U.S.

Terror Panel Wants More Snooping

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 5, 2000 / 11:27 AM EDT / CBS

A congressional commission on terrorism has proposed increasing funding for the CIA and FBI -- and letting them bend the rules to gather information on terrorist groups, reports CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts.

The bipartisan National Commission on Terrorism says intelligence is the key to preventing atrocities like the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, but committee chair Paul Bremer notes, "Terrorist organizations are becoming more diffuse, more difficult to detect, to penetrate, and disrupt."

The commission also encourages the United States to keep up sanctions against the seven known sponsors of state terrorism -- and impose new sanctions against Pakistan and Greece, which often turn a blind eye to terrorist acts.

Bremer says, "A major terrorist group which has attacked and killed Americans still has openly a headquarters in Athens."

With past acts of terrorism carried out by foreign nationals living in America, the commission recommended the establishment of an electronic database to track all foreign students here, a proposal some say smacks of McCarthyism.

James Zogby of the Arab American Institute says, "I don't want to see the long arm of the law reaching down into people's private affairs and threatening their basic constitutional rights."

The recommendations include monitoring the movements -- and even the majors -- of all foreign college students in the United States.

CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan reports the commission also says the army should be given a greater role in fighting domestic terrorism.

That would put the military in the leading role for the response to any major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, as opposed to the FBI or the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The panel says the U.S. should threaten sanctions against Greece and Pakistan, which are U.S. allies, after designating them as "not fully cooperating" on terrorism. That designation would bar those countries from buying U.S. military equipment.

Visas for Greek citizens would also be restricted.

The panel also says Afghanistan should be classified as a "state sponsor" of terrorism. Afghanistan is currently classified as "not cooperating fully" and is the only country in that category.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright says the policy on Greece and Pakistan recommended by the commission is not the one being pursued by the Clinton administration.

"As far as Greece and Pakistan are concerned, it is a subject of discussion with them and was raised both when President Clinton and I were in Pakistan and in Greece recently," Albright said. "And we are pressing them on it, but we are not considering sanctions."

The commission, set up by Congress two years ago in response to the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, is also calling for relaxing restrictions on the CIA and the FBI which have limited the recruitment of informnts.

The proposals being unveiled in Washington Monday are raising a red flag in some quarters. One panel recommendation is that the government monitor changes in students' study plans – for example, a switch from an English literature major to nuclear physics might arouse suspicion.

"If implemented, these recommendations would severely damage civil liberties and facilitate abusing behavior by the government, without necessarily producing any increase in security," said Hala Maksoud, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

There is also reaction to the commission's recommendation to loosen restrictions on the FBI and the CIA, in opening investigations of terrorist suspects and using informants who may have unsavory backgrounds.

A CIA spokesman says the restrictions - started after the agency admitted close ties to Guatemalan military officers who had committed human rights abuses - have not hindered its intelligence-gathering operations.

"Overall, we just don't believe we face inhibitions related to restrictions," CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said. "There has never been a case when higher-ups were asked to authorize utilizing unsavory people that they didn't say, 'Go ahead.' "