We are, as a nation, about to experience the changing of two guards. First, Ira Glasser, having given a year's notice, is stepping down after nearly a quarter-century as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, "Liberty's Law Firm" as they like to call it. Second, Louis Freeh is leaving the FBI after serving eight years of a ten-year term as director.

There is, of course, a built-in tension between an organization dedicated to protecting and expanding rights, like the ACLU, and an institution like the FBI, too often bent on invading them. Thus when Director Freeh began agitating for the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, providing for the placement of surveillance-friendly equipment in all new telephones, it was Glasser who pointed out that it was like requiring builders to put microphones in buildings to make it easier for the cops to listen in.

Despite occasional differences over this and that, we will miss Ira's energetic and articulate defense of free-speech values, his "First Amendment absolutism," his stewardship of an organization dedicated to eternal verities in a postmodernist culture.

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