Governor Romney is a strong supporter of the PATRIOT Act, and the expanded powers given to the government for homeland security purposes. He supports the use of Guantanamo Bay for holding detainees, supports military tribunals, and opposes habeas corpus rights for detainees and civilian trials for terrorists. He has also expressed support for extraordinary rendition.
At a campaign event in 2007, Governor Romney stated that he supported enhanced interrogation techniques in a "ticking time bomb" scenario, but that he was opposed to torture. He praised President Bush for the passage of the PATRIOT Act, for the pursuit of wiretapping calls made by possible terrorists, and for interrogating prisoners.
During the New Hampshire Debate, Governor Romney was asked about previous statements that he believed mosques should be wiretapped if a credible threat existed. He reiterated this stance, but noted a judge's approval would be required. He stated that while he hears people worry about encroachment on civil liberties, he believes that the most important civil liberty that government can provide is to keep it's citizens alive.
At a 2009 policy speech, Governor Romney lamented the possibility that CIA interrogators would be investigated over possible violations. He stated that there were times when other countries helped us out by allowing us to have prisoners interrogated there. Investigations into those actions only weakens trust in the US and may lead to nations refusing these extraordinary renditions in the future.
As part of his 2012 campaign, Governor Romney issued a white paper on foreign policy. In that document, he outlined a vision of the world that had the US under constant assault from all sides, and noted that the military and other tools of the government needed to be adjust to accomodate those threats. He advocated for restructuring the DHS, for focusing on domestic radicalization, and for updating the authorization for the use of force to include new terrorist entities and new countries.
In 2012, Governor Romney stated in a debate that he would have signed the 2012 National Defese Authorization Act. That legislation gave the President the authorization to arrest and indefinitely detain US citizens who are suspected on being allied with al-Qaeda.
Denison, Iowa Campaign Event
During a question and answer session in Denison, Iowa on July 20, 2007 Governor Romney stated that he supported the PATRIOT Act and enhanced interrogation techniques.
I support tough interrogation techniques, enhanced interrogation techniques, in circumstances where there is a ticking time bomb, a ticking bomb. I do not support torture, but I do support enhanced interrogation techniques to learn from terrorists what we need to learn to keep the bombs from going off.
Our president, for all the criticism he receives, has kept America safe these last six years, and he has done it by: One pursuing the Patriot Act, which has given us the intelligence information we needed to find out who the bad guys were and get them out before they got us, and No. 2, when al-Qaida was calling America, he made sure someone here was listening. And No. 3 ... when terrorists were detained, were captured, he made sure we interrogated them.
New Hampshire Debate
On September 5, 2007 Governor Romney participated in the Presidential debate in New Hampshire. He was asked about the PATRIOT Act, wiretapping, and other homeland security items.
GOLER: I want to talk, gentlemen, about presidential power and the war on terror here at home.
GOLER: Governor Romney, I'll start with you. You had said that the government should wiretap some mosques to keep tabs on Islamic extremists. Would you do this even without a judge's approval, sir?
ROMNEY: No, of course not. But use the law to follow people who are teaching doctrines of terror and hate, and make sure that if they're doing that in a mosque, in a school, in a playground, wherever it's being done, we know what's going on.
There's no question but that we're under threat from people who want to attack our country in this global effort. And I know there's a lot of attention paid to, if you will, trying to respond to what would happen if we were attacked. And that's appropriate.
We need to have first response up to the best standards. But our focus has to be on preventing an attack. And preventing attack means good intelligence work.
It means that people who are coming to this country terrorizing or talking about terror in such a way that it could lead to the violent death of Americans, we need to know about that, track them, follow them, and make sure that in every way we can, we know what they're doing and where they're doing it.
ROMNEY: And if it means we have to go into a mosque to wiretap or a church, then that's exactly where we're going to go. Because we're going to do whatever it takes to protect the American people.
And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second. We have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don't forget, the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that's what we're going to have to do.
