--- begin forwarded text Status: U Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 12:17:27 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (by way of [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Subject: ip: Collision with Civil Rights: A Wide, Aggressive Probe http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/A34046-2001Sep14.html A Wide, Aggressive Probe Collides With Civil Rights Innocent People May Face Questioning, Experts Say By Serge F. Kovaleski Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 15, 2001; Page A14 NEW YORK, Sept. 14 -- As the FBI pursues thousands of leads around the country and widens its dragnet, agents have detained for questioning dozens of people who, investigators eventually determined, had no role in Tuesday's terrorist attacks. Terrorism experts said that such measures are a necessary part of following tips about possible accomplices and sympathizers and trying to develop intelligence that might lead to those behind the deadliest act of terrorism in American history. But the experts also cautioned that FBI agents risk running roughshod over people's civil liberties as they face immense pressure and an extremely difficult investigation. "They have to follow leads, and some people will get sucked up into the investigation who had nothing to do with the attacks. And a lot of them will fit a certain profile of Arabs and Muslims," said Juliette Kayyem, executive director of the program on domestic preparedness at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She added: "The challenge is how do you do all this without intimidating an entire ethnic or religious population. First of all, there is incredible pressure on the FBI, and when law enforcement agencies are under pressure they tend to cut corners and . . . there may be ethnic or racial profiling going on to narrow the pool of suspects." Most recently, the FBI said today that all 13 people taken into custody on Thursday at Kennedy and La Guardia airports had been released and that none of them had any ties to the hijacking attacks. But Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said at least one remained in custody. Authorities said they suspected that one of the detainees was carrying a fake pilot's license. Today, however, officials said the man was a pilot and that there were suspicions about him because of documents he was carrying, including a visa issued under another name. The man was taking the papers to his brother in Boston, who coincidentally lived in the same building as three of the hijackers, officials said. Meanwhile, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, the home of radiologist Basem M. Hussein was searched and his car was later impounded after his landlord called local authorities Tuesday saying she had not seen him after the attacks. Hussein's apartment was searched and his car was impounded at the Pittsburgh airport, while agents investigated the lead by, among other things, reviewing hospital employment records at two Pennsylvania hospitals where he had worked. Hussein, whose home is in Neshannock Township, Pa., just outside New Castle, was located Wednesday afternoon at the Indian Health Service in Shiprock, N.M., where he has been working as a contracted medical doctor since early September, the FBI said. Hussein was detained, cooperated with the questioning and was not arrested, the FBI said in a statement. In Boston, federal authorities detained three people on Sept. 12 for several hours after law enforcement officials received a tip that led them to a hotel in downtown. In the city's Copley Square area, local police and agents from the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms descended on the Westin Copley Hotel with battering rams and shields, detaining a Saudi businessman, his wife and his sister who were guests, officials said. Two bomb squads and two SWAT teams were among the first into the building after reports that at least one suspect was hiding in the hotel. About an hour later, police evacuated not only the hotel but the adjacent shopping mall. An FBI source subsequently confirmed that the tip was wrong, and there was no connection between the family and the suspected terrorists. About 4,000 special FBI agents are involved in the attack investigation, as are the bureau's 56 field offices around the country. The agency has received an estimated 36,000 leads and has served more than 30 search warrants and issued hundreds of subpoenas, but has made at least one arrest. Officials said that teams of agents have also been deployed to airports to assist in case suspicious questions are raised about particular passengers. "There is a fine line between a thorough investigation and violations of civil liberties. The line gets crossed when agents intimidate, use excessive questioning and rely on racial profiling," said Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. "The fact that the American Muslim community is under increased scrutiny is unfortunate but something we have to accept." James K. Kallstrom, the former head of the FBI in New York, said that it is important for agents to pursue leads, as tiresome as it may be, because it can help provide the probe with the critical mass needed to determine the mastermind behind the attacks. "The small things can lead you to the meat of the investigation, but the meat of the investigation is not dragging a guy off an Amtrak train," said Kallstrom, who oversaw the criminal probe into the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of New York. "The meat would be finding out the full extent of the conspiracy and who inside and outside the country helped these cowards commit these acts, who harbored them, who encouraged and helped them, who gave them money and who gave them transportation," he said. "It could be that the guy you pull off the train can provide leads." Ian Lesser, senior analyst specializing in security affairs at the Washington area office of the think tank RAND Corp., said that given the magnitude and intensity of the investigation, individuals will invariably be targeted by agents in error as the FBI tries to unravel the possible conspiracy behind the attacks. "Mistakes will be made in terms of misidentifications. The heavy level of scrutiny and attention will clearly cause a lot of false alarms," Lesser said. "But that is understandable under the circumstances and it is the natural outcome of heightened security and heightened awareness, as well as the scope and intensity of the investigation." --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]