By DAVID ROHDE
SHABAK VALLEY, Afghanistan — In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a soft-spoken civilian anthropologist named Tracy.

Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team’s ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations — in one case spotting a land dispute that allowed the Taliban to bully parts of a major tribe — has won the praise of officers who say they are seeing concrete results.

Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with the anthropologists here, said that the unit’s combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the scientists arrived in February, and that the soldiers were now able to focus more on improving security, health care and education for the population.

“We’re looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist’s perspective,” he said. “We’re not focused on the enemy. We’re focused on bringing governance down to the people.”

In September, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates authorized a $40 million expansion of the program, which will assign teams of anthropologists and social scientists to each of the 26 American combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since early September, five new teams have been deployed in the Baghdad area, bringing the total to six.

Yet criticism is emerging in academia. Citing the past misuse of social sciences in counterinsurgency campaigns, including in Vietnam and Latin America, some denounce the program as “mercenary anthropology” that exploits social science for political gain. Opponents fear that, whatever their intention, the scholars who work with the military could inadvertently cause all anthropologists to be viewed as intelligence gatherers for the American military.

Hugh Gusterson, an anthropology professor at George Mason University, and 10 other anthropologists are circulating an online pledge calling for anthropologists to boycott the teams, particularly in Iraq.

“While often presented by its proponents as work that builds a more secure world,” the pledge says, “at base, it contributes instead to a brutal war of occupation which has entailed massive casualties.”

In Afghanistan, the anthropologists arrived along with 6,000 troops, which doubled the American military’s strength in the area it patrols, the country’s east.

A smaller version of the Bush administration’s troop increase in Iraq, the buildup in Afghanistan has allowed American units to carry out the counterinsurgency strategy here, where American forces generally face less resistance and are better able to take risks.

A New Mantra

Since Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the overall American commander in Iraq, oversaw the drafting of the Army’s new counterinsurgency manual last year, the strategy has become the new mantra of the military. A recent American military operation here offered a window into how efforts to apply the new approach are playing out on the ground in counterintuitive ways.

In interviews, American officers lavishly praised the anthropology program, saying that the scientists’ advice has proved to be “brilliant,” helping them see the situation from an Afghan perspective and allowing them to cut back on combat operations.

The aim, they say, is to improve the performance of local government officials, persuade tribesmen to join the police, ease poverty and protect villagers from the Taliban and criminals.

Afghans and Western civilian officials, too, praised the anthropologists and the new American military approach but were cautious about predicting long-term success. Many of the economic and political problems fueling instability can be solved only by large numbers of Afghan and American civilian experts.

“My feeling is that the military are going through an enormous change right now where they recognize they won’t succeed militarily,” said Tom Gregg, the chief United Nations official in southeastern Afghanistan. “But they don’t yet have the skill sets to implement” a coherent nonmilitary strategy, he added.

Deploying small groups of soldiers into remote areas, Colonel Schweitzer’s paratroopers organized jirgas, or local councils, to resolve tribal disputes that have simmered for decades. Officers shrugged off questions about whether the military was comfortable with what David Kilcullen, an Australian anthropologist and an architect of the new strategy, calls “armed social work.”

“Who else is going to do it?“ asked Lt. Col. David Woods, commander of the Fourth Squadron, 73rd Cavalry. “You have to evolve. Otherwise you’re useless.”

The anthropology team here also played a major role in what the military called Operation Khyber. That was a 15-day drive late this summer in which 500 Afghan and 500 American soldiers tried to clear an estimated 200 to 250 Taliban insurgents out of much of Paktia Province, secure southeastern Afghanistan’s most important road and halt a string of suicide attacks on American troops and local governors.

In one of the first districts the team entered, Tracy identified an unusually high concentration of widows in one village, Colonel Woods said. Their lack of income created financial pressure on their sons to provide for their families, she determined, a burden that could drive the young men to join well-paid insurgents. Citing Tracy’s advice, American officers developed a job training program for the widows.

In another district, the anthropologist interpreted the beheading of a local tribal elder as more than a random act of intimidation: the Taliban’s goal, she said, was to divide and weaken the Zadran, one of southeastern Afghanistan’s most powerful tribes. If Afghan and American officials could unite the Zadran, she said, the tribe could block the Taliban from operating in the area.

“Call it what you want, it works,” said Colonel Woods, a native of Denbo, Pa. “It works in helping you define the problems, not just the symptoms.”

