What is the exact source of the Patriot Act?

[WilliamPitt]

I understand that it was written well before 9/11. Who exactly wrote it? When? Links would be great, as this is in response to a question.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. No link.

My guess: James Baker III.

[Don_G]

2. Asskrap's Paranoia

[Sliverofhope]

3. I don't know if it's directly connected

but there was an ANSER institute of homeland security set up in 98 or 99 that might have done research into such a thing.

www.anser.org

I dunno if there's anything useful there, but it's worth a check.

[Donna Zen]

4. There should be 2

I remember Maxine Waters on the News Hour, it was a Wednesday. She was talking about having hammer out, with the help of the ACLU, some differences to improve the bill. She said she wasn't totally satisfied, but it was better than originally written. That bill is not the bill that was offered up on the Friday (thurs?) they voted. A new bill was presented directly from Asscroop's office. No one read it before it passed to the best of my knowledge.

What I don't understand is references to Edwards or Graham or both having worked on the Senate version.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

5. I don't recall the anwers to the exact circumstances

and am still checking my bookmarks but I do have these links from programs I have watched....I am still scanning the Moyer's one to see if it adresses it but am posting these in case you scan it faster than me. :D

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_lewis2.html

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

http://www.cdt.org/security/usapatriot/history.shtml

Upon reviewing ONE of the article's it Viet Dinh Asst Atty General was instrumental in pushing it. Dinh is a fellow of the Federalist Society (and was vetted for the job through them) an advocacy group largely responsible for a reinterpretation of several aspects of Law and Economics.

[sistersofmercy]

6. I don't know wish I did, 131 pgs in 5 weeks, I think not!

[proud patriot]

7. I asked at Ask Jeeves ask.com and this is what I got

http://web.ask.com/web?q=Who+wrote+the+Patriot+Act&o=0&qsrc=0&askbutton.x=12&askbutton.y=16

[WilliamPitt]

9. Not so much who as when

[ScreamingMeemie]

8. I believe its roots are in the 1996 Anti- terrorism and Death Penalty Act

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1996_cr/s_735_final.htm

Which was on it's way to having several key parts removed about the time of 9/11, because they were deemed unconstitutional.

Good luck in searching, Laura

[stevedeshazer]

10. Viet Dinh

http://regenerationtv.net/pipermail/actionla/2003-February/002626.html

The USA Patriot Act, approved by Congress in the wake of
the September 11 attacks, undermines and threatens our
civil liberties. Crafted by one of John Ashcroft's
right-hand men, Viet Dinh - the head of the Department of
Justice's Office of Legal Policy, the Patriot Act violates
basic rights, for example by:

*expanding the ability of law enforcement to
conduct secret
searches, engage in phone and Internet surveillance, and
gain access to
highly personal medical, financial, mental health, and
student records; and
*permitting noncitizens to be jailed based on
mere suspicion and to be denied re-admission to the U.S.
for engaging in free speech.

Viet Dinh also has crafted initiatives that require the
fingerprinting of potentially tens of thousands of
visiting foreigners from Middle East countries and put
foreign students under greater scrutiny. According to the
Los Angeles Times (9/18/02), Dinh revamped law enforcement
guidelines that "give FBI agents new powers to snoop in
mosques and surf the Internet."

More:

'Freedom's Attendant' -- Patriot Act Drafter Defends His Vision
Sandip Roy, News Profile,
Pacific News Service, Jan 27, 2003
Many charge Viet Dinh, 34-year-old assistant attorney general and architect of the Patriot Act, with sacrificing Americans' civil liberties for domestic security. The rising star of the Bush administration, who escaped with his family from Vietnam 25 years ago, sees it differently.

Seared into the memory of the architect of the USA Patriot Act is the image of his mother wielding an ax almost as big as herself, chopping to pieces the rickety boat that carried them from Vietnam to Malaysia in 1978.

"My first question was, 'Is she crazy?'" recalls Viet Dinh. "We could be imprisoned or forced back to sea in an even less seaworthy vessel. But it was recognition that nothing could be as bad as going back to Vietnam. It was a leap of faith into our freedom."

The irony for Dinh is that today, some Americans accuse him of presiding over perhaps the most sweeping curtailment of individual freedoms since the McCarthy era.

