the taliban. this is a corporal from akron, ohio, who is excited about that. they want to help train the afghan army and national police. they want to provide the security. they want to finish the mission. i can't answer about your >> jason has the gold tie near the door. >> over the last few months, there has been a fairly well publicized increase in the number of representatives from civilian agencies in the government. there has been other reports that two to security concerns, many of these newly arrived civilians are not allowed to get out to the field as much as hoped. rc southwest, can you comment

on civilian operations? >> and the last 10 years, it has been evolutionary. samen't look at things the in the department of defense as we did prior to 9/11. i suspect a lot of our interagency partners do not view the same -- the things the same either. who would have thought that we would have actually be hiring people in the civilian agencies now and part of their contract, the way i understand it, when you sign on, is that you are deployable and you can go to some of the story places around the world. some of these places are very dangerous. we have changed. my sense is that we are absolutely headed in the right direction. we spent some time during the evening -- a couple of occasions -- with the provisional reconstruction team in the

helmund province. they are doing a terrific job. that step is coming together. the state department is splashing that out. there are others that need to be part of that. they are coming in. it is slower than we would like. the vector is heading in the right direction. i would argue that this part of the evolution are learning process is we will have to hire specific kind of people at the front end to be willing to go out with the skill sets, to be willing to go out into the really hard things that our nation will expect of our civilian part of the solution. not only is it heading in the right direction but it has to head into the right direction.

it is imperative. one of the other lessons we've learned -- we talk about old government and people use that phrase like it is a bumper sticker but it really is the truth. we are in it together. the marine corps -- we have no business thinking we can go someplace all by ourselves, fly to the marine corps flag and play "from balls of montezuma" and take and stake out their claim. i would be happy to be in complete support of some interagency effort someplace else around the world and we're supporting them and providing the capabilities and security and the ability to be able to do the nation's betting. we are all in this together. it is not where it should be but it is heading in the right direction and i am encouraged. >> the young woman with the red hair. >> good morning.

a few months ago, it was talked about how that would like to reorganize the department of the navy. the secretary mentioned latorial warfare and nifka and the started by -- and i was wondering if the marine corps acquisition programs look like they would be rolled up in that effort every organized under different acquisition structures or if you see that affected the way that marines to business. do you see the marine corps taking an interest in u-class in the future? >> thye u-class

? >> you see the marine corps taking an interest in modifying it in any way so they can launch of an amphibious ship said the instead of a- carrier? >> you were talking about a new n friend mark?r more ta framework? >> it was mentioned in nifca and latorial were fair. will marine corps acquisition programs get rolled up into those new programs or will it

affect marine corps capabilities? >> if there is an effort underway to change the acquisition program to lump things under capabilities, i am not aware of that. i am not saying it is a bad idea but i have not put any thought to it. i was talking earlier about how we take what we have and make it better. i was not necessarily lumping it under capabilities. i cannot answer that. i heard u-class and i think you are talking up the navy's carrier variant. i think that is a tremendous effort. we go back to the uas question we had earlier. there is an example of taking technology and actually bring it aboard, something like eight nimitz class carrier. that is pretty significant.

we have to see how it will turn out but we are optimistic. i don't know of any effort right now. we're trying to pull all live under different sets of capabilities and the acquisition. >> one last question. over here, yes, please. >> i am from the university of edinburgh. i want to talk about the budget difficulties. you had an emphasis on strategy first. how will that risk assessment take place? is there more emphasis and capability in afghanistan now or more emphasis on the desire to shape the marine corps after afghanistan? >> that is a very good question. my sense is that when we start talking about budget items and

you start thinking about the fiscal pressures, we are probably talking afghanistan. i don't think there is anybody -- let me speak for myself -- if you were to look at the written guidance i put out the day after i became the commandant, i have four priorities. my number one priority is to do everything that is required to guarantee success in afghanistan for are deployed forces. that is my number one priority my promise to the marines on the crown and the families back home and those marines training is that i will spend whatever money is required, i will take whatever personal capital is required, i will make whatever is expenditure is required with regard to training our forces and equipping our forces -- i will do all of that even at the expense of the rest of the marine corps to guarantee success in afghanistan. you heard me talk earlier that

it is not winning or losing and success is what that means. afghanistan is my number one priority. as i said on the joint chiefs, it is absolutely a top priority for our nation and certainly our service chiefs. i do not see that changing until such time as the withdrawal plan is executed and america comes out of afghanistan, and our allies. i don't think that will change. we are talking about the risk in the future. we are out there probably the next decade and you could make a case that if you look out over the next decade, you should look out over the next two decades because when you start buying equipment and procuring stuff, it takes a long time to buy it and takes all the things we just

