5/23/05 Big Story GOP Propaganda Item #1: Thank You, USA Patriot Act
Reported by Ellen - May 24, 2005 -
Just in time to coincide with the Senate's consideration of renewing and expanding the USA Patriot Act, the top story on yesterday's Big Story was "PA man accused of trying to build and sell bomb to Al Qaeda." Judge Andrew Napolitano, subbing for host John Gibson, gushed, "The Feds are calling this a success story, nabbing this guy during the PLANNING (his emphasis) stages of a terrorist attack. Here to talk about the threat and how the FBI pulled this one off is Greg Esslinger. Greg is a former FBI counter-terrorism special agent and executive vice president at Smith & Carson." Surprise, Surprise! Esslinger credited the Patriot Act and called it "a terrific tool."
After Napolitano and Esslinger each mentioned that FBI were sure to respect the civil rights of the suspect, Esslinger revealed that "an important element here is that this is one of the post 9/11 tests of the material support statute (whatever the heck that is. It was never explained.) as augmented by the USA Patriot Act. I think it's a really good example of how the augmentation of that material support statute, although it's been decried by a number of people - civil rights groups - is really a useful tool, and if used properly is a terrific tool for stopping a terrorist act long before it reaches fruition."
Napolitano: There's no question that giving the bad guys a bomb would be providing them with material support, if anything would.
Esslinger: Absolutely, but... it's important here that this individual never actually got to the stage of building a device, that we were able to get to him long before he reached that stage but still obtained enough information to prosecute him under the statue successfully.
Comment: He hasn't been "successfully" prosecuted yet. Judge Napolitano subsequently mentioned that the suspect had only been arraigned "two hours ago." In fact, in the four years since the Patriot Act was passed, no terrorist has been convicted under it, a fact conveniently omitted from this discussion.
Also, either the viewers weren't persuaded or it's a different audience listening to Alan Colmes' FOX News radio show because, as I reported in an earlier post, six out of seven callers were adamantly against expanding the Patriot Act.
