http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/?id=110004586
Patriot Acting Out
The phony case against an antiterror law.
Thursday, January 22, 2004 12:01 a.m.
Pity the poor Patriot Act. Rarely has a law been misunderstood by so many
thanks to the manipulation of so few.
To its supporters it's an essential tool for fighting terrorism, as
President Bush said Tuesday night. To its detractors it's a dangerous
infringement on civil liberties. So perhaps a few words of clarification
are in order. Let's start with what two of its advocates had to say about
the Patriot Act at the time of its passage not long after September 11:
Senator John Kerry (D., Mass.): "I support the conference report before the
Senate today. . . . if one is going to cope with an al Qaeda, with a
terrorist entity such as Osama bin Laden, who moves his money into this
legitimate marketplace, law enforcement has to have the ability to hold
people accountable . . ."
Senator John Edwards (D., N.C.): "When I met with FBI agents in Charlotte
shortly after September 11, they told me their number one priority was to
streamline the process for conducting investigations of foreigners
operating in the United States. We've done that . . ."
Today Senators Kerry and Edwards and another erstwhile fan, Joe Lieberman,
sing a different tune, seizing every opportunity to take shots at the law
they and all but two of their fellow Senators voted for. (The House vote
was 357-66.)
The Senators stand by their votes, saying parts of the law are still OK.
But given the hostility to Mr. Bush and John Ashcroft among Democrats who
vote in the primaries, they seem to have concluded that there's more to be
gained in denouncing the law, albeit only in general terms. As Dennis
Kucinich is fond of pointing out, he's the only Democratic Presidential
candidate who voted against the Patriot Act.
Maybe this is because most Patriot Act provisions are just plain common
sense and in many cases have long been available in drug and Mafia cases.
Take the roving wiretap, which follows a suspect rather than a specific
phone that could be jettisoned after one call. If investigators can use
roving wiretaps to track down drug peddlers--as has been permitted since
1986--they ought to be able to use them to catch terrorists.
Or consider the provision that permits access to library and other business
records. Civil libertarians have been having a field day with this one,
scaring librarians into thinking that Big Brother is invading the reading
rooms of America. What they fail to mention is, first, that the law
requires a court order. And second, that investigators in ordinary criminal
cases can already gain access to library records--as happened in the 1997
Gianni Versace murder in Miami Beach and the 1990 Zodiac gunman case in
Manhattan.
The law does a number of other useful things. Perhaps most important, it
removes the legal barriers that used to forbid information sharing between
intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It's now legal for a federal
prosecutor to tell the FBI if he has information about terrorist
activities. That used to be a federal offense.
The Justice Department says the Patriot Act has played "a key
part"--sometimes the "leading role"--in a number of successful anti-terror
operations. As for civil-liberties abuse, a useful measure of just how
profoundly threatening the law is should be Section 223, the Patriot Act
provision under which citizens can seek monetary damages if they are
mistreated. To date, the number of lawsuits is zero.
Copyright � 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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