Begin forwarded message:
From: "Mario Profaca" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: July 28, 2008 5:55:09 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [SPY NEWS] Are You On the Terror Watch List? Good Luck
Getting Off It
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.alternet.org/story/92545/
Are You On the Terror Watch List? Good Luck Getting Off It
By Ivan Eland, Consortium News
Posted on July 24, 2008, Printed on July 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/92545/
After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter
Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names
on TSA's swollen terrorism watch list.
Although TSA insists Griffin's name is not on the list and pooh-poohs
any possibility of retaliation for Griffin's negative reporting, the
reporter has been hassled by various airlines on 11 flights since May.
The airlines insist that Griffin's name is on the list.
Congress has asked TSA to look into the tribulations of this prominent
passenger.
In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, probably responding to the
controversy over Griffin, Leonard Boyle, the director of the Terrorist
Screening Center, defended the watch list, claiming that because
terrorists have multiple aliases, the names on the list boiled down to
only about 400,000 actual people.
If there are 400,000 terrorists lying in wait to attack the United
States, we are all in trouble.
But wait a minute. There has been no major terrorist attack on U.S.
soil since 9/11 -- almost seven years ago. Where are all these
nefarious evildoers?
Boyle says 95 percent of these people are not American citizens or
legal residents and the vast majority aren't even in the United
States. He rather sheepishly defends the size of the list by writing,
"Its size corresponds to the threat. It's a big world."
That brings up a very important issue. The U.S. government regularly
tries to police the world and combat threats to other nations -- in
the process, usually generating more enemies.
Examining the 44 organizations on the State Department's highly
politicized list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), one finds
that only a very few currently focus their efforts on U.S. targets.
And the U.S. government has even flirted with one anti-Iranian group,
the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which was put on the FTO list long ago.
Similarly, the State Department's list of five state sponsors of
terrorism has included Cuba and North Korea -- neither of which has
actively participated in terrorist attacks in decades. These two
countries continued to be on the list for other reasons -- namely U.S.
government aversion to them.
On its Web site, the State Department even admits that, "The
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was not known to have
sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines
flight in 1987."
The Web site also contains an implicit admission that keeping selected
countries on the state sponsors list can reap ulterior political
benefits for the United States. The Web site notes that under the
umbrella of the Six-Party Talks, the United States intends to remove
North Korea from the list as that nation takes actions toward getting
rid of its nuclear weapons program.
Even the remaining three nations on the list that do sponsor terrorism
-- Syria, Iran and Sudan -- don't support groups that focus their
attacks on the U.S. Thus, the humongous terrorist watch list for
airline travel and the excessively large FTO and state sponsors lists
are a few more examples of the United States taking on other nations'
security burdens.
Trying to be the "big man on (the world) campus," however, comes at a
horrendous cost to American freedom at home.
The terrorist watch list is downright unconstitutional. Under the
Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, no warrants shall be issued
unless there is probable cause that a crime has been committed.
If the government has such probable cause that a passenger is
conspiring to commit a terrorist act on an airplane, it should not
hassle that person at the airport when trying to fly or ban him or her
from flying; it should arrest them.
But of course the government does not have the evidence to do that for
the vast majority of the 400,000 people on the watch list.
And it's apparently not easy to get yourself off the list once you are
on it. Although Boyle claims that the TSA constantly scrubs the list
for possible mistaken identities of people who have frequent
"encounters" with the list, even if they don't file a complaint,
Griffin uncovered an innocent passenger with a common name -- James
Robinson -- who has complained endlessly and has received no
resolution of his case.
Senator Edward Kennedy -- also with a common name -- experienced
endless hassles and red tape trying to get his name off the list. If
such a well-known figure has such problems, the average misidentified
traveler is in big trouble.
And as the economists would say, what about opportunity cost to real
security?
The U.S. government should spend the time it devotes to scrutinizing
400,000 people on the watch list, and the vast majority of the 44 FTOs
and all of the five countries who don't sponsor anti-U.S. terrorism,
on the again rising principal threat from Osama bin Laden, Ayman
al-Zawahiri and their tens of hard-core al-Qaeda followers operating
out of Pakistan.
The American public would be much safer. As the famous Prussian
military ruler Fredrick the Great (and closet economist) said, "To
defend everything is to defend nothing."
Moreover, under current government policy, we have neither liberty nor
security.
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The
Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for
Congress on national security issues, including stints as an
investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal
Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office.
© 2008 Consortium News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/92545/
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