Posted on 11/30/2001 6:26:23 PM PST by GeneD
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 — Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax restrictions on the F.B.I.'s spying on religious and political organizations in the United States, senior government officials said today.
The proposal would loosen one of the most fundamental restrictions on the conduct of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and would be another step by the Bush administration to modify civil-liberties protections as a means of defending the country against terrorists, the senior officials said.
The attorney general's surveillance guidelines were imposed on the F.B.I. in the 1970's after the death of J. Edgar Hoover and the disclosures that the F.B.I. had run a widespread domestic surveillance program, called Cointelpro, to monitor antiwar militants, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, while Mr. Hoover was director.
Since then, the guidelines have defined the F.B.I.'s operational conduct in investigations of domestic and overseas groups that operate in the United States.
Some officials who oppose the change said the rules had largely kept the F.B.I. out of politically motivated investigations, protecting the bureau from embarrassment and lawsuits. But others, including senior Justice Department officials, said the rules were outmoded and geared to obsolete investigative methods and had at times hobbled F.B.I. counterterrorism efforts.
Mr. Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, favor the change, the officials said. Most of the opposition comes from career officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said today that no final decision had been reached on the revised guidelines.
"As part of the attorney general's reorganization," said Susan Dryden, the spokeswoman, "we are conducting a comprehensive review of all guidelines, policies and procedures. All of these are still under review."
An F.B.I. spokesman said the bureau's approach to terrorism was also under review.
"Director Mueller's view is that everything should be on the table for review," the spokesman, John Collingwood, said. "He is more than willing to embrace change when doing so makes us a more effective component. A healthy review process doesn't come at the expense of the historic protections inherent in our system."
The attorney general is free to revise the guidelines, but Justice Department officials said it was unclear how heavily they would be revised. There are two sets of guidelines, for domestic and foreign groups, and most of the discussion has centered on the largely classified rules for investigations of foreign groups.
The relaxation of the guidelines would follow administration measures to establish military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorism; to seek out and question 5,000 immigrants, most of them Muslims, who have entered the United States since January 2000; and to arrest more than 1,200 people, nearly all of whom are unconnected to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and hold hundreds of them in jail.
Today, Mr. Ashcroft defended his initiatives in an impassioned speech to United States attorneys.
"Our efforts have been deliberate, they've been coordinated, they've been carefully crafted to not only protect America but to respect the Constitution and the rights enshrined therein," Mr. Ashcroft said.
"Still," he added, "there have been a few voices who have criticized. Some have sought to condemn us with faulty facts or without facts at all. Others have simply rushed to judgment, almost eagerly assuming the worst of their government before they've had a chance to understand it at its best."
Under the current surveillance guidelines, the F.B.I. cannot send undercover agents to investigate groups that gather at places like mosques or churches unless investigators first find probable cause, or evidence leading them to believe that someone in the group may have broken the law. Full investigations of this sort cannot take place without the attorney general's consent.
Since Sept. 11, investigators have said, Islamic militants have sometimes met at mosques — apparently knowing that the religious institutions are usually off limits to F.B.I. surveillance squads. Some officials are now saying they need broader authority to conduct surveillance of potential terrorists, no matter where they are.
Senior career F.B.I. officials complained that they had not been consulted about the proposed change — a criticism they have expressed about other Bush administration counterterrorism measures. When the Justice Department decided to use military tribunals to try accused terrorists, and to interview thousands of Muslim men in the United States, the officials said they were not consulted.
Justice Department officials noted that Mr. Mueller had endorsed the administration's proposals, adding that the complaints were largely from older F.B.I. officials who were resistant to change and unwilling to take the aggressive steps needed to root out terror in the United States. Other officials said the Justice Department had consulted with F.B.I. lawyers and some operational managers about the change.
But in a series of recent interviews, several senior career officials at the F.B.I. said it would be a serious mistake to weaken the guidelines, and they were upset that the department had not clearly described the proposed changes.
"People are furious right now — very, very angry," one of them said. "They just assume they know everything. When you don't consult with anybody, it sends the message that you assume you know everything. And they don't know everything."
Still, some complaints seem to stem from the F.B.I.'s shifting status under Mr. Ashcroft. Weakened by a series of problems that predated the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. has been forced to follow orders from the Justice Department — a change that many law enforcement experts thought was long overdue. In the past, the bureau leadership had far more independence and authority to make its own decisions.
Several senior officials are leaving the F.B.I., including Thomas J. Pickard, the deputy director. He was the senior official in charge of the investigation of the attacks and was among top F.B.I. officials who were opposed to another decision of the Bush administration, the public announcements of Oct. 12 and Oct. 29 that placed the country on the highest state of alert in response to vague but credible threats of a possible second terrorist attack. Mr. Pickard is said to have been opposed to publicizing threats that were too vague to provide any precautionary advice.
Many F.B.I. officials regard the administration's plan to establish military tribunals as an extreme step that diminishes the F.B.I.'s role because it creates a separate prosecutorial system run by the military.
