Pubdate: Sun, 14 Sep 2003 Source: Times Daily (Florence, AL) Copyright: 2003 Times Daily Contact: http://www.timesdaily.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1641 Author: Charles Levendosky, Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune WARS COLLIDE BILL WILL COMBINE WAR ON DRUGS WITH WAR ON TERRORISM It parades as an anti-drug bill under the near-acronym VICTORY (Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations) Act of 2003. The rationale for the bill is to "combat narco-terrorism.'' The legislation sweeps far wider than that. If Congress passes the VICTORY Act, Americans will lose more of their freedom and terrorists can claim the victory. Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, authored the bill. It is scheduled to be introduced in the Senate this fall. The Department of Justice claims it has nothing to do with the legislation, even though it contains provisions that are on the department's current wish list. LibertyThink.com obtained an updated version (July 30) of the VICTORY Act and posted it. The July 30 version is 33 pages shorter than the 89-page, June 27 version of the act. The newer version eliminates provisions making it easier for federal prosecutors to seize tax records and attorney fees. It also drops sections that would allow longer prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. One provision of the June 27 version of the VICTORY Act that was quietly eliminated made offshore banking for the purposes of tax evasion a money-laundering scheme. Anyone found guilty of this type of money laundering would have spent up to 20 years in a federal prison. The updated version of the bill grants the Justice Department the authority to freeze the property of suspects until that property can be turned over to the government in a forfeiture process. Both the earlier version and the updated one allow the federal government to freeze all bank accounts of anyone charged with money laundering. One of the money-laundering crimes, according to the Hatch bill, is "reverse'' money laundering. One commits this crime by concealing "more than $10,000 on his person or in any vehicle, in any compartment or container within any vehicle, or in any container placed in a common carrier, and transports, attempts to transport or conspires to transport such currency'' across state lines or out of the United States "knowing that the currency was derived from some form of unlawful activity, or knowing that the currency was intended to be used to promote some form of unlawful activity.'' The message being: don't travel far with more than $10,000 on your person -- even if you plan to use it as a down payment on a house. Section 207 of the updated bill makes any account and any assets at any financial institution through which suspected drug or terrorist "tainted'' funds have passed subject to forfeiture. And, according to the Hatch bill, "the government shall not be required to identify the specific property involved in the offense that is the basis for the forfeiture.'' Section 209 of the VICTORY Act deals with the crime of "commingled funds.'' If a person in an otherwise honest transaction receives more than $10,000 of "criminally derived property,'' that person is guilty of money laundering. If you sell your car to someone for $12,000, you better hope that at least $2,000 of that money had been honestly gained. The Hatch bill creates a new crime, narco-terrorism, and defines that crime so broadly that anyone who manufactures, distributes or possesses with the intent to distribute controlled substances risks being charged with narco-terrorism. The government only has to show the individual intends to use those drugs to provide support, directly or indirectly, to "a foreign terrorist organization or any person or group involved in the planning, preparation for, or carrying out of, a terrorist offense.'' Under this section of the bill, the government doesn't even have to prove a drug defendant knew a group was designated as a "foreign terrorist organization.'' The bill, in effect, combines the "war on drugs'' with the "war on terrorism.'' President Nixon began the war on drugs in the 1970s. It has already cost the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars. The combined war on drug-terrorism would ensure a continuous flow of taxpayer money, with about the same level of triumph - maximum penalties, minimum success; loading up our prisons, chopping down our liberties. The war on drugs has led to the gutting of the Fourth Amendment. Before to the war on drugs, American citizens had much greater constitutional protection from government searches and seizures of their property. The war on terrorism has also had an impact on Fourth Amendment protections, since search warrants granted by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts are a much lower standard than probable cause. The passage of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 already allows the Department of Justice, under the rationale of fighting the war on terrorism, to tap phones, to search through a citizen's electronic communications and to conduct secret searches of homes and offices. The currently proposed Victory Act sweeps much too broadly. Honest people who have no intent of committing crimes or supporting terrorism can be swept up by its provisions and suffer the dire consequences. Looking at what each homefront "war'' has done to civil liberties, one sees that combining the war on drugs with the war on terrorism can, and more than likely will, escalate the loss of our freedoms. Charles Levendosky, editorial page editor of the Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune, has a national reputation for Bill of Rights commentary. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin