Wiley, Joyce N.

English

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Journal of Political Science Volume 31 Number 1 Article 8 November 2003 Book Review: Terrorism and the Constitution by David Cole and James X. Dempsey Joyce N. Wiley Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops  Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Wiley, Joyce N. (2003) "Book Review: Terrorism and the Constitution by David Cole and James X. Dempsey," Journal of Political Science: Vol. 31 : No. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops/vol31/iss1/8 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Politics at CCU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Political Science by an authorized editor of CCU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact commons@coastal.edu. BOOK REVIEWS 200 David Cole and James X. Dempsey. Terrorism and the Constitution. (New York: The New Press, 2002) . 231 pp. The authors, one a professor of law at Georgetown University and the other a former assistant counsel to a U.S. House Judiciary subcom-mittee, provide a straightforward account of U.S. sacrifices of liberty for security. Their thesis is that curtailing liberty does not enhance secu-rity. Their historical review of our responding to political violence with infringements on the First Amendment and other constitutional princi-ples include (1) 1950s McCarthyism; (2) 1960s and 1970s COINTEL-PRO (counterintelligence programs) directed against major protest movements such as Vietnam War protests; (3) 1980s programs like CISPES, which targeted opponents of U.S. military aid to El Salvador; and (4) 1990s efforts to end Palestinian and Muslim provision of hu-manitarian aid to groups the U.S . designated terrorist. During the McCarthy era, the McCarran-Walter Act made it a crime to associate with a group that advocated communism. Senator McCarthy depended heavily on the FBI for information, but the ac-cused had no access to FBI evidence that would assist their defense and no opportunity to cross-examine their accusers. The purpose of the COINTELPRO was to discredit protest groups. From 1961 to 1976 the FBI used 1,300 informants and 204 illegal break-ins against one group, the Socialist Workers Party, without find-ing a single instance of illegal activity. Among the other groups targeted for counterintelligence investigation were Amnesty International, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the African National Congress, the Irish Republican Army, and opposition political parties abroad. Guilt by association led to the investigation of members of Amnesty Interna-tional for writing letters to help political prisoners in suspect places like the Soviet Union. People who received phone calls from Earth First were investigated. Once a person is investigated and a file created, the file can be kept secret indefinitely. The guidelines on counterintelli-gence are largely classified, and congressional oversight is inconsistent. CISPES generated files on several thousand activists but found no evidence of planned violence or other illegal activity. Investigation by Representative Don Edwards' subcommittee eventually led the FBI to T HE JOURNAL OF POLITI CAL SCIEN CE BOOK REVIEWS 201 admjt that CISPES focused on First Amendment activity and wasted resources. In 1994 Representative Edwards got a provision adopted saying that investigations could not be initiated on activities protected by the First Amendment, but the provision was repealed in the 1996 Antiterrorism Act. The LA 8, mostly Palestinian immigrants, were arrested in 1987 and portrayed as terrorists although the government never showed any evi-dence of unlawful activity on their part and never charged them with a crime. As part of its investigation, the FBI tracked the distribution of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) magazine. Over a fifteen year period the government repeatedly sought their de-portation because "it is our belief that they are members of [the PFLP]" (p. 37). The Supreme Court had held in 1972 that guilt by association is impermissible, but this provision was curtailed for non-citizens in Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (1999). The 1996 Antiterrorism Act is one of the worst assaults on the Con-stitution. It resurrected guilt by association and used secret evidence as a basis for deportation of non-citizens, almost all of them Muslim. Whenever the courts compelled revelation of the evidence, it proved to be worthless, e.g. the six Iraqi detainees who worked with the CIA in the 1997 effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein were detained for several years on the basis of secret "evidence." No matter how innocent the suspects, they cannot rebut undisclosed evidence. It was finally deter-mined that the secret evidence hinged on errors in translation and the interviewer's ignorance of Iraq. In a number of cases the INS used the 1996 law to deprive the accused of the right to confront their accusers, but the Act had little impact on terrorism, leading to only three prosecu-tions. The INS continues to use secret evidence. Liberty is sacrificed without benefit to security. The 2001 Patriot Act passed Congress with far less scrutiny than other laws. Among its provisions are removing judicial controls on government power, making aliens deportable for wholly innocent asso-ciational activity, and authorizing wiretaps without probable cause. The authors do not believe these and other provisions of the new law will add to security because the intelligence agencies are already awash in information that they cannot digest. They believe we are again wasting VOL. 31 2003 BOOK REVIEWS 202 valuable resources tracking innocent political activity. They argue that denying the accused the right to confront their accusers and relying on untested evidence will increase the likelihood that the search for the truly guilty party will be called off prematurely. The authors' analysis of past laws and their efficacy, plus the detail-ing of the present law makes Terrorism and the Constitution a very valuable book. It should be in college libraries and it could be assigned to students . The book's absence of an index is regrettable, but it does contain a valuable appendix of law professors' petition to Congress. Joyce Wiley University of South Carolina Spartanburg Jaques Baudot (ed.), Building a World Community: Globalization and the Common Good. (Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2001). 272 pp. Building a World Community is mostly the product of Jacques Bau-dot, the principal organizer of the 1995 UN World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen and the secretary for the four semi-nars that followed from 1996 to 1999. This work is published in asso-ciation with the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although listed as editor, Baudot, in elegant English with British spellings, writes three-fourths of the book. The remainder of the book contains eight essays by noted scholars, headlined by Richard Falk of Princeton Uni-versity. These essays merely echo themes already presented by Baudot. The Copenhagen Summit, the follow-up seminars, and Building a World Community are, taken together, a response to the powerful forces gathered up in the globalization process . Baudot offers a synthesis of the summit and seminars amounting to a "vision for a single global community of the human race" (p. 11). The result is a call for a democ-ratic world at all levels of governance accompanied by a world econ-omy that will serve everyone on the planet. Repeatedly, Baudot gives the power of world capitalism its due for its productivity, but, for Bau-THE JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 

Book Review: Terrorism and the Constitution by David Cole and James X. Dempsey

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Book Review: Terrorism and the Constitution by David Cole and James X. Dempsey

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