Foreign Policy Initiative Interview
On September 21, 2009 Governor Romney was interviewed by the foreign policy initiative concerning numerous issues. He spoke briefly about policies of rendition, enhanced interrogation, and their relation to foreign policy. After discussing the four major strategies of government to include a US model, a Russian model, a Chinese model, and a jihadist model, Governor Romney states the following:
Of the four major strategies, only ours includes freedom. And that's why it's been so essential for America over this last half a century to be so strong in the defense of freedom, and the promotion of freedom, and standing with our friends regardless of the consequences. ... I know a lot of people, like myself, are very troubled that we would even consider having a Justice Department Investigation into the CIAs interrogation techniques. These people who got answers that were needed to protect the American people and save American lives are heroes in my view and they should not be defendants. That's why you have seven former heads of the CIA saying "Don't pursue that".
One of the reasons that you don't pursue that, by the way, goes back to my original point. Which is that the interrogations in some cases where held in places where our friends, our closest friends, were convinced by us saying "We need your help, we need to interrogate some people, will you help us out? Will you locate these sites in your country?" Our friends know that if this investigation proceeds, they're gonna be exposed. There are gonna be stories in their newspapers and their gonna suffer political heat. Our friends around the world are asking themselves, "Is it better to be a friend of the United States or a foe?" That has dramatic implications for the future of freedom, democracy, human rights, and free enterprise.
CBS Foreign Policy Debate
In November of 2011, Governor Romney participated in the CBS foreign policy debate. He was asked about his support for assasinating US citizens who have aligned themselves with al-Qaida. He agrees that the President has the authority to do that.
Scott Pelley: And that is time. Thank you, sir. Governor Romney. Governor Romney, recently President Obama ordered the death of an American citizen who was suspected of terrorist activity overseas. Is it appropriate for the American president on the president's say-so alone to order the death of an American citizen suspected of terrorism?
Mitt Romney: Absolutely. In this case, this is an individual who had aligned himself with a-- with a group that had declared war on the United States of America. And-- and if there's someone that's gonna-- join with a group like Al-Qaeda that declares war on America and we're in a-- in a-- a war with that entity, then of course anyone who was bearing arms for that entity is fair game for the United States of America. Let me go back-- let me go back and just-- and just talk for a moment about the issue that the issue that a number of people have spoken about which is their definition of how their foreign policy might be different than this president.
My foreign policy's pretty straightforward. I would be guided by an overwhelming conviction that this century must be an American century where America has the strongest values, the strongest economy, and the strongest military. An American century means the century where America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world.
We have a president right now who thinks America's just another nation. America is an exceptional nation. We have a president who thinks that the way to conduct foreign policy is through his personal affects on other people. I'm-- I believe the way to conduct foreign policy is with American strength. Everything I do will make America stronger. And I will stand and use whatever means necessary within the law to make sure that we protect America's citizens and Americans' rights.
CNN National Security Debate
On November 22, 2011 Governor Romney participated in the national security debate on CNN. He spoke about the difference between acts of war and crimes and the need to pursue measures outside of criminal law for those who participate in activities against the US.
BLITZER: I'm going to give everyone a chance to respond, but let me get this one question from CNN Politics, that came to cnnpolitics.com, and then we'll bring in the rest of you.
This was the question: "TSA pat-downs: violation of civil liberty or a necessity to ensure national security?"
Governor Romney?
ROMNEY: Well, we can do a lot better than the TSA system. It's going to get get better over time. We can use better technology. We can also identify people who are lower risk and allow them to go through the process more quickly than the current process.
But let's come back to the issue that seems to be so confusing here.
And that is Congressman Paul talked about crime. Newt Gingrich was right. There are different categories here. There's crime and there are rights that are afforded to American citizens under our Constitution and those that are accused of crime. Then there's war. And the tool of war being used today in America and around the world is terror. There's a different body of law that relates to war.
And for those that understand the difference between the two, they recognize that we need tools when war is waged domestically to ensure that, as president of the United States, you can fulfill your first responsibility, which is to protect the life, liberty and property of American citizens and defend them from foes domestic and foreign.
And that means, yes, we'll use the Constitution and criminal law for those people who commit crimes, but those who commit war and attack the United States and pursue treason of various kinds, we will use instead a very different form of law, which is the law afforded to those who are fighting America.
that we need tools when war is waged domestically to ensure that as president of the United States you can fulfill your first responsibility which is to protect the life, liberty and property of American citizens and defend them from foes domestic and foreign. That means yes we'll use the constitution and criminal law for those people who commit crimes but those who commit war and attack the United States and pursue treason of various kinds we will use instead a very different form of law which is the law afforded to those who are fighting America.
