Attorney general has unusual chance to make his mark

Descending into National Airport aboard the last plane to fly on Sept. 11, 2001, the attorney general kept his counsel. John Ashcroft watched the Pentagon smolder black that afternoon and mourned Barbara Olsen, a beloved friend among its ashes.

His silence ended when he landed. He ordered his offices moved from the Justice Department, with its broad rooms and stunning views of the Capitol, to a windowless bunker across the street at FBI headquarters.

The somber directive was a harbinger of decisions Ashcroft cast in the pall of Sept. 11.

Some decisions are grounded in the age of terrorism; others are unrelated but no less dramatic.

A short list includes broadly enhancing search powers, puncturing attorney-client privilege, clamping down on public information access, rolling back pollution enforcement and terminating some anti-discrimination settlements in the workplace.

Such sweeping powers were once unimaginable for a public figure who lost his Senate seat in Missouri to a dead man and went through a fiery confirmation that made him attorney general by the narrowest vote ever for that position.

Aides acknowledge Ashcroft's agenda derived momentum from the worst single crime ever committed on American soil.

"Sept. 11 gave us an opportunity to do what should have been done long ago," said Ralph Boyd, who heads the Justice Department's civil rights division. Boyd meant that Ashcroft now had a better chance to correct what he saw as a bias for affirmative action in the government.

It's a view consistent with Ashcroft's description in his autobiography of his bumpy career -- "for every crucifixion, a resurrection is waiting to follow." But critics are unnerved by changes made under cover of a national tragedy.

Even some of Ashcroft's personal beliefs seem to have evolved. The senator who crusaded against Big Government is now its toughest enforcer. The separation-of-powers enthusiast now says he is too busy or worried about leaks to testify often to Congress. The opponent of secret recordings now wants to grant police the right to eavesdrop for up to two weeks before getting a judge's sanction.

But Viet Dinh, the assistant attorney general who was the lead drafter of the Patriot Act, says Ashcroft's new purpose is wrapped with caution. "We don't shoot from the hip just because our sleeves are rolled up," he said in an interview. "We have to be methodical, precise and careful about all our actions."

Rarely been home

Ashcroft's deliberate Midwestern tones evoke a slightly caffeinated John Wayne. He peppers his speech with equal parts hellfire and high tech. "The terrorists have an interest in very serious weapons of chemistry, evil biology and even radiological consequences," Ashcroft said recently.

Since the terrorist attacks, he's rarely been home to his beloved Missouri farm and has suspended his morning prayer meetings.

He commands loyalty: His favorite admonishment, "Think outside the box, think inside the Constitution," is repeated over and over by aides in interviews. Ashcroft tends to speak in rehearsed lines and in the most formal settings -- a speech, a news conference -- rather than mixing it up on the TV talk shows.

He is resilient and almost seems to enjoy bouncing back from defeat. His most significant loss was his Senate seat -- in 2000 to Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, three weeks after Carnahan died in a plane crash.

But while the public rarely sees his lighter side, he can be a cutup. "We're already reading all your e-mail anyway," he once teased just-retired House Republican leader Dick Armey, "and it's not that interesting."

In less weighty days, he was part of a quartet of singing senators.

Issue of Patriot Act

Defenders and detractors agree that Ashcroft's changes will reverberate long after the war on terrorism has subsided. They differ on whether Ashcroft is exploiting Sept. 11 or whether the attacks in New York and Washington permanently changed how Americans live.

"We cannot sit still and think that all of the laws we had to prevent previous threats will work," Ashcroft says.

Civil libertarians don't agree.

When it comes to civil rights, said Laura Murphy, the congressional liaison for ACLU, "They can't say, 'Oh, it's war -- never mind!"'

At the center of the debate is the USA Patriot Act, drafted by Ashcroft's top lawyers and passed after Sept. 11 with bipartisan support.

The act extended authorization for "roving" wiretaps -- tapping someone at whatever phone he uses, not just those he owns -- to the secretive Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court. Since then, Ashcroft has sought unprecedented "John Doe" taps of individuals who exist in theory only -- a license, civil libertarians say, for fishing expeditions.

The act also allows "sneak and peek" warrants for searches without notifying the homeowner.