The lanky 34-year-old with a ready smile sees it differently. As assistant attorney general overseeing the Office of Legal Policy, Dinh describes himself as "an attendant of freedom." Dressed casually in blue jeans, he looks more like a young, gung-ho hi-tech entrepreneur than a professor of constitutional law and what the Los Angeles times describes as part of the "brain trust" behind the Bush administration's anti-terrorism campaign.

http://mail.saigon.com/pipermail/vacets-gen/2003-January/000004.html

[stevedeshazer]

11. More

http://www.usdoj.gov/olp/vietdinh.htm

[proud patriot]

12. more history

The President intends to nominate Viet Dinh to be Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy. Dinh is currently a professor at Georgetown University Law School where he is the Deputy Director of the Asian Law and Policy Studies Program. He served as Special Counsel to Senator Pete Domenici. A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, he served as a Law Clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.


http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/03/20010301-3.html


(this is a frontline interview I guess he was involved with
investigating Bill and Hillary )

Mike Kirk: The destruction of the records at Rose Law Firm. How unprecedented is this?

Viet Dinh: I do not know as to the level of precedence as to how widely practiced it is. What I do know, it is out of the ordinary. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a routine record destruction process. As a matter of fact, what is routine for law firms is record retention, simply because the client files and the attorneys' time sheets, and her work product, is the best defense that she has to charges of impropriety.


Mike Kirk: So, what does it mean that they didn't retain those records?

Viet Dinh: The purge does suggest an effort, if it was done consciously, it does suggest an effort to keep from the public eye, and from subsequent investigation, the extent and nature of the Rose Law Firm's representation of Madison Guaranty, and, specifically, Mrs. Clinton's representation of Madison Guaranty.


Mike Kirk: Is there any evidence that it wasn't done intentionally?

Viet Dinh: We do know that Mrs. Clinton was the one who ordered the destruction of the record, so the specific intent to destroy the record was on Mrs. Clinton's part. We can only make guesses as to why she ordered the destruction of records, certainly under the circumstances of the case--the case was still open, the representation of the client was engaged in civil litigation on the exact same issue. It was certainly not ordinary or routine. As a matter of fact, rather extraordinary that the records were destroyed.

And you know what? This specific destruction of records should not be viewed in isolation. It should be viewed as a larger pattern of records becoming either destroyed or lost or somehow not made available to federal investigators. We start with the 1988 destruction of records related to Madison. We start with the Webb Hubbell's attempt to collect all of the records in 1992, related to Madison, and then absconding with them to Washington, DC. We have the printing out of the billing records in 1992, and deleting the underlying computer records.

And it's a whole pattern of records relating to the Rose Law Firm's representation of Madison Guaranty that is destroyed, concealed or withheld from federal investigators.


Mike Kirk: Why?

Viet Dinh: I think simply because there is a question, and the questions that we still ask today, as to the nature and extent of the involvement, specifically of Mrs. Clinton's involvement in the representation, and questions that we have only started, begun to have the answers to, once we rediscover the billing records in 1996

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/arkansas/interviews/vietdinh3.html



QUOTE: The roundup that followed the <9/11> attacks....has produced few if any law enforcement coups....has provoked a sprawling legal battle, now being waged in federal courthouses around the country, that experts say has begun to redefine the delicate balance between individual liberties and national security.

Viet Dinh is About

http://www.fairness.com/resources/by-relation?relation_id=9101



9/18/02 Los Angeles Times: "At Home in War on Terror: Viet Dinh has gone from academe to a key behind-the scenes role. Conservatives love him; others find his views constitutionally suspect."

Loretto, PA. – Viet Dinh is working the room. Viet Dinh, it seems, is always working a room.

The room itself isn't much, at least not by the standards of one of the rising stars of the Bush administration. A hundred or so faculty members and supporters at Saint Francis University in rural Pennsylvania are lunching in a nondescript student center to hear Dinh, advisor to U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and a point man in the war on terrorism, philosophize about how liberty and freedom can thrive even in a time of national crisis.

But look closer, and the Vietnamese-born, Southern California-bred Dinh has a more immediate agenda. Seated at lunch next to him is a local district judge, D. Brooks Smith, whose promotion to a federal appellate court has been imperiled by protests over his civil rights record. Literally and figuratively, Dinh is at Smith's side.

Amid Dinh's broad legal colloquies and historical references to Nathan Hale and William Penn, he delivers an impassioned endorsement of Smith. He steps up the drumbeat for local television reporters after his speech, decrying the "liberal activists" who have threatened to derail President Bush's nominee.

