Round Up the Usual Suspects

Nineteen-year-old Ahmed Atta made the mistake of having the wrong last name; in this case the same last name as one of the men who hijacked one of the jets that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11.  Although his last name is a rather common one in the Middle East - sort of like Jackson, Richards, and many other American names - he has been caught up in one of the largest police dragnets in the past 100 years.  According to a Los Angeles Times story (November 4), Mr. Atta and his roommate Salman Hyder, were two college students in Southern California attending college on a student visa.  But he made the mistake of taking on a part-time job, to help pay expenses.  It seems that this is against one of the myriad rules applying to student visa recipients.  Not that this would ordinarily draw attention, but these are times of national hysteria.  In the case of Mr. Atta and his roommate, such hysteria resulted in their detention by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).  Finally, on December 11 they were released on bond - Ahmed on a $50,000 bond (while placed on electronic surveillance), Hyder on a $100,000 bond.

In still another case, a 21-year-old college student in San Diego with another common Middle Eastern name - Osama Awadallah - was accused of lying to a grand jury probing the 9/11 attacks.  He testified that he knew one of the hijackers, but was charged with lying about the exact nature of his association with another hijacker.  ABy lying to the grand jury, the defendant=s acts promoted terrorism,@ claimed a U.S. attorney prosecuting the case.  He was finally released on bail (he was being held in a New York jail) after about three months (Los Angeles Times, 12/14/01 and 12/15/01).

Then there are the cases of a 34-year-old Egyptian who was taken from his Southern California home and taken to a detention center in Brooklyn and housed with about 60 other Arab Muslims.  Plus dozens of Mauritanians rounded up in northern Kentucky and detained, based mostly on tips that turned out false (Los Angeles Times, 11/4/01).

All of these men - and thousands more - have been questioned about their knowledge of terrorist activities, with many being locked up with little or no access to a lawyer. Under pressure from the Media, Attorney General Ashcroft finally released the names of about 100 suspects, out of at least 1,100 rounded up so far (as of December 1).  While a handful have serious charges leveled against them, the majority have either no specific charges or minor charges mostly related to their visas.

And so will an additional estimated 5,000 or so individuals with similar last names, according a federal initiative that seeks some answers about terrorist activities in this country. Federal authorities say these individuals are not Asuspects,@ but rather they are wanted for Avoluntary@ interviews, based upon the assumption that they might have something to offer about terrorist activities. (The INS can hold someone for a Areasonable period of time@ - a time that has never been defined.) Even certain religious groups (and we know who they are) are likely to be Amonitored.@ Where did these 5,000 names come from?  Apparently from a list of those who entered this country with a passport from a country that a terrorist might be from.

I am not an expert on terrorism, but this seems a bit farfetched.  This effort reminds me of one of the classic lines from the film Casablanca where Captain Renoit says ARound up the usual suspects@ right after ARick@ (Humphrey Bogart) has just shot Major Strasser (a Nazi officer).  Translated this means that there are a group of individuals - usually among the most marginalized and outcast in a society - who together form a grouping that is almost always suspected of some form of Acrime@ - no matter how minor.  They are among the Adangerous classes@ that we should always be careful of, lest they Aget out of hand@ and upset the current social order.

But this is nothing new.  During the second decade of the 20^th century there was a similar concern about another group of Aforeigners.@  These were mostly Italian immigrants who came to this country, like millions of other immigrants, to search for a better life.  They took seriously the words written on the Statue of Liberty: AGive me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.@  But these were tense times, since in 1917 the Bolshevist Revolution occurred in Russia and there was a worldwide revolutionary fervor against the capitalist system.  Indeed, this was at the height of the labor movement and among those in the forefront were some with certain extreme views, namely that of socialism and a relative known as anarchism (still a much misunderstood term).  Among those espousing the anarchist perspective were a good number from Italy.  The hysteria reached its zenith during the so-called Red Scare of 1919 when a relatively new law enforcement agency known as the Bureau of Investigation (which started in 1908 and later became known as the FBI) engaged in a systematic roundup of mostly Italian immigrants in the segregated communities where they lived.  Hundreds of these were eventually deported.  The plan was authorized by U.S. Attorney General Palmer, who turned the roundup over to a young and energetic agent, who in turn carried out the details of this sweep.  This little known agent was a man named John Edgar Hoover.

