Patrick Leahy

The Vermont senator talks about terrorism, his "strained relationship" with Attorney General John Ashcroft and the beauty of the First Amendment.

By Jake Tapper

Dec. 21, 2001 | Elected Chittenden County state's attorney at 26, born-and-bred Vermonter Patrick Leahy was first elected to the Senate in 1974 with 49 percent of the vote. He was only 34 -- the second youngest in the Senate. Over the next quarter-century, the Georgetown Law School graduate moved from the status of prematurely bald whipper-snapper to senior Democrat, cruising to increasingly easy re-election victories -- in 1998 he defeated obscure cult-film hero Fred Tuttle, 72 percent to 22 percent.

While his politics are generally old-school liberal in the Kennedy-Humphrey tradition, Leahy is often willing to let his eccentric Vermontness come out, whether through dry wit or professions of his love for the Grateful Dead and Batman. (Leahy had a bit part in 1997's abysmal "Batman & Robin"; he provided the voice of the governor of the Arizona territory in an episode of "Batman: the Animated Series," and wrote the foreword for the 1992 collection "Batman: the Dark Knight Archives.")

The more seriously-channeled energies of the so-called "Cyber-Senator" have been spent in support of foreign aid programs and in defense of civil liberties and privacy rights. He led the charge against both land mines and the death penalty, long before either cause became trendy.

With the defection of one-time rival and state junior Senator Jim Jeffords from the GOP in June, which handed the Democrats control of the Senate, Leahy jumped to the chairmanship of the powerful and high-profile Judiciary Committee. Even before then, as ranking Democrat on the committee, Leahy caused the Bush White House consternation by objecting to his nominee for attorney general -- his former colleague from Missouri, defeated Sen. John Ashcroft -- and holding up the nomination of Ted Olson as solicitor general.

In the post-Sept. 11 era, Leahy has emerged as perhaps the biggest obstacle to the sweeping law-enforcement powers sought by the Bush Administration and Attorney General John Ashcroft. After President Bush's Sept. 20 address to a joint session of Congress, Leahy said that the government's challenge was "to defend our freedoms and not diminish them in this effort."

But constitutional freedoms are hardly the top concern of most Americans right now, so Leahy has recently found himself something of a lightning rod for criticism. On Oct. 2, Ashcroft condemned "the rather slow pace" he felt Senate Democrats were displaying in dealing with his anti-terrorism bill. "Talk won't prevent terrorism; tools can help prevent terrorism," Ashcroft said. In the closed-door confines of a Republican Senate lunch, he was even harsher. "He said he's had three weeks of meetings with Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy and the time for discussions is running out," a GOP source told Salon.

The bill soon passed, but tension between Ashcroft and Leahy -- personifying the current face-off between security and freedom -- did not. On Dec. 6, Ashcroft came before Leahy's committee to answer questions about the Bush Administration's counter-terrorism measures. The attorney general said: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends."

Ashcroft clarified that he was referring not to critics like Leahy and others on the Judiciary Committee, but to those in the media who mischaracterize counter-terrorism proposals and laws. "The attorney general has the same right of free speech that we all do," Leahy said after the hearing.

On Wednesday, Dec. 19, Salon spoke with Leahy by phone to discuss our brave new world.

You took some heat during the debate over what ended up being named the "Uniting and Strengthening America By Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism," or USA PATRIOT Act. When that bill passed the Senate with your support, 98-1, you said that "I did my best to strike a reasonable balance between the need to address the threat of terrorism . . . and the need to protect our constitutional freedoms. Despite my misgivings, I acquiesced in some of the Administration's proposals to move the legislative process forward." What are your problems with the bill that passed?

First, the sense that we were defenseless without it. Underlying that was the feeling by some that our security was more important than our Constitution. I felt that enough was being said by everybody that neither was true. One, we were not defenseless without it -- we have stopped terrorists many times before. We just have to be better with the tools we have. And secondly, even assuming that there was any short term gain in turning back the Constitution, in the long term the damage is greater than anyone could find acceptable.

Like what?

When you start saying that we can forgo the rights to appeal, the rights of the press, that "We should suppress freedom of speech just this one time because it's important." It would take years or more to recover.

The American Civil Liberties Union has referred to some of the counter-terrorism measures as "Assaults on our freedoms." Is the ACLU right?

I think that there are a lot of people who would like to have legislation that would really assault our freedoms. That happens all the time -- it has to be up to those willing to put the brakes on to do so. Sometimes it's easy enough to get enough people so you can be successful and put the brakes on; sometimes it's not so easy. But the fact that there are more than just a very few of us asking questions about military tribunals indicates to me that at least [in that case] the brakes are going on.

The anti-terrorism legislation originally proposed by the administration -- and given strong lip service by others -- was stopped because we refused to be steam-rolled into the legislation, and we ended up with a package that had some very good things in it. It had some things in it that otherwise wouldn't have been there, too, but the overall package was light years ahead of what was originally proposed.

Next page: "People who would trade their liberty for security deserve neither"