[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17011-17018]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        PATRIOT ACT PROTECTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
control the time on the leadership hour here tonight.
  As you know, and I hope a lot of America knows, last week and this 
week we have been through some intense debates on the PATRIOT Act. Last 
week as a member of the Committee on the Judiciary, I sat in on a 12-
hour mark-up and some 40 amendments that came from the minority party. 
We hammered out a bill from the Committee on the Judiciary that we 
brought to the floor of this Congress here today for a long debate. And 
in this long debate we saw bipartisan support, a number of constructive 
amendments from both sides, and a bipartisan vote of 257 to 171.
  We passed the PATRIOT Act off the floor of this House of 
Representatives and will send it over to the Senate for their 
consideration and deliberations and a conference committee to resolve 
any differences we might have. We will bring it back to each Chamber so 
we can extend the PATRIOT Act and preserve the safety and liberty of 
the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but comment on the remarks that were made 
by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) who spoke just ahead 
of me and the allegation that the Republican committee chairman can 
think nothing of turning off the lights and shutting off the debate in 
the Committee on the Judiciary.
  I was there that day and I am there every day hopefully standing up 
to defend the Constitution and fighting for freedom and fighting for 
the safety of the American people.
  I will tell you that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman 
Sensenbrenner) runs that committee as good as any chairman I have 
served under or with in any level of government, be it in the State 
government or here in Congress. He announces the rules. He lives by the 
rules. He enforces the rules on us and on himself. When the time is up, 
the time is up and the gavel comes down and we move on to give another 
individual an opportunity to speak on the issue.
  If it was run any other way, we would not have that kind of an even-
handedness that we have on the Committee on the Judiciary. And the day 
that was addressed by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) was 
a day that had all Democrat witnesses. It was a hearing that was 
requested by them. They all signed a document demanding the hearing. 
Some of them that signed the letter did not show up, but we did; and we 
listened to the testimony all day long. The chairman followed the rules 
and when the hearing was over, the gavel came down. The committee 
hearing was adjourned and the microphones were shut off and the lights 
were shut off.
  And I can tell you the gavel has come down on me. My microphone had 
been shut off. The lights have been shut off while I am standing there 
talking in the room. We follow the rules for Republicans and Democrats 
alike. I never felt an ounce of offense at that. I thought it was even 
handed, it was well balanced; and I think that the minority party is 
looking for something to, I will say, criticize and attack the most 
effective Members in this Congress.
  We have this opportunity tonight to review what we have done with the 
PATRIOT Act and help clarify some of the murky issues that have been, I 
will say, demagogued here on the PATRIOT Act and our debate on the 
floor and also in committee. And there are a number of Members that are 
here tonight that know that there is more to be said. And hopefully 
when we finish

[[Page 17012]]

this tonight we will put the lid on the PATRIOT Act here in Congress 
and let the Senate take it up and give it back to the American people 
as it appropriately ought to be.
  To start this off for his perspective, I am honored to be here 
tonight with a gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) who I always 
considered my wing man on the Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Carter).
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Iowa for yielding 
to me. Mr. Speaker, I too would like to address the comments that were 
made here just recently in this House just briefly.
  We keep hearing this tirade that there is someone that is taking away 
liberty, taking away freedom in this country with the PATRIOT Act. And 
you heard the comments that they can go into all of your records and 
they do not tell you about it. As if just any old ordinary policeman or 
FBI agent could go out there with no control whatsoever and search your 
home, search your records and so forth. And they give that impression 
to the American public by their statements here tonight.
  Nothing could be further from the truth. And they know that nothing 
could be further from the truth because they sat through the 12-hour 
hearing that was held in the Committee on the Judiciary. They examined 
every one of these various sections that we have gone through tonight 
in heavy detail, and they know that there certainly are provisions 
where somebody oversees whether there is, in fact, probable cause for a 
search warrant to be issued. A judge makes that decision. That is the 
same judge that makes the decision in every case of a search warrant in 
the history of the United States. This is how we do search warrants. 
And he makes that decision.
  What they are trying to make an inference on is they have this thing 
they call a sneak-and-peek warrant that they have entitled it. And they 
say that so it sounds like I said the other night, like we are talking 
about some kind of Peeping Tom.
  That is not it at all. This is a device that has been used in 
criminal justice for many, many years. It is very simple, Mr. Speaker. 
This is not complex stuff. I will give you an example.
  We have a warrant that says that in a drug case there is a suspicion 
that there is a methamphetamine speed lab in a certain building, and 
they have someone who gives them good evidence to that effect. They 
present it to the judge. He finds there is probable cause to believe 
there is a speed lab and stored drugs in the certain location. He sets 
out specifically in that warrant what exactly they are to go look for. 
And they go and they look, and sure enough there is a speed lab in that 
building. Sure enough there are drugs and the ingredients for making 
more drugs in that building. But they also discover there is no one 
there. And what are we trying to do here?
  We are trying to get these drugs off the street, and we are trying to 
catch the people that are poisoning our children. And that is what the 
criminal justice system is trying to do in that case. And so they back 
off. They back off and they watch and they wait, so the perpetrators, 
and hopefully from top to bottom, from the mules that deliver it to the 
king pins that finance it, are somehow connected with that lab. And 
when they have gathered that evidence as a result of this look at this 
building maybe in a day, maybe a little longer, they come in and they 
seize them on the premises. They have the evidence, and they get 
convictions from top to bottom and get this vermin off the streets of 
America.
  Now, if we use this to get the vermin off the streets of America that 
are doing drugs and poisoning our children, why in the world would we 
not use that same tool to get the enemies of America who are embedded, 
in many instances, in our country off the street and keep them from 
killing innocent American citizens?
  Mr. Speaker, there is nothing more vile on Earth than the terrorists, 
absolutely nothing. They have no credibility in any way, form, or 
fashion because they are not human beings enough to fight a real fight 
with somebody that can fight back. You never see these terrorists out 
there trying to get in a knock down drag out punch out one-on-one with 
anybody. They hide and sneak and skulk up and down alleys and plant 
bombs and kill innocent human beings who they do not even know or care 
about. And they kill them by the hundreds and occasionally, like in the 
World Trade Center, by the thousands.
  Just today, praise God, a faulty bomb did not go off entirely in 
Great Britain. We are still waiting to find out the damage that was 
done. Again, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, has been attacked by 
these terrorists.
  Mr. Speaker, what is wrong with the picture that I have just painted 
to fight these terrorists? I say there is nothing wrong with it. It has 
been a procedure used by the law forever. And yet we hear from someone 
that it paints the picture as if somebody is totally walking all over 
people's rights without any warrant.
  You never heard him say, they get a warrant to go in and look at your 
records. They get a warrant and go in and look at your premises. You 
did not hear that spoken from the other side here tonight. So the 
American public gets deceived into thinking that there are police 
officers and law enforcement officers walking all over their rights. 
That is not the case. It is the same way we always have handled it. We 
have a search warrant.

