The Department of Justice USA Patriot Act.

The Department of Justice's first priority is to prevent future terrorist attacks. Since its passage following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Patriot Act has played a key part - and often the leading role - in a number of successful operations to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists dedicated to destroying America and our way of life. While the results have been important, in passing the Patriot Act, Congress provided for only modest, incremental changes in the law. Congress simply took existing legal principles and retrofitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network. The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Congress enacted the Patriot Act by overwhelming, bipartisan margins, arming law enforcement with new tools to detect and prevent terrorism: The USA Patriot Act was passed nearly unanimously by the Senate 98-1, and 357-66 in the House, with the support of members from across the political spectrum. The Act Improves Our Counter-Terrorism Efforts in Several Significant Ways: 1. The Patriot Act allows investigators to use the tools that were already available to investigate organized crime and drug trafficking. Many of the tools the Act provides to law enforcement to fight terrorism have been used for decades to fight organized crime and drug dealers and have been reviewed and approved by the courts. As Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) explained during the floor debate about the Act, "the FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the mafia, but they could not get one to investigate terrorists. To put it bluntly, that was crazy! What's good for the mob should be good for terrorists." (Cong. Rec., 10/25/01) • Allows law enforcement to use surveillance against more crimes of terror. Before the Patriot Act, courts could permit law enforcement to conduct electronic surveillance to investigate many ordinary, non-terrorism crimes, such as drug crimes, mail fraud, and passport fraud. Agents also could obtain wiretaps to investigate some, but not all, of the crimes that terrorists often commit. The Act enabled investigators to gather information when looking into the full range of terrorism-related crimes, including chemical-weapons offenses, the use of weapons of mass destruction, killing Americans abroad, and terrorism financing. • Allows federal agents to follow sophisticated terrorists trained to evade detection. For years, law enforcement has been able to use "roving wiretaps" to investigate ordinary crimes, including drug offenses and racketeering. A roving wiretap can be authorized by a federal judge to apply to a particular suspect, rather than a particular phone or communications device. Because international terrorists are sophisticated and trained to thwart surveillance by rapidly changing locations and communication devices such as cell phones, the Act authorized agents to seek court permission to use the same techniques in national security investigations to track terrorists. • Allows law enforcement to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists. In some cases, if criminals are tipped off too early to an investigation, they might flee, destroy evidence, intimidate or kill witnesses, cut off contact with associates, or take other action to evade arrest. Therefore, federal courts in narrow circumstances long have allowed law enforcement to delay for a limited time when the subject is told that a judicially approved search warrant has been executed. Notice is always provided, but the reasonable delay gives law enforcement time to identify the criminal's associates, eliminate immediate threats to our communities, and coordinate the arrests of multiple individuals without tipping them off beforehand. These delayed notification search warrants have been used for decades, have proven crucial in drug and organized crime cases, and have been upheld by courts as fully constitutional. • Allows federal agents to ask a court for an order to obtain business records in national security terrorism cases. Examining business records often provides the key that investigators are looking for to solve a wide range of crimes. Investigators might seek select records from hardware stores or chemical plants, for example, to find out who bought materials to make a bomb, or bank records to see who's sending money to terrorists. Law enforcement authorities have always been able to obtain business records in criminal cases through grand jury subpoenas and continue to do so in national security cases where appropriate. These records were sought in criminal cases such as the investigation of the Zodiac gunman, where police suspected the gunman was inspired by a Scottish occult poet, and wanted to learn who had checked the poet's books out of the library. In national security cases where use of the grand jury process was not appropriate, investigators previously had limited tools at their disposal to obtain certain business records. Under the Patriot Act, the government can now ask a federal court (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), if needed to aid an investigation, to order production of the same type of records available through grand jury subpoenas. This federal court, however, can issue these orders only after the government demonstrates the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a U.S. person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a U.S. person is not conducted solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment. 2. The Patriot Act facilitated information sharing and cooperation among government agencies so