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Subject: We've Had Enough Witch-hunts
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 04:44:22 -0400
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We've Had Enough Witch-hunts
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
Los Angeles Times - June 4, 2002
http://www.latimes.com
Commentary;
We've Had Enough Witch Hunts
War on terrorism does not justify racial profiling.
by Robert Scheer
Nothing succeeds like failure. Suddenly, everyone wants to grant the
FBI and other intelligence agencies even more power despite the fact
that they failed so spectacularly to utilize the expansive powers
they had to head off terrorism before Sept. 11. In a sign of mass
impotent rage, liberal columnists and politicians are joining
right-wing talk show blatherers in insisting the FBI not be
"hamstrung" by the restraints of civil liberty.
First to go? Freedom from discrimination based on ethnicity, race or
nationality. Racial profiling, popular since the Dark Ages, is again
in vogue. Consider Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) comments Sunday
that to prevent terrorism "one isn't going to look for blond
Norwegians" and that "the racial profiling debate has [had] ... a
chilling impact" on the FBI. The truth is that the bureau was
hamstrung not by constitutional limits on its powers but rather by
incompetence and bureaucratic arrogance at the organization's top,
which ignored ample warnings from below that something terrifying was
afoot.
Furthermore, the FBI's parent bureaucracy, the Justice Department,
was itself hobbled by Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who remained
steadfastly focused on the so- called war on drugs despite urgent
warnings from the previous administration that terrorism was the main
law enforcement problem.
The rest of the Bush administration was equally distracted before
Sept. 11, focusing on an illusory promise of missile defense rather
than on the hard reality of terrorism. Former White House officials
have told me that despite the passionate warnings of Richard Clarke,
a top anti-terrorism official under both Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush, the president's Cabinet went the first eight months of his
administration without discussing terrorist threats.
The killing of thousands of people in New York, Washington and
Pennsylvania on Sept. 11 got their attention, though. Ashcroft
charged the Hill to demand--and receive--sweeping new law enforcement
powers under the USA Patriot Act, hastily passed by a stunned
Congress. He didn't, however, admit under congressional questioning
that his FBI had ample warnings from field agents that a great many
suspicious men were training in U.S. flight schools or that FBI
headquarters had failed to act on the reports.
More recently, Ashcroft has approved changes in the FBI's internal
regulations to permit increased spying on Americans, deceitfully
shifting the onus for the failure to protect society from the
incompetence of the Justice Department and the CIA to the alleged
deviousness of John Q. Public. These new powers intrude on the lives
of law-abiding citizens and add nothing that would have helped
prevent the terrorist attacks.
Take, for instance, Feinstein's call for the FBI to engage in racial
profiling of Arab Americans: Police departments across the country
have found such tactics alienate otherwise loyal minority communities
whose cooperation is indispensable to investigations, and it also
wastes limited resources. Consider the FBI budget and manpower used
to hound Taiwanese-born Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee for five
years without finding evidence of spying.
Meanwhile, for more than a decade, FBI headquarters harbored the
biggest spy of all, top agent and Soviet mole Robert Hanssen. Perhaps
the FBI should racially profile straight white males like Hanssen? Of
course that will never happen, anymore than it did during WWII when
the feds were unwilling to round up Hitler's extensive fifth column
in the German American community, even as apolitical
Japanese-American gardeners were sent to concentration camps.
If we were to be honest in making the case for profiling, we would go
after Saudi Arabians and their business partners and other associates
in this country. The Sept. 11 attacks were--from Osama bin Laden to
15 of the 19 hijackers to the money that supported them--an operation
with top-to-bottom links to Saudi Arabia, a kingdom our military has
protected for half a century and which enjoys close ties with Bush's
family. Instead of harassing loyal Arab Americans, the FBI would be
better advised to squeeze executives from U.S. corporations, such as
the Carlyle Group and Bechtel, that have extensive ties to the
Saudis.
What we don't need is a witch hunt against the American people,
ferreting through their private lives or detaining them because of
their ethnicity. If there is a group that should be looked at
closely, and with suspicion, it is the top officials of this
administration, whose indifference and incompetence before Sept. 11
may have permitted an incredible tragedy.
Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
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