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Senate OKs terror bills

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, October 11, 2001

Herald news services

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Thursday to give police broad new wiretapping authority and other tools to pursue suspected terrorists and to increase and federalize security on airliners and at airports.

Hours after unanimously passing a bill to overhaul protections against terrorism in aviation, the Senate approved a compromise bill negotiated with Attorney General John Ashcroft authorizing the use of roaming wiretaps and new subpoena powers against suspected terrorists.

The Bush administration had urgently pressed for the two measures as a response to the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. But both had been stalled for two weeks, the anti-terrorism bill over civil liberty concerns and the aviation security bill over efforts to add aid for laid-off airline workers.

A two-week stalemate on the aviation bill was broken Thursday when a procedural vote went against an amendment to link the bill to a $1.9 billion package to help laid-off aviation workers.

The bill would:

  • Require all airline cockpit doors to be reinforced to prevent unauthorized entry.

  • Allow pilots and flight engineers to carry guns in the cockpit — with training, and with approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

  • Mandate X-ray screening of every piece of luggage to enter a plane, including checked bags.

  • Require background checks on every person with access to secure airport locations.

  • Require improved perimeter security at the edges of airports. Security will remain each airport’s responsibility, but the federal government will pay for additional law enforcement as needed.

    The Senate passed the anti-terrorism legislation 96-1. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., cast the only dissenting vote.

    Feingold failed in a last-ditch effort to tone down parts of the bill’s police powers, and grew angry that the bill, which came straight to the floor, was moving so fast. "What have we come to when we don’t have either committee or Senate deliberation or amendments on an issue of this importance?" he said.

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