Patriot federal credit union

Byline: Paul Rush, INSIGHT

Charles Dudley Warner's timeless observation that "politics makes strange bedfellows" arose from his unlikely alliance with author Harriet Beecher Stowe in support of abolitionism, despite their dramatically different religious beliefs. Recent alignment of the political right and the political left on civil-liberties issues in a post-9/11 America again proves Warner's axiom. This time, antiterrorism legislation has galvanized the two political polar opposites and, according to their leaders, the solidity of their union is resolute indeed.

Defense of civil liberties has been a rallying cry of American liberals almost as long as limiting government has been the raison d'etre of the conservative movement. Now, amid the flurry of antiterrorist proposals, acts, executive orders, notices and legislation which both sides see as threats to infringe the privacy rights and other civil liberties of all Americans both ends of the political spectrum again are being reminded of what they have in common.

On Aug. 19, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, opened a monthlong speaking tour defending the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act" (USA PATRIOT Act) against its critics. "We have used the tools provided in the PATRIOT Act to fulfill our first responsibility to protect the American people. ... We have used these tools to provide the security that ensures liberty," he said. But critics noted that his rhetoric and pragmatic arguments sidestepped the issue of whether the principles of the PATRIOT Act gave the government a broad grant of authority that could be misused.

On March 12, ABC News reporter Dean Schabner presented a news piece titled "Conservative Backlash" detailing the joint efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Conservative Union (ACU) to protest many of the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and a possible follow-up law, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (dubbed PATRIOT II). Rare, indeed, was the news that these two anchors of the political dichotomy had managed to find so much common ground during an administration that has presided over one of the most philosophically divided U.S. Senate sessions in modern times.

From its founding as part of a socialist united front, the ACLU always has sought to maximize the reach of the ever-growing blanket of an autonomous "right to privacy," as evidenced today by its support for abortion on demand, abolition of sodomy laws and advocacy for homosexual rights. The ACU, the oldest grass-roots conservative lobbying organization in the country, is motivated more by its historical desire to limit the scope of the national government to the level prescribed in the 10th Amendment.

These motives, divergent as they might seem when traced to their historical antecedents, nevertheless have led both groups to resist the antiterrorism laws as unconstitutional the ACLU on grounds that these laws violate the "right to privacy," and the ACU on grounds of the need to limit federal authority, a limitation which it views as the heart of the Constitution. ACU Chairman David Keene says that the ACLU's objections to many of the antiterrorism schemes are broader than those of the ACU. The rights of resident aliens feature prominently in the ACLU's objections to the PATRIOT Act, Keene says, whereas the ACU focuses more specifically on the rights of U.S. citizens.

Both the left and right make slippery-slope arguments, noting that in times of crisis the U.S. government tends to justify lowering constitutional safeguards against intrusions by the government to protect U.S. citizens. Both warn, however, that many of the provisions found in these bills allow the government to prosecute citizens for activities other than terrorist-related crimes. If, for example, roving wiretaps are used to investigate potential terrorist-related activities (an action allowable under the USA PATRIOT Act), any evidence of other potential criminal activities by U.S. citizens uncovered in this process may be used to prosecute them. ACLU spokesman Timothy Edgar emphasizes that the USA PATRIOT Act and related measures tend to overreach their mandates. One of the current goals of both the ACLU and the ACU is to limit the scope of these bills to actual terrorist-related activities.

Of special concern to the ACLU, says Edgar, is the "delayed-notice provision," also known as the "sneak and peek." The USA PATRIOT Act grants government officials the power to conduct searches of a suspect's home without prior notification, as typically would be required. Edgar worries that granting such powers to fight terrorism may, by familiar use, put at risk the constitutional guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizure. The ACU and many other conservative organizations make the same argument.

One difference between left and right is their view of why the Department of Justice has insisted on broadening its authority. Keene and others on the right say that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and others in his department are not evildoers out to roll back the protections of the Constitution, but are instead loyal Americans who may have fallen victim to "mission creep." They say the increasingly broad powers Congress is authorizing result from a poor definition of terrorism in many of the controversial bills. The USA PATRIOT Act, for example, repeatedly uses the phrase "terrorist activities" to define the term "terrorist activities." To some, this is reminiscent of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it." Many on both the left and right tell Insight they worry that vague legislative definitions inevitably will lead to inconsistent use of the term and, therefore, to an unpredictable application.

Edgar argues that the USA PATRIOT Act is not really about terrorism but "is a laundry list of powers that came labeled in a package of terrorism-prevention methods." When asked how Congress managed to pass a bill that has generated such intense opposition from ideologues of both parties, Edgar explains that the bill was passed in an "attractive political environment" shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. "It was too rushed. Practically no one in the Senate had any clue what was in the USA PATRIOT Act before it was voted on," he says, echoing Insight's observation made at that time [see "Police State," Dec. 3, 2001].

Keene agrees that following the 9/11 attacks the Senate was under tremendous pressure from the public to pass strong antiterrorism legislation. As a result, he says, the Department of Justice proposed the USA PATRIOT Act, nearly all of which consisted of provisions that had been defeated by Congress during the Clinton administration. "They just threw it all together and passed it. Few, if any, in Congress even read it. The theory now is that any proposal emphasizing the words 'security' or 'terror' is golden," he says.

According to Keene, such behavior hardly is surprising. "The history of individual rights in America is such that, whenever there is a crisis, the public is willing to listen to leaders who tell them that they need to trade freedom for security. And the public will buy it," he says. Infringements on the people's liberties then gradually accumulate, which is why the ACU is focused on adding sunset provisions to eliminate the act's most intrusive aspects as soon as the emergency has ended.

The left and the right agree on this, and several other proposals have attracted vehement criticism from many in both parties. Among these are the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II), an airline-security proposal that would snoop into public and private databases for information on all travelers, and the Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) proposal developed at the Pentagon by the recently resigned Adm. John Poindexter.

CAPPS II is a computerized system that gathers information on each passenger from a variety of sources (including credit reports), compiles it and generates a rating for each passenger to determine the likelihood that this passenger might be affiliated with terrorists. The ACLU and the ACU both believe that "this is a perfect example of mission creep," says Edgar. "The original goal of securing our airlines has become such that, under CAPPS II, every single traveler will come under a cloud of suspicion."