Pete Sessions: “I think the Senator is fundamentally correct. Sometimes investigators need to know which books have you checked out. I…”

“I think the Senator is fundamentally correct. Sometimes investigators need to know which books have you checked out. I prosecuted an individual one time who was a doctor. They made a TV movie out of it. He had a book, a death dealer's manual in his possession and another one on deadly poisons. But when you are trying to prosecute a case, the fact is that this covers even book sales, for example. Any district attorney in America today can subpoena the book store and find out what you or I bought, if it is relevant to a criminal investigation. In this case, not only must it be relevant to any investigation, it must be relevant to a national security investigation in which the issuer of the subpoena must certify that it endangers the United States. It is a very rare occurrence. The only difference is that there is an automatic ability for the Government to request that it not be revealed to the person investigated on an immediate basis. These records are available today. The library association, in my view, has misunderstood the principle of law enforcement. Yes, you do not want people willy-nilly probing library records to see what people are reading. Of course, that is not legitimate. But when you certify it is a national security investigation, important to the safety of the United States, when you issue one of these subpoenas, I can't imagine anybody would object to that. It is certainly consistent with the generalized principle of subpoenaing records.…”