                              {time}  2245

  It just infuriates me, having worked in the courts for 20 years, for 
people to step up and make statements that hide the real truth of the 
matter with regard to the procedures we use in our courts. I am proud 
to have been a judge for 20 years. I am proud of the American judicial 
system. I am proud of the law enforcement officers that every day put 
their lives in harm's way. I am proud of the lawyers fighting terror in 
this country right now. Just like our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
those brave men and women that put their lives on the line, our law 
enforcement officers put their lives on the line, too, fighting these 
horrible vermin right here in our country. I am offended, and I think 
we should all be really suspicious of someone who gives us only a 
partial truth and not the whole story.
  I would be glad to have anybody look at my library records. Who cares 
what is in your library records? But you do care when you find out that 
terrorists go to libraries because they believe, sometimes truly and 
sometimes falsely, that if they get on a computer at a library that 
every day they clean the hard drive of that computer. They know if they 
seize their computer back home they might be able to find out they were 
talking to al Qaeda and to their operatives overseas. But if they go to 
the public library and use that computer and it gets erased every day, 
who is going to know?
  Well, I tell you who is going to know. The law enforcement officer 
that executes that warrant and examines that hard drive to find out 
that they were doing that. They should not be able to hide in one of 
our greatest institutions, a public library. Benjamin Franklin, one of 
the founders of this country, gave us the concept of the public library 
in the United States. Why should our enemies think they can hide in a 
public library on a computer or in the stacks reading their bomb 
manuals and we cannot find out about it, especially when we have gone 
through the proper ordinary procedures that every court goes through to 
be able to seek those records.
  And, in fact, there are more procedures in the PATRIOT Act protecting 
those records than there would be if you went to a grand jury and got a 
grand jury subpoena to get the exact same information. So let us not 
have partial stories told here in this House tonight. Let us have the 
whole story. And the whole story is we have taken and given to the 
intelligence community and those who are defending us from terrorists 
the same tools we have given to law enforcement over the years to 
protect us from the vermin that would destroy us from within. Now we 
can use it against our enemies

[[Page 17013]]