talked about or the last hour. my sense is that the risk will be addressed in what the department of defense will do for our nation and a post- afghanistan environment. it does not mean it will not apply prior to that but if you take a look at the bulk of the effort, it will be toward strategy for the world beyond afghanistan. what is required and what can we do and what is it we can't do? that is risk. how'd we mitigate it? >> please join me in thanking the, died. [applause] , the commandant. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> follow "washington journal" on twitter. the question today is high profile bookings. you can also tweaked your questions to our guests and add your comments to the conversation. start your twitter account today at twitter.com/cspanwj. this weekend on c-span 3, ben bradlee and bob woodward of watergate and the fallout from president nixon. the assess it professor george mason university talks about the foreign policy of president reagan and will visit fort myer, va. to learn more about the army's oldest infantry unit and its role in military and president of burials. get the complete weekend schedule at c-span.org/history.

or you could have a e-mailed to you. >> "washington journal" begins at the top of the hour. we will talk about medicare and later, douglas brinkley discusses the world war ii memorial on the national mall. yesterday, the senate reached an agreement on a four year extension of the expiring provisions of the anti-terrorism law known as the picture that. before the extension was passed, the chamber voted to kill a couple of amendments offered by kentucky senator rand paul. one was on gun records and this is part of the debate. mr. paul: i'm pleased today to come to the floor of the senate to talk about the patriot act. i'm pleased that we have cracked open the door that we will shed some light on the patriot act. i wish the door were wider on, the debate broader and more significant, but we will talk a

little bit about the constutionality today of the patriot act. i was a cosponsor of senator leahy's amendment, and i think it would have gone to many great steps forward to makeure that we have surveillance on what our government does; authorized audits and the attorney general to continue to watch over to make sure that government is not invading the rights of private citizens. and i do support that wholeheartedly jefferson said that if we had a government of angels, we uldn't have to care or be concerned about the power that we give to government. unfortunately, sometim we don't have angels in charge of our government. sometis we can even get a government in charge that would use the power of government in a malicious or malevolent way to, look at the banking records of people they disagree with politically, to look at the religious practices of people they disagree with.

so it's very important that we are always vigilant, that we are eternally vigilant of the powers of governmt, that they not grow to such an extent that govement could be looki into our private affairs for nefarious reasons. we have proposed two amendments that we will have votes on today. one of them concerns the second amendment. i think it's very important that werotect the rights of gun owners in our country not only for hunting, but for self-protection, and that the records of those in our country who own guns should be secret. i don't think the government, well-intentioned or not well-intentioned, should be sifting through millions of records of gun owners. why? there have been times even in our history when government has invaded your household to take things from you. in the 1930's, government came into your household and said give us your gold. gold was confiscated in this

country in 1933. could there conceivably be a time when government comes into your house and says we want your guns? well, people say that's absurd. that would never happen. i hope that day never comes. i'm not accusing anybody of being in favor of that. but i am worried about a government that is sifting through millions of records without asking, are you a suspect; without asking are you in league with foreign terroris; are you plotting violent overthrow of your government? by all means, if you are, let's look at your records. let's put you in jail. let's procute you. would this not sift through hundreds of millions of gun records to find out whether or not you own a gun or not. let's don't leave those data banks in the hands of government where someday those could be abused. what we're asking for are procedural protections. the constitution gave us those protections. the second amendment gives you

the right to keep and bear arms. the fourth amendment is equally important. it gives you the right to be free of unreasonable search. it gives you the right to say that government must have probable cause. there must be at least some suspicion that you are committing a crime before they come into your house or before they go into your records, wherever your records are. the constitution doesn't say that you only have protection of records that are in your house. you should have protection of records that reside in other places. just because your visa record resides with a visa company doesn't make it any less private. if you look at a person's visa bill, you c find out all kinds of things about them. if you look at a person's visa bill, you can find out what doctors they go to, do they go to a psychiatrist? do they have mental stkpwhreupbs what type of medications d they take? if you look at my visa bill, you

can tell what type of books i read, what types of magazines i read. one of the provisions of the patriot act is called the library provision. they can look at the books you check out in the library. people say well still a judge has to sign these warrants. but we change the standard. e standard of the fourth amendment was probable cause. they had to argue, or at least convince a judge that you were a suspect. they were doing something wrong. now the cause or the standard has been changed to relevance. so it could be that you went to a party with someone who was from palestine who gives money to some group in palestine that may well be a terrorist group or not. but the thing is because i went to a party with them, because i know that person, am i now somehow connected enough to be relevant? and they would say, well, your government would never do that. they would never go and investigate peoe. the problem ithis is all secret.

