Russ Feingold: “Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come a long way since those days of infringements on civil liberties.…”

“Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come a long way since those days of infringements on civil liberties. But there is ample reason for concern. And I have been troubled in the past 6 weeks by the potential loss of commitment in the Congress and the country to traditional civil liberties. As it seeks to combat terrorism, the Justice Department is making extraordinary use of its power to arrest and detain individuals, jailing hundreds of people on immigration violations and arresting more than a dozen 'material witnesses' not charged with any crime. Although the Government has used these authorities before, it has not done so on such a broad scale. Judging from Government announcements, the Government has not brought any criminal charges related to the attacks with regard to the overwhelming majority of these detainees. For example, the FBI arrested as a material witness the San Antonio radiologist Albader Al-Hazmi, who has a name like two of the hijackers, and who tried to book a flight to San Diego for a medical conference. According to his lawyer, the Government held Al-Hazmi incommunicado after his arrest, and it took 6 days for lawyers to get access to him. After the FBI released him, his lawyer said: This is a good lesson about how frail our processes are. It's how we treat people in difficult times like these that is the true test of the democracy and civil liberties that we brag so much about throughout the world. I agree with those statements.”