Embedding Scholars

The process that led to the creation of the teams began in late 2003, when American officers in Iraq complained that they had little to no information about the local population. Pentagon officials contacted Montgomery McFate, a Yale-educated cultural anthropologist working for the Navy who advocated using social science to improve military operations and strategy.

Ms. McFate helped develop a database in 2005 that provided officers with detailed information on the local population. The next year, Steve Fondacaro, a retired Special Operations colonel, joined the program and advocated embedding social scientists with American combat units.

Ms. McFate, the program’s senior social science adviser and an author of the new counterinsurgency manual, dismissed criticism of scholars working with the military. “I’m frequently accused of militarizing anthropology,” she said. “But we’re really anthropologizing the military.”

Roberto J. González, an anthropology professor at San Jose State University, called participants in the program naïve and unethical. He said that the military and the Central Intelligence Agency had consistently misused anthropology in counterinsurgency and propaganda campaigns and that military contractors were now hiring anthropologists for their local expertise as well.

“Those serving the short-term interests of military and intelligence agencies and contractors,” he wrote in the June issue of Anthropology Today, an academic journal, “will end up harming the entire discipline in the long run.”

Arguing that her critics misunderstand the program and the military, Ms. McFate said other anthropologists were joining the teams. She said their goal was to help the military decrease conflict instead of provoking it, and she vehemently denied that the anthropologists collected intelligence for the military.

In eastern Afghanistan, Tracy said wanted to reduce the use of heavy-handed military operations focused solely on killing insurgents, which she said alienated the population and created more insurgents. “I can go back and enhance the military’s understanding,” she said, “so that we don’t make the same mistakes we did in Iraq.”

Along with offering advice to commanders, she said, the five-member team creates a database of local leaders and tribes, as well as social problems, economic issues and political disputes.

Clinics and Mediation

During the recent operation, as soldiers watched for suicide bombers, Tracy and Army medics held a free medical clinic. They said they hoped that providing medical care would show villagers that the Afghan government was improving their lives.

Civil affairs soldiers then tried to mediate between factions of the Zadran tribe about where to build a school. The Americans said they hoped that the school, which would serve children from both groups, might end a 70-year dispute between the groups over control of a mountain covered with lucrative timber.

Though they praised the new program, Afghan and Western officials said it remained to be seen whether the weak Afghan government could maintain the gains. “That’s going to be the challenge, to fill the vacuum,” said Mr. Gregg, the United Nations official. “There’s a question mark over whether the government has the ability to take advantage of the gains.”

Others also question whether the overstretched American military and its NATO allies can keep up the pace of operations.

American officers expressed optimism. Many of those who had served in both Afghanistan and Iraq said they had more hope for Afghanistan. One officer said that the Iraqis had the tools to stabilize their country, like a potentially strong economy, but that they lacked the will. He said Afghans had the will, but lacked the tools.

After six years of American promises, Afghans, too, appear to be waiting to see whether the Americans or the Taliban will win a protracted test of wills here. They said this summer was just one chapter in a potentially lengthy struggle.

At a “super jirga” set up by Afghan and American commanders here, a member of the Afghan Parliament, Nader Khan Katawazai, laid out the challenge ahead to dozens of tribal elders.

“Operation Khyber was just for a few days,” he said. “The Taliban will emerge again.”

Iraqis to Pay China $100 Million for Weapons for Police
Experts Fear More Will Go to Insurgents
By Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 4, 2007; A12

Iraq has ordered $100 million worth of light military equipment from China for its police force, contending that the United States was unable to provide the materiel and is too slow to deliver arms shipments, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said yesterday.

The China deal, not previously made public, has alarmed military analysts who note that Iraq's security forces already are unable to account for more than 190,000 weapons supplied by the United States, many of which are believed to be in the hands of Shiite and Sunni militias, insurgents and other forces seeking to destabilize Iraq and target U.S. troops.

"The problem is that the Iraqi government doesn't have -- as yet -- a clear plan for making sure that weapons are distributed, that they are properly monitored and repeatedly checked," said Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information, an independent think tank. "The end-use monitoring will be left in the hands of a government and military in Iraq that is not yet ready for it. And there's not a way for the U.S. to mandate them to do it if they're not U.S. weapons."

News of Iraq's arms deal came as Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. commander for day-to-day operations in Iraq, told editors and reporters at The Washington Post yesterday that he expects a U.S. troop presence will be required in the country for a minimum of "at least three to five more years" and will involve 25,000 to 50,000 troops, depending on security conditions.