from without who are hiding within our country to protect the American 
citizens so that people can get up and go to work in the morning and 
raise their children and go to the park at night and not be afraid that 
some creep is going to blow up the means of transportation that they 
are on.
  That, Mr. Speaker, is what a patriot in this country ought to be 
concerned about. That is what I think we have done here tonight. We 
have reaffirmed the tools of the war against terror within the United 
States and given our law enforcement officers weapons just like those 
rifles that our soldiers are carrying in Afghanistan that will protect 
our freedom.
  We should never be ashamed for what we did here today. We should be 
proud. And I am proud that a bipartisan effort passed through this 
House of Representatives. I think that we can count the numbers and we 
will see that that is the truth, as the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
said.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for allowing me to have a chance to 
stand up here for just a few minutes. I do want to point out one more 
thing before I stop. I served on that Committee on the Judiciary for 2 
years, and I served side-by-side with my colleague here, the gentleman 
from Iowa. In fact, we were partners right there at each other's elbow. 
I can tell you that the chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Sensenbrenner) runs a perfectly tight ship in his committee. When he 
says the rules are going to be abided by, they are abided by.
  I will also say this. I will defy anybody to check the record. He 
never gave a member of the Republican matter one extra second in their 
time limit, but he constantly gave extra time to the minority. And 
almost every day I served on that committee, they would ask for 
additional time and he granted it. I personally have asked for 
additional time on that committee and he did not allow me to have that 
additional time. I think his reason is clear. We are the majority. We 
know the rules. We should get our job done within the time limit. And I 
respected him for it.
  But the facts are, they have had advantages in that committee and 
they are in here crying like we did not treat them fairly. Mr. Speaker, 
that is not true.
  I had better calm down here and thank my friend from Iowa and give 
him the opportunity to talk for a while, and I thank my colleagues for 
being patient with me.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the presentation of the 
gentleman from Texas here tonight and his service here in the Congress. 
In the time we have served together on the committee I came to know the 
gentleman's ability, and the way that the gentleman has spoken to the 
issue of Chairman Sensenbrenner and how he handles that committee, the 
gentleman and I share that belief and respect for the way he has 
handled it.
  We have a PATRIOT Act that has passed the floor of this Congress 
tonight because of the way it has been handled through that committee. 
And it will protect Americans for a long, long time to come.
  Mr. CARTER. It is, and it is something we should be very proud of, 
and I am personally proud and I know the gentleman is too.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I certainly am.
  I want to move along in this discussion and celebrate this 
accomplishment here today and look forward to a future where we have 
more confidence in our security and safety and the ability to ferret 
out these terrorists before they hit us. That is the key to the PATRIOT 
Act. Not to just put resources in place to clean up the disaster, but 
preempting the disaster and being there to cuts it off before it 
happens.
  One of the people, Mr. Speaker, who has worked with some of the 
disasters, worked with health care and the safety of the people, and a 
gentleman who also handled the PATRIOT Act with regard to the Committee 
on Rules, a professional absolutely in his own right, the gentleman 
from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).
  Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa and it is 
indeed a pleasure to be spending a little of the time with him this 
evening.
  Of course, the gentlemen that are on the Committee on the Judiciary 
and those who have been in the justice system and the judiciary, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter), my good friend who just spoke, they 
understand this PATRIOT Act I think far better, Mr. Speaker, than most 
of the Members of this body, certainly than this Member, this physician 
Member. But as the gentleman from Iowa pointed out, I did have the 
opportunity today as a member of the Committee on Rules to carry the 
rule on this reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act.
  In the hearing before the Committee on Rules Members had an 
opportunity to come before the committee, just as they did in the 
markup during the Committee on the Judiciary hearings, that were so 
fairly conducted by Chairman Sensenbrenner. And the same thing 
basically, Mr. Speaker, occurred under the leadership of my chairman, 
the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier). It was a fair and balanced 
hearing. There were some 47 amendments that were requested. About half 
of them were granted with an opportunity to be discussed on this floor. 
Five were Democrat amendments and six amendments were cosponsored by 
Republican and Democrat. So it was a very bipartisan rule, and I think 
the essence of fairness.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just mention one in particular, and that 
amendment this evening was approved before we finally had our final 
vote and approved the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act in an 
overwhelming fashion, and that was the Flake-Schiff amendment, No. 59, 
that basically states that the director of the FBI must personally 
approve any library or book store request for records by the FBI under 
section 215.
  Section 215 is exactly what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) was 
just talking about, this ability to look at business records. I do not 
know how this became known as the library provision, but in fact no 
United States citizen since the PATRIOT Act was enacted has had their 
library records looked at. My colleague from Texas pointed out the 
importance, however, of being able to do that when you are dealing with 
a potential terrorist. And the Flake-Schiff amendment makes that even 
tighter, such that the director of the FBI must personally approve any 
library or book store request for records by the FBI under section 215.
  Earlier this evening, before we started this special order hour, 
during the 5-minute special orders, Mr. Speaker, we heard the gentleman 
from Washington say that in the PATRIOT Act we have replaced the rule 
of law with the rule of fear. I have heard other Members on the other 
side of the aisle say in one of the amendments, in fact, Mr. Speaker, 
on the motion to recommit with instructions it was said, well, let us 
go back and let us have a sunset on all of these provisions so that in 
4 years we can go back to the norm.
  Well, my colleagues, I want to tell you right now, from the 
standpoint of this Member, I like the new norm. I do not want to go 
back to the old norm. I do not think we can afford to ever do that in 
this country. We are in a different world and we have got to deal with 
these terrorists.
  We have heard the other side talk about, well, let us put more money 
behind homeland security, and we need to make sure that we check every 
train and every bus and every bit of cargo at every port in this 
country. I am all for that, whatever we can afford to do, but the point 
is, as we know from what just happened again today in London, you 
cannot stop these people at that point. You have to get to them before 
they get to that point. That is what the PATRIOT Act is all about. And 
it is not, Mr. Speaker, giving up our personal civil liberties to 
protect our citizens.
  I think that we have struck a fair balance, and I commend the Members 
on both sides of the aisle on the Committee on the Judiciary that 
worked through the chairman and ranking member. The same thing with the 
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that worked through this 
bill. They are heroes. And I think today we came together in a 
bipartisan fashion and we reauthorized an act that has taken us almost 
4 years to finalize.

