After: How America Confronted The Sept. 12 Era

Romero and the ACLU staff could now turn their attention to the Senate. Their goal was to get the Senate to want to match the House by putting some of its own limits into the Ashcroft bill. That didn't seem like it would be difficult, since the Senate was controlled by Democrats. Then, they might end up with all of the House and Senate limits in the conference bill that would be worked out by the two chambers, once each passed its own version. It seemed like a good plan.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2001

Murphy had gone to bed last night disappointed that just before midnight the Senate had passed a version of the Patriot Act that had almost none of the modifications that staffers for Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had assured her they would fight for. Instead, the Senate Democrats had basically caved in to Ashcroft. When Russell Feingold of Wisconsin had stood to explain why he was casting the one dissenting vote, Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle countered, "We've got a job to do. The clock is ticking."

Still, Murphy, Romero, and the other ACLU people held out some hope. Leahy's people had assured Murphy that he and Daschle would appoint sympathetic members to the conference committee that would negotiate with the House over a final version of the bill.

But by the morning of the 12th, Murphy knew that was not to be. Amazingly, Sensenbrenner's more moderate bill had been scuttled. In its place was a bill that House Speaker Dennis Hastert had negotiated with Ashcroft overnight, and it was almost identical to the Senate bill. It had stripped out almost all of the softenings of the original Ashcroft proposal.

By 8:30, Murphy and other ACLU staffers were on the phone to their friends who were staffers on the Hill, screaming about a betrayal. They even reached some members of Congress. Most were sympathetic, but some screamed back that the ACLU people simply didn't understand what was going on--what the atmosphere was like, what the fear was like. Helicopters and jet fighters were still patrolling the skies over the Capitol. There were bomb scares. Ashcroft was announcing new threats almost every day.