Free the FBI

WHILE MUSLIM TERRORISTS penetrate our borders with surface-to-air missiles and make every air traveler a potential target, and while INS screw-ups show daily that we have no borders and no real ability to keep any of our enemies out, a surreal battle is taking place within the ranks of the hostage population itself. The debate is whether Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI should have given agents license to keep an eye on suspected terrorists and their ideological supporters if they have not yet blown up a plane. The trigger of the debate is the recent decision of the Justice Department to remove restrictions it imposed on itself in 1972 that prevent the agency from spying on organizations that have not yet committed an actual crime. A chorus of so-called civil rights groups has already attacked the decision, which involves no change in the law and no endorsement of illegal behavior, as though it were an attack on the Constitution itself.

The 1972 restrictions were adopted by the FBI in the face of an assault on its practices by the political left. The issue was the FBI’s "Cointelpro" program, an effort to counter massive civil disobedience and the growing threat from quasi-military radical groups who had gone from demonizing America to planting more than 1,000 bombs, committing acts of military sabotage and killing at least one innocent math professor in their campaign against the Vietnam War. While lighting the fires of war on the home front war as a protest against the war abroad, the political left succeeded in making the FBI the villain in the case. Of all the groups targeted by the FBI’s Cointelpro program, the one most held up as an example of American injustice was the Black Panther Party. Plots and alleged acts of political "repression" against the Panthers became the prime justifications for clipping the FBI’s wings.

In fact, the Panthers were a heavily armed group prone to violence against their own members and others. One of their leaders, Elaine Brown, boasted they had more than 1,000 weapons including rocket launchers and machine guns. But since they were a "political" party, and since a vast fellow-traveling cadre of leftwing lawyers and civil rights groups abetted by a willing press was ready to see them as victims rather than perpetrators, the FBI was effectively neutralized and the Panthers continued on their radical course. The 1972 restrictions, which barred the FBI from infiltrating the Panthers and acting to prevent violence before it occurred, made the task of controlling them much greater. With the restrictions in place, the Panthers were able to murder more than a dozen people – mostly black -- in the 1970s including my friend Betty Van Patter who was bludgeoned to death in 1974. No one was ever prosecuted for these crimes.

In 1969 a group of SDS New Leftists created the Weather Underground, America’s first terrorist cult. The Weathermen made very obvious their anti-American jihad. They issued a declaration of war against "Amerikkka" and began a campaign of violence that included detonating a bomb in the U.S. Capitol building. In 1970, three of their leaders were blown up while building a nail bomb, which they intended to set off at a dance at Fort Dix. The FBI knew the names of every leader of Weatherman and most of its members. But because the Weather fugitives were aided by other leftists, including prominent "civil rights" attorneys, and because the FBI – even prior to its self-imposed restrictions – was unable to penetrate the leftist networks that protected and supported the terrorist cadre, the government was never able to apprehend them. In the five years before they surfaced themselves, only a handful of Weathermen were ever captured.

And the Weathermen did not have Stinger missiles, anthrax caches, or suitcase nuclear devices to make their mayhem really impressive.

All Americans who care for their own lives or the lives of their families and neighbors, both leftists and conservatives alike, should join in praising John Ashcroft for taking these minimal – but politically difficult -- steps to defend their homeland. It would have been better if the FBI had announced that it was specifically targeting mosques where radical Islamic doctrines are preached, instead of churches, synagogues and mosques in general. This blanket approach was obviously adopted to make the agency less vulnerable to attacks from the vocal fellow-travelers of the civil rights left. The left’s strategy is certainly clever: Attack the idea that any Muslims are America’s enemies, even the ones who declare that they are -- because that’s racial profiling. Then, when the government bows to political correctness and announces its sweep will be non-discriminatory and general, proclaim that the FBI is attacking religion! Ideas!

In fact 80% of America’s mosques are funded by the Saudis, who also fund al-Qaeda worldwide, along with the suicide bombers in the Middle East. The leader of the first bomb attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, whose aim was to kill 250,000 people, was a blind sheik who operated out of a mosque. The radical lawyer representing the now imprisoned blind sheik is under indictment by Ashcroft’s Justice Department for allegedly helping the prisoner communicate with his terrorist cohorts in the conduct of their violence in the Middle East. The lawyer – Lynne Stewart – is a well-known radical "civil rights lawyer" and former attorney for the Weather Underground terrorists. She is currently also representing three pro-Palestinian teenagers charged with a hate crime for attempting to firebomb an orthodox synagogue in New York as a "protest" against Israel’s attempts to defend itself in the Middle East.