so i don't know if i've been investigated. my visa bill sometimes have been $5,000. sometimes we pay for them over the phone, which is a wire transfer. have i been investigated by my government? i don't know. it's secret. what i want are protections. i want to capture terrorists. sure, if terrorists are moving machine guns and weapons in our country, international terrorists, by all means let's go after them. but you know the worst people, the people we want to lock up forever, the people all of us universally agree, people who commit murder, people who commit rape, we want to lock them up and throw away the book, and i'm all with you. but we still have the protections of the fourth amendment. if someone is running around on the streets of washington tonight at 4:00 in the morning and we think they may have murdered someone, we will call a judge and we will t a warrant. just because we belve in procedural protections, just because we believe in the constitution doesn't mean that we don't want to capre

terrorists. we just want to have some rules. i'll give you an analogy. right now he have a been to the airport. most of america has been to the airport at some point or time in the last year or two. millions of people fly every day. but we're taking thi shotgun aprofess. we think everyone is a terrorist. so everyone is being patted dowfnlt everyone is being strip searched. we are putting our hands inside the pants of 6-year-old children. have we not gone so far, are we so afraid that we're willing to give up all of our liberty in exchange for security? franklin said if you give up your liberty, you'll have neither. if you give up your liberty in exchange for security, you may well wind up with neither. becausee take this shotgun approach, we take this approach that everybody is a potential terrorist, i think we actually are doing less of a good job in capturing terrorists because if we spend our time going after

those who are committing terrorism, maybe we'd spend less time on those who are living in this country -- children and otherwise, frequent business travelers who are not a threat to our country -- instead of wasting time on these people, we could spend more time on those who would attack us. i'll give you an example. the underwear bomber -- for goodness sake, his dad reported him. his d called the u.s. embassy and said, my son is a potential throat your country. we did nothing. he was on a watch list. we still let him get on a plane. he'd been to nigeria, to yemen twice. for goodness sakes, why don't we take half of the people in the s.a. and have them look at the international flight manifest of those traveling from certain countries who could be attacking us. r goodness sakes, why don't we target who we're looking at. my other amendment conrns banking records. 8 million banking records have

been looked at in our country, not byhe government. they have empowered your bank to spy own. every time you go into your bank, your bank is cd to spy on you if you make a transaction more than $5,000. the bank is ened to report you. the bank doesn't report you, they let a large fine and the tune of $100,000 or more. they cld get five years in prison. they are ovencouraged. the incentive is for the bank to report everyone. so once upon a time, these suspicious activity reports were maybe 10,000 in a year. they're now over a million of these suspicious activity reports. do i want to capture terrorists? yes. do i want to capture terrorists transferring large amounts of money? yes. when we're wasting time on 8 million transactions, the vast majority of these transactions being law-abiding u.s. citizens, we're not targeting the people who would attack us. let's do police work.

if there are terrorist groups in the middle east and we know who they are, let's investigate them. if they have money in the u.s. or they're transferring it between banks, by all means let's investigate them. but let's have some constitutional protections. let'save some protections that say, you must ask audge for a warrant. some have said, how would we get these people? how would we capture those who are transferring weapons? we would investigate. we have all kinds of tools and we've been using these tools. others have said, well, we've captured these people through the patriot act and we never could have gotten them. the problem with that is it's unbelievable. you can tell me that you've captured people through the patriot patriot, but you can't prove that you would have captured them had you not asked for a judge. we have a special court. it's called the fisa complete it's been around since the late-1970's, not one warrant was

ever turned down before the patriot act. but they say we need more power, we need more power given to these agencies, and we don't need any constitutional restrain anymore. but my question is, the fourth amendment said you had to have a probable cause, you had to name the person and the place. well, how do we change and get rid of probable cause and change it to a standard of relevance -- how do we do that and amend the constitution without actually amending the constitution? these are important constitutional questions. but when the patriot ability came up, we were so frightened by 9/11, that it just flew through here. no senat read the patriot act t didn't go through the standard procedure. look at what's happening here. ten years later you'd think the fear and hysteria would have gotten to such a level that we could go through the committee

process. senator leahy's bill went to committee, it was deliberated upon, it was discussed, it was debated, it was passed out with bipartisan support, it came to the floor with bipartisan support, but you know what it's not getting a vote now? because they've backed us up against a deadline. there have been people who are implied in print that if i hoaltd patriot act up and they atck us tonight, that i'm responsible for the attack. there are been people who have implied that if some terrorist gets a gun, that i'm somehow responsible. it's -- it's sort of t analogy of sayin that because i believe that you should get a warrant before you go into a potential or alleged murderer's house that somehow i'm in favor of murder. i'm in favor 6 having nstitutional protections. these arose out of hundreds of years of common law. they were codified in our constitution because we were worried. we were incredibly concerned

