AMY GOODMAN: The Bush administration’s urgent quest for new “anti-terrorism” laws bogged down in Congress yesterday, as lawmakers from both parties expressed concern that the hastily prepared package could greatly expand police powers at the expense of privacy and other civil liberties. At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, skeptical members confronted Attorney General John Ashcroft and other senior Justice Department officials on a number of administration proposals, including one that would permit the indefinite detention, without trial, of immigrants suspected of ties to terrorist organizations. They also said the administration is trying to force the package through Congress without giving lawmakers time to adequately digest proposals that could have serious, unforeseen consequences for rights that Americans now take for granted.

The Washington Post quotes Congressmember Robert Barr, the well-known right-wing representative from Georgia, who asked, “Why is it necessary to rush this through? Does it have anything to do with the fact that the department has sought many of these authorities on numerous other occasions, has been unsuccessful in obtaining them, and now seeks to take advantage of what is obviously an emergency situation to obtain authorities that it has been unable to obtain previously?”

We go first to Nadine Strossen, on the phone with us. She is president of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Welcome to Democracy Now! in Exile’s War and Peace Report.

NADINE STROSSEN: I’m so happy to be there, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, can you tell us about what Ashcroft has proposed, as we hear more ambulances race down the streets outside us in Chinatown?

NADINE STROSSEN: There are several major areas of concern for the ACLU and all of us who prize our civil liberties, Amy. One is the area of immigration, as you mentioned in your excellent introduction. Another is the area of surveillance, in particular, electronic surveillance of phone communications and online communications, emails and internet access. And then we also have a lot of concerns in the area of criminal justice.

Now, let me say at the outset that one of the overriding concerns is that all of these laws are drafted so broadly that we fear that their major impact, if not their only impact, is going to have nothing to do with the very important task of seeking justice for those who are engaged in terrorism or will be engaged in terrorism, but in fact is going to be used for bread-and-butter law enforcement activities. And there, I completely agree with Bob Barr’s sentiment that this is the kind of power that has always been sought by those who are seeking to prosecute not the war against terrorism, but the war on drugs. And what might not be so well known about Congressman Bob Barr is his extensive law enforcement background. He was a U.S. attorney. He was a state attorney general. He can hardly be accused of being soft on crime. And yet, as an experienced prosecutor, he has agreed with civil libertarians that the measures that are being asked for are not necessary, effectively, to enforce either the drug laws or the laws of — very extensive laws against terrorism that already exist.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I was thinking, as I read this piece in The Washington Post, that if — it says, “The administration’s bill would make it easier for law enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists by expanding wiretap authority from single phone lines to multiple modes of communication linked to a suspect, such as cell phones and e-mail.” Now, if you take away “to a suspect” and “eavesdrop on suspected terrorists,” because in the case that this happens, of course, this could be anyone, it gives you the right to do it — the government to do it to anyone. What we’re talking about is simply making it easier for law enforcement to eavesdrop, to expand wiretaps and to go from single phones to multiple modes of communication, including cellphones and email.

NADINE STROSSEN: Right. And the whole — by inherent concept, wiretapping already ensnares many, many completely innocent conversations and communications. That’s why, when it was initially introduced, a number of Supreme Court justices thought it was inherently unconstitutional, because it’s not a targeted search. I’m not going to argue that, but I am going to point out that we already have record-breaking numbers of wiretaps in this country. We already have the unprecedented surveillance technology of ECHELON, which has been of concern to the European Community and has — they’ve written an official report documenting the millions of completely innocent conversations by citizens and citizens’ groups that are being surveilled by our government, working in concert with other governments around the world. We already have the Carnivore technology, which means that anytime the FBI is looking for email communications from the target of an investigation, all communications going in and out of, passing through the same internet service provider that is accessed by that target, all of those communications are also available to the government. So, in fact, I’ve heard FBI officials complain in the media and before Congress that they don’t have enough personnel to analyze the fruits of the surveillance that already exists.

So, it’s not really going to aid the anti-terrorism effort. In fact, the ACLU did a report after the 1996 anti-terrorism law — and let us not forget that already expansive government investigative powers were expanded quite dramatically in 1996. And I’m happy to say again that this law-and-order conservative, Bob Barr, worked very closely with the ACLU back then to oppose it, but it passed. He thought that one went too far. And we did a report, an excellent report, called “Big Brother in the Wires,” taking the government’s own numbers about the amount of wiretapping that was going on under that new legislation. We showed that the vast majority of them had nothing to do with suspected terrorist activity or crimes, violent crimes, that might be engaged in by terrorists, but, in fact, had to do with drug crimes and gambling crimes. And that’s not surprising. The so-called victimless crimes are the ones where the government really has traditionally depended on electronic surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined in our firehouse studio by Janine Jackson, and she’s with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the media watch group. Janine, you’ve been particularly looking at the civil liberties issue and how the media is dealing with it.

JANINE JACKSON: Yes. While Nadine is talking about powers that the administration is trying to grab at the moment to gather information, they’re also trying to gain power, the very connected power, to withhold information. A military official — unnamed, of course — gave this really chilling quote to The Washington Post just yesterday: “This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine. We are going to lie about things.” He said that directly. And we’re already seeing the withholding of information. They’re already talking about further restrictions in advance of the Gulf War protocols that had been set up, in which journalists were herded into pools, military officers told them who they could photograph, who they could not, who they could interview and so forth. We have the Bush administration now saying they want to junk those rules and go for something even more severe, where perhaps journalists will not even be allowed anywhere near the action.

