BOMBS AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Almost 35 years ago I was the first policeman to reach the scene of a
fatal bombing. Someone known as the Sunday Bomber had placed a
powerful explosive under a seat in a subway car. The bomb went off on
a quiet Sunday Morning in New York City at the West 125th Street
station, a block from where I, a rookie patrolman, stood. I ran to the
site and at the bottom of the subway stairs found a scene from hell. A
huge hole had been torn through the steel subway car and dozens of
people stood dazed and bloody. I approached what appeared to be a
bundle of rags. It was a teenage girl blown almost in half. I leaned
over to hear her feeble plea. 'Help me.' But no one could. She died
before reaching the hospital.

It was nowhere near the scale of the Oklahoma City tragedy, but I
remember the feeling of helplessness and rage at whoever had planted
the bomb and the determination that something extraordinary had to be
done to protect other innocent victims. Nevertheless, my experience in
law enforcement during the following 35 years leads me to be nauseated
and concerned by the political posturing in Washington following the
Oklahoma City bombing.

The public needs reassuring that the government will not allow
widespread terrorism and that government officials share the public
grief for the innocent victims and their families. However, the
eagerness of the president and congressional leaders to move in front
of TV cameras with hasty proposals for major increases in federal
power rings of self-aggrandizement and cheapens the nation's sincere
moment of sorrow. The hurried recommendations-to hire more federal
agents, to change intelligence-gathering guidelines. to increase
wiretap surveillance, and to involve military personnel in
investigations or civilians-are hypocritical and potentially harmful.

If our elected leaders truly believe that increased danger of
terrorism warrants such extraordinary powers, how do they explain that
few federal and government facilities have taken precautions to
prevent attacks since the Oklahoma City bombing?. I have inspected a
number of facilities since the attack. Security personnel have not
been on alert, nor has the government taken the routine precaution of
diverting vehicular traffic to prevent car bombings.

We should also remember that Timothy McVeigh, charged in the Oklahoma
City bombing, was quickly apprehended without the U.S. passing new
laws and spending additional billions of dollars. It is also important
to recall that during the 20 Years since reasonable guidelines were
established for intelligence gathering by federal agents on citizens,
the U.S. has not been overwhelmed by terrorist acts. The FBI can and
does gather intelligence on domestic groups when appropriate.
Furthermore, despite our horror in viewing the Oklahoma City blast
victims, we should remember that more than 25,000 Americans are
murdered each year and less than 100 of the killings are by
explosives. More important, it is unlikely that any of the suggested
anti-terrorist legislation would have prevented the Oklahoma City
bombing.

My own experience, which includes heading police forces of two of the
nation's largest cities, is that law-enforcement intelligence
activities are only occasionally important but require constant
oversight. The Militia paranoids are wrong in believing that law-
enforcement officers are essentially fascist. Yet there have been
countless examples showing that power can be abused by initially well
meaning officers given too much secret discretion.

Recall Richard Nixon's involvement of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and near involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency
in the Watergate coverup. And. much more recently, there was President
Clinton's slip in implying that radio talk-show hosts critical of his
administration were encouraging potential bombers.

Would a president view criticism as potentially violent and therefore
worthy of secret FBI surveillance under the new legislation? It would
be most wise to temper our revulsion for the killers responsible for
the Oklahoma City murders and our sorrow for the victim with the
realization that during this century the greatest terrorists have been
governments like Nazi Germany. Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, and
Pol Pot's Cambodia. They murdered millions and millions of their own
citizens in the name of providing security.

If terrorism increases here, it will be necessary to take additional
precautions to protect the nation However, the most reliable way to
prevent terrorism is by conducting government in a manner that wins
the public's trust and destroys the appeal of the lunatic fringe. It
would be ironic if anti-terrorist legislation helped destroy the
protections of our Constitution and turned the delusions of the
paranoids into reality.