Foreign Policy Paper
In November of 2011, Governor Romney's presidential campaign released a white paper focusing on foreign policy. Part of that paper discussed homeland security aspects.
Restructure Our Diplomatic Apparatus
America’s diplomatic and foreign assistance agencies are the instruments by which the United States projects its soft power to advance our interests and values. Today we are underutilizing our soft power. In significant part, this is due to the antiquated organizational structure of our Department of State, which divides diplomatic authority country-by-country and then across various crisscrossing functional and regional bureaus. Our foreign-assistance capabilities are then further spread out across various agencies, from United States Agency for International Development to the Departments of Commerce and the Treasury. This balkanized scheme scrambles lines of authority, blurs priorities, and creates accountability gaps through which failures to unpunished and successes go unrecognized. The disadvantages of the current structure dissipate America’s soft power. President Obama has attempted to overcome these difficulties by appointing presidential “czars” or “special envoys” to address various regional problems, but these ad hoc arrangements lack the legislatively endowed directive and budgetary power to be effective. Mitt Romney recognizes that what we need instead is a governmental structure that allows for regional strategic planning focused on our formidable soft power resources. He will move to reform all of our diplomatic and assistance agencies to foster joint regional strategic planning, clear lines of authority, and personal accountability for results. Romney will work with Congress and relevant Executive branch agencies to begin a process of reorganization toward unified budgetary and directive authority under one official responsible for all diplomatic and assistance programs within a particular region. These will be designed to mirror the regional military combatant commands. This would improve coordination between our military and diplomatic agencies so that their missions reinforce each other, instead of working at cross purposes as is currently the case.
Empower Our Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Agencies
In the same way we must ensure that our soft power agencies are properly structured to allow them to carry out their duties in an effective and strategic manner, we must also make sure that those agencies charged with combating terrorism have the clearest mandate to keep America safe. As president, Mitt Romney will empower all relevant military, intelligence, and homeland security agencies with the appropriate legal authority and policy guidance to dismantle terrorist groups and prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland and on targets abroad. The saying that we always fight the last war is familiar, but familiarity should not lead us to miss that maxim’s sober warning. Our homeland-security professionals must be able to focus on the threats to come, not simply the threats that came before.
Focus on Cybersecurity: In the first 100 days of his administration, Romney will order full interagency reviews to develop and deliver to his desk a unified strategy to bolster America’s cyber- security. Attacks on our digital infrastructure can take many forms. We have been and will continue to be subject to militarized cyber-attacks, cyber-terrorism, cyber-espionage, and private-sector theft of intellectual property. A cyber-attack that debilitates or compromises any of our vital computer systems — from the electric grid, to nuclear plant cooling systems, to our intelligence databases — could be devastating, and the perpetrators could be extremely difficult to trace, apprehend, and punish. President Obama has taken some positive steps to confront this problem, but he has not yet updated our national cyber-security strategy, promulgated in 2003, an eternity ago in the rapidly evolving digital world. And his efforts so far have not adequately engaged our defense and intelligence resources. The multi-faceted threat we face in cyberspace requires a much more coordinated effort by the Department of Defense, the intelligence agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Departments of Commerce and the Treasury to secure America. This effort must prevent duplication, maximize information sharing, and bind together the disparate competencies of these agencies.
Focus on Domestic Radicalization: Rising alongside cyber-attacks as an emerging threat to the homeland is the radicalization of U.S. citizens and residents leading to “homegrown” Islamist terrorism. The number of terror plots hatched by domestic Islamist terrorists has spiked in recent years as our terrorist adversaries abroad have been less successful in trying to infiltrate us from outside and focused more on radicalizing and recruiting American citizens and residents to become operatives. The Fort Hood shootings, carried out by a member of our armed forces, and the attempted Times Square bombing, planned by a naturalized U.S. citizen, are only the most well- known of these plots.
