WXXI: USA Patriot Act Challenged and Defended (2003-09-02)

Attorney General John Ashcroft is on a month-long campaign to defend the Patriot Act. Passed just six weeks after September 11 and designed to increase federal powers against terrorism, it was approved overwhelmingly by both parties in Congress. But more recently, the Act has been condemned as an assault on civil rights by the ACLU, local governments and enough conservative Republicans that the House has blocked funding for one major provision. We speak with an ACLU attorney, the creator of the Justice Department's Terrorism Unit, a constitutional law expert, and Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders, about the Patriot Act, its success in preventing terrorism and its price in civil liberties.

Jameel Jaffer is an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Detroit against Attorney General Ashcroft on behalf of a number of Islamic and other concerned groups. Viet Dinh, law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, is a former assistant attorney general for legal policy under John Ashcroft who was a key player in the crafting of the USA Patriot Act. Congressman Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, introduced the Freedom to Read Protection Act of 2003 last March. His is one of three bills being circulated in Congress. A former deputy assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division who created the US Department of Justice's Terrorism Unit, Victoria Toensing is an attorney in private practice and a founding partner at the firm of DiGenova and Toensing. © Copyright 2012, KCRW