Attorney General John Ashcroft has launched a USA Patriot Act road show to counter the growing criticism that the sweeping law, passed just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, went too far in sacrificing civil liberties. He reportedly plans to take his message to more than a dozen cities, focusing on some key battleground states for the 2004 presidential election.
Ashcroft fails to understand that any defense coming from him smacks of empty rhetoric, not reassurance. More than 150 communities, as well as three states, have passed resolutions raising concerns about the Patriot Act, largely due to Ashcroft's refusal to be accountable to Congress or the public over its implementation. If Ashcroft wants to reassure Americans the Justice Department is using its new authority with restraint, he will have to be far more forthcoming and less imperious with the public than he has been with Congress.
Strong congressional oversight can help to ensure that the broad powers of surveillance and wiretapping granted law enforcement under the Patriot Act are not abused, but that is precisely what Ashcroft has resisted. In his dealings with Congress, Ashcroft has routinely ignored questions, or had the department answer them so vaguely as to be nonanswers.
Ashcroft's tactics have infuriated Democrats and Republicans alike. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., once even threatened to get a subpoena to pry information from the department. And when Ashcroft appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2002, an exasperated Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., asked, "How do we communicate with you, and are you really too busy to respond?"
Ashcroft's road show is less about explication than damage control. Last month, the House passed an amendment sponsored by C.L. "Butch" Otter, R-Idaho, that would repeal the "sneak and peek" search provisions of the Patriot Act. Ashcroft is nervous over this and withering congressional support for extending the Patriot Act powers beyond 2005, when some of the law's provisions are set to expire. So he is out on the campaign trail, talking to law enforcement groups and conservative think tanks - hand-picked audiences only - with another fear-mongering message.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Ashcroft browbeat a jittery Congress into passing the Patriot Act by warning that any questions about civil liberties would be "aiding the terrorists." Now he is out stumping with a similar warning. To anyone who dares even to question some of the law's excesses, Ashcroft says: "To abandon these tools would senselessly imperil American lives and American liberty."
What hypocrisy. In Ashcroft's Justice Department, "American liberty" is a hollow phrase. How else to describe the department's stance that the executive branch has the unreviewable authority to confine Americans as enemy combatants, without charge and incommunicado? How else to understand Ashcroft's "no apologies" response to an inspector general's report describing how hundreds of immigrants were rounded up, without any evidence of a terrorism connection, and held for months after Sept. 11? Or his refusal to release the names of those arrested? Or his preventive detention tactics?
Not every provision of the Patriot Act was an overreach by the department. Those parts that allow more updating of surveillance rules and information-sharing among intelligence agencies are probably sound changes in law. But the law has stripped away far too much judicial oversight over federal law enforcement, making databases of personal records accessible without individual suspicion of terrorism. Ashcroft's defense of these powers indicates he wants no checks on his actions.
The one benefit of Ashcroft's road show that it is bringing renewed attention to his abuse of the Patriot Act.
