Strip search

In our latest episode of continuing adventures with the U.S.A. Patriot Act, FBI agents say they’ve used the new antiterrorism law to prosecute a political bribery case centered on the owner of some Las Vegas strip clubs.

What do topless dancers in Vegas have to do with terrorism, you may ask? Nothing, everyone agrees, unless perhaps you count the violence some of the ladies inflict on the wallets of their mostly male clientele.

Nevertheless, the FBI now confirms local Las Vegas newspaper reports that the agency used the Patriot Act’s provisions to subpoena financial information about four local politicians and one local businessman, Michael Galardi, the owner of the Jaguars topless dance clubs in southern Nevada and Cheetah’s clubs in Las Vegas and San Diego.

The Patriot Act, passed in the panicky weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, allows the government to peek into the personal affairs of many people, not just suspected terrorists. The law’s powers only begin with suspected terrorists. We have yet to learn how far it extends.

That’s the part Attorney General John Ashcroft does not talk much about as he tours the country touting the powers the Patriot Act gave the federal government to fight terrorism.

“We have used these tools to save innocent American lives,” Mr. Ashcroft told an August law officers convention at the federal courthouse in Las Vegas. “We have used these tools to provide the security that ensures liberty.”

He neglected to mention how, even as he spoke, Las Vegas FBI agents were using those “tools” to go after a strip club owner and the politicians the club owner allegedly paid off.

It turns out Section 314 of the Patriot Act allows federal investigators wider leeway in obtaining financial information from stockbrokers, banks and other financial institutions on people “suspected, based on credible evidence, of engaging in terrorist acts or money laundering.”

Pay close attention to that last phrase, “or money laundering.” Ah, what legal power that little word “or” contains. Thanks to that teeny but mighty conjunction, the Patriot Act is not limited to money laundering linked to suspected terrorist acts but to any suspected money laundering.

“The Patriot Act was not meant to be just for terrorism,” Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo told a reporter.

Now they tell us. Before the Patriot Act became law, FBI agents needed a subpoena from a grand jury to demand financial records. Under Section 314, agents no longer need trouble themselves with facing a grand jury, which is, after all, made up of only ordinary citizens. Instead, agents need only certify in a secret documentation a reasonable suspicion money laundering is taking place.

Only after the case comes to trial can a judge rule on whether the agents’ certification was adequate. If not, the judge can throw out all the evidence gathered as a result of the bogus certification, according to the Justice Department spokesmen.

Why, one wonders, is the normal subpoena process such a bother, all of a sudden? Since when it is so hard to prosecute public corruption in Las Vegas, a possibility that rivals gambling in Casablanca on most people’s shock-o-meters?

The Justice Department spokesman said the American people expect law enforcement officers to use any and all constitutional and legal tools to fight all crime, whether terror-related or not.

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