Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks
with explosives.’’

The president spent the rest of August 6,
and almost all the rest of August 2001 on vacation.
There is no evidence that he called
any meetings of his advisers to discuss this
alarming report. When the title and substance
of this PDB article were later reported
in the press, then-National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice began a sustained
campaign to play down its significance, until
the actual text was eventually released by
the White House.

New York Times writer Douglas Jehl, put
it this way: ‘‘In a single 17-sentence document,
the intelligence briefing delivered to
President Bush in August 2001 spells out the
who, hints at the what and points towards
the where of the terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington that followed 36 days
later.’’

Eleanor Hill, Executive Director of the
joint congressional committee investigating
the performance of the US intelligence community
before September 11, 2001, reported in
mid-September 2002 that intelligence reports
a year earlier ‘‘reiterated a consistent and
constant theme: Osama bin Laden’s intent to
launch terrorist attacks inside the United
States.’’

That joint inquiry revealed that just two
months before September 11, an intelligence
briefing for ‘‘senior government officials’’
predicted a terrorist attack with these
words: ‘‘The attack will be spectacular and
designed to inflict mass casualties against

U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations
have been made. Attack will occur
with little or no warning.’’
Given the White House’s insistence on secrecy
with regard to what intelligence was
given to President Bush, the joint-inquiry
report does not divulge whether he took part
in that briefing. Even if he did not, it strains
credulity to suppose that those ‘‘senior government
officials’’ would have kept its
alarming substance from the president.

Again, there is no evidence that the president
held any meetings or took any action to
deal with the threats of such attacks.

W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from
office.
ARTICLE XXXIV.—OBSTRUCTION OF INVESTIGATION
INTO THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

Following September 11, 2001, President
Bush and Vice President Cheney took strong
steps to thwart any and all proposals that
the circumstances of the attack be addressed.
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell
was forced to renege on his public promise
on September 23 that a ‘‘White Paper’’
would be issued to explain the cir

cumstances. Less than two weeks after that
promise, Powell apologized for his ‘‘unfortunate
choice of words,’’ and explained that
Americans would have to rely on ‘‘information
coming out in the press and in other
ways.’’

On Sept. 26, 2001, President Bush drove to
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters
in Langley, Virginia, stood with Director
of Central Intelligence George Tenet
and said: ‘‘My report to the nation is, we’ve
got the best intelligence we can possibly
have thanks to the men and women of the
C.I.A.’’ George Tenet subsequently and falsely
claimed not to have visited the president
personally between the start of Bush’s long
Crawford vacation and September 11, 2001.

Testifying before the 9/11 Commission on
April 14, 2004, Tenet answered a question
from Commission member Timothy Roemer
by referring to the president’s vacation (July
29–August 30) in Crawford and insisting that
he did not see the president at all in August
2001. ‘‘You never talked with him?’’ Roemer
asked. ‘‘No,’’ Tenet replied, explaining that
for much of August he too was ‘‘on leave.’’
An Agency spokesman called reporters that
same evening to say Tenet had misspoken,
and that Tenet had briefed Bush on August
17 and 31. The spokesman explained that the
second briefing took place after the president
had returned to Washington, and played
down the first one, in Crawford, as uneventful.

In his book, At the Center of the Storm,
(2007) Tenet refers to what is almost certainly
his August 17 visit to Crawford as a
follow-up to the ‘‘Bin Laden Determined to
Strike in the US’’ article in the CIA-prepared
President’s Daily Brief of August 6.
That briefing was immortalized in a Time
Magazine photo capturing Harriet Myers
holding the PDB open for the president, as
two CIA officers sit by. It is the same briefing
to which the president reportedly reacted
by telling the CIA briefer, ‘‘All right, you’ve
covered your ass now.’’ (Ron Suskind, The
One-Percent Doctrine, p. 2, 2006). In At the
Center of the Storm, Tenet writes: ‘‘A few
weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered,
I followed it to Crawford to make sure that
the president stayed current on events.’’

A White House press release suggests
Tenet was also there a week later, on August

24. According to the August 25, 2001, release,
President Bush, addressing a group of visitors
to Crawford on August 25, told them:
‘‘George Tenet and I, yesterday, we piled in
the new nominees for the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their
wives and went right up the canyon.’’
In early February 2002, Vice President
Dick Cheney warned then-Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle that if Congress went
ahead with an investigation, administration
officials might not show up to testify. As
pressure grew for an investigation, the president
and vice president agreed to the establishment
of a congressional joint committee
to conduct a ‘‘Joint Inquiry.’’ Eleanor Hill,
Executive Director of the Inquiry, opened
the Joint Inquiry’s final public hearing in
mid-September 2002 with the following disclaimer:
‘‘I need to report that, according to
the White House and the Director of Central
Intelligence, the president’s knowledge of intelligence
information relevant to this inquiry
remains classified, even when the substance
of the intelligence information has
been declassified.’’

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks,
also known as the 9/11 Commission,
was created on November 27, 2002, following
the passage of congressional legislation
signed into law by President Bush. The
President was asked to testify before the
Commission. He refused to testify except for
one hour in private with only two Commission
members, with no oath administered,

June 9, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5107

with no recording or note taking, and with
the Vice President at his side. Commission
Co-Chair Lee Hamilton has written that he
believes the commission was set up to fail,
was underfunded, was rushed, and did not receive
proper cooperation and access to information.

A December 2007 review of classified documents
by former members of the Commission
found that the commission had made repeated
and detailed requests to the CIA in
2003 and 2004 for documents and other information
about the interrogation of operatives
of Al Qaeda, and had been told falsely by a
top C.I.A. official that the agency had ‘‘produced
or made available for review’’ everything
that had been requested.

