From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Willful Ignorance
Racial profiling might have prevented Sept. 11.
If we're going to have an investigation to find out why no one foresaw the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, let's have one that gets at some answers rather than merely points fingers. Last week, Sen. Hillary Clinton cited a New York Post headline that claimed "Bush Knew," and asked: "The president knew what? My constituents would like to know the answer." Mrs. Clinton and other critics backed off when it became apparent that the warnings President Bush received about terrorist attacks were both general and inconclusive.
When it comes to imposing some accountability over this generation's Pearl Harbor. the critics would do well to look at how fears about "racial profiling" increased the chances the attacks would succeed.
Clearly the FBI was negligent in ignoring a memo from a Phoenix agent urging an investigation of Middle Eastern men enrolled in American flight schools and suggesting that Osama bin Laden could be using the schools as training camps for terrorist attacks. "There was reluctance at the time to mount such a major review because of a concern that the bureau would be criticized for ethnic profiling of foreigners," the New York Times reports.
Indeed, Robert Wright, a 12-year FBI veteran, has filed a complaint with the Justice Department's inspector general accusing his superiors with ignoring the pre-Sept. 11 U.S. activities of the terrorist group Hamas, in part out of concern over profiling. Mr. Wright claims that a more vigorous investigation could have crimped the financing of groups that received money from Saudi Arabian interests. Some of that money eventually helped fuel bin Laden's terrorist operations.
Mr. Wright also says he was unfairly investigated for allegedly harassing an Arab American FBI agent. Mr. Wright had asked the agent to wear a secret listening device to record his conversation with the president of a company that might have been tied to Hamas. The agent supposedly refused, leading to an argument and the filing of a complaint against Mr. Wright.
Of course, sour grapes can't be discounted as a partial motive for Mr. Wright's complaint. He is trying to publish a book entitled "Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission," and the bureau is blocking its release. But Mr. Wright is represented by David Schippers, the respected counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during President Clinton's impeachment. Tom Fitton, a lawyer for Judicial Watch, which is also representing Mr. Wright, says "it will become clear that this lawsuit goes to the heart of government policies that stymied the investigation of terrorists."
CNN has reported a shocking incident involving the American Airlines flight that was flown into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Before boarding began that morning, an airline employee struck up a conversation with two Arab male passengers who said they were friends. One of them had a first-class boarding pass for seat 2B, while the other man was sitting in coach. She asked them, "Why don't you guys sit together?" and received what she considered a very odd answer. But she said nothing.
There are two reasons for such timidity. Airlines are extremely skittish about lawsuits. No airline wants to go to court to defend itself against charges it discriminated by "harassing" a harmless passenger or refusing to let him board a plane.
And it is the official policy of the U.S. government that airport screeners are not to pay attention to age, ethnicity, accents or facial features of passengers. The Federal Aviation Administration says that the screening of passengers taking such characteristics in to account could be "perceived . . . as discrimination against citizens on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin or gender." When Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta was asked by "60 Minutes" if a 70-year-old woman from Florida and an Islamic man from Jersey City should be treated with the same level of suspicion, he replied "Basically, I would hope so." When asked if there were any circumstances that would justify profiling, he said, "Absolutely not."
This is absurd. If a child were struck down by a hit-and-run driver, would the police look at bicycles in the vicinity and examine the cars in the neighborhood only randomly? Even Mr. Mineta has retreated a few inches from this stance. Last month, he told an audience in Minneapolis that using racial characteristics in an airport setting would be appropriate, but only if officers were seeking someone who had already breached security.
To Rafi Ron, a former security director at Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport, it is passing strange that a man speaking Arabic, reading the Koran and praying can't be identified as a potential threat. He told the House Transportation Committee that security agents at U.S. airports are wasting resources on "low-risk passengers." He mentioned an incident in which a decorated U.S. military officer was selected for a complete search that involved as many as 10 security officers. By contrast, the profiling method that Israel has developed over 32 years has been very successful in combating terrorism. "It takes into account many things, and ethnicity or country of origin is not the determining factor," he says. "If someone is Palestinian, that's not enough to make him subject to a search."
That's why Americans should be angry at the mindless political correctness that now guides our airport security policies. As Rich Lowry pointed out in National Review, more than half the people on the FBI's Most Wanted terrorist list are named Mohammed or Ahmed.
Even the current screening program, which is based on a computer program that doesn't take into account race or ethnicity, flagged two of the Sept. 11 hijackers on the flight that crashed into the Pentagon. They had paid for their expensive tickets in cash. Their checked bags were given an extra look-through, but neither was searched or questioned--in part Justice Department sources tell me, because of a general climate of fear surrounding racial profiling. If the hijackers had been questioned, perhaps someone would have asked why so many Arabs were traveling in first class with box cutters in their carry-on luggage.
It's time to end the madness of mindless airport searches and institute a prudent, thoughtful program of racial profiling. Far from protecting us, the current system only sends a message to terrorists that our political correctness is preventing us from being as serious about stopping them as we should be.
