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December 7, 2001
BY BRIAN DICKERSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNISTLate last week, the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union announced that it would provide free legal counsel to any of the 566 Middle Eastern men the FBI wants to interview locally in connection with terrorist threats to this country.
By Friday morning, a hot line set up to process requests for legal assistance was ringing every few minutes. FEMALE CALLER: How can you guys tell us that people who are not American citizens have rights? Bull crap!
By noon, the hot line's voice mail system had recorded two dozen messages. But only five were from Middle Easterners seeking legal counsel. The other callers -- male and female, young and old, white and African American -- were U.S. citizens outraged by the ACLU's offer to represent foreigners being sought for questioning.
OLDER MALE: When anthrax reaches one of your children's schools, you'll regret your allegiance wasn't in the right place.
Assumed guilty
The men the FBI seeks to interview are 18 to 33 years old, from Middle Eastern or Islamic countries, and visiting Michigan on non-immigrant visas. The bureau has emphasized repeatedly that none is a criminal suspect, but those who flooded the ACLU's hot line with protests clearly assumed otherwise.
ANOTHER MALE: When are you going to concern yourself with Americans? You seem to be more concerned about a bunch of people who would just as soon kill us as look at us.
Callers ridiculed the notion that the Constitution offers any protection to foreigners visiting the United States at our government's pleasure.
MALE: What makes you think these people have rights? Those are Arabs; they have no rights. Deal with it!
This is, in fact, the view of many Americans, including a dismayingly large number who have law degrees and should know better. But the legal reality is otherwise, as U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft acknowledged in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
Ashcroft told senators foreign visitors detained in connection with the FBI's terrorism investigation clearly are entitled to legal representation -- a view shared by virtually every constitutional scholar.
OLDER FEMALE: I'm an African American, and I don't believe in racial profiling, but this is different. I think the government should go door to door and question every one of these Arabs.
Enduring principles
About 30 Middle Eastern men sought for questioning by the FBI had sought the ACLU's free legal counsel as of Wednesday. Spokeswoman Wendy Wagenheim said the civil liberties organization has encouraged all of them to cooperate with the federal investigation, and Michael J. Steinberg, the ACLU's legal director, said he was pleased with the way the handful of interviews already conducted had gone.
Both said they've been stunned by the number of callers who consider the ACLU's aid to foreign visitors treasonous.
"When we're called traitors for teaching people about their constitutional rights -- well, that's very troubling," the soft-spoken Steinberg told me.
The truth is that the ACLU has almost certainly facilitated the FBI's fact-finding mission while protecting clients confused and frightened by our government's sudden interest in them.
And if you just simply can't imagine why any innocent person should be frightened, the ACLU has a voice mail tape you should listen to.
Contact BRIAN DICKERSON at 248-586-2607 or dicker@freepress.com.
