Bush's snoop troops
By Derrick Z. Jackson
Editorial
The Boston Globe
7/19/2002
THE WHITE HOUSE tells Americans they can be James Bond at the same time it has turned scrutiny of itself into Mission Impossible. Sizzling reels of tape may not be far behind.
As part of the so-called war against terrorism, President Bush has launched Operation TIPS, the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. In patriotic language on the administration's Citizens Corps Web page, TIPS ''will involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places.''
Bush wants to turn citizens whose jobs take them through your neighborhoods and into your homes into Snoop Doggerel. If you see a terrorist, run to the phone to rap with the government. What the government would get from adding Val Verizon, Pete Plumber, Eli Eighteenwheeler, and Pat Postman into the ranks of spies is a deep mystery given what the snoozing pros at the FBI and the CIA did with the rap sheets of terrorists prior to Sept. 11 and what the schmoozing cops did in three stops of the Midwest pipe bomber for driving violations: nothing.
Pat Postman already figured this out and quit even before the spying commenced. The Postal Service, which has enough problems ensuring the privacy of our mail while watching out for anthrax, announced this week that it would not take part in Operation TIPS.
Since Americans are more trained in stereotypes than disguises, our civilian James Bonds will have all the grace of Austin Powers. When some Harvard students can go nuts over the word ''jihad'' in a commencement speech, it is easy to imagine Ernie Electric coming to repair a line, seeing a man in a turban, seeing a book called ''Jihad,'' and seeing the bomb squad screeching down the street. The odds of your average international terrorist of mass destruction discussing the merits of nitroglycerine in the kitchen while Sal Satellite is hooking up Direct TV are about as good as Bond being invited to deliver the keynote address for the National Organization for Women.
It looks more ridiculous when the same White House that is encouraging Americans to spy on one another is smashing every magnifying glass placed over its own activities. This week, Bush reaffirmed that he was not going to ask the Securities and Exchange Commission to release all the files on his sweetheart deals at Harken Energy. This is the same Bush who has placed new restrictions on access to presidential papers.
When he was not hiding in a bunker, Vice President Dick Cheney spent the bulk of 2001 and 2002 fighting some order to release the guest list for his energy task force, the task force that turned Bush into marionette for oil, gas, coal, and cars. Contrary to the grandfatherly figure he got away with during the presidential campaign, Cheney fought the disclosure of his guest list to the point of getting hit with lawsuits from every political angle. He was sued on the left by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, on the right by Judicial Watch, which hounded the Clinton administration, and up the usually mundane middle by the General Accounting Office. Cheney became the first vice president ever to be sued by the GAO.
The fight for needless secrecy has become so annoying that last week, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan said Bush and Cheney's conception of personal privacy threatens to ''eviscerate the understanding of checks and balances between the three branches of government on which our constitutional order depends.'' Sullivan said Bush and Cheney want an ''aggrandizement of executive power.''
This was all before Cheney's latest troubles with Halliburton, which are already resulting in lawsuits to force him to disclose his dealings there. While the White House maintains a secrecy that Bond would need more than a two-hour movie to crack, Attorney General John Ashcroft has used the war on terrorism to unilaterally roll back civil liberties, holding suspects without accusation and telling the FBI it could more closely monitor civilians at their places of worship, at rallies, and on the Internet, whether or not agents had a cause to snoop. It is an open question whether Ashcroft, a romantic for the Confederacy, will be a watchdog for terrorism or a German shepherd who nips at the heels of Americans the administration does not like.
The odds of a tip coming to TIPS from Carl Cable about the next Mohamed Atta are slim. The chances of tipping government resources toward harassing politically undesirable Americans is much greater. The chances are magnified by a White House that seeks to break every magnifying glass on its aggrandizement of power.
boston.com |
