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Patriot Act's Fate

Aired June 15, 2005 - 13:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it's one of the hottest hot- button issues in Washington now, the clock ticking on a very divisive post-9/11 set of security laws.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: At the end of this year, 16 critical provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to expire. Some people call these Sunset Provisions. It's a good name, because letting that -- those provisions expire would leave law enforcement in the dark.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: The Patriot Act, a product of the alarm raised by 9/11, now the subject of great debate and spawning some very odd political bedfellows. Conservatives singing harmony with the ACLU? It happens, folks.

Bob Barr is here, CNN contributor, former U.S. Congressman. He's been railing against the Patriot Act since day one. Also Barbara Comstock, onetime spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, and we welcome you both to the program.

Barbara, ladies first. Why do we need to continue these very, harsh provisions of the Patriot Act?

BARBARA COMSTOCK, FMR. JUSTICE DEPT. SPOKESWOMAN: Well, because they're protecting American lives and helping us detect terrorists. The president noted in that speech we've had 400 arrests that were connected with terrorism investigations from the Patriot Act. He was in Columbus, because Iyman Faris, who is a truck driver in Columbus, was one of the people that we were conducting surveillance on for month and months. He was somebody who wanted to blow up bridges in New York. Fortunately, we were able, through the Patriot Act, to detect him, put together and connect intelligence that were from all kinds of various sources, around the world even, and be able to track him down and arrest him and try and figure out what other information he might know and...

O'BRIEN: Barbara...

COMSTOCK: And he didn't end up blowing up bridges because we stopped him.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, can you tell me categorically that he would not have been detected without the Patriot Act? COMSTOCK: Well, what the people on the ground who -- the FBI and prosecutors who are -- it's the intelligence sharing. You would not have had the intelligence sharing if we didn't have the Patriot Act, because it used to be you had people at the FBI and the CIA who couldn't talk to each other and share information.

O'BRIEN: All right.

COMSTOCK: Particularly in that case, the sharing of information was key and crucial in stopping him from his actions...

O'BRIEN: But, but...

COMSTOCK: ... because these people try and stay -- you know, sleeper cells and sleeper terrorists here, they are very skilled in not having you be detected, so you have to be able to share all that information to detect it.

O'BRIEN: Bob Barr, the sharing of intelligence between these agencies. Is that a point you quibble with on the Patriot Act?

BOB BARR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, the devil is in the details. The fact of the matter is, by the way, the president was talking about 400 people. There was a study in the Washington press just a couple of days ago that the figure is more -- is closer to about 40. So there's a lot of exaggeration going on here. No, the problem is not should there be sharing of information, but are we going to continue to have a Fourth Amendment that protects the law-abiding citizens of this country, or are we not?

What the president is proposing here, Miles, is nothing short of a complete emasculation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects Barbara's privacy, your privacy, my privacy, from the government invading that privacy without at least having a reasonable suspicion for doing so.

If the president and Barbara have their way, then the FBI, for example, would be able to take a piece of paper, write out a subpoena on it, never go before a judge and get private information on you or I without any suspicion at all that we've done anything wrong.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, that makes me nervous. You know, the FBI on its own, getting subpoenas. That is very much the kind of power that the KGB would have.

COMSTOCK: Well, actually, that provision that was voted on in the intelligence committee is a provision that we used in healthcare investigations...

O'BRIEN: But we're not talking about healthcare. We're talking about somebody getting a subpoena, knocking down your door...

COMSTOCK: No, they're not, no.

O'BRIEN: ... coming into your house...

COMSTOCK: No, not at all. It was talking about third party records where we already...

O'BRIEN: No, no...

COMSTOCK: No, today -- that is what it was talking about...

O'BRIEN: But this provision, why does the FBI need to invade your privacy in that manner...

COMSTOCK: OK, well...

O'BRIEN: ... without going to a judge and just saying, your honor, this is the case we have. What's the matter with that?

COMSTOCK: I should -- because I should make it clear that this is about third party records, where there is not an expectation of privacy already.

BARR: Certainly, you have an expectation -- Miles, wouldn't you have an expectation of privacy with your medical records at your doctor's office?

O'BRIEN: I think that's pretty high on the privacy meter, Barbara.

BARR: Of course you do.

COMSTOCK: No, these are for -- these are provisions where they can -- and they can be challenged. People who get those subpoenas can challenge them and go to a judge. Actually, the way the situation is right now, you have to go to a judge to get information.

Like today, I came into CNN and your people gave me a little badge that they probably kept a record of. I had to sign in here. Those are the type of third party records that someone could go in and say we want to find out where Barbara was because she's been kidnapped now. Why should you have to go to a judge and track down these things when CNN could just give them...

O'BRIEN: I...

COMSTOCK: ... this information. It's a sensible thing to...

