mr. chairman , i want to thank the gentleman from wisconsin ( mr. sensenbrenner )  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 .  