Let me start out by giving credit where credit is due. As community policing policies championed by the Attorney General have been put in place, and the programs established by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 have been implemented under her able leadership, the nation's serious crime rate has declined for six straight years. In 1997 alone, preliminary analysis indicates that the violent crime rate decreased an additional 5 percent and property crimes decreased 4 percent. These are the lowest recorded rates since 1986.

Juvenile crime rates have also been falling under the Attorney General's leadership. Since 1994, the juvenile arrest rates for serious crimes have declined more than 9 percent and violent crimes by juveniles have declined more than 12 percent. Our federal, State and local law enforcement officers have been doing a great job, and this Attorney General should be commended for greatly improving the effectiveness of our federal assistance efforts to State and local law enforcement officers and for extending the reach of those efforts into rural areas. In this connection I thank the Attorney General for coming to Vermont to speak at the 50th anniversary of our State Police last July and for visiting the Essex Teen Center this February. I also personally appreciate her kind words at the President’s signing of the Bulletproof Vest Partnership Act last month.

I also commend the Attorney General for helping to stem the tide of domestic violence. Over the past year, the Department has successfully defended the constitutionality of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and vigorously applied the new federal offenses contained in that law to combat domestic violence. She has also moved forward aggressively with programs designed to help the victims of this abuse.

The Department also deserves credit for the good work being done by Bill Lann Lee as acting head of the Civil Rights Division. We had quite a knock-down, drag-out fight here in the Committee over the nomination of Bill Lee to be the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. He was painted as a wild-eyed radical and a “Quota King,” and some members of this committee were predicting a parade of horrors if he were confirmed.

Bill Lee has a track record now, and what does it show? Cases which have dragged through the courts for decades, nearly 30 years in some cases, are now being resolved, with sensible, thoughtful solutions. Agreements have been reached with realty agents, apartment owners, businesses of all kinds, and local governments on effective, moderate remedies to housing discrimination, disability rights, and all of the areas that the Division enforces. We received a remarkable letter of praise from Governor Zell Miller of Georgia on Bill Lee’s handling of a matter involving the State of Georgia and its juvenile detention facility. Governor Miller’s letter joins the many other testimonials we have received from other litigants who sat on opposite sides of the table from Bill Lee and come away from the experience impressed by his fairness.

He and the Civil Rights Division have been aggressive when they should be and they are pursuing cases involving involuntary servitude and forced prostitution. Bill Lann Lee deserves tremendous credit for creating a Worker Exploitation Task Force to get at the roots of a problem that few of us can believe exists in this country at this date and time: slavery. I commend Bill Lann Lee for putting the spotlight on this shameful crime and for pursuing those responsible.

The President renominated Bill Lann Lee to be Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division on January 29 of this year. Given his outstanding performance over the past seven months, I hope Chairman Hatch and the other Republican members of the Judiciary Committee will reconsider his nomination, review his record and favorably report the nomination of Bill Lann Lee to the Senate so that he may be confirmed as the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Bill Lee deserves this consideration and he deserves our support, and all Americans will be served by his confirmation.

The Department has much to proud of. I hope we will have an opportunity today to hear from the Attorney General about these efforts and accomplishments and the plans to increase the effectiveness of our law enforcement efforts over the next few years.

The challenges are tremendous. The Attorney General presides over our response to some of the most pressing matters on the agenda of the American people and of this Congress, and today we should take this opportunity to make some progress on those issues. We have a gang problem not only in urban settings but also, increasingly, in rural areas. We need to do more to stop violent juvenile crime. We have a serious illegal drug problem among our youth. We have a critical number of vacancies on our federal courts. Immigration issues are a continuing concern. It will be a revealing test of our diligence as legislators to see at the end of today just how much we have been able to bury partisanship in the interest of shedding light on the long list of issues that fall within our jurisdiction and within the responsibilities of the Attorney General.

A new problem arose just two weeks ago. A three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit decided United States vs. Singleton, in which it found that the prosecutor had violated the federal gratuity statute and state ethics rule by entering a plea agreement with a cooperating defendant that made certain promises in exchange for the cooperator's truthful testimony at trial. The promises in question were the sort of plain vanilla promises that appear in virtually every cooperation agreement, and are the lifeblood of bringing successful prosecutions. As a former prosecutor, I found this decision to be a bizarre and dangerous one. If this decision stands, prosecutors would be exposed to the threat of felony liability and disciplinary action just for doing their jobs.

In addition, this decision could result in a tidal wave of reversals and suppression rulings in cases involving cooperator testimony. We need to ensure that prosecutors have the tools they need to do their jobs effectively, and being able to enter into cooperation agreements is critical. I will be interested in hearing from you about how the Department is addressing this decision.

As we look to the future, we also need to focus on the challenges created by rapidly changing technology. At the top of the list is the encryption issue, where our current policy has stifled the widespread use of this critical crime-prevention tool, leaving our computer networks and critical infrastructures vulnerable to online crooks and high-tech terrorists. This status quo should be intolerable to law enforcement. Instead of a willingness to work with our high-tech industries and with members of the Committee who have introduced encryption legislation to rectify this situation, the Department and the law enforcement agencies under the Department’s supervision have stonewalled.

Problems also persist in implementation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or digital telephony law. To date, this law has generated litigation in the courts and before federal regulatory agencies, and provoked additional legislative action, but has not been implemented in the manner it should.

Technology creates opportunities that we need to seize -- both to prevent crime and to catch criminals. The Criminal Alien Tracking Center based in South Burlington, Vermont, is a good example of using an online national database to identify criminal aliens. This Center has demonstrated its importance to our national immigration policy.

Since its inception in 1994, the Center’s 24-hour team has received more than 40,000 inquiries from law enforcement agencies and identified more than 20,000 aliens of which more than 10,000 were identified as having criminal records. The Center now covers Arizona, Iowa and Florida and could be on-line in California, Texas and other states by the end of the year. We need to expand coverage to all 50 States and rectify an unfortunate bureaucratic decision to undermine its agents.

We need to help our law enforcement agencies use technology to their advantage and should not stand in the way of new developments. Law enforcement agencies throughout the nation lack communications systems to coordinate responses to crimes that cross state and local jurisdictions. A recent incident along the Vermont-New Hampshire border underscored this problem. During a cross-border shooting spree that left four people dead, including two New Hampshire state troopers, Vermont and New Hampshire officers were forced to park two police cruisers next to one another to coordinate activities between federal, state and local law enforcement officers because the two states’ police radios could not communicate with one another.

I am pleased that working with the Chairman and Senator DeWine, we were able on Monday to pass the “Crime Identification Technology Act,” S.2022, to provide federal assistance to States to upgrade their communications technologies and criminal justice identification systems.

The demands on the Attorney General are immense, because her work is of vital importance. The American people deserve safe streets. They deserve safe schools. They deserve continued protection of their civil rights.

Congress can help. I continue to strive to work on a bipartisan basis to help the Department of Justice do its work, help an outstanding Attorney General do her work, and help make this nation safe and secure for all of its people.