Tucson, Arizona Monday, 15 September
By David B. Caruso
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHILADELPHIA - In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh
powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors
have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but
on people charged with common crimes.
The Justice Department said it has used authority given to it by the USA Patriot
Act to crack down on currency smugglers and seize money hidden overseas by alleged
bookies, con artists and drug dealers.
Federal prosecutors used the act in June to file a charge of "terrorism
using a weapon of mass destruction" against a California man after a pipe
bomb exploded in his lap, wounding him as he sat in his car.
A North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine
lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons.
If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12 years to life in prison for
a crime that usually brings about six months.
Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law, which defines chemical
weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the
capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.
Civil liberties and legal defense groups are bothered by the string of cases
and say the government soon will be routinely using harsh anti-terrorism laws
against run-of-the-mill lawbreakers.
"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department
was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to
extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the
National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want
the Patriot Act to fight terrorism. Then, within six months, they are teaching
their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."
Prosecutors aren't apologizing.
Attorney General John Ashcroft completed a 16-city tour last week defending
the Patriot Act as key to preventing a second catastrophic terrorist attack.
Federal prosecutors have brought more than 250 criminal charges under the law,
with more than 130 convictions or guilty pleas.
The law, passed two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, erased
many restrictions that had barred the government from spying on its citizens,
granting agents new powers to use wiretaps, conduct electronic and computer
eavesdropping and access private financial data.
Stefan Cassella, deputy chief for legal policy for the Justice Department's
asset forfeiture and money laundering section, said that while the Patriot Act's
primary focus was on terrorism, lawmakers were aware it contained provisions
that had been on prosecutors' wish lists for years and would be used in a wide
variety of cases.
In one case prosecuted this year, investigators used a provision of the Patriot
Act to recover $4.5 million from a group of telemarketers accused of tricking
elderly U.S. citizens into thinking they had won the Canadian lottery.
Before the anti-terrorism act, U.S. officials would have had to use international
treaties and appeal for help from foreign governments to retrieve the cash,
deposited in banks in Jordan and Israel. Now, they simply seized it from assets
held by those banks in the United States.