Clinton's 'anti-terrorism' bill
Seizing upon the explosion of TWA flight 800 and the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, President Clinton is seeking broader police powers that undermine democratic rights.
In the wake of the bombing of a federal government building in Oklahoma last year, the administration fashioned a so-called "anti-terrorism" bill that was passed with a few deletions by Congress and signed into law by Clinton on April 24 of this year. Now Clinton is seeking to put those deletions back in.
The April 24 bill was bad enough. In the name of fighting "terrorism", it gave new arbitrary powers to various government agencies and drastically reduced prisoners' rights, especially those facing the death penalty.
It calls for the prosecution of any US citizen accused of raising funds for any organisation overseas that the State Department labels "terrorist." Since such designation is arbitrary, it boils down to a list of organisations the US government doesn't like.
For example, in the past, Washington has so labelled the African National Congress, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Irish Republican Army. If this law had been in effect then, any citizen who gave any money to the fight for Palestinian or Irish rights or to the anti-apartheid fight would have been liable to prosecution.
Further, included in the definition could be groups "linked" to the "terrorist" organisation, for example, Sinn Féin in Ireland. And the money need not be sent for arms. Already the government has begun to raise the alarm about money sent to hospitals and other charities run by "Muslim extremists" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Also, the government is authorised to ban entry into the US of any individual it claims is "linked" to a banned group. Any non-citizen within the US who is so charged can be deported without so much as presenting a judge with the evidence.
Any immigrants arriving in the US seeking political asylum, and who do not have documents (from the government they are fleeing) will have their claims heard and acted upon by a single Immigration and Naturalization Service officer, not by a judge, as was the case previously. Any undocumented immigrant presently living in the country may be deported without judicial review. Before, they were entitled to a hearing and legal representation.
The key provision that was dropped from the bill, which Clinton is now reintroducing, is to expand the FBI's authority to wiretap telephones. Mainly, he wants the FBI to be able to wiretap not only specific telephones, for which a warrant is supposed to be obtained, but any phone it thinks a suspect might use.
Laura Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union said the FBI was using terrorism to bolster its arguments for techniques that it really wants to use in other cases. "The idea that these roving wiretaps are going to lead to new developments in our ability to fight terrorism is a big myth", she said.
She pointed out that only a minute fraction of wiretaps involve crimes of terrorism and that the new types of wiretaps the FBI seeks are more invasive and more likely to track innocent parties than the old kinds.
Another aspect of the bill already passed is to speed up the process of killing prisoners who have been condemned, and restricting their rights. Death row inmates would generally be given six months after their final state court proceeding to file a habeas corpus petition — a suit that allows federal judges to hear any cases of violations of a person's constitutional rights. Prisoners not on death row would be given one year to file the petition. Before, there was no time limit.
These provisions apply only to inmates who are being represented by a court-appointed attorney. Blacks and other working people inside prison walls generally have to rely on such public defenders. Those able to afford their own lawyers would not have these restrictions!
Another draconian measure would mandate those convicted on federal charges to pay restitution to their accusers, imposing punishment upon them indefinitely.
There have been a number of prisoners who faced the death penalty, and were not executed for a variety of reasons, who have recently been found to have been not guilty and released. DNA tests on four black men who spent 18 years in jail for a rape and murder proved their innocence. If this law had been in force earlier, they would have been executed.
ACLU legislative council Gregory Norjeim told the New York Times that the bill virtually ensures that a person wrongly convicted would never "get his day in court to prove his innocence".
Another aspect of the campaign to enact this law is that it appears that the Oklahoma bombing and the Olympic one were the work of ultraright racists. This points to a lesson of history we must not forget. The way to fight the extreme right and fascists is not to look to the capitalist government to do the job, but through mass working-class action.
This law may be used against the rightists, but it attacks everyone's rights, especially workers'. Leon Trotsky once pointed out that for every time such a law is used against the right, there will be 10 times that it will be used against the left.