MR. ASHCROFT, LET'S NOT REPEAT PAST MISTAKES

WHOA! The problem is the premise. We are having one of those circular
arguments about how many civil liberties we can trade away in order to
make ourselves safe from terrorism, without even looking at the
assumption - can we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less
free? There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security.
Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights
are not safe from terrorist attack.

Exactly what do we want to strike out of the US Constitution that we
think would prevent terrorist attacks? Let's see, if civil liberties
had been suspended before Sept. 11, would law enforcement have noticed
Mohamed Atta? Would the FBI have opened an investigation of Zacarias
Massoui, as Minneapolis agents wanted to do?

The CIA had several of the Sept. 11 actors on their lists of suspected
terrorists. Exactly what civil liberty prevented them from doing
anything about it?

In the case of a suspected terrorist, the government already had the
right to search, wiretap, intercept, detain, examine computer and
financial records, and do anything else it needed to do. There's a
special court they go to for subpoenas and warrants. As it happens,
they didn't do it.

Changing the law retroactively is not going to change that. Certainly,
we had a visa system that had more holes than Swiss cheese. What does
that have to do with civil liberties? When we don't give an agency
enough money to do its job, it doesn't get done.

As you may have heard, Immigration and Naturalization has been a bit
overwhelmed in recent years. In fairness to law enforcement, it's hard
to imagine how anyone could have seen this one coming. It's always
easy to point the finger after the fact. It was just a damnable act.

Absolutely nothing in the Constitution would have prevented us from
stopping Sept. 11, so why would we want to change it? I also think
we're arguing from the wrong historical analogies. Yes, during past
wars civil liberties have been abrogated and the courts have even
upheld this. We regret it later, but we don't seem to learn from that.

But the Bush administration's rhetoric aside, we are not at war. War
is when the armed forces of one country attack the armed forces of
another. What we're looking at is more akin to the 19th century
problem with anarchists, the terrorists of their day. And we made some
memorable errors by giving in to hysteria over anarchists.

In the infamous 1886 Haymarket Square affair in Chicago, after a bomb
killed seven policemen, eight labor leaders were rounded up and
"tried," even though there was no evidence against them - four
hanged, one suicide, three sentenced. Historians agree they were all
innocent.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, executed in 1927, were finally
exonerated by the state of Massachusetts in 1977. That outbreak of
hysteria over "foreign anarchists" led to, among other abuses, a
wave of arrests for DWI: "Driving While Italian." And no one was
ever made safer from an anarchist bomb by the execution of innocent
people. We all know other groups, from the Irish to the blacks to the
Chinese, have been targeted for legal abuse over the years - all
betrayals of our laws, values, and the sacrifices of generations.
Let's not do it again.

The counter-case was neatly put by David Blunkett, the British home
secretary: "We can live in a world with airy-fairy civil liberties
and believe the best in everybody - and they will destroy us."
Unless, of course, we destroy ourselves first.

"Fascism" is not a word I throw around lightly, but what do you
think happened in Germany in the 1930s? The US Constitution was
written by men who had just been through a long, incredibly nasty war.
They did not consider the Bill of Rights a frivolous luxury, to be in
force only in times of peace and prosperity, put aside when the going
gets tough. The Founders knew from tough going. They weren't airy fairy guys.

We put away Tim McVeigh and the terrorists who did the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing without damaging the Constitution. If the laws
break into some apartment full of Al Qaeda literature and plans of
airports, absolutely nothing prevents them from hauling in the
suspects and having a nice, cozy, cop-like chat with them. Because
there's evidence. That's what they call "due process."

When there is no evidence, no grounds for suspicion, we do not hold
citizens indefinitely and without legal representation. Foreign
citizens have only limited rights in this country, depending on their
means of entry - different for refugees, permanent residents, etc. So
what's the problem?

Attorney General John Ashcroft has been so busy busting dying
marijuana smokers in California and doctors in Oregon who carry out
their terminal patients' wishes to die in peace, he obviously has no
time to consider the Constitution. But he did swear to uphold it.