"The only thing I have seen about the tribunals is what I have seen in the newspapers," a senior official complained.
Another official said many senior law enforcement officials shared his concern about the tribunals. "I believe in the rule of law, and I believe if we have a case to make against someone, we should make it in a federal courtroom in the United States," he said.
Several senior F.B.I. officials said the tribunal system should be reserved for senior Al Qaeda members apprehended by the military in Afghanistan or other foreign countries.
Few were involved in deliberations that led to the directive Mr. Ashcroft issued this month to interview immigrant men living legally in the United States. F.B.I. officials have complained that the interview plan was begun before its ramifications were fully understood.
"None of this was thought through, a senior official said. "They just announced it, and left it to others to figure out how to do it."
The arrests and detentions of more than 1,200 people since Sept. 11 have also aroused concerns at the F.B.I. Officials noted that the investigations had found no conspirators in the United States who aided the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks and only a handful of people who were considered Al Qaeda members.
"This came out of the White House, and Ashcroft's office," a senior official said. "There are tons of things coming out of there these days where there is absolutely no consultation with the bureau."
Some at the F.B.I. have been openly skeptical about claims that some of the 1,200 people arrested were Al Qaeda members and that the strategy of making widespread arrests had disrupted or thwarted planned attacks.
"It's just not the case," an official said. "We have 10 or 12 people we think are Al Qaeda people, and that's it. And for some of them, it's based only on conjecture and suspicion."
I hate to break this to you (and I pray to God I am wrong) but it occurs to me that Clinton/Reno was the Wiemar Republic...
Smells fishy...almost LEAHY-like to me.
I've got a reminder for some of you on the left AND the right who are knocking their knees over the fear of military tribunals:
These murderous animals want to get nuclear weapons. What'll it take to get you people on board? Do they have to detonate a device over Manhattan? Washington, DC? How many millions will they kill before you folks finally say, "Damn, our government needs to be identifying these people and bringing them to justice immediately."
Don't bother giving some civil rights classroom discussion about due process for all, blah blah blah. NOTHING this administration has said has hindered the civil rights or Constitutional Rights of any citizen. They HAVE decided to go beyond what their NORMAL modus operandi, though, in light of this situation:
Just because the war in the Asian theatre is going seemingly GREAT so far, and we're wasting Taliban idiots left and right DOESN'T mean there isn't a significant threat here at home. How dare you all accuse this administration of purposely coming into office and making it a point to interrupt the normal lives of the citizenry! They're busting their asses to help us get BACK to our normal lives--what would you prefer they had done since September 11 on the home front...just say,
"Well, folks, we're not really gonna upset you by trying to identify the terrorists here, cause, well, you all might think we're goin' a little too far, you know. Alan Dershowitz on the left and you militia folk on the right will think we've gone too far, so you know, let's all just keep an eye out for bad guys, okay?"
NO, THAT would be insufficient. We lost 5,000 people in one day. 5,000. I know most of us saw it on TV, not in the flesh, where it would have been more embedded in our souls. I know the shock value isn't the same as it was 3 months ago. I know we want to "move on". I know things seem quiet and almost "normal" now. They aren't. The jackals who killed our citizens are still among us, and it is the DUTY of our government to do all it can do to find them and bring them to justice.
God Bless America.
I'm SO glad to be a
Recovering Democrat.
I'm on guard now. I'm scared @#^%less about 2004 or 2008. It's the next one.
Bush I - 1988-1992 - BAD PRES
Klinton - 2nd worst ever(FDR)
Bush II - Lost many freedoms, so far I give him a C-. B+ on foreign affairs, D- on the domestic front.
No, that was LBJ by a country mile. He sank further into the tank recently in my mind when his newly released tapes had him admitting that Vietnam (at least doing it his way) was unwinnable, but that he didn't think he could afford to "lose," and so contented himself like a deer in headlights with a state of ineffectual equipoise in which a few dozen American troops flowed down the facet into LBJ's witches' brew bathtub each week, matched by few dozen troops going down the drain. In other words, the policy was with malice aforethought.
I think he knew the evil he was doing, since it not only poltically destroyed him, but also physically. May he not rest in peace. Sorry to be so immoderate about this. It isn't typically like me. :)
Ran a tight ship that put the fear of God in criminals.
I don't think this conclusion is supported by the text of the article.
If this is what is happening, then I am in favor of it. We have lost a lot since the 60's, and Jimmy Carter's actions in the 70's was just a continuation of it. I'm a little sceptical, and I will keep my eyes open as I'm sure most freepers will. But we have to remember that the enemy is within this country, among us.
There are other government actions that I would be far more critical of. To me, this is just legitimizing what the FBI already does.
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So what does this mean, more Ruby Ridges and more Wacos?
There has still been no serious accountability for past lunacy by federal agents. As such, any federal agencies can not be trusted with further empowerment.
No one, not even Congress, holds the FBI accountable even now. It is the honor system and some in the FBI have no honor.
That's how Nazi took over people's rights in the 30's ( In the name of security for it's citzens ) ....
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