"Lessons Forgotten: The Folly of Sacrificing Liberty for Political Expediency"

Message to Maine
"Lessons Forgotten: The Folly of Sacrificing Liberty for Political Expediency"
By
U.S. Representative Tom Allen
1st District of Maine

In 1798, to silence Republican critics, the Federalist-controlled Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. The most despotic and infamous of the new laws prohibited criticism of the government, which effectively nullified the First Amendment's protection of free speech and press.

More than two centuries later, a comparable abuse of power has unfolded. In the final hours before leaving town for midterm elections, the House and Senate leadership pushed through legislation (which the President will sign into law) that sanctions inhumane interrogation techniques and revokes rights that go to the heart of what makes the United States a beacon of freedom. In the House, leaders bulldozed through a bill that would allow the President to eavesdrop on Americans' communications without any kind of court order. This bill now awaits Senate consideration.

The two bills have several things in common. They both were put to a vote in contrived haste. Republican leaders openly acknowledged that these bills were timed to give them a political advantage on the eve of the election. They provided little opportunity to scrutinize the proposals in committee hearings, offer amendments, engage in meaningful debate, or hear from the public. The not-so-hidden threat was clear: if you oppose these bills, we will label you "terrorist coddlers" in your campaign for reelection. But in truth, the measures will actually foster greater hostility and violence toward our country and further endanger our men and women in uniform. Finally, these measures not only fail to make America safer, they undermine our freedom and our stature in our own eyes and those of the world.

Make no mistake: Americans are united in our support for stronger tools to locate, prosecute and eliminate terrorists. But these tools must be effective in protecting our security and consistent with our values.

The detainee bill (H.R. 6166, the Military Commissions Act of 2006) fails on both scores. First, it hands over to the President the unilateral authority to "interpret the meaning and application" of U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions. The law will now sanction the CIA's continued use of what President Bush euphemistically calls an "alternative set of procedures" in interrogating terrorism suspects. These practices are so cruel and useless in yielding reliable information that the FBI and the U.S. military refuse to allow them under any circumstances—here or abroad, against foreigners or Americans. Instead of crafting a law to conform U.S. anti-terror policies to the anti-torture protections of the Geneva Conventions, the senators who brokered this deal surrendered this authority to the President. That's not a compromise. It's a cop-out.

Second, the measure eliminates the right of habeas corpus. This Constitutionally-protected, ancient and fundamental doctrine ensures that prisoners held indefinitely without charge will not be forgotten, but rather, have a right to challenge their incarceration in a court of law. Only a few selected detainees at Guantanamo Bay are likely to be tried by "military commissions," the new judicial system created for this purpose. The rest, guilty and innocent alike, may never be charged, never be tried, never see the evidence against them, and may never be released. What does this say about our values? This despotic law would, as Colin Powell has said, add to the world's doubts about "the moral basis of our fight against terrorism [and] would put our own troops at risk."

The second bill rushed through the House, H.R. 5825, the Domestic Electronic Surveillance Act, is a blatant attempt to legalize current Administration practices that the courts have held unconstitutional. I supported an alternate proposal that would modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to account for technological advancements and enable speedy surveillance of terrorist activity. The current FISA law already allows the government to begin surveillance immediately in emergency situations and to seek court approval later. I have seen no evidence to support the President's assertion that the Constitutional requirement for warrants and court review hinders efforts to track terrorists.

H.R. 5825 would allow the Administration to conduct warrantless surveillance for an unlimited number of ninety day periods following a terrorist attack or if a threat is "imminent." Since the President portrays the war on terror as perpetual, this provision could result in indefinite espionage on American citizens without court review. In addition, the bill removes a critical protection in the FISA law that requires a warrant if surveillance of a foreign agent is likely to intercept the communications of a U.S. citizen.

I agree with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote in a 2004 Supreme Court decision that a "state of war is not a blank check when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." Both bills are blank checks, and transparent efforts to force members to yield to political pressure rather than to carefully consider the policy. It is an affront to our nation's values and decency to use serious matters of national security for short-term political gain.

http://tomallen.house.gov/article.asp?id=811