With A Whisper, Not A Bang
By David Martin
San Antonio Current

December 24, 2003

On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as “the President signs bills seven days a week.” But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shutting down the federal government the following Monday.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein’s capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don’t suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.

By signing the bill on the day of Hussein’s capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote.

The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies tucked away these new executive powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government. The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of “financial institution,” which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business “whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.”

Congress passed the legislation around Thanksgiving. Except for U.S. Representative Charlie Gonzalez, all San Antonio’s House members voted for the act. The Senate passed it with a voice vote to avoid individual accountability. While broadening the definition of “financial institution,” the Bush administration is ramping up provisions within the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which granted the FBI the authority to obtain client records from banks by merely requesting the records in a “National Security Letter.” To get the records, the FBI doesn’t have to appear before a judge, nor demonstrate “probable cause” - reason to believe that the targeted client is involved in criminal or terrorist activity. Moreover, the National Security Letters are attached with a gag order, preventing any financial institution from informing its clients that their records have been surrendered to the FBI. If a financial institution breaches the gag order, it faces criminal penalties. And finally, the FBI will no longer be required to report to Congress how often they have used the National Security Letters.

Supporters of expanding the Patriot Act claim that the new law is necessary to prevent future terrorist attacks on the U.S. The FBI needs these new powers to be “expeditious and efficient” in its response to these new threats. Robert Summers, professor of international law and director of the new Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University, explains, “We don’t go to war with the terrorists as we went to war with the Germans or the North Vietnamese. If we apply old methods of following the money, we will not be successful. We need to meet them on an even playing field to avoid another disaster.”

“It’s a problem that some of these riders that are added on may not receive the scrutiny that we would like to see.” - Robert Summers

Opponents of the PATRIOT Act and its expansion claim that safeguards like judicial oversight and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, are essential to prevent abuses of power. “There’s a reason these protections were put into place,” says Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, and a historian of U.S. political repression. “It has been shown that if you give [these agencies] this power they will abuse it. For any investigative agency, once you tell them that they must make sure that they protect the country from subversives, it inevitably gets translated into a program to silence dissent.”

Opponents claim the FBI already has all the tools to stop crime and terrorism. Moreover, explains Patrick Filyk, an attorney and vice president of the local chapter of the ACLU, “The only thing the act accomplishes is the removal of judicial oversight and the transfer of more power to law enforcements agents.”

This broadening of the Patriot Act represents a political victory for the Bush Administration’s stealth legislative strategy to increase executive power. Last February, shortly before Bush launched the war on Iraq, the Center for Public Integrity obtained a draft of a comprehensive expansion of the Patriot Act, nicknamed Patriot Act II, written by Attorney General John Ashcroft’s staff. Again, the timing was suspicious; it appeared that the Bush Administration was waiting for the start of the Iraq war to introduce Patriot Act II, and then exploit the crisis to ram it through Congress with little public debate.

The leak and ensuing public backlash frustrated the Bush administration’s strategy, so Ashcroft and Co. disassembled Patriot Act II, then reassembled its parts into other legislation. By attaching the redefinition of “financial institution” to an Intelligence Authorization Act, the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies avoided public hearings and floor debates for the expansion of the Patriot Act.

Even proponents of this expansion have expressed concern about these legislative tactics. “It’s a problem that some of these riders that are added on may not receive the scrutiny that we would like to see,” says St. Mary’s Professor Robert Summers.

The Bush Administration has yet to answer pivotal questions about its latest constitutional coup: If these new executive powers are necessary to protect United States citizens, then why would the legislation not withstand the test of public debate? If the new act’s provisions are in the public interest, why use stealth in ramming them through the legislative process?

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Patriot Act II Resurrected?
By Ryan Singel
Wired

August 21, 2003

Congress may consider a bill that not only expands the government’s wiretapping and investigative powers but also would link low-level drug dealing to terrorism and ban a traditional form of Middle Eastern banking.

The draft legislation — titled the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003, or Victory Act — includes significant portions of the so-called Patriot Act II, which faced broad opposition from conservatives and liberals alike and embarrassed the Justice Department when it was leaked to the press in February.
The Victory Act also seems to be an attempt to merge the war on terrorism and the war on drugs into a single campaign. It includes a raft of provisions increasing the government’s ability to investigate, wiretap, prosecute and incarcerate money launderers, fugitives, “narco-terrorists” and nonviolent drug dealers. The bill also outlaws hawalas, the informal and documentless money transferring systems widely used in the Middle East, India and parts of Asia.

A June 27 draft of the bill, authored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and co-sponsored by four fellow Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, has been circulating in Washington, D.C.

Critics say the bill is an opportunistic attempt to link the fight against drugs to the fight against terrorism by creating a new crime called “narco-terrorism.” According to the draft, narco-terrorism is the crime of selling, distributing or manufacturing a controlled substance with the intent of helping a terrorist group.

While this draft legislation’s focus differs significantly from the much-criticized Patriot II draft leaked to the press in February, Hatch’s bill contains several passages from that draft.

Among other things, the bill would:

* Allow the FBI to get a wiretap order on a wireless device, such as a cell phone, from any district court in the country
* Force defendants who are trying to exclude illegal wiretap evidence to prove police intentionally broke the rules
* Further restrict judges’ sentencing discretion in drug cases
* Ease restrictions on government access to sensitive financial records
* Increase penalties for selling drugs to people under the age of 21
* Make it easier for the government to seize or freeze assets of people accused of money laundering
* Remove gradations of sentencing for those convicted of selling amphetamines so that anyone convicted of possessing more than 250 meth pills would automatically go to jail for 200 years
* Increase the ability of the FBI to self-issue subpoenas for terrorism investigations without having to consult a judge

Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said he suspects that the Justice Department was heavily involved in the drafting of the bill.

