Now he’s nowhere to be seen. And warnings about possible attacks are emanating from the administration almost daily. Maybe Ashcroft knows something we don’t.
Now that he’s a seasoned veteran looking at all the deadly threats collected by the intelligence community, perhaps he no longer feels the urge to rush before the television cameras to announce the latest scare. Landmark bridges are still standing; commuters in Manhattan are riding the subways, if nervously, and the Statue of Liberty beckons freedom while guards search tourists’ backpacks.
There is no penalty for predicting suicide bombers will come to our shores, or that there will be a nuclear event in this country at some point. An aide says Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle typically comes back from breakfast with President Bush sobered by what he has heard about terror threats. “It’s scary stuff,” says the aide.
This is the “Trust Us” presidency. Bush wants the Congress and the country to trust him to do the right thing. His attitude is that experienced professionals surround him, and they shouldn’t be second-guessed. The White House resists a broader inquiry into the events leading up to September 11.
Secrecy and spin are the twin towers of this administration. As Bush meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin to sign a new arms accord, it is not popular to point out that the historic reduction isn’t all it seems. The administration has done a deft job of selling the treaty as momentous, but it doesn’t call for destroying warheads, only dismantling them. In today’s terror-infested world, having thousands of loosely guarded warheads sitting around Russia is still a threat to U.S. national security.
The Bush administration wants the flexibility of warehousing its nuclear components for quick assembly should the need arise. That makes it unlikely that the Russians will destroy their stockpile. A program to buy these nuclear materials is underway, but at the rate of current funding it will take 60 years to rid Russia of these weapons. The administration worries about a radioactive bomb being set off in the heart of Washington, and that is the principal reason Vice President Dick Cheney spends most nights at a secure location some distance from the center of the city.
A commission to investigate the September 11 attacks seems inevitable. The White House may be able to forestall it for a time, but ultimately members of Congress worried about their standing with the voters will make the decision. A Senate bill cosponsored by Democrat Joseph Lieberman and Republican John McCain could come up for a vote soon after members return from their Memorial Day recess.
A major consideration in forming the Warren Commission after the Kennedy assassination was the need for the public to understand that the government wasn’t in on it. In the aftermath of September 11, conspiracy theories abound on the Internet and in the nonmainstream press. Much of the Islamic world believes the Bush administration had a hand in what happened. The fact that Bush is the son of a former CIA chief makes it all the more important to have an independent inquiry to lay these theories to rest and to fix the system of intelligence-gathering so the government is better prepared in the future.
Cheney counters that leaks would be a problem and says he has confidence in the congressional intelligence committees to do the job. That may be the first time any Bush administration official has voiced support for Congress’ ability to keep a secret. It is a mark of the administration’s determination to head off an investigation.
JUDICIAL SLUGFEST
Get ready for Round Two in the slugfest over judicial nominations. Despite lobbying from liberal groups, Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph Biden sided with the White House and voted to approve the nomination of Judge D. Brooks Smith to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Smith earned the ire of women’s groups by pledging to resign his membership in the all-male Spruce Creek Rod and Gun Club when it became an issue in his confirmation as a trial judge–then taking 11 years to make good on the promise. Alliance for Justice, a coalition of progressive groups, vows to take the fight to the Senate floor, where they are relying on most of the 13 female senators to oppose Smith. But the loss of Biden and two other Judiciary Committee Democrats, John Edwards of North Carolina and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, makes it unlikely that Smith’s approval will be overturned.
Alliance for Justice president Nan Aron thought Smith’s defeat would be easy. But Democrats don’t want to appear reflexively opposed to another high-profile Bush nominee so soon after voting to reject Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering. Edwards in particular took a lot of heat for leading the campaign against Pickering, a fellow Southerner. Besides, the Democrats are saving their firepower for a bigger target: Texas Justice Priscilla Owen, whose claim to fame is that Bush strategist Karl Rove was her campaign consultant when she ran for the state Supreme Court in 1994.
Owen is “the most conservative justice on the most conservative state court in the country,” says Aron. In one celebrated case, Owen dissented from the court’s decision allowing a minor to bypass her parents and get an abortion, then questioned why the case had been handled on an expedited basis even as the girl’s pregnancy was advancing. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who was on the Texas Supreme Court at the time, called Owen’s opinion in the case “an unconscionable act of judicial activism.” Liberal groups are also armed with information about potential conflicts of interest. Owens has accepted campaign contributions from many corporate interests, including Enron, and the liberal groups say her rulings favor her biggest campaign donors 85 percent of the time. When her friend and benefactor, Karl Rove, talks about the importance of winning back the Senate for Republicans, he is girding for the fight he knows Democrats will wage to block Owen.
