mr. chairman , i want to thank the gentleman from wisconsin ( mr. sensenbrenner ) xz4003650 for his leadership on this important legislation , and i rise today in support of this bill . 
i served in the justice department before and after 9/11 . 
i led the department 's counterterrorism efforts in the united states attorney 's office in the state of texas . 
i worked with the joint terrorism task forces fighting this war on terror in the trenches . 
i know firsthand that this patriot act provides the necessary tools to win this war on terror at home . 
significantly , the patriot act tore down the wall between the criminal division and the intelligence side of the house . 
prior to this it was dysfunctional . 
the left hand literally did not know what the right was doing . 
the 9/11 commission reported this wall may have contributed to 9/11 . 
an fbi agent testified that efforts to conduct a criminal investigation into two of the hijackers were blocked due to concerns over the wall . 
frustrated , he wrote to the fbi headquarters and he said , some day someone will die . 
and wall or not , the public will not understand why we were not more effective at throwing every resource we had at certain problems . 
let us hope that the national security law unit will then stand behind their decisions , especially since the biggest threat to us now is osama bin laden . 
today , thanks to the patriot act , this wall has come down . 
it helps us connect the dots by removing the legal barriers that prevented law enforcement and the intelligence community from sharing information . 
but the patriot act provides many other tools for law enforcement in this war on terrorism . 
it updates the law to the technology of today . 
the patriot act also takes laws which have long applied in drug cases and organized crime cases and applies them to the terrorists , such as the roving wiretaps , such as the delayed notification for searches . 
it makes no sense for us to apply these laws only in drug cases and not in the most important cases affecting our national security , cases involving terrorists . 
and contrary to critics ' assertions , the justice department can not do anything without court supervision . 
the u.s. patriot act does not abrogate the role played by the judiciary in the oversight of the activities of federal law enforcement . 
and while we are talking about libraries , let us not forget al qaeda operative mohammed babar who used a computer in a library and when asked after he was arrested why , he said because the libraries will scrub the hard drives . 
i can envision no bigger national security mistake than to go back to the way things were . 
we owe it to the citizens of this country to reauthorize the patriot act , for if we do not and another terrorist attack occurs on our shores we will surely all be held accountable . 
