Antiterror bill gets fast track on jolted Hill

With the men in hazmat suits only just out of its halls, Congress returns today to move forward on the most sweeping enhancements to law-enforcement powers since World War II.

Ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has said that a clear and present danger requires immediate action on tougher antiterrorist laws. Congress wanted more time. The consequences for the nation's civil liberties were too high to rush into, members said.

But with anthrax attacks on the Capitol and several news organizations, that danger suddenly got clearer and much more present - both for lawmakers and the press corps that covers them. And differences on the proposed legislation were quietly set aside.

Working in hastily reassigned venues, congressional staff worked out the details of a compromise on antiterrorism that comes close to what the Bush team originally proposed. The bill includes many features that civil

liberties groups say were unthinkable before Sept. 11, including broad new authority to eavesdrop, search without warrants, and detain suspects.

It's not the first time Congress will have moved quickly in a national emergency. On the first of Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days, the House passed his emergency banking bill in 38 minutes, without reading it. The Senate took two hours and 15 minutes.

During "the New Deal and after Pearl Harbor, many pieces of legislation were passed with very cursory review," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "This shows us that Congress can act quickly when it needs to...."

Nonetheless, the difficulties this week in just going about the business of Congress have been severe.

Even before congressional offices closed last week for anthrax sweeps, rumors - swiftly corrected and replaced by new rumors - competed with normal legislative business for the attention of everyone who works here.

Since the shutdown, members and staff have been cut off from files and office phones - and the quiet staff-to-staff communication on which this institution has long depended. People had trouble finding one another. Mail didn't get through. Lobbyists knew important decisions on antiterrorism were pending, but weren't sure how to influence them.

"It has been a terrible legislative process," says Kit Gage, coordinator of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, a watchdog group on new antiterrorist legislation. "The anthrax scare has obviously made it hard to do any negotiation and communicate with people."

FROM the start, the strategy of the leadership in both houses has been to try to move along the bills needed to deal with the national security crisis. The Senate leadership negotiated its antiterrorist bill directly with the White House and Justice Department, rather than risk protracted battles in a divided Judiciary Committee. The bill passed the Senate on Oct. 11, with one dissenting vote.

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