“It reads like what you would come up with if you got a whole bunch of prosecutors in a room and asked them, ‘If you could rewrite the law, what would it look like?’” Edgar said. “It’s cleverly packaged as an antiterrorism package, when really it’s just a grab bag of changes the Justice Department wants.”

“The amendments look small, but in aggregate represent a large shift in power to the government away from the judiciary, defense lawyers and other components of the justice system,” he said.

The Justice Department did not return repeated calls for comment on its involvement with the draft.

Margarita Tapia, Hatch’s spokeswoman at the Judiciary Committee, declined to speak about the legislation’s provisions, the Justice Department’s involvement or the time frame for the bill’s introduction.

“Narco-terrorism is an issue that is of continuing interest to this committee,” said Tapia, noting that the committee held a hearing in 2001 on the subject. “So of course, the chairman would look at all legislative options to eliminate financing mechanisms for terrorist organizations.”

In a May Judiciary Committee hearing, Hatch said he had long been concerned about the “nexus forming between international organized crime, political movements and terrorism.

“Terrorists around the world, and in every region, appear to be increasing their involvement in the trafficking of illegal drugs, primarily as a source of financing for their terrorist operations,” said Hatch. “The connection between Middle Eastern terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and Latin American drug trafficking, has been reported in the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, which has long been characterized as a regional hub for radical Islamic groups, which engage in arms and drug trafficking, contraband smuggling, money laundering and movement of pirated goods.”

Critics said the attempt to connect drugs to terrorism may be an effort to raise support for the so-called war on drugs.

“This bill struck me as a way to link a dying concept of how to fight the drug war to other issues that still have public support, like the war on terrorism,” said Ryan King, a research associate at the Sentencing Project. “It’s counter to what we have seen in the last few years, at least state-wise, where states are turning to drug treatment and alternative sentencing options.

“If the Justice Department is trying to link terrorism to high-level drug dealing, why turn around then and try to punish street-level dealers?” asked King.

Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation worries most about the wiretap provision that would make it harder for a defendant to exclude evidence if the wiretap was not legal.

“This creates a question of fact as to what is ‘bad faith,’” Tien said. “That can be really hard to show.”

“Every time, the (FBI) has a violation of wiretap procedures, they can just say, ‘We made a mistake.’” Tien said. “That encourages sloppiness.”

The bill’s critics all emphasize, however, that the bill is likely to be quite different when it is introduced, which many expect will happen in September when Congress returns from its summer break.

“Part of the reason bills change when drafts become known is because people take shots at it,” said the ACLU’s Edgar.

The future of the Victory Act may hinge on Ashcroft’s success in defending the Patriot Act, according to King. Ashcroft will be traveling the country in the next few days defending the Patriot Act, which is losing support from Congressional members and local government officials.

“How Ashcroft’s tour is received will decide what will go forward in the fall and what cannot,” said King.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

The Patriot Act’s Assault on The Bill of Rights
By Brigid O’Neil
Detroit News

September, 15, 2003

To the layperson looking at John Ashcroft’s now-infamous road show in defense of the USA PATRIOT Act, the whole ruckus — complete with organized protestors and opportunistic reporters — must look rather comical. In fact, with 91 percent of registered voters unaware of the Act’s encroachment on civil liberties, the entire dispute might even appear unnecessary. Unnecessary, that is, until you take a look at the Act in all of its 342 pages of verbose details and constitutional infractions. And then, somewhere between the elimination of privacy rights and abolition of checks and balances, it becomes startlingly apparent that over the furor of “preventive justice”, the White House has silently squandered our constitutional protections of due process and civil liberties.
The PATRIOT Act’s baleful abrogation of our right to due process under the law cannot be overstated. As defined in legal jargon, our constitutional right to due process endows every person with appropriate safeguards to protect against arbitrary or unreasonable treatment under the law. It is noteworthy to all, including the Department of Justice, that the framer’s used the term “person”‘ instead of “citizen”‘ in reference to due process. This makes the worst provisions of the PATRIOT Act all the more deplorable for their targeted discrimination of non-citizens. In essence, these provisions institute ideological censorship, authorize deportation for lawful group activities, and allow the Attorney General to detain foreigners with a piece of paper.

Such blatant constitutional violations by the PATRIOT Act, however, are not restricted to foreigners alone. The legislation expands terrorism laws to include “domestic terrorism”, which could subject common political organizations to surveillance, wiretapping, and harassment for political advocacy. Consequently, the mere threat of criminal action is employed to suppress peaceful dissent.

Intelligence agents are similarly granted increased powers to detain citizens for investigative purposes and conduct surveillance — even when there is no basis for suspecting criminal activity. One particularly Orwellian provision involves the notorious “sneak and peek” warrant. Not to be confused with the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizures, this new and improved PATRIOT warrant permits agents to search homes and confiscate property under a low evidentiary standard, without first notifying the owner. The warrant also betrays long-held “knock and announce” requirements — allowing subjects of a search to challenge errors in the warrant, such as a wrong address or mistaken name. This particularly odious due process violation finally found it’s way back on the House floor, where it was overwhelmingly repealed in a show of bipartisan support.

The House also voted to repeal Section 215 of the Act, extending government surveillance powers into the very bastions of access to the free press: bookstores and public libraries. Under this provision, the FBI can force librarians and booksellers to turn over the records of their customers without showing probable cause before an ordinary court. The Act also carries a gag order, criminalizing any discussion of FBI searches with the threat of prosecution. Contrary to Ashcroft’s dismissal of librarian concerns as “baseless hysteria”, one survey by the University of Illinois in October 2002 found that federal and local law enforcement officials contacted over 10 percent of their universities for investigation. After checking this university survey for it’s authenticity, it would seem that Ashcroft would be well advised to collaborate with law enforcement officials before he starts a war of words with our nation’s librarians.