So I think it’s something to be very, very concerned about. Reporters understand that they aren’t going to be reporting on troop movements or something like this, but if we don’t learn what is being done and why things are being done, there will be simply no way for the public to make informed choices about policy in the future. We won’t know if all these measures that are being taken now have any effect, have negative effect, you know, achieve the goals they’re set out for, if reporters are not allowed to even get the basic information to talk about them.

AMY GOODMAN: Janine, have you ever seen the media in such lockstep as we are now?

JANINE JACKSON: Well, the truth is, I don’t think it is exactly lockstep right now. I think some of the highest-profile people, the Dan Rathers and the Bill O’Reillys, seem to be in a contest to see who is more uncritical and patriotic. However, I am seeing things around the edges, these concerns, these questions. I mean, this is Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post quoting this military officer saying he’s going to mislead the public, and I think, expressing some concerns about that.

AMY GOODMAN: I am seeing some things in the newspapers. But what really manufactures consent is television. That’s what beats the drum for war. And you’ve got the logo of, you know, CNN, “America’s New War.” And so you don’t have people on talking about not going to war, but just how fast we do it, etc.

JANINE JACKSON: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: And that extends to the networks.

JANINE JACKSON: And you have, you know, stations fighting battles because reporters — some are saying they don’t want to have to wear an American flag on their lapel while they’re on television. They don’t think that’s appropriate. You know, they’re still planning to do the best job of journalism they can. They think that is simply inappropriate. And there are these, you know, tests —

AMY GOODMAN: Who is asking them to do that?

JANINE JACKSON: Well, there have been — we’ve heard sort of internal battles. There’s a Baltimore TV station I talked about last time, where reporters had to, you know, promise fealty on air. Other places have been doing it voluntarily. And there’s been, we’ve heard, sort of internal pressure: “Oh, you’re not wearing one? I’m not” — you know, we don’t need this at the moment. This is not what the public needs to be focusing on.

AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of crackdown on civil liberties, Nadine Strossen of the ACLU, the other issue at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Ashcroft’s proposed expansion of a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs wiretapping of non-Americans inside the United States, ran into trouble not only with Democrats, but also with at least one Republican member. That was Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio. Patrick Leahy and members of his staff worked with administration officials last weekend as they raced to complete their anti-terrorism bill. But what about, specifically, immigrants when it comes to civil liberties?

NADINE STROSSEN: Well, you do not forfeit all rights by living in this country without being a citizen. Conversely, we have always guaranteed very fundamental rights to all people in this country, whether they are Americans or not. That’s very clear when you look at the constitutional language of the Due Process Clause, which is the most important one, because that makes the whole Bill of Rights enforceable at every level of government. And as Justice Stephen Breyer said in a decision just last summer, it deliberately refers — that language deliberately refers to all persons in the United States, in contrast to a couple other constitutional provisions that refer explicitly only to citizens. So, you should not have to forfeit your rights just by virtue of not having been born here or become a citizen.

And what’s very frightening is — again, going back to my theme of the government already has such expansive power, particularly in the wake of the 1996 anti-terrorism law, why does it need any more? Under the 1996 anti-terrorism law, the government has the power to detain, potentially indefinitely, all noncitizens based on secret evidence. This, to me, is an absolutely Kafkaesque situation in, supposedly, the leader of the free world. And I do believe that our country should live up to that ideal, and in many ways does, but falls far short when it came to the secret evidence, to the extent that even when he was campaigning for president, George W. Bush supported a repeal of the secret evidence law. And Congress was strongly considering legislation that would have repealed the ability to detain non-Americans on secret evidence. Instead, the legislation that is now being considered goes in the opposite direction. It requires almost no evidence at all — from secret evidence to no evidence. The attorney general basically can certify, in his discretion and without citing any evidence, that he believes that this non-American may endanger national security. And once he’s issued that certification, then the person can be detained, potentially indefinitely.

AMY GOODMAN: Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU. And finally, Janine Jackson, front page, Washington Post today, “More than 350 people have been swept up in the massive dragnet for witnesses and suspects cast since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.”

JANINE JACKSON: I’m happy to hear The Washington Post reporting that figure. I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to get as much and as specific information on just who is being detained, because Attorney General Ashcroft basically threatened to The Washington Post — or reported in The Washington Post that they may stop disclosing arrests of material witnesses. And, in fact, the Justice Department said they may stop releasing figures on people who have been detained on immigration charges — all of this in an attempt to sort of shroud the actions from public scrutiny. It’s a very frightening time.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for joining us, Janine Jackson with FAIR. You can go to the website at FAIR.org. Again, none of the detainees has been charged with a crime directly related to the attacks. Nadine Strossen with the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union. And we’ll certainly continue to follow these issues.

When we come back from our break, we’re going to take a look at the Bush administration lifting restrictions on giving military aid to human rights-abusing countries. And then we’re going to go to a local struggle with more than half of the firefighters killed at a local firehouse in Brooklyn. The city has tried to close that firehouse. But yesterday, the people won their battle to keep it open. You’re listening to Democracy Now! in Exile's War and Peace Report. We're broadcasting on Manhattan Neighborhood Network, channel 34, today on CUNY, around New York City, on public access stations around the country, on Free Speech TV, on the DISH Network. That’s FSTV channel 9415. And we’re broadcasting on Pacifica stations and affiliates around the country, WBIX.org, as well. Stay with us.