Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Patriot Act knows no limits

Anti-terror bill used to go after those in Strip club probe

Do FBI agents believe the surviving leaders of the elusive Osama bin Laden terror network have been conducting strategy sessions over take-out tabouli and hummus, while holed up in the basement of the Jaguars Gentleman's Club, owned by Mike Galardi, near Sahara and Interstate 15?

Are there reliable reports of al-Qaida weapons stashes there and at the Cheetah's topless bar, just across the highway and also owned by Mike Galardi, in partnership with his father Jack?

Of course not. The Galardis and their lobbyist, former Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone, are under investigation by federal law enforcement agents who assert the bar owners paid off municipal officials here and in San Diego to create a more favorable regulatory environment for their establishments.

So what on earth were FBI agents thinking when they cited Section 314 of the USA Patriot Act as their grounds for faxing subpoenas to two Las Vegas stockbrokers on Oct. 28, seeking financial information on many of those who have been targeted in the ongoing Galardi probe?

"It's just as the ACLU said from the start," explains Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. "The Patriot Act, which was originally passed off as dealing solely with terrorism, in fact expands government power in areas that have nothing to do with terrorism."

Critics have warned from the start that provisions in the bill would gut what remains of our financial privacy under the Bill of Rights. The Bush administration responded the new powers were needed to fight Arab terrorists, and would be used sparingly.

The critics responded that once federal agents had these powers, there would be no limiting their application to only those cases where the suspects wear headcloths.

Sure enough, a mere two years after its enactment, the use of the Patriot Act in a case as far from "9-11" terrorism as the Galardi topless bar probe proves the skeptics were right.

The Patriot Act provision "was used appropriately by the FBI and was clearly within the legal parameters of the statute," argues Special Agent Jim Stern, a spokesman for the Las Vegas field office of the FBI.

If that's true, then major portions of this law need to be promptly repealed, unless the high court can get at them and overrule them, first.