Such outrageous violations of due process and equal protection have not gone unnoticed in America’s town halls. More than 160 local governments and three states have passed resolutions opposing the PATRIOT Act, and numerous civil liberty groups have filed lawsuits against the Act’s constitutional violations. At the same time the Inspector General of the Justice Department has submitted two scathing critiques of the Department’s treatment of immigrants swept up under the Act’s broad provisions. The report details dozens of blatant civil rights abuses, many alleging inhumane treatment of prisoners at the hands of Department employees.

What makes these shocking disclosures all the more repugnant is the latest attempt by the Bush Administration to expand state powers even further with a new PATRIOT II. As outlined in his politically motivated speech the eve of 9-11, President Bush proposed to drop current subpoena protections, expand the federal death penalty statutes, and bar purported “terror suspects” from being released on bail. With civil liberties already overrun by patriotic fervor and state abuse, how can the American people possibly afford to squander more constitutional protections?

The Administration’s current policy seems hazardously duplicitous when it asserts its commitment to freedom and democracy, particularly when both principles seem to be the first casualties of war. As Senator Russell Feingold, the lone Senate opposition vote to the PATRIOT Act, forebodingly said, “Preserving our freedom is one of the main reasons that we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.”

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Get Ready for PATRIOT II
By Matt Welch
AlterNet

April 2, 2003

The “fog of war” obscures more than just news from the battlefield. It also provides cover for radical domestic legislation, especially ill-considered liberty-for-security swaps, which have been historically popular at the onset of major conflicts.

The last time allied bombs fell over a foreign capital, the Bush Administration rammed through the USA PATRIOT Act, a clever acronym for maximum with-us-or-against-us leverage (the full name is “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”).
Remarkably, this 342-page law was written, passed (by a 98-1 vote in the U.S. Senate) and signed into law within seven weeks of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. As a result, the government gained new power to wiretap phones, confiscate property of suspected terrorists, spy on its own citizens without judicial review, conduct secret searches, snoop on the reading habits of library users, and so General John Ashcroft wants to finish the job. On Jan. 10, 2003, he sent around a draft of PATRIOT II; this time, called “The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003.” The more than 100 new provisions, Justice Department spokesperson Mark Corallo told the Village Voice recently, “will be filling in the holes” of PATRIOT I, “refining things that will enable us to do our job.”

Though Ashcroft and his mouthpieces have issued repeated denials that the draft represents anything like a finished proposal, the Voice reported that: “Corallo confirmed … that such measures were coming soon.” You can read the entire 87-page draft here. Constitutional watchdog Nat Hentoff has called it “the most radical government plan in our history to remove from Americans their liberties under the Bill of Rights.” Some of DSEA’s more draconian provisions:

1. Americans could have their citizenship revoked, if found to have contributed “material support” to organizations deemed by the government, even retroactively, to be “terrorist.” As Hentoff wrote in the Feb. 28 Village Voice: “Until now, in our law, an American could only lose his or her citizenship by declaring a clear intent to abandon it. But ˆ and read this carefully from the new bill ˆ ‘the intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct.’”

2. Legal permanent residents (like, say, my French wife), could be deported instantaneously, without a criminal charge or even evidence, if the Attorney General considers them a threat to national security. If they commit minor, non-terrorist offenses, they can still be booted out, without so much as a day in court, because the law would exempt habeas corpus review in some cases. As the American Civil Liberties Union stated in its long brief against the DSEA, “Congress has not exempted any person from habeas corpus ˆ a protection guaranteed by the Constitution ˆ since the Civil War.”

3. The government would be instructed to build a mammoth database of citizen DNA information, aimed at “detecting, investigating, prosecuting, preventing or responding to terrorist activities.” Samples could be collected without a court order; one need only be suspected of wrongdoing by a law enforcement officer. Those refusing the cheek-swab could be fined $200,000 and jailed for a year. “Because no federal genetic privacy law regulates DNA databases, privacy advocates fear that the data they contain could be misused,” Wired News reported March 31. “People with ‘flawed’ DNA have already suffered genetic discrimination at the hands of employers, insurance companies and the government.”

4. Authorities could wiretap anybody for 15 days, and snoop on anyone’s Internet usage (including chat and email), all without obtaining a warrant.

5. The government would be specifically instructed not to release any information about detainees held on suspicion of terrorist activities, until they are actually charged with a crime. Or, as Hentoff put it, “for the first time in U.S. history, secret arrests will be specifically permitted.”

6. Businesses that rat on their customers to the Feds ˆ even if the information violates privacy agreements, or is, in fact, dead wrong ˆ would be granted immunity. “Such immunity,” the ACLU contended, “could provide an incentive for neighbor to spy on neighbor and pose problems similar to those inherent in Attorney General Ashcroft’s Operation TIPS.”

7. Police officers carrying out illegal searches would also be granted legal immunity if they were just carrying out orders.

8. Federal “consent decrees” limiting local law enforcement agencies’ abilities to spy on citizens in their jurisdiction would be rolled back. As Howard Simon, executive director of Florida’s ACLU, noted in a March 19 column in the Sarasota Herald Tribune: “The restrictions on political surveillance were hard-fought victories for civil liberties during the 1970s.”

- American citizens could be subject to secret surveillance by their own government on behalf of foreign countries, including dictatorships.
- The death penalty would be expanded to cover 15 new offenses.
- And many of PATRIOT I’s “sunset provisions” ˆ stipulating that the expanded new enforcement powers would be rescinded in 2005 ˆ would be erased from the books, cementing Ashcroft’s rushed legislation in the law books. As UPI noted March 10, “These sunset provisions were a concession to critics of the bill in Congress.”

I wouldn’t be writing this article today had an alarmed Justice Department staffer not leaked the draft to the Center for Public Integrity in early February. Ashcroft, up to that point, had repeatedly refused to even discuss what his lawyers might be cooking up. But if 10,000 residents of Los Angeles had been vaporized by a “suitcase nuke” in late January, it is reasonable to assume that the then-secret proposal would have been speed-delivered for a congressional vote, even though Congress has not so far participated in drafting the legislation (which is, after all, its Constitutional role).

As a result of the leak, and the ensuing bad press, opposition to the measure has had time to gather momentum before the first bomb was dropped on Saddam’s bunker. Some of the criticism has originated from the right side of the political spectrum ˆ a March 17 open letter to Congress was signed not only by the ACLU and People for the American Way, but the cultural-conservative think tank Free Congress Foundation, the Gun Owners of America, the American Conservative Union, and more.

One does not have to believe that Ashcroft is a Constitution-shredding ghoul to find these measures alarming, improper and possibly illegal. Glancing over the list above, and at the other DSEA literature, I can see multiple ways in which a Fed with a grudge could legally ruin my life. Removing checks and balances on law enforcement assumes perfect behavior on the part of the police.

Safeguarding civil liberties is an unpopular project in the most placid of times. Since Sept. 11, the Bush Administration has shown that it will push the envelope on nearly every restriction it considers to be impeding its prosecution of the war on terrorism. This single-minded drive requires extreme vigilance, before the fog of war becomes toxic.

Detailed critiques of the Patriot II draft have been prepared by the ACLU and the Center for Public Integrity. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights also has a useful 98-page report on post-Sept. 11 civil liberties, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center maintains an outstanding PATRIOT-related site.

Matt Welch is the Los Angeles correspondent for the National Post, and an editor of the L.A. Examiner. He also maintains a weblog about current events.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

The New Inquisition
By Walter Cronkite
The Denver Post

Sunday 21 September 2003

President Bush’s televised answer to the growing concerns of many - including some Republicans - about the powers granted to him in the USA Patriot Act was to ask for even stronger measures, particularly the expanded use of “nonjudicial subpoenas.” That means a federal agency such as the FBI can write its own subpoenas to conduct a search - no judges needed.
Unfortunately, security and liberty form a zero-sum equation. The inevitable trade-off: To increase security is to decrease liberty and vice versa. In the past, such trade-offs have been temporary - for the duration of the crisis of the moment. But today, we cannot see an end to the War on Terrorism, and that forces us to decide how secure we have to be and how free we want to be.

By delivering the speech last week himself, Bush added presidential heft to the issue and took some of the heat off of his attorney general, who is seen by many as the heedless champion of security at any price.

In his 2 1/2 years in office, Attorney General John Ashcroft has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Torquemada of American law. Tomas de Torquemada was the 15th century Dominican friar who became the grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. He was largely responsible for its methods, including torture and the burning of heretics - Muslims in particular.

Now, of course, I am not accusing the attorney general of pulling out anyone’s fingernails or burning people at the stake (at least I don’t know of any such cases). But one does get the sense these days that the old Spaniard’s spirit is comfortably at home in Ashcroft’s Department of Justice.

The Patriot Act is much in the news, as Ashcroft and his minions seek both to justify its excesses and strengthen them, thus intensifying its dangerous infringements on the Bill of Rights.

There was something almost medieval in the treatment of Muslim suspects in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Many were held incommunicado, without effective counsel and without ever being charged, not for days or weeks, but for months or longer, some under harsh conditions designed for the most dangerous criminals.

It was in the spirit of the Inquisition that the Justice Department announced recently that it would begin gathering data on judges who give sentences lighter than called for by legislative guidelines.

Nothing so clearly evokes Torquemada’s spirit as Ashcroft’s penchant for overruling U.S. attorneys who have sought lesser penalties in capital cases. The attorney general has done this at least 30 times since he took office, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel. In several cases, Ashcroft actually has overturned plea bargains negotiated by those government prosecutors.

The New York Times editorialized that the attorney general seems to want the death penalty used more often.

Ashcroft is not alone in this. His boss, while governor of Texas, seemed never to have met a death sentence he didn’t like. The two of them represent a subdivision of the Republican Party known as the “social conservatives,” who often have favored the use of government power to police moral issues they view as modern heresies, such as abortion, homosexuality and obscenity. They contrast with those Republicans who tend to resist such uses of federal power and can generally be counted on to defend individual rights.

What makes this administration’s legal bloodthirstiness particularly alarming is the almost religious zeal that seems to drive it. So, what we are seeing now is a confluence of two streams of American thought. One of those streams represents those who believe security must have priority over civil rights. The other stream represents those who believe that civil rights must be preserved even as we prosecute to the hilt the war on terrorism.

Our liberty could drown in the resultant turbulence of these colliding currents.

Walter Cronkite has been a journalist for more than 60 years, including 19 as anchor of the CBS Evening News.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Liberty Bushwhacked
Washington Post | Editorial

Saturday 13 September 2003

President Bush asked Congress this week to “untie the hands of our law enforcement officials” by passing three new counterterrorism proposals. Two of these are relatively insignificant, but one is dramatically dangerous — and it has received little attention. Mr. Bush wants Congress to give federal investigators the power to compel witnesses to submit to secret interrogations without the traditional protections of the grand jury.
In more technical terms, Mr. Bush wants to give the Justice Department the power to issue “administrative subpoenas” instead of grand jury subpoenas to compel documents or testimony from reluctant witnesses. The administration argues that grand jury subpoenas can be too slow in emergency situations. The administrative approach, Mr. Bush said, is faster and already “used in a wide range of criminal and civil matters. . . . If we can use these subpoenas to catch crooked doctors, the Congress should allow law enforcement officials to use them in catching terrorists.”

