Here's an article I wrote on 9.11: "Bush had called for laxer airport
security." Prior to 9.11, the Administration was weakening two anti-terrorist
procedures - profiling of airline passengers and the use of secret evidence
against would-be immigrants believed by the U.S. government to be terrorists.
The reason for this was they had a "disparate" impact on Middle Easterners.

It wasn't right to send this article out immediately, however. I should have
realized that in a national emergency you shouldn't immediately criticize the
President. A nation going to war needs a fair degree of confidence in its
leader, no matter how possibly disastrous the mistakes.

Also, keep in mind that Presidents have to take stands on so many different
issues that they will inevitably be wrong on some of them, so Bush shouldn't
be blamed too much for these two mistakes, which no doubt seemed like minor
sops to throw to the Arab voters in Michigan. Further, Bush was widely
supported by other politicians and the press. For example, Gore, who had
played a role in implementing these two sensible anti-terrorist policies in
1996 immediately reversed course and attacked them after Bush criticized
them. It's hard to remember now how obsessed American elites were about
rooting out anything that might "discriminate" before 9.11. Everyone just got
swept up in the madness of assuming that the "stereotype" that a Middle
Eastern man was more likely to hijack a plane than a, say, American Indian
woman was just racism.

At least, I'm proud to say, I didn't. My jaw dropped when I heard Bush attack
anti-terrorism procedures and I wrote several articles bringing it up.
Steve Sailer

Bush had called for laxer airport security
By STEVE SAILER
LOS ANGELES, Sep. 11 -- Ironically, in an attempt to appeal to the growing
number of Arab-American and Muslim voters, exactly eleven months ago George
W. Bush called for weakening airport security procedures aimed at deterring
hijackers.

On Oct. 11, 2000, during the second presidential debate, the Republican
candidate attacked two anti-terrorist policies that had long irritated Arab
citizens of the U.S.

At present [i.e., the evening of 9.11], of course, there is no definite
evidence that Arabs or Muslims were involved in today's terrorist assaults.
Many incorrectly assumed after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that Middle
Easterners were involved. Nor is there direct evidence that Bush's attack on
airline safety procedures made the four simultaneous hijackings easier to
pull off.

Bush said during the nationally televised debate, "Arab-Americans are
racially profiled in what's called secret evidence. People are stopped, and
we got to do something about that." Then-Governor Bush went on, "My friend,
Sen. Spence Abraham [the Arab-American Republic Senator from Michigan], is
pushing a law to make sure that, you know, Arab-Americans are treated with
respect. So racial profiling isn't just an issue at the local police forces.
It's an issue throughout our society. And as we become a diverse society,
we're going to have to deal with it more and more."

Bush's plug for Senator Abraham was intended to help Abraham in close
re-election battle, which he ultimately lost. (Abraham is now the Bush
Administration's Secretary of Energy.) More important personally to Bush was
the swing state of Michigan's 18 electoral votes, which Al Gore eventually
won narrowly. Arab-Americans, centered in Dearborn and Flint, make up about
four percent of the population of Michigan, the most of any state.

In the debate, Bush conflated two separate policies that Arab-Americans and
Muslim-Americans felt discriminate against them: the heightened suspicions
faced by Middle Eastern-looking travelers at airport security checkpoints and
the government's use of "secret evidence" in immigration hearings of
suspected terrorists. Yet, despite Bush's confusion, Arab-Americans
appreciated his gesture. Four days after the debate, the Arab-American
Political Action Committee endorsed Bush.

The day after Bush's remarks, 17 American sailors died in a terrorist attack
in the Arab nation of Yemen. The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, however, did not
stop Vice President Al Gore from echoing Bush's calls to end these two
anti-terrorist techniques in a meeting with Arab-American leaders on October
14, 200.

According to a spokesperson for a leading Arab-American organization, people
of Arab descent are stopped and searched at airports more often than many
other ethnic groups. Some refer to this as Flying While Arab or Flying While
Muslim. These terms are intended as plays on the popular phrase "Driving
While Black," which is widely used to criticize police departments for
stopping more black than white motorists.

This year, both Bush and his Attorney General John Ashcroft have called for
an end to racial profiling.

The Federal Aviation Administration provides airline and airport personnel
with the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening system to help them
identify suspicious travelers. It relies on a secret profile of the
characteristics of typical hijackers and terrorists.

Bush's Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has said that "the security
procedures are not based on the race, ethnicity, religion or gender of
passengers…" Yet, the system is widely believed to use other information -
such as whether the traveler is going to or coming from the Middle East -
that tends to "disparately impact" Arab and Muslims.

None of the ethnic rights groups, however, has offered any data to dispute
the widespread assumption that in the three decades since the Palestine
Liberation Organization invented skyjacking, a disproportionate number of
hijackers and plane bombers have had Middle Eastern ties.

Nonetheless, the Bush Administration publicly agrees with the civil rights
organizations that even a nonracial airport profiling system that had merely
a disparate impact on Arabs and Muslims would be objectionable. Secretary
Mineta said, "We also want to assure that in practice, the system does not
disproportionately select members of any particular minority group." Of
course, if Arabs and Muslims are disproportionately more likely to hijack
airliners, and the profiling system does not end up disproportionately
targeting them, then system wouldn't work very well at preventing hijackings.

To ensure that no disparate impact is occurring, the Bush Administration
carried out in June a three-week study, first planned by the Clinton
Administration, of whether or not profiling at the Detroit airport
disparately impacts Arabs.

The results of the study have not been released. Nor is it known whether the
secret profiles have been relaxed - they are kept secret in order to keep
hijackers guessing.

However, on June 6th Attorney General Ashcroft told Congress, "We want the
right training, we want the right kind of discipline, we want the right kind
of detection measures and the right kind of remediation measures, because
racial profiling doesn't belong in the federal government's operational
arsenal."

Besides airport profiling, Arab-American activists long demanded the repeal
of the "secret evidence" section of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act. To prevent
terrorist gangs from murdering U.S. government secret informants, this law
allows the government to provide evidence from unidentified moles in the
immigration hearings of foreigners suspected of terrorist links. The
government has deported or detained a number of Arabs hoping to immigrate to
the U.S. due to testimony by witnesses they were never allowed to confront.

Although Abraham's bill repealing the use of secret evidence died in 2000,
during his confirmation hearing, Ashcroft endorsed the ban on secret
evidence. He told Congress in June that the Bush Administration has not used
secret evidence.

As the practice has come under increasing attack, the number of Arab
immigrants detained on secret evidence has dropped sharply. Hussein Ibish of
the American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee told UPI in June, "Two years
ago there were 25 in prison," he said. "Now we're down to only one."

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