Patriot Act Protections
PATRIOT ACT PROTECTIONS -- (House of Representatives - July 21, 2005)
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to control the time on the leadership hour here tonight.
As you know, and I hope a lot of America knows, last week and this week we have been through some intense debates on the PATRIOT Act. Last week as a member of the Committee on the Judiciary, I sat in on a 12-hour mark-up and some 40 amendments that came from the minority party. We hammered out a bill from the Committee on the Judiciary that we brought to the floor of this Congress here today for a long debate. And in this long debate we saw bipartisan support, a number of constructive amendments from both sides, and a bipartisan vote of 257 to 171.
We passed the PATRIOT Act off the floor of this House of Representatives and will send it over to the Senate for their consideration and deliberations and a conference committee to resolve any differences we might have. We will bring it back to each Chamber so we can extend the PATRIOT Act and preserve the safety and liberty of the American people.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but comment on the remarks that were made by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) who spoke just ahead of me and the allegation that the Republican committee chairman can think nothing of turning off the lights and shutting off the debate in the Committee on the Judiciary.
I was there that day and I am there every day hopefully standing up to defend the Constitution and fighting for freedom and fighting for the safety of the American people.
I will tell you that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) runs that committee as good as any chairman I have served under or with in any level of government, be it in the State government or here in Congress. He announces the rules. He lives by the rules. He enforces the rules on us and on himself. When the time is up, the time is up and the gavel comes down and we move on to give another individual an opportunity to speak on the issue.
If it was run any other way, we would not have that kind of an even-handedness that we have on the Committee on the Judiciary. And the day that was addressed by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) was a day that had all Democrat witnesses. It was a hearing that was requested by them. They all signed a document demanding the hearing. Some of them that signed the letter did not show up, but we did; and we listened to the testimony all day long. The chairman followed the rules and when the hearing was over, the gavel came down. The committee hearing was adjourned and the microphones were shut off and the lights were shut off.
And I can tell you the gavel has come down on me. My microphone had been shut off. The lights have been shut off while I am standing there talking in the room. We follow the rules for Republicans and Democrats alike. I never felt an ounce of offense at that. I thought it was even handed, it was well balanced; and I think that the minority party is looking for something to, I will say, criticize and attack the most effective Members in this Congress.
We have this opportunity tonight to review what we have done with the PATRIOT Act and help clarify some of the murky issues that have been, I will say, demagogued here on the PATRIOT Act and our debate on the floor and also in committee. And there are a number of Members that are here tonight that know that there is more to be said. And hopefully when we finish this tonight we will put the lid on the PATRIOT Act here in Congress and let the Senate take it up and give it back to the American people as it appropriately ought to be.
To start this off for his perspective, I am honored to be here tonight with a gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) who I always considered my wing man on the Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter).
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the presentation of the gentleman from Texas here tonight and his service here in the Congress. In the time we have served together on the committee I came to know the gentleman's ability, and the way that the gentleman has spoken to the issue of Chairman Sensenbrenner and how he handles that committee, the gentleman and I share that belief and respect for the way he has handled it.
We have a PATRIOT Act that has passed the floor of this Congress tonight because of the way it has been handled through that committee. And it will protect Americans for a long, long time to come.
Mr. CARTER. It is, and it is something we should be very proud of, and I am personally proud and I know the gentleman is too.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I certainly am.
I want to move along in this discussion and celebrate this accomplishment here today and look forward to a future where we have more confidence in our security and safety and the ability to ferret out these terrorists before they hit us. That is the key to the PATRIOT Act. Not to just put resources in place to clean up the disaster, but preempting the disaster and being there to cuts it off before it happens.
One of the people, Mr. Speaker, who has worked with some of the disasters, worked with health care and the safety of the people, and a gentleman who also handled the PATRIOT Act with regard to the Committee on Rules, a professional absolutely in his own right, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) for his wise words, and I would like to associate myself with those remarks, particularly with the philosophy that we have a new norm; that we will not be going back to an old norm. The old norm allowed for a wall of separation between intelligence and prosecution, and that may have been the wall of separation that allowed the September 11 terrorists to attack us.
So the PATRIOT Act has removed that wall and allowed for that cooperation and that sharing of information and records, and I believe that has been part of the reason why we have not had a terrorist attack in this country since September 11. This reauthorization that took place in this Congress today, and hopefully will make its way to the President's desk fairly soon, is an authorization for the new norm, the norm where we will be with our intelligence people, with our FBI, and using our resources far more wisely than we were before.
But, Mr. Speaker, not a single piece of the PATRIOT Act allows the law enforcement people to access any data or information or anyone's private records in any fashion with more latitude than exists already in a criminal investigation prior to the passage of the PATRIOT Act. It is true today that there are more protections in the PATRIOT Act for civil liberties than there are for criminal investigations on the domestic side. It will stay that way, and in fact we have even expanded those protections.
Mr. Speaker, joining us tonight is the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), who has brought a real talent to this Congress and someone who I really enjoy working with and look up to and admire for the energy she brings to this task. Mr. Speaker, I yield such to her for her comments tonight.
