Homeland Intelligence Chief Hughes Warned Civil Rights Would Have to Be 'Abridged' to Prevent Another Terror Attack
By Justin Rood, CQ Staff Eight months before the White House appointed him the Homeland Security Department's top intelligence official, retired U.S. Army Gen. Patrick M. Hughes told a public forum at Harvard last year that the government would have to "abridge individual rights" and take domestic security measures "not in accordance with our values and traditions" to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States. "What I'm about to say is very arrogant - arrogant to a fault," said Hughes, a former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), in previously unreported remarks at a March 2003 Harvard University forum on "Future Conditions: The Character and Conduct of War, 2010 and 2020." "Set aside what the mass of people think. Some things are so bad for them that you cannot allow them to have them. One of them is war in the context of terrorism in the United States," Hughes said, according to a transcript obtained by CQ Homeland Security. "Therefore, we have to abridge individual rights, change the societal conditions, and act in ways that heretofore were not in accordance with our values and traditions, like giving a police officer or security official the right to search you without a judicial finding of probable cause," said Hughes. "Things are changing, and this change is happening because things can be brought to us that we cannot afford to absorb. We can't deal with them, so we're going to reach out and do something ahead of time to preclude them. "Is that going to change your lives?" Hughes asked rhetorically. "It already has." Neither the department nor Hughes would comment for the record on whether Hughes stood by his comments in the year he has held the senior DHS intelligence post. At the time of his remarks, Hughes was a private consultant whose clients included the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DIA, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, Science Applications International Corp., SRI International, Anteon, Boeing, Rand Corp., and others, according to the Web site for his company, PMH Enterprises, LLC. In his current position, Hughes heads up DHS' intelligence analysis efforts and coordinates with the other members of the intelligence community, as well as with such interagency intelligence efforts as the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. Conspiracy Theories Roger Cressey, who ran the Transnational Threats unit of the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, took issue with Hughes' remarks. "It's a little surreal. I don't agree with that," Cressey said. They "fuel the conspiracy theorists and those on the extreme left and right who believe the government is only out for one thing: to screw with the American people. I don't think it's a helpful way of advancing the discourse." An official with the 9/11 Public Discourse Project - the lobbying effort created by the former members of the 9/11 commission - drew a stark contrast between Hughes' reflections and the 9/11 commission's position. "The choice between security and liberty is a false one," said the official, who agreed to talk only on condition of anonymity to protect the project's efforts from charges of partisanship. "Our history has shown us that insecurity threatens liberty. Yet if our liberties are curtailed, we lose the values that we are struggling to defend," the official said. "The Fourth Amendment is pretty clear, said Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, when asked about Hughes' comments. "In general, the rule is that you do need a warrant and probable cause" to search someone. Edgar said there are numerous exceptions to that requirement, but it was not clear that those were what Hughes was referring to. " 'We have to abridge individual rights' - that's a very disturbing thing, coming from the head of intelligence at the Homeland Security Department," Edgar said. Former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart (1974-86) of Colorado, co-chairman of the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century - which first called for the creation of a homeland security department - called Hughes' remarks "a dangerous misunderstanding of the United States Constitution, our history and our political culture." "It's the same kind of thinking that caused Abu Ghraib," Hart said, referring to the recent scandal in which U.S. Army personnel abused Iraqi prisoners. "This thinking applied to this country will cause Abu Ghraibs in the United States." Since taking his position with DHS last November, Hughes appears to have tempered his comments. In May, he told the Associated Press that "we are trying to make ourselves more secure in a way that is palatable and constitutionally right." The White House did not return calls seeking comment. Justin Rood can be reached via [EMAIL PROTECTED] Source: CQ Homeland Security © 2004 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. Any and all copyrights appearing in list messages are maintained by their respective owners.