That may sound reasonable, and current law does permit investigators in certain types of cases to use administrative subpoenas, which FBI agents can issue with far less oversight. But until now there have been important limits to administrative subpoena power. While investigators can use an administrative subpoena to obtain documents, they cannot normally compel testimony in criminal cases. The exception is a provision of federal drug law on which the Bush proposal, contained in a bill introduced this week by Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), is modeled. Yet even there, prosecutors generally use the power to obtain records, not testimony, law enforcement experts say. In this country, in other words, if you don’t want to talk to the FBI, you don’t have to — and the only way the Justice Department can force you to talk is to put you in front of 23 of your fellow citizens with a court stenographer making a detailed transcript. All of this significantly deters abuse.

Under Mr. Feeney’s bill, the bureau in terrorism cases could subpoena a witness and, if that person balks, get the courts to “compel compliance” on pain of contempt. So, absent an assertion of a privilege, you could no longer refuse to talk to investigators without the protections of a grand jury. Moreover, the bill would give the department the authority, if it certifies that “a danger to national security” would result from disclosure of the subpoena, to slap a gag order on the witness. This is entirely at odds with traditional grand jury procedure, in which witnesses are specifically exempted from the secrecy that surrounds proceedings. And unlike in the drug context, there’s reason to fear that this authority would be used routinely in the context of terrorism.

This radical new power is unnecessary as well as dangerous. It’s not as though seeking grand jury subpoenas is especially burdensome. Prosecutors don’t need to seek a grand jury’s approval for each subpoena they issue; rather, they often issue them on behalf of the grand juries. Federal rules allow them to keep signed and sealed blank subpoenas for use when necessary. While it is probably true that getting grand jury subpoenas out the door is more cumbersome in certain jurisdictions than in others, that would at most suggest tinkering with some local rules and practices. Mr. Feeney’s bill would do a lot more than tinker.

Asked to account for the extraordinary power proposed in the bill, a department spokeswoman initially suggested that Mr. Feeney may have drafted it badly. Only when it was pointed out that similar language had appeared in the so-called “Patriot II” draft bill the Justice Department prepared and leaked early this year did the department even acknowledge that it supports this bill as written. We hope Congress will take a different view.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

The Hill
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
The Right View
By David Keene

Ashcroft Shows Shortcomings With ‘Victory’

Attorney General John Ashcroft began his recent “victory” tour at the American Enterprise Institute where he disingenuously justified his campaign-like appearance as necessary, lest those lacking his unique dedication to the war against terrorism succeed in “repealing” the USA Patriot Act. He then took his show on the road, speaking primarily before closed meetings of law enforcement officials assembled to applaud and nod as he not only defended the vast investigative powers he and they have acquired since Sept. 11 but argued that more were needed.
Meanwhile, his spokespeople were hinting publicly that anyone who even dares question the need for such power or suspects that it might actually be abused by those to whom it is being entrusted are at the very least insufficiently committed to fighting terrorism and might, indeed, be “soft” on the whole question. Indeed, his people began charging that critics of the Patriot Act, ranging from the ACLU to the Eagle Forum, have been lying and misrepresenting the whole thing from the beginning in an effort to stir up fears about actual or potential government abuse of the rights of innocent U.S. citizens. One of my conservative brother’s questions were dismissed by a Justice Department representative, who told him that he should just “trust the government to do the right thing.”

I have always considered John Ashcroft a friend, and I certainly appreciate the difficulty of his current job, but like many of those who have supported him in the past, I find myself stunned not only by his failure, rhetoric aside, to understand the need to balance the demand for security with the need to safeguard individual freedom but with the way in which he is trying to consign anyone who questions anything the government does to the ranks of terrorist sympathizers. He knows better, and those he is now attacking have every right to resent the mischaracterization of their motives and integrity emanating from his office.

Many in the administration seem to believe that this helps President Bush who, rightly, continues to get high marks for his conduct of the war against terrorism, but they are missing the straws in the wind. The Patriot Act passed in the weeks following Sept. 11 because in times of crisis people want action and don’t pay much attention to details. Many of those who voted for it did so without even reading it, and everyone in Congress knows that the recent Justice Department assertion that the act was seriously debated and examined for six weeks before passage is laughable nonsense.

Since then, many in Congress have had a chance to step back and ask whether the 342-page bill the administration cobbled together in those dark days might have gone too far. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) believes today that his vote for the bill was perhaps the worst he’s ever cast, and dozens of others from both parties are suggesting that Congress revisit some of the provisions they might not have passed those provisions had they not been stampeded by an administration insisting that a vote against a bill they hadn’t even had a chance to examine was a vote against bringing terrorists to justice.

It should be noted, however, that regardless of what Ashcroft claims, no one is urging repeal of the Patriot Act. Even the act’s harshest critics acknowledge that the government needed new tools to deal with the unique threat posed by international terrorism and would do nothing to deny government those tools. However, they are now asking that it be reviewed and perhaps modified with an eye to protecting the traditional and constitutional rights of innocent Americans. Ashcroft’s response to this has been to demand that the sunset provisions that would eventually force such a review be removed and that Congress expand rather than restrict the investigative powers “needed” to effectively fight terrorism.

Fortunately, Congress has been less receptive to the attorney general than the handpicked audiences he addressed during his tour. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) has introduced a bill in the Senate to reform the act, and the House recently voted 309-118 for a floor amendment offered by Idaho’s Butch Otter restricting the utilization of what are known as “sneak and peek” warrants. One hundred thirteen of those votes came from Republicans, and, regardless of whether the amendment passes the Senate or survives a conference, represent a warning that neither Ashcroft nor the president can afford to ignore.

Americans demand both security and freedom and believe that we can have both.

The administration is tasked with protecting us but should be on notice now that Americans are simply unwilling to give up their rights to make that task easier just because Ashcroft’s bureaucrats say we should trust them.