[[Page 17014]]

  And the proof is in the pudding. They have not struck us in this 
country yet. I feel very good about this bill, and I do not think we 
have sacrificed anybody's freedoms. Maybe inconvenienced people, yes. I 
am willing to put up with some inconveniences for the safety of my 
children and my grandchildren, and I think everybody in this chamber 
should feel that way. And most of us today.
  Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank again the gentleman from Iowa for 
bringing this special order tonight in such a timely fashion, on the 
day we did reauthorize the PATRIOT Act, as amended, and it will, 
hopefully, take us many more years before we have anything like what 
happened to us on 9/11. And so with that, I yield back to the gentleman 
from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia 
(Mr. Gingrey) for his wise words, and I would like to associate myself 
with those remarks, particularly with the philosophy that we have a new 
norm; that we will not be going back to an old norm. The old norm 
allowed for a wall of separation between intelligence and prosecution, 
and that may have been the wall of separation that allowed the 
September 11 terrorists to attack us.
  So the PATRIOT Act has removed that wall and allowed for that 
cooperation and that sharing of information and records, and I believe 
that has been part of the reason why we have not had a terrorist attack 
in this country since September 11. This reauthorization that took 
place in this Congress today, and hopefully will make its way to the 
President's desk fairly soon, is an authorization for the new norm, the 
norm where we will be with our intelligence people, with our FBI, and 
using our resources far more wisely than we were before.
  But, Mr. Speaker, not a single piece of the PATRIOT Act allows the 
law enforcement people to access any data or information or anyone's 
private records in any fashion with more latitude than exists already 
in a criminal investigation prior to the passage of the PATRIOT Act. It 
is true today that there are more protections in the PATRIOT Act for 
civil liberties than there are for criminal investigations on the 
domestic side. It will stay that way, and in fact we have even expanded 
those protections.
  Mr. Speaker, joining us tonight is the gentlewoman from Tennessee 
(Mrs. Blackburn), who has brought a real talent to this Congress and 
someone who I really enjoy working with and look up to and admire for 
the energy she brings to this task. Mr. Speaker, I yield such to her 
for her comments tonight.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa. He has 
done such a wonderful job on the Committee on the Judiciary. I had the 
opportunity to serve with him on that committee last Congress, and I 
appreciate his wisdom, his expertise, and just his common sense way of 
approaching legislation.
  So often he will say that he was out on his tractor thinking about 
this, that, or the other, and let me tell you what I think. I think 
there are many of my constituents in Tennessee that certainly relate to 
how he goes about that thinking process, and we appreciate that.

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. Speaker, we did pass the PATRIOT Act today and reauthorize that. 
We did this with bipartisan support. I would remind the body this is 
one in a continuing string of items of legislation that have been 
passed with bipartisan support in this body. Whether it be bankruptcy 
reform or extension of the death tax, the energy bill or the highway 
bill, I could go on and on. Supplemental budget, the REAL ID Act, we 
have done it with bipartisan support.
  I think there is a reason that the minority votes with the leadership 
of this House and the majority on our agenda, and it is because the 
leadership of this House is in touch with what the American people 
think, what is on their mind, what they are focusing on.
  One of the things that we know that they are focusing on is security, 
whether it be moral security or economic security or health care 
security or homeland security; and our focus today has been on homeland 
security.
  The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is right, today with bipartisan 
support we reauthorized the PATRIOT Act. We did it with good reason. We 
did it because it is a cornerstone and an important part of fighting 
and winning the war on terror. And winning is something we have to be 
certain we do.
  Now, there are a couple of points that I did want to make, and I 
appreciate the gentleman yielding me this time. We heard quite a bit of 
bravado today about abuses, and we have a poster here. The PATRIOT Act, 
section 223 of the PATRIOT Act allows individuals to sue the Federal 
Government for money damages if a Federal official discloses sensitive 
information without authorization. Number of lawsuits filed against the 
government: zero. And the source on this is the Department of Justice.
  One of my colleagues earlier said let us look at the PATRIOT Act by 
the numbers. This is a pretty important piece to remember. This is 
there for a reason, and it is important.
  Here are some more PATRIOT Act facts by the numbers. One of the 
things that I would like to call attention to is the third point. Since 
the attacks on 9/11, the people arrested by the Department of Justice 
as a result of international terrorism investigations, 395; 
convictions, 212. This is so important for us to keep in mind because 
this shows the PATRIOT Act is working. There is a reason for this. 
There is a reason that we have that.
  The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) has talked about, and the 
gentleman from Texas talked about, the libraries and the importance of 
having access to the library records. The other night as we were 
discussing the PATRIOT Act, we talked about you had to have a court 
order. It is not just the ability to go in and say let me look at So-
and-So's records. There is a process. It is the same process which has 
been in place for years. When we were looking at drug kings and 
racketeering, our Federal agents would use those powers at that point, 
always going to a judge, always receiving that permission.
  But we know and we have had testimony given that some of the 
suspected 9/11 hijackers actually went in and used public libraries. We 
do not want our public libraries to become safe havens for terrorists. 
Those are the reasons for those provisions.
  All in all the PATRIOT Act is one of those items that will add to 
achieving the security that we want here in our homes, in our 
communities, in our schools, in our public places and gathering places. 
It is another tool that can be used by our intelligence community, our 
defense community, and our law enforcement community to be certain they 
gather information and have the ability to share information that is 
necessary to keep this Nation safe.
  I again thank the members of the Committee on the Judiciary, and I 
thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) for the 
excellent work that was done on this bill, bringing it to the floor; 
and I thank the members who voted and supported and worked in a 
bipartisan manner to see this finished today.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee 
(Mrs. Blackburn).
  A number of other subjects pop to mind as I listened to the 
gentlewoman from Tennessee. One of them is with sunsets. That has been 
a subject matter here in this debate and throughout the markup last 
week, that is, the argument that we should sunset the PATRIOT Act so we 
force hearings so we can have legitimate oversight, and that oversight 
comes back on a regular basis.
  The argument against that is we have had 3\1/2\ years of demagoguery 
on the PATRIOT Act and not a single lawsuit has been filed, even though 
there is a special provision, section 223 of the code, that provides 
for a person to seek redress of damages if they have been violated by 
the PATRIOT Act. Not a single lawsuit has been filed.
  Section 215, looking into bookstore records and library records and 
the

