Patriot Act won't be made permanent

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans backed down on Thursday from an effort to make permanent the Patriot Act's sweeping anti-terrorism powers, clearing the way for passage of a less divisive measure that would still expand the government's ability to spy on foreign terrorist suspects in the United States.

In an agreement finalized over the last week, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dropped his effort to extend provisions of the Patriot Act whose broad powers to investigate and track terrorists suspects were scheduled to expire in 2005.

As a result, the Senate voted 90-4 to approve a measure expanding the government's ability to use secret surveillance tools against terrorist suspects who are not thought to be members of known terrorist groups.

Under current law, federal officials are not allowed to seek secret surveillance warrants against non-citizens unless the officials can establish that they are linked to a known terrorist group.

The day's developments represented a key test of the balancing act between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberties, and the result delivered a mixed verdict as many lawmakers expressed reservations about giving law enforcement officials too much power to fight terrorism.

"There's a delicate balance between liberty and security," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who was one of the authors of the so-called "lone wolf" counter-terrorism measure. "It's a see-saw, and that's the debate that we're seeing now in Congress."

Hatch led a push beginning last month to attach to the bill an amendment that would have repealed time restrictions built into the Patriot Act of 2001.

Hatch adopted this tactic because he was said to believe that some Democrats on the judiciary committee were seeking to water down the bill by attaching amendments that would impose tougher legal standards and greater reporting requirements on law enforcement officials in their use of their new counter-terrorism powers. Many Democrats have complained in recent months that the Justice Department has kept them in the dark about its counter-terrorism activities since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Hatch's effort to try to make the Patriot Act permanent set off immediate criticism from civil liberties groups and lawmakers, including some Republicans, who said that Congress needed more time to scrutinize how the Patriot Act was working — and whether law enforcement officials were abusing it — before revisiting it.