O'BRIEN: I think a judge should be in the mix. I do.

COMSTOCK: Well, if I'm being kidnapped, I hope they can turn those things over very quickly to find out what time I was here and not have to waste time to try and get a subpoena to track down these records that I don't expect CNN is keeping private -- the fact that I signed in here today to come on this show or if I had gone on an airport -- you know, if I had gone to an airport and they had records of me being at the airport because I checked in on my plane.

O'BRIEN: All right.

COMSTOCK: Those are not private records. O'BRIEN: It's a slippery slope, though, isn't it, Barbara? And Bob Barr, I'm going to ask you this. These are different times. And we've heard this time and again, that the war on terror demands a different way of operating. Did we have too many civil liberties prior to 9/11? And is it important to scale back some of them to allow us to live safer lives?

BARR: Absolutely not. The reason that the terrorists succeeded on 9/11 was not because we didn't have a Patriot Act. It was because a number of our federal agencies and our state agencies were asleep at the switch. They made mistakes.

John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, was asked before the House Judiciary Committee and before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he was arguing in favor of the Patriot Act, if we had had the Patriot Act on 9/11 could these -- would these terrorists have been stopped? And he could not say that that was the case.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, would you agree with that?

COMSTOCK: Well, you know, we can't figure out, you know, for the absence of something. We can't determine that now. But we do know that information was not shared. Information about bin Laden. That's what we spent -- you know, the 9/11 Commission spent, you know, over a year and the key thing that they came out with is information sharing is so key. And that is the key provision in the Patriot Act that the ACLU and others often oppose. They don't want...

BARR: No, that's -- that's absolutely not true.

O'BRIEN: Final thought here. Barbara, my sense is, and what you hear from people like Bob Barr, is that what the administration is doing here, and supporters of the Patriot Act outside the administration -- what they're doing is playing on people's fears.

COMSTOCK: No.

O'BRIEN: And isn't that a scary thing to be doing in a democracy?

COMSTOCK: No, not at all. I mean, I would really disagree with the premise that you started out today, saying that this is a controversial bill. 2-1, the American people support it. In Congress, only one senator voted against it...

O'BRIEN: But are they really paying attention?

COMSTOCK: No -- they supported it. The ACLU made this case all last year. 2-1, they support it. They understand that we are -- there's many checks and balances within the bill. We are having to report on this all the time. And that's why the Congress, including Congressman Barr, voted for this bill in 2001...

O'BRIEN: But let me ask -- I still ask the question. Is fear being used as leverage here? COMSTOCK: No, that's not the situation at all. It's being able to be smart about how we pursue information and share intelligence. And it has the checks and balances. You have the situation where the Justice Department inspector general looked at 7,000 complaints about supposed civil rights violations. And this is an inspector general who's appointed by Bill Clinton. He's not particularly -- you know, he's not necessarily friendly to this administration. He could not find one violation...

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: I got to -- all right, to balance it out, we got to go back to Bob Barr. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, maybe?

BARR: Well, the only thing here that we have to fear is the secrecy that accompanies all of this. Of course you're not going to find a lot of complaints. Of course you're not going to find a lot of evidence of abuse, Miles...

O'BRIEN: How could you, it's all secret, right?

BARR: It's all done in secret. And they are playing on people's fear. When Barbara first started her arguments in support of the Patriot Act, she started talking about these terrorists out there and stopping this, that. They're playing on people's fears.

COMSTOCK: Well, 9/11 was a scary event and we didn't...

O'BRIEN: No one doubts that, no one doubts that. Barbara Comstock, Bob Barr, thanks so much for your time, appreciate it. And we'll be back with more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DORNIN: In California, some tense moments after an offshore earthquake triggers a tsunami warning. That warning was later canceled, but not before thousands were evacuated from the beachfront town of Crescent City.

CNN's Rusty Dornin has more on the science and the scurrying.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): There were definitely moments of panics in Crescent City when the sirens began wailing about 8:14 local time. That gave the town only 15 minutes to evacuate. They estimated the wave would get here at 8:29.

Now, when the first sirens went off, the commercial fishing boats here fired up their engines, about 30 of them, and headed out to sea, trying to escape any tsunami that might be coming in to port, because their boats would have been crushed. Now, they headed out to sea.

Meantime, emergency crews were trying to evacuate the hotels, the business, the restaurants; 4,000 people ended up leaving the area by the time they called off the tsunami alert, one hour after the earthquake. There were no injuries. There were a couple of minor fender benders.

Now this all comes to a town that experienced tragedy in 1964 after the Alaska earthquake, when 11 people were killed here. They have a very powerful memory of how dangerous tsunamis can be. And most people here are breathing a sigh of relief today.