[[Page 17015]]

computer records in the public library, that major subject matter that 
has been brought before our national discussion board and on the Web 
for now several years, not a single time has the PATRIOT Act been used 
to look in bookstores or library records. But we want to preserve the 
ability to do that with law enforcement investigations. We know that 
the 9/11 terrorists did use the libraries, and we know that one of the 
optimum drop points for spies and surveillance and intelligence work is 
a library. You can write a note, put it in a certain page in a library 
book, put the book back on the shelf, and walk out of the library. That 
is the drop. And the pickup is the person that comes behind, knows the 
name of the book and picks up that information.
  We must maintain that ability to look into libraries and bookstores, 
and we must also maintain appropriate government oversight 
responsibility. We preserved a couple of sunsets in the PATRIOT Act; 
but the fact remains, if the majority or minority party determines that 
they want to have hearings, if they are hearing complaints from their 
constituents, if there are complaints that are being filed or lawsuits 
being filed, we can call for hearings at any time, whether majority or 
minority, and get those hearings and get that public oversight and make 
the appropriate changes. I accept that. It is our responsibility to do.
  One of the other points is the NSL, the national security letter. The 
argument is that could be used without appropriate oversight. In fact, 
the national security letter does not allow any FBI officer to read any 
documents and search into any telephone records or financial records 
except for the fact that it lets them look at the record of the 
records, the record of potential financial records or computer records 
to see if there is a pattern. If the pattern is there, then they have 
to go forward to get the warrant; and that warrant under the PATRIOT 
Act has a higher standard than under a criminal investigation.
  That covers some of the things that have been an issue. We have quite 
a group of people here tonight. I am feeling a little out of place. I 
have a judge on my right, a judge on my left, and a judge behind me. 
When I look at these three judges, if I were actually King, I would 
appoint them all to the Supreme Court; but since I cannot, I yield to 
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for his remarks.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman does not mind, I would 
like to have a dialogue. I would like to have a ``quadolog'' with our 
other colleagues here. I think we could have a good discussion because 
something good happened today. It was not just today; it was not just 
the hours and hours we spent on debate on this issue today. It was not 
just the 12 hours that we had during markup, or the hearings. I thought 
it was 11, the chairman said we had 12 hearings. I knew it was a lot. 
Or the dozens of witnesses we had on the PATRIOT Act, the oversight, 
the review of what needed to be.

                              {time}  2310

  But I do not now how it struck the gentlemen, but I think most of 
them were in here when the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) 
was making a floor speech just earlier tonight and he made the comment 
that we need to stop fear mongering. He told us to stop fear mongering. 
I do not know what news he is watching, but I do not think we have to 
say anything about fear. We are trying to fear, like that fine 
President Roosevelt did, ``nothing to fear but fear itself,'' but we do 
have to deal with people who do want to destroy us. And the news even 
this very day shows what demagoguery that is, to tell us to stop fear 
mongering when we have terrorists bent on our destruction, they are 
blowing up the subways, trying to blow up subways. In London those 
people have done a great job of resilience and trying to stand tall and 
firm through these crises. And we could have an attack tomorrow. I know 
the gentleman from Washington is on the Committee on the Judiciary with 
me at the current time. I do not know if my colleagues had a chance to 
go by and look at the top secret documents. I have had people say, 
Well, I would tell you, but I would have to kill you. They told me that 
if I told anybody that did not have the clearance then they would kill 
me for telling somebody else.
  So, anyway, we cannot go into that stuff, but we can say that we know 
they have stopped terrorists by use of the PATRIOT Act. It has been 
used to keep Americans alive. That is not fear mongering. That is 
looking at the facts and just calling it like it is.
  And I would like to point out, with all the mess that gets thrown 
into the air, there has been bipartisan debate. There has been rigorous 
debate. There are people on the other side of the aisle with whom I 
disagree. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and I have 
had some rigorous discussions, debate. He has never lied to me, and he 
has been very honest and forthcoming. I voted for one of his amendments 
today, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), one of his 
amendments today. And the truth is on the PATRIOT Act, there were six 
Democrat amendments that we took up today. Five of them passed. I do 
not know about my colleagues here, but I voted for five of them. I 
thought they were good amendments. There was one person that surprised 
me. Normally that particular Democratic congressman does not have all 
that good amendments and had a good one today. One of the things I like 
about being a Republican is the freedom we have. We can read the 
amendments, we can determine whether it is a good idea or not, and vote 
for it.
  So I did not know the gentleman's feelings, but he had to notice 
there was bipartisan support and the Republicans were open to good 
ideas.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the 
gentleman's remarks on this. And I have read some of those records 
associated with the PATRIOT Act investigations. And, in fact, I read 
some of those records throughout an investigation I am somewhat 
familiar with, and if we read through that carefully with the idea of 
what this would have been like without the payment PATRIOT Act, what 
would we have had for information? I think with many of those 
investigations, it would easy to make the case that we would have had a 
disaster at the other end rather than an arrest and prosecution at the 
other end of that. So to preempt this is what we need to be doing, and 
I am absolutely all for that.
  I cannot resist marking that the individual that accused us of fear 
mongering is also the individual that went to Iraq and surrendered 
before we liberated the Iraqis and the individual who refused to put 
his hand over his heart when he led Pledge of Allegiance here one 
morning to open the House Chamber for the day. So I would put that only 
within that contest. I do not what drives that kind of thought process.
  I am very proud of the patriots we have in this Congress, and they 
are on both sides of the aisle. They just seem to be in a bigger number 
over here where we have the majority at the present time.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, 
being a Republican has allowed me to take issue with people I have deep 
respect for.
  On this very Patriot Act, I have had some severe concerns. I am 
grateful that we had Democratic and Republican amendments that fixed 
the concerns that I was concerned about. And I believe with the sunset 
provisions we have, which of course it is a little bit different than 
what the Senate came out; so there will be some debate. There will be 
some give and take, but we will sunset provisions coming out of 
conference.
  But through this process I talked personally with the Attorney 
General. He contacted me, Alberto Gonzales. I have great respect for 
him. He had been on our Supreme Court there in Texas. He is a good man 
and he works for a great President. We have had frank discussions. 
There were things we disagreed on. I have talked with the Assistant 
Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General. I talked to the White 
House legislative liaison on

