Clinton Again Urges Broader Terrorism Laws

President Clinton on Sunday revived administration proposals to broaden federal wiretap authority and to require chemical markers in common explosives, arguing that both steps are needed to fight a terrorist threat that may be the “greatest security challenge of the 21st century.”

Reacting to two suspected acts of terrorism in three weeks, Clinton said he will ask Congress to reconsider the measures, which were dropped from the administration’s anti-terrorism bill in the face of opposition from both liberals and conservatives.

The terrorist’s goal is to “demoralize us as a people and spread fear throughout everyday life,” Clinton said in a wide-ranging speech before the annual convention of the Disabled American Veterans. “We must not let them do that.”

Hoping for swift action in the wake of the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta and the apparent bombing of TWA Flight 800, Clinton invited Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress, along with FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, to a White House meeting on terrorism today.

He said he was “very encouraged” that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who along with the National Rifle Assn. had opposed the tracer-chemical measure, indicated Sunday that Congress might be willing to reexamine that proposal and the wiretap measure.

“I believe that the more there is terrorism, the more pressure we’re under to find systematic ways to solve it,” Gingrich said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

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In an address from his Washington campaign headquarters, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole said that the victims of the Olympic bomb blast are in his thoughts and prayers and that he will visit Atlanta on Friday.

“I talked to the president yesterday,” Dole said. “As far as I know we’re doing precisely what we should be doing” to investigate the bombing and to protect athletes and visitors to the Games.

Dole was asked whether he thought that a portion of Pennsylvania Avenue, closed to protect the White House, should be reopened.

“If people are determined and willing to give their lives, they’re going to get through somehow,” Dole said. “My view is we ought to open it up. There ought to be other ways to protect the president.”

The thoroughfare was blocked off in 1995 after a gunman fired shots at the executive mansion and a pilot crashed his plane on the lawn beneath the presidential bedroom the year before.

The wiretap measure was stricken from the anti-terrorism bill when civil libertarians denounced it. The provision would have enabled federal law enforcement agencies to obtain court permission to tap all telephone lines used by a suspect, instead of only a single, specified line.

Advocates have argued that such permission would help police track suspects who move quickly from place to place, sometimes using a series of stationary phones, pagers and mobile phones.

The tracer proposal would require the most common explosives, black and smokeless powder, to be marked with special chemicals called “taggants” before they are sold. The taggants would make it possible for law enforcement officers to trace the explosive material to its source in the same way that police use serial numbers to track motor vehicle parts.

Clinton recalled that the anti-terrorism bill he signed in April made acts of terrorism a federal offense, expanded the FBI’s role in fighting terrorism and imposed the death penalty for convicted terrorists.

But he said the measure “did not give our law enforcement officials some of the powerful tools I had recommended. . . . Where they [terrorists] are flexible, so must we be.”

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Clinton suggested that he is also open to other measures. He vowed to do “whatever is necessary to give law enforcement the tools they need to find terrorists before they strike and to bring them swiftly to justice when they do.”

Gingrich, like others in recent days, suggested during the TV interview that the nation also needs to route additional resources into “human intelligence,” that is, spies infiltrating terrorist groups.

“You’ve got to have people on the ground trying to get inside and understand terrorism,” he said.

Even as the president flew to Louisiana, he continued to receive briefings on the aftermath of the pipe-bomb explosion. He also took calls from French President Jacques Chirac and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom offered their condolences and assistance.

Although Clinton’s Vietnam War-era draft avoidance has made his reception by military groups uncertain, he was warmly received here Sunday.

He thanked the veterans of World War II for their service and sacrifice, “including the Republican candidate for president, Sen. Bob Dole.”

Clinton boasted about his administration’s generosity toward veterans, noting that he had asked for $1 billion in increases this year in the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

On other topics, Clinton:

* Offered no new clues about whether he would sign the welfare reform bill now under review by congressional conferees.

* Won his biggest reaction of the day by declaring that “deadbeat dads” should be made to support their offspring. If all parents who owed money paid up, he said, there would be 800,000 fewer women and children on welfare.

Dole turned down an invitation to speak at the convention. His campaign cited limited funds.

After his Washington address, he attended a rally in Billings, Mont., and then traveled to Redding, the heart of California timber country, where he will speak at a lumberyard today.

Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this story.