about what the king had done. we were concerned about what a far distant parliament was dation without our approval. we were concerned about what james otis called "writs of assistance." writs of assistance were pieces of paper that are warrants that were written by soldiers. they were telling us we had to house the british soldiers in our house, and they were giving general warrants, which meant we're just going to search you willy-nilly. we're not going to name the person or plashings we're not going to name the crime you are accused of. if a goverent were comprised of angels, we wouldn't need the fourth amendment. what i argue for here now is protections that protect us all, should we get a despot, should we someday elect somebody who doest have respect for rights. we should obey rules and laws. is this an isolated episode that we're here talking about the pay patriot academand that there is -- the patriot act? it is a deadline, huer rirks

hurry, wmust act. we have had no sufficient debate on the war with libya. we are now encountered in a war in libya. we now have a war in which there's imn 0 no congressional debate and no congressional vote. but you know what they argue? they say it is just a little war. but you know what? it is a big principle. it is the principle that we as a country elect people. it is a principle that we are restrained by the constitution, that you are protected by the constitution, and if i ask the young men and women here today to go to war and say we're going to go to war, that there darn well should beebate in this body. we are abdating those responsibilities. we are not debating the patriot act sufficiently. we are not having an open amendment process. quay, am i pleased it took me three days of sitting down here fiblghting,ut i am going to get two amendment votes. i am very happy and pleased that we came together to do that. i wish we would do more. i wish senator lay heys bill

were being voted here on the floomplet i wish there were a week's worth of debate. the thing is we come here to washington expecting these grand debates. ifer been here four months. but i expected that the important questions of the day would be debated back and forth. instead, what happens so often is the votes are counted and recounted and loriously counted and when they know they can beat me, when they know they can beat somebody else, then they allow the vote to come to the floor. but some, likeenator leahy's bill, i'm suspicious that it's not going to be voted on because we may not be able to beat it. or they may not be able to beat it. i support t so the question is, should we have some more debate in our country? we have important things pressing on us. i've been here for four months and i'm concerned about the future of our country because of the debt burden, because of this enormous debt we're accumulating. but are we debating fully? are we talking about ways we could come together, how republicans and democrats, right and left, could come together to figureut a crisis, this crisis

of disebt? no, i think we're so afraid of debate. but particularly with the patriot act, the thing is with the patriot act is that it's so emotional, because anyone who stand up like myself and says we need have protections for our people, that we shouldn't sift through every gun owner in america through their records, looking and just trolling through records ... interestingly, we have looked at 28 million electronic records when the inspector general looked at this. 28 million electronic records. we've looked at 1,600,000 texts. if you said to me, they asked a judge and they thought they were terrorists, i don't have a problem. but do you want them trolling through your facebook? do you want them trolling through your e-mails? do you want a government that is unrestrained by law? this ultimately boils down to

whether we believe in the rule of law. so oft we give lip service to it on our side and the oer side and says, well be in the constitution and the rule of law. when you need to protect the rulef laws, when it is most unpopular, when everybody tells you that you're unpatriotic or you're for terrorism because you believe in the constitution, that's when it's most prey shurks that's what it is that you need stand up and say "no," we can fight. we can preserve our freedoms. we are who we are bus of our freedoms and our individual liberty. if we give that up, we're no different than those we oppose. ose who wish to destroy our country want to see us dissolve from within. we dissolve from within when we give up our liberties. we need to stand up and be proud of the fact that in our country it's none of your darn busess what we're reading. it's none of your business where we go to the doctor or the movie or what our magazines r it's nobody's business here in washington what we're doing.

if they think it is the business of law enforcement, get a warrant. prove to somebody -- at least have one step that says, that person is doing something suspicious. the thing is that these suspicious activity reports -- 8 million of them have been filed in the last eight years -- the government doesn't have ask about this. it is sort of like they have deputized the banks. the banks have become sort of like police agency. banks are expected to know what is in the bank secrecy afnlgt they are spoac expected to know thousands of pageof regulations. if you don't report everybody, if you don't report these transactions, we'll fine you, put new jail or we'll put you out of business. that is a problem. it is a real problem. that's what's come of this. and i think we need to have procedural protections.

if at this point there is a request from the senator from i will toil yield for a a question or for a comment, i would be happy to, if it is about the patriot act. okay. the amendments that i will -- the amendments that i will be proposing will be about two thirntion and we will have votes on them. we've been given the time to debate, which i'm glad we fought for. we'll basically be given a virtually insurmountable huddle. this will be maybe the first time in recent history i remember seeing this, but they will move to table my motions. in order for me to disweet the tabling motions to reconsider i will have to get 60 votes. it is similar to the votes that we have when you have to overcome a cloture vote or you have to overcome a filibuster. but we really aren't having any vote where there is a possibility of me winning. there's really a foregone

conclusion. the votes are voted in advance. i am proud of the fact that i vote for, though, and we got some debate on the floor and then maybe in bringing this fight that the count will consider and reconsider the patriot act. but we need to have more debate. senator leahy's bill needs to be fully debated, needs to come out. maybe when there's not a deadline, maybe it will come forward. maybe we can have some discussion. but i guess most of my message is that we shouldn't be fearful. we shouldn't be fearful of freedom, we shouldn't be fearful of individual liberty. and they're not mutually schuvment you don't have to give up your liberty to catch criminals. you can catch crinals and terrorists and protect your liberty at the same time. there is a balancing afnlgt what we did in our hysteria after 9/11 was we didn't do any kind of balancing act. we just said, come and guess it. here is our-- --come and get t here is our freedom. come and get it. we zoo care whether there is review in congress.

