“I’m running on fumes,” Anthony Romero says. It’s 5 p.m. on a Friday in July, and he’s trying to get out of the office to go on vacation. It will be his first since he became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
A few days into his new job last fall, Romero was about to give his inaugural address to the group’s major donors when a staffer alerted him that hijackers had crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He had neither business cards nor an e-mail account.
But he had work to do. Romero, JD ’90, says he instantly realized that the U.S. government’s response to September 11 could have far-reaching effects. Civil liberties have not been in such jeopardy, he says, since the internment of Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals during World War II. And in the aftermath of the terrorist strike, his organization has criticized the federal “dragnet” that rounded up nearly 1,200 people, many of them immigrants of Arab and South Asian origin, and has asserted that several detainees were not promptly charged with crimes or given adequate access to counsel. The ACLU also has denounced what it sees as the Bush administration’s penchant for secrecy, from closing immigration court proceedings to authorizing military tribunals to requesting the expanded secret search powers of the USA Patriot Act.
From his 18th-floor corner office in lower Manhattan, Romero, 37, manages the 500-employee, 300,000-member nonprofit, which has affiliate offices in every state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. He serves as a key spokesperson and fund-raiser for the $51 million organization, oversees its financial and administrative aspects, and provides guidance on priorities and program development.
In a typical summer, an ACLU director probably would be giving interviews about the flurry of decisions that the Supreme Court hands down at the end of its term in June. Cases on the First Amendment. Search and seizure. The death penalty. Due process. Reproductive rights. Antidiscrimination law. In short, the traditional bulwarks of the ACLU: the Bill of Rights and civil rights.
But this year, the focus is on the U.S. response to terrorism. Is the ACLU (or, for that matter, the citizenry) paying sufficient attention to other changes in the law? “It’s one of my biggest worries,” Romero says. “We had a full plate on September 10.”
And the worry is likely to remain for several years. “The problem is that the war on terrorism is not going to come to a public, decisive end anytime soon—you know, the Allies march into Berlin, the emperor throws his hands in the air, the Japanese detainees are released,” Romero says. “That means that what we do in the short term is likely to have long-term effects on the democracy.”
Reporters—10,000 of whom called Romero’s office between September 11 and the end of January—often put the question this way: how should the United States reconcile an increased need for national security with preservation of essential freedoms? “It’s a testament to [the ACLU’s] success over the last 82 years that now the debate is largely framed in terms of balancing liberties with national security,” Romero says.
When he speaks on the topic, Romero makes two main points. First, he says, law enforcement doesn’t necessarily need increased powers; it just needs to use its already “prodigious” powers to the fullest extent. Minnesota FBI agent Coleen Rowley’s May 2002 memo detailing how management stymied her office’s investigation of so-called 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui in the weeks before September 11, Romero says, “was rather clear that the problem was not a breakdown of powers, but a breakdown of work of law-enforcement officials.”
Second, he argues that some of the post-September 11 reforms have concentrated excessive power in the executive branch of government, undermining the system of checks and balances. If that system gets off-kilter, Romero says, “government power can turn into government abuse.” His example: under a new regulation promulgated last October, prison officials can monitor all of a federal inmate’s communications with his or her lawyer when the attorney general certifies that there is reasonable suspicion that the inmate will pass messages through the attorney that “further or facilitate acts of violence or terrorism.” The regulation not only “undercuts the right to counsel,” Romero says, but also removes a check by the judicial branch on the executive branch. “Prior to the new rule, the attorney general could always have pierced the [attorney-client] privilege, but he would have to go before a judge and show probable cause of a crime. Now, it’s in the hands of one man.”
After presentations, audience members often approach Romero and argue that the United States should abridge some civil liberties in favor of increased security. He sees that as an opportunity. “You can very much reach them,” he says. “You acknowledge the fear. You acknowledge that we all want to be safe. The government does have an obligation to keep people secure, to bring to justice those responsible. At the same time, what was attacked was not just American lives and property, but also core American values. And if you inspire them to root their patriotism in defense of civil rights and civil liberties, you can convince many. Give me 10 minutes, and I’ll at least make them think.”
Such determination was forged early. The son of a Puerto Rican couple who moved to the Bronx, Romero grew up in a low-income housing project and was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He went to Princeton, then decided to pursue public-interest law at Stanford. The Law School, Romero says, “made you think about the role of law in the broader society, and gave you the tools to be an effective lawyer and advocate.”
After graduation, he spent two years at the Rockefeller Foundation, then moved to the Ford Foundation. Within four years, he was named director of human rights and international cooperation, one of Ford’s largest grant-making programs. The ACLU board of directors voted unanimously to hand him the reins in April 2001.
Romero is well aware that the ACLU is a symbol both revered and reviled. The Statue of Liberty is visible from his office window, and he has told the New York Times that his job is “to make sure no one extinguishes her flame.” He’s philosophical about statements like televangelist Jerry Falwell’s (later recanted) that “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way” were partly responsible for September 11. “God help you if you happen to be the gay director of the ACLU,” intones Romero, who is openly gay and lives in Manhattan with his partner. He then turns serious. “Obviously, [Falwell’s remarks are] patently wrong,” he says. “We have a civic responsibility to voice our dissent. Democracy is many things, but it’s not a quiet business.”
And Romero is out making noise almost every day. “I’ve never seen someone work so hard in my entire life,” says Emily Whitfield, the ACLU’s media relations director. “He gets four hours of sleep a night.” Romero is partly fueled by sugar—there’s a large bag of Sour Patch Kids on his desk—but mostly, he is motivated by the magnitude of the responsibility he feels. Heading the ACLU is “an enormous privilege,” he says. “The chance to make the country a better place makes you want to get to work quicker. And you give it everything you’ve got. Seven days a week. In every respect, it’s a righteous battle.”