Rusty Dornin, CNN, Crescent City, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired June 15, 2005 - 13:38   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it's one of the hottest hot- button issues in Washington now, the clock ticking on a very divisive post-9/11 set of security laws.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: At the end of this year, 16 critical provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to expire. Some people call these Sunset Provisions. It's a good name, because letting that -- those provisions expire would leave law enforcement in the dark.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: The Patriot Act, a product of the alarm raised by 9/11, now the subject of great debate and spawning some very odd political bedfellows. Conservatives singing harmony with the ACLU? It happens, folks.

Bob Barr is here, CNN contributor, former U.S. Congressman. He's been railing against the Patriot Act since day one. Also Barbara Comstock, onetime spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, and we welcome you both to the program.

Barbara, ladies first. Why do we need to continue these very, harsh provisions of the Patriot Act?

BARBARA COMSTOCK, FMR. JUSTICE DEPT. SPOKESWOMAN: Well, because they're protecting American lives and helping us detect terrorists. The president noted in that speech we've had 400 arrests that were connected with terrorism investigations from the Patriot Act. He was in Columbus, because Iyman Faris, who is a truck driver in Columbus, was one of the people that we were conducting surveillance on for month and months. He was somebody who wanted to blow up bridges in New York. Fortunately, we were able, through the Patriot Act, to detect him, put together and connect intelligence that were from all kinds of various sources, around the world even, and be able to track him down and arrest him and try and figure out what other information he might know and...

O'BRIEN: Barbara...

COMSTOCK: And he didn't end up blowing up bridges because we stopped him.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, can you tell me categorically that he would not have been detected without the Patriot Act? COMSTOCK: Well, what the people on the ground who -- the FBI and prosecutors who are -- it's the intelligence sharing. You would not have had the intelligence sharing if we didn't have the Patriot Act, because it used to be you had people at the FBI and the CIA who couldn't talk to each other and share information.

O'BRIEN: All right.

COMSTOCK: Particularly in that case, the sharing of information was key and crucial in stopping him from his actions...

O'BRIEN: But, but...

COMSTOCK: ... because these people try and stay -- you know, sleeper cells and sleeper terrorists here, they are very skilled in not having you be detected, so you have to be able to share all that information to detect it.

O'BRIEN: Bob Barr, the sharing of intelligence between these agencies. Is that a point you quibble with on the Patriot Act?

BOB BARR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, the devil is in the details. The fact of the matter is, by the way, the president was talking about 400 people. There was a study in the Washington press just a couple of days ago that the figure is more -- is closer to about 40. So there's a lot of exaggeration going on here. No, the problem is not should there be sharing of information, but are we going to continue to have a Fourth Amendment that protects the law-abiding citizens of this country, or are we not?

What the president is proposing here, Miles, is nothing short of a complete emasculation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects Barbara's privacy, your privacy, my privacy, from the government invading that privacy without at least having a reasonable suspicion for doing so.

If the president and Barbara have their way, then the FBI, for example, would be able to take a piece of paper, write out a subpoena on it, never go before a judge and get private information on you or I without any suspicion at all that we've done anything wrong.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, that makes me nervous. You know, the FBI on its own, getting subpoenas. That is very much the kind of power that the KGB would have.

COMSTOCK: Well, actually, that provision that was voted on in the intelligence committee is a provision that we used in healthcare investigations...

O'BRIEN: But we're not talking about healthcare. We're talking about somebody getting a subpoena, knocking down your door...

COMSTOCK: No, they're not, no.

O'BRIEN: ... coming into your house...

COMSTOCK: No, not at all. It was talking about third party records where we already...

O'BRIEN: No, no...

COMSTOCK: No, today -- that is what it was talking about...

O'BRIEN: But this provision, why does the FBI need to invade your privacy in that manner...

COMSTOCK: OK, well...

O'BRIEN: ... without going to a judge and just saying, your honor, this is the case we have. What's the matter with that?

COMSTOCK: I should -- because I should make it clear that this is about third party records, where there is not an expectation of privacy already.

BARR: Certainly, you have an expectation -- Miles, wouldn't you have an expectation of privacy with your medical records at your doctor's office?

O'BRIEN: I think that's pretty high on the privacy meter, Barbara.

BARR: Of course you do.

COMSTOCK: No, these are for -- these are provisions where they can -- and they can be challenged. People who get those subpoenas can challenge them and go to a judge. Actually, the way the situation is right now, you have to go to a judge to get information.

Like today, I came into CNN and your people gave me a little badge that they probably kept a record of. I had to sign in here. Those are the type of third party records that someone could go in and say we want to find out where Barbara was because she's been kidnapped now. Why should you have to go to a judge and track down these things when CNN could just give them...

O'BRIEN: I...

COMSTOCK: ... this information. It's a sensible thing to...