that they can better "connect the dots." The Act removed the major legal barriers that prevented the law enforcement, intelligence, and national defense communities from talking and coordinating their work to protect the American people and our national security. The government's prevention efforts should not be restricted by boxes on an organizational chart. Now police officers, FBI agents, federal prosecutors and intelligence officials can protect our communities by "connecting the dots" to uncover terrorist plots before they are completed. As Sen. John Edwards (D N.C.) said about the Patriot Act, "we simply cannot prevail in the battle against terrorism if the right hand of our government has no idea what the left hand is doing." (Press release, 10/26/01) • Prosecutors and investigators used information shared pursuant to section 218 in investigating the defendants in the so-called “Virginia Jihad” case. This prosecution involved members of the Dar al-Arqam Islamic Center, who trained for jihad in Northern Virginia by participating in paintball and paramilitary training, including eight individuals who traveled to terrorist training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan between 1999 and 2001. These individuals are associates of a violent Islamic extremist group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), which operates in Pakistan and Kashmir, and that has ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network. As the result of an investigation that included the use of information obtained through FISA, prosecutors were able to bring charges against these individuals. Six of the defendants have pleaded guilty, and three were convicted in March 2004 of charges including conspiracy to levy war against the United States and conspiracy to provide material support to the Taliban. These nine defendants received sentences ranging from a prison term of four years to life imprisonment. 3. The Patriot Act updated the law to reflect new technologies and new threats. The Act brought the law up to date with current technology, so we no longer have to fight a digital-age battle with antique weapons-legal authorities' leftover from the era of rotary telephones. When investigating the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, for example, law enforcement used one of the Act's new authorities to use high-tech means to identify and locate some of the killers. • Allows law enforcement officials to obtain a search warrant anywhere a terrorist-related activity occurred. Before the Patriot Act, law enforcement personnel were required to obtain a search warrant in the district where they intended to conduct a search. However, modern terrorism investigations often span a number of districts, and officers therefore had to obtain multiple warrants in multiple jurisdictions, creating unnecessary delays. The Act provides that warrants can be obtained in any district in which terrorism-related activities occurred, regardless of where they will be executed. This provision does not change the standards governing the availability of a search warrant but streamlines the search-warrant process. • Allows victims of computer hacking to request law enforcement assistance in monitoring the "trespassers" on their computers. This change made the law technology-neutral; it placed electronic trespassers on the same footing as physical trespassers. Now, hacking victims can seek law enforcement assistance to combat hackers, just as burglary victims have been able to invite officers into their homes to catch burglars. 4. The Patriot Act increased the penalties for those who commit terrorist crimes. Americans are threatened as much by the terrorist who pays for a bomb as by the one who pushes the button. That's why the Patriot Act imposed tough new penalties on those who commit and support terrorist operations, both at home and abroad. In particular, the Act: • Prohibits the harboring of terrorists. The Act created a new offense that prohibits knowingly harboring persons who have committed or are about to commit a variety of terrorist offenses, such as destruction of aircraft; use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons; use of weapons of mass destruction; bombing of government property; sabotage of nuclear facilities; and aircraft piracy. • Enhanced the inadequate maximum penalties for various crimes likely to be committed by terrorists: including arson, destruction of energy facilities, material support to terrorists and terrorist organizations, and destruction of national-defense materials. • Enhanced a number of conspiracy penalties, including for arson, killings in federal facilities, attacking communications systems, material support to terrorists, sabotage of nuclear facilities, and interference with flight crew members. Under previous law, many terrorism statutes did not specifically prohibit engaging in conspiracies to commit the underlying offenses. In such cases, the government could only bring prosecutions under the general federal conspiracy provision, which carries a maximum penalty of only five years in prison. • Punishes terrorist attacks on mass transit systems. • Punishes bioterrorists. • Eliminates the statutes of limitations for certain terrorism crimes and lengthens them for other terrorist crimes. The government's success in preventing another catastrophic attack on the American homeland since September 11, 2001, would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, without the USA Patriot Act. The authorities Congress provided have substantially enhanced our ability to prevent, investigate, and prosecute acts of terror 

When it's convenient to be Black!