we don't care whether there is to ben inspecto general looking at this. one of my colleagues today reported, well, there's no evidence those 8 million banking investigations are bothering or doing anything to flnts innocent people. there is a reason for there being no evidence. they're secret. you're not told if your bank has been spying on you. if your bank has put in a suspicious activity report, you're not informed of that. so the bottom line is, just because there's no complaint doesn't mean there haven't been abuses. there is a something called nation security letters. these are written by officers of the larks by f.b.i. agents. there's no review of judges. there have been 200,000 of these. there's been an explosion of those national security letters. and we don't know whether they are alaska abused because they're screvment in fact, here's how deep the secret goes. when the patriot act was originally passed, you weren't allowed to tell your lawyer. if the government came to you

with an f.b.i. agent's request, you could not even tell your lawyer. this i think is very disturbing. they finally got around to changing that. but you know what? if i have an internet service, if i am a server and they come to me wh a policeman's request and they say, give us your records, if i tell anyone other than my attorney, i can go to jail for five years. what we have in s. a veil of secrecy so even if the government is abusing the powers, we will never know. madam president, can you tell me how we're doing on our time, please. the presiding officer: the senator has eight minutes remaining. mr. paul: did the senator from illinois wish to interject? mr. durbin: i understand there is time on the other side as well? the presiding officer: 28 minutes on the majority -- on the other sides. mr. paul: would you like to interject outn or at a later time? mr. durbin: i would like to speak on the majority side.

does the senator yield the floor? mr. paul: okay. i'll go ahead and finish up, then. as we go forward on these, i would hope that there would be some deliberation and that the vote, as it goes forward, people will think about that we need to balance our freedoms wit our security. i think we all want security. nobody wants what happened on 9/11 to happen again. but i think we don't need to simplify the debate to such an extent that we simply say we have to give up ouriberties. for exame, i can tell you how many times people have come up to me in washington, other elected officials, and they say, we could have gotten moussaoui, the 19th hijacker, if we would have had the patriot act. the triewt of the matter is we didn't capture moussaoui because we had poor police work. and ask yourself, did we fire anybody after 9/11? we gave people gold medals. we gave them meds of hor for their intelligent work after 9/11. so my knowledge, not one person

was fired. do you think we were doing a good job before 9/11? we had the 19th hijacker in prison or in custody for a month before 9/11. we had his computer. when they look at moussaoui's computer four days after 9/11 or the day after 9/11, they connected all the dots to most of the hijackers and to people in pakistan. why didn't we look at his computer? was it becse we didn't have the prerogative? they didn't ask. an f.b.i. agent in minnesota wrote 70 letters to his superiors saying ask for a warrant. his superiors didn't ask for a warrant. do you think we should have done something about that after 9/11? we gave everybody in the f.b.i. and the c.i.a. medals. we gave theeaders medals for meritorious service and no one blinked an eye. what did we do? we passed the patriot act and said, come and take our liberties, make us safe.

we have to protect what we read, to protect what we view, to protect what -- where we go and who we associate. we shouldn't allow government to patrol willy-nilly through millions of records. you've heard of warrantless wiretaps. a lot of these things are unknown because they're so secret that nobody knows, even many of us don't even know the extent of these things. but i can tell you that there's a great deal of evidence that we are looking at millions of records and that millions of innocent u.s. citizens are having their records looked at. now, are we doing anything, are we imprisoning innocent folks? no, i don't think we're doing that. i think they're good people. i think the people i've met with the fib f f.b.i., the people i't in our government, they want to do the right things. but what i'm fearful of is there comes a time when you've given these powers up. you know, when you recognize, for example, the constitutional discussion over war, if you say, well, libya's just a small war, we don't care, and you say that

congress has no say in this, what happens when we get a president who decides to send a million troops into war and we simple say -- simply say, who cares, we let the president do whatever he is because he's got unlimited powers. you know, we fought a war, we fought long a hard to restrict -- we wanted an executive that was bound by the chains of the constitution. we wanted a presidency, an executive branch that was bound by the checks and balances. th's what our constitution's about. it is about debate. debate is important. amendments are important. bringing forward something from committee that would have reformed the patriot act is incredibly important, to have those debates on the floor. and that's why there is a certain amount of disappointment to having arrived in washington and to see the -- the -- the fear of debate the constitution and that we really need to be debating these things. we need to have full amendments. we need to -- can there be any excuse why the inspector general

