Soaring with the Attorney General
Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com
07.23.03 - The Almighty, Himself, could not have set a better theatre piece. It was still in the cool of the morning, the beginning of a hot, cloudless summer day, with a cool salt air breeze and the deep blue summer skies that are one of the most fiercely held secrets of Pacific Northwesterners. The sun was rising at my back over Pier 36 of the Port of Seattle, the U.S. Coast Guard's ISC-Seattle facility. Before me, Elliott Bay, Seattle's harbor, and the snow- capped Olympic Mountains on the other side of the water.
It was a glorious stage for a little outdoor theatre, requiring only a few additional props: a podium and three large flags (they had to replace the original American flag; it was too small). A couple dozen folding chairs. And on the folding chairs, the final props: us.
Enter, stage left, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Ashcroft has been on the West Coast this week visiting the "troops," in this case a joint federal, state, and local anti-terrorism task force of the type now in over 30 U.S. cities. While he was here, as is usual for these multi- purpose stops, Ashcroft also spoke to Coast Guard servicepeople in the base's gym, and took a boat ride with a Coast Guard rear admiral to tour Seattle Harbor's anti-terrorism safeguards (digital image of Attorney General, on foredeck with wind-blown hair, available upon request.) And, of course, Ashcroft paused for nine minutes to recite a boilerplate speech to local media, and then took six questions. Exit stage left.
Ashcroft, in his stump speech, stared off into the distance, playing to the cameras, never making eye contact with his audience. We weren't there, really. In nine minutes, I counted 25 references to "terror" or "terrorist," 17 mentions of "America" or "Americans." It was a commercial, marketing, propaganda, meant to convey two somewhat contradictory emotional messages: "You should be afraid," and "We're protecting you."
At least he never asked us to pray. Or sing.
For those 280 million of us hicks living outside the Beltway, this is as close as we ever come to a face-to-face encounter with the powerful figures who run our country. Ashcroft made no public appearances in his overnight visit here, but about 15 of us media types, after passing through a military checkpoint, got the opportunity to record and pass on what was essentially a stump speech. The subsequent questions ranged from vacuous ("Sir, if Saddam Hussein and his sons were actually killed today, will that reduce the threat of terrorist attack in the United States?") to good but unanswered ("Will local jurisdictions receive enough federal funding to help pay for the enormous costs of the new security measures we're now required to implement?") Ashcroft's answers said as little as his stump speech, and stuck as closely to his emotional power points. We were the props that gave his message legitimacy.
I got a question in, too. I asked Ashcroft whether his department was preparing to submit to Congress legislation that would update and expand 2001's PATRIOT Act, and if so, when?
To my surprise, he actually gave an answer, sort of: that "we" were "discussing" ways to gain such additional powers, so that law enforcement could have additional "tools" for their "tool kits" in fighting terrorism -- for example, the subpoena powers already used in the war on drugs.
Of course, Ashcroft made no mention of a timeline, or of protecting civil liberties or respecting the Constitution while fighting those unseen yet all- powerful terrorists. There was no mention of provisions, such as the ones in a draft version of a PATRIOT II bill leaked to the public in January, that go far beyond any existing measures by, for example, empowering the government to strip suspected terrorists' citizenship. Ashcroft also said nothing of the anti-terror provisions already being slipped as riders onto unrelated bills, or the sweeping changes he's enacted via regulation, with no Congressional approval at all.
And that was it. The chairs were folded, the flags put away, the seals peeled off the podium. Nobody had asked about the legal procedures or prison conditions now being used to terrorize non-citizens; nobody asked, even once, about civil liberties, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. Nobody wondered if we were even safer today than we were two years ago. Nobody questioned the usefulness of a law enforcement strategy built on snitching. With over two million people in the nation's prisons, there were no non- terrorism questions at all, and nobody even thought to ask what the nation's chief law enforcement officer was doing strutting around on a military facility and taking boat rides with an admiral. (Answer: Bush already used the flight suit gimmick.)
I couldn't help but think, on this glorious outdoor stage, of the men a few blocks away who weren't enjoying the day, who might have had less polite questions for Ashcroft. They hail from around the world, speak dozens of languages, and languish in an INS detention facility a few blocks east of where we sat. Most of those detainees have been accused of no crime; many face deportation and then more prison and possible torture or death for having been labeled extremists by Ashcroft's agencies. When Ashcroft smugly referenced a handful of marginal "successful" prosecutions for terrorism, and went on to cite 18,000 post-9/11 subpoenas and search warrants (!), those detainees represent the other fish caught in his net. They were out of sight, out of hearing. On this day, as on most, nobody spoke for them, or even of them.
So much for the watchdog media, the only possible hint of external challenge in the carefully controlled world of powerful figures like Ashcroft. Politicians, and the staff who arrange their lives, have learned how to handle the media. And the public. There is little, if any, possibility that someone like Ashcroft can be held accountable by the public for his assault on this country's freedoms. After four years, we get one collective yes-or-no vote on his boss. (Our state will almost surely vote "no"; it may or may not matter.) That's our version of democracy.
Ashcroft, his handlers and security detail, the Coast Guard enlistees who watched from a neighboring pier, and we reporters never saw or heard the protesters outside the gates of the base. By the time we left, they, too, had gone.
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