Ron Paul's former aide reveals: "We needed" Barr to vote for the PATRIOT Act

http://www.nolanchart.com...

Topic: Bob Barr
Ron Paul's former aide reveals: "We needed" Barr to vote for the PATRIOT Act

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Brad Jansen, Ron Paul's former congressional banking staffer, says that Bob Barr was the opposition coalition's "man on the inside".
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by George Dance
(Libertarian)
Saturday, May 24, 2008
J. Bradley Jansen, the former congressional staffer to Ron Paul who wrote the 2002 Liberty magazine article protesting the Libertarian Party's campaign to defeat Bob Barr in the Republican primary that year (see "Bob Barr's Real Record (II))", revisits the controversy in a new article for the American Spectator, published May 23.

Barr is currently running for the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, while Paul is seeking that of the Republican Party. Jansen is currently the campaign manager for Ron Paul Republican Vern McKinley, who is running for Congress in Virgina's 10th District.

Jansen, who got to know Barr during his four years as Paul's banking staffer, reveals in the Spectator article that he left the Libertarian Party in 2002 over that issue:

Six years ago, I parted ways with the Libertarian Party over its misguided attempt to defeat Bob Barr in the Republican -- that's right, Republican -- primary. Just as many Libertarians cling to their pipe dream that they had a role in defeating him despite evidence showing their efforts backfired, many now harbor similar delusions about Barr himself.
Jansen also deals with several of the issues raised in the new attacks on Barr from some of his opponents in the Libertarian race -- notably George Phillies and Mary Ruwart -- the most interesting of which is his treatment of Barr's 2001 vote for the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act [The "Patriot Act".]

Contrary to the claims being circulated on-line that Barr supported the Patriot Act, Jansen claims that Barr opposed that Act from the beginning:

True to his libertarian instincts, Barr was initially skeptical of President George W. Bush's anti-terrorism proposal and earned the ire of Karl Rove for speaking up against it.
That claim is supported by a news report from the time from ZDNet News:

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Barr entered the spotlight as the Judiciary committee wrestled with President Bush's USA Patriot Act. Barr initially denounced the bill as handing police too much surveillance powers, and then ended up embracing it. "We were able to eliminate or severely limit the most egregious violations of Americans' civil liberties that were contained in the original proposal," Barr said after the vote. (Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, another pro-privacy politico, opposed the final bill.)
Jansen's further claim that Barr "earned the ire of Karl Rove" for his opposition was confirmed by Wayne Madsen in his definitive article "Exposing Karl Rove," which was reprinted in 2005 on liberal blog Daily Kos:

Bush's binary view of "good and evil" and "friend and enemy" sits well with the Rove strategy. Georgia's conservative but libertarian-minded Representative Bob Barr found out about this in last August's [2002] primary when his GOP primary opponent John Linder began spreading around stories that Barr was "soft on terrorism." Because Barr was skeptical about a number of aspects of the Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT Act, he became a target for the Rove machine.
(Interesting that the Libertarian Party and Karl Rove worked as one to defeat a common enemy in that primary.)

Jansen answers the question: If Barr did not support the Act, why did he vote for it? His answer is revealing:

[Barr] worked with a broad coalition of groups -- including conservatives, libertarians, leftists, privacy activists, and even drug policy reform groups -- to protect our civil liberties in the debate.

And here's the important part: He voted for the bill in the Judiciary committee because we needed him to. Only members who voted for it could be on the conference committee that "reconciled" the House and Senate versions.
When different versions of a bill are passed by the two houses of Congress, a "conference committee" is the joint committee of both houses that decides on the final ("reconciled") wording of the Act the President signs into law. As Jansen puts it, "The conference committee is where the real evil takes place."

As previously reported, Barr was offered a deal: if he voted for the Act, sunset provisions would be inserted into the sections he was questioning in the version before the House of Representatives; meaning that those sections of the law would automatically expire in 2005. However, no such provisions were added to the version that passed the Senate.

That meant that Barr (or someone else) had to be on the Patriot Act conference committee to push for the sunset provisions to go into the reconciled version; and that someone (as Jansen notes) had to be someone who voted for the Act.

So Barr accepted the deal, voted for the Act, and got to serve on the conference committee.

The USA PATRIOT Act conference committee suffered the stubbornness of Bob Barr fighting the worst of it and enacted some provisions to sunset some compromises in exchange for his support.

Sure, fellow Republicans Ron Paul and Bob Ney joined "Butch" Otter who spoke eloquently against its passage on the House floor and voted against the final passage, but none of them were on the Judiciary committee. None of them had the opportunity and responsibility to fight over the devilish details.

Thankfully, we had a former CIA agent and prosecutor on our side who knew the ins and outs and the ramifications of the proposals to fight for our privacy and civil liberties. He was our "man on the inside" for us to share our proposals. Some of those proposals were adopted and became law.
As the anti-Patriot Act coalition's "inside man," Barr was able to ensure that its most egregious parts would cease to be law on Dec. 31, 2005. However, George Bush was re-elected in the 2004 elections, and those provisions were renewed for another four years in 2005.

Jansen notes that Barr now regrets his choice:

It's telling that Barr doesn't think he did enough to safeguard our liberties. He now regrets the USA PATRIOT Act vote that he exchanged for Bush's promises. Just as most Americans gave President Bush some benefit of the doubt in those hectic and fearful days immediately after the terrorist attacks, Barr believed the president when he said that the powers in the anti-terrorism bill would be a ceiling not a floor.
However, he points out that others' judgement has been more charitable:

"Barr made it respectable to question the giveaway of powers to government in the civil liberties area in a very, very difficult time in America's history. And that's certainly worth a lot," says Fred Smith, who runs the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. "Even though he didn't totally succeed, he was one of the voices raised. He did this from a southern state and from a conservative perspective, and that was very useful."
Barr has continued to oppose the Act through several organizations: the American Conservative Union, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Libertarian Party (which he joined in 2006), and the American Freedom Agenda (which he co-founded, along with Bruce Fein, David Keene and Richard Viguerie, in 2007.)

Sources:
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J. Bradley Jansen, "Enemy of the Good," The American Spectator, May 23, 2008.
http://www.spectator.org/...

Declan McCullagh, "Net privacy loses a voice," ZDNet News, Aug 26, 2002.
http://news.zdnet.com/210...

roseeriter, "I Want Karl Rove's Head (on a platter)," Daily Kos, Feb 08, 2005.
http://www.dailykos.com/s...

"About Us," American Freedom Agenda (accessed May, 24, 2008.)
http://www.americanfreedo...

See also:
Bob Barr's Real Record (I)
http://www.nolanchart.com...

Bob Barr's Real Record (II)
http://www.nolanchart.com...

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