should not be reviewing other agenci of government to find out if your rights are being trampled upon? so i would ask, in conclusion, that as these amendments come forward, that people think about it, think about our constitutional protections, but don't go out and say that, you know, the senator from kentucky doesn't want to capture terrorists or that the senator from kentucky wants people to have guns and to attack us. because the thing is, is we can have reasonable philosophic debates about this but we need to be having an open debate process, we need to talk about the constitutional protections, the protections that protect us all, and we need to be aware of that. i tell people, you can't protect the second amendment if you don't believe in the fourth amendment. you can't protect the second amendment if you don't believe in the first amendment. it's all incredibly important and i hope as we go forward on this vote, and even though i will likely fail because of the way the rules are set occupy the vote, i hope as we go forward that at least somebody will

begin to discuss this, somebody will begin to discuss where we should have some constitutional restraint. senator leahy will have a chance to bring his bill forward, that there will be a full and open debate, and i hopehat we've cracked the door open, that i've been a small part of that. thank you, madam president. and i yield back my time. mr. durbin: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois is recognized. mr. durbin: madam president, it's my understanding that we have a consent that will allow senator paul to offer two amendments and then we'll go to final passage on this reauthorization of the patot act. the presiding officer: that's correct. mr. durbin: madam president, i will oppose the amendments offered by senator paul and then oppose the reauthorization of the patriot act and i'd like to explain in my remarks why. i voted for the patriot act in the year 2001. in fact, there was only one senator on the floor who no longer serves who voted against it. it was a moment of national crisis. we were told then by the bush administration they needed new auorities to make certain that america would be safe and never attacked again.

and i want to salute senator patrick leahy as well as his counterparts on both sides of the aisle who really worked night and day to put together a bipartisan version of this patriot act and had the good sense to include in it a sunset. we knew that we were writing a law with high emotion over what had happened to our country. we wanted to make sure it was a good law but we made certain that it would be temporary in nature, for the most part, and we would return and take another look at it. i cannot vote for an extension, a long-term extension of the patriot act without additional protections included for the constitutional rights of our american citizenry. it's worth taking a moment to review history. the patriot act was passed ten years ago -- almost ten years ago -- while ground zero was still burning. congress responded and passed it with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. it was a unique moment in our history. but even then, we were concerned enough to put a sunset and to do

our best to review it in future to determine whether it went too far when it came to our freedoms. i voted for it but i soon realized that it gave too much power to government witho enough judicial and congressional oversight. so two years after the patriot act bece law, i joined a bipartisan group of senators in introducing the safe act, legislation to reform the patriot act. the safe act was supported by advocates from left and right, from the aclu to the american conservative union. progressive democrats and very conservative republicans came together across the partisan divide understanding americans can be both safe and free. we wanted to retain the expanded powers of the patriot act but place some reasonable limit to protect constitutional rights. when he joined the senate in 2005, senator barack obama became a cosponsor of our safe act. here's what he said -- and i quote -- as a senator -- "we don't have to settle for a

patriot act that sacrifices our liberties or our safety. we can have one that secures both." i agree with then-senator obama. in 2006, the first time congress reauthorized the patriot act, some reforms from the safe act were included in the bill and i supported it. however, many key protections from the safe act were not included, so there aretill significant problems. the f.b.i. is still permitted to obtain a john doe roving wiretap that does not identify the person or the phone that will be wiretapped. in other words, the f.b.i. can obtain a wiretap without telling a court who they want to wiretap or where they want to wiretap. in garden variety criminal cases, the f.b.i. is still permitted to conduct sneak-and-peek searches of a home without notifying the homeowner about the search until a later time. we now know that the vast majority of sneak-and-peek searches take place in cases that don't involve terrorism in any way. a national security letter or n.s.l. is a form of administrative subpoena issued

by the f.b.i. we often hear n.s.l.'s compared to grand jury subpoenas. but unlike a grand jury subpoe subpoena, a national security letter is issued without the approval of a grand jury or even a prosecutor. and unlike the grand jury subpoena, the recipient of an n.s.l. is subjected to a gag order at the f.b.i.'s discretion. theatriot act also greatly expanded the f.b.i.'s authority to issue n.s.l.'s. an n.s.l. now allows the f.b.i. to obtain sensitive personal information about innocent american citizens, including library records, medical recor records, gun records, and phone records, even when there's no connection whatsoever to a suspected terrorist or spy. the justice department's inspector general concluded that this standard -- quote -- "can be easily satisfied." this could lead government -- to government fishing expedition as that target innocent people. for years we've been told there's no reason to be concerned about this broad grant

