The Nation - News from June 14, 1988

Members of a House Judiciary subcommittee, examining alleged abuses in the FBI’s investigation of a group opposed to the Reagan Administration’s Central America policy, said they intend to draft more restrictive standards for probes of terrorists in this country. “I am thinking seriously of sometime early next year taking another quick look at this issue and writing the beginnings of an FBI charter,” Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), chairman of the civil and constitutional rights subcommittee, said. Edwards and others on the panel appeared to agree with recommendations of witnesses that there should be one standard for FBI probes of domestic terrorism and that this standard should be written into law. Spurring the hearings was the FBI’s handling of a probe of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.