W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from
office.
ARTICLE XXXV.—ENDANGERING THE HEALTH OF
9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS

The Inspector General of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) August 21,
2003, report numbered 2003–P–00012 and entitled
‘‘EPA’s Response to the World Trade
Center Collapse: Challenges, Successes, and
Areas for Improvement,’’ includes the following
findings:

‘‘[W]hen EPA made a September 18 announcement
that the air was ‘safe’ to
breathe, it did not have sufficient data and
analyses to make such a blanket statement.
At that time, air monitoring data was lacking
for several pollutants of concern, including
particulate matter and polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs). Furthermore, The White
House Council on Environmental Quality
(CEQ) influenced, through the collaboration
process, the information that EPA communicated
to the public through its early press
releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring
statements and delete cautionary
ones.

‘‘As a result of the White House CEQ’s influence,
guidance for cleaning indoor spaces
and information about the potential health
effects from WTC debris were not included in
EPA-issued press releases. In addition, based
on CEQ’s influence, reassuring information
was added to at least one press release and
cautionary information was deleted from
EPA’s draft version of that press release . . .
The White House’s role in EPA’s public communications
about WTC environmental conditions
was described in a September 12, 2001,
e-mail from the EPA Deputy Administrator’s
Chief of Staff to senior EPA officials:

‘‘ ‘All statements to the media should be
cleared through the NSC [National Security
Council] before they are released.’

‘‘According to the EPA Chief of Staff, one
particular CEQ official was designated to
work with EPA to ensure that clearance was

obtained through NSC. The Associate Administrator
for the EPA Office of Communications,
Education, and Media Relations
(OCEMR) said that no press release could be
issued for a 3- to 4-week period after September
11 without approval from the CEQ
contact.’’

Acting EPA Administrator Marianne
Horinko, who sat in on EPA meetings with
the White House, has said in an interview
that the White House played a coordinating
role. The National Security Council played
the key role, filtering incoming data on
ground zero air and water, Horinko said: ‘‘I
think that the thinking was, these are experts
in WMD (weapons of mass destruction),
so they should have the coordinating role.’’

In the cleanup of the Pentagon following
September 11, 2001, Occupational Safety and
Health Administration laws were enforced,
and no workers became ill. At the World
Trade Center site, the same laws were not
enforced.

In the years since the release of the EPA
Inspector General’s above-cited report, the
Bush Administration has still not effected a
clean-up of the indoor air in apartments and
workspaces near the site.

Screenings conducted at the Mount Sinai
Medical Center and released in the September
10, 2004, Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report (MMWR) of the federal Centers
For Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), produced the following results:

‘‘Both upper and lower respiratory problems
and mental health difficulties are widespread
among rescue and recovery workers
who dug through the ruins of the World
Trade Center in the days following its destruction
in the attack of September 11, 2001.

‘‘An analysis of the screenings of 1,138
workers and volunteers who responded to the
World Trade Center disaster found that nearly
three-quarters of them experienced new or
worsened upper respiratory problems at
some point while working at Ground Zero.
And half of those examined had upper and/or
lower respiratory symptoms that persisted
up to the time of their examinations, an average
of eight months after their WTC efforts
ended.’’

A larger study released in 2006 found that
roughly 70 percent of nearly 10,000 workers
tested at Mount Sinai from 2002 to 2004 reported
that they had new or substantially
worsened respiratory problems while or after
working at ground zero. This study showed
that many of the respiratory ailments, including
sinusitis and asthma, and gastrointestinal
problems related to them, initially
reported by ground zero workers persisted
or grew worse over time. Most of the
ground zero workers in the study who reported
trouble breathing while working
there were still having those problems two
and a half years later, an indication of
chronic illness unlikely to improve over
time.

W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from
office.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr.
ELLISON). Under rule IX, a resolution
offered from the floor by a Member
other than the majority leader or the
minority leader as a question of the
privileges of the House has immediate
precedence only at a time designated
by the Chair within 2 legislative days
after the resolution is properly noticed.

Pending that designation, the form of
the resolution noticed by the gentleman
from Ohio will appear in the
RECORD at this point.

The Chair will not, at this point, determine
whether the resolution constitutes
a question of privilege. That
determination will be made at the time
designated for the consideration of the
resolution.

SPECIAL ORDERS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under
the Speaker’s announced policy of January
18, 2007, and under a previous
order of the House, the following Members
will be recognized for 5 minutes
each.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. POE) is recognized
for 5 minutes.

(Mr. POE addressed the House. His
remarks will appear hereafter in the
Extensions of Remarks.)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Maryland (Mr. CUMMINGS)
is recognized for 5 minutes.

(Mr. CUMMINGS addressed the
House. His remarks will appear hereafter
in the Extensions of Remarks.)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from North Carolina (Mr.
JONES) is recognized for 5 minutes.

(Mr. JONES of North Carolina addressed
the House. His remarks will appear
hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentlewoman
from California (Ms. WOOLSEY)
is recognized for 5 minutes.

(Ms. WOOLSEY addressed the House.
Her remarks will appear hereafter in
the Extensions of Remarks.)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Kansas (Mr. MORAN) is
recognized for 5 minutes.

(Mr. MORAN of Kansas addressed the
House. His remarks will appear hereafter
in the Extensions of Remarks.)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Oregon (Mr. DEFAZIO) is
recognized for 5 minutes.

(Mr. DEFAZIO addressed the House.
His remarks will appear hereafter in
the Extensions of Remarks.)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Georgia (Mr. BROUN) is
recognized for 5 minutes.

(Mr. BROUN of Georgia addressed the
House. His remarks will appear hereafter
in the Extensions of Remarks.)

The Absurd Times

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Impeachment of Bush

Twitter

Translate

Labels

Popular Posts

fb