House OKs Crime Bill Rid of Antiterrorism Provisions

The House passed a watered-down anticrime bill Thursday containing provisions to curtail multiple legal appeals filed by convicted criminals but stripped of proposals intended to crack down on domestic terrorism.

Approved on a 229-191 vote after two days of often-heated debate, the amended bill includes none of the expanded powers for federal law enforcement agencies recommended by the House Judiciary Committee after the Oklahoma City bombing and endorsed overwhelmingly by the Senate last June.

Before any antiterrorism legislation reaches President Clinton, however, the vastly different House and Senate versions will have to be reconciled by a Senate-House conference committee, a task that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Thursday conceded will be difficult.

Gingrich, urging passage of the weakened House bill, called it “a substantial step in the right direction,” adding that “when it goes to conference it will be improved further.”

He said that he hopes a provision can be restored that would prevent U.S. fund-raising by terrorist organizations identified by the secretary of State and the attorney general, such as the Palestinian group Hamas. This provision was among the proposed federal powers deleted from the bill Wednesday under a far-reaching amendment sponsored by Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.).

The reconciliation process could pose a difficult election-year challenge for Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the likely Republican nominee for president, because many Americans are seen as favoring strong antiterrorism measures, such as making it easier to deport criminal immigrants and to keep potential terrorists under federal surveillance--two other provisions that were killed.

But the National Rifle Assn. and the Gun Owners of America pressed House members in recent days to back the Barr amendment and there were fears among some conservatives that wider federal powers could be used to harass law-abiding militia groups.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) told reporters after the vote that “House Republicans weren’t willing to stand up to the right-wing militias.”

The Barr amendment was largely supported by members who objected to new grants of authority for agencies perceived to have overstepped their bounds in the fatal shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and the deadly 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.

But Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), who supported the stronger Judiciary Committee bill, asked his colleagues: “Why do we gut such a bill? Are we more frightened of our own government than of foreign terrorists? We should not be.”

And Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), a Judiciary Committee member, called Barr’s amendment “highly irresponsible,” saying it guts antiterrorism measures and prevents authorities from barring foreigners suspected of links to terrorist organizations from entering the United States.

“The next time we have some major foreign organization . . . bomb one of our buildings and kill a lot of people, we’re going to be the ones to blame for it, not somebody else,” said McCollum, who chairs the committee’s subcommittee on crime.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said that she was “extremely disappointed” at the House action to “undercut America’s law enforcement officers.”

The bill, as approved, makes it illegal for anyone to provide material support to any foreign terrorist group. But Barr’s amendment included language to grant more legal protections to gun dealers and others.

Under the original committee bill, merchants could be prosecuted if there were “reasonable cause to believe” that they had sold weapons or explosives to suspected terrorists. Barr got the language changed to require such knowledge “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a more difficult standard for prosecutors.

Liberal Democrats sought to delete provisions limiting appeals by death-row inmates but the House voted down their amendments. As finally approved, the House bill would allow a convicted criminal one comprehensive federal court appeal from his conviction, eliminating the multiple appeals by which some defendants have staved off their executions for as long as 14 years.

Families of victims of the bombing in Oklahoma City last year that killed 169 people have lobbied members of Congress for just such a reform, contending that they want to see justice imposed expeditiously for persons convicted of that terrorist act.

The measure also would make it a federal crime to kill any federal employees because of their work and would require the inclusion of “taggants” in plastic explosives so that they can be traced.