Both Stewart’s attorneys are radical lawyers who have defended terrorist bombers whose targets were Americans. One of them, Susan Tippograph, was the prime suspect in the escape of a Puerto Rican terrorist from an American prison. Stewart’s colleague in defending the teen terrorists, Stanley Cohen, is a lawyer and political advocate for Hamas and a disciple of another Stewart colleague, William Kuntsler, whose Center for Constitutional Rights is a front for leftwing extremists intent on carrying on their own war with America. As an editor for the New Left magazine Ramparts, I remember being visited in 1969 by Arthur Kinoy, who with Kunstler was the co-founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Kinoy was carrying with him a draft manifesto for a new "Communist Party" (those were the words in the document) which he intended to organize with Kunstler. The agendas of the hard left never really change. Support for America’s enemies then; support for America’s terrorist enemies now.

Following the Ashcroft announcement, I was a guest on Sean Hannity’s radio show opposite Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at Illinois University and self-proclaimed "civil liberties" activist. Professor Boyle went swiftly on the offensive. The removal by the FBI of its own self-imposed restrictions was an assault, he said, on the First and Fourth Amendments – although no one’s free speech was in danger and no search and seizure was proposed. Boyle was concerned, he said, about the liberties that made America what it was.

Or was he? Francis Boyle is a legal advisor to the terrorist PLO and the terrorist Palestinian Authority. His agenda in the Middle East, laid out in the pro-Palestinian Internet magazine Counterpunch, is "dismantling [the] criminal apartheid regime" in Israel! In fact, Boyle, is a supporter of the anti-Israel divestment movement and compares the liberation struggle against Israel to the liberation struggle against South Africa. The destruction of Israel doesn’t faze Boyle at all. But then Boyle sees the present Republic of South Africa, which has tragically become the rape, murder and AIDS capital of the world, as "a beacon of hope" for mankind.

While many people in the civil rights business are genuine liberals, others are people who sympathize with terrorists like the Panthers and the Weathermen, and now Hamas and al-Qaeda. This should be a warning to all Americans who care about their country. It is not only that we have to take the threat to our homeland more seriously. We have to become more sophisticated about the threat we face.


Israel. We must also not take part in a regional conference with Arafat or his representatives. We must not fall into this trap under any circumstances.

"When the Prime Minister turned to me and asked me to take part in the information effort, I responded willingly, and met with many Senators and Representatives. If I had any difficulties in explaining, it was not regarding why we want to expel Arafat; it was why we were *not* expelling him!

"The biggest mistake that was made [a reference to Sharon, among others] was to promise the greatest prize for Palestinian terrorism: the establishment of their own independent state. Most people now feel that a state under Arafat would be a terrorist fortress dedicated to our destruction. But some say that without Arafat, and without the Tanzim, and with a different leadership, things would be different. Let's see if this is true. We want to ensure that such an entity does not receive more than self-rule. But it will demand all the powers of a state, such as controlling borders, bringing in weapons, control of airspace and the ability to knock down any Israeli plane that enters its area, the ability to sign peace treaties and military alliances with other countries. Once you give them a state, you give them all these things, even if there is an agreement to the contrary, for within a short time they will demand all these things, and they will assume these powers, and the world will stand by and do nothing - but it *will* stop us from trying to stop them. We will thus have created with our own hands a threat to our very existence. Arafat said it best when talking to reporters the day he signed the Oslo accords: "Since we can't defeat Israel in war, we must do it in stages, we must take whatever area of Palestine we can get, establish sovereignty there, and then at the right time, we will have to convince the Arab nations to join us in dealing the final blow to Israel.". Self-rule, yes. But a state with which to destroy the State of Israel - no.

"All the Likud governments objected to a Palestinian state, and with that we received our mandate from the public, and to this mandate all Likud leaders are bound. And yet something strange happened here: Without anyone approving it, without any democratic process - not in the party, not in the government, not in the Knesset, and certainly not in the country - but only with some ill-advised remarks [by Sharon in favor of a PA state], one of the foundation stones of our national security has been shaken, and suddenly the position of Sarid and Peres has become the official policy of the Government of Israel - and as a result, also that of the United States. Ladies and gentlemen, is this how critical decisions on our national existence are made??

"Just today we heard in the news that Shimon Peres met with Arafat's top aide, Muhammad Rashid, in order to discuss the 'reforms that must be made in the PA in order to enable a PA state.' We are told that we must not tie the government's hands in this matter - and I say that in this existential matter, we must tie its hands and stop this danger! If we end this evening without a clear decision on this matter, not only will we not stop the train of a PA state, we will even speed it up. For it will mean that the Likud has retreated from its principled positions..."