On the Road With Ashcroft

Attorney General John Ashcroft marked the two-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11 by launching a national publicity tour to sell Americans on the USA Patriot Act. That he felt the need to do so was itself revealing. The act is, of course, already law, and when it came to a vote just six weeks after the 9/11 attacks only a single senator (Russell Feingold) and sixty-six members of the House voted against it (even though almost no one had had time to read the 342-page bill before voting). But the act has come under increasing grassroots criticism ever since--more than 150 towns, cities and states have enacted ordinances condemning it--and the Justice Department finds itself on the defensive.

Even more telling, however, is the fact that Ashcroft's national tour will not address the public. His speaking engagements are all before closed audiences, primarily law-enforcement officers. The choice to speak to police and exclude the people captures much of the flavor of the Administration's war on terrorism: It has repeatedly sought to maximize police power while minimizing public oversight. But that tactic may be backfiring, as the American people are starting to fight back [see David Sarasohn, page 23].

The Administration has done everything in its power to duck scrutiny of its actions. In the initial weeks after the attacks it arrested hundreds of people in secret, and it has continued to fight to keep their names secret, despite an Inspector General's report in June revealing that virtually all those arrested have been cleared of any connection to terrorism. It held secret trials for all those held on immigration charges and then staved off Supreme Court review of the practice, telling the Court that the trials had been completed and therefore there was no need to find whether the practice was constitutional (one court of appeals had declared it unconstitutional; another had upheld it).

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