Bush Makes Push For Patriot Act
For the second day in a row, President Bush made a strong public defense of the Patriot Act, decrying any proposed weakening of the law he calls central to fighting terrorism.
The law does not expire until next year but the president is making it a campaign issue now, reports CBS News Correspondent Peter Maer.
On Tuesday, Mr. Bush flew to Buffalo, N.Y., site of the Lackawanna Six case, in which six Yemeni-Americans pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism by briefly attending al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
"The Patriot Act defends our liberty under the Constitution," Mr. Bush told several hundred political supporters, along with firefighters, police and other rescue workers.
About 100 anti-war protesters demonstrated outside Buffalo's Kleinhans Music Hall as Mr. Bush spoke.
"We've got to make sure the laws reflect the reality" of a post-Sept. 11 world, Mr. Bush said.
The president also used the occasion to justify the war in Iraq, saying that Saddam Hussein's regime had harbored terrorists.
"He was paying for terrorists to kill" and in a post-Sept. 11 world, the United States decided to "take actions to defend our country," the president said. "We are fighting the enemy there so we won't have to them here."
The case against the Lackawanna Six succeeded because of the Patriot Act's provisions, said U.S. Attorney Mike Battle of the western district of New York, who appeared with Mr. Bush. Battle said the law broke down the walls that had barred FBI agents investigating criminal matters and intelligence matters from sharing information.
Before the Patriot Act, FBI agents "could talk about Buffalo Bills football, but they couldn't talk about protecting the homeland," Mr. Bush said.
"We were fighting with one arm tied behind our back," said Pete Ahearn, the FBI agent in charge of the Buffalo field office, also appearing with the president.
Major elements of the Patriot Act are to expire at the end of next year. Both conservatives and liberals, including Mr. Bush's Democratic rival John Kerry, have criticized some of the law's provisions as undermining basic freedoms.
One provision allows sneak-and-peek searches to permit law enforcement agencies to surreptitiously enter a premises for evidence and inform terrorism suspects later. Another gives law enforcement agencies the ability to obtain library records on demand for terrorism investigations.
A defense attorney for the Lackawanna Six, James Harrington, contends the federal government has exaggerated the importance of the Lackawanna case and the danger posed by those involved. Harrington has asked for a meeting with the president to let him hear an alternate view of prosecutions of people accused of participating in terrorism.
Defense lawyers for the Lackawanna Six have said the men were victims of high-pressure recruiters who appealed to their sense of religious duty in persuading them to seek military-style training.