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).
A number of other subjects pop to mind as I listened to the gentlewoman from Tennessee. One of them is with sunsets. That has been a subject matter here in this debate and throughout the markup last week, that is, the argument that we should sunset the PATRIOT Act so we force hearings so we can have legitimate oversight, and that oversight comes back on a regular basis.
The argument against that is we have had 3 1/2 years of demagoguery on the PATRIOT Act and not a single lawsuit has been filed, even though there is a special provision, section 223 of the code, that provides for a person to seek redress of damages if they have been violated by the PATRIOT Act. Not a single lawsuit has been filed.
Section 215, looking into bookstore records and library records and the computer records in the public library, that major subject matter that has been brought before our national discussion board and on the Web for now several years, not a single time has the PATRIOT Act been used to look in bookstores or library records. But we want to preserve the ability to do that with law enforcement investigations. We know that the 9/11 terrorists did use the libraries, and we know that one of the optimum drop points for spies and surveillance and intelligence work is a library. You can write a note, put it in a certain page in a library book, put the book back on the shelf, and walk out of the library. That is the drop. And the pickup is the person that comes behind, knows the name of the book and picks up that information.
We must maintain that ability to look into libraries and bookstores, and we must also maintain appropriate government oversight responsibility. We preserved a couple of sunsets in the PATRIOT Act; but the fact remains, if the majority or minority party determines that they want to have hearings, if they are hearing complaints from their constituents, if there are complaints that are being filed or lawsuits being filed, we can call for hearings at any time, whether majority or minority, and get those hearings and get that public oversight and make the appropriate changes. I accept that. It is our responsibility to do.
One of the other points is the NSL, the national security letter. The argument is that could be used without appropriate oversight. In fact, the national security letter does not allow any FBI officer to read any documents and search into any telephone records or financial records except for the fact that it lets them look at the record of the records, the record of potential financial records or computer records to see if there is a pattern. If the pattern is there, then they have to go forward to get the warrant; and that warrant under the PATRIOT Act has a higher standard than under a criminal investigation.
That covers some of the things that have been an issue. We have quite a group of people here tonight. I am feeling a little out of place. I have a judge on my right, a judge on my left, and a judge behind me. When I look at these three judges, if I were actually King, I would appoint them all to the Supreme Court; but since I cannot, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for his remarks.
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's remarks on this. And I have read some of those records associated with the PATRIOT Act investigations. And, in fact, I read some of those records throughout an investigation I am somewhat familiar with, and if we read through that carefully with the idea of what this would have been like without the payment PATRIOT Act, what would we have had for information? I think with many of those investigations, it would easy to make the case that we would have had a disaster at the other end rather than an arrest and prosecution at the other end of that. So to preempt this is what we need to be doing, and I am absolutely all for that.
I cannot resist marking that the individual that accused us of fear mongering is also the individual that went to Iraq and surrendered before we liberated the Iraqis and the individual who refused to put his hand over his heart when he led Pledge of Allegiance here one morning to open the House Chamber for the day. So I would put that only within that contest. I do not what drives that kind of thought process.
I am very proud of the patriots we have in this Congress, and they are on both sides of the aisle. They just seem to be in a bigger number over here where we have the majority at the present time.
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think the gentleman has brought out an important point here. And that is that this debate was envisioned to produce a product that brought view points in from each side and a properly functioning legislative process. Whether it be a city council or county supervisors or the State legislature or the United States Congress, we have an open debate and we put our ideas out there, and as the ideas get debated, the amendments are offered. Some are successful and some are defeated and some are negotiated. And, in fact, we negotiated the sunset to be a 10-year sunset. Some people thought it ought to be considerably sooner than that. Some thought we ought to split the difference out to a 4 or 5 year. Some people thought we should not have sunsets, and I was actually among those. And yet the negotiation came down to a 10-year sunset. That was a compromise that would get the ball moving down the field, and that is what we resolved on that particular issue. But when we reach that static position when each side makes their case in a legitimate open debate and we arrive at that center position that we can all live with, then we move forward. And that is something that has been classic in the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, and that has been how the debate has brought us all together to the middle so that we could have this bipartisan vote of 257 votes here to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act.
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I appreciate the contributions here tonight.
I would like to take us back a little bit and recap what has happened here in the last 3 1/2 going on 4 years, and that is that, yes, we were attacked from within and the vulnerabilities that are inherent in a free society were exploited by people that came here and people who have a hatred for our freedom and a hatred for anyone whom they declare to be a infidel. Their number one and number two targets, preferred targets, are Jews first and Christians second, but western civilization is their main enemy.
That thought process, that cult, that barbarism, is bred around the world in regions where they are taught in madrassas to hate anyone not like them, to kill anyone not like them.