of power to the f.b.i. in 2003, then-attorney general ashcroft testified to our committee that librarians raising concerns about the patriot act were -- quote -- "hysterics" and that -- quote -- "the department of justice has neither the staffing, the time nor the inclination to monitor the reading habits of american americans." but we now know the f.b.i. has, in fact, issued national security letters for the library records of innocent people. for years, we were told the f.b.i. was not abusing this broad grant of power but in 2007, the justice department's own inspector general has concluded the f.b.i. wasuilty of -- quote -- "widespread and serious misuse" of the national security letter authority and failed to report these abuses to congress and the white house. the inspector general reported that the number of national security letter requests has increased exponentially from about 8,500 the year before enactment of the patriot act, to an average of more than 47,000 per year and that even these

mbers were significantly understated. madam president, we can be se and free. i think it's important that the mease that passed the senate judiciary committeehould have been on the floor. it included an amendment which i offered with senator leahy and other provisions which i think are an improvement under the -- over the current bill before us. i'll say one quick word about the amendment by senator paul. i don't believe it is in our nation's best interest to exempt gun records from terrorist investigation. for goodness sakes, when we are dealing with people, terrorists using guns, searching the records to make certain that we know the source of those guns and whether or not there are any other threats to this nation is a reasonable thing to do. these should not be so sacred and sacrosanct that we don't ask the hard questions when our nation's security is at risk. i would agree with him that we ought to make certain there is a connection between that request for gun record information and a suspected terrori or spy. but to say that these records

cannot be asked for under the patriot act i think goes too far and that's why i will oppose his amendment. madam president, i yield the floor. mr. chambliss: madam predent? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia is recognized. mr. chambliss: madam president, i rise to speak in opposition to amendment number 365, senator paul's amendment concerning suspicious activity reports or what's referred to as sar's. this amendment would prevent the department of treasury from requiring any financial institution to submit a suspicious activity report unless law enforcement first requests the report. if this amendment should become law, it will effectively take away one of the government's main weapons in the battle against money laundering and other financial crimes. it will also negatively impact our efforts to detect and follow the flow of funds to and from ternational terrorists. it's important to remember that s.a.r.'s are essentially tips from third-party financial institutions concerning

suspicious transactions. because law enforcement is not watching the denial transaction of -- the financial transaction of every american on a daily basis 24/7, they often have no idea that a person is even engaged in a financial crime until they receive a suspicious activity notification from a nancial institution. in a sense, s.a.r.'s are not much different than the thaip law enforcement often -- tips that law enforcement often receives from anonymous sources. these tips or leads can often form the basis for initiating investigations that can be used to neutralize criminal or terrorist activities. the problem with ts amendment is it would require the government to look into a crystal ball in order to figure out when they should request a s.a.r. with this logic, we should only allow law enforcement to act on an anonymous tip unless they ask for the tip to be reported fir rst. if a law enforcement or intelligence official doesn't get a tip about suspicious

activity, how in the world are they going to knowhen it has occurred in the first place? the answer here is pretty simple -- they will likely never know that it occurred until the criminal activity has occurred and maybe even it will go undetected. let's look, for example, about the 9/11 hijackers. there were a minimum of 12-13 of those individuals who came into and out of the united states over a perd of time. money was transferred to and from those individuals over a period of time. under the requirement's prepatriot act, there was no suspicious activity detected, but after the enactment of the patriot act, there would be reason now for any financial institution to suspect the potential for suspicious activity from those transfers of moneys. that's exactly why we did what we did in the patriot act, and that's one of the reasons why we have not seen a subsequent

direct attack on u.s. soil from individuals who have been in the united states and have received money through transfers or whatever it may be. and let's don forget that section 215 business records cannot be obtainedn an arbitrary manner. there has to be, first of all, a determination that there is some international connection between the individual whose account has been deemed suspicious by the financial institution, and ao there has to be some follow-on procedure to determine that -- that there is reason for the government to get a hold of the financial records of this individual. in my mind, this amendment would put law enforcement in an unacceptable and unreasonable position. at the same time, we're asking them to psue swindlers and money launderers more aggressively. we need to preservehe requirement that financial

institutions report suspicious activities. we need to follow up on these leads, not scwu from a criminal law enforcement perspective, but from a national security perspective as well. and let me just say that since 9/11, i have been involved with the intelligence committee. all of those years. we do extensive oversight on this particular provision in the patriot act as well as other provisions, and we have hearings on this from time to time, and we require the law enforcement officials to come in and talk to us about what they're doing. and to my knowledge, there has never been one complaint or abusive that's been shown from the use of this particular provision. so, madam chairman, this -- madam president, this particular provision is working exactly the way that we intended it to work, and it's a valuable tool for our law enforcement. let me speaklso about

amendment number 363 which is senator paul's amendment concerning firearms records. simply put, this amendment would make it more difficult for national security investigators to prevent an act of terrorism inside the united states. the amendment would prohibit the use of a fisa business records court order to obtain firearms records in the possession of a licensed firearms importer, manufacturer or dealer. instead, national security investigators could only obtain such records through a federal grand jury subpoena during the course of a criminal investigation or with a search warrant issuedy a federal magistrate upon a showing of a reasonable cause to believe that a violation of federal firearms laws has occurred. that might not always be possible. for example, before major hassan began his deadly assault against innocent military personnel at fort hood, texas, in november of

