Terror rights crowd rails against tracking

Frank Gaffney:

One of the most serious threats we face in this War for the Free World is the possibility terrorists with radioactive material will find ways to detonate it inside the United States.
Such an attack could involve a "dirty bomb," capable of contaminating large parts of a city with dangerous levels of radiation, effectively making it uninhabitable for many years. Or the perpetrators might have access to a crude atomic device, capable of utterly destroying the targeted community.
How serious are these dangers? The former is likelier than the latter, but neither can be ruled out. We know al Qaeda is interested in such weapons of mass destruction. Reports have been persistent of plots involving radioactive material in one form or another.
It is the first responsibility of government to prevent these and other sorts of attacks on this country and its people. Consequently, we should not be surprised that federal authorities have used various means to detect radiation in unauthorized places. In fact, if no such efforts were mounted, those authorities would be derelict.
Yet, last week, U.S.News & World Report precipitated a new firestorm of criticism of the Bush administration when it disclosed such a program was indeed instituted shortly after September 11, 2001. Among the sites where air samples reportedly were taken for monitoring radiation levels were a number of "prominent mosques and office buildings" in suburban Washington and five other metropolitan areas. The surveillance reportedly was conducted from public property or publicly accessible spaces without search warrants.
In short order, the disclosure of this highly classified program, conducted by the FBI and the Energy Department's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST), prompted denunciations from organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). A Dec. 23, CAIR news release seized upon the report to promote the idea Muslims writ large were subjected to unwarranted government surveillance: "All Americans should be concerned about the apparent trend toward a two-tiered system of justice system, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims."
Actually, the sorts of facilities reportedly monitored were in all likelihood under surveillance not because they are Muslim but probably because they have ties to the radical Islamofascist political ideology promoted by Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi sect.

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As with other controversies of the moment (notably, National Security Agency wiretaps of international communications involving al Qaeda-connected phone numbers and e-mail addresses in the United States, alleged CIA "secret prisons" in Europe and treatment of terror suspects that they -- or the American advocates -- might find "degrading"), one thing is clear: Such measures are the exception, not the norm.
Moreover, these initiatives have a common, single purpose. They are aimed at preventing another attack in this country by people determined to kill as many of us as possible. The test of whether these counterterrorism activities are justified should not be whether we would do exactly the same in peacetime.

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