NYT: Antiterrorism Bill Passes; U.S. Gets Expanded Powers

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/us/nation-challenged-legislation-antiterrorism-bill-passes-us-gets-expanded-powers.html

October 26, 2001

Antiterrorism Bill Passes; U.S. Gets Expanded Powers

By ADAM CLYMER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25--The Senate passed sweeping antiterrorism legislation today, sending President Bush a measure that would expand the government's ability to conduct electronic surveillance, detain immigrants without charges and penetrate money-laundering banks.

The measure also permits officials to share grand jury information to thwart terrorism and relaxes the conditions under which judges may authorize intelligence wiretaps.

The president's deputy press secretary, Claire Buchan, said, ''The president is pleased that the Congress has acted quickly to provide additional tools in fighting the war on terrorism, and he looks forward to signing the bill into law tomorrow.''

Attorney General John Ashcroft said that within hours of President Bush's signature he would distribute new directives to all federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents telling them how to use the law. One step to be taken right away, senior law enforcement officials said, is to seek subpoenas to obtain information on computers used by any terrorist suspects.

The Senate vote was 98 to 1, after a 356-to-66 vote in the House on Wednesday. Only Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, voted against the bill, arguing that it would allow unconstitutional searches and punish individuals for vague associations with possible terrorists.

The bill provides most of the additional powers Mr. Ashcroft sought after the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But it added the money-laundering measures after a push by Senator Paul S. Sarbanes, the Maryland Democrat who is chairman of the Banking Committee. And the bill curtailed some of the tools Mr. Ashcroft sought, reflecting concerns in both parties and houses that the administration proposal went too far.

For example, it denied the administration the power to detain indefinitely and without charges immigrants suspected of involvement in terrorism. The bill does expand the limit to seven days of detention, from two days, though under some circumstances that could be repeatedly extended by six-month periods.

The bill denied the administration the power to use foreign wiretaps that would have been illegal in the United States. It also provides that authority for expanded surveillance of computers and telephones will expire after four years. The administration wanted permanent authority.

Senator Feingold, while praising his colleagues for denying Mr. Ashcroft some of the powers he sought, complained of ''relentless'' pressure to move quickly, ''without deliberation or debate.'' He attacked the bill for enabling the government to obtain the business or medical records of anyone ''who might have sat on an airplane'' with a terrorism suspect. He also objected to the bill's liberal approval of intelligence wiretaps even if intelligence gathering is only a minor purpose of the tap. Such wiretaps are often issued in secrecy and under much looser standards than those required for wiretaps in criminal cases.

''Congress will fulfill its duty only when it protects both the American people and the freedoms at the foundation of American society,'' he said.

But he was the lone dissenter. One senator, Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, did not vote.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Ashcroft had asked that the legislation be passed in two days. Instead, Mr. Leahy said: ''We took the time to look at it, and we took the time to read it. And we took time to remove those parts that were unconstitutional and those parts that would have actually hurt the rights of all Americans.''

Mr. Leahy praised the addition of provisions to cope with money laundering, saying he had learned as a state prosecutor of the need to ''follow the money.''

The banking measures include allowing the secretary of the Treasury to impose sanctions -- up to cutting off all dealings with United States financial institutions -- on banks in a nation whose bank secrecy laws deny information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or other agencies. Another provision would require foreign banks maintaining correspondent accounts in United States banks to designate someone here to receive subpoenas related to those accounts and their depositors.

If those subpoenas were not answered, the accounts could be ordered closed.

Other major provisions include barring United States banks from doing business with ''shell banks'' overseas that have no physical facilities and are not part of a regulated banking system, and empowering the Treasury secretary to require United States banks to exercise enhanced ''due diligence'' to find out who their private banking depositors are if they come from nations that will not assist United States officials.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who has worked for years on money-laundering legislation, said, ''Osama bin Laden has boasted that his modern, new recruits know the, in his words, cracks in Western financial systems like they know the lines in their own hands.''

Mr. Levin said the bill would thwart efforts by ''terrorists and other criminals to use our own financial systems against us.''

Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the Judiciary Committee's senior Republican, singled out as a core provision of the bill the authority it gives law enforcement and intelligence communities ''to share information and cooperate fully in protecting our nation against terrorist attacks.'' Mr. Hatch cited a provision that allows grand jury information to be shared to block terrorist attacks.

Intelligence files, obtained from wiretaps authorized by a special court that oversees wiretaps related to activities of foreign governments and organizations, will be turned over to criminal investigators for possible prosecutions.

''We have intelligence files ready to go,'' one senior official said. ''That will allow us to make cases against some people and put them in jail.''

Mr. Ashcroft said the use of national security wiretaps for criminal prosecution would be valuable in breaking up terrorist organizations. He compared the wiretaps to former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's prosecution of organized crime figures for unrelated crimes.

''Attorney General Kennedy made no apologies for using all of the available resources in the law to disrupt and dismantle organized crime networks,'' he said. ''One racketeer and his father were indicted for lying on a federal home loan application.''

Mr. Hatch cited another major provision of the bill, allowing roving wiretaps in intelligence cases, as they already are in criminal cases.

A roving wiretap confers blanket authority to tap all phones a suspect uses, instead of requiring separate applications for each telephone. ''Terrorists,'' Mr. Hatch said, ''don't pay any attention to those antiquated laws. They just buy 10 cellphones, talk for a while, throw it out the window.''

Mr. Hatch added: ''We treat terrorism with kid gloves in the current criminal code. This bill stops that.''

A Closer Look: Provisions of the Antiterrorism Bill

Here are the main provisions of the antiterrorist legislation passed yesterday by the Senate. President Bush is expected to sign the measure into law today.

INCREASING PENALTIES -- Criminal sentences for committing acts of terrorism or for harboring or financing terrorists or terrorist organizations are increased. Committing an act of terrorism against a mass transit system becomes a federal crime.

BIOTERRORISM PROVISION -- It becomes illegal for people or groups to possess substances that can be used as biological or chemical weapons for any purpose besides a ''peaceful'' one.

DETENTION -- The attorney general or the commissioner of immigration may now certify an immigrant as being under suspicion of involvement in terrorism. Those individuals may then be held for up to seven days for questioning, after which they must be released if they are not charged with violations of the criminal or immigration codes.

ROVING WIRETAP -- Law enforcement officials may now obtain from the special intelligence court the authority for roving wiretaps on a person suspected of involvement in terrorism so that any telephone used by that person may be monitored. Currently, officials need separate authorizations for each phone used by the person.

SEARCH WARRANTS -- Federal officials will be allowed to obtain nationwide search warrants for terrorism investigations.

MONITORING OF COMPUTERS -- Officials will be allowed to subpoena the addresses and times of e-mail messages sent by terrorism suspects. E-mail communications will then be equal to those made by telephone, for which the authorities can use a subpoena to obtain records of numbers called and the duration of calls.

SHARING OF INTELLIGENCE AND CRIMINAL INFORMATION -- Intelligence officials and criminal justice officials will be allowed to share information on investigations.

MONEY LAUNDERING -- The Treasury Department will be able to require banks to make much greater efforts to determine the sources of large overseas private banking accounts. The Treasury will also be able to impose sanctions on nations that refuse to provide information on depositors to American investigators. Monitoring of American dealings by the nearly paperless banks, or hawalas, of the Middle East will be allowed.

SHELL BANKS -- American banks will be barred from doing business with offshore shell banks, which have no connection to any regulated banking industry.

PURPOSE OF INVESTIGATIONS -- National security investigators will be able to obtain from a special intelligence court the authority to wiretap suspects in terrorism cases if they assert that foreign intelligence operations are a significant purpose of the investigation. Currently, foreign intelligence has to be the only purpose of the investigation to win such authorization.

SUNSET PROVISIONS -- The bill's sections expanding surveillance powers for tapping telephones and computers will expire in four years, but any information learned from expanded wiretaps in those four years will still be usable in court even if the case are brought years later.

DISCLOSURE SUITS -- The government may now be sued for leaks of information gained through the new wiretapping and surveillance powers.