Detailed planning is underway for the U.S. military to begin scaling back its primary mission from one of fighting a counterinsurgency to an advisory and training role, which will involve pulling U.S. troops out of Iraqi cities and closing some U.S. bases, Odierno said. Odierno and Talabani, who met separately with Post editors and reporters, said they expect their governments to finalize a long-term bilateral security pact in 2008.

The capabilities of Iraqi security forces are pivotal to the U.S. exit strategy in Iraq, with the creation of a viable police force critical to reconciliation. Talabani said only one in five Iraqi police officers is armed and called for faster weapons delivery from the United States to beef up Iraq's fledgling army.

Iraq's police force is noted for infiltration by militias and insurgents out to use national resources for their own ends, said William D. Hartung, director of the New America Foundation Arms and Security Initiative. "Besides, aside from possibly wanting newer models, there are piles of arms and weapons floating around in Iraq," he said.

The Chinese arms deal sheds light on the larger dispute between the United States and Iraq over rebuilding Iraq's armed forces and police. Iraqi officials have long complained about the supply of weapons and equipment for their personnel, noting that Iraqi security forces often patrol in pickup trucks without body armor along the same routes as U.S. troops wearing flak jackets and riding in armored vehicles.

"There is general frustration in the Iraqi government at the rate in which Iraqi armed forces are being equipped and armed," Iraqi Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie told reporters this summer. "This is a collaborative effort between the Iraqi government and the government of the United States, and the process is not moving quickly enough to improve the fighting capacity of Iraqi armed forces. A way must be found to improve this process."

Talabani yesterday expressed frustration with the delays. "The capacity of the factories here are not enough to provide us quickly with all that we need, even for the army. One of our demands is to accelerate the delivery of the arms to the Iraqi army."

Iraq has become one of the largest buyers of U.S.-made weapons. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that Baghdad has signed deals to buy $1.6 billion in U.S. arms, with another $1.8 billion in possible weapons purchases.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the United States is "working closely" to help Iraq obtain "appropriate and necessary" military equipment. But U.S. officials concede delivery problems.

"We haven't converted toaster factories to produce carbines and we're working hard just to supply our own troops," said an administration official involved with Iraq policy. "Our factories are working for our own troops. So it's true we don't have the ability to provide these rifles and other equipment they're looking for."

In 2004 and 2005, the United States bought 185,000 AK-47s from an Eastern European country -- after Iraqis rejected U.S.-made M-16 assault rifles -- as part of a $2.8 billion program to deliver military equipment to Iraq. But a recent Government Accountability Office report said that 110,000 of them were unaccounted for, with about 30 percent of all arms distributed to Iraqi forces by the United States since 2004 missing.

Nevertheless, Odierno said, recent improvements in Iraq's security since the U.S. troop buildup have exceeded his expectations, with attacks down in September to the lowest level since January 2006 and U.S. troop casualties declining since June. A major factor has been U.S. operations against al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose sanctuaries have been reduced by 60 to 70 percent since January, he said. He warned, however, that the group can regenerate.

Another factor has been the unexpected willingness of Sunni tribes to cooperate with U.S. and Iraqi forces, he said. But Odierno said he remains concerned over recent statements from Iraq's Shiite ruling faction demanding that the U.S. military stop recruiting Sunni tribesmen f0r Iraq's police force.

"That's uncomfortable to them, and I think that's part of why it's so important. This is about reconciliation," Odierno said. "We have to continue to move forward."

He said the U.S. military is shifting more of its resources to targeting Shiite militias, including what Odierno called "surrogates" who are trained, armed and funded by Iran, as well as "special groups" affiliated with the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

"We are starting to see at low levels a split between those [Shiite militias] who have some relationship with Iran . . . and those who do not," Odierno said. He said the significance of the "fissures" is not yet clear.

October 4, 2007
A Peek Inside Myanmar’s New Capital

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:15 a.m. ET

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) -- This may be the world's only national capital without mobile phone service or international flight connections. It certainly doesn't have traffic problems. And you won't find any food carts clogging the streets.

All of this suits Myanmar's paranoid military leaders just fine.

Welcome to Naypyitaw, the new capital of Myanmar, where the ruling junta can feel safe in a denuded area nestled among mountain jungle, aloof from the demands for democracy that are popping up elsewhere in the country.

