Lawmakers Tone Down Terror Bill

Key lawmakers reached a compromise Monday on anti-terrorism legislation that would deny Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft some of the more sweeping powers he is seeking from Congress, but it would still mark a major expansion of law enforcement authority.

The bill, which the House could consider as early as next week, would dramatically enhance investigators’ ability to conduct electronic surveillance, detain foreign suspects and seek stiffer criminal penalties in terrorism cases.

But the measure would strip out or scale back a number of controversial proposals offered by the White House, including the authority to indefinitely detain foreign nationals identified by the attorney general as terrorist threats.

The bill still must clear a number of legislative hurdles and is separate from similar legislation being crafted in the Senate. But it provides the first clear view of Congress’ likely direction on anti-terrorism legislation in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The compromise was negotiated by Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the chairman and the ranking minority member, respectively, of the House Judiciary Committee. Their endorsements will carry considerable weight with their colleagues.

Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, declined to discuss details of the House bill but said the administration “appreciates the willingness of Congress to work in a bipartisan way to give the attorney general important additional tools.”

Changes Ease Criticism but Don’t End It

Civil liberties groups said the measure was a marked improvement over Ashcroft’s initial proposal, which drew heavy criticism from such disparate organizations as the National Rifle Assn. and the American Civil Liberties Union.

But many critics weren’t assuaged by the revisions.

“It’s inadequate,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU’s national office in Washington. “The potential for abuse is still great here.”

The anti-terrorism bill is now seen as one of the top priorities on Capitol Hill, where the congressional agenda has been rewritten since suicide hijackers commandeered four jetliners last month. Three of the planes slammed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon; one crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

President Bush and top White House officials have urged Congress to move swiftly to grant law enforcement agencies sweeping new powers that would both aid their ongoing investigation of the attacks and help prevent future strikes.

Authorities need new tools “to identify, dismantle, disrupt and punish terrorist organizations before they strike again,” Ashcroft said in testimony last week before the House and the Senate Judiciary committees. “Terrorism is a clear and present danger to Americans today.”

But even with Congress in a wartime mood, members of both parties have expressed deep misgivings about provisions of the Ashcroft proposal that they fear would erode privacy rights and civil liberties.

Sensenbrenner and Conyers eliminated some of those provisions, rejecting proposals that would have enabled law enforcement to seize the assets of suspected terrorists, conduct criminal property searches without notifying suspects, access a greater range of student records and cooperate with foreign governments to conduct electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens here and abroad.

The House lawmakers also added provisions that the White House may not welcome. The House bill, for instance, would create a watchdog position in the Justice Department to oversee the protection of civil liberties, with the power to investigate citizens’ complaints of abuses.

The House version also contains a clause that would cause provisions expanding authorities’ wiretapping powers to expire after two years and would require congressional review before they are renewed. Ashcroft has argued against including such a “sunset” provision.

Other elements were significantly modified. Ashcroft’s initial request for authority to detain foreign nationals indefinitely, for example, has been watered down to allow for a detention of a maximum of seven days. At that point, authorities would either have to file charges against the detainee--opening the door to judicial review--or release him.

Bill Would Expand Surveillance Rights

The House lawmakers granted Ashcroft’s request for “roving wiretap” authority, meaning that investigators would no longer be restricted to monitoring a specific telephone or other instrument but instead could track a suspect’s communications across multiple devices.

The revised bill would also expand law enforcement’s ability to conduct secret surveillance, even of U.S. citizens, under the aegis of gathering foreign intelligence. This, critics said, represents a major erosion of citizens’ protections under criminal codes, which place a greater burden on investigators to prove in court that they have just cause for such surveillance.

“The change would allow the government, even in a criminal investigation, to conduct secret wiretapping, secret searches and seizures and never tell the criminal defendant it had done so,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties advocacy organization in Washington.

Critics also say the House bill does not go far enough in tightening the definition of what constitutes “terrorism.” This is a crucial point because the legislation gives law enforcement a host of new powers that can only be used in cases of suspected terrorist activity.

The House lawmakers inserted language specifying that terrorist acts are those “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion.”

But, said Murphy of the ACLU, that definition is “still so overly broad that it could apply to a protester who throws a rock through an office building.”

The bill is scheduled to be considered by the full House Judiciary Committee this week. A committee aide said it is expected to be approved and sent to the full House for a vote, perhaps as early as next week.

Meanwhile, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee continued to pursue separate negotiations with the Justice Department on their version of the anti-terrorism bill.

Negotiations among staff “were largely concluded over the weekend,” said David Carle, spokesman for Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee’s chairman. “There are still a couple of differences and still some draft proposals being exchanged to try to resolve those.”