Opening statement  of Senator Patrick Leahy , ranking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee,
Oversight hearing of Attorney general John Ashcroft June 8, 2004.

In the 1000 days since the catastrophic attacks of September 11th, we have learned little from our Justice Department. We know this:

• Osama bin Laden remains at large;
• At least three senior al Qaeda operatives who helped plan the 9/11 attacks, including the suspected mastermind of the plot, are in U.S. custody, but there has been no attempt to bring any of them to justice;
• The Moussaoui prosecution has bogged down because the prosecution refuses to let the defense interview witnesses in U.S. custody;
• A German court acquitted two 9/11 co-conspirators, in part because the U.S. Government refused to provide evidence for the cases;
• Three defendants who you said had knowledge of the 9/11 attacks did not have such knowledge; the Department retracted your statement, and then you had to apologize to the court for violating a gag order in the case;
• The man you claimed was about to explode a "dirty bomb" in the U.S. had no such intention or capability, and because he has been held for two years without access to counsel, any crimes he did commit might never be prosecuted;
• Terrorist attacks on Capitol Hill and elsewhere involving the deadly bioterror agents anthrax and Ricin have yet to be solved, and the Department is defending itself in a civil rights action brought by a man who you publicly identified as a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation;
• U.S. citizens with no connection to terrorism have been imprisoned as material witnesses for chunks of time -- with an "Oops, I'm sorry" when a "100 percent positive" fingerprint match turns out to be 100 percent wrong;
• Non-citizens with no connection to terrorism have been rounded up on the basis of their religion or ethnicity, held for months without charges and, in some cases, physically abused;
• Interrogation techniques approved by the Department of Justice have led to abuses that have tarnished our nation's reputation and likely given strength and driven hundreds, if not thousands, of new recruits to our enemies;
• Your Department turned a Canadian citizen over to Syria who was tortured;
• Documents have been classified, unclassified, and reclassified to score political points rather than for legitimate national security reasons;
• Statistics have been manipulated to exaggerate the Department's success in fighting terrorism; and
• The threat of another attack on U.S. soil remains high, although how high depends on who, in the Administration, is talking and what audience they are addressing.