The capital's move from Yangon -- formerly known as Rangoon -- to Naypyitaw began in 2005 and was hastily completed last year, as civil servants were loaded onto trucks and taken 250 miles to the north.

Foreign journalists, invited by the government for a rare visit to the ''Seat of Kings'' this year found a city struggling to come alive despite a claimed population of almost 1 million.

Military VIPs fly into the city's bare-bones airport. Ordinary people, however, must endure a jostling 8-to-10-hour drive from Yangon on a pitted two-lane highway also used by oxcarts. A poorly marked turnoff gives way to an eight-lane concrete highway, the likes of which are not seen elsewhere in impoverished Myanmar.

Naypyitaw's wide boulevards hold the promise of grandeur but carry so few vehicles there are hardly any traffic lights. Dusty construction sites dot the area. Notably absent are the street vendors who make up the commercial lifeblood of most Asian cities.

An architectural wonder it is not.

The city hall is imposing yet odd, a vaguely Soviet totalitarian-style building with peaked Burmese roofs. The city has 1,200 new four-story apartment blocks, but their cookie-cutter nature and wide spacing is closer to a soulless suburban development than the bustling city life that most residents were used to in Yangon.

Many workers were unhappy when first forced to move. It's hot -- the temperature can top 100 degrees. Prices of everyday goods are high. Many spouses and children were left behind because of their jobs and schools.

Yangon's vibrant culture is a dim memory. To compensate, residents here get 10 television stations, six more than in Yangon, although most are government channels.

Rent is free for civil servants' quarters in both cities, but in Naypyitaw the apartments are bigger. Water and electricity are also free here and the city enjoys a 24-hour supply of electricity, a rarity outside of military bases.

''Living conditions here are better,'' said a senior clerk from the state mining corporation, who asked not to be quoted by name. ''I lived in a small wooden house (in Yangon), but here my apartment has three bedrooms, with electricity and water.''

Some new residents have taken to the city. Myint Khin, the 40-year-old wife of a Railways Department clerk, set up a table outside her apartment block to sell noodle salad.

''I want to supplement our income, and business is good since there are very few shops in Naypyitaw,'' she said.

Her husband, a senior clerk, earns nearly $32 a month, while their son, a junior clerk, earns about $22.

Than Than, married to a driver for the mining corporation, was also happy, even in an apartment where the family couch is an old bench seat from a van.

''They have provided us with everything we need,'' she said.

Given the widespread distrust of the military rulers, theories abound as to why the junta moved the capital. Some see the answer in the section of town reserved for the military itself, close to hills rumored to be honeycombed with bunkers.

''There was a real concern that they (the soldiers) were becoming contaminated by the masses in Yangon and being made soft by the increased standard of living in Yangon: the restaurants, the consumer goods,'' says Larry Jagan, a Thai-based expert who specializes in Myanmar. ''So this was a way, really, of isolating and insulating the military so they would remain loyal.''

Others see it as an attempt by junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe to leave his mark on history by creating a brand-new capital just like the Burmese kings of old.

Some believe the military moved much further inland to thwart any U.S. plan to invade by sea and topple the government. Washington is a fierce critic of the junta and maintains political and economic sanctions against it.

The military says Naypyitaw was chosen for its central -- abeit entirely remote -- location.

''The capital city, which is the administrative hub, is required to be placed with easy access to each and every part of the nation,'' explained Information Minister Brig. Gen. Kyaw Hsan.

October 4, 2007
State of the Art
Laptop With a Mission Faces Its Biggest Obstacle

By DAVID POGUE
In November, you’ll be able to buy a new laptop that’s spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

And this laptop will cost $188.

The computer, if you hadn’t already guessed, is the fabled “$100 laptop” that’s been igniting hype and controversy for three years. It’s an effort by One Laptop Per Child (laptop.org) to develop a very low-cost, high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion educationally underserved children in poor countries.

The concept: if a machine is designed smartly enough, without the bloat of standard laptops, and sold in large enough quantities, the price can be brought way, way down. Maybe not down to $100, as O.L.P.C. originally hoped, but low enough for developing countries to afford millions of them — one per child.

The laptop is now called the XO, because if you turn the logo 90 degrees, it looks like a child.

O.L.P.C. slightly turned its strategy when it decided to offer the machine for sale to the public in the industrialized world — for a period of two weeks, in November. The program is called “Get 1, Give 1,” and it works like this. You pay $400 (www.xogiving.org). One XO laptop (and a tax deduction) comes to you by Christmas, and a second is sent to a student in a poor country.

