2 of 3

Lori Waters, executive director of Eagle Forum, said that without changes the legislation would be overly broad. Under the government's antiterrorist proposal, she said, "Every person regardless of religion is a terrorist suspect until it is proven that you're not." Waters is especially concerned about the Pentagon's Terrorist Information Awareness Plan—formerly code-named Carnivore—to sift data on every citizen to identify potentially dangerous people.

Recalling the misapplication of laws designed to combat organized crime, prolife activists told CT that prosecutors could create sweeping, abusive definitions of terrorist or terrorist network. "With a different administration," Waters said, "a few little tweaks with a word or comma could redefine prolife groups as domestic terrorists."

Attorneys at the conservative American Center for Law and Justice advise caution. Colby May, ACLJ senior counsel, said federal agents "should not put a question mark" over Christians involved in controversial but legal protests.

Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action said that Ashcroft has legitimate security concerns but may be overlooking how power tends to corrupt. "We need a more Lincolnesque understanding of the tragedy of history from Ashcroft," Sider told CT. "Even good people abuse power."

Sources in the federal government told CT that after 9/11, federal officers started sweeping up every Middle Eastern person on their lists of former felons and those they deemed suspicious. One federal officer told CT that he was instructed, "Give us some names so we can bring them in." A high official in the Department of Defense's counter-terrorism effort told CT that he too was told, "Just give me some names."

According to reports by the U.S. inspector general—mandated by Patriot I—federal officials detained 762 immigrants in the year after 9/11. Authorities held many of them for months without charges or legal counsel. No one was charged with terrorism.

From December 16, 2002, to July 15, the inspector general's office received more than a thousand new complaints. But only 34 raised "credible Patriot Act violations on their face."

Observers say that Ashcroft has been helpful in implementing the inspector general's recommendations to discourage unwarranted detentions.

Ashcroft says new legislation is needed because the current Patriot Act will expire and has loopholes that Patriot II will rectify. After 9/11, he said, law enforcement disrupted more than 100 terrorist plots, filed 228 terrorist-related criminal charges, convicted 113 people linked to terrorism, and dismantled 36 organizations that financially supported terrorism.

Administration officials say terrorists are on the defensive. A court document revealed that a terrorist cell member in Portland, Oregon, was recorded via wiretap complaining that the Patriot Act had disrupted his financial-support network. "Everybody's scared to give up money to help," he said, "because [of] that law that Bush wrote."

Since 9/11, the Bush administration has sought to strengthen security without weakening religious freedom and other civil rights. In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush decried "the midnight knock of the secret police" and reiterated "the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the power of the state."

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

September 2003, Vol. 47, No. 9