2001 Ron Paul 104:1
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I am inserting in
the RECORD a copy of an article by former
cabinet member Joseph Califano that appeared
in today’s Washington Post. I call this
article entitled “Too Many Federal Cops,” to
the attention of Members. It presents a balanced
and even-handed assessment of how
successive administrations over the decades
have expanded Federal police powers at considerable
cost to our endangered civil liberties.
2001 Ron Paul 104:2
I wholeheartedly agree with the points
raised by Mr. Califano, having spoken in this
House concerning the same topic on many occasions.
I wish to commend Mr. Califano for
his timely and important piece, and recommend
it to Members and others concerned
with preserving civil liberties.
As defense lawyers and civil libertarians
huff and puff about Attorney General John
Ashcroft’s procedural moves to bug conversations
between attorneys and their imprisoned
clients, hold secret criminal military
trials and detain individuals suspected
of having information about terrorists, they
are missing an even more troubling danger:
the extraordinary increase in federal police
personnel and power.
2001 Ron Paul 104:4
In the past, interim procedural steps, such
as the military tribunals Franklin Roosevelt
established during World War II to try saboteurs,
have been promptly terminated when
the conflict ended. Because of its likely permanence,
the expansion and institutionalization
of national police power poses a greater
threat to individual liberties. Congress
should count to 10 before creating any additional
police forces or a Cabinet-level Office
of Homeland Security.
2001 Ron Paul 104:5
Pre-Sept. 11, the FBI stood at about 27,000
in personnel; Drug Enforcement Administration
at 10,000; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms at 4,000; Secret Service at 6,000;
Border Patrol at 10,000; Customs Service at
12,000; and Immigration and Naturalization
Service at 34,000. At the request of the White
House, Congress is moving to beef up these
forces and expand the number of armed air
marshals from a handful to more than a
thousand. Despite the president’s objection,
Congress recently created another security
force of 28,000 baggage screeners under the
guidance of the attorney general.
2001 Ron Paul 104:6
In 1878 Congress passed the Posse Comitatus
Act to prohibit the military from performing
civilian police functions. Over Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s opposition,
President Ronald Reagan declared drug
trafficking a threat to national security as
the rationale for committing the military to
the war on drugs. (Weinberger argued that
“reliance on military forces to accomplish
civilian tasks is detrimental to . . . the
democratic process.”) Reagan’s action gives
George Bush a precedent for committing the
military and National Guard to civilian police
duty at airports and borders.
2001 Ron Paul 104:7
Given the president’s candor about the
likelihood that the war on terrorism will
last many years, the administration and a
compliant Congress are in clear and present
danger of establishing a national police force
and — under either the attorney general, director
of homeland security or an agency
combining the CIA and State and Defense intelligence
(or some combination of the
above) — a de facto ministry of the interior.
2001 Ron Paul 104:8
The fact that George Bush has no intention
of misusing such institutions is irrelevant.
You don’t have to be a bad guy to abuse police
power. Robert Kennedy, a darling of liberals,
brushed aside civil liberties concerns
when he went after organized crime and
trampled on the rights of Jimmy Hoffa in his
failed attempt to convict the Teamsters boss
of something. He bugged and trailed Martin
Luther King Jr., even collecting information
on the civil rights leader’s private love life,
until Lyndon Johnson put a stop to it.
2001 Ron Paul 104:9
Bureaucratic momentum alone can cross
over the line. After President John F. Kennedy
privately berated the Army for being
unprepared to quell the riots when James
Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi,
we (I was Army general counsel at
the time) responded by collecting intelligence
information on individuals such as
civil rights leaders, as well as local government
officials in places where we thought
there might be future trouble. We were motivated
not by any mischievous desire to violate
privacy or liberties of Americans but by
the bureaucratic reflex not to be caught
short again.
2001 Ron Paul 104:10
In the paranoia of Watergate, the CIA followed
a Washington Post report for weeks,
even photographing him through the picture
window of his home, because he had infuriated
the president and the agency with a
story containing classified information.
Faced with our discovery (I was The Post’s
lawyer at the time), CIA Director William
Colby readily admitted that “someone had
gone too far.”
2001 Ron Paul 104:11
All 100 members of the Senate voted to create
the newest federal police force under the
rubric of airport security. In its rush to judgment,
the Senate acted as though a federal
force was the only alternative to using the
airlines or private contractors. Quite the
contrary, policing by the individual public
airport authorities, guided by federal standards,
would be more in line with our tradition
of keeping police power local.
2001 Ron Paul 104:12
It’s time for the executive and Congress to
take a hard look at the police personnel
amassing at the federal level and the extent
to which we are concentrating them under
any one individual short of the president.
Congress should turn its most skeptical laser
on the concept of an Office of Homeland Security
and on any requests to institutionalize
its director beyond the status of a
special assistant to the president. We have
survived for more than 200 years without a
ministry of the interior or national police
force, and we can effectively battle terrorism
without creating one now.
