The Daily Princetonian sat down with Congressman Adam Schiff, eight-term representative of California’s 28th District, who in January became the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. The interview followed a lecture he gave that highlighted Congress’ domestic surveillance debates and U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East.
The Daily Princetonian:What was your most memorable experience as an undergraduate at Stanford?
Adam Schiff: I would say life in the freshman dorm. I just loved everything about it. It was a great experience going away to college and getting to know people from all over the country.And it was just fun ...I loved the independence of being on my own.
DP: Did that change by the time you finished college?
AS: At the end of my sophomore year it dawned on me that I was halfway through my college career and I was really depressed it had gone by so fast. Senior year was just a blur. But it was a magnificent place to go to school and I really treasured the experience.
DP: Based on your experience as a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, what kind of legislative efforts have you made to improve public safety?
AS: A lot of the work that I’ve done in Congress in the public safety arena has been around DNA evidence. As a prosecutor, DNA has struck me as a very powerful tool, both for conviction and for exoneration. It also struck me as a tool thatwe’re not utilizing at all to the capacity that it has — to solve crimes, to take dangerous people off the street, and also make sure people on death row are not innocent and wrongly convicted. SoI have worked for anumber of years to expand DNA sampling, to make sure we have privacy protections, to reduce rape kit backlogs, which was a staggering problem in Los Angeleswith thousands andthousands of kits untested,as well as to try to increase response time.
DP: Moving to foreign policy, how concerned are you with U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Yemen right now?
AS: I’m very concerned about it. We had a good partnership with the Yemeni government, we had personnel in Yemen, and we’ve lost a lot of that capability. And we see the results: not only a loss of our capabilities but also the degree to which al-Qaeda has profited from the chaos in Yemen. Al-Qaeda has taken over the fifth largest city in Yemen. They had been very much on the run and now they’re resurgent. [AQAP] is the most dangerous al-Qaeda franchise that has tried to blow up our aircraft repeatedly, so it’s something I’m very concerned about. We still do have capabilities there and we have a lot of experience working in denied environments but nonetheless it’s been a real setback in our efforts.
DP: And do you see major differences between ground-based intelligence versus overhead capabilities?
AS: Ideally, you have a good complement of both, and there are some things that each are better at doing. But if you lose your eyes on the ground it’s a real serious problembecause that often helps inform your assets in the air, and vice versa. So there’s no way to sugarcoat it. We have a pretty much diminished capacity there but we’re going to have to do the best we can.
DP: So in March this year, you and 40 other House members introduced the Armenian Genocide Truth and Justice Resolution and you’ve also announced that you will read the names of those deceased Armenians for one hour on the House floor next week. What are you trying to communicate? You’ve had a history of fighting for international human rights issues and crises, so how does this recognition play into your efforts on that front?
AS: I think it’s really part and parcel of what America has to do to lead on human rights, and that is we can’t pick and choose when we’re going to recognize genocide or when we’re going to speak out on mass atrocity. It’s not a principled position to take to say, “Well, we’ll recognize genocide if it’s committed by a government we oppose but not when it’s committed by the predecessor nation of an ally.” So this is important, I think, to our present ability to speak out on human rights, but also it’s an open wound for millions of families, that their own adopted nation doesn’t recognize what happened to them ... I don’t think it’s in our interest to be complicit in Turkey’s campaign of denial.
DP: How do you think this congressional push will affect our relationship with Turkey?
AS: It’ll prompt a usual indignant reaction by Turkey, just like they had when the Pope recognized the genocide this past week, but I don’t expect it’ll be much more than that. Turkey will do what is in its national interest. We have tried to get the Turks to do more in terms of combating ISIL — for example, by shutting down their border to foreign fighters going in and oil money coming out — with very limited success. Turkey will simply do what it decides is in its best interest, and I don’t think that’s going to be cutting off its relationship with the United States because we recognize the unquestioned facts of history.
DP: In 2010, President Barack Obama approved the Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act, which you authored in the Caucus for Freedom of the Press. How do you believe the Act furthers the cause of journalistic freedom around the world and holds governments under closer scrutiny?
AS: The goal of the Daniel Pearl Act was to shed a spotlight on the freedom of the press around the world: what countries are improving, which countries are moving backward, what steps the United States government can take to encourage a free press around the world and unfortunately we’re moving backward, not forward. The world is a more hostile place now than it was two or three years ago. So we’re moving in the wrong direction and many countries are becoming great big prisons for journalists ... I think it’s really one of those fundamentals that America needs to champion, in its own right and in the interests of developing good economies and successful states that don’t become havens for bad actors.
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