Posted on 08/01/2003 4:49:49 PM PDT by Princeton
In June, Marc Schultz, an Atlanta bookstore clerk, received a call at work from his mother. "The FBI is here," she said. "They say you're not in trouble; they just want to talk. They want to come to the store."
Schultz said he was puzzled but could only guess the FBI was performing a routine background check on a friend who had applied for a government job. He was wrong. The FBI was after him.
According to Schultz, two agents came to the bookstore and quizzed him about his brief stop at a coffee shop a few days earlier, asking whether he had been reading something while there. Nervous, as he remembered it, it took him a while to recall that he had been reading an article called "Weapons of Mass Stupidity: Fox News hits a new lowest common denominator," a scathing attack on Fox News written by columnist Hal Crowther.
Crowther is a left-leaning writer who frequently lambasts the establishment, but he can hardly be considered a terrorist. Apparently, however, Schultz's mere reading of Crowther's column prompted some bystander to report him to the FBI, who, astonishingly, queried him about it. Frightening, isn't it?
If you thought that alarmists were exaggerating the erosion of civil liberties since the terrorist attacks of two years ago, think again. One of many disturbing features of the Patriot Act, pushed hastily through Congress in the panic immediately following 9/11, is that it gives the federal government the authority to inspect or seize the reading lists of any library user or bookstore customer. The feds can get the go-ahead from a secret court without showing probable cause. And a gag order prevents librarians and book retailers from revealing to customers that the government is sifting through their reading lists.
Could George Orwell have been right, after all? Special Agent Joe Parris, spokesman for the FBI's Atlanta office, says the Schultz episode "is being misconstrued." While reiterating the FBI's standing order to investigate all terrorist leads, Parris insisted, "We are not thought police. We don't consider something a terrorist lead that someone is standing in a check-out line reading an article that might be misconstrued as critical of American foreign policy. That simply does not and will not happen." Yet that is exactly what happened.
According to Parris, the FBI "received a call from someone who said he was standing in line in a coffee shop behind a young man reading literature concerning WMDs. He attempted to cover up the reading material, and he seemed nervous. ... In the caller's mind, the totality of circumstances alarmed the caller."
That's nonsense. These days, newspaper headlines are full of the phrase "weapons of mass destruction." As it happens, however, Schultz was reading an article titled "Weapons of Mass Stupidity." The last I heard, that's not illegal.
Yet Parris insists that the FBI was compelled to investigate. "God help us if we don't, and it turns out to be the next Mohamed Atta. I think the public expects us in this day and time to be vigilant."
A 25-year-old college graduate who lives with his parents, Schultz says that he's liberal but not criminal. "I had a reckless driving ticket once," he offered.
He's bearded, but his only accent is Southern. He was born and reared in suburban Marietta, Ga. Since writing about the episode in an Atlanta alternative newsweekly, Creative Loafing, Schultz says he's spoken with many friends and acquaintances who are "pretty astonished," as he is.
Parris, on the other hand, is clearly exasperated by the continuing media inquiries. When I told him Schultz was the subject of my call, he responded, "Oh, God." The FBI needs to get a grip. Blindsided by Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and criticized for ignoring critical leads that may have prevented the attack, the agency has responded by abandoning discretion and discernment and investigating everything, including crank tips and irrational suspicions. That wastes time while generating fear and ill will. Those tactics won't get Osama.
I thought so...
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That is the nature of the intelligence work: you investigate hundreds, maybe thousands of leads and one turns out to be a jackpot, the others are false alarms, but they don't know which one.
While prior to 9-11 they erred on the side of skepticism, now they are erring on the side of caution. So they went to talk to the guy, they didn't beat him up or arrest him, or anything, they just checked out a tip.
The times the leads actually pay off, they are probably not allowed to talk about it.
As the spokesman said, they can't afford to possibly not follow up a lead and have that be the one that may have prevented the next terror attack.
Of course, I wish they would use a little common sense and stop following poor Hatfill around, and wouldn't have drained that lake -- IOW, I think they are doing some things which are obviously mistakes, but I don't think they deserve to be bashed over doing some routine work, which they have to do.
Depending on where you set the threshold, you either get a lot of false alarms, but have an increased probability of detection of real terrorists, or if you set the threshold too high, you may not have many false alarms, but you miss a lot of real terrorist plots, which we can't afford to do.
Some guy was acting suspicious out in public, the FBI politely questioned him, and eliminated him as a suspect of anything. End of story. What's the big deal.
So now reading is a suspicious act? Interesting.
The tear in the fabric of our society just got larger.
I hear more and more of these "Erosion of Our Rights" stories. And EVERY ONE of them are geared to tearing down the efforts to track down the Jihadis and their supporters (ie. Socialists).
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