by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, June 19, 2002 11:14 A.M. EDT

UCSD Sides With Hate Group
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has taken up the case of The Koala, a student publication, which the University of California at San Diego is prosecuting over a parody of the Hispanic hate group Mecha. The Koala stands charged with "disruption" for "taking photographs" at a Mecha meeting that was open to the public--though in fact the photographer was not a member of The Koala and submitted the photos to the publication after the fact.

"We condemn The Koala's abuse of the Constitutional guarantees of free expression and disfavor their unconscionable behavior," a FIRE statement quotes Joseph Watson, UCSD's vice chancellor for student affairs, as saying. But FIRE notes that in 1995 Watson "issued an unequivocal defense of the right to free expression." The issue then was an article advocating racist violence against law-enforcement officers, which appeared in Mecha's own publication. It cheered the murder of a Hispanic Immigration and Naturalization Service officer, saying he was a "traitor . . . to his race" and adding: "We're glad this pig died, he deserved to die. . . . The only good one is a dead one."

It gets even worse. As we noted in March, Mecha is a virulently anti-Semitic organization, which is easily enough confirmed by a visit to the group's own Web site. Yet the university regards the group as somehow representing "diversity." A Web search turned up this 1999 memo to UCSD's chancellor by a self-described piece of furniture (Herbert York, "chair" of the "Diversity Council") urging that "the chancellor should raise new funds and/or allocate existing funds to ensure the effective implementation of the AASU and MEChA high school conferences and recognition ceremonies, respectively." (The AASU is the African American Student Union.)

Mecha's members are entitled to exercise their First Amendment right of free expression. But they no more deserve university subsidies and moral support--let alone an effort to silence their critics--than would a campus chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

Stop Making Sense
Life during wartime hasn't been good to Alan Keyes, whose once-in-a-lifetime gig as a talking head is coming to an end. MSNBC announced last week that it will cancel the two-time presidential candidate's low-rated daily prime-time show, "Alan Keyes Is Making Sense," in July. In response, a Jewish group called Mesora has launched a petition campaign to send the following message to NBC:

I urge MSNBC to continue "Alan Keyes is Making Sense" in the 10:00 PM slot. I protest your succumbing to pressures against Keyes' stance for truth, and his honest fight against terrorism. Too many Americans died, and Keyes is defending them, . . . but you favor those who oppose Keyes. This is not American. Keep him on air, or I will cease watching your programming, and get others to join me.

One wonders if these guys have ever watched Keyes. He's a brilliant and eloquent man, but he doesn't seem capable of speaking in any manner other than high-flown oration. He's simply too intense to be watchable except in very small doses, which is doubtless why his ratings are poor. To blame his cancellation on terrorist sympathizers--not exactly an ascendant group in post-Sept. 11 America--reminds us of the guy in the old joke who complains to a friend that he was turned down for a radio job "because I'm J-J-J-J-Jewish."

'Bear' Trapped
Among the terror suspects Morocco picked up last month was a man who was a big fish in more ways than one. Abu Zubair al-Haili, a Saudi man who weighs 300 pounds and is known as "The Bear," is a senior al Qaeda recruiter, the Associated Press reports. Bear "was central to al-Qaida's international recruiting network, accepting recruits into training and placing them in overseas cells, officials said."

Saudi-Egyptian Spat
Riyadh recently announced that it had arrested a handful of al Qaeda terror suspects in the months since Sept. 11. At the same time, the Saudis announced that they had released many more Saudi nationals who had fought in Afghanistan. Why now? Stratfor.com has this analysis:

It appears the Saudis are feeling the heat from an Egyptian investigation into al Qaeda's presence in Saudi Arabia, and they must therefore make a reluctant public show of support to the United States. However, they also must be careful to avoid being seen as Washington's puppet. . . .

Apart from the general pressure being applied by the United States, an interesting incident occurred in Egypt late last week: Security forces arrested Salah Hashem, a co-founder of the radical Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya Islamic organization, which is blamed for the massacre of tourists at Luxor, Egypt, in 1997. . . .

One of the things he likely has knowledge of is the relationship between the two most important elements in al Qaeda: Egyptian and Saudi members. Hashem worked in Saudi Arabia from 1982 to 1985 and could therefore have information on people and activities there. This is a critically important addition to the intelligence Egypt has gathered about al Qaeda in general and the presence and structure of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia in particular.

Such information also disallows the Saudis plausible deniability. The intelligence that the Egyptians have gathered through this and many other arrests has put the Saudi government in a position wherein Washington would regard failure to act on this information as a refusal to cooperate. The Saudis cannot afford this.

Terrorism for Dummies
The Secret Service has arrested Safraz Jehaludi for allegedly threatening to blow up a power plant and the White House, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. The feds acted on a tip from an informant who "he had overheard 'Safraz Jehaludi' state he was planning to blow up a Florida Power & Light Co. power plant and make a name for himself in an attempt to kill the president and take over the White House." Who sent the tip? Safraz Jehaludi!

Jehaludi's cousin, Moien Mohamed, calls the tip "off the wall" and says Jehaludi was "set up."

