ANTI-TERROR LAWS GAIN COMMON USAGE

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.

Meth Charge Included

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 this 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 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.

Provisions Were Known

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. residents into thinking they had won
the Canadian lottery. Prosecutors said the defendants told victims
they would receive their prize as soon as they paid thousands of
dollars in income tax on their winnings.

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.

"These are appropriate uses of the statute," Cassella said. "If we can
use the statute to get money back for victims, we are going to do it."

The complaint that anti-terrorism legislation is being used to go
after people who aren't terrorists is just the latest in a string of
criticisms.

More than 150 local governments have passed resolutions opposing the
law as an overly broad threat to constitutional rights.

Critics also say the government has gone too far in charging three
U.S. citizens as enemy combatants, a power presidents wield during
wartime that is not part of the Patriot Act. The government can detain
such individuals indefinitely without allowing them access to a lawyer.

And Muslim and civil liberties groups have criticized the government's
decision to force thousands of mostly Middle Eastern men to risk
deportation by registering with immigration authorities.

"The record is clear," said Ralph Neas, president of the liberal
People for the American Way Foundation. "Ashcroft and the Justice
Department have gone too far."

Some of the restrictions on government surveillance that were erased
by the Patriot Act had been enacted after past abuses - including
efforts by the FBI to spy on civil rights leaders and anti-war
demonstrators during the Cold War. Tim Lynch, director of the Project
on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank,
said it isn't far fetched to believe that the government might
overstep its bounds again.

"I don't think that those are frivolous fears," Lynch said. "We've
already heard stories of local police chiefs creating files on people
who have protested the (Iraq) war... . The government is constantly
trying to expand its jurisdictions, and it needs to be watched very,
very closely."