TBR-Leighton Bradford, Editor-in-Chief

The one thing that should irritate a righteous Black person, is someone who is Black, when it's convenient to be Black! The last election cycle was about the US dynamic between White men & Black women. Massa & the slave mistress are at odds with each other. Lock up a brother until we figure it out. Don't get me wrong, I admire a strong Nubian queen. As long as it's not about a willie lynch type of divide and conquer!

The media props up teleprompting reading vixen's, who announce the taking away of the freedoms of a Black man. Be it Uncle or Tom, the paper defines the implicit role. Demanding a supposed Black male leader reveal his soul, so as to work towards his demise? They demand you speak! So, we can figure out how to destroy your ass! Sippin on the spirits, does not vanquish the heathen! The interracial aspect is tired when it comes to Hatin on a strong Black family structure. You find love where it resides. Just because it's Black! Does not deny the implicit other! 

 Most profiled Blacks within interracial or materialistic relationships, are Black when it's convenient to be Black. Raise your son not to switch; but fight the injustices of our people! I have a philosophical or rhetorical question? How many Black female leaders have been executed as opposed to Black male leaders? Believe you me this author is as fallible as they come. When Black heterosexual men stick together, we are unstoppable! We must respect and protect God fearing righteous Black women! The European male probes the heavens, while the Black man derives abstract meaning from a sporting event & entertainment. I refuse to be a martyr for the hypocrite! There will still be taxes on Wednesday. Silence is golden when it comes to the revelation of a tired black man. A segment will rejoice, when this brother dies. And then came the critics!

AIR FORCE HISTORY: The Black Swallow of Death and the world’s first black fighter pilot

• 

   Eugene Jacques Bullard was born in 1894 in Columbus, Georgia

  
  Published Feb. 17, 2017
• By Howard E. Halvorsen
• Air Force Sustainment Center Historian

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  

America’s first black aviator did not fly for the country of his birth, America, but for his adopted country, France. Eugene Jacques Bullard was born in 1894 in Columbus, Georgia, and was the seventh of 10 children born to a black man from Martinique and a Creek Indian woman. Eugene said his father was an educated man who worked hard as a laborer but took the time to properly raise and teach his children, often in his native French, especially after Eugene’s mother tragically passed away when he was five. His father’s stories often told how in France every man is accepted as a man regardless of the color of his skin. When Eugene Bullard’s father was nearly lynched, this child of only eight years old decided to leave home and find this magical place: France.

It was 1902 and the young man wandered all over the southeastern United States doing odd jobs. At one point he displayed some skill in horseracing as a jockey and was able to put a little money away. When he was 12 years old he stowed away on a German ship bound for Scotland. After some hard times doing odd jobs, he found himself in Liverpool, England, where he was able to become a skilled boxer. Through years of lifting weights he went from bantam weight, to lightweight and eventually fought as a welterweight in both England and France. His first bout in France, boxing in Paris at the Elysee Montmartre, was Nov. 28, 1913. From the moment he first set foot in France he knew this was the place he belonged, and that first visit cemented his long-held aspiration of moving to Paris.

He ended up touring Europe with a traveling act called “Freedman’s Pickaninnies,” but he settled down in Paris and was soon employed in the world of boxing. Bullard picked up languages easily and helped set up matches for other boxers using his translating skills, in addition to his own boxing career. He finally had found his place on this Earth, making the most money he ever had in his life in a place that accepted him as a man. In fact, he found living in France “convinced me too that God really did create all men equal, and it was easy to live that way.”

