Cato Daily Dispatch for November 19, 2002
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Senate to Vote on Homeland SecurityBush in Russia for NATO Summit
Court Finds Justice Department Can Conduct PATRIOT Wiretaps
Senate to Vote on Homeland Security
A vote is expected in the Senate today on the Homeland Security bill, according to The Associated Press. The struggle to create a Homeland Security Department has come down to a fight over provisions that Democrats want to strip from the bill, arguing they are nothing more than gifts to Republican corporate interests.
Democrats pressed hard for a victory in the waning days of their Senate majority and got a boost when Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said he would support their effort.
President Bush weighed in Monday, calling undecided Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to seek his support, and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge was making similar calls.
In a recent Cato Foreign Policy Briefing, "The New Homeland Security Apparatus Impeding the Fight Against Agile Terrorists", University of Louisiana Professor Eric R. Taylor explains that the "new Homeland Security Council is essentially an empty shell." Taylor argues that instead of creating a new bureaucracy, "efforts for increased security should focus on timely intelligence sharing, threat recognition, and action. Without dramatic improvements in those areas, coordination and implementation of policy by the new offices and department will likely remain problematic."
During a July 31 Cato Policy Forum, "Will a New Federal Bureaucracy Make Us More Secure?", several experts joined Cato Institute Director of Defense Policy Studies Ivan Eland in discussing the proposed Department of Homeland Security.
Bush in Russia for NATO Summit
The Associated Press reports that President Bush left Washington early today for Prague for a summit of leaders of the 19 NATO nations. He will also visit Russia and prospective NATO members Lithuania and Romania on the five-day trip.
Bush says the addition to NATO of former members of the Soviet bloc will bring new life to the trans-Atlantic alliance because totalitarian rule taught their people the value of freedom.
In a June 8 Cato Daily Commentary, "NATO Expansion Hurts U.S. Security", Cato Senior Fellow Doug Bandow says, "Expanding NATO will offer no benefits to America. Rather, doing so would extend U.S. security guarantees to peripheral regions without augmenting Western military power. And there should be no doubt that it would be Washington that would be expected to resolve any new security problem. The membership might be in NATO, but the security guarantee is American."
He goes on to say, "The Europeans are well able to defend against any likely threats in the future. Turning NATO into a European-organized and European-led alliance would allow the U.S. to focus on genuine threats to its own security."
In Nato Enlargement: Illusions & Reality, a book edited by Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for foreign policy and defense studies, 18 authors contribute chapters that examine the hazards involved with expanding the Atlantic alliance.
Court Finds Justice Department Can Conduct PATRIOT Wiretaps
The Washington Post reports a secretive appeals court yesterday cleared the way for the Justice Department to use broad new authority to conduct wiretaps and other surveillance of terrorism and spying suspects in the United States, overturning a lower court that had blocked Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's efforts out of fear the new powers would be abused.
The special three-judge panel, issuing its very first ruling, found that the USA PATRIOT Act--enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks--allows intelligence investigators and criminal prosecutors to more easily share information about ongoing terrorism and espionage cases.
"We think the procedures and government showings required under FISA, if they do not meet the minimum Fourth Amendment warrant standards, certainly come close," the three-judge panel wrote in the ruling, parts of which were classified. "We therefore believe firmly . . . that FISA as amended is constitutional because the surveillances it authorizes are reasonable."
"Perhaps, as the appellate court said, the new law's surveillance provisions 'come close' enough to meeting minimal constitutional standards for reasonable searches," says Robert A. Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. "But what may arguably be constitutional is nonetheless bad public policy. The lower court got it right. The PATRIOT Act could lead to misuse of intelligence information in criminal cases."
In a recent commentary, "The USA PATRIOT Act: We Deserve Better", Levy explains why "you should be deeply troubled by the looming sacrifice of civil liberties at the altar of national security."
Wyatt Dubois, editor, wdubois@cato.org