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International's outstanding research on the profound and appalling human rights record of Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands incarcerated. I, frankly, found your research to be very moving. Quite a few people in precincts around the country didn't appreciate this conservative Republican quoting Amnesty International to justify, in part, the war, but I have appreciated your work.

It's in that context that I must tell you, Mr. Pitts, I was very troubled by your description of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as a gulag of our times. There has been a lot said by Mr. Van Hollen a few moments ago and other colleagues about the importance of our image in the world, and I think prison abuse is an appalling thing, and I'm pleased at the aggressive prosecutions that have taken place of military personnel who have been accused of that, and believe that that should be the case. But I also believe that anti-historical, irresponsible rhetoric, like referring to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as the gulag of our times, endangers the lives of Americans in uniform by fueling the very worst stereotypes of our enemies about this country in the world.

The gulag, of course, was a Soviet system of forced labor camps. The word is a Russian abbreviation for the term chief administration of camps. In The Gulag Archipelago, the famous book by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, he brought the story of the gulags to the world; 28.7 million people put into forced labor. The death rates in those camps reached their apex in World War II. The total number of prison deaths is impossible to calculate. It ranges from a low end of 3 million people systematically executed or starved to death or worked to death in the gulags to numbers of 10, 12 and even 20 million.

In the book, Gulag: A History, a journalist named Anne Applebaumgate writes that after 1937 the camps "transformed themselves from indifferently managed prisons in which people died by accident into genuinely deadly camps where workers were deliberately worked to death or murdered."

It is extraordinary to think of a comparison between a U.S. detention facility, where maybe mistakes have been made and have been made by American personnel, to the systematic death camps of the Soviet empire. It's also peculiar to me that Amnesty International would refer to Guantanamo as the gulag of our times when there is a much better candidate in the Kwan-li-co couldn't find system of concentration camps in North Korea. North Korea is a bona fide Soviet state run by the son of a man who was actually put into power by Stalin. In fact, Kim Jong-il was reportedly born in a training camp in Siberia where his father was groomed for power. But to suggest that, you know, in all of the world the gulag of our times is not the death camps that are the natural progeny of the gulags of the Soviet empire that exist today in North Korea, but that Guantanamo Bay is, that seems to me, as I said, anti-historical, irresponsible and the type of rhetoric that endangers American lives.

Now, I'm not alone in this. It was former Soviet political prisoner Vladimir Bukowski who characterized your term as "stupid" and "an insult to the memory of millions who perished in Soviet

With all of that said, and I ask this respectfully, Mr. Pitts, are you or is Amnesty International prepared to retract your statement that the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo is the gulag of our times, or are you prepared before this hearing to qualify that before this hearing, given the extraordinary record of history of the gulags and the reality of gulags in our times in countries like North Korea?

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentlewoman from Florida

Mr. NADLER. Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman will state his point of order.

Mr. NADLER. I believe it is improper under our rules to cast aspersions on the integrity of our witnesses, and I would like to give the witness an opportunity to respond to that.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. First of all, that is not a proper point of order; secondly, I believe the gentleman

Mr. NADLER. It's a point of decency.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Well, point of decencies are determined other than by rulings of the Chair.

The statements that were made by the gentleman from Indiana were not impugning the integrity of any of the witnesses, including Mr. Pitts, before the Committee; they were value judgments on the part of the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Pence, on statements that have been made by representatives of Amnesty International other than the witness that is before us.

Mr. NADLER. I would ask that the witness have an opportunity to respond.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Without objection, the witness may proceed.

Mr. PITTS. I would like to respond to Mr. Pence's question, and also some of the other statements made that Amnesty has in some way applied amoral equivalency either with the horrendous regime of Stalin, which we were at the forefront of condemning the perpetuation of that system in the Soviet Union in the 1970's and 1980's. And we're not suggesting moral equivalency, Mr. Pence, with China, or North Korea or Iran. Our point is that it's not Amnesty International that is putting the U.S. in this position, and it's not just Amnesty International's reports-although we have issued several reports, hundreds of pages in each, enumerating numerous instances of torture that would break our heart-and I'm prepared to read them if you would like. But as we've heard today, it is the Government's own reports, it is the reams of Government memos that show that we created a black hole, and that the same principles or practices that were at play in the gulag-disappearances, putting people in the gulag, stripping them, beating them-these are practices that people that were there we are now seeing in Guantanamo.

How can the U.S. have credibility in condemning North Korea as it does, or Iran or Cuba, for arbitrary detentions, for beatings, for torturing people when the same things are going on in Guantanamo? And Secretary Rumsfeld himself approved techniques like forced nudity, like stripping, like hooding people. One of the people

know died from the hooding, the beating. He was one of the ghost detainees that Secretary Rumsfeld personally approved.

And so I don't think it's absurd for Amnesty International to make these points, I think it is absurd for the U.S. to create that legal black hole. And it's time to fill in that legal black hole and shut Guantanamo.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Chair would point out that the activities of the Department of Defense are not within the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee, but are within the jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee, and it is their responsibility to investigate allegations and to conduct oversights over the Department of Defense.

The gentlewoman from Florida, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

Mr. CONYERS. Would the gentlelady yield to me just briefly?
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Of course.

Mr. CONYERS. I would like to point out that it is the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee to consider human rights, civil rights, civil liberties violations. That is not an inappropriate subject for this Committee. As a matter of fact, we have the sole jurisdiction over those concerns.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You're welcome.

Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to join this Committee. It is a baptism by fire for me as a new Member. And as the gentleman from Arizona stated, sometimes the world does see our version of democracy, warts and all. This proceeding would be one version of that democracy.