2009, there was no evidence that he had violated any criminal or federal firearms laws. thus, the federal bureau of investigation f.b.i. could not have -- the federal bureau of investigation could not have relied on title 18 to obtain information about hassan's purchase of the firearms used in the attack. as we have since learned, however, there was likely enough intelligence information to open a preliminary investigation on hassan because of his contacts with a known al qaeda member in yemen and seek a section 215 order for information about his gun purchases. i don't understand why we would take this tool away from national security investigators, especially here again where there has been no indication of any abusive of this authority with respect to firearms or other sensitive records. congress has conducted extensive oversight of the patriot and fisa authorities and there have been no reports of any widespread abuse or misuse and no reports that the government

has ever used these authorities to violate second amendment rights. moreover, the protections detailed in section 215 ensure that second amendment rights are fully respected in the use of this authority. unlike in criminal investigations where a federal grand jury may issue a subpoena for firearms records, any request for records under section 215 must first be approved by the foreign intelligence surveillance court. as with all other section 215 records, the court must find that such records are relevant to an authorized national security investigation. is means that the f.b.i. cannot use this authority in a domestic terrorism investigation, nor canhe f.b.i. randomly decide to see whether an ordinary citizen or even a vocal advocate of the second amendment owns a firearm. there are two additional oversight safeguards that are built into the section 215

process. first, each request for sensitive records by the f.b.i. can only be approved by one of three high-level f.b.i. officials -- the director, the deputy director or the executive assistant director for national security. second, there are also specific reporting requirements that are designed to keep congress informed about the number of orders issued for these types of sensitive records. one of the big lessons we learned after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was that we needed to make sure that national security investigators had access to investigative tools similar to those that have long been available to law enforcement. section 215 of the patriot act addresses that need. it provides an alternative way to obtain business records, including firearms records in situations where there may be a national security threat, but not yet a criminal investigation or violation. i have been a long and stron

supporter of the second amendment. there is nobody in this body that has a better voting record on the second amendment than i do. probably nobody here owns as many guns as i own. but i use them for legal and lawful purposes. and i work with the national rifle assiation and any citizen group to make sure that neither this law nor any federal law is misused to infringe on second amendment rights of any law-abiding citizen. but this particular amendment would harm legitimate national security investigations. madam president, i'd like to take one minute to read a letter that i have received from christmas -- from cis cox, the executive director of the national rifle association." dear senator chambliss, thank you for asking about the n.r.a.'sosition on a motion to

amendment 363 of the patriot act. the n.r.a. takes a back seat to no one when it comes to protecting gun owners' rights against government abuse. over the past three decades, we have fought successfully to block unnecessary and obtrusive compilation of firearms-related records by several federal agencies, and we'll continue to protect the privacy of our members and all american gun owners. while well intentioned, the language of this amendment as currently drafted raises potential problems for gun owners in that it encourages the government to use provisions in current law that allow access to firearms records without reasonable cause, warrant or judicial oversight of any kind. based on these concerns and the fact that n.r.a. does not ordinarily take positions on ocedural votes, we have no position on a motion to table amendment number 363 so, madam president, for those reasons, i intend to vote against both these two amendments, and while i

appreciate the intent and the emotion with which my friend, senator paul, comes to this floor to advocate, w need t make sure that we get these extensions in place immediately so that we have no gap in the coverage available to our intelligence community and that we continue to give them the tools they need torotect america and to protect >> yesterday, the senate voted to kill both of senator paul's amendments. the timber then voted 72-23 to extend the expiring provisions of the patriot deck. the house agreed to this extension and this came hours before the patriot act was set to expire. with president obama in europe, the white house said it would use an auto pen machine to sign the bill into law. that is used on rare occasions. 9 > >> over the memorial day

weekend, commencement addresses from across the country. at 3:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern, memorial day weekend on c-span. "washington journal" is next and we will look at today's news and take your phone calls. the house will be in for a brief pro forma session this morning. this afternoon, a member of the palestinian legislative council will discuss the recent political unrest in the arab world and what it means for the middle east peace process. that is all live from the carnegie endowment for international peace at 12:30 eastern. >> and at this hour, a look at the u.s. supreme court decision requiring california to reduce its prison population. its prison population.