A Mountain or a Molehill?
Last month our Peggy Noonan speculated that the FBI's pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures may have been more sinister than mere incompetence. Citing a "joke" about "spies or moles" in Agent Coleen Rowley's famous memo, Noonan wrote:

This is no laughing matter. When an FBI field operative who is the chief legal counsel of her office tells the head of the FBI in Washington that they've been wondering, out in the field, if spies or moles made the fateful decisions, she is saying something huge. She is saying she thinks it is possible that spies within the FBI thwarted attempts to stop or diminish the attacks of Sept. 11.

Today's Washington Post brings a hint that Noonan may have been on to something. "In separate cases, two new FBI whistle-blowers are alleging mismanagement and lax security--and in one case possible espionage--among those who translate and oversee some of the FBI's most sensitive, top-secret wiretaps in counterintelligence and counterterrorist investigations," the Post reports.

Whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds, "a former wiretap translator in the Washington field office, raised suspicions about a co-worker's connections to a group under surveillance," the Post reports:

The FBI confirmed that Edmonds's co-worker had been part of an organization that was a target of top-secret surveillance and that the same co-worker had "unreported contacts" with a foreign government official subject to the surveillance, according to a letter from the two senators to the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General. In addition, the linguist failed to translate two communications from the targeted foreign government official, the letter said.

The Post says the translator, whom it doesn't identify, "is a 33-year-old U.S. citizen whose native country is home to the target group":

In December, Edmonds said the woman and her husband, a U.S. military officer, suggested during a hastily arranged visit to Edmonds's Northern Virginia home on a Sunday morning that Edmonds join the group.

"He said, 'Are you a member of the particular organization?' " Edmonds recalled the woman's husband saying. "[He said,] 'It's a very good place to be a member. There are a lot of advantages of being with this organization and doing things together'--this is our targeted organization--'and one of the greatest things about it is you can have an early, an unexpected, early retirement. And you will be totally set if you go to that specific country.' " . . .

Later, Edmonds said, the woman approached her with a list dividing up individuals whose phone lines were being secretly tapped: Under the plan, the woman would translate conversations of her former co-workers in the target organization, and Edmonds would handle other phone calls. Edmonds said she refused and that the woman told her that her lack of cooperation could put her family in danger.

The two women are both "U.S. citizens who trace their ethnicity to the same Middle Eastern country," which the Post doesn't identify. Edmonds was fired in March; she says the FBI was punishing her for blowing the whistle, while the FBI claims the termination was on the merits, based in part on her "disruptiveness."

But We Weren't Serious!
Uh-oh. "President Bush plans in the coming days to propose the establishment of a Palestinian state," the Washington Post reports. Uh, Mr. President, we were only kidding yesterday. The White House is denying reports in today's New York Times and elsewhere that yesterday's murder of 19 Jews in Jerusalem had prompted the president to delay his speech on the Middle East.

A Jerusalem Post analysis argues that Hamas, the terror group that perpetrated yesterday's attack, did so precisely in order to upset Bush's peacemaking plans. "The message being sent by the Hamas leadership could not be clearer: Do not delude yourselves, in Washington, to think that your ideas and your diplomacy (and for that matter, your power) will determine the course of events in the Middle East," writes Eran Lerman. Hamas, Lerman argues, is acting with the tacit approval of Yasser Arafat and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad:

Neither Arafat nor Assad, indeed, see much to hope for in the current American plans (which, in a sense, would bypass them both). In all likelihood, they see them as part of the effort to make the region less volatile, while the US gets serious about the business of deposing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Hence their common interest, despite their visceral and mutual dislike, in keeping the fires of destabilization burning. (Besides, the realization is growing in Egypt and some other sober Arab regimes that Arafat and Assad are not good for their health).

As we've argued before, Saddam too has an interest in fomenting conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, the better to distract America from overthrowing him. Let's hope the forthcoming Bush proposal doesn't turn into just such a distraction.

Israeli Pre-emption
The Israeli group Independent Media Review Analysis picks up an Israeli TV report that "it is not expected that Israel will expel Arafat or take other action of that magnitude until there is a 'mega-terror-attack' "--one on the scale of Sept. 11--"or a large number of 'regular' terror attacks that take place within a very tight period of time." Ron Ben Yishai, the station's military correspondent, "explained that Israel thinks that the world might accept such an Israeli action after a 'mega-attack.' " Hey, haven't the Israelis ever heard of pre-emption?

Actually, that's not really fair. Responding to yesterday's massacre, Jerusalem is engaging in some pre-emption. "Israel will seize and hold Palestinian lands until terror attacks against its civilians end, the government said early Wednesday," the Associated Press reports. This morning, the Jerusalem Post reports, Israeli tanks and troops entered Nablus, Jenin and Qalqilya and arrested more than a dozen suspected terrorists.

Jewish World Review has profiles of 16 of the 19 victims ("Bodies 17, 18, and 19 are still in pieces and have yet to be identified"), who ranged in age from 11 to 71. Reuters, of course, persists in putting the word terror in scare quotes, apparently believing that the murderer of an 11-year-old Ethiopian girl is a "freedom fighter."