The scene is typical of Dinh and his remarkable ascent to power: Part law school professor, part political pit bull, Dinh has navigated seamlessly between the worlds of Ivory Tower academia and sharp-elbowed Washington politics to leave his imprint on a wide array of policy decisions.

http://www.asianam.org/viet%20dinh.htm

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

13. More on his Federalist Society links

http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipients/fed-soc.htm

[stevedeshazer]

14. He sure played dumb in this exchange

From June 2001 Senate confirmation hearing:

DURBIN: So it is your belief that the Federalist Society does not have a . . .
stated philosophy when it comes to, for example, the future course of the
Supreme Court?

DINH: No, I do not think it does have a stated philosophy . . . . I know that the
society has a very diverse membership of people who think very equivocally
about these issues, and I know that I've gotten into many, many disagreements
with members of the Federalist Society on these kinds of issues. So I do not
think that a official policy would be possible even if desirable.

DURBIN: Where would you put the Federalist Society on the political
spectrum?

DINH: You know, I simply do not know. I know that there are press reports that
have attempted to put it in a political spectrum with respect to other organizations.
I myself have -- in my personal and professional life -- have been very hesitant to
characterize anybody or any group according to labels, simply because I eschew
such labels myself. So I -- it would not be appropriate for me to do so for others .
. . .

DURBIN: Well, let me say that what I've read -- and I'm not an expert nor am I a
member of the Federalist Society -- they do have a very conservative philosophy.
I don't think they are a debating society. I think they have an agenda.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A10851-2001Jun2¬Found=true

I'd say it's very likely that the Federalist Society developed the so-called PATRIOT Act and used Viet Dinh as a front man.

[proud patriot]

17. interesting ...I'll see if I can dig anything up

:hi:

[Tatiana]

15. Interesting article "Big Brother Gets Bigger"

http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/repression/big-broth-kin.htm

<snip>

The terrorist atrocities committed on September 11, 2001, greatly accelerated the creation of a single electronic information network that links every law enforcement agency in the country. However, as of March 26, 2002, according to Kathleen L. McChesney, the FBI’s Executive Assistant Director for Law Enforcement Services, in a Washington Post online discussion, there was still “no one, universal means of sharing information between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.” This is no longer quite true.


The Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) were created by Congress in 1974 to aid law enforcement agencies with multi-jurisdictional investigations. RISS members include over 6,000 federal, state, and local agencies in all 50 states. Although RISS is administered regionally, the information is shared nationally. In 1995, the FBI started Law Enforcement Online (LEO) to provide a secure, “interactive communications mechanism to link all levels of Law Enforcement throughout the United States by supporting broad, immediate dissemination of information.” In 2002, LEO had 32,500 members, about two-thirds were state and local law enforcement and the rest federal and foreign users.

<snip>

The USA PATRIOT Act, together with the Homeland Security Act, recent Executive Branch decisions, and the often overlooked Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, have already unduly expanded federal power and undermined essential American freedoms under the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments to the Constitution. These assaults on liberty must be rolled back but to that list the GIWG and its work must be added.

Who wrote/sponsored/authored the bill? Some clues...

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
DECEMBER 13, 1995

Mr. HYDE (for himself, Mr. MCCOLLUM, Mr. SMITH of Texas, and Mr.

BARR of Georgia) introduced the following bill; which was

referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

A BILL

To combat terrorism.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of

Representatives of the United States of America

in Congress assembled, <<-Italic>

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Effective Death Penalty and

Antiterrorism Act of 1995'.

There was also a Senate bill introduced. The sponsors of this bill are interesting...

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

February 10 (legislative day, JANUARY 30), 1995

Mr. BIDEN (for himself, Mr. SPECTER, Mr. KOHL, Mr. KERREY, and Mr.

D'AMATO) (by request) introduced the following bill; which was

read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

A BILL

To improve the ability of the United States to respond to the

international terrorist threat.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of

Representatives of the United States of America in Congress

assembled, <<-Italic>

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as `the Omnibus counterterrorism

Act of 1995'.

SEC. 2. TABLE OF CONTENTS.

The following is the table of contents for this Act:

Sec. 1. Short title.

Sec. 2. Table of contents.

Sec. 3. Findings and purposes.

