You just finished a show on terrorism (WAMU, 10-11am, 10/26/95). Thank you. Some of your callers said most of what I would have said and I found that pleasing, since I wasn't able to call in. However, there was a theme which kept coming up and which wasn't addressed specifically. You might hold it in mind for future shows on terrorism: The FBI representative was saying that the goal is to *prevent* terrorism, not just to investigate and prosecute crimes after the fact. I heard Director Freeh (on 10/19 on All Things Considered) say something similar -- that the FBI's job was to protect the people (which can be be translated into "prevent terrorism"). This seems to be a major problem and perhaps the source of the concern about civil liberties. Terrorism might be a product of an organized, identified group and infiltration of that group might enable the FBI to prevent acts of violence. Of course, the permission to infiltrate suspicious groups has been used in the past to justify infiltration of non-violent but unpopular groups like the Sanctuary Movement. However, many of our recent terrorist acts appear to be the result of individual actions -- not those of organized groups. [Unabomber, OK City, train derailment] Infiltration is out of the question in such cases. The only way to prevent such acts is to put the entire population of the US under surveillance -- an authentic instance of Big Brother from 1984. The conclusion to me is that we can not task the FBI with the job of prevention of terrorism. I suspect that we must insure that the FBI is formally and carefully restricted to the job of investigating and prosecuting crimes once they occur -- allowing the threat of almost certain prosecution to serve as a prevention -- rather than with the impossible job of prevention of such crimes. ------------------------------ Meanwhile, there was one question I had that no one answered: I didn't like history much as a student, but I vaguely remember other periods of domestic terrorism: bombings in the early 1900s, acts of violence associated with the labor movement, sabotage during WW-I conducted by German agents. There may have been many others. This seems to be a feature of life -- nothing recent, nothing special, frightening from its news coverage but not a serious threat to any one individual (because of the actual statistics around the threat -- comparing my chance of injury due to auto accident, plane flight or terrorist act (for example)). It would be interesting to know why we had the pause in terrorism during the Cold War -- or, for that matter, if we actually did. Could it be that the apparent return of terrorism is actually a perception rather than a fact -- as a result of shift in focus of the news media? - Carl +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme@acm.org http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |PGP: E0414C79B5AF36750217BC1A57386478 & 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2 | | ``Officer, officer, arrest that man! He's whistling a dirty song.'' | +---------------------------------------------- Jean Ellison (aka Mother) -+