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is a managing associate with the Carmen Group, a D.C.-based governmental affairs firm

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Ashcroft Slams Critics as Patriot Act Backlash Grows
By Tom Regan
Christian Science Monitor

Tuesday 16 September 2003

The war of words over the USA Patriot Act heated up considerably over the past few days, thanks in part to a recently completed “Patriot Act Tour” conducted by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. The tour, conducted in front of small, law enforcement friendly audiences, excluded participation from the general public. (At Faneuil Hall in Boston, Ashcroft addressed a crowd of 150, while outside the hall a crowd of 1200 chanted “This is what democracy looks like.”) The tour was designed to create support for the act, but in some ways may have done just the opposite.
One of the main charges critics of the Patriot Act aim against Ashcroft is that rules designed to catch terrorists will be used against ordinary citizens. They also say police and prosecutors will use the laws created by the Patriot Act in other areas of law enforcement. These critics include people from both the left and the right of the American political spectrum.

Ashcroft blasted some of these critics on Monday, taking aim in particular at librarians. The Associated Press reports that Ashcroft said people are being wrongly led to believe that libraries have been “surrounded by the FBI,” with agents “dressed in raincoats, dark suits and sunglasses. They stop everyone and interrogate everyone like Joe Friday.”

The attorney general continues to insist that the Act “respects rights and increases security.” USA Today looks at how the Act is at the heart of Ashcroft’s powers as attorney general.

There are also some people who don’t think Ashcroft and the Patriot Act have gone far enough. They would like to see a halt to all immigration of any kind, for instance, as a better way to prevent terrorism.

Delaware Online reports that Patriot Act “abuses,” however, are starting to surface. People with no connection to any form of criminal activity say that they are being deprived of the right to open bank accounts, get credit cards, etc. because of the Patriot Act.

Shortly after he graduated from college in May, French Clements of San Jose, Calif., tried to open an online brokerage account with Harrisdirect, where his stepfather has an account. A day after he completed the online application, however, he got a brief e-mail from Harrisdirect saying, “We regret to inform you that we are unable to approve your application at this time: The customer’s identity not properly authenticated per the Patriot Act.” Clements was stunned, and so was his mother, Alayne Yellum. “Maybe they don’t like people named French,” she says.

As evidence of the Act’s effectiveness, the Justice Department often points out that 260 individuals have been charged, and that 515 “linked” to the 9/11 investigation have been deported. But the Christian Science Monitor reports that what the government doesn’t reveal is that the vast majority of the 260 charged and 515 deported were involved in relatively minor crimes or immigration infraction, and had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or terrorism.

Critics of the Patriot Act also point out that it is now being used in other areas of law enforcement.

“Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases,” said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. “They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens.”

In one case, a North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually brings about six months. AP reports that prosecutors are making no apologies for these tactics, saying that while the Patriot Act’s primary focus is on terrorism, lawmakers are aware it contains provisions that have been on prosecutors’ wish lists for years, and could be used in a wide variety of cases.

It is this idea of law enforcement officials jamming every conceivable thing on their wish lists into the Patriot Act (because they knew a Congress staggered by the 9/11 attacks would pass it), that enrages so many people. The Chicago Sun-Times reports on a recent debate where retired judge, and former Clinton White House Counsel, Abner Mikva said the act is “making us into the Police State of America.”

“It’s a 342-page bill that changes our immigration laws, privacy laws, security, detention, the entire way the federal government treats its people,” Mikva said … Mikva described it as a grab bag of civil liberties-defying requests from federal prosecutors that he had rejected during the Clinton years. “I was at the White House in 1995, and we were able to get some of the worst provisions excluded from the 1995 act, and they were just dumped wholesale into the Patriot Act,” Mikva said.

The growing backlash against the act may make it more difficult for the Bush asministration to get new provisions added to it. The Washington Post reports that President Bush used the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to call for empowering authorities in terrorist investigations to issue subpoenas without going to grand juries, to hold suspects without bail and to pursue the death penalty in more cases. But The Toledo Blade reports that Bush didn’t go as far as Ashcroft wanted, because senior Republican lawmakers had told him many of these new provisions would be “dead on arrival.”

As the Blade also points out, knowing whether Ashcroft or his critics views are justified is made more complicated by the Justice Department’s refusal to release information about Patriot Act prosecutions.

An analysis of the act, as it is being implemented by the federal government and subtly revised by the courts, indicates that so far it has not threatened the civil liberties of millions as some claim but neither has its use avoided unintended consequences and damage to innocent lives. The problem is that because of government secrecy - the fate of some Muslim-Americans rounded up since 9/11 is still unknown - it is difficult to know exactly how the law is being enforced.

Finally, it seems that Ashcroft is having some legal problems of his own. On Friday his department filed a brief saying that he shouldn’t be required to appear in a Michigan federal court to explain why he violated a judge’s gag order in place during a terrorism trial. Ashcroft is accused of violating a court order when he praised government informant Youssef Hmimssa during an April 17 news conference. At the news conference, Ashcroft called Youssef Hmimssa’s cooperation “a critical tool” in efforts to combat terrorism.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

For Those Who Wish to Dissent:
Speech, Silence and Patriotism
by Sara Paretsky
The Chicago Tribune

Sunday, September 21, 2003

A cloud of unknowing surrounds St. Johns College in Santa Fe, Andrew O’Connor and his long interrogation by Albuquerque police and the Secret Service in February 2003. O’Connor was removed from the college library by police after he made negative comments about President Bush in an online chat room. But since he was ultimately released without being charged, he clearly had not threatened the president’s life. What he said, how the police and Secret Service knew he said it, and the gag order on the college to keep people from talking about his arrest, are all shrouded in silence.
Similarly, we don’t know what a New Jersey library user was reading the day another patron called the police to report that the man was looking at a foreign-language Web page. But the man was hauled off for questioning, held without being allowed to call his home or a lawyer, and then released without being charged. We also don’t know why the FBI arrived at a California student’s home hours after she talked on the phone about bomb icons in a video game she was playing.