TITLE I--SUBSTANTIVE CRIMINAL LAW ENHANCEMENTS

Sec. 101. Acts of terrorism transcending national

boundaries.

Sec. 102. Conspiracy to harm people or property overseas.

Sec. 103. Clarification and extension of criminal

jurisdiction over certain terrorism offense overseas.

TITLE II--IMMIGRATION LAW IMPROVEMENTS

Sec. 201. Alien terrorist removal procedures.

Sec. 202. Changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act to

facilitate removal of alien terrorists.

Sec. 203. Access to certain confidential INS files through

court order.

TITLE III--CONTROLS OVER TERRORIST FUND-RAISING

Sec. 301. Terrorist fund-raising prohibited.

TITLE IV--CONVENTION ON THE MARKING OF PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES

Sec. 401. Short title.

Sec. 402. Findings and purposes.

Sec. 403. Definitions.

Sec. 404. Requirement of detection agents for plastic

explosives.

Sec. 405. Criminal sanctions.

Sec. 406. Exceptions.

Sec. 407. Investigative authority.

Sec. 408. Effective date.

TITLE V--NUCLEAR MATERIALS

Sec. 501. Expansion of nuclear materials prohibitions.

TITLE VI--PROCEDURAL AND TECHNICAL CORRECTIONS AND

IMPROVEMENTS

Sec. 601 Correction to material support provision.

Sec. 602. Expansion of weapons of mass destruction statute.

Sec. 603. Addition of terrorist offenses to the RICO

statute.

Sec. 604. Addition of terrorist offenses to the money

laundering statute.

Sec. 605. Authorization for interception of communications

in certain terrorism related offenses.

Sec. 606. Clarification of maritime violence jurisdiction.

Sec. 607. Expansion of Federal jurisdiction over bomb

threats.

Sec. 608. Increased penalty for explosives conspiracies.

Sec. 609. Amendment to include assaults, murder, and

threats against former Federal officials on account of the

performance of their official duties.

Sec. 610. Addition of conspiracy to terrorism offenses.

TITLE VII--ANTITERRORISM ASSISTANCE

Sec. 701. Findings.

Sec. 702. Antiterrorism assistance amendments.

http://nsi.org/Library/Legis/bill390.txt

[Devlzown]

16. Here's something about the origins

of the Homeland Security Act, which is certainly related. http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/12.03B.jvb.hsa.1.htm
And there's this, also, with more links. http://www.rationalrevolution.net/homeland_security_act.htm

[stevedeshazer]

18. From your second link:

<snip>
Plans for the Department of Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Act were underway as early as 1998. In 1998 the United States Commission on National
Security/21st Century began working on a report called Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change, which was issued January 31st 2001. This report called for the creation of a National
Homeland Security Agency.

The Commission was actually put together by the Clinton administration and supported by Senator Lieberman. The Bush administration was initially against the idea of the Department of Homeland
Security because it was part of the Clinton legacy. However, the initial report by the Commission has been significantly changed and added to by the Bush administration since 9/11.

The initial report outlining the National Homeland Security Agency can be found here: (on edit, the Hart-Rudman thing)

http://www.nssg.gov/phaseIII.pdf

[Devlzown]

19. That's the blueprint, all right.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy that there are all these people planning out our future, doesn't it? :scared:

[stevedeshazer]

23. Oh boy

This is why this liberal wasn't so fond of Clinton as others here...

[Unknown Known]

20. Bob Graham takes credit for it right in his own biography

He was a primary author of the USA PATRIOT Act, which President George W. Bush signed into law in October 2001. Among other steps, it mandates greater information sharing among foreign intelligence and domestic law-enforcement agencies to help fight a unified war on terrorism. Graham also was the chief sponsor of a five-year plan for bolstering our intelligence capabilities, contained in the Fiscal Year 2002 and 2003 Intelligence Authorization Bills.
more

http://graham.senate.gov/biography.html

[Whoa_Nelly]

21. Going back to the Roosevelt administration

You may find this interesting.

http://www.uwm.edu/~margo/govstat/jsm.pdf

[GalleryGod]

22. To be serious,Will: Look to AEI or Hudson Insitute.

A 300 page document is passed within 30 days! Or DAZE:wtf:

The Boys from BER-lin had it "on the shelf".

Sounds like you kicked ass in Austin!

Vaya con dios!:pals: