Patriot Act Facts: There is "Judicial Oversight" and No Proven "Abuse"

By Andrew Cochran

I've said in various public fora that the USA Patriot Act is the most "slandered" and most misunderstood law in America today, and that the public understands the dreaded Internal Revenue Code better that the Patriot Act. That level of misunderstanding is apparently true even of our own Victor Comras, who complains of a lack of "judicial oversight" and a perception of "abuse." First of all, as I wrote last week, there has been no proven abuse of Patriot Act powers, as reported to the Congress repeatedly by the Justice Department Inspector General. And the editors of "National Review" wrote a rebuttal to part of Victor's post even before Victor posted, so here are pertinent excerpts:

The government cannot get a search warrant without showing a judge probable cause either that a crime has been committed or that the subject of the warrant is an agent of a foreign power (such as a terrorist organization). When people are accused or wrongfully convicted, they fully maintain their rights to confrontation and appeal; but those rights come into play only after a person has been formally accused. They have always been irrelevant while the government is conducting an investigation, even of an ordinary crime. Why should things be any different in the case of a threat to national security, which is what the Patriot Act covers?...(F)ederal prosecutors have for decades been fully empowered, in investigations of run-of-the-mill crimes like gambling and minor frauds, to issue grand-jury subpoenas, which can compel all the same evidence with absolutely no court supervision. There was no widespread abuse of these tactics prior to Patriot, just as there is no record of their being abused in the four years since Patriot sensibly extended them to national-security investigations...The Justice Department has long taken the position that Section 215 orders can be appealed. The proposed Patriot Act reauthorization not only formally creates a judicial-review process allowing a judge to modify or set aside flawed Section 215 orders or NSLs, but adds other protections as well: It loosens the nondisclosure requirements to facilitate court challenges; calls for �minimization procedures� that will limit the government�s ability to retain and disseminate the intelligence collected; and provides for monitoring by an inspector general to make certain the authorities are being used properly.

The NR editors, advised on this issue by former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, wrote a comprehensive review and endorsement of the Act before the Senate vote, and I commend it to our readers and experts.

Finally, Victor's comments on the NSA intercept program, Abu Ghraib, and the Gitmo detainees are interesting but irrelevant to the Patriot Act debate, and it's certainly unfair to tar the President and the Patriot Act debate with the actions of a few idiots at Abu Ghraib.

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