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Terror bill gets close scrutiny
©New York Times
© St. Petersburg Times, WASHINGTON -- After the terrorist attacks, there was a bipartisan rush to provide the administration with emergency aid money, new military authority and financial relief for the airlines. But Congress is taking a second look -- and a third and a fourth -- at the administration's antiterrorism proposal. Asked about the strikingly different response, Rep. Dick Armey, the House majority leader and a conservative Republican from Texas, said this week: "This is a tougher area for us to look at than areas that involve money. This is about how we equip our antiespionage, counterterrorism agencies with the tools they want while we still preserve the most fundamental thing, which is the civil liberties of the American people." That concern over civil liberties -- and the desire to keep careful checks on the government -- run deep on Capitol Hill, although they are expressed with the utmost care these days, given the magnitude of the losses and the anger at the terrorists who caused them. Everyone begins their remarks by vowing that law enforcement authorities should be given the tools they need. But there are questions about the balance between civil liberties and national security in the administration's proposal. And those concerns are bipartisan. The result is legislation that Attorney General John Ashcroft asked Congress to pass in a matter of days last week is now the subject of intense negotiations among Democrats, Republicans and the administration. Some provisions apparently will be dropped, others substantially revised. Lawmakers say they still hope to move legislation through the committees next week, but they also say it is critical to first reach a broad consensus. "I'm not going to bring a bill to the floor that's going to be attacked by the left and the right," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "because it's not going to go anywhere." Sen. Arlen Spector, R-Penn., is worried about the administration's proposal to allow the indefinite detention of immigrants if they are deemed to be threats to national security. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., shares those objections. Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, wants to ensure that, if the government gets the new surveillance powers, there are also new remedies against those in the government who release "inappropriate, personal" information. At a hearing this week, he recalled the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Armey voiced a similar concern but reached back to a more recent precedent -- the gathering of FBI files on Republican officials by aides in the Clinton White House. "There are a lot of members that are acutely aware of the fact that the agencies don't always exercise due diligence in the way they handle information," Armey said. "I draw my case by raw FBI files apparently being turned over to political operatives at a moment's notice, and that sticks in a lot of people's craw in terms of the security of who you are in your life and what right the government has to share that information." Rep. Bob Barr, a conservative Republican from Georgia, has been one of the House Judiciary Committee's most vocal critics of the administration's legislation. Barr argues that some provisions in the proposal -- for example, new money laundering statutes to cut off financing to terrorist organizations -- are areas of consensus and could be passed quickly. But others, he says, need careful scrutiny, such as allowing a wider use of material obtained in grand juries. Rep. Maxine Waters, a liberal Democrat from California, declared at the House committee's hearing this week that while many lawmakers had "bent over backward" to rally behind the administration, "we have to draw the line" on civil liberties. Waters said she feared that the definition of terrorism in the administration's bill was too wide. She concluded, "I find myself agreeing with Mr. Barr, and that is very unusual." Rep. Robert Scott, D-Va., a House Judiciary Committee member, was pleased with the decision by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who is the committee chairman, to postpone action on the bill until next week. "The first victory was the idea that we're actually going to deliberate and take some time before we report a bill," Scott said. Some lawmakers say that the indefinite detention of immigrants will not survive in the final legislation. Other provisions are also being substantially rewritten. Grover Norquist, the conservative strategist, whose regular Wednesday meeting of the "center-right coalition" heard from Barr on civil liberties this week, said the process was a good one. "Things are slowed down now to the point where there's an honest, serious discussion about what points are useful and what are not," Norquist said.
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