Ashcroft terrorizes Senate panel

The attorney general says that critics of Bush's controversial security measures "live in a dream world" -- as one committee member slumbers peacefully.

By Jake Tapper

Dec. 7, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- The hearing wasn't even close to over when Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., proclaimed Attorney General John Ashcroft the winner of his Thursday face-off with the skeptics of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Eighty-seven days after the most horrific act of terrorism in U.S. history, Ashcroft came before the committee to answer questions about civil liberties and President Bush's order for a military tribunal for non-U.S. citizens involved in terrorism. But for a chunk of the hearing the Democrats on the committee barely asked him about such matters, McConnell noted. Instead they peppered him with questions about the Justice Department's refusal to let the FBI use a law enforcement firearms database -- the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) -- to see if any of the 1,200 or so individuals detained in the post-9/11 dragnet had ever purchased a gun.

"The best evidence that you've won the public discussion on the tribunal is that this hearing has changed into a discussion about gun control," McConnell gloated.

That Ashcroft "won" the debate still seems a fairly premature call, especially since so many questions about the tribunal -- which Bush slipped into the Federal Register on Friday, Nov. 16 -- remained vague. Like who, exactly, could be tried. Or what the burden of proof would be. Or whether it would be a court only for war crimes or one for "violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws," as the order states. Or whether the death penalty could be applied if a defendant was convicted by a 2-1 vote. Or whether the president or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could overrule an acquittal and single-handedly send a defendant to his death. Trifling little matters like that.

But the fact that throughout the hearing Ashcroft refused to bend when confronted with probing -- often disapproving -- questions is indisputable. So if determined elusiveness was McConnell's yardstick, Ashcroft did indeed take home the gold. Ashcroft kept inquiries about basic details of the tribunal unanswered, insisted that Bush had no need for any congressional sign-off on the controversial measure, and even challenged the patriotism of those who questioned the measures the administration was taking to prevent future terrorism attacks. And though Democrats on the committee -- along with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. -- were clearly displeased, there seemed little that they were willing to do about it, even (or is that especially?) in the face of Ashcroft's searing rhetoric.

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve," Ashcroft said in his opening remarks. "They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil."

Following complaints that he only spent an hour before the committee on Sept. 25 after requesting sweeping counter-terrorism legislation, Ashcroft came loaded for bear Thursday morning at 10 a.m. -- "unsenatorial in arriving early," he privately joked to committee chairman Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt. Ashcroft had clearly had his Wheaties, holding his ground throughout the three and a half hours' worth of doubts and misgivings about the administration's attitude toward civil liberties. "The need for congressional oversight and vigilance is not, as some mistakenly describe it, 'to protect terrorists,'" Leahy said. "It is to protect ourselves and our freedoms."

But in the security vs. civil liberties debate, security was clearly still the easier principle to defend, especially in light of public opinion polls indicating that the American people are willing to give up a lot as long as most of the real infringements don't happen to anyone they know. "We are at war with an enemy who abuses individual rights as it abuses jet airliners -- as weapons with which to kill Americans," Ashcroft countered. Thus, Ashcroft argued, post-9/11 law enforcement measures were no more objectionable than various airplane security measures. He has "one single overarching objective," he intoned. "To save innocent lives from further acts of terrorism."

Those with conflicting concerns did not share, therefore, his one single overarching concern. Those who thought Sept. 11 was "a fluke," who think we need "to do nothing differently," are "liv[ing] in a dream world," Ashcroft said -- at a moment, coincidentally, when Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., appeared to be napping.

Next page: "Fanatics who seek ... to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can"