It was about twenty years later that a similar procedure was used to weed out another segment of the Adangerous classes.@  In another time of national hysteria, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were stripped of their property and livelihoods (many owned businesses at the time) and sent to what were called ARelocation Centers@ - newspeak for AConcentration Camps@ or just plain prisons.  All this in the name of Anational security.@

But we were not done, for similar tactics were used during the McCarthy era in the 1950s during our Awar on Communism.@  During this period of hysteria, again in the name of Anational security,@ thousands of lives were ruined because someone in authority merely accused them of being a Acommunist.@  The term Acommunist,@ like Aanarchist,@ socialist,@ and Aterrorist,@ defies precise definition.  (Some critics rightly point out that it is Aterrorism@ when Athey@ do it, but not when Awe@ do it.  But this is the subject of another commentary.)  During this era if you even were casually acquainted someone who just attended a meeting of alleged Acommunists@ you were therefore a Acommunist.@  Can we not say the same thing with Aterrorism@ today?

We were still not done, for the FBI was at it again during the 1960s and 1970s with the infamous COINTELPRO investigation that successfully eliminated the dreaded Black Panther Party.  With Hoover in charge, the successful tactics of the Red Scare were once again used, this time with more sophistication than ever before.  This program has been rightly called a form of Adomestic terrorism.@  And we know the results.

Similar tactics have been used in the Awar on drugs.@  And we know the results, as millions languish in America=s jails and prisons for mere possession or even Atrafficking@ in substances that harm relatively few in comparison to tobacco and alcohol, not to mention the dangerous prescription drugs that drug companies Atraffic@ in every day.

What do all these have in common?  Several themes run through these horrible episodes.  First, the Bill of Rights are practically thrown into the toilet.  We often forget that the Constitution specifically states that no Aperson@ shall be Adeprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.@  Second,  when we declare a Awar@ on something, these rights are typically ignored, mostly because those who are targeted are among the most marginalized, the most uneducated and the poorest in our society. Third, in each and every case it turned out that the threat was highly exaggerated (most Italians were not avowed anarchists, Japanese-Americans were solidly American, most Acommunists@ turned out to be rather ordinary people with liberal views on most problems, the Black Panthers did more good than harm to their communities, while the hysteria focused on the weapons they had, fully protected by the Second Amendment.) 

The problem with using the metaphor of Awar@ is that it almost invariably sets up a simple dichotomy of Aus vs. them.@  This is because in any war there has to be an Aenemy@ and that individual, group, or nation is generally seen as Aevil@ or Asick@ or Aalien@ or just plain Adangerous@ and perhaps even a threat to the AAmerican way of life@ (the usual translation is: a threat to corporate profits).  Also, when such a war is declared all manner of reason and logic seems to be thrown in the toilet with little or no attempt to find and root out the causes.  All too often the solution is to simply get rid of the Aenemy@ (either literally via the death penalty or segregating them in prisons or ghettos or deportation).  So it has been with the Awars@ we have engaged in: on drugs, gangs, communism, and now terrorism.

Like the war on gangs and drugs, the war on terrorism has not resulted in great success.  Gangs are still more or less permanent features of our poorest communities, drugs are just as widely used as ever and even cheaper, and so far the Around up@ of the Ausual suspects@ in our war on terrorism has not produced much,  despite the expenditures of millions of dollars.

            Yes, indeed, let=s Around up the usual suspects.@  This catchy phrase (or something similar) has been used repeatedly by law enforcement agencies over the past 100 years in order to pacify a frightened public or powerful political leaders who want to at least look like they are doing something, when they know there=s not much they can do.  But it makes for some good headlines.