Terrorism Prevention Bill

* Kudos on your June 12 editorial “The Big Clunker in the Terrorism Bill.” From its tone as well as its admission that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI actually have abused people, I can only conclude that either your offices have been infiltrated by the National Rifle Assn. or that your staff has read all 10 amendments of the Bill of Rights.

It is interesting that the Democrats’ idea of crime-fighting is spying upon American citizens without the formality of a court order, while the Republicans limit appeals by convicted, condemned murderers. Predictably, The Times and the Democrats are more worried about convicted murders than citizens subjected to unwarranted federal wiretaps.

The Times also seems to regard the further militarization of federal law enforcement as a good thing. Perhaps the United States should carry this process to its logical conclusion. Argentina and Northern Ireland have demonstrated how successful armies can be in combatting terrorism. Of course, they do occasionally kill innocent citizens who have no way to appeal their death sentences, since a trial is not usually part of the process.

ROY C. HOFSCHNEIDER

Upland

* Given our nation’s long history of willingly sacrificing constitutionally enshrined liberties at the altar of national security in time of national crisis, it should come as no surprise that the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Terrorism Prevention Act of 1995, despite the fact that the bill carried “some extraneous political baggage.”

The Palmer Raids following World War I, the internment of over 110,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast (two-thirds of whom were American citizens) in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the FBI’s well-documented counterintelligence programs of the Cold War era are just a few examples of how our federal government has trampled upon the Constitution in the name of national security.

Today, as congressmen in the conservative House deliberate over the CTPA, we, as concerned citizens, would be well served to remember the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who once wrote: “Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when government purposes are beneficent . . . The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

SUSAN E. EVANS

Manhattan Beach