Issues of liberty, economics surface in security discussion

By Lawrence M. O'Rourke-- Washington Bureau
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002

WASHINGTON – The Sept. 11 terrorist strike against the United States forced the federal government to take a fresh, frenzied – and costly – look at security on the ground and in the air.

As the economy slipped, the attack generated demands for new spending, shriveling a blossoming federal surplus.

Since Sept. 11, the attack has seemed to pop up in every House and Senate debate. Whether it's Amtrak or the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, education or corporate corruption, a connection to terrorism is invoked.

White House officials and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers invoke Sept. 11 in the most critical debate in Washington: whether the United States should use force to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has had to address links between the war in Afghanistan and the most potentially dangerous of foreign conflicts: the bloody clash between Israel and Palestinians.

The Sept. 11 strike altered the way Americans look at the role of government, too.

"Americans were emotionally attacked on their own soil for the first time and they suddenly became aware how vulnerable they were," said political scientist Thomas Baldino at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. "So they turned to government for protection."

That protection has been expensive and shows no sign of slacking off.

Quickly after the attack, Congress authorized $40 billion to rebuild New York and beef up national intelligence and security. Then it gave the Pentagon $38 billion to rout the Taliban from Afghanistan. The estimated total costs so far of Sept. 11 to the federal treasury run as high as $180 billion.

"It has allowed members of Congress to invent a whole new category of federal spending," said Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan watchdog. "You can say that almost anything is connected to the war against terrorism. Fiscal discipline has been lost."

A year after hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, conflict continues over how the federal government should be restructured to prevent another assault on America – and at what cost to civil liberties.

The White House and congressional leaders hope to cut a deal sometime soon need to check before rundate to see if this happens in August, as planned to create a massive new federal Department of Homeland Security. But concerns remain over whether it will help the executive branch prevent terrorist attacks or be little more than a bureaucratic monstrosity.

Many on Capitol Hill question the value of an anti-terrorist agency that excludes the FBI, the CIA and defense intelligence units.

Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike also fear that the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft has eroded civil liberties in the name of hunting terrorists. But Congress nonetheless approved Bush's request for wider wiretapping authority and tougher penalties for terrorism.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has detained at its Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters captured in Afghanistan. These prisoners have been kept incommunicado for months while being questioned about ongoing terrorist operations.

In addition, according to the Justice Department, more than 1,200 people arrested in the United States have been detained since Sept. 11 on suspicion they violated immigration laws or aided the enemy in some manner, or as material witnesses.

The government largely has refused to identify the detainees, asserting that secrecy has disrupted ongoing terrorist operations.

The government's use of secrecy came into question, however, when U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruled in early August that the identities of detainees had to be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. "Secret arrests are a concept odious to democratic society," the judge wrote.

Federal judges have gone in different directions in other cases, and many Sept. 11 legal issues appear headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

One Bush proposal ran into particularly stiff challenges: having utility meter readers and mail deliverers report anything suspicious observed in private homes.

Facing aggressive opposition from conservative and libertarian Republicans, the Justice Department scaled back the so-called TIPS plan.

"There is no place in America for either an internal passport or for utility workers and cable technicians to become government-sanctioned peeping Toms," said Rachel King, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Sept. 11 attack jolted Congress into what had eluded it during the first seven months of Bush's administration: bipartisanship.

But now, as the midterm election campaign occupies center stage on Capitol Hill, political sparring is back – with a few new rules.

Democrats bash the GOP for the stock market decline, corporate scandals and rejection of a prescription drug plan. But they are staying away from criticizing Bush's war against terrorism.

"September 11th gives the Bush administration cover for the bad economic performance," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. "Republicans can blame the terrorists."