The group does worry that people might compare the XO with $1,000 Windows or Mac laptops. They might blog about their disappointment, thereby imperiling O.L.P.C.’s continuing talks with third world governments.

It’s easy to see how that might happen. There’s no CD/DVD drive at all, no hard drive and only a 7.5-inch screen. The Linux operating system doesn’t run Microsoft Office, Photoshop or any other standard Mac or Windows programs. The membrane-sealed, spillproof keyboard is too small for touch-typing by an adult.

And then there’s the look of this thing. It’s made of shiny green and white plastic, like a Fisher-Price toy, complete with a handle. With its two earlike antennas raised, it could be Shrek’s little robot friend.

And sure enough, the bloggers and the ignorant have already begun to spit on the XO laptop. “Dude, for $400, I can buy a real Windows laptop,” they say.

Clearly, the XO’s mission has sailed over these people’s heads like a 747.

The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough — some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.

In the places where the XO will be used, power is often scarce. So the laptop uses a new battery chemistry, called lithium ferro-phosphate. It runs at one-tenth the temperature of a standard laptop battery, costs $10 to replace, and is good for 2,000 charges — versus 500 on a regular laptop battery.

The laptop consumes an average of 2 watts, compared with 60 or more on a typical business laptop. That’s one reason it gets such great battery life. A small yo-yo-like pull-cord charger is available (one minute of pulling provides 10 minutes of power); so is a $12 solar panel that, although only one foot square, provides enough power to recharge or power the machine.

Speaking of bright sunshine: the XO’s color screen is bright and, at 200 dots an inch, razor sharp (1,200 by 900 pixels). But it has a secret identity: in bright sun, you can turn off the backlight altogether. The resulting display, black on light gray, is so clear and readable, it’s almost like paper. Then, of course, the battery lasts even longer.

The XO offers both regular wireless Internet connections and something called mesh networking, which means that all the laptops see each other, instantly, without any setup — even when there’s no Internet connection.

With one press of a button, you see a map. Individual XO logos — color-coded to differentiate them — represent other laptops in the area; you connect with one click. (You never double-click in the XO’s visual, super-simple operating system. You either point with the mouse or click once.)

This feature has some astonishing utility. If only one laptop has an Internet connection, for example, the others can get online, too, thanks to the mesh network. And when O.L.P.C. releases software upgrades, one laptop can broadcast them to other nearby laptops.

Power users will snort at the specs of this machine. It has only one gigabyte of storage — all flash memory — with 20 percent of that occupied by the XO’s system software. And the processor is feeble by conventional standards. Starting up takes two minutes, and switching between programs is poky.

Once in a program, though, the speed is fine; it turns out that a light processor is plenty if the software is written compactly and smartly. (O.L.P.C. points out that despite gigantic leaps in processing power, today’s business laptops don’t feel any faster than they did a few years ago. The operating systems and programs have added so much bloat that they absorb the speed gains.)

The built-in programs are equally clever. There’s a word processor, Web browser, calculator, PDF textbook reader, some games (clones of Tetris and Connect 4), three music programs, a painting application, a chat program and so on. The camera module permits teachers, for the first time, to send messages home to illiterate parents.

There are also three programming environments of different degrees of sophistication. Incredibly, one keystroke reveals the underlying code of almost any XO program or any Web page. Students can not only study how their favorite programs have been written, but even experiment by making changes. (If they make a mess of things, they can restore the original.)

There’s real brilliance in this emphasis on understanding the computer itself. Many nations in XO’s market have few natural resources, and the global need for information workers grows with every passing day.

Most of the XO’s programs are shareable on the mesh network, which is another ingenious twist. Any time you’re word processing, making music, taking pictures, playing games or reading an e-book, you can click a Share button. Your document shows up next to your icon on the mesh-network map, so that other people can see what you’re doing, or work with you. Teachers can supervise your writing, buddies can collaborate on a document, friends can play you in Connect 4, or someone across the room can add a melody to your drum beat in the music program. You’ve never seen anything like it.

The pair of laptops I reviewed had incomplete power-management software, beta-stage software and occasional cosmetic glitches. But O.L.P.C. and its worldwide army of open-source (volunteer) programmers expect to polish things by the time the assembly line starts to roll in November.

No, the biggest obstacle to the XO’s success is not technology — it’s already a wonder — but fear. Overseas ministers of education fear that changing the status quo might risk their jobs. Big-name computer makers fear that the XO will steal away an overlooked two-billion-person market. Critics fear that the poorest countries need food, malaria protection and clean water far more than computers.

