FBI director Robert Mueller says the Sept. 11 attacks might have been avoided if his agency knew what to do with the information it already had. John Ashcroft’s immediate response, of course, was to lift the limits placed on domestic spying in the 1970s, giving an incompetent FBI more power at the expense of our civil liberties.
The limits Ashcroft removed were designed in response to serious FBI abuses in the domestic intelligence program known as Cointelpro. There is no evidence that changing the rules will help the bumbling FBI catch terrorists, but every reason to expect a return to dangerous and unconstitutional FBI actions. It’s hard to ignore the Bush administration’s constant appetite for new excuses to expand the police state. This is a sickeningly un-American response to the tragedy of Sept. 11.
