Librarians Duped

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Ashcroft Mocks Librarians and Others Who Oppose Parts of Counterterrorism
Law
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

NY TIMES 
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/politics/16LIBR.html?ex=1064725918&ei=1&en
=1217d4a0cce8cda0

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - Attorney General John Ashcroft today accused the
country's biggest library association and other critics of fueling
"baseless hysteria" about the government's ability to pry into the
public's reading habits.

In an unusually pointed attack as part of his latest speech in defense of
the Bush administration's counterterrorism initiatives, Mr. Ashcroft
mocked and condemned the American Library Association and other Justice
Department critics for believing that the F.B.I. wants to know "how far
you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel."

The association, which has argued for months that the government's new
antiterrorism powers risk encroaching on the privacy of library users,
took some satisfaction from the broadside.

"If he's coming after us so specifically, we must be having an impact,"
said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the library association's
Washington office.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the department, said the speech was intended
not as an attack on librarians, but on groups like the American Civil
Liberties Union and politicians who he said had persuaded librarians to
mistrust the government.

The American Librarian Association "has been somewhat duped by those who
are ideologically opposed to the Patriot Act," Mr. Corallo said.

....