(The founder, Nicholas Negroponte’s, response: “Nobody I know would say, ‘By the way, let’s hold off on education.’ Education happens to be a solution to all of those same problems.”)

But the XO deserves to overcome those fears. Despite all the obstacles and doubters, O.L.P.C. has come up with a laptop that’s tough and simple enough for hot, humid, dusty locales; cool enough to keep young minds engaged, both at school and at home; and open, flexible and collaborative enough to support a million different teaching and learning styles.

It’s a technological breakthrough, for sure. Now let’s just hope it breaks through the human barriers.

E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com

Preempt Terrorists, Or Not?

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
October 2, 2007
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4989

"Everything" did not change on 9/11, as some expected, but one thing certainly did: the U.S. government's willingness to preempt enemies before they act. This new policy has outraged so many, it may be discontinued.

In foreign affairs, preemption replaced the long-established policy of deterrence. A series of speeches established the new policy, culminating in George W. Bush's June 2002 declaration that "our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." Nine months later, preemption justified the invasion of Iraq before Iraqis had attacked the United States, to the fury of many.

In domestic U.S. affairs too, preemption has prompted great consternation. In keeping with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution ("The right of the people to be secure … against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause"), law enforcement historically has held off arresting thieves until they actually committed crimes. But the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), beefed up by the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, makes it easier to stop terrorists before they act. If there is probable cause that someone is acting as an agent of a foreign terrorist group, without there also being probable cause that he has planned or committed crimes, it allows surveillance – and the resulting evidence.



Brandon Mayfield, advised by his wife Mona, addresses the press after his release from prison in 2004.Last week, a U.S. district court judge in Oregon, Ann Aiken, used the case of one Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon attorney who was wrongly accused of terrorism, as her vehicle to declare unconstitutional this key provision of the USA PATRIOT Act. If upheld, her decision to reject prior precedent upholding the act has potentially far-reaching and harmful consequences for counterterrorism.

Mayfield's case, however, shows the weakness in Aiken's argument:

Following the March 11, 2004, bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured 2,000, the Federal Bureau of Investigation tested a set of fingerprints from the Spanish crime scene and generated twenty prints from its system that most closely matched. Mayfield alleges that FBI examiners ran background checks and learned of his conversion to Islam, and that this knowledge biased their examination of his fingerprints, leading to the search of his house, followed by his arrest. He spent two weeks in prison, until the Spanish authorities definitively attributed those fingerprints to someone else.

Mayfield argues that taking his religion into account was illegitimate and the court agreed with him. However, circumstantial evidence strongly suggested Mayfield's connection to the Madrid bombing, as I have shown in a prior column and weblog entry. That evidence included Mayfield having:

Prayed in the same mosque as did several individuals who pleaded guilty of conspiring to help the Taliban.
Helped organize a branch of the Muslim Student Association, a Wahhabi organization, at Washburn University.
Represented Jeffrey Leon Battle – who subsequently was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to levy war against America – pro bono in a custody dispute.
Advertised his law practice with Farid Adlouni, someone "directly linked in business dealings" with Wadih El Hage, Osama Bin Laden's former personal secretary later convicted of conspiring to murder American citizens.
Wrote a letter supporting the Taliban.

In addition, Mayfield's house contained virulently anti-Semitic articles, his landline telephone was used to contact Perouz Sedaghaty (a.k.a. Pete Seda), a suspected terrorism-funder, and someone used his home computer to research travel to Madrid, rental housing in Spain, and a website connected to the Spanish national passenger rail system, target of the Madrid bombings.

This evidence, the U.S. Attorney in Oregon, Karin Immergut, rightly concluded, "demonstrates that the government and its agents were acting in good faith" when they imprisoned Mayfield. Also, the Department of Justice inspector general found no indication "that the FBI Laboratory had knowledge of Mayfield's religion" while analyzing his fingerprints. But Judge Aiken, a Clinton appointee, exploited law enforcement's misstep to gut the USA PATRIOT Act.

That act provides some crucial updating; the Founding Fathers could not anticipate that U.S. citizens one day would support Al-Qaeda, while Congress wrote FISA to counter Soviet espionage, not Hezbollah cells. Should Aiken's view prevail (which it might well not), terrorism will more often have to occur before its perpetrators may be arrested.

Practically speaking, we will have returned to 9/10.