Tag Archives: Terrorism

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Legal Affairs – Politically Incorrect Profiling: A Matter of Life or Death

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

What would happen if another 19 well-trained Al Qaeda terrorists, this time with 19 bombs in their bags, tried to board 19 airliners over the next 19 months? Many would probably succeed, blowing up lots of planes and thousands of people, if the forces of head-in-the-sand political correctness prevail-as they did before September 11-in blocking use of national origin as a factor in deciding which passengers’ bags to search with extra care.

But a well-designed profiling system might well catch all 19. Such a system would not be race-based; indeed, most Arab-Americans would not fit the profile. It would factor in suspicious behavior, along with national origin, gender, and age. It could spread the burden by selecting at least one white (or black, or Asian) passenger to be searched for every Middle Easterner so selected. And it should be done politely and respectfully.

We have no good alternative. For the foreseeable future, the shortage of high-tech bomb-detection machines and the long delays required to search luggage by hand will make it impossible to effectively screen more than a small percentage of checked bags. The only real protection is to make national origin a key factor in choosing those bags. Otherwise, federalizing airport security and confiscating toenail clippers will be futile gestures.

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Periscope

by Stuart Taylor, Jr. et al.

Newsweek

In investigating the Sept. 11 attack, few tasks are more difficult–and potentially more ominous–than unraveling the role of a mysterious Iraqi official named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. Until last spring, al-Ani was listed as the chief of consular affairs in the Iraqi Embassy in Prague. But last month U.S. officials were told by Czech intelligence that al-Ani had been spotted having a number of meetings with Mohamed Atta, the suspected hijack ringleader, near the Iraqi Embassy during a visit Atta made to the Czech Republic in April 2001.

The report prompted tense debate within the Bush administration over possible Iraqi involvement in the attack. Al-Ani is believed to be a hardened Iraqi intelligence agent. In late April the Czech Foreign Ministry called in Iraq’s mission chief in Prague and demanded that al-Ani leave the country within 48 hours. Why? U.S. and Czech officials told NEWSWEEK that al-Ani had been spotted “casing” and photographing the Radio Free Europe building in Prague. Czech officials feared al-Ani was plotting an attack on Radio Free Europe, which incurred Saddam’s wrath when it began broadcasting into Iraq in 1998. “I told the Iraqi chief of mission that [al-Ani] was involved in activities which endanger the security of the Czech Republic,” Hynek Kmonicek, the Czech Foreign Ministry official who ordered al-Ani’s expulsion, told NEWSWEEK.

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Legal Affairs – The Bill to Combat Terrorism Doesn’t Go Far Enough

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Suppose the FBI receives an anonymous tip that an apartment in Trenton, N.J., was used by Middle Eastern terrorists to prepare the anthrax-laced letters that have convulsed the nation. Could it get a search warrant? Possibly not: Under current case law, an anonymous tip falls short of the "probable cause" necessary to justify searching an apartment.

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Legal Affairs – The Media, The Military, and Striking the Right Balance

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

This war will severely test the inherently uneasy relationship between the government-especially the military-and the media. The chafing has already begun. While the Bush Administration so far seems largely to have avoided the outright deceptions practiced by its predecessors, it has exhibited an unhealthy impulse to control the news by leaning on the media not to publish enemy "propaganda." And while much of the news coverage has been superb, some journalists have exhibited a reckless indifference to endangering military operations and the lives of our soldiers, and a reflexive hostility toward the military.

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Legal Affairs – The Rage of Genocidal Masses Must Not Restrain Us

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Should America’s war aims be big and bold, or small and soft? Should we go in forcefully to make sure that Osama bin Laden is killed and the Taliban overthrown, or hold back for fear of inflaming the "Death-to-America" mobs and destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan? Should we hunt down Al Qaeda terrorists hiding in unfriendly countries, or plead impotently for their extradition? Should we stand proudly by Israel, or distance ourselves? Should we vow to invade Iraq and decapitate Saddam Hussein’s regime if he threatens us with weapons of mass destruction, or sit back, hoard antibiotics, move out of our endangered cities, and hope for the best?

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Legal Affairs – Wiretaps Are an Overblown Threat to Privacy

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, … he could be seen as well as heard. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. – George Orwell, 1984

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Legal Affairs – How to Minimize The Risks of Overreacting To Terrorism

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The portion of Attorney General John Ashcroft’s proposed anti-terrorism bill that has attracted the most controversy since it was made public on September 19-the so-called "indefinite detention provision"-may turn out to be less far-reaching and less controversial than it first appeared. Therein lies a lesson about how best to reconcile Ashcroft’s urgent request for new powers with Congress’s need to deliberate carefully on this complex and multifaceted bill before passing laws that could be with us for decades.

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NewsHour: Racial Profiling – September 26, 2001

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GWEN IFILL: So is this racial profiling or reasonable investigation?

We ask four people who specialize in civil rights, terrorism and the law. Juliette Kayyem is executive director of the Domestic Preparedness Session at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; Frank Wu is a professor at Howard University Law School, he is the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White; Stuart Taylor is a columnist for the National Journal and Newsweek; and Gail Heriot is a law professor at the University of California at San Diego.

GWEN IFILL: Juliet Kayyem, you’re an Arab-American woman. Do you believe at any time that racial profiling can be acceptable?

JULIETTE KAYYEM: The easy answer to your question is no. It can’t be. And it’s not simply for the legal issues that will probably get into or the ethical issues. As a person in the terrorism business, I think it’s completely ineffective.

It’s ineffective with the specific problem we’re dealing with here. We have the Al-Qaeda group, we know they’re in 40 countries, from Malaysia to the Philippines to Latin America, so Arab looking people won’t satisfy, if you look for Arabs you’re not going to satisfy it.

But secondly I think it’s ineffective because we have a huge problem in law enforcement and intelligence right now, and that is simply we have no one to translate any of the information that we have. We have, we’re starting to hear hints that we knew something was going on at least a few weeks before this, and we’re still trying to translate some of that information.

If we continue to sort of intimidate and interrogate an entire community, and I should point out that most Arab Americans are Christians, not Muslims in America, we will not get the kind of cooperation we need.

GWEN IFILL: Stuart Taylor, when can racial profiling ever be acceptable?

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Column – The Case for Using Racial Profiling at Airports

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

With bigots harassing and violently attacking loyal Arab-Americans, it is a bit taboo in some circles to advocate racial or ethnic profiling of any kind, in any place, ever. "I’m against using race as a profiling component," even in screening would-be airline passengers, Attorney General John Ashcroft declared in a September 16 television interview.

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Column – Thinking the Unthinkable: Next Time Could Be Much Worse

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Unimaginable as it may seem, it could be worse the next time. It could be nuclear or biological terror. While we mourn our loved ones, friends, neighbors, and countrymen, we must focus on the fact that these evil people will kill as many of us as they can-unless we stop them or kill them first.