A prophet has no honor in his own country

Mother Jones, September/October 2000 issue:

Since 1996, federal spending on counterterrorism has nearly doubled to $11 billion a year. The fastest-growing share of that spending -- up 140 percent in just four years -- is aimed at countering the kind of scenario acted out in Portsmouth: terrorist use of chemical weapons, nuclear devices, and biological warfare agents known collectively as weapons of mass destruction. The anti-terrorism campaign has been led by President Clinton and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, who warn that terrorists might unleash a doomsday weapon that could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The problem is, the threat of such an attack appears to be no more real than the mock terror in Portsmouth. According to data collected by the State Department and the FBI, terrorism worldwide (in all its forms, including old-fashioned bombs, guns, and airplane hijackings) has plummeted since the end of the Cold War -- and in the United States, it is virtually nonexistent. U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials have yet to document a single serious threat to the United States involving terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction. And many arms control officials and scientists say the chances of such an attack are close to zero -- because such weapons are so difficult to create and deploy.

[snip]


Like the farcical fallout-shelter drills that marked the height of Cold War hysteria in the 1950s, the antiterrorism mobilization may have more to do with fueling fears than safeguarding citizens. The effort is wasting enormous sums of federal dollars -- without any serious evidence that such programs are actually needed. "The United States holds little credible intelligence indicating that international or domestic terrorists are planning to attack United States interests domestically through the use of weapons of mass destruction," FBI Director Louis Freeh testified before Congress last year. In May, investigators with the General Accounting Office concluded that the government is preparing for terrorist disasters without regard to the likelihood that they might occur."Federal efforts to combat terrorism," the GAO found, "have been based on worst-case scenarios which are out of balance with the threat."

Those "worst-case scenarios" have provided the military and defense agencies with a much-needed rationale to sustain high levels of spending in the wake of the Cold War. With so much money being spread around, virtually every agency of the U.S. government is fast developing an antiterrorism program to cash in. And in an ominous move, the Clinton administration has given the Pentagon and the FBI sweeping new powers that threaten to erode civil liberties. Counterterrorism laws have allowed the FBI to expand surveillance of American dissidents and U.S. backers of Third World guerrilla groups, while U.S. armed forces have set up special commands that enable uniformed soldiers to erect domestic roadblocks, make arrests, and engage in house-to-house searches in response to an alleged terrorist act or threat.

In effect, the Clinton administration has used what it concedes is an unlikely threat of a terrorist attack to create an unprecedented partnership involving the military, intelligence agencies, and domestic law enforcement. "What you have is all of the agencies using the terrorism issue to augment their existing authority," says Jim Dempsey, senior staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a think tank focusing on civil liberties. "They've all learned to sing the terrorism song."

You can chide Mother Jones for being dead wrong, and I'll agree with you. You can even chide the left for underestimating the threat, and I'll say you're right. But then, I'd also say that so did a president who, when presented with a Presidential Daily Briefing on August 6, 2001, that said "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.", said "OK, you've covered your asses now."

The left blasted Clinton for spending money on a "phantom menace." The Republican Congress tried to thwart his anti-terrorism efforts.

They were ALL wrong.

But interestingly, the one person who DID get it was William Jefferson Clinton.

And he's the one being portrayed as a do-nothing by a major television network tomorrow night.

Go figure.