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Thursday, May 5, 2005

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  He assures them the U.S. government is not looking at people's reading lists.

"While I may be fascinated in the books you read, I just don't have that luxury to go on fishing expeditions," he says.

As Congress weighs whether to renew some of the most controversial aspects of the Patriot Act, some federal prosecutors are acting as defense attorneys for the anti-terrorism law.

U.S. attorneys in Florida, Michigan and Iowa last week wrote newspaper opinion columns defending the law. Other prosecutors, like O'Connor, make frequent speeches to community groups.

The Justice Department encourages such articles and speeches but has not issued a directive, spokesman Kevin Madden said. Federal law prohibits the use of government agencies to lobby the public to pressure Congress.

"U.S. attorneys have been a very valuable asset in educating the American public about the Patriot Act's importance," he said.

The Patriot Act was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. But since then, 379 towns and cities have approved resolutions opposing provisions in the act, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Idaho, Montana, Maine, Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska have also passed resolutions objecting to sections.

The most antipathy is reserved for the so-called libraries provision, which allows authorities to examine "tangible items" such as business records, credit card receipts and library records as part of foreign intelligence or international terrorism investigations. Another provision makes it easier to obtain secret search warrants, once exclusively for use in foreign intelligence cases, in criminal cases.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others have repeatedly said the government has never asked for anyone's library records.

But the fear and suspicion are out there. Mansfield, Conn., which has a population of about 11,000 and is home to the University of Connecticut, adopted a resolution against the Patriot Act because of concerns about invasions of privacy.

"Theoretically, the FBI could go into the library and look to see what certain people are reading," Mayor Elizabeth Paterson said. "The librarian would not be able to disclose that. We felt it put employees in a very difficult situation."

Federal authorities say the law has been key to a number of major arrests and convictions. Among them: an Islamic scholar in Virginia found guilty of exhorting followers to help the Taliban fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and the arrests last year in England of three men who allegedly were gathering information on the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial institutions in preparation for an attack.

The ACLU contends the government has repeatedly abused and misused the Patriot Act, citing examples that include the case of Brandon Mayfield, who was wrongly arrested by the FBI in connection with the Madrid train bombings. Gonzales said last month that there has been no substantiated allegation of abuse of the Patriot Act.

Tim Edgar, national security policy counsel for the ACLU, which is part of a broad coalition that backs changes to the law, said the effort by U.S. attorneys to aggressively defend the law is "kind of close to the line of legality."

Charles W. Larson, who is U.S. attorney in Iowa and is on special assignment in Iraq, wrote in a column for the Globe-Gazette of Mason City, Iowa, that the Patriot Act allowed terrorism investigators to catch up with technology. He said "misconceptions and half-truths" are circulating about the law.

"I have seen firsthand the oppression and lack of freedom that result when truth takes a back seat to rhetoric," Larson wrote.

© 2005 The Associated Press

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