Patriot Act warning issued

Thursday, March 18, 2004 | 9:32 a.m.

A leading national law expert told UNLV law students Wednesday that heightened citizen awareness of the government's increased powers under the Patriot Act may help prevent problems similar to what occurred during the Watergate era.

Speaking before about 100 students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Boyd School of Law, United Nations Counsel Peter Erlinder talked of Patriot Act evils such as "secret courts" and the president's heightened powers to arrest people and hold them without bail for two years before granting them a trial.

Noting that government agents recently sought lists of people attending an anti-Iraq War meeting at Drake Law School, Erlinder warned local students that by attending his lecture federal agents may seek them out as subversives under the Patriot Act.

Whether it was the desire to listen to a rousing controversial speech or to enjoy the free pizza and soda that was served at Erlinder's lecture, no one was seen leaving after his warning, which drew a few chuckles.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "People from the United States can no longer consider themselves immune from the actions of U.S. foreign policy," Erlinder, a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., said.

Those attacks gave birth to the Patriot Act, which gives the federal government extended powers to deal with terrorists. But critics say the act also has eroded personal freedoms.

Erlinder's hourlong lecture was sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Vegas Immigration Student Association.

To hammer home his point, Erlinder conjured images of 32 years ago when Richard Nixon was in the White House committing under the guise of national security -- criminal acts that eventually forced his resignation.

Erlinder talked about a case in the 1970s stemming from a U.S. attorney's claim that the president had powers to carry out electronic eavesdropping operations against those he felt threatened the United States. A judge ruled Nixon was not above the Fourth Amendment and the Supreme Court agreed.

Erlinder told UNLV students that the high court ruling ran on the front page of the Washington Post the same day the newspaper ran a short story inside on the break-in of the Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate hotel.

"Had that (Supreme Court) decision gone the other way, the burglars would never have been in there removing the electronic (bugging) devices," Erlinder said. "We never would have learned about Watergate.

"Now those limitations have been removed" by the Patriot Act, he said.

One local example of stretching the Patriot Act, Erlinder said, was the raiding of topless nightclubs and the gathering of evidence against Las Vegas elected officials who were indicted in Operation G-Sting last year.

Erlinder said use of the Patriot Act's higher surveillance powers was possible in that case because prosecutors needed only to convince a judge that in some manner they were gathering foreign intelligence information.

"As law students, you have to ask yourself, what sort of nation do you think you are in and what sort of nation do you want," Erlinder said.