After: How America Confronted The Sept. 12 Era

Later that morning, the House voted 337-79 to pass the bill. The outraged dissenters complained that no one could possibly have had the time to read the enormously complex 342-page law that amended 15 different federal statutes and that had been printed out only hours before.

The ACLU effort was dead.

Ashcroft now had the tools he needed.

For the ACLU and other civil libertarians, and for honest citizens whose sole offense might be having a Muslim name, Ashcroft's new tools presented a whole new version of American justice. But for people living in sleeper cells--waiting to attack, yet not committing any overt crimes or revealing any other explicit evidence for which the old rules of search and seizure had applied--the feds' new latitude presented a whole new set of vulnerabilities. Indeed, the idea of being in a sleeper cell was to live quietly and obey all the rules until the moment came to act. So to Ashcroft and everyone else trying in those frantic early weeks following September 11 to find those who lay waiting to attack, the new law was well named. To them, this was Congress at its patriotic best.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2002

John Ashcroft went to an early prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral, where he read the names of some of the victims of the attacks. He attended a Pentagon memorial at 9:30.