The Times of London quotes Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw expressing his "compassion" for suicide bombers. "When young people go to their deaths, we can all feel a degree of compassion for those youngsters," Straw tells the paper. "They must be so depressed and misguided to do this."

Misguided yes, but the suicide note of Mohammed al-Ghoul, who perpetrated yesterday's massacre, doesn't show much evidence of depression. "How beautiful it is to make my bomb shrapnel kill the enemy," Ghoul rhapsodized before becoming a ghost, according to the Jerusalem Post. "How beautiful it is to kill and to be killed not to love death, but to struggle for life, to kill and be killed for the lives of the coming generation."

Holy Toledo!
We're not sure quite what to make of this odd crime story in the Toledo (Ohio) Blade. Hussain Anwar Mahmood, a 21-year-old Saudi student at the University of Toledo, has been charged with forgery and of unauthorized use of a computer. Mahmoud allegedly tried "to purchase an embossing machine that could have reproduced the official University of Toledo seal, which is used to authenticate transcripts, enrollment forms, diplomas, and other student-related documents."

Something in the Air
"City Chokes on Smoke," reads the headline of a Denver Post article on Colorado's forest fires. The item immediately below reports that alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui "wants his trial moved from suburban Virginia to Denver because he says . . . the air is cleaner in Colorado."

Corrections
An item yesterday described Anthony Cuomo as a medic in the Marine Corps reserves. The original article on which we based the item said Cuomo was a medic for the Marine Corps reserves. Apparently the changed preposition made a big difference, as several readers wrote to inform us that the Marines have no medical personnel but instead rely on Navy doctors and corpsmen.

Another item misstated the location of a plane crash last Nov. 12. The plane actually crashed in the Queens neighborhood of Rockaway Beach, not Far Rockaway. We usually write from Manhattan, where all Rockaways are far.

You Don't Say
"Cubans Back Socialism, Castro Says," reads the headline on an Associated Press dispatch reporting that "nearly 99 percent of Cuba's registered voters signed a petition declaring the island nation's socialist system 'untouchable,' " according to Castro's dictatorial government. The dispatch doesn't mention that phony 99% outcomes are typical in totalitarian regimes, or that millions of Cubans have voted with their arms, swimming to freedom in Florida. We suppose most people already know this, but shouldn't the AP provide a little context instead of acting as a dictator's transcription service?

Blimps on Airplanes
"Southwest Airlines will start charging larger passengers for two seats on its 2,800 daily flights starting June 26," the Washington Times reports. The airline calls such passengers "persons of size." Expect this policy to lead to a big lawsuit--and we mean a big lawsuit!

Broadway's Trickle-Down Economics
"Urinetown," a comic Broadway musical about a world in which a water shortage forces people to pay to go to the toilet, is temporarily closed because of a leak in the theater.

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Rita Wilson, the assistant principal at San Diego's Rancho Bernardo High School, has been demoted. As we noted last month, Wilson ordered girls at a dance to show their underwear, in view of male students, so she could verify that it wasn't too revealing. Now, CNN reports, Wilson "will be reassigned to a teaching position." Hey, those guys at the Rancho Bernardo school board are brilliant. The classroom is just the place to put a peeping principal!

Orlando Sentinel, Fiction Department
"Thousands of years before Christ, hunters prowled the St. Johns River near present-day Astor," reports Mike Archer in the Orlando Sentinel:

We consider these ancients to be primitive people, but in some ways their wisdom ran much deeper than ours. They formed a spiritual bond with the land and water that sustained them.

Through climate shift and subsequent changes in plants and animals, the forest dwellers watched the river evolve toward its present form.

Waters deepened and filled with fish, crabs and mussels. The wandering hunters settled down, trusting the gifts of nature to nourish them.

Descendants of the ancient Floridians lived with the river and surrounding forest for centuries, hunting, fishing, gathering and growing. They squabbled some, but carried a deep understanding of their relationship with all life.

Archer concludes by quoting "voices from prehistory" as saying we should "respect the land and water." He doesn't name his prehistorical sources, nor does he give any clue from what contemporary sources he may have gathered his "facts" about the attitudes of Florida's inhabitants "thousands of years before Christ." This sounds like little more than an exercise in the imagination. When such an exercise finds its way into a news story, we call it a fabrication.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Gerald Robbins, Jerry Skurnik, S.E. Brenner, Raghu Desikan, Marie Bourgeois, Natalie Cohen, Carl Sherer, Howard Weiser, Gershon Dubin, Michael Segal, Jerome Marcus, Darren Gold, Alex Lubarov, Monty Krieger, Yehuda Hilewitz, Gordon Kaplan, Tyler Messa, Paul Bisdorf, Gregory Taylor, Don Hering, A.S. Clifton, Mark Holtzman, Paul Cooper, Mike Basham, Chuck Gitles and Thomas Mahoney. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Why won't the government let you get a smallpox vaccine?
• Pete du Pont: Pre-emption is just what the doctrine ordered.
• John Fund on Jesse Ventura's retirement.