Pubdate: Sun, 03 Mar 2002
Source: State, The (SC)
Copyright: 2002 The State
Contact:  http://www.thestate.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/426
Author: Brad Warthen, Editorial Page Editor

WAR ON TERROR BLURS LINES BETWEEN STATE AND FEDERAL, MILITARY AND CIVILIAN

ROBERT STEWART, chief of the State Law Enforcement Division, dropped by the 
other day to make the case for letting his agency listen in on telephone 
conversations -- with appropriate warrants.

It's not something he would have asked for a few years ago. "I don't like 
the sound of 'wiretap' myself," he said. "I call it 'court-authorized 
electronic surveillance."" But recent developments in both technology and 
the nature of crime caused him to start changing assumptions even before 
Sept. 11.

Another set of assumptions has undergone a transformation that makes 
wiretaps in South Carolina look fairly minor.

Until recently, there were clearly defined boundaries between the various 
entities that are charged with enforcing laws and keeping Americans safe.

Sheriffs and local police enforced local ordinances, as state agencies did 
state laws. The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of 
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and other federal law enforcement agencies 
upheld federal statutes. The CIA collected intelligence abroad and was 
barred from spying on Americans. The military was there to protect us from 
foreign militaries, and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibited it from 
performing civilian police functions.

There were breaches of those functions over the years, but they were 
generally the exception rather than the rule until Ronald Reagan started 
using the military to help fight the drug war.

Chief Stewart points out that there have been National Guard troops 
stationed at SLED headquarters for 10 years to assist in antidrug 
operations -- although they are not allowed to make arrests.

But since Sept. 11, the lines between military and civilian, foreign and 
domestic, state and federal, CIA and FBI have blurred to the point that 
they are often invisible or nonexistent.

The feds have started working together to an unprecedented degree. In The 
New York Times Jan. 20, Tim Weiner summarized one of the more dramatic changes:

"The charter of the Central Intelligence Agency expressly denies the spies 
any domestic police powers. President Harry S. Truman was vigilant in 
wanting no secret police. Nor did he want J. Edgar Hoover's FBI cloaked in 
the cover that espionage demands. The spies and the G-men had two distinct 
roles, two distinct sets of rules.

"So the boundaries were drawn at the dawn of the cold war. The CIA would 
find out what was going on outside the United States -- and so prevent a 
second Pearl Harbor. The FBI would work inside the United States to catch 
criminals and foreign agents. That once bright line has blurred since Sept. 
11."

That's happened largely because neither the CIA nor the FBI nor the 
military nor anyone else managed to prevent the "second Pearl Harbor."

While civil libertarians can and probably should dispute whether Congress 
should have granted the CIA new powers to snoop on people in the United 
States (civil libertarians play an important role in our society, even when 
they're wrong), there's little doubt that some of the barriers between 
federal institutions needed to fall. As Chief Stewart noted, "We quit 
counting at 148 separate federal agencies that are supposed to protect us," 
and yet the various "federal intelligence computers don't geehaw, don't fit 
together."

Next week in Washington, Chief Stewart will attend a meeting intended to 
foster police and national security cooperation on an unprecedented scale. 
The "Summit on Criminal Intelligence Sharing: Overcoming Barriers to 
Enhance Domestic Security," will seek to "design a process to promote 
intelligence-led policing, concentrating on successful development, sharing 
and use of intelligence information, construction of a common intelligence 
language, and creation of a structure for information exchange."

Joining sheriffs, police chiefs and state law enforcement officials from 
across the country will be such luminaries as Attorney General John 
Ashcroft, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, FBI Director Robert 
Mueller, CIA Director George Tenet, ATF chief Bradley Buckles and Secret 
Service Director Brian Stafford.

Also on hand will be top officials from the DEA, the Federal Aviation 
Administration, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Immigration 
and Naturalization Service, the Army's Counterdrug Office and others that 
most of us have never heard of. INTERPOL, the U.N. Security and Safety 
Services and Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service will be 
represented as well.

Depending on whether you're a law-and-order type or one who worries about 
black helicopters, this gathering constitutes either a dream team or a 
nightmare.

But whatever you think of it, it's one of the most dramatic illustrations 
yet of the most overused of post-9/11 cliches: Everything has changed.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager