Statements On Introduced Bills And Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I am very proud to rise today to join with Senator Sessions, my friend from Alabama, in introducing this legislation to reauthorize provisions of the PATRIOT Act that will expire at the end of the year if we do not act. These are critically important provisions.

I was about to say something that may sound odd to say, which is that the PATRIOT Act got a bad name, which it did not deserve. It is hard to imagine that anything with the name ``patriot'' in it could have gotten a bad name. There may have been a lot of reasons for it--misunderstandings, maybe, frankly, suspicions of the previous administration. But on the merits, this legislation was critically necessary in the time after September 11. And as Senator Sessions has made clear, because of what seems to be an escalating series of threats to our homeland security from Islamist extremists using terrorism to attack us, these provisions are actually probably more critically necessary today than they have been in years past. But they have been critically important.

I say the PATRIOT Act got a bad name because of the three provisions that our legislation--Senators SESSIONS, BOND and I--will continue to authorize, including the roving wiretap, business records provisions, and the so-called lone wolf provision.

When Senator Sessions goes into these in some detail in a few moments, I think anybody coming to the discussion with an open mind will see that these are very commonsense provisions. In fact, they are provisions that law enforcers in our country have today with regard to traditional crimes. And we are taking them and applying them to these kinds of investigations regarding terrorist threats against the United States of America.

The Judiciary Committee labored with very good intentions, brought a bill out that was a compromise and did get some bipartisan support, I gather, which I was pleased about. But it does, as Senator Sessions says, make some changes and it puts some pressure on the enforcement of these critical provisions of the PATRIOT Act that will weaken them, will undermine their effectiveness. And I think we should go for everything we can get here which has worked so well for the past years.

The fact is, we have seen a series--I want to come to this. I want to go back because there was mention--I said the PATRIOT Act got a bad name. There was a particular focus and concern in the library community and advocates for libraries--we all love libraries, and I myself have such memories of the role the public library in my hometown of Stamford, CT, played in my education--that somehow the government could break into libraries through the PATRIOT Act and check on what books people were taking out and compromise peoples' freedom of, I guess, intellectual pursuit, freedom of interests, if you will.

There was a lot of concern, a lot of debate back and forth. Finally, after some period of time in which the Attorney General refused to answer questions about how often that provision of the PATRIOT Act had been utilized, the Attorney General actually came forth--I forgot the circumstances--and said it had never been utilized, and it was cleaned up, and that is not in effect anymore.

Now a new administration--President Obama, Attorney General Holder--changed, different parties, in some sense different perspectives, but yet the President and the Attorney General took a sensible and I would say unbiased look at the challenge they faced from terrorism in this country and then looked at the provisions of the PATRIOT Act and said: We need it. It is fair. It is constitutional. It does not deprive people of rights. And more to the point, it will be critically useful in stopping the extremists and the terrorists from depriving people not only of their rights here in America but of their lives.

The PATRIOT Act provisions in question here have been a critical part of, I would say, a remarkable, impressive improvement in the capacity of the U.S. Government to stop terrorism, this unconventional enemy we face which aims to attack and kill Americans and, indeed, to undermine if not to defeat our fundamental way of life, our freedom, our values, our diversity, our tolerance.

We have seen, since 9/11, I am proud to say facilitated or encouraged by some legislation we passed, the Department of Homeland Security created, the 9/11 Commission Report, reforming the intelligence community, the Department of National Intelligence.

Probably one of the great unsung national assets we have, something called the National Counterterrorism Center, exists outside of Washington. It is a facility in which all of the relevant agencies of the Federal Government are there side by side 24/7, 365 days a year sharing information, connecting the dots. What did we all say after 9/11 and after the Commission Report? We had a lot of information in different places in the Federal Government; that if it had been brought together in one place, I personally think we would have stopped 9/11, the murder of 3,000 people on American soil. We did not have it together. But now those places exist--NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center; the tremendous work by our intelligence community, by our military community, by our law enforcement community, working together cooperatively and cooperating with foreign intelligence, law enforcement and military communities.

The FBI has created and beefed up a counterterrorism division that I think has become the best in the world. And it is what makes the arrests that have occurred, a series of events, the ones Senator Sessions mentioned, the Zazi case--Najibullah Zazi, Afghan from birth, came here, permanent legal resident--this is the nightmare case--becomes radicalized, commits himself to Islamist extremism, goes over to Pakistan and connects with the highest levels, allegedly, of al-Qaida, receives training. One presumes--we do not know--he was directed or encouraged to do the things he came back here to do and started to work to put together, to acquire, according to the indictment, the material to explode several bombs in New York City, which would have done devastating damage.

The slightest bit of evidence--I am not compromising anything, but you might say metaphorically, Zazi appeared on one screen, a shred of evidence about him, and it alarmed some of our law enforcement people, and all of the resources of our government--foreign intelligence, American intelligence, CIA, DNI, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, local law enforcement--came together with that little piece to build a picture that helped us to follow him and find him and stop him before he was able to do terrible damage in New York City. Do you know what else helped with that? The PATRIOT Act. It has helped in so many of these cases we stopped.

There has been a ring of them this year.

Earlier, about a month ago in our Homeland Security Committee, Senator Collins and I convened a hearing on the state of homegrown terrorism and our efforts to stop it. We had the Secretary of Homeland Security, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, and the head of the FBI. As my last question, I kind of said it wide open to each of them: Tell me the one thing Congress could do to help you do the extraordinary, critically important, life-and-death work you are doing to prevent terrorist attacks against the United States. You might say I was giving them a blank check. Frankly, I thought they would say: We need more money for this program or that program.

When we came to Bob Mueller, the Director of the FBI, he gave a simple answer to the question: What is the one thing Congress could do to help you continue to do the extraordinary work you and the rest of our American team are doing to stop terrorist attacks. Director Mueller said: Reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. Without it, without those three simple provisions--lone wolf, roving wiretaps, and the business record provisions--we will not be able to do the job you want us to do.

This is so critical to our security that we should settle for nothing less than exactly the best. The Department of Justice recently submitted a letter urging renewal of the expiring PATRIOT Act provisions and emphasized the importance of us not doing anything ``to undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities.'' Despite the clear admonition--you might say plea--from the Obama administration and the Department of Justice, those who use these tools to keep us safe, I am concerned that proposals to impose some new requirements and restrictions on the FBI's ability to use these tested, existing PATRIOT Act authorities and national security letters will diminish the ability of the law enforcement community to protect us from these terrorist attacks.

As an individual Senator from Connecticut, as a Senator privileged to serve as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, I am proud to join with Senators SESSIONS and BOND in introducing this clean, total reauthorization of the expiring PATRIOT Act provisions and urge my colleagues to support swift passage of this simple, proven, and vitally important legislation.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source