I wanted to ask Mr. Zogby if he could discuss the Justice Department's claims that it is not racially profiling, but is profiling by country of passport. For me, because I represent communities in south Florida where we have many Hispanic Americans and many Hispanic immigrants who have darker skin, I think that they would beg to differ on that difference, and that it would be deemed as a difference without distinction. And actually, if I could get my questions out to the three of you, and then I will be quiet so I can hear your answers and not use up my 5 minutes talking.

My other question would be first, Ms. Tapia Ruano, your testimony discussed the secret immigration hearings that are taking place. Can you talk a little bit about why the secrecy is a problem, and why it's important for the American public and the world to know who has been detained? And do we even know how many people and who has been detained and for how long? And in general, between the two of you, if you can discuss what changes you think need to be made to the PATRIOT Act, because obviously that is a product that we would like to bring forward from the results of this hearing so that legal and innocent immigrants, and Americans, who have been unjustly punished or detained can receive justice. Thank you.

Mr. ZOGBY. Congresswoman, you are right, it is a difference without distinction, bottom line. When all the people brought in in the call-ins, when people from Arab or Muslim countries, there is a single set of characteristics there that constitutes profiling. There was no behavior issue at stake; there was no broader definition of

we're looking for a needle in the haystack, and all the Department of Justice keeps doing is adding more hay to the stack.

So there are 160,000 in the field with special registration, about 83,000 registered. Almost 14,000 of them are held deportable, but no terrorist suspects and no information about terrorism resulted from any of this. And so the result is that it was ineffective, created fear, and it was based on crude profiling. It didn't work, and yet it caused irreparable damage to a whole lot of young, innocent people across the country who are now facing dramatic, life-changing decisions because of this program.

MS. TAPIA RUANO. With regard to these closed hearings, these hearings were held in secret, and you asked what is the problem with that. Well, we believe part of a democratic society which is open, that this is an important concept. Not only were the individuals not allowed to have their family members and also have other individuals there for moral or other support, but family members often didn't even know where these individuals were, the fact that they were being held by the agency, where they were transferred to, the fact that they were facing any possible expulsion from the United States. And that created an enormous amount of anxiety. What's the solution? Well, eliminate closed hearings with regard to blanket closed hearings, which is what these rules allow, just blanket closed hearings, without taking a look at was it justified, was there any possible reason to sustain the need to have a hearing closed.

We believe that the act that I mentioned just before, the Civil Liberties Restoration Act, is a solution to that by prohibiting closed hearings except in situations where a judge, after reviewing the individual facts, determines that it is in the interest of national security, or because of sensitive information, or at the choice of the individual detained. Those are rational, legal, fair reasons to have a closed hearing. But blanket closures, without the consent of the parties involved, appears to be abhorrent to our system.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, if I can just also point out and request permission to note that I apologize for being tardy. I arrived at 8:38, and wanted to have my presence noted for the record. And I yield back.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. And your presence is noted, and your contribution is appreciated.

The gentlelady from Texas Ms. Jackson Lee.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Conyers, for your insight on holding what I think may be one of the more crucial constitutional hearings that we may have in the history of this particular judiciary body.

Let me also thank Mr. Coble and Mr. Scott, as a Member of their Subcommittee, for the number of hearings that have been held, as well recognize the fact that this hearing is being held today.

I don't want this hearing to center around any one Member, but I do want to relate what I think we're trying to do today, and I really hope that we can do this in a bipartisan manner.

I think you remember, Dr. Zogby, that we did produce a bipartisan PATRIOT Act out of this Committee, with the partnership of the Chairman and the Ranking Member and all of us. Ultimately

began to become a product of the Majority. In essence, the tyranny of the Majority ruled.

What I'm concerned about is that we're being clouded by our rightness on an issue, refusing to look at how we can fix problems. Reminds me of the time when this country held slaves for 400 years and refused to acknowledge the wrongness of that terrible act, and again, we were ruled by the tyranny of the Majority. Even reflecting upon President Lincoln's decision, history will tell you that it was not for the humanitarian needs of the slaves, but for some other reasons.

Then I cite prior to the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor our refusal to acknowledge the Holocaust that was going on in the 1930's before we entered World War II; again, refusing to acknowledge dark times in our history.

The brutality of the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's, we refused, for a period of time, to acknowledge the dark time in the history of America; just a few years ago when we turned the lights out on the brutality of a million people in Rwanda.

So I think what we have an opportunity to do today, as we all embrace those who lost lives and the families of 9/11, I don't think there was an American of any race, color or creed that did not mourn, did not fall to their knees, did not pray to their person of faith, who they believed in during that time. And so I think where we're going here today and the tone that I've heard by some of my colleagues is again trying to turn the lights out on absolute abuses. My question is, one, are there any checks and balances under the PATRIOT Act to even prove one's innocence? That is a general question that I have.

Ms. Ruano, I want to know what have we done by diminishing the powers of the Bureau of Immigration Appeals so that there is no due process? How do Americans understand that by due process being eliminated from that Bureau, you are really beginning to eliminate due process rights for others as well?

Dr. Zogby, I think it's important, a point that you made earlier, that immigration does not equate to terrorism. Tell me, what kind of intimidation is fusing through the Muslim community in the United States and around the world because of that synonym now seems to be coming together?

Amnesty International, I'd appreciate if you would again speak to Guantanamo and as well the specifics of why the sort of elusiveness or unclarity, if I might say, of what Guantanamo means is putting young soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq in jeopardy of their lives.

And, Ms. Pearlstein, I would ask you as well about-if you would again speak to this whole question of detention, people being picked up randomly. And others may wish to comment on this whole registration of Muslims or Pakistani individuals which generated, I believe, no conviction and no arrests of terrorism.

And lastly let me say under the PATRIOT Act we have Minutemen at the border. That is what we are being driven to at this point. America needs to understand that we're in dark days that

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