THE WHITE HOUSE (FinalCall.com)�With unprecedented speed and the kind of short-sighted determination that sent shivers down the spines of civil libertarians, Congress passed and President Bush signed a new anti-terrorism bill Oct. 26 that many say would make the late F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover blush.

The new law gives law enforcement agencies broad new investigative and surveillance powers aimed at tracking and disrupting the operations of "suspected" terrorists. It reduces the need for subpoenas and court orders to conduct searches, detain or deport suspects, eavesdrop on Internet communication, monitor financial transactions and obtain electronic records of individuals.

"The changes effective today will help counter a threat like no other our nation has ever faced," Mr. Bush said at the signing ceremony in the East Room. "As of today, we�re changing the laws governing information-sharing. And as importantly, we�re changing the culture of our various agencies that fight terrorism."

The unprecedented speed with which the bill was passed, circumventing normal committee procedures caused activists to charge that lawmakers were stampeded into approving the far-reaching measures that will be difficult to repeal.

While the nature of the threat motivating this legislation may be new, its critics point out that the methods the legislation authorizes open the door for the kinds of age-old abuses of civil liberties.

"There have been periods in our nation�s history when civil liberties have taken a back seat to what appeared at the time to be the legitimate exigencies of war," Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), the lone dissenting vote in the Senate, warned during debate on the bill.

"Our national consciousness still bears the stain and the scars of those events," he said, listing The Alien and Sedition Acts; the suspension of habeas corpus rights during the Civil War; the internment of Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, and Italian-Americans during World War II, among other atrocities.

During the Civil War, for example, the government arrested some 13,000 civilians, implementing a system akin to martial law, Mr. Feingold pointed out. During World War II, President Roosevelt signed orders to incarcerate more than 110,000 people of Japanese origin, as well as some roughly 11,000 of German origin and 3,000 of Italian origin.
So far during this emergency, nearly 1,000 people have been secretly detained. No listing of names or numbers of suspects has been released. FBI officials have admitted that fewer than 10 of the detainees are suspected of having ties to the Sept. 11 hijacking plot, however. Civil liberties advocates have questioned whether prosecutors and the FBI are abusing their authority.

Under this new law, the government "can apparently go on a fishing expedition and collect information on virtually anyone," Sen. Feingold insisted. "All it has to allege in order to get an order for these records from the court is that the information is sought for an investigation of international terrorism or clandestine intelligence gathering. That�s it."

The government will be able to exercise its new powers in a secret court, with not showing even that the information it seeks is even relevant to the investigation, Sen. Feingold warned. "This is a truly breathtaking expansion of police power."

Among the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), only 12 of the 36 CBC members voted in favor of the law, which was dubbed the "Patriot Act," by its supporters.
"Past experience has taught us that today�s weapon against terrorism may be tomorrow�s weapon against law abiding Americans," warned Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and the Dean of the CBC during hearings.

Mr. Conyers conceded that there are some useful changes agreed to by the Justice Department, but waved a flag of caution because "numerous provisions are crafted too broadly. If we quickly cast aside our constitutional form of government then the enemy will not be the terrorists, it will be us. The terrorists will have accomplished in a �slow burn� what the fires of the World Trade Center could not�the destruction of our democratic form of government."

Tyrone Powers, an author, and former FBI agent, said the irony of the passage of the bill is that just five months ago Congress was railing against the FBI as an out-of-control organization.

He also quoted former FBI Louis Freeh as stating before a congressional hearing at that time that without oversight the FBI has the potential to be the most dangerous organization in the world.

"Most of aspects of the bill would not have stopped the September 11 attacks," he said. "They are riding on the emotionalism and patriotism of most of the citizens."

Mr. Powers, a former counterintelligence expert, said that in order to implement a counterterrorism plan, one must strip the analysis of emotionalism and patriotism. He said that among other potential abuses, the bill would allow federal agents to enter a home, take photographs, and claim to never have been in the home.

"It�s a very frightening situation," Nkechi Taifa, director of the Equal Justice Project at the Howard University School of Law told The Final Call. "The bill that was passed was processed through Congress in extremely undemocratic fashion. No hearings were held in either the House or the Senate on this particular act.

"Few, if any, members of Congress are actually aware of what�s in this massive, complex, highly technical, 30,000-word statute, divided into 10 panels, more than 270 sections, endless sub-sections that cross-reference and amend more than a dozen other sections," Prof. Taifa pointed out, adding, "What we really need to do is find the proper balance between the requirements of security and the necessity of liberty."

But proponents of the law argue that Congress and the courts will provide checks and balances against the abuse of executive power. "Any law, no matter how many protections it has, if people misuse it, can erode our civil liberties," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) told reporters outside the Oval Office, following the signing ceremony. Both the House and Senate Judiciary committees "have got to do constant oversight. I mean constant, constant oversight," he said.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) assured reporters that he already has appointed one person on his staff who will be doing nothing but oversight over the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, and another person looking into the FBI.

"Finally, I would point out that there is a specific office created by this legislation in the Justice Department to look into questions of alleged civil liberties violations. So the Justice Department is going to have a �cop on the beat� there, making sure that the Constitution and the laws are obeyed," he insisted. The law recognizes that technology has changed greatly from the days when eavesdropping laws were written, when telephones had rotary dials, its supporters say. But it takes its inspiration from those times when organized crime figures were prosecuted for any and every violation of the law, no matter how trivial. "If we are dealing with people who are potentially linked to terrorists, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law," one Justice Department official told reporters. "We don�t care if it�s chump change."