1118 ★ CHAPTER 28 A New Century and New Crises
few members of the House or Senate had actually read. It conferred unprece-
dented powers on law- enforcement agencies charged with preventing the new,
vaguely defined crime of “domestic terrorism,” including the power to wire-
tap, spy on citizens, open letters, read e- mail, and obtain personal records from
third parties like universities and libraries without the knowledge of a suspect.
Unlike during World Wars I and II, with their campaigns of hatred against
German- Americans and Japanese- Americans, the Bush administration made
a point of discouraging anti- Arab and anti- Muslim sentiment. Nonetheless, at
least 5,000 foreigners with Middle Eastern connections were rounded up, and
more than 1,200 arrested. Many with no link to terrorism were held for months,
without either a formal charge or a public notice of their fate. The administra-
tion also set up a detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba, for persons captured in Afghanistan or otherwise accused of terrorism.
More than 700 persons, the nationals of many foreign countries, were detained
there.
In November 2001, the Bush administration issued an executive order
authorizing the holding of secret military tribunals for noncitizens deemed
to have assisted terrorism. In such trials, traditional constitutional protec-
tions, such as the right of the accused to choose a lawyer and see all the
evidence, would not apply. A few months later, the Justice Department
declared that American citizens could be held indefinitely without charge
and not allowed to see a lawyer, if the government declared them to be
“enemy combatants.” Attorney General John Ashcroft declared that criti-
cism of administration policies aided the country’s terrorist enemies.
The Power of the President
In the new atmosphere of heightened security, numerous court orders and reg-
ulations of the 1970s, inspired by abuses of the CIA, FBI, and local police forces,
were rescinded, allowing these agencies to resume surveillance of Americans
without evidence that a crime had been committed. Some of these measures
were authorized by Congress, but the president implemented many of them
unilaterally, claiming the authority to ignore laws that restricted his power
as commander- in- chief in wartime. Thus, soon after September 11, President
Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Ameri-
cans’ telephone conversations without a court warrant, a clear violation of a
law limiting the NSA to foreign intelligence gathering.
The majority of Americans seemed willing to accept the administration’s
contention that restraints on time- honored liberties were necessary to fight
terrorism. Others recalled previous times when wars produced limitations
on civil liberties and public officials equated political dissent with lack of