The Connecticut Four: Just Doing their Jobs

There they were, this morning at breakfast, four of my colleagues on the front page of the Hartford Courant, and above the fold--George Christian, Peter Chase, Jan Nocek, and Barbara Bailey. (Leslie Burger and Alice Knapp were also in the picture in the New York Times Metro section, but were cropped from the Courant, probably because they aren’t local, even though Leslie is president of the American Library Association, and Alice is president of the Connecticut Library Association.)

They are the Connecticut Four. They didn’t set out to make the papers. They were just doing their jobs as librarians. Three of them are directors of public libraries in small towns around Hartford—Plainville, Portland, and Glastonbury. Last summer they happened to be serving as the Vice President, Secretary, and President of Library Connection, a cooperative of 27 libraries in the Hartford area that share an automated library system. Then the FBI sent a national security letter demanding records of patron Internet use to Library Connection’s Executive Director, George Christian.

Exactly what happened then, they still cannot say, but these four people, now known collectively as John Doe, did their jobs. They refused to give up any of the records sought by the FBI, and they are the first in the country to challenge a national security letter, 30,000 of which are estimated to have been issued this year.

Unlike search and arrest warrants, a national security letter can be issued by the FBI without judicial review, and the recipients are bound by a perpetual gag order to refrain from telling anyone they have received a letter. Anyone means friends, family, colleagues, their own library boards, even the other librarians on Library Connection’s Board of Directors.

I was lucky enough to have a previously scheduled meeting at Library Connection’s office in Windsor this afternoon. I drove up hoping to get some inside information, but George and the Library Connection officers still cannot talk about who was targeted in the letter or what records were sought. And, although they were above the fold today at ACLU headquarters in Manhattan, my colleagues still face a legal battle over other portions of the demand, and they still are prohibited from discussing details of the letter and its delivery.

But at least today, and maybe for a few days, they were there—in the New York Times and the Hartford Courant and on TV and radio, and attention is being paid to the importance of protecting the privacy of public library patrons. Now, thanks to the Connecticut Four, all those audiences (as well as our own friends and family) know something about the job of a librarian.

As George said this afternoon, (before he had to leave to be flown to Washington DC for an interview with NPR,) “Who ever heard of such a thing—no probable cause, no subpoena, just a letter demanding information about people who use the public library?”

Who gives up that information? Not the library!

Not Just Another Day in the District

It was just another day in D.C., but oh what it seemed to me! Not only is Washington several weeks further into springtime than the cold rainy Connecticut to which we returned, but the District is beautiful. Years ago a friend of mine who worked for the National Park Service told me that they spend 90% of their entire budget in the district, and I’m here to tell you, we get our money’s worth. Except for the major construction site (of a new visitors’ center) around the Capitol, the city begs to be walked, and Tuesday was a day that would inspire e.e.cummings:
“Thank you God, for most his amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of a sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

But the real inspiration was not from the May flowers or the way the marble buildings gleam in the sunshine. (It just seems a little more important now that I’m back in the drizzle.) It was not just from meeting with Rosa DeLauro and John Larson. The thrill was from having a real conversation with both of them. I’ve been on this annual appeal before, when librarians from all over the country descend on Congress for the American Library Association’s annual Legislative Day in May. Often we delegates from the Connecticut Library Association end up discussing library legislation in the hallway with congressional aides. I am always star struck when we meet with actual members of Congress in their Capitol hill digs, which get more elaborate as the members gain more seniority. Both DeLauro and Larson have always supported not only library funding, but also intellectual freedom concerns like the Patriot Act, and federal funding for libraries is faring pretty well these days with a librarian as chief spouse.

So we didn’t have to lobby either of them. Instead we got to talk—-about Rosa’s “Rosa’s Readers” program to reward kids between the first and second grades who have read 20 books, about how funding for the arts is not “not our business” as some of her colleagues think, about how much her immigrant parents valued both reading and learning the English language, and finally about Rosa’s fabulous clothes. (OK, that was only me, but this is a woman who has found her style!)

We got to congratulate John Larson for his courageous vote against the war in Iraq and he got to show off a new book of which this former history teacher is justifiably proud--The House, a History of the House of Representatives by historian Robert Remini. The first bill that Larson ever introduced was to commission an historian to write a history of the House of Representatives. Tom Geoffino, the president-elect of CLA, knew of Remini right away, having read his biographies of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, and so he was as excited as Larson.

These are good people, Rosa DeLauro and John Larson, and it was an amazing day to have a chance to talk with them, not just about supporting increased federal funding for libraries, but about things that we all care about.