The only thing we do know is that all these acts by police and FBI are legal under the USA Patriot Act. A few years ago, I was almost arrested in the middle of the night. The police stopped a hit man just before he reached his target. The hit man had a card with my name and the title of one of my books on the seat next to him, and the police were sure I was involved. But they had to get a warrant, and the assistant state’s attorney wouldn’t issue it. Today, though, the cops could just come and get me. And U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft thinks that’s fine.

In fact, as Ashcroft has taken his dog-and-pony show on the road, he’s been saying that not only is it good for the police to arrest me, or library patrons, or college students, without needing to show probable cause, they should have even more power. They should be able to search all our records, and to hold us without bail when they do arrest us. He says those of us objecting are “raising the phantom of lost liberty,” and we’re giving “ammunition to America’s enemies.”

I grew up in Kansas during the shadow of the Cold War, when religion and patriotism were conflated and we attended daylong revivals of religion and daylong lectures on patriotism. The local paper pilloried my parents for questioning the revivals, printing their phone number and urging readers to call them– which happened for some months, usually in the middle of the night. A popular high school teacher had to resign because he was doing a PhD in Russian history–and only a communist would study Russia. In the larger society, Martin Luther King Jr. was hounded with lies claiming he was a communist, and Dashiell Hammett, who wrote “The Maltese Falcon,” spent six months in prison for refusing to name names to the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. Hammett’s publishers even bowed to pressure from the House and briefly took his books out of print.

These days, the chill-silencing winds of my childhood are starting to blow at gale force again. I am a frightened citizen right now, more scared than I’ve been since the first few weeks after Sept. 11, 2001. The situation in post-war Iraq seems to be creating, not eliminating, new sources of terror, while the nation’s worst blackout on Aug. 14 shows how vulnerable we are. And Ashcroft’s response is to say that any questions about his policies, any questions about governmental lies, secrets or silences, is tantamount to treason.

When I started writing my most recent book, “Blacklist,” it was under the shadow of the attack on the Twin Towers. I started writing it soon after Sept. 11–maybe too soon, when I was still feeling numbed and shocked. I started with my detective, V.I. Warshawski, in that state–it was the only way I could write, by having her express the reality of my feelings–the feelings we all had two years ago. During the 18 months it took me to write the book, the powers of the Patriot Act and the actions of the U.S. attorney general began frightening me almost as much as Al Qaeda.

Silence and speech are the hallmarks of my work: who can speak, what can they say, who will listen to them? In “Blacklist,” V.I. gets penned into a smaller and smaller space by an array of business and political leaders who call on the power of the Patriot Act to silence her. She finally figures out a strategy to wriggle out of danger. But in the real world today, I don’t know how someone would evade the police and political forces V.I. faces–I don’t know how I would.

I think of Patrick Henry’s cry to the Burgesses, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” and William Lloyd Garrison’s cry to slavery forces, “I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard.” I don’t want ever to face the choice the U.S. Congress gave Dashiell Hammett: choose between prison and betraying my friends. I don’t want to be pilloried in the papers, as my parents were, or have my books blacklisted. But even more, I hope if I am put to the test for my beliefs, I will be strong enough to stand with our true patriots, with Patrick Henry and William Lloyd Garrison, with Dashiell Hammett–and my parents.

Sara Paretsky is a mystery novelist

Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

The following remarks were delivered by William Rivers Pitt at a Town Hall meeting in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, September 16. The meeting was called on the eve of an historic vote; the capitol city of Texas is very near to joining hundreds of other American communities in passing a resolution that repudiates the Patriot Act.

Patriot Act Finds Trouble in Texas
By William Rivers Pitt
Monday 22 September 2003

I have listened to the defenses of the Patriot Act offered tonight. The essence of the defenses, the essence of the rebuttals to our reservations and complaints, is “Trust us. We’re the government. We’re the constitutional scholars. Trust us.”
I’ve heard that before.

There are tons of mass destruction weapons in Iraq. Trust us. There are al Qaeda terrorists all over Iraq. Trust us. September 11 happened because of enemies who hate our freedoms. Trust us.

With all due respect, I say hell no. The one thing this government’s behavior has not created is trust.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have come here today to appeal to your patriotism. We are all patriots here, every one of us. Let no one deny that or doubt that.

What are our duties as patriots? Is one a patriot if they fly the flag, to stand for the national anthem? Yes*and no. One may do these things and be filled with love of country, but if that is all you do, then you have not done enough. In this time, and in this place, and with all that is happening in this country and around the world, the duties of a patriot go far, far, far beyond flying the flag.

The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say ‘No.’

That is how our freedom began 227 years ago. We said ‘No.’ Now, we must talk, and listen, and ask questions, and understand. If we do not like where we find ourselves, we must once again say ‘No’ with roaring voice, and without fear.

So let us, as patriots, speak tonight about the Patriot Act. The full name is the USA Patriot Anti-Terror Act, passed in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Interestingly, and disturbingly, the document was written long before those attacks ever took place. If you believe the advertising, the Patriot Act serves us all by defending us against terrorist attacks, by casting a fine net to snare those who mean to do us harm. The Act itself is a huge sheaf of paper, written in that dense legalese so common to legislation. Attorney General John Ashcroft has been on a tour of American cities in the last month touting the Act before police organizations. He believes it is a vital and necessary weapon against terrorism.

I am not going to stand up here today and try to claim that the events of September 11 do not require a response from the American legal system. That would be patently absurd. One of the cruelest ironies of that day is that the terrorists used our greatest American strength against us. They used our freedom of movement against us. They came here, rented cars, got hotels, got on airplanes, and dealt us a mighty blow. Because we are free to go where we wish and stay where we wish, we were open to their trauma.

But I must now ask you my first question of the night, one I will repeat as we go on. What price security? How much can we give up before we become a country that is not America?

