[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 175 (Thursday, December 3, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Page S8374]
TRIBUTE TO DANIEL J. JONES
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I wish to praise today the work of Mr.
Daniel Jones, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee staff, who
is leaving the Senate tomorrow.
Many of us enter public service for the simple goal of making a
difference. After knowing Dan for 9 years, I can say that he is one of
the few people working here on Capitol Hill who has helped make
history. Without his indefatigable work on the Intelligence Committee
staff, the Senate report on the CIA's Detention and Interrogation
Program would not have been completed, nor would its executive summary
have been released to the public, an effort that led to the recent
passage of critically important and long overdue anti-torture
legislation.
Dan came to the Intelligence Committee in January 2007 from the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he served as an intelligence
analyst. In his first 2 years on the staff, he played a key role in
overseeing counterterrorism efforts and the FBI's transition from a
pure law enforcement agency to an intelligence agency--a transition
that has proven instrumental to the Bureau's ability to identify and
thwart numerous terrorist attacks over the past several years.
However, his service and focus shifted following the revelation in
December 2007 that the CIA had previously destroyed interrogation
videotapes that showed the brutal treatment and questioning of two
detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Then-Chairman Jay
Rockefeller assigned Dan and fellow staffer Alissa Starzak to review
the CIA cables describing those interrogation sessions. For the next
several months, Dan worked at his full-time job at the committee while
also working nights and weekends at CIA headquarters, poring through
the cables.
The report that he and Alissa produced in early 2009 was graphic, and
it was shocking. It demonstrated in documented fact and in the CIA's
own words treatment by the U.S. Government that stood in contrast to
our values and to what the committee had previously been led to
believe. The report sparked a comprehensive investigation by the
committee, with a 14-1 vote in March 2009, that Dan led and then saw
through to its completion.
While carrying out the investigation into the CIA program, Dan also
co-led the committee's investigation into the attempted bombing of
Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 by Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab. Five months later, the committee produced a bipartisan
report that found 14 specific points of failure that resulted in
Abdulmutallab being able to board the flight and attempt to detonate
his explosive device at the direction of al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula. The report also made both classified and unclassified
recommendations to improve our counterterrorism efforts.
But back to the investigation on the CIA Detention and Interrogation
Program--to say that Dan worked diligently on this study is a gross
understatement. He, along with other committee staff, worked day and
night, often 7 days a week, from 2009 through December 2012. He became
an expert in one of the most unfortunate activities in the history of
our intelligence community, going through more than 6 million pages of
materials produced for the study, as well as immersing himself in the
anti-torture provisions in U.S. law, as well as human rights materials,
and the background of other similar historic Senate investigations.
Throughout this period, Dan regularly briefed me on the team's
findings. Each time, I noted the obvious toll that this was taking on
him physically, but he always remained committed to concluding the
report.
From the end of 2012 through the end of 2014, Dan stewarded the
report through two bipartisan committee votes, a lengthy period of
review and meetings with the CIA, and an 8-month long redaction review
leading to the release of the executive summary of the study on
December 9, 2014. He then played a key role in enacting reforms
following the release of the executive summary, in particular the
passage of a provision in this year's National Defense Authorization
Act that will prevent the future use of coercive interrogation
techniques or indefinite, secret detention in the future.
While Dan is known most for his leadership on the CIA detention and
interrogation review, his public service doesn't end there. Before his
Federal service, Dan taught for Teach for America in an inner-city
school in Baltimore, MD, and he has served on the board of his alma
mater, Elizabethtown College. His dedication to service is also
demonstrated by his two master's degrees, a master's of public policy
from the Kennedy School of Government and a master's of arts in
teaching from Johns Hopkins.
I want to use this opportunity to thank Dan Jones for his
indispensable work over the past 9 years and to wish him the very best
as he moves on to future endeavors.
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