by Dana Milbank:

Some­where, in a secure, undis­closed loca­tion, John Ashcroft is chuckling.

Pres­i­dent Obama cam­paigned on a promise to restore trans­parency to gov­ern­ment. But now the time has come to renew the USA Patriot Act, the bete noire of civil lib­er­tar­i­ans. When the Obama administration’s point man on the leg­is­la­tion came to Capi­tol Hill on Wednes­day, he sounded very much like his pre­de­ces­sors in the Bush administration.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chair­man of the Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee, asked Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral David Kris whether the admin­is­tra­tion would sup­port con­gres­sional over­sight as part of the Patriot Act. “We don’t have a posi­tion on any­thing par­tic­u­larly yet,” Kris answered.

Sen. Dianne Fein­stein (D-Calif.), chair­man of the Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, asked whether the Democ­rats’ pro­posed changes to the Patriot Act would impede cur­rent inves­ti­ga­tions. “We’re not going to dis­cuss clas­si­fied mat­ters here, and also there is this Jus­tice Depart­ment pol­icy about com­ment­ing on ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions,” the offi­cial commented.

Sen. Russ Fein­gold (D-Wis.) pointed out that of the sev­eral hun­dred “sneak and peek” search war­rants issued under the Patriot Act, only three were for ter­ror­ism cases and most were for drugs. “I guess it’s not sur­pris­ing to me that it applies in drug cases,” Kris replied.

Fein­gold was sur­prised by the witness’s lack of sur­prise. “As I recall, it was in some­thing called the USA Patriot Act,” he said scorn­fully, “which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism.”

The per­for­mance must have been dis­heart­en­ing for Democ­rats, because Kris was sup­posed to be one of the good guys. Once a Clin­ton and Bush Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial, he scolded his for­mer Bush col­leagues in 2006 for their “weak jus­ti­fi­ca­tion” of the war­rant less wire­tap­ping program.

But if dis­ap­point­ing, Kris’s guard­ed­ness was to be expected. Obama may

have promised new open­ness, but “so far, the con­ti­nu­ities between the Obama and Bush admin­is­tra­tion over­whelm the dif­fer­ences,” says Steven After­good, who runs the Project on Gov­ern­ment Secrecy for the Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can Scientists.

Obama gets credit for mak­ing pub­lic a 2004 report on CIA inter­ro­ga­tions and Jus­tice Depart­ment tor­ture memos, and for releas­ing more records of White House vis­i­tors. He restored news cov­er­age of return­ing cas­kets of fallen sol­diers. On Wednes­day, he earned mixed reviews from civil lib­er­tar­i­ans when he sig­naled an inten­tion to keep fewer things hid­den under the “state secrets” policy.

But trans­parency advo­cates such as After good and Eliz­a­beth Goitein of the Bren­nan Cen­ter point to many more short­falls: refus­ing to release infor­ma­tion about detainees held at the Bagram deten­tion facil­ity in Afghanistan, reneg­ing on a deci­sion to release pho­tos of detainee abuse, using sign­ing state­ments to under­mine leg­is­la­tion, defend­ing the grant­ing of immu­nity to tele­com com­pa­nies that par­tic­i­pated in the wire­tap pro­gram, and oppos­ing a request that all intel­li­gence com­mit­tee mem­bers be briefed on covert operations.

Of course, these moves could be evi­dence that Obama is being cau­tious and respon­si­ble as cam­paign­ing yields to gov­ern­ing. But what­ever the rea­son, civil lib­er­tar­i­ans have rea­son to feel that Obama sold them a bill of goods — and Wednesday’s hear­ing of the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee was unlikely to change this feeling.

Kris began by request­ing renewal of the three expir­ing pro­vi­sions of the Patriot Act. Leahy has intro­duced a bill that would extend the pro­vi­sions while also adding a few new pro­tec­tions, but Kris wasn’t at lib­erty to dis­cuss these.

Leahy asked whether Kris would agree to an effort to stop the abuse of “national secu­rity let­ters,” which have been used to obtain bank and med­ical records with­out war­rants. “We don’t have an offi­cial admin­is­tra­tion posi­tion on that ele­ment of your bill or the oth­ers,” the wit­ness informed the chairman.

Fein­stein fared no bet­ter when she asked whether the Jus­tice Depart­ment would have a prob­lem with requir­ing that there be “rea­son­able grounds to believe that the infor­ma­tion sought is at least rel­e­vant to an autho­rized investigation.”

“That’s a posi­tion we’d like to work through in an orderly fash­ion,” Kris demurred. Fein­stein asked another ques­tion, and Kris repeated his wish not to “get into any­thing clas­si­fied or operational.”

The other com­mit­tee mem­bers got sim­i­lar answers: “I would be reluc­tant to dis­cuss that in an open hear­ing.… I think I should defer get­ting into the pos­si­bly clas­si­fied details of any­thing here.… I wouldn’t put it the way you’ve just put it, Sen­a­tor.” When Sen. Shel­don White­house (D-R.I.) pointed out a prob­lem with one of the Patriot Act pro­ce­dures, Kris labeled the sen­a­tor “a very pre­cise and care­ful tech­ni­cal lawyer to pick up on this.”

“It’s not some­thing I just invented,” White­house shot back.

Fein­gold, who has pro­posed leg­is­la­tion that would sharply cur­tail the Patriot Act, lec­tured Kris that “its quite extra­or­di­nary” to allow the gov­ern­ment “to secretly break into Amer­i­cans’ homes in crim­i­nal cases, and I think some Amer­i­cans might be con­cerned that it’s been used hun­dreds of times in just a sin­gle year on non-terrorism cases.”

“Well,” the wit­ness replied, “I don’t mean to quib­ble with you.” But he did anyway.

David Kris, left, was speak­ing for the Obama Jus­tice Depart­ment this time, but he recy­cled some Bush-era argu­ments on the Patriot Act. (By Pablo Mar­tinez Mon­si­vais — Asso­ci­ated Press)