Mitt Romney will make countering this mounting danger a top priority. He will charge our federal agencies not only with designing better frameworks to share intelligence “horizontally” among themselves, but also with redoubling their efforts to work with state and local authorities to share intelligence “vertically.” Our counterterrorism professionals will need to continue to develop “fusion centers” and other innovative systems to collect and systematically analyze information about domestic activities. They will need the capacity, consistent with U.S. law, to collect and unflinchingly analyze communications between terrorist networks abroad and people within our borders. They must bolster partnerships with Muslim-American communities, build trust in the spirit of “community policing,” work with community leaders to identify threats and suspicious activity, develop our database of knowledge about the hallmarks of radicalization and recruitment, and train local and state authorities to understand those hallmarks and act on them at the earliest appropriate moment. Enhancing our ability to fight this side of the terror threat will inevitably raise questions about the protection of privacy and civil liberties. Romney will require that any counterterrorism strategy must contain measures to balance the increased capabilities of our analytic technologies against legitimate concerns about the preservation of our constitutional rights.
Clarify Counterterrorism Legislative Mandates
To ensure that our military and counterterrorism professionals have the authority they need to keep America safe from asymmetric threats, Mitt Romney will take steps to clarify the legislative authorities underlying our fight against terror.
Update the AUMF: The chief source of statutory authority for the war on terrorism — the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress shortly after the attack of September 11, 2001 — is only a few sentences long, its language is quite general, and it has not been updated since its enactment. While the statute clearly authorizes force against al Qaeda and the Taliban, it does not directly address what other groups might also be covered. Recent administrations have interpreted the AUMF expansively to include those who substantially support forces associated with al Qaeda and the Taliban, but as more time passes, the connections between those two groups and the terror threats we face will become more and more attenuated. These new terror groups — like al-Shabaab in Somalia — may share al Qaeda’s ideological objectives but lack close operational ties with the larger network. This leaves our counterterror forces to operate in a legal limbo, possibly hamstringing them when they should enjoy the full freedom of action and deserve the full protection of law. Romney will work with Congress to clarify this portion of the AUMF, amending it to authorize the use of force against any foreign terrorist entity that is waging war against the United States.
Unify Oversight of DHS: Mitt Romney will also work with Congress to unify the over 108 authorizing committees and subcommittees in Congress that oversee the Department of Homeland Security. Whereas other agencies answer to only one authorizing committee in each house of Congress, since its formation the Department of Homeland Security has had to answer to a panoply of committees. This is a legacy of the Department’s swift formation from a number of disparate offices spread over numerous agencies. It creates many problems. The obligation to report to and testify before such a large number of committees dominates the working hours of Department officials. Their time would be far better spent focused on operational tasks that make America safer. The committees also create a rash of inconsistent mandates and priorities for the Department, confusing its mission. Simply put, there are far too many cooks in the congressional kitchen. Mitt Romney would strengthen the Department and allow its professionals to carry out their work more effectively by seeking to form only one authorizing committee in each house responsible for the Department’s operations. Though it is difficult to convince members of Congress to relinquish oversight power when national security is at stake, Romney will work closely with Congress to ensure that this important reform is realized.
South Carolina Debate
In January of 2012, Governor Romney participated in the GOP debate in South Carolina. He was asked if he would have signed the 2012 national defense authorization act (NDAA). The legislation was signed by President Obama on Dec 31, 2011 and gave him the right to arrest and indefinitely detain US citizens named as enemy combatants on US soil. He states that he would indeed have signed the legislation.
EVANS: Governor Romney, when President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, he enacted a provision allowing him to indefinitely detain American citizens in U.S. military custody, many, including Congressman Paul, have called it unconstitutional. At the same time the bill did provide money to continue funding U.S. troops. Governor Romney, as president, would you have signed the National Defense Act as written?
ROMNEY: Yes, I would have. And I do believe that it is appropriate to have in our nation the capacity to detain people who are threats to this country, who are members of al Qaeda. Look, you have every right in this country to protest and to express your views on a wide range of issues but you don’t have a right to join a group that is killed Americans, and has declared war against America. That’s treason. In this country we have a right to take those people and put them in jail. And I recognize, I recognize that in a setting where they are enemy combatants and on our own soil, that could possibly be abused. There are a lot of things I think this president does wrong, lots of them, but I don’t think he is going to abuse this power and I that if I were president I would not abuse this power. And I can also tell you that in my view you have to choose people who you believe have sufficient character not to abuse the power of the presidency and to make sure that we do not violate our constitutional principles. But let me tell you, people who join al Qqaeda are not entitled to rights of due process under our normal legal code. They are entitled instead to be treated as enemy combatants
