National Security and the Law – Outline
**Theme of course is the responses to terrorism and the limitations of those responses**
I. Overview – Nature and Threat of National Response
A. Overview of Law Enforcement Tools
i. Assistant U.S. Attorney’s and FBI work hand in hand in the federal system. Assistant U.S. Attorney’s are involved from the very beginning.
ii. Scenarioà Scenario- December of 1999. Plan to explode a massive bomb to coincide with the millennium celebration. December 14, FBI was contacted and told a man tried to enter US near Seattle in a rental car from Canada. A suspicious customs agent searched the car and found garbage bags full of white powder. Also saw olive jars with some liquid in it, a Tylenol bottle, a zinc vitamin bottle, and a bag of timing devices and wires. White powder was urea fertilizer (when combined with nitric acid, becomes explosive). The Tylenol, zinc, and olive jars were filled with different kinds of highly volatile liquid explosives. The suspect broke free and started running. Police and ICE were able to capture the suspect and place him under arrest. Many questions were left unanswered at that point. Who was the suspect? Who was he working for? What was his plan? Was he part of some large coordinated millennium attack plan? Were there already people in the US poised to attack that haven’t been caught? What do we do about the millennial celebrations?
iii. As an FBI agent, what do you do at this point?
a. Interrogate him
· Do you Mirandize him?
¨ Yes, if you want to use his statements in court.
¨ Would the same be true if he was picked up in another country?
a Does it matter if DOD is doing the interview or if the FBI is?
· He refused to speak.
b. Retrace his steps and see if Canadian or international law enforcement knows anything. Trace the rental car, his cell phone, etc…
c. Check what he has on him.
· Do you need a search warrant?
¨ No- search incident to arrest. Don’t even need probable cause. Supreme Court says you can search them and log everything they have on them.
¨ Had a Quebec ID card with the name Benni Antoine Norris with an address on it.
¨ Also had another Quebec ID card with another name and another address.
¨ Had a business card with the name “Ghanni” and three phone numbers on it. Had two 718 numbers and a 917 number on it. Traced back to two apartments in Brooklyn.
a To get phone records, you do not need a warrant. This gives you outgoing calls. (Cell phones are a little different, you get both). You can also get a pen register which is a court order for the phone company to log all outgoing and incoming calls.
b Tap the phone lines.
1. Need a court order if you want to use content of the phone conversations.
2. Don’t need a court order if both parties are outside the US.
c Other electronic surveillance.
1. Obtained
civilians and will use any technique they can get their hands on. Nothing is too far.
e. Preferred battlefield is the US. They know they can’t defeat the US militarily so the goal is to create fear and death.
f. The threat doesn’t go away just because an attack hasn’t happened in a while. They’re very patient and willing to reinitiate plans at a future time.
C. Terrorism: Structures and Definitions
3 Institutional Responses to Terrorism- all 3 need to work together and none should be allowed to operate w/o controls
prevention – combination of protective devices and persuasion
prosecution – traditional civilian criminal trials and processes
military action – use of deadly force to subdue and control
Each response is subject to limitations and controls
U.S. Dep’t of State must designate “foreign terrorist organizations” based on three criteria:
it is a foreign organization
it engages in terrorist activity
the organizations terrorist activity threatens the national security of the U.S. or U.S. Nationals
Def: “Terrorist Activity” – 4 elements
violence
civilian targets
subnational or clandestine perpetrator
political motivation
