Friday November 16 5:38 PM ET

Bush Lawyer Calls Terrorists Savages

By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The men who killed his wife and thousands of others Sept. 11 were savages and bigots, says the Bush administration's top lawyer.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson said his wife, lawyer and conservative activist Barbara Olson was the perfect terrorist victim because she was a quintessential American: tough, ambitious, self-made.

``They are tyrants because they hate democracy,'' Olson said Friday in a lecture to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that Olson and his wife helped found.

``They are bigots and religious zealots who persecute Christians and Jews, ... so they must hate America because America stands for tolerance, freedom and respect for all religions, all people, regardless of their sex, color, national origin or accent.''

Barbara Olson called her husband from the doomed plane that hit the Pentagon and described the hijacking in progress. Theodore Olson is among the White House's chief proponents of tough new anti-terrorism laws.

Olson is the administration's chief lawyer for arguments before the Supreme Court. Should anyone be charged and tried for participation in the attacks, his office probably would be involved at the appeals stage. It is not known whether Olson would step aside in light of his personal involvement.

Olson did not mention the administration's plan to try terrorists before military tribunals, which might or might not offer a chance for the accused to appeal. The Supreme Court upheld the government's last use of a military tribunal during World War II.

In that case, the court found that German saboteurs who sneaked ashore in New York and Florida were foreign combatants who intended the United States harm.

Olson suggested the foreign-born terrorists of Sept. 11 fit the same model. The attacks were an act of war, Olson said, and the terrorists were devious plotters who took advantage of the openness of American society.

``It is a sad and tragic irony that these 19 savages who took the lives of thousands of Americans on Sept. 11 were able to come here because we welcomed them and trusted them,'' Olson said.

``They took these precious gifts and turned them into instruments of hatred and death.''

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2001