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Saturday, May 3, 2003
Summary of Hawash Case
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a good article on the Mike Hawash case. It's as good a summary of the case as I've seen, noting the difficulty the government faces in identifying and prosecuting domestic terrorists, as well as looking realistically at both the results and consequences of those efforts.
[...] As with the detention of Mr. Hawash, the case against the Portland Six also has drawn criticism from civil libertarians and others who feel that the government has been overly zealous. When the six were arrested in October, Attorney General John Ashcroft called the event "a defining day in America's war against terrorism," and said that "a suspected terrorist cell within our borders" had been "neutralized." Evidence that has emerged so far, however, appears to give little support to the contention that the group was a real terrorist cell. Despite months of intensive surveillance of the defendants by the FBI before their arrests, no allegation has been made that they were plotting any violent action after they returned home from China. Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said that the department views sleeper cells to be any group that "conspires to support terrorists," regardless of whether it was planning any violent action here.The criminal complaint and lengthy affidavit in the Hawash case offer little actual evidence of what Mr. Hawash's intentions were. The sole exception is a partial transcript of a conversation recorded by a confidential FBI source with one of the other defendants in the case, Jeffrey Leon Battle. In it, Mr. Battle said a "Palestinian" who was "married to a white woman ... left with us to go fight." [WSJ Online]
Terry Frazier at 11:15 AM
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Thursday, April 17, 2003
Patriot Act Faces Opposition
An interesting story being reported by AP via FoxNews on House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner's objections to the secrecy and tactics of the DoJ regarding the Patriot Act. Sensenbrenner has apparently sent a list of over 100 questions to the Bush Administration regarding the use and expansion of the Patriot Act but is still waiting for a response -- noting that virtually everything regarding the Act has been classified Top Secret and therefore off-limits to Congress.
[...] Sensenbrenner maintains that because the department refuses to be forthcoming, it is losing the public relation battle needed to extend the law beyond its October 2005 expiration, much less expand it. [...]
Toward the end of the article there is a quote from Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, regarding his desire to see the Act's limited sunset provisions removed.
[...] "It seems to me to be ridiculous to take away the best law enforcement tool against terrorism before we get rid of terrorism," said Hatch, R-Utah. "This bill has helped us protect ourselves from terrorism both inside and outside the country. It's a tough bill, but it's constitutional and it works." [...]As noted in my previous post, this quote indicates Hatch's view that any open review of the Act will lead to its death, since Americans are historically intolerant of abusive laws.
There is no way to know how this will shape up, but there is clearly a battle brewing over the extent and duration of the Patriot Act. The proper approach is for the Administration to be straightforward and forthcoming about exactly what they're doing, how they're doing it, and precisely what costs are being exacted in American liberty.
If this law been, as Hatch suggests, wildly successful in protecting us then the DoJ should be more than willing to show just how Patriot made possible what other laws could not, and how any mistakes have been corrected and compensated.
It is up to the people of America to choose the proper balance between Liberty and Security, not unelected bureaucrats in the DoJ. An open debate about the Act, its consequences and ramifications, and its innocent victims is the best way to make that choice. And Senator Hatch would be well advised to keep that in mind.
Terry Frazier at 7:54 PM
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