EXPANSION OF FBI POWERS GOOD REASON FOR SUSPICION

The broad new investigative powers granted to the FBI last week by Attorney
General John Ashcroft pose a threat not only to the freedom of the American
people but also to the FBI itself.

Ashcroft, of course, described the changes differently. The old rules, he
complained, gave terrorists a "competitive advantage."

''Our philosophy today is not to wait and sift through the rubble following
a terrorist attack," he said. "Rather, the FBI must intervene early and
investigate aggressively.'' More specifically, he said, he wants to give
FBI agents the same right to visit public meetings, church services, Web
sites and libraries as anybody else in the country.

Who could argue with that?

The biggest change, however, is that FBI agents no longer need a suspicion
that a crime has been or will be committed before beginning to investigate.
In the example offered by officials, under the old rules agents could use
the Web to look up information on anthrax because that germ had been used
in an attack. But they could not have used the Web to learn about smallpox
as a bioweapon because no crime had been committed with smallpox.

If previous rules truly did prevent such use of the Web, they were absurd
and, of course, should have been changed. But that example is misleading.

The policy change is far more significant than that example might indicate.
Among other things, the change also means that FBI agents have the right to
monitor political discussions in chatrooms and newsgroups and to initiate
investigations based on the opinions expressed there.

It also means that the agency now has the authority to monitor political
groups and political activities, to infiltrate those groups with informers
and to compile reports on those activities and individuals with no evidence
of their involvement in criminal or terror activities.

And because the agency is now able to use commercial data-mining services
again without any indication that a crime had been committed --- the
agency could rather quickly compile a list of Americans who subscribe both
to Islam Today and American Aviation magazines; those folks, too, could
find themselves visited by humorless armed men.

Likewise, someone who argued vehemently in a chatroom against a U.S.
invasion of Iraq might also make himself a target of an investigation. That
kind of scenario may seem farfetched to some, but it's not. During the
Vietnam War, Americans were targeted for FBI investigation for just that
kind of reason.

In fact, it's important to remember that the rules tossed aside by Ashcroft
had been implemented for very good cause. The 1975 Church Committee report
found that the FBI had compiled dossiers on more than 500,000 Americans,
including such well-known criminals as Albert Einstein and John F. Kennedy.

FBI agents attended meetings of women's lib groups, noting in its files the
name of every person attending. They infiltrated the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People and spied on the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr., whom its Domestic Intelligence Division considered "the most
dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country." In 1970, the FBI
ordered investigations of every member of "every Black Student Union and
similar group regardless of their past or present involvement in disorders."

And the list goes on and on.

In the strongest language possible, the Church report stressed the
importance of requiring law enforcement to investigate conduct, not
opinion. Without such a protective rule, it argued, an agency will
inevitably be drawn into treating political dissent as a dangerous
activity. It's also important to note that the committee found very little
evidence that the investigative focus on political groups had been
successful in preventing or uncovering terrorist activity or treason.

One high-ranking FBI official, in an interview with the committee,
described the agency's slide all too well, noting the tendency "to move
from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid
with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing
candidate. And you just keep going down the line."

In the absence of a clear legal line preventing such a slide --- a line
that has now been erased --- the only hope for keeping agencies such as the
FBI out of trouble is strong leadership at the top, deeply committed to
respecting the full diversity of opinion that makes America such a great
country.

And in that role, John Ashcroft is hopelessly miscast.