Graham Demands Access to Hagel Archives

Graham Demands Access to Hagel Archives

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) requested Friday that Chuck Hagel, the former Nebraska Senator nominated for Secretary of Defense, give Congress access to his archives at the University of Nebraska and past speeches from the Washington Speakers Bureau, the agency that coordinated his past public speaking engagements. 

“During your appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, you committed to fully cooperating with Senate requests to disclose information about your record,” Graham wrote in letter to Hagel. “‘Everything that is out there that we can find we’ll make every effort to get it and provide it,’ you told Chairman Levin.”

Despite Hagel’s promises at the confirmation hearing, he has refused to fully disclose financial documents, past speeches, records, and documents he submitted to the University of Nebraska that could shed more light on his associations with groups that could be allied with states that support terror. 

“The Washington Speakers Bureau has confirmed that it will not transfer to the Senate any video recordings of your past speeches without your authorization,” Graham charged. “The University of Nebraska-Omaha is stonewalling Senate staff and journalists seeking access to your Senate office archive, which is filled with past speeches, videos, letters and notes.”

Further, Graham reminded Hagel that he has not responded to a previous letter concerning “the accuracy of a contemporaneous report or remarks you delivered at Rutgers University in April 2010.”

The South Carolinian Senator wrote that on top of Hagel’s previous comments “accusing Israel of keeping Palestinians ‘caged up like animals,’ justifying Palestinian suicide bombings and alleging that a ‘Jewish lobby intimidates’ Senators into doing ‘dumb things,'” the 2010 report claims Hagel also said “Israel is becoming an apartheid state, that Prime Minister Netanyahu is a radical, that the Hamas terrorist organization should be brought into negotiations and that Israel stands in violation of multiple United Nations resolutions.”

Graham concluded his letter: “Sen. Hagel, given the threats we face in the world and the public confidence level needed to be an effective Secretary of Defense, I believe the airing of your views and record is critical to the confirmation process. Will you give the interested parties access to the archives at the University of Nebraska and the Washington Speakers Bureau?”

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