PROSECUTORS INCREASINGLY TURN TO PATRIOT ACT

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 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, 2001, 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 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. 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 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.

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.