[[Page 17016]]

these issues. We have been able to have a great debate, and we have 
come to a meeting of the minds on most of the things we disagreed 
about.
  But I tell my colleagues I appreciate the freedom we have had to work 
on this because it is not about Democrats or Republicans. We are 
talking about the future of the United States of America, and I 
appreciate the dedication and the massive debates we have had on this.
  And sometimes it scares me the way we make laws and we see each other 
running through the halls to try to get back to another hearing and 
vote on some issues. But we have done something good for America. And 
there is always room for improvement. There are always things we can do 
better. I do not know about my colleagues, but to talk about not doing 
or our job with oversight, as long as I am on the Committee on the 
Judiciary, we are going to do keep doing oversight. That is our job. We 
are going to do it.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think the 
gentleman has brought out an important point here. And that is that 
this debate was envisioned to produce a product that brought view 
points in from each side and a properly functioning legislative 
process. Whether it be a city council or county supervisors or the 
State legislature or the United States Congress, we have an open debate 
and we put our ideas out there, and as the ideas get debated, the 
amendments are offered. Some are successful and some are defeated and 
some are negotiated. And, in fact, we negotiated the sunset to be a 10-
year sunset. Some people thought it ought to be considerably sooner 
than that. Some thought we ought to split the difference out to a 4 or 
5 year. Some people thought we should not have sunsets, and I was 
actually among those. And yet the negotiation came down to a 10-year 
sunset. That was a compromise that would get the ball moving down the 
field, and that is what we resolved on that particular issue. But when 
we reach that static position when each side makes their case in a 
legitimate open debate and we arrive at that center position that we 
can all live with, then we move forward. And that is something that has 
been classic in the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, and that has 
been how the debate has brought us all together to the middle so that 
we could have this bipartisan vote of 257 votes here to reauthorize the 
PATRIOT Act.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman further yield?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I think it is interesting here when we look 
at this to note: Since the attacks of 9/11, the number of individuals 
arrested by the Department of Justice as a result of international 
terrorism investigations, 395. That is 395 that there was probable 
cause to believe were trying to do us harm, trying to destroy our way 
of life, and some of those have been very recent. And the PATRIOT Act, 
as the gentleman has said, wow, what a help to find these people before 
they kill fine innocent Americans.
  The number of those individuals convicted, we are not talking about 
indicted and we are not talking about probable cause. We are talking 
about beyond a reasonable doubt. Two hundred and twelve of them have 
already been convicted. And the former judges here with us, they know 
that probably some of those that were convicted were because some of 
the others that were arrested and charged turned evidence and helped 
them out on those convictions.
  So it is doing its job. We may have another attack tomorrow. But 
thank God it will not be because we did not give the law enforcement 
and the intelligence community what they needed to try to protect us.
  And one thing I would like to add about that too. We know 
historically that evil people try to destroy good wholesome ways of 
life. They just do. Evil is around in the world. But thank God. Over 
the years there have been dark ages, there have been periods when 
people have been subverted and put into real terrible situations .

