Stuart Taylor, Jr.’s media appearances in print publications.
The horrors of September 11 have had some healthy aftereffects: A newfound patriotism and community spirit. A deeper respect for the heroism of people who do dangerous jobs to protect the rest of us. A fuller appreciation of how much more free, more diverse, more tolerant, and more civilized our much-disparaged society is than the societies that wallow in anti-American hatred and barbarism.
The Bush Justice Department’s focus on preventing terrorist acts rather than solving past crimes is justified by the magnitude of the threat. It’s unfortunate but understandable that by throwing a broad net to catch people who might possibly be terrorists, the government has arrested and detained hundreds of Middle Eastern men on the basis of unconfirmed suspicions that-in the vast majority of cases-have been or seem likely to be dispelled. What’s unfortunate and unforgivable is the mounting evidence that many of these men have been treated badly or abusively while detained, even after being cleared of involvement in terrorism. Such mistreatment will not win the hearts and minds of potential informers, and it will ultimately prove unhelpful to the war on terrorism.
In America, people are not supposed to disappear the way they do in Argentina and Guatemala. Yet under President Bush’s November 13 order authorizing trials of noncitizens accused of terrorism by presidentially appointed military commissions, the Bush Administration has assumed sweeping power to make such people almost disappear.
More than 1,180 men, most of them Middle Eastern, have been locked up in connection with the September 11 mass murders with virtually no public disclosure of who they are, where they are, or what crimes or immigration violations they have been suspected of committing. A regulation is quietly slipped into the Federal Register authorizing government officials to listen in on consultations between some of these detainees and their lawyers. A presidential order allows for future military detention and trials of foreigners accused of terrorist war crimes.
Few things concentrate the mind like the prospect of a nuclear mushroom cloud in your own neighborhood. So please concentrate on this: I asked Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr., a sober, respected, retired career arms control official who was President Clinton’s special representative for nonproliferation and disarmament from 1994-97, to quantify the risk of nuclear terrorism. Here is what he said, from Moscow, via cell phone:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
