USA PATRIOT Act

Historical Context

Passed by a wide margin in both the House and Senate on October 26, 2001, the Patriot Act emerged as a compromise unification of two competing acts introduced in Congress in late September. What these bills shared was the central question asked by many American citizens following the attacks of September 11: what lapses had occurred in the nation's political, security, and counterterrorism apparatuses in order to allow such a catastrophe to occur? While there had been attacks that occurred on U.S. soil in the recent past, most notably the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1994, one would have to look back to the Pearl Harbor bombing of 1941 to find a comparable attack on American soil.

Yet if the attacks of September 2001 had little precedent in the history of American foreign policy, equally unprecedented was the exigency that led to the speedy passage of this sweeping legislation. Historically, it is often the case that tragedy in the face of domestic threats to safety leads to expedient action, and this bill was no different. The urgency of the situation was clear, and the bill faced relatively little debate, a fact that later led to much criticism of both the bill and many of the congressional members who voted for its provisions. The political and popular goodwill historically granted to heads of state following a state of emergency notwithstanding, the act's passage was also encouraged by the decisive policy action of the George W. Bush administration's attorney general, John Ashcroft, who urged [Page 916]swift passage. The process was further hurried along by warnings that future terrorist acts were imminent and, from Ashcroft, that members of Congress themselves would bear the responsibility if an attack were to occur while the legislation was still in debate. As such, it faced few proposals for amendments and no formal reports from committees were requested. Some legislative provisions of the act, mostly dealing with electronic surveillance, were given sunset stipulations for the end of 2005 (most of which ended up being renewed at that time) to allow a compromise support for quick passage of the bill with the understanding of later legislative revisitation, but the majority of the act's titles had no such conditions.

...