If senators weren't already feeling pressure when the bill was brought to the floor for a vote by the full chamber on Oct. 11, the FBI's first terrorist threat warning further stoked the tension.

"Certain information, while not specific as to target, gives the government reason to believe that there may be additional terrorist attacks within the United States and against U.S. interests overseas over the next several days," it said.

Shortly before noon, President Bush strode to the podium at a Pentagon ceremony to mark the one-month anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. "America will never relent in this war on terror," he said to applause.

Later, Bush held a news conference in the East Room of the White House, where he amplified the FBI's warning without adding specifics: "I am aware of the intelligence that caused the warning to be issued, and it was a general threat on America," he said.

It was against this backdrop that the Senate debate began. The bill was put on the fastest of tracks, with less than seven hours set aside for discussion. There was only one opponent: Sen. Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, who offered a forceful, but doomed, dissent.

"There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists," Feingold said. "But that would not be a country in which we would want to live, and ... that country would not be America."

Feingold's efforts to amend the bill were quickly beaten back, and his objections were dismissed by a longtime ally -- Democrat Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate Majority Leader.

"We have a job to do. The clock is ticking. The work needs to get done. We have to make our best judgment about what is possible, and that process goes on," Daschle said. "Let's move on and finish this bill."

As the debate continued in a largely pro forma fashion, Leahy retired to a small dogleg of a room just off the Senate floor, an exclusive hideaway that is off-limits to everyone but members of Congress.

By Senate standards, the Democratic cloakroom is austere, with an arched ceiling accented with wisps of gold filigree. A royal blue carpet with a pattern of maroon- and-gold florets covers the floor. To the right of the corner reception desk there is a short corridor filled with old-fashioned hardwood telephone booths, 10 in all.

It was close to 9 p.m. when several members of the House Judiciary Committee entered the cloakroom through the back door, over by the phone booths. Their mission, Lofgren recalls, was "to try to come to a more balanced bill."

As the House members ascended the carpeted steps into the room, a well-used coffee station was the first thing they saw and smelled. The way things turned out, they were there barely long enough for a cup a coffee.

Lofgren said the House Democrats came into the cloakroom session knowing the Senate bill would pass, but hoping to get enough Democrats to vote against it to demonstrate that the measure had flaws and to prompt support for the modified measure offered by the House Judiciary Committee.

Their pleas were flatly rejected.

"They were under a great deal of pressure," Scott said of the Democratic senators. "There was some concern and they listened, but we just weren't successful in our effort. Had we been able to slow it down ... I think we could have made some changes."

"During all my years in the Congress, if I could change any vote, that would certainly be the one," said former Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey. "I knew it was the wrong vote at the time, but the pressure and the fear were extraordinary. There was no doubt it had to pass."

At around midnight, the measure was passed 96-1, with only Feingold dissenting.

***

As they headed back from their unsuccessful meeting in the cloakroom, walking beneath the soaring majesty of the Capitol dome, there was discontent and frustration among the House Democrats.

The mood would have been even darker if they had known what was happening at that very moment during a secret meeting a short distance away, in a conference room down an unmarked hall.

The Lincoln Room, as it is known, is one of Washington's ultimate backrooms, located within the House Speaker's suite of offices. It is decorated in Federal style with a large mahogany table and leather-backed chairs. There is a painting of Abraham Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation on one side of the room, and a window offering a splendid view of the national mall and the Washington Monument on another.

There, in a lengthy session attended on-and-off by Speaker Dennis Hastert, Sensenbrenner and staffers, the House Judiciary Committee's measure was being reworked, with assistance from Dinh. As midnight approached and the Senate prepared to pass its bill, the talks were nearing conclusion.

The result of that session was a virtual copy of the Senate bill, with almost all of the House Judiciary Committee's compromises stripped out. Members of the committee wouldn't see the 140-page finished product until the following day, shortly before the full House was scheduled to vote on it.

"They just took what we reported out and threw it in the garbage," said Nadler, the New York Democrat who was a leading architect of the Judiciary Committee bill. "I was incensed by the process, never mind what was in the bill. We heard this was happening, that it had happened or it was happening ... but we didn't see the bill until that morning."

Despite the expressions of shock and betrayal from Nadler and many civil liberties advocates, Dinh dismissed much of the criticism as the kind of conspiracy-theory talk that might come from liberal filmmaker and activist Michael Moore.

"This is what I call the 'Fahrenheit 9/11' allegation -- that there was a last-minute switch. There's nothing sinister or mysterious about it," said Dinh, who today is a professor at Georgetown Law School. "It's just a matter of inter- chamber politics that goes on in these processes."

Dinh also defended the swift pace of the negotiations. "In most normal legislative sessions they handle about 50 different bills and you'll be lucky if you get legislators to get focused on any one particular provision and one particular bill," he said.

"The process in the six weeks following Sept. 11 was that this was the only game in town. Basically, every single person ... was focused on this one particular bill, simply because the country was in a very focused mood after the catastrophic attacks of Sept. 11."

As midnight came and went, the negotiators in the Lincoln Room struck a final compromise over the name of the bill -- which, as is often the case in Washington, had changed several times since it was first unveiled.

Combining the Senate's "Uniting and Strengthening America Act" and the House's "Providing Appropriate Tools to Restrict Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act" they called their measure the USA PATRIOT Act.

