Ashcroft defends Patriot Act

South Bend Tribune
Sep. 14, 2005

BENTON HARBOR -- Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is well aware his name is nearly synonymous with the 2001 Patriot Act that gave the FBI and Justice Department broad powers.

As its chief enforcer and defender, Ashcroft has been a target of librarians and civil rights activists who say the Patriot Act brings Big Brother into the private lives of ordinary citizens by allowing investigators to detain terrorism suspects.

"I'm probably a poster boy for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)," Ashcroft told members of the Economic Club of SW Michigan Tuesday at the Mendel Center for the Arts and Technology at Lake Michigan College.

"They've built their membership against me," he added.

But he told the audience of mostly like-minded Republicans why the act is necessary in a post-9/11 country.

The act's measures give federal investigators more tools to prevent future terrorist attacks, such as "bringing down the wall" of silence that prevented the CIA, FBI and local enforcement agencies from sharing information that could've stopped the planners of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Measures like "roving wiretaps," he said, sound alarmist, but they extend to terrorists what law officers have used to fight drug dealers for years.

"We needed the authority to extend that to terrorists," he said.

Another provision that angered librarians at the time about the federal government being allowed to inquire about reading materials of patrons was also highlighted by a bookstore owner in the audience.

She told Ashcroft she has no safeguards against her records being seized.

Ashcroft said during the first two years of the Patriot Act, no library records were seized to hunt for terrorists.

He added that the act provides for congressional oversight, during which every six months members review activities conducted under the act.

"I don't think there have been abuses of the Patriot Act," he said, adding that "libraries should not be a safe haven for terrorists."

He pointed out that before the act was approved, the federal government had reviewed library materials used by the Unabomber suspect while piecing together evidence against him.

The events of 9/11 changed the United States and it required a new set of tools to prevent future terrorist attacks, he said.

Prior to the Patriot Act, Ashcroft said the FBI and the Justice Department was good at putting together pieces of a puzzle to determine what happened and why to prosecute criminals.

But when perpetrators blow themselves up in the commission of a terrorist strike, Ashcroft said there is no one to prosecute, so the government needs to focus on prevention measures to stop terrorists before the strike.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Ashcroft said he was heading to Milwaukee for a meeting with schoolchildren when he heard about the attacks at the World Trade Center. After his plane landed in Milwaukee, dozens of SWAT team members ushered him back on a plane bound for Washington to meet with the president and his advisers.

One of President Bush's strongest attributes, Ashcroft said, is his clarity of mission.

"I'll never forget what the president said as he leaned in my direction: 'Don't ever let this happen again,'" Ashcroft said.

Later in his speech, Ashcroft touched upon Bush's directness in fighting terrorism again, when he said, "The president could've said, "Do your best to not let this happen again,' but he didn't."

Ashcroft said the tools necessary to make Americans safe were written into the Patriot Act to preserve liberty and freedom.

"I believe America is safer today," he said.