O'BRIEN: I think a judge should be in the mix. I do.

COMSTOCK: Well, if I'm being kidnapped, I hope they can turn those things over very quickly to find out what time I was here and not have to waste time to try and get a subpoena to track down these records that I don't expect CNN is keeping private -- the fact that I signed in here today to come on this show or if I had gone on an airport -- you know, if I had gone to an airport and they had records of me being at the airport because I checked in on my plane.

O'BRIEN: All right.

COMSTOCK: Those are not private records. O'BRIEN: It's a slippery slope, though, isn't it, Barbara? And Bob Barr, I'm going to ask you this. These are different times. And we've heard this time and again, that the war on terror demands a different way of operating. Did we have too many civil liberties prior to 9/11? And is it important to scale back some of them to allow us to live safer lives?

BARR: Absolutely not. The reason that the terrorists succeeded on 9/11 was not because we didn't have a Patriot Act. It was because a number of our federal agencies and our state agencies were asleep at the switch. They made mistakes.

John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, was asked before the House Judiciary Committee and before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he was arguing in favor of the Patriot Act, if we had had the Patriot Act on 9/11 could these -- would these terrorists have been stopped? And he could not say that that was the case.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, would you agree with that?

COMSTOCK: Well, you know, we can't figure out, you know, for the absence of something. We can't determine that now. But we do know that information was not shared. Information about bin Laden. That's what we spent -- you know, the 9/11 Commission spent, you know, over a year and the key thing that they came out with is information sharing is so key. And that is the key provision in the Patriot Act that the ACLU and others often oppose. They don't want...

BARR: No, that's -- that's absolutely not true.

O'BRIEN: Final thought here. Barbara, my sense is, and what you hear from people like Bob Barr, is that what the administration is doing here, and supporters of the Patriot Act outside the administration -- what they're doing is playing on people's fears.

COMSTOCK: No.

O'BRIEN: And isn't that a scary thing to be doing in a democracy?

COMSTOCK: No, not at all. I mean, I would really disagree with the premise that you started out today, saying that this is a controversial bill. 2-1, the American people support it. In Congress, only one senator voted against it...

O'BRIEN: But are they really paying attention?

COMSTOCK: No -- they supported it. The ACLU made this case all last year. 2-1, they support it. They understand that we are -- there's many checks and balances within the bill. We are having to report on this all the time. And that's why the Congress, including Congressman Barr, voted for this bill in 2001...

O'BRIEN: But let me ask -- I still ask the question. Is fear being used as leverage here? COMSTOCK: No, that's not the situation at all. It's being able to be smart about how we pursue information and share intelligence. And it has the checks and balances. You have the situation where the Justice Department inspector general looked at 7,000 complaints about supposed civil rights violations. And this is an inspector general who's appointed by Bill Clinton. He's not particularly -- you know, he's not necessarily friendly to this administration. He could not find one violation...

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: I got to -- all right, to balance it out, we got to go back to Bob Barr. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, maybe?

BARR: Well, the only thing here that we have to fear is the secrecy that accompanies all of this. Of course you're not going to find a lot of complaints. Of course you're not going to find a lot of evidence of abuse, Miles...

O'BRIEN: How could you, it's all secret, right?

BARR: It's all done in secret. And they are playing on people's fear. When Barbara first started her arguments in support of the Patriot Act, she started talking about these terrorists out there and stopping this, that. They're playing on people's fears.

COMSTOCK: Well, 9/11 was a scary event and we didn't...

O'BRIEN: No one doubts that, no one doubts that. Barbara Comstock, Bob Barr, thanks so much for your time, appreciate it. And we'll be back with more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DORNIN: In California, some tense moments after an offshore earthquake triggers a tsunami warning. That warning was later canceled, but not before thousands were evacuated from the beachfront town of Crescent City.

CNN's Rusty Dornin has more on the science and the scurrying.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): There were definitely moments of panics in Crescent City when the sirens began wailing about 8:14 local time. That gave the town only 15 minutes to evacuate. They estimated the wave would get here at 8:29.

Now, when the first sirens went off, the commercial fishing boats here fired up their engines, about 30 of them, and headed out to sea, trying to escape any tsunami that might be coming in to port, because their boats would have been crushed. Now, they headed out to sea.

Meantime, emergency crews were trying to evacuate the hotels, the business, the restaurants; 4,000 people ended up leaving the area by the time they called off the tsunami alert, one hour after the earthquake. There were no injuries. There were a couple of minor fender benders.

Now this all comes to a town that experienced tragedy in 1964 after the Alaska earthquake, when 11 people were killed here. They have a very powerful memory of how dangerous tsunamis can be. And most people here are breathing a sigh of relief today.

Rusty Dornin, CNN, Crescent City, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com