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Cato Daily Dispatch for October 9, 2001

Congress To Take Up Terrorism Bill Soon
Support Grows For Racial Profiling
CIA Expands After Attacks

Congress To Take Up Terrorism Bill Soon

The anti-terrorism bill that Congress is slated to take up this week includes a number of measures long sought by law enforcement agencies but resisted by civil libertarians and their congressional allies as overly broad and possibly unconstitutional, according to The Washington Post.

In response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the House and Senate will vote on separate versions of wide-ranging legislation that would enhance domestic surveillance powers, stiffen penalties for terrorism and make it easier for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to share information. Administration officials say that current laws are, in many cases, more suited to the age of the rotary telephone than the era of the Internet.

Civil liberties advocates, meanwhile, point to the broad powers already available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies -- and past abuses committed by both in the name of national security -- in warning that political pressures may cause Congress to go too far.

Last week, the Cato Institute hosted a policy forum examining the pending antiterror legislation and how freedom and security can be balanced. The forum featured Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), with commentary by Solveig Singleton, senior analyst, Competitive Enterprise Institute; Stuart Taylor, senior writer, National Journal; Jonathan Turley, professor of law, George Washington University. You can watch the forum online.

Support Grows For Racial Profiling

Two Texas civil rights leaders said Saturday that they are unsure whether state lawmakers would approve a bill prohibiting racial profiling if it were being debated now, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the Associated Press.

Fortunately, they added, lawmakers approved the racial profiling bill during the legislative session that ended in May.

"Even opinion polls now are saying that 54 percent of African-Americans are supporting racial profiling against Muslim- or Arab-Americans, and that is incredible to me," said Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas chapter of the NAACP.

Seventy percent of all Americans, he added, support racial profiling under the current climate, according to recent polls, he said.

"With those kind of numbers, there is absolutely no way the Legislature would have voted to do this," Mr. Bledsoe said.

Profiling might help to combat terrorism, but it could also involve a massive infringement of civil liberties. Finding the balance requires an analytical framework that isn't based on seat-of-the-pants speculation, says Cato scholar Robert Levy in "Ethnic Profiling: A Rational And Moral Framework."

CIA Expands After Attacks

The CIA has doubled the size of its counterterrorism center since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, adding not only more of its own analysts and operations officers but also FBI and Pentagon personnel, including members of the Army's Special Forces, according to senior intelligence officials, as reported in The Washington Post.

The center, long portrayed as an analytical operation, has become a hub for planning and overseeing offensive military operations in Afghanistan as well as key activities related to homeland defense, one official said.

The center also directs clandestine activities in the terrorism area, including covert operations and recruitment of agents.

In the 1996 study "Why Spy? The Uses and Misuses of Intelligence," Cato research fellow Stanley Kober argued that intelligence agencies focus too much attention on economic espionage when they should devote their resources to the most serious security threats, principally international terrorism and adverse political trends.