The whiff of mortality permeated the room -- and not just because of a sad cameo by feeble former Dixiecrat Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., 99 years young on Wednesday. The hearing was held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Leahy pointed out, because the Hart Building was still closed due to anthrax contamination. But that didn't stop Ashcroft, who made his case for the suspension of some civil liberties, from further scaring the bejesus out of the room.
"My day begins with a review of the threats to Americans and American interests that were received in the previous 24 hours," he said. "If ever there were proof of the existence of evil in the world, it is in the pages of these reports. They are a chilling daily chronicle of hatred of America by fanatics who seek to extinguish freedom, enslave women, corrupt education and to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can."
Many of these fanatics are still in our communities, he said, "plotting, planning and waiting to kill again. They enjoy the benefits of our free society even as they commit themselves to our destruction. They exploit our openness -- not randomly or haphazardly -- but by deliberate, premeditated design."
Some senators had complained that the executive branch wasn't adequately working with the legislative branch. "There's been no consultation," Leahy complained to the New York Times. "These things just get announced: 'George Washington got a British spy once by doing this, so thank goodness we've got recent precedents.'"
But on this, Ashcroft didn't budge. "In some areas, I cannot and will not consult you," he said, beginning a Dr. Seussian cadence. He "cannot and will not divulge the contents, the context, or even the existence of advice" he gives to the president, and "cannot and will not divulge information ... that will damage the national security of the United States."
On this he was clear. On this and pretty much everything else he was backed by most of the committee Republicans, almost all of whom prefaced their remarks with plaudits for the magnificent job their former colleague was doing. In a thinly veiled barb aimed at Leahy, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the committee's ranking Republican, said "we could all check our egos ... Do any of the members of this committee really believe that in this time of crisis the American people -- those who live outside the Capital Beltway -- really care whether the president, the secretary of state, or the attorney general took the time to pick up the telephone and call us prior to implementing these emergency procedures?"
Ashcroft provided the committee with 100 pages excerpted and translated from an al-Qaida training manual used as evidence in the trial of the 1998 embassy bombers. "In this manual, al-Qaida terrorists are told how to use America's freedom as a weapon against us," Ashcroft said. They use our free press and our fair judicial process, he said.
In an apparent attempt to quell anecdotal complaints from human-rights groups about prisoner mistreatment, Ashcroft revealed that in the manual "imprisoned terrorists are instructed to concoct stories of torture and mistreatment at the hands of our officials." In an apparent defense of his recent decision to monitor the lawyer-client phone conversations of a select list of suspected terrorists, Ashcroft noted that in the manual, "they are directed to take advantage of any contact with the outside world to 'communicate with brothers outside prison and exchange information that may be helpful to them in their work.'"
Right now, 16 prisoners out of a total of 158,000 in the federal prison system are subject to such monitoring, the attorney general said. "It's very few," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said supportively.
Next page: "These nitpickers need to find another nit to pick"