THE RIGHT MAN:

On Terror and Spying, Ashcroft Expands Reach (ERIC LICHTBLAU with ADAM LIPTAK, March 15, 2003, NY Times)

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. [...]

Mr. Ashcroft has managed to blunt Congressional criticism through the carefully timed announcements of one major terrorist arrest after another. And he has also emerged as a useful political foil for President Bush.

While the president has visited mosques to deliver a message of respect for Muslims, for instance, it was left to Mr. Ashcroft to orchestrate an unpopular program to register Middle Eastern immigrants. And after Mr. Bush last year announced that he wanted to enlist workers for a terrorist "tips" program, Mr. Ashcroft was dispatched to Capitol Hill to defend the unpopular idea.

"I think Ashcroft understands that he's a lightning rod for this administration," said a Justice Department official close to the attorney general who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He's at the center of so many different policies - terrorism, affirmative action, the death penalty - and he's no stranger to controversy. He's been living it all his life." [...]

Mr. Ashcroft is an unlikely figure to lead the Justice Department's expansion: a politician who sharply attacked big government and privacy intrusions and fought for states' rights is now orchestrating one of the most sweeping federal expansions in law enforcement history.

Two years after he was confirmed by the slimmest margin for an attorney general in 75 years, Mr. Ashcroft has not only survived that bruising fight and a malaise that seemed to follow it, but is drawing comparisons to Robert F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt's attorney general, Francis Biddle, in the muscle and ambition he has brought to the job - for better or worse.

"For Ashcroft, the evils are pervasive," said Nancy Baker, a professor at New Mexico State University who wrote a history of the attorney general's office. "The current attorney general sees himself and the Justice Department as engaged in a systemwide struggle between good and evil, and that therefore requires very aggressive and comprehensive countermeasures." [...]

"John Ashcroft has clearly abused his power," said Laura W. Murphy, director of the A.C.L.U.'s Washington office. "He is supposed to be the chief enforcer of the Constitution for the executive branch, but he has given lip service to constitutional rights and has systematically eroded free speech rights, privacy rights and due process rights, in the context of fighting the war on terrorism."

Mr. Ashcroft is just one of a series of strong managers on the unparalleled Bush team--has any government ever had so many ex-governors and two former presidential chiefs of staff? Had the '00s been like the '90s that wouldn't have mattered too much. But in the wake of 9-11 it's been a huge benefit (consider for a moment William Cohen and Janet Reno running the war on terror). We should, of course, always be vigilant about protecting genuine civil rights, but you'll note that the ACLU is complaining about what are basically manufactured "rights", like privacy rights and due process rights. These are appropriately taken with a grain of salt, particularly in time of war. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 15, 2003 7:24 AM