On Terror and Spying, Ashcroft Expands Reach

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

On Terror and Spying, Ashcroft Expands Reach

March 15, 2003 


By ERIC LICHTBLAU with ADAM LIPTAK




 

WASHINGTON, March 14 - In the bureaucratic reshuffling over
domestic security, Attorney General John Ashcroft came out
a winner. Mr. Ashcroft grabbed control of the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and with it an issue dear to
his conservative agenda, guns. And he shucked
responsibility for two areas of law enforcement that had
brought ridicule to the Justice Department, the color-coded
threat alert system and immigration.

In recent months, Mr. Ashcroft, once regarded as a
peripheral, even clumsy, player in the Bush administration,
has not only honed his skills as a bureaucratic infighter,
he has also patched his tenuous relations with President
Bush, who told Mr. Ashcroft last month that he was doing "a
fabulous job." 

With the addition of nearly 5,000 law enforcement officials
from the firearms bureau, Mr. Ashcroft has again expanded
the policing authority of the Justice Department, a
hallmark of his tenure as attorney general. And with the
fight against terrorism as his soapbox, he has pushed the
powers of federal law enforcement in directions few thought
possible before the Sept. 11 attacks. His reach extends not
only to counterterrorism, but also to issues like the death
penalty and gun policy, which he attacks with equal
aggressiveness. Despite a years-long effort as a senator
from Missouri to shrink government, Mr. Ashcroft has
significantly broadened the reach of the attorney general,
legal scholars and law enforcement officials agree.

All of which has left his many critics increasingly
worried. 

Even some of his conservative peers complain that Mr.
Ashcroft may have grown too powerful. To his critics, Mr.
Ashcroft is a Big Brother figure: an attorney general whose
expanding scope has allowed the Justice Department to use
wiretaps, backroom decisions, and an expanded street
presence to spy on ordinary Americans, read their e-mail
messages, or monitor their library checkouts, all in the
name of fighting terrorism. And the department's
consideration of proposals that could give it still
greater, secret counterterrorism authority has provoked a
fresh round of concerns.

The former Republican congressman Dick Armey, on his way
out the door last year as House majority leader, said he
thought Mr. Ashcroft and the Justice Department were "out
of control." 
And Representative Jose E. Serrano, Democrat of New York,
told Mr. Ashcroft at a hearing last week: "I fear some
officials are so intent on fighting against terror that
they forget what we are fighting for. People across the
spectrum fear for our civil liberties."
 
<snip>

There have been exceptions, however. One federal judge,
ruling last year that the Justice Department should have to
make public the names of detainees in its terrorism
investigations, said that secret arrests "are a concept
odious to a democratic society."

This week saw another round of mixed results for the
department in its court fights. In Washington, a federal
appellate court ruled that prisoners from the Afghanistan
war held in Guantánamo Bay may not challenge their
detentions in the courts, but in a separate case heard in
New York, a federal judge ruled that Jose Padilla, the
suspect in the "dirty bomber" case, has the right to meet
with a lawyer to challenge his status as an enemy
combatant. 

With the Supreme Court ultimately likely to rule on the use
of secret hearings and other counterterrorism tactics, Mr.
Ashcroft may be walking a fine line between protecting the
public and compromising its rights, legal and political
observers said. 

"You don't want the United States to turn into some sort of
police state," said John C. Danforth, the former Missouri
senator who has known Mr. Ashcroft for years, "but the
first duty of government is to protect its citizens. It's
an extremely difficult job that he has."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/15/politics/15ASHC.html?ex=1048731093&ei=1&en
=fd87cbc2a41c1c4d

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