Praising the Patriot Act

Gov. Christie hasn't negotiated with other countries or shaped foreign policy. But he does claim one resumé detail to distinguish himself on national security ahead of a likely 2016 presidential run: the Patriot Act.

Even as Congress scales back the law, Christie has been arguing forcefully for the tools given to law enforcement and intelligence agencies after 9/11 as crucial to prosecuting terrorists.

Yet the importance of the Patriot Act in Christie's tenure as a prosecutor is less clear than he asserts.

In national television interviews and appearances in early presidential primary states, Christie, who served as New Jersey's U.S. attorney from 2002 to 2008, has defended the National Security Agency's controversial collection of telephone metadata of every American. And he has belittled critics of intelligence tools - who include presidential candidate Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky - as participants in a purely theoretical debate.

"What they've done in Washington this week has made America weaker, and it's made America vulnerable," Christie said at a town-hall-style meeting last week in Greenville, S.C. "And anybody who tells you differently is talking like a college professor."

Christie - who routinely mentions that he was nominated as U.S. attorney on Sept. 10, 2001 - told the crowd at Tommy's Country Ham House that "I brought prosecutions against terrorists and put them in jail in New Jersey, using the Patriot Act."

He has cited two terror cases, including one against British national Hemant Lakhani, who authorities said tried to sell shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to people he believed were terrorists bent on bringing down U.S. jetliners. He was convicted in 2005.

The other case involved the so-called Fort Dix Five, a group of foreign-born Muslim men in South Jersey and Philadelphia who were convicted in 2008 of conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel.

In a speech last month in New Hampshire, Christie raised those cases but did not give specifics on how the Patriot Act was applied.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office and a spokeswoman for Christie's political action committee declined to answer questions about his use of the act.

Because the act expanded existing authority, Christie's statement that he used it is "just a way of saying, 'I used law enforcement techniques.' Of course, he did," said Elizabeth Goitein, codirector of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has advocated for privacy rights in the surveillance debate.

The fact that Patriot Act provisions are used in a given case "does not tell you whether narrower versions of those provisions would be equally effective," Goitein said.

The Patriot Act gave U.S. attorneys "much more legal authority and policy direction to be involved in counterterrorism matters," said Carrie Cordero, a former Justice Department lawyer who provided counsel on the law to the assistant attorney general for national security.

"That would've involved more extensive coordination and involvement in addressing major counterterror investigations or threats in their area of responsibility," said Cordero, now director of National Security Studies at Georgetown Law.

One effect of the Patriot Act was that U.S. attorneys could review applications to a special court established by a 1978 law.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorized that court to issue orders approving electronic surveillance of a person believed to be an agent of a foreign power for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence. The Patriot Act revised the law, which made it easier for the government to obtain the orders and allowed for greater coordination among intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

This appears to have had some relevance in the Fort Dix case, in which the defendants plotted to attack the U.S. Army base. The government was aided by two informants, who secretly taped conversations with the men.

On appeal, the defendants argued that the government had relied on evidence illegally obtained through FISA, as amended by the Patriot Act. An appellate court rejected those arguments. In a footnote unrelated to its decision, the court said "the scope and nature of the FISA-derived evidence presented at trial appear to be limited."

In 2003, Christie's office charged Lakhani with trying to sell a Russian missile to a government informant posing as an agent for Somali terrorists.

In a speech that year, then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft cited the case after praising information-sharing enabled by the Patriot Act.

Lakhani argued that he was entrapped by the government.

"From my perspective at the defense table, Lakhani was a case that could have been brought before 9/11 or 30 years ago," said Lakhani attorney Henry Klingeman. He said, however, he didn't know to what extent Patriot Act tools might have been used behind the scenes.

A 2004 U.S. Department of Justice report said federal prosecutors in New Jersey used the Patriot Act to charge a money transmitter used by Lakhani.

Christie could benefit from emphasizing his experience fighting terrorism, said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. "America may want a president" who is "more Reaganlike than Carterlike. Or Obamalike," he said.

GOP primary voters said security and terrorism are the top priorities the government should address, according to an April Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Other surveys, however, suggest voters might be skeptical. A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found a majority of Republicans and independents disapproved of the NSA's collection of phone and Internet data. Bulk phone-data collection, which lawmakers overhauled last week, was grounded in Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Other GOP presidential contenders also support data collection.

"I used [Section 215] extensively, aggressively, and legally as U.S. attorney, and I can tell you this: It works," Christie said last month in New Hampshire.

Besides NSA snooping, Section 215 made it easier for officials to obtain records in counterterrorism investigations, because it no longer had to prove the target was an agent of a foreign power. It's possible that Christie, who has not specified how he used the provision, was involved in that process.

Christie's supporters praised his attentiveness to terror threats, which perhaps more than anything else shaped his worldview as U.S. attorney.

"He had to be on his game for counterterrorism," said Leslie G. Wiser Jr., former special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark office from 2005 to 2007.

"Everybody considered [New Jersey] to be the door through which terrorists were going to go through New York," said Wiser, now at the University of South Carolina. "We all considered New York to be the prime target."

856-779-3846@AndrewSeidman