OKLAHOMA CITY: AFTER THE BOMB : Senate Democrats, GOP Clash Over Anti-Terrorism Bills

WASHINGTON — Appealing for support for President Clinton’s counterterrorism proposals, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and other senior officials told Congress on Thursday that current laws inhibit them from monitoring a broad range of terrorist threats, including the danger posed by the growth of well-armed, far-right militias.

And, as the Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on anti-terrorist measures to combat such incidents as last week’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, several Republican senators, including Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), moved to put a GOP stamp on Clinton’s proposals by introducing an anti-terrorism bill of their own.

Dole’s bill, co-sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), incorporates many of Clinton’s proposals. But its inclusion of a provision to limit Death Row appeals--one of the most fiercely contested proposals in the Republicans’ rewrite of last year’s omnibus crime bill--touched off partisan controversy.

Hatch said that if Clinton accepts habeas corpus reforms putting a one-year time limit on Death Row appeals, Republicans would not antagonize Democrats further by adding to the bill a repeal of last year’s ban on assault weapons.

That brought a chorus of protests from Democrats, who characterized the GOP maneuver as a violation of the pledges of bipartisanship made by both sides to speed a counterterrorism bill through Congress in the wake of the bombing.

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Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called the habeas corpus provision irrelevant to the terrorism bill and warned that it could endanger its passage by exposing the measure to a host of other amendments that would mire its progress in partisan bickering. Other lawmakers noted that Clinton has threatened to veto a repeal of the assault-weapons ban. And they said that the deal being offered by Hatch was hardly a concession since many Republicans have been backing away from repeal of the ban in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and the attention it has focused on heavily armed paramilitary groups.

Testifying before the Judiciary Committee as it opened hearings on Clinton’s $1.25-billion package of counterterrorism measures, Freeh warned that the threat of domestic terrorism is growing as “individuals and groups . . . arm themselves for potential conflicts” with federal authorities.

But “serious gaps” in its existing authority limit the FBI’s ability to monitor these groups or to deal with terrorism now that it has “exploded into middle America,” he said. “The current scope of federal criminal laws does not reach some very possible and frightening terrorist activity,” Freeh said.

Treasury Undersecretary Ronald K. Noble, who also testified before the panel, noted that “virulently anti-gun control and anti-government” militias have sprung up in recent years in 34 states. Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy J. McVeigh has been linked to the Michigan Militia.

Even if they do not engage in terrorism themselves, the paramilitary militias foster a climate of hatred and pose “a particular threat” when “all too often their members grow bored with roaming the woods and shooting at paper targets,” said Morris Dees Jr., the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group that tracks hate crimes.

Despite the fears of civil libertarians that some of the measures could infringe on constitutionally protected freedoms, the lawmakers were generally supportive of Clinton’s requests, which the President outlined in a meeting with House and Senate leaders Wednesday night.

Most were immediately incorporated into the GOP bill, which would relax current restrictions on wiretapping, ease FBI access to credit card, travel and other records, make it easier to deport foreigners suspected of terrorist links and increase the penalties for crimes against federal workers and for those who aid terrorists by transporting explosives that they know will be used for criminal purposes.