John Ashcroft's First Year as Attorney General

The secrecy of confidential information is always a sensitive issue, especially in wartime situations. The Justice Department under Ashcroft, however, is establishing a wall of secrecy around the Department's actions that even Congress isn't allowed to peer over.

After rounding up and detaining over 1,200 individuals in the terrorist investigation, the Justice Department announced in early November that it would stop issuing tallies of how many individuals were being detained while officials conducted the terrorism investigation.37 Faced with mounting criticism, Ashcroft released a limited update on the detentions in late November, but firmly refused to identify most of the remaining detainees.38

Ashcroft has changed Justice Department policy on agencies releasing information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the law that allows reporters and others to get unclassified government records that are not routinely made public. In an Oct. 12 memo, Ashcroft directed agency heads to be cautious when releasing such records and pledged that decisions to legitimately turn down FOIA requests would have the full backing of the Justice Department.39

People For the American Way Foundation and 15 other civil liberties and civil rights organizations filed a FOIA request with the Justice Department on Oct. 29 seeking information about detainees. In late November, the Department released fragmentary information, which fell far short of what had been requested, and failed to respond to the FOIA request. On Dec. 5, 2001, PFAWF and the 15 groups, including the ACLU, Amnesty International, several Arab-American anti-discrimination and immigration rights groups, filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department seeking release of the information requested. While that lawsuit is still pending, partial release of information prompted by the lawsuit has already documented a number of lengthy detentions that had previously been kept secret.

In January 2002, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the ACLU, and some Detroit news organizations filed suit challenging the Justice Department's decision to close what are normally open public immigration hearings.40 The specific case involved Rabih Haddad, a Muslim cleric in Ann Arbor, Michigan.41 Rep. Conyers and journalists were denied access to his Dec. 19 deportation hearing, as was his family. The judge in the case confirmed that her decision to close all proceedings was prompted by a Sept. 21 memo from Chief Immigration Judge David Creppy, which states, in part, "[T]he Attorney General has implemented additional security procedures for certain cases in the Immigration Court. Those procedures require us to hold the hearings individually, to close the hearings to the public, and to avoid discussing the case or otherwise disclosing any information about the case to anyone outside the Immigration Court ..."42