Wait Until Dark
New York Times
November 24, 2001
EXCERPT from article:
By FRANK RICH
"Even as we track down a heinous enemy who operates out of a cave, we are
getting ready to show the world that the American legal system must retreat
to a cave to fight back. Our government refuses to identify its many
detainees, or explain why they are held, or even give an accurate count. The
next stop on the assembly line for these suspects could be a military tribunal,
which, as decreed by President Bush in an executive order, is another secret
proceeding in which neither the verdicts, evidence nor punishments ever have
to be revealed to the public. Thus could those currently in captivity move
from interment to execution without anyone ever learning why or where they
disappeared. If this sounds like old-fashioned American justice, it is — albeit
of such Americas as Cuba and Chile.
If the administration were really proud of how it's grabbing "emergency"
powers that skirt the law, it wouldn't do so in the dead of night. It wasn't
enough for Congress to enhance Mr. Ashcroft's antiterrorist legal arsenal
legitimately by passing the U.S.A.-Patriot Act before anyone could read it;
now he rewrites more rules without consulting senators or congressmen of
either party at all. He abridged by decree the Freedom of Information Act,
an essential check on government malfeasance in peace and war alike, and
discreetly slipped his new directive allowing eavesdropping on conversations
between some lawyers and clients into the Federal Register. He has also
refused repeated requests to explain himself before Congressional
committees, finally relenting to a nominal appearance in December.
At one House briefing, according to Time magazine, he told congressmen they could call an 800 number if they had any questions about what Justice is up to.
This kind of high-handedness and secrecy has been a hallmark of the
administration beginning Jan. 20, not Sept. 11. The Cheney energy task
force faced a lawsuit from the General Accounting Office rather than reveal
its dealings with Bush-Cheney campaign contributors like those at the now
imploding Enron Corporation. The president's commission on Social Security
reform also bent the law to meet in secret. But since the war began, the
administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to restrict news coverage
of not only its own activities but also Osama bin Laden's. A Bush executive
order diminishing access to presidential papers could restrict a future David
McCullough or Michael Beschloss from reconstructing presidential histories.
To consolidate his own power, Mr. Ashcroft even seized authority from
Mary Jo White, the battle-proven U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted
both the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists and the bin Laden accomplices
in the 1998 African embassy bombings. He has similarly shunted aside state
and local law-enforcement officials by keeping them in the dark before
issuing his vague warnings of imminent terrorist attacks.
Thanks to a journalist, Sara Rimer of The Times, we now know that one of
the attorney general's secret detainees was in fact a local official: Dr. Irshad
Shaikh, a Johns Hopkins- educated legal immigrant who serves as the city
health commissioner of Chester, Pa. Dr. Shaikh's door was broken down by
federal agents who suspected he might be an anthrax terrorist. It's all too
easy to see why Mr. Ashcroft wants to hide embarrassing fiascoes like this.
But it's also likely that the attorney general wants to hide the arrests he is not
making along with the errant ones that he is.
As far as anthrax terrorism goes, evidence like the lethal letter to Senator
Patrick Leahy increasingly suggests that the culprit is not a Muslim or Israeli
immigrant but, as Mr. Ashcroft's fellow cabinet member Tommy Thompson
put it this week, "a disgruntled American" piggybacking on Islamic terrorism.
The obvious suspects include those on the Timothy McVeighesque fringes of
the Second Amendment cult, who proudly trade in germ war "cookbooks" at
gun shows, and those in the anti-abortion terrorist movement, who have a
history of wielding anthrax scares as well as explosives in pursuit of their
cause.
But is Mr. Ashcroft pulling in, say, any of America's own Talibans, like the
Army of God, with his dragnet? It seems unlikely, given that these
organizations, which are big on advertising their own self-martyrdom, haven't
reported any such detentions. A cynic might think that domestic extremists
who share the attorney general's antipathy to abortion and gun control —
and are opposed to the likes of Mr. Leahy and Tom Daschle — receive a
free pass denied to suspicious-looking immigrants. Yet that cynicism could
be dispelled in a second if Mr. Ashcroft trusted the public, and for that
matter his former colleagues in Congress, to carry out his brand of law
enforcement in daylight.
While Mr. Ashcroft may abhor such openness because he's pursuing a
political agenda of his own, it's also possible that less malevolently, he's just
trying to hide his failure at getting the job done. There's nothing in the man's
history as either a governor or senator to suggest that he's the Rudy Giuliani
his assignment calls for, and despite his strong-arm policing since Sept. 11,
he has no visible results. His latest scheme — to spend 30 days interviewing
5,000 more immigrants who, he says, fit "a set of generic parameters" —
inspires so little confidence that some local police chiefs are in open revolt
against it.
Mr. Ashcroft likens himself to Robert Kennedy, who also at times warped
constitutional protections in ravenous pursuit of criminality. But among the
many differences between the men is the fact that Kennedy actually busted
criminals. If another 30 days and 5,000 interviews pass with no
breakthroughs, who knows what grandiose new plot Mr. Ashcroft will
devise, and at what civic price, to make himself look like Dick Tracy. At a
time when most Americans feel confident that the war on terrorism is going
as well, if not better, than could be expected, his every ineffectual and
extralegal move waves an anomalous but still chilling white flag of defeat.
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