                              {time}  2320

  We have seen it even in the present day. But I thank God I live in a 
country where we are determined not to let that happen here, not now, 
not on our watch.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield to another judge 
from Texas, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe).
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Iowa yielding, 
and I appreciate his passion for the Constitution. The gentleman is 
very familiar with that sacred document and the history of the 
document, and the gentleman, as he does always, carries a copy of it in 
his pocket in case somebody wants to read it. As a former judge, I 
appreciate the fact that the gentleman is beholden to the Constitution.
  I was just counting up the years of judicial service between the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Carter) and myself. The three of us have been on the bench with over 50 
years of judicial experience.
  Having served in Houston for over 22 years, I tried only criminal 
cases. I tried about 25,000 felony cases, numerous death penalty cases, 
and they were all criminal cases. I say that because the PATRIOT Act 
deals with crime, it deals with international terrorists. As judges, we 
dealt with local terrorists.
  The Constitution is that sacred document that we have always been 
sworn to uphold. I think my record, as well as these two judges' 
records, speaks pretty clearly that we are strong law-and-order judges, 
if we can use that phrase. People that were convicted in my court, they 
were held to a high standard and there were consequences for those 
actions. Some of them are serving long sentences even tonight.
  But also I, too, am a very strong supporter of the Constitution, 
especially the Bill of Rights. Some people think that a former law-and-
order judge or a law-and-order judge is not a person who supports the 
Constitution. That is just not true. The first 10 amendments, the Bill 
of Rights, make us really a unique type of country because we show the 
worth of the individual.
  The PATRIOT Act, some have been concerned about the allegations in 
the PATRIOT Act, whether or not it puts a dent in those Bill of Rights. 
I have studied the document, including the amendments tonight that were 
passed. I think all of those amendments and the document itself proves 
a point, that in this country we can have civil rights, individual 
liberty, and we can have security. We can have both.
  History has always shown that people, all people throughout the 
world, were willing to give up freedom in the name of security, 
democratic countries and non-democratic countries. But in this country, 
we, through the PATRIOT Act, are continuing to show we can have both, 
we can have security and we can have civil liberties.
  The PATRIOT Act does support that. I do not believe there has been 
one provision of the PATRIOT Act that has gone to court for judicial 
review that has been found unconstitutional. I think that is worth 
noting, that not one section has been found unconstitutional.
  The PATRIOT Act calls for judicial review, as all of our laws should 
call for judicial review, and to make sure that judges throughout the 
land review the action of law enforcement. That is the standard of 
conduct in this country, it always has been and it always will be. The 
PATRIOT Act supports that.
  So I am quite a supporter of the PATRIOT Act, especially as it has 
passed the House, as the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) says, with 
bipartisan support. It is something that is necessary.
  There has been a lot of scare tactics that have been used and 
rhetoric about the PATRIOT Act, but the bottom line is the people who 
commit crimes against us need to fear the rule of law, need to fear the 
consequences for violating our safety and our freedom.
  In this country we do have a lot of freedom, but yet we take a lot of 
precautions. Most folks tonight are doing the same thing before they 
went into their homes. Wherever they are in the United States, they 
probably locked the doors. They probably put chains on

[[Page 17017]]

the front door and deadbolts. Some people sleep with bars on their 
windows. We do that because of crime, of local criminals, outlaws and 
terrorists. That is a way that we have chosen to live because of the 
nature of criminal conduct in this country.
  I think the PATRIOT Act is a statement that we are not going to live 
in fear, we are not going to live in terror, and we are not going to be 
afraid of those people who threaten us in remote portions of the world 
and come to try to make us continue to be imprisoned in our own homes, 
in our actions each day.
  So I think this act goes a long way in making sure that we have 
freedom in this country and that we have liberty in this country and 
that we have security in this country, to let people know, woe be to 
you if you choose to commit a crime against the people of the United 
States, because this act gives law enforcement the ability to track 
those people down, hunt those people down and bring them to justice. 
That is really what the Constitution is about.
  So I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding, and I will 
yield back to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the 
gentleman from Texas, and I appreciate the contributions here tonight.
  I would like to take us back a little bit and recap what has happened 
here in the last 3\1/2\ going on 4 years, and that is that, yes, we 
were attacked from within and the vulnerabilities that are inherent in 
a free society were exploited by people that came here and people who 
have a hatred for our freedom and a hatred for anyone whom they declare 
to be a infidel. Their number one and number two targets, preferred 
targets, are Jews first and Christians second, but western civilization 
is their main enemy.
  That thought process, that cult, that barbarism, is bred around the 
world in regions where they are taught in madrassas to hate anyone not 
like them, to kill anyone not like them.
  There are something like 16,000 madrassas, hate teaching schools, 
just in Pakistan alone, and if you look at those schools around Saudi 
Arabia and if you look at the funding stream that runs around the 
world, that network is what brought al Qaeda into the United States for 
that September 11th attack, that network is what attacked London on 
July 7, and that may be the network that also attacked London today, 
although we do not have the records in today. It is part of the network 
that attacked Spain on that March 11 day that changed the political 
destiny of Spain and caused them to make a decision to pull their 
troops out of Iraq.
  The worldwide war that we are up against, the PATRIOT Act addresses 
it domestically so that our FBI and our CIA, our domestic investigators 
and our terrorism investigators will cooperate together.
  They will be able to do roving wiretaps in an era when trading cell 
phones on the run is almost a normal procedure. We do not go back to a 
landline any longer and go home to make our phone calls. Our phone is 
with us. Our communication is where we are, and we have to have an act 
that catches up with technology and allows for roving wiretaps.
  We have to be able to look at some financial records and some credit 
card records and maybe some bookstore and library records to see the 
pattern. If the pattern justifies a warrant to go in and take a deeper 
look, then a Federal judge will have to provide that warrant, a higher 
standard than if it were a regular criminal investigation.
  We need all of these tools to preempt the terrorist attacks on us in 
this country, and those tools so far have been part of the reason why 
we have not been attacked again. Many of us believe though that those 
attacks are inevitable, and I am one of those people, and I think they 
will be worse next time. I think we need all of these tools and more.
  By looking around the world also, the President's doctrine, the Bush 
doctrine that he laid out several weeks after the September 11, 2001, 
attacks, that the media just caught up with after he gave his second 
inaugural address here last January, the Bush doctrine of promoting 
freedom and liberty around the world, is that free people never go to 
war against never free people. That would be consistent with the 
history of this country.
  So in Iraq and in Afghanistan we have created the habitat for 
freedom, and the Afghanis have gone to the polls and voted and the 
Iraqis have gone to the polls and voted and helped select their leaders 
and are directed their national destiny and established a climate and 
culture where there is a growing desire for freedom.
  If that freedom can continue to take root, and if that freedom can be 
contagious across the Arab world, from Afghanistan to Iraq and Saudi 
Arabia and Egypt and Syria and Jordan and the Middle Eastern countries 
all across the region, if freedom can be manifested there and take root 
in establishing the fashion that it is here, the way it is with our 
brothers in Great Britain, then there is a climate there that does not 
breed terrorists any longer. We will have eliminated the habitat for 
terror by replacing that habitat of a radical Islamic society with that 
of freedom and democracy.

