Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has always been a champion for government transparency, and has been, of late, a staunch critic of the decision to allow unclassified government documents to be stored in the Senate Security Room.
Last week, he called out the decision to place the FBI’s unclassified documents from the Hillary Clinton email investigation in the secured space. Thursday, he took to the Senate floor again, reminding his colleagues of his concerns—which apparently have already been played out.
Here is the complete transcript of his speech:
Last week, I spoke about the danger of allowing agencies to improperly use the Office of Senate Security to keep information secret even when it is unclassified.
I said that if we let the FBI get away with hiding the Clinton investigation documents from the public, then other agencies would abuse the system to undermine transparency and oversight.
That is exactly what is happening.
The State, Treasury and Justice Departments are trying the same trick to hide documents about the Obama Administration’s transfer of billions of dollars to Iran for hostages. These unclassified documents requested by the Judiciary Committee are being locked away in the basement of the Capitol.
They are being treated as if they are classified, but they are not.
The Committee was not consulted and did not agree to these burdensome and unnecessary document controls.
With the Clinton investigation documents, the FBI improperly mixed classified and unclassified documents together in order to keep the unclassified documents secret.
But, this time every paragraph and every page of the Iran hostage payment documents is 100-percent unclassified.
So why send it to Senate Security?
Why keep it locked away from the public and congressional oversight?
Why would the Senate participate in this scheme to undermine transparency?
If the Senate, as an institution, wants to take its oversight responsibility seriously, we should not be helping the executive branch hide embarrassing information from the American people.
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