Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Legalizing Nixon's criminal ways

Commentary by Pat Murphy


By PAT MURPHY

Pat Murphy

Even as Watergate crimes of President Nixon and his claque of black-bag thugs is undergoing revived attention with the outing of "Deep Throat," Republican plans are afoot to transform Nixon's abuses into legal tactics for the Bush administration.

President Bush and frightmongers around him, who keep Americans in a contrived state of fear of terrorism, have persuaded simple-minded politicians that civil liberties are expendable in the name of fighting terrorists.

However, unbridled police powers and President Bush's hunger for secrecy are breeding grounds for shredding constitutional rights, just as Nixon used the FBI and CIA in the Watergate cover-up.

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, of Kansas, wants to expand, not shrink, the heavy-handed, misnamed Patriot Act in ways that echo the jackbooted, no-knock tactics of foreign police states.

Roberts would give individual FBI agents the single-handed power, without court approval, to simply decide to seize records of hotels, banks and Internet services, to name a few, if the agent suspects national security threats.

The FBI without court review could also order the U.S. Postal Service to photocopy envelopes of mail the bureau suspects of national security importance.

And here's the ultimate in police state power: If national security fizzles as an excuse for seizing records, FBI agents could look for other crimes as they rummaged through papers.

If FBI abuses were later proven? So what.

Courts have rejected this power as an unconstitutional threat to the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

Bush advisers are ecstatic with Roberts' legislation, naturally. Who knows what FBI agents might find in the future in random searches of business and Internet files if the Republican-controlled Senate approves them.

Trusting the FBI to protect the rights of citizens is unreliable: Acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray was part of Nixon's Watergate cover-up (even destroying evidence), as was his boss, Attorney General John Mitchell, who helped pay for the Watergate break-in. The FBI's recent wrongful arrests of terrorism "suspects" should say something.

If President Bush gets his way with senators, and new rightwing judges are appointed—including a new chief justice—the list of possible "national security suspects" (read that, critics of Bush war policies) is endless.

The success in rounding up suspects without warrants, throwing them into cages without charges—often physically abusing them and denying them legal counsel—shows just how far executive-branch lawlessness can be pushed without any meaningful opposition.




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