22 November 2002

"Anti-terrorism Tools Needed," by Barbara Comstock, November 22, 2002

(Op-ed article from USA Today)

(This byliner by Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs for the Department of Justice, first appeared in USA Today November 22, 2002 and is in the public domain. No republication restrictions.)
(begin text)

Anti-terrorism Tools Needed Barbara Comstock

Court Decision Doesn't Allow Government to Overreach.

The President, Congress and the American people all urgently want the government to take forceful, yet constitutional, steps to protect the American public from the devastating consequences of terrorist attacks. We are at war against a savage, unprincipled, secretive enemy, sworn to inflict violence against innocent civilians. We must be able to use lawful means to prevent future attacks, including the gathering of intelligence from agents of foreign governments or terrorist cells.

The decision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Review Court last Monday confirms that Congress -- in passing the USA Patriot Act -- intended to allow the government to conduct court-approved surveillance of foreign governments and agents of foreign governments when they are engaged in espionage or in the planning or execution of terrorist acts against the United States or its people.

The court decision merely allows sensible coordination of these court-approved intelligence-gathering activities so that they are conducted without excessive bureaucratic confusion, averting mistakes or inaction as a result of avoidable ignorance. It became clear following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that law enforcement and intelligence officials could not connect all of the dots if they couldn't share with each other the dots they each had.

Contrary to some misreporting, the court did not expand authority to wiretap or lower the legal standards the government must meet to get court approval. We cannot monitor anyone today whom we could not have monitored before the court's decision. The government still has to show probable cause that the target of the surveillance is a "foreign power" or an "agent of a foreign power." For U.S. citizens, this requires not only a connection to a foreign power, but also probable cause that it is engaged in clandestine intelligence activities, international terrorism, sabotage or related activity.

This in no way threatens "ordinary Americans," as some have suggested; instead it allows the government's intelligence and law enforcement agencies to protect ordinary Americans by working together to track the extraordinary terrorist threats that continue to confront us every day.

(Barbara Comstock is director of public affairs for the Department of Justice.)

(end text)