                              {time}  2330

  Now, that does not solve all the problems. If that happens, we also 
know that from the London bombs, that we have second generation 
terrorists, sons of moderate Muslims that travel and establish 
themselves within Great Britain, and these children were either born 
there or naturalized there, but they were taught in a moderate Muslim, 
peaceful society, and yet they still found their Madrassas in the 
mosques and they still bought into the culture of death, and they still 
blew themselves and 56 or so Londoners up and wounded however many 
others.
  These terrorists, these radical Islamists, according to Benazir 
Bhutto, a former Prime Minister of Pakistan, told me there are not very 
many, perhaps 10 percent, are sympathetic to al Qaeda, but of about 1.2 
or 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, 10 percent is 120 million to 130 
million. I call that a lot; not ``not very many,'' but quite a lot of 
potential either terrorists or terrorist supporters and sympathizers, 
and we cannot kill them all and we do not want to, but we have to 
defend ourselves from them.
  Mr. Speaker, the Jahadists that are killing Londoners and Americans 
and Spanish and other Muslims around the world, these terrorist attacks 
that are taking place, they are parasites that live amongst the host, 
the Islamists. The terrorists are the parasites; the hosts is Muslim, 
the Muslim religion. So they feed off of the host, they travel with the 
host and on the host, they are funded through the host, through the 
mosques, so they can go anywhere in the world and find themselves a 
small core, a cell of sympathizers, a sleeper cell, and the network of 
funding is collected around the world, and the networks of 
communications and the network of training and where the training camps 
are all can be fed through the network of the Muslim religion.
  I will call upon moderate Islam, if you exist out there, and I 
believe you do, then cleanse thy selves, rid yourselves of this 
parasite. We cannot do that for you. We can work with you and we can 
cooperate with you, but until you do, there will not be peace in this 
world, there will not be safety in this world, and there will not be an 
end to this war on terror.
  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert).
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank it is worth noting that these 
people who are bent on our destruction are so consumed with evil and 
hatred that they would blow up sweet little innocent Iraqi children. 
They are not just killing Americans, they will kill anybody that stands 
in their way. And the only thing these people in Iraq, we have met 
them, we have talked to them, they want to be, they want to live. Yet, 
they are so consumed with hatred they would blow those innocent people 
up, Muslims themselves, and they blow them up so treacherously.
  I believe that all of us here share the same passion. Mr. Speaker, I 
do not

[[Page 17018]]

want people at home in America to think, well, they think they have 
done it all, now that they have passed the PATRIOT Act. This is an 
ongoing thing. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. It is an 
ongoing battle that we fight here for America.
  But another thing that we have to take up is securing our borders. 
This is one of the tools, securing our borders will be another, and I 
think the gentleman shares my passion that that is another thing we 
have to take up, it is another thing we have to do to protect America. 
I am proud to stand, to sit, to debate, to be on the same side with the 
gentleman.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, His Honor, 
Judge Gohmert, and Judge Poe from Texas, Judge Carter from Texas, the 
gentlewoman from Tennessee, and the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mr. 
Gingrey), all of us who have participated in this tonight. We have had 
an opportunity to discuss the PATRIOT Act and kind of put the final 
frosting on the cake here in the House, I hope, and maybe bring a 
better and more objective perspective to the PATRIOT Act for the 
American people, Mr. Speaker.
  So we have a long road ahead of us. We will work with the PATRIOT Act 
to provide the maximum amount of domestic security and will continue 
the Bush doctrine to eliminate the habitat that breeds terrorists 
around the world. We are going to ask for the rest of the countries in 
the world to shut off the funding, shut off the training, shut off the 
feed mechanism that funds these terrorists. We are going to ask the 
moderate Islam to purge the parasites from your midst; you are the only 
ones that can do it. We are going to take a look at our borders, both 
north and south, and we are going to slow down that human river of 
about 3 million illegals that poor across there, that huge haystack of 
humanity that, amongst that 3 million or so, are hundreds and perhaps 
thousands of terrorists, certainly thousands of criminals that prey 
upon Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, if we can all get that done by the end of the 109th 
Congress, I am going to take the day off.

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