There are something like 16,000 madrassas, hate teaching schools, just in Pakistan alone, and if you look at those schools around Saudi Arabia and if you look at the funding stream that runs around the world, that network is what brought al Qaeda into the United States for that September 11th attack, that network is what attacked London on July 7, and that may be the network that also attacked London today, although we do not have the records in today. It is part of the network that attacked Spain on that March 11 day that changed the political destiny of Spain and caused them to make a decision to pull their troops out of Iraq.
The worldwide war that we are up against, the PATRIOT Act addresses it domestically so that our FBI and our CIA, our domestic investigators and our terrorism investigators will cooperate together.
They will be able to do roving wiretaps in an era when trading cell phones on the run is almost a normal procedure. We do not go back to a landline any longer and go home to make our phone calls. Our phone is with us. Our communication is where we are, and we have to have an act that catches up with technology and allows for roving wiretaps.
We have to be able to look at some financial records and some credit card records and maybe some bookstore and library records to see the pattern. If the pattern justifies a warrant to go in and take a deeper look, then a Federal judge will have to provide that warrant, a higher standard than if it were a regular criminal investigation.
We need all of these tools to preempt the terrorist attacks on us in this country, and those tools so far have been part of the reason why we have not been attacked again. Many of us believe though that those attacks are inevitable, and I am one of those people, and I think they will be worse next time. I think we need all of these tools and more.
By looking around the world also, the President's doctrine, the Bush doctrine that he laid out several weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, that the media just caught up with after he gave his second inaugural address here last January, the Bush doctrine of promoting freedom and liberty around the world, is that free people never go to war against never free people. That would be consistent with the history of this country.
So in Iraq and in Afghanistan we have created the habitat for freedom, and the Afghanis have gone to the polls and voted and the Iraqis have gone to the polls and voted and helped select their leaders and are directed their national destiny and established a climate and culture where there is a growing desire for freedom.
If that freedom can continue to take root, and if that freedom can be contagious across the Arab world, from Afghanistan to Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Syria and Jordan and the Middle Eastern countries all across the region, if freedom can be manifested there and take root in establishing the fashion that it is here, the way it is with our brothers in Great Britain, then there is a climate there that does not breed terrorists any longer. We will have eliminated the habitat for terror by replacing that habitat of a radical Islamic society with that of freedom and democracy.
Now, that does not solve all the problems. If that happens, we also know that from the London bombs, that we have second generation terrorists, sons of moderate Muslims that travel and establish themselves within Great Britain, and these children were either born there or naturalized there, but they were taught in a moderate Muslim, peaceful society, and yet they still found their Madrassas in the mosques and they still bought into the culture of death, and they still blew themselves and 56 or so Londoners up and wounded however many others.
These terrorists, these radical Islamists, according to Benazir Bhutto, a former Prime Minister of Pakistan, told me there are not very many, perhaps 10 percent, are sympathetic to al Qaeda, but of about 1.2 or 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, 10 percent is 120 million to 130 million. I call that a lot; not ``not very many,'' but quite a lot of potential either terrorists or terrorist supporters and sympathizers, and we cannot kill them all and we do not want to, but we have to defend ourselves from them.
Mr. Speaker, the Jahadists that are killing Londoners and Americans and Spanish and other Muslims around the world, these terrorist attacks that are taking place, they are parasites that live amongst the host, the Islamists. The terrorists are the parasites; the hosts is Muslim, the Muslim religion. So they feed off of the host, they travel with the host and on the host, they are funded through the host, through the mosques, so they can go anywhere in the world and find themselves a small core, a cell of sympathizers, a sleeper cell, and the network of funding is collected around the world, and the networks of communications and the network of training and where the training camps are all can be fed through the network of the Muslim religion.
I will call upon moderate Islam, if you exist out there, and I believe you do, then cleanse thy selves, rid yourselves of this parasite. We cannot do that for you. We can work with you and we can cooperate with you, but until you do, there will not be peace in this world, there will not be safety in this world, and there will not be an end to this war on terror.
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, His Honor, Judge GOHMERT, and Judge POE from Texas, Judge CARTER from Texas, the gentlewoman from Tennessee, and the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), all of us who have participated in this tonight. We have had an opportunity to discuss the PATRIOT Act and kind of put the final frosting on the cake here in the House, I hope, and maybe bring a better and more objective perspective to the PATRIOT Act for the American people, Mr. Speaker.
So we have a long road ahead of us. We will work with the PATRIOT Act to provide the maximum amount of domestic security and will continue the Bush doctrine to eliminate the habitat that breeds terrorists around the world. We are going to ask for the rest of the countries in the world to shut off the funding, shut off the training, shut off the feed mechanism that funds these terrorists. We are going to ask the moderate Islam to purge the parasites from your midst; you are the only ones that can do it. We are going to take a look at our borders, both north and south, and we are going to slow down that human river of about 3 million illegals that poor across there, that huge haystack of humanity that, amongst that 3 million or so, are hundreds and perhaps thousands of terrorists, certainly thousands of criminals that prey upon Americans.
Mr. Speaker, if we can all get that done by the end of the 109th Congress, I am going to take the day off.
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