LOOPHOLES IN CIVIL LIBERTIES

AUSTIN -- WHOA! The problem is the premise. We are having one of those
circular arguments about how many civil liberties we can trade away in
order to make ourselves safe from terrorism, without even looking at the
assumption -- can we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less
free? There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less
of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not
safe from terrorist attack.

Exactly what do we want to strike out of the U.S. Constitution that we
think would prevent terrorist attacks? Let's see, if civil liberties had
been suspended before Sept. 11, would law enforcement have noticed Mohamed
Atta? Would the FBI have opened an investigation of Zacarias Massoui, as
Minneapolis agents wanted to do? The CIA had several of the 9-11 actors on
their lists of suspected terrorists. Exactly what civil liberty prevented
them from doing anything about it?

In the case of a suspected terrorist, the government already had the right
to search, wiretap, intercept, detain, examine computer and financial
records, and do anything else it needed to do. There's a special court they
go to for subpoenas and warrants. As it happens, they didn't do it.

Changing the law retroactively is not going to change that. Certainly, we
had a visa system that had more holes than Swiss cheese. What does that
have to do with civil liberties? When we don't give an agency enough money
to do its job, it doesn't get done.

As you may have heard, Immigration and Naturalization has been a bit
overwhelmed in recent years. In fairness to law enforcement, it's hard to
imagine how anyone could have seen this one coming. It's always easy to
point the finger after the fact. It was just a damnable act.

Absolutely nothing in the Constitution would have prevented us from
stopping 9-11, so why would we want to change it? I also think we're
arguing from the wrong historical analogies. Yes, during past wars civil
liberties have been abrogated and the courts have even upheld this. We
regret it later, but we don't seem to learn from that.

But the Bush administration's rhetoric aside, we are not at war. War is
when the armed forces of one country attack the armed forces of another.
What we're looking at is more akin to the 19th century problem with
anarchists, the terrorists of their day. And we made some memorable errors
by giving in to hysteria over anarchists.

In the infamous 1886 Haymarket Square affair in Chicago, after a bomb
killed seven policemen, eight labor leaders were rounded up and "tried,"
even though there was no evidence against them -- four hanged, one suicide,
three sentenced. Historians agree they were all innocent.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, executed in 1927, were finally
exonerated by the state of Massachusetts in 1977. That outbreak of hysteria
over "foreign anarchists" led to, among other abuses, a wave of arrests for
DWI: "Driving While Italian." And no one was ever made safer from an
anarchist bomb by the execution of innocent people. We all know other
groups, from the Irish to the blacks to the Chinese, have been targeted for
legal abuse over the years -- all betrayals of our laws, values and the
sacrifices of generations. Let's not do it again.

The counter-case was neatly put by David Blunkett, the British Home
Secretary: "We can live in a world with airy-fairy civil liberties and
believe the best in everybody -- and they will destroy us." Unless, of
course, we destroy ourselves first.

"Fascism" is not a word I throw around lightly, but what do you think
happened in Germany in the 1930s? The US.

Constitution was written by men who had just been through a long,
incredibly nasty war. They did not consider the Bill of Rights a frivolous
luxury, to be in force only in times of peace and prosperity, put aside
when the going gets tough. The Founders knew from tough going. They weren't
airy-fairy guys.

We put away Tim McVeigh and the terrorists who did the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing without damaging the Constitution. If the laws break into
some apartment full of al-Qaeda literature and plans of airports,
absolutely nothing prevents them from hauling in the suspects and having a
nice, cozy, cop-like chat with them. Because there's evidence. That's what
they call "due process."

When there is no evidence, no grounds for suspicion, we do not hold
citizens indefinitely and without legal representation. Very airy- fairy of
us, to be sure. Foreign citizens have only limited rights in this country,
depending their means of entry -- different for refugees, permanent
residents, etc. So what's the problem?

Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft has been so busy busting dying marijuana
smokers in California and doctors in Oregon who carry out their terminal
patients' wishes to die in peace, he obviously has no time to consider the
Constitution. But he did swear to uphold it.