Patriot Act Reauthorization

PATRIOT ACT REAUTHORIZATION -- (House of Representatives - July 19, 2005)

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Mr. McCAUL of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter), who is my neighbor, and thank him for his leadership on this important issue. I serve on the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee on International Relations, but that is not the experience I would like to talk about tonight. I would like to discuss my experience in the Justice Department prior to running for Congress which, in my opinion, is very relevant to this discussion.

I served as a Federal prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section at Main Justice when the so-called wall between the criminal division and the FBI's foreign counterintelligence was in place. After 9/11, I served as the Chief of Counterterrorm and National Security for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the western district of Texas. My jurisdiction included the President's ranch, the State Capitol, and the Mexican border. I worked very closely with the FBI and the CIA on the joint terrorism task forces. In that capacity, I practiced law as a Federal prosecutor under the USA PATRIOT Act provisions, including the one that brought down the wall.

I also served as deputy attorney general under then Attorney General and now United States Senator JOHN CORNYN. I would like to take us back to the last decade. In 1995, the U.S. Attorney General adopted policies and procedures for contacts between the FBI and the criminal division concerning foreign counterintelligence investigations. This policy prohibited the criminal division from directing or controlling foreign counterintelligence investigations. Eventually, those procedures would be narrowly interpreted to act as a wall to prevent the FBI and intelligence officials from communicating with the criminal division.

As noted by the 9/11 Commission Report, this wall may have created a climate that helped contribute to 9/11. An FBI agent testified that efforts to conduct a criminal investigation of two of the hijackers were blocked due to concerns over the wall. Frustrated, he wrote to FBI headquarters saying, "Someday, someone will die, and wall or not, the public will not understand why we were not more effective in throwing every resource we had at certain problems. Let us hope the National Security Law Unit will then stand behind their decisions, especially since the biggest threat to us now, Osama bin Laden, is getting the most protection." This was 9/11.

Another illustration of the wall creating dangerous confusion is in the case of Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos investigation. The first time the chief of the Counter Espionage Section in the Justice Department heard the name Wen Ho Lee was when he read about him in the New York Times.

Indeed, in my own experience I was assigned to investigate allegations that China attempted to corrupt and influence our elections. With the cooperation of witnesses, we were able to uncover some evidence that the director of Chinese intelligence may have funneled money to influence the Presidential elections. The frustration came from the lack of coordination and communication with the foreign counterintelligence side of the House, particularly when our criminal investigation moved into the intelligence arena.

Ultimately, these examples portray an inefficient system in which the left hand literally did not know what the right hand was doing. As stated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Quarterly Review, they said: "Indeed, effective counterintelligence we have learned requires the whole-hearted cooperation of all government personnel who can be brought to the task. A standard which punishes such cooperation could well be thought dangerous to national security."

Mr. Speaker, today, thanks to the PATRIOT Act, that wall has come down. The PATRIOT Act helps us connect the dots by removing the legal barriers that prevented law enforcement and the intelligence community from sharing information and coordinating activities in a common effort to protect national security. It dismantled the walls of separation and enabled a culture of cooperation that is essential to our integrated antiterrorism campaign.

The President and the Attorney General recognized that without the ability to share information, including intelligence, we risk the very survival of this Nation. As stated by Senator Leahy about the PATRIOT Act: "This bill breaks down traditional barriers between law enforcement and foreign intelligence. This is not done just to combat international terrorism but for any criminal investigation that overlaps a broad definition of foreign intelligence."

My experience in the Justice Department after the wall came down was profound and dramatically improved. As chief of counterterrorism, I spearheaded the efforts of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. No longer did the barriers of communication exist. Indeed, the FBI's foreign counterintelligence agents and the intelligence community were full partners at the table. For the first time, the FBI intelligence files were reviewed by criminal division prosecutors and agents.

Our greatest task and our greatest task today remains to identify and locate the terror cells which may be in this very country. One of the tools we used to achieve this goal was through the use of national security wire taps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

In addition to these wiretaps, the PATRIOT Act provides many other tools for law enforcement in the war on terror. First, the PATRIOT Act updated the law to the technology of today. No longer will we have to fight a Digital Age battle with antique weapons, legal authorities left over from the era of rotary telephones.

