FOWLER: President Bush, 45 days after 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which takes away checks on law enforcement and weakens American citizens' rights and freedoms, especially Fourth Amendment rights.

With expansions to the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II, my question to you is, why are my rights being watered down and my citizens' around me?  And what are the specific justifications for these reforms?

BUSH: I appreciate that.

I really don't think your rights are being watered down.  As a matter of fact, I wouldn't support it if I thought that.

Every action being taken against terrorists requires court order, requires scrutiny.

As a matter of fact, the tools now given to the terrorist fighters are the same tools that we've been using against drug dealers and white-collar criminals.

So I really don't think so. I hope you don't think that.  I mean, I -- because I think whoever is the president must guard your liberties, must not erode your rights in America.

The Patriot Act is necessary, for example, because parts of the FBI couldn't talk to each other.  The intelligence-gathering and the law-enforcement arms of the FBI just couldn't share intelligence under the old law.  And that didn't make any sense.

Our law enforcement must have every tool necessary to find and disrupt terrorists at home and abroad before they hurt us again. That's the task of the 21st century.

And so, I don't think the Patriot Act abridges your rights at all.

And I know it's necessary.  I can remember being in upstate New York talking to FBI agents that helped bust a Lackawanna cell up there.  And they told me they could not have performed their duty, the duty we all expect of them, if they did not have the ability to communicate with each other under the Patriot Act.

GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.

KERRY: Former Governor Racicot, as chairman of the Republican Party, said he thought that the Patriot Act has to be changed and fixed.

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, he is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said over his dead body before it gets renewed without being thoroughly rechecked.

A whole bunch of folks in America are concerned about the way the Patriot Act has been applied.  In fact, the inspector general of the Justice Department found that John Ashcroft had twice applied it in ways that were inappropriate.

People's rights have been abused.

I met a man who spent eight months in prison, wasn't even allowed to call his lawyer, wasn't allowed to get -- finally, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois intervened and was able to get him out.

This is in our country, folks, the United States of America.

They've got sneak-and-peek searches that are allowed.  They've got people allowed to go into churches now and political meetings without any showing of potential criminal activity or otherwise.

Now, I voted for the Patriot Act.  Ninety-nine United States senators voted for it.  And the president's been very busy running around the country using what I just described to you as a reason to say I'm wishy-washy, that I'm a flip-flopper.

Now that's not a flip-flop.  I believe in the Patriot Act.  We need the things in it that coordinate the FBI and the CIA.  We need to be stronger on terrorism.

But you know what we also need to do as Americans is never let the terrorists change the Constitution of the United States in a way that disadvantages our rights.

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