PROFILING BILL CLINTON

Consider the following:

"Predominant wholesale [heroin] traffickers are Colombian, followed by
Dominicans, Chinese, West African/Nigerian, Pakistani, Hispanic and Indian.
Midlevels are dominated by Dominicans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans,
African-Americans and Nigerians."

To some, this may sound like a racist diatribe from a skinhead Web site. But
in fact, this is an excerpt from a 1999 official advisory issued by the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration.

That is, Bill Clinton's DEA.

And it lends important perspective to the debate over alleged racial
profiling by the New Jersey State Police.

It also exposes the tremendous hypocrisy of the Clinton administration -
which publicly condemns local police departments across the nation as
racist, but practices blatant ethnic profiling in its own law-enforcement
agencies.

New Jersey state officials this week released some 91,000 pages of documents
on racial profiling - and they confirmed that up to 80 percent of the
motorists who were stopped and searched on the New Jersey Turnpike over the
past decade were black or Hispanic.

But state Attorney General John Farmer noted that this policy - which he
conceded is "devastating" as "social policy" - originated with the federal
government.

Moreover, he added, the same folks in Washington continue to defend what can
only be described as out-and-out racial profiling.

And there's a reason for that: The searches uncovered contraband in 30
percent of the searches - meaning that it was "effective in law-enforcement
terms."

Indeed, the Clinton Justice Dept.'s civil-rights division - the same outfit
that is threatening legal action against the NYPD for alleged endemic racial
profiling - specifically cleared its own agencies of the practice in 1997.

Just one year later, however, Clinton White House drug czar Gen. Barry
McCaffrey issued a report giving detailed and specific breakdowns of drug
traffickers and users by ethnic and racial groups.

"The troopers in the field were given a mixed message," notes Farmer. "On
the one hand, we were training them not to take race into account. On the
other hand, all the [federal] intelligence featured race and ethnicity
prominently."

The use of such ethnic profiles didn't originate with the Clinton
administration. But only this president and attorney general have piously -
and recklessly - condemned others for practicing what they themselves so
blatantly preach.

Even - as in the case of the NYPD - where charges of racial profiling are
dubious at best.

Profiling can be a valuable tool in law enforcement, and case law is
inconclusive on just when and how ethnicity can be taken into account.

But there is no confusion about the sanctimoniousness and hypocritical piety
emanating from Washington on the issue.