With the deal set, the bill was printed with a time stamp of 3:45 a.m., Oct. 12, 2001.

***

When the sun rose only a few hours later, the stage was set for a dramatic showdown.

As Nadler and his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee got their first glimpse at the freshly minted draft that had replaced their own, the administration orchestrated a series of media events for the president and other administration officials.

The day played out at a dizzying pace:

11:58 a.m. Appearing at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington to address a March of Dimes Leadership Conference, Bush talked about the high stakes in the war on terror and declared: "We must fight this enemy wherever he plans or hides or runs -- abroad, and here at home."

1:33 p.m. At the Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Tommy Thompson stood with Ashcroft to brief reporters on a new case of anthrax involving an NBC employee. "The public needs to understand that our public health system is on heightened sense of alert for any diseases that may come from any kind of biological attack or any kind of terrorist attack," Thompson said.

2:15 p.m. "Bienvenidos," President Bush said to applause at a gathering in the White House's East Room. He was there to sign an executive order setting up a commission on educational excellence for Hispanic Americans, but he used the opportunity to talk about the threat of terrorism. "Our nation is still in danger," he said. "But the government is doing everything in our power to protect our citizenry."

2:18 p.m. Less than 4 1/2 hours after Nadler and other House members first got a copy of the bill crafted overnight by Hastert, Sensenbrenner and Dinh, the full House moved to consider the Patriot Act.

2:50 p.m. Giving voice to the anger among members of the Judiciary Committee, Democrat Maxine Waters of California attacked the new bill. "Mr. Speaker," she said, "we had a bipartisan bill and John Ashcroft destroyed it. The attorney general has fired the first partisan shot since Sept. 11."

3:44 p.m. At the Justice Department, Ashcroft held a news conference, where he discussed the Patriot Act. "I ask the congressional leadership to send the president a bill to sign right away. I can say with enthusiasm that they should not delay. We need these anti-terrorism tools now."

4:26 p.m.: The House voted 337-79 to pass the bill. Among those casting reluctant votes for the bill were Barr, Lofgren and Armey. Among those voting no were Nadler, Scott, Conyers and Waters.

The day's events were witnessed with something like despair at the ACLU headquarters. Murphy watched the news on television in her cluttered office, surrounded by aides sadly hunkered down in chairs and on the floor. Every surface of the room was piled high with books, papers, pizza boxes and drink containers.

Her team was exhausted and frustrated after spending days trying to drum up opposition to a process that increasingly had an aura of inevitability about it. Even among the most liberal members of Congress, some of whom had supported civil liberties causes for decades, there was little stomach for fighting the legislation.

"We knew that this bill was going to pass. The question was, how many votes could we get? ... At the time, we were asking members to vote 'no' because we felt there were so many constitutional issues," Murphy said. "We were just totally demoralized about how few members spoke up."

***

It took the Congress another 12 days to iron out the modest differences between the two bills, but during that time fear only tightened its grip on Capitol Hill.

The anthrax threat, which had shown up earlier in only two remote cases, came to Congress on Oct. 15 in a pair of mysterious envelopes. Lawmakers, staff and visitors had their noses swabbed, and medical workers dispensed the antibiotic Cipro. As investigators combed the Capitol building for clues, offices were shuttered on both sides of the hill.

With so much going on, the final votes on the Patriot Act, as amended to reconcile the House and Senate versions, were barely noted: The House passed it by a vote of 357-66 on Oct. 24, and the Senate approved it, 98-1, the next day.

Ashcroft issued a statement claiming a near complete victory: "A new era in America's fight against terrorism, made tragically necessary by the attacks of September 11th, is about to begin," he said.

Murphy, at the ACLU, broke down: "I remember the final vote on the conference report and tears springing to my eyes," she said. "Sort of tears of resignation and exhaustion and I felt like 'Oh my God, what is happening to my country?'"

At 9:49 a.m. on Oct. 26 -- less than 24 hours after the Senate gave its final stamp of approval -- Bush addressed a gathering of lawmakers and others in the East Room of the White House, a copy of the Patriot Act sitting atop a desk, bill- signing pens at the ready.

"I commend the House and Senate for the hard work they put into this legislation. Members of Congress and their staffs spent long nights and weekends to get this important bill to my desk," the president said.

"I want to thank Attorney General John Ashcroft," he added, "for spending a lot of time on the Hill to make the case for a balanced piece of legislation."

Although the bill included almost everything the Justice Department wanted, there was one significant exception. Sensenbrenner, despite helping to scuttle the House Judiciary Committee's bill, had insisted on language that allowed many provisions of the act to expire in four years, unless they were reauthorized.

It is these "sunsets" that have prompted a second round of debate about the Patriot Act this year, re-energizing civil libertarians like Murphy who remain bitter about their 2001 defeat. "Thank god for that one thing," Murphy said. "The sunsets were the only thing that gave us hope."

The Dec. 31 expiration date has also brought fresh efforts from supporters of the Patriot Act to make it permanent. Even Sensenbrenner, who fought for the sunset provisions, argued for the act's swift renewal after last week's bombings in London. "Now, more than ever," he said, "it is incumbent upon Congress and the American people not to let our guard down."

© 2005 The Star Ledger

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