Into this idyllic life, world events came crashing in. War. The Great War — what we call World War I today. Bullard was eager to serve for his adopted country, and on his 19th birthday he joined his fellow American expatriates in the French Foreign Legion, the toughest unit at that time in the world. Soon after training he was assigned to a unit that contained 54 different nationalities and fought in the toughest battles of the war. One unit with whom he served were referred to as “The Swallows of Death.” The fierce and lucky Bullard quickly became known as the “Black Swallow of Death.” The Legion often led the way which led to frightful numbers of casualties. For instance, at the Battle of Artois Ridge, Bullard’s company lost 80 percent of its strength. Later in September of the same year, 1915, 94 percent were lost in the Champagne Offensive. It was during the Battle of Verdun on March 5, 1916, that Bullard received the wounds that removed him from the ground war and subsequently awarded The Croix de Guerre and Médaille Militaire.

It was during his convalescence in Lyons that two interesting life events happened. One was his first bit of fame when he was interviewed by Will Irwin of The Saturday Evening Post. The second was the opportunity to become a flier. It was thought that Bullard’s wounds would keep him from walking again, but an American friend bet him $2,000 he could not get into aviation (he would never be able to rejoin the infantry) and become a pilot. He soon earned his wings on May 5, 1917, and collected his money. This made Bullard the first black fighter pilot in history.

He was soon assigned to the Lafayette Escadrille and was happy to find respect and friendship regardless of race and nationality. In this spirit, Corporal Eugene Bullard painted a red bleeding heart pierced by a knife on the fuselage of his Spad. Below the heart was the inscription “Tout le Sang qui coule est rouge!” Roughly translated it says “All Blood Runs Red.” His first mission was on Sept. 8, 1917, and he never missed a mission until the war ended. After the United States entered the war he took a flight physical and applied for a commission to fly for his home country, but the application was ignored. Fellow flying heroes like George Dock recalled him to be a humorous, brave, and self-reliant man and Charles Kinsolving noted that Bullard had no fear. Happily, all wars end…even this one. He decided to remain in Paris and soon married a French countess and fathered three children, though one passed soon after birth.

Normally that would be the end of the story. Yes, he opened a famous nightclub, Le Grand Duc, where Paris’ most famous entertainers would perform for the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gloria Swanson, and England’s Prince of Wales but that is not where the story ends. Once again, world events came crashing in. In 1939, war once again threatened the nation that had been so good to him. As a widowed father of three, it would have been easy for most to sit the war out. Instead, in July 1939 he joined the French Resistance. He was good with languages, including German, and was quite successful as the Germans pompously thought that no black man could properly understand their language. He even worked with the famous French spy Cleopatra Terrier and others.

However, at last German troops began to overrun Paris, so the single father of two fled with his children away from the fighting to Orleans only to find himself under fire there as well. He joined uniformed troops and quickly found himself both wounded and the only one left alive. Resistance friends doctored his wounds and smuggled him and his daughters to Spain where he was later medically evacuated to the United States. He was thrilled to finally be back home and became an elevator operator in Rockefeller Center, a position he would hold until he retired. Americans saw him every day and did not know they were in the presence of greatness. France never forgot.

In 1954, Bullard was requested to help relight the Eternal Flame of the Tomb of the Unknown French Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. In 1959 he was named Knight of the Legion of Honor in New York City and was interviewed on the Today Show. President-General Charles de Gaulle, while in NYC, publicly embraced Bullard as a true French hero in 1960 when Bullard was 65 years old. Two years later, in 1961, Bullard lost a fight to an illness caused from the many wounds he received in wartime. Again France did forget as, with the tri-color of France draping his coffin, he was laid to rest with full honors by the Federation of French War Officers at Flushing Cemetery in New York. On Aug. 23, 1994, the USAF posthumously commissioned him a lieutenant. During his lifetime, Eugene Ballard was awarded 15 French war medals, including the Knight of the Légion d’honneur, Médaille Militaire, Croix de Guerre, Volunteer’s Cross (Croix du combatant volontaire), Wounded Insignia, World War I Commemorative Medal, World War I Victory Medal, Freedom Medal, and the World War II Commemorative Medal.

Sources include Air and Space Power Journal, Black Art Depot, “All Blood Runs Red” by Henry Scott Harris.