Next, it promotes efficiency by providing for nationwide search warrants in terrorist cases. Investigators and prosecutors save valuable time because they are able to petition the local Federal judge who is the most familiar with the case and who is overseeing the nationwide investigation.

While most of the matters I worked on since the PATRIOT Act remain classified, one example that I can share this evening was a provision in the PATRIOT Act which was extremely helpful in a case involving allegations of a terrorist attack on July 4, 2003. In late June we received intelligence from a specific and credible source that a terrorist attack was going to occur on July 4 in my home State of Texas. At the same time we also received e-mails from an Internet chat room from an individual named Apostasy Hears Voices. He threatened to commit terrorist acts at numerous locations throughout the United States as a member of an unknown terrorist cell.

And specifically, the individual threatened on July 4, 2003, significant locations in Austin, Texas; Washington, D.C.; New York; Miami; Charlotte; San Francisco; Seattle; and Portland would be attacked by terrorists. The voice stated, "I have planned a little event for July 4, roasted Americans on Independence Day. It will be the second largest terrorist demonstration in U.S. history." He described himself as having the name "Ali Aussie," a student at the University of Texas who had been on a "mission" for 4 years on a student visa as a member of a terrorist cell.

He stated that each cell acts independently for the most part so that if one cell gets caught, the other cells are not compromised, which is consistent with how al Qaeda operates. He concluded with the following words: "I did enjoy watching Americans burn alive in the WTC event. BBQ Americans."

We were getting this real-time from the Internet chat room. The JTTF quickly went into action sharing intelligence, information and coordinating with multiple jurisdictions. By utilizing the PATRIOT Act, I was able to save valuable time by obtaining a nationwide search warrant for electronic evidence for terrorist-related activities. Given the urgency of the matter and the potential loss of human life, time was critical and of the essence. These provisions allowed us to execute search warrants on the Internet service provider in real-time. Once we received the information, an arrest warrant was obtained and the defendant was arrested on July 3, the day before the planned attack.

The defendant was charged with using the Internet to make threats to kill or injure persons by an explosive device. Fortunately, the threat on that day turned out to be a hoax. But had it been a real threat, and we have to assume they all are, we would have saved lives. That in my judgment is what the PATRIOT Act is all about, protecting and saving lives.

There has been much talk from critics of the PATRIOT Act regarding allowing many of the information-sharing provisions in the law. Having served under its provisions before and after the bringing down of the wall, and the implementation of the PATRIOT Act, I can envision no bigger national security mistake than to go back to the way things were. The PATRIOT Act takes laws which have long applied to drug dealers and organized crime and applies them to terrorists.

For example, for years law enforcement has been able to use roving wiretaps which follow all communications used by a suspect as opposed to just one telephone line. The PATRIOT Act simply authorizes the use of this technique in national security intelligence investigations and amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conform to the parallel provision found in the Federal wiretap statute. Contrary to critics' assertions, the Justice Department cannot do anything without court supervision. The USA PATRIOT Act does not abrogate the role played by the judiciary in the oversight of activities of Federal law enforcement. Federal agents still have to obtain judicial approval before they can search a residence and before they can install a wiretap.

I would like to leave Members with the following words which are disturbing but I think kind of ring home why we are here tonight and talking about this important issue.

The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals, or Aristotle diplomacy. But it does know the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and the machine gun. Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils. They are established as they always have been through pen and gun, by word and bullet, and by tongue and teeth.

The words that I just read are the preface to the al Qaeda training manual. These words demonstrate the widely held belief that the question is not if the terrorists will strike us again, but rather when and where; and we had better be prepared.

Thomas Jefferson once said "the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." Those words ring more true today than ever before.

We owe it to the citizens of this country to reauthorize the USA PATRIOT Act, for if we do not, and another terrorist attack occurs on our soil, on our shores, we will surely all be held accountable.

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