At bottom, at the end of the day, and when all the shouting and chest-beating is over, America is an idea. You can take all of our roads, our cities, our crops, our people, our armies - you can take all that away, and the idea that is America will still be there as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind. What is that idea? The idea is simple and stupendous simultaneously.

The idea that is America says you can go where you want, say what you want, think what you want, spend what and where you want, pray to whomever you want, or not pray at all, and the government cannot restrict your doing this unless you are demonstrably causing harm to a fellow citizen. Simple*and amazing. The document says we are gifted the unalienable right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The substance of those rights are the freedoms I have listed, and all the others I have not named. That is the idea that is America. We are unique in all the world to have such concepts be an essential part of our founding.

If you murder the idea that is America, you have murdered America itself. You can keep all of our roads, our cities, our crops, our people, our armies - you can keep all that, but if you murder the fundamental idea that is America, you have murdered America itself in a way that ten thousand September 11ths could never do. No terrorist can end this country. No terrorist can destroy the ideals we hold dear. Only we can do that, we who are most comforted by that blanket of freedom, and I fear that we have begun to do so with the passage of this thing they call the Patriot Act.

There are hundreds and hundreds of sections to the Patriot Act. My personal favorite is Section 213. Legal scholars have dubbed this the “Sneak and Peek” provision. Section 213 of the Patriot Act gives authority to agents of the Federal government to enter your home, search your belongings, tap your phone, tap your computer so every keystroke and website and email is recorded. They can do this without getting a warrant, and without ever letting you know they were there.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution reads as follows: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

But this is all supposed to be about going after terrorists, right? Why should terrorists have access to the protections of the Fourth Amendment? They key here is the definition of ‘terrorist,’ and the Patriot Act leaves that definition very, very vague.

Section 802 of the Act creates the federal crime of “domestic terrorism.” Among other things, this section states that acts committed within the United States “dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws” can be considered acts of domestic terrorism if they “appear to be intended” to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,” or “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” This provision applies to United States citizens, as well as aliens.

Ever been to a protest? A lot of protests are acts intended to attack or throw light upon a particular government policy. According to the nebulous definition of ‘domestic terrorism’ as espoused by Section 802 of the Patriot Act, such acts of dissent now fall under the definition of terrorism.

Nancy Chang of the Center for Constitutional Rights writes: “Vigorous protest activities, by their very nature, could be construed as acts that ‘appear to be intended to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.’ Further, clashes between demonstrators and police officers and acts of civil disobedience - even those that do not result in injuries and are entirely non-violent - could be construed as ‘dangerous to human life’ and in ‘violation of the criminal laws.’ Environmental activists, anti-globalization activists, and anti-abortion activists who use direct action to further their political agendas are particularly vulnerable to prosecution as ‘domestic terrorists.’”

There is more. Section 411 of the Patriot Act purportedly defines foreign terrorist organizations. However, as the ACLU points out, this provision “permits designation of foreign and domestic groups,” since the provision defines these groups as “any political, social or other similar group who publicly endorse acts of terrorism” - which, of course, under the Section 802, could mean lawful protest.

I’ll give you one quick example. On December 6, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft stood before Congress to testify about the Patriot Act. In his opening statements, he said, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists — for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.”

Therefore, according to Mr. Ashcroft, if you criticize the Patriot Act you are, under section 411, publicly endorsing terrorist activity by “frightening people with phantoms of lost liberty.” If you criticize the Patriot Act publicly, you are also potentially in violation of section 802.

Opportunities for abuse of these broad new powers are immense, and that is the rub. Of course there must be a legal response to the crimes committed against us on September 11. But the Patriot Act goes much, much too far. The Patriot Act asks us to completely surrender that mistrust of government that caused us to make this country in the first place, that mistrust of government that is essential to our standing as free citizens. The Patriot Act asks us to believe that no government official would ever, ever, ever abuse these sweeping powers in the pursuit of a political agenda. Why worry? That’s never happened before.

The Patriot Act asks us to throw over the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the constitution, period.

The Patriot Act allows the government to detain, indefinitely and without access to an attorney or a trial by jury, anyone they deem to be a terrorist.

That definition is left to the sole discretion of the federal government, and to John Ashcroft. That definition, as we have already seen, can be applied to citizen and non-citizen alike. It can apply to you, and to me. As we sit here, there are well over 1,000 people sitting in prisons without access to an attorney or a jury trial. There is no time limit on their detention. Some of them may very well be terrorists that mean to do us harm. Many others, however, are people who fit a preconceived notion of what a threatening person may be.

In an Associated Press article from last Sunday, said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, said, “Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases. They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens.”

Clearly, the powers of the Patriot Act are already being abused.

September 11 happened. There must be a response. I submit to you today that the Patriot Act is the wrong response, a dangerous response, a response that wrecks far too much of what makes this country excellent and unique. I submit to you that John Ashcroft, who accused anyone who disagrees with the Patriot Act of aiding terrorists from the well of our Congress, is the wrong man to hand such sweeping powers over to. I submit that we have surrendered to the terrorists with this Act. We have done what they tried to do. We have done what they could never do. We have helped to murder the idea that is America. We have given those attackers the victory they sought on September 11. They never need to come back again. Thanks to the Patriot Act, their work is done.

Thomas Paine once said, “If there is to be trouble, let it be in my day, so my child may be safe.” We did not want this trouble, but we’ve got it. I ask you, here and now, to make trouble for those who would trouble us with this terrible law.

I ask you, here and now, to stand for a better way than this, a way that defends this nation while standing in the required reverence and awe of the ideals that make this country what it is. I am asking you, as patriots, to stand against this Patriot Act.

William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times and international best-selling author of three books - “War On Iraq,” available from Context Books, “The Greatest Sedition is Silence,” available from Pluto Press, and “Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism,” available in August from Context Books.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)