- WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Formation
of a domestic intelligence-gathering agency similar to Britain's MI-5,
prompted by the need to prevent terrorist activity and attack, is not under
consideration by the Bush administration given provisions of the U.S. Constitution,
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Sunday.
-
- Reported surveillance of Iraqi nationals and people of
dual U.S.-Iraqi citizenship was also being conducted under constitutional
strictures, he said, as would domestic intelligence operations if the United
States was to go to war with Iraq.
-
- "We need to remind ourselves from time to time as
Americans, we do operate under a rule of law," Ridge said on CNN's
"Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." "We are guided by a Constitution,
and we're not going to -- as difficult as this war on terrorism would be,
as difficult as it would be for this country if we would engage
-
- Iraq militarily, those measures that we take internally
still have to be consistent with the Constitution of the United States.
-
- "We know that and we expect it as Americans.
-
- "There are lessons to be learned from how MI5 operates,
but I don't think you're going to see a similar organization be developed
in this country."
-
- Britain does not have a written constitution. It's MI-5,
the domestic equivalent of its foreign intelligence service MI-6, has been
over the years heavily involved in countering activities in Britain by
the Irish Republican Army and its sympathizers.
-
- Speculation over creation of a U.S. equivalent arose
earlier over Ridge's visit to Britain to meet with MI-5 officials and news
reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was having difficulty
transforming itself from a law enforcement entity to an also intelligence-gathering
one to fulfill its new mission in the war on terrorism.
-
- The FBI, with the Central Intelligence Agency, brief
President George W. Bush every morning on threats to the country.
-
- "We have made enormous progress in combining domestic
and foreign intelligence gathering capacity in this country," Ridge
said. "CIA and the FBI are working closer together than ever before."
-
- Ongoing consultations and discussions, however, were
necessary he said to continually attempt to improve counter-terrorism efforts.
-
- Ridge, repeated his remarks on several other interview
shows Sunday, fronting the administration's insistence of progress in the
war on terrorism, a stance under attack by Democratic Senate leader Tom
Daschle, D-S.D., and others.
-
- "If you're looking at a measure of success, take
a look at the success the military's enjoyed in Afghanistan: There are
no longer any training camps, we basically liberated a country," Ridge
said on the CNN program. "We're working with our allies, we've frozen
over $100 million worth of their assets. Working with our allies we now
have nearly 2,700 people under detention, we get more information about
their threats and operational capability."
-
- Other issues broached by Ridge:
-
- --The latest threat of a
"spectacular" attack on the United States: "I think the
document that the FBI put out a couple of days ago was basically summarizing
some of the threats we've heard during the past two months. And 'spectacular'
-- we know spectacular, we've got the sights and the sounds of Sept. 11,
2001, in our hearts and in our minds. But we also know that they have the
capacity, we've seen it around the rest of the world, to operate in isolated
events where you don't have mass casualties. But we need to be prepared,
as a country, to prevent the entire range of potential attacks. And from
time to time, we do get the threats of a potential spectacular attack.
But there has never been a time and a place and a means associated with
those general threats," he said on ABC television.
-
- --On a new tape from al Qaida,
with a voice believed to be that of Osama bin Laden, indicating the suspected
terrorist mastermind was alive despite U.S. efforts in Afghanistan: "We
believe it's likely (his voice) and we certainly are going to act as if
it is. But again, the fact that we either get taped messages, video messages,
or paper messages, we know we are at war. We know that this is a decentralized
organization that has cells around the country. We know they plan. We know
they from time to time go from the planning stage to the operational stage,
as we've seen over the past three or four weeks," Ridge told ABC's
George Stephanopoulos.
-
- "And we know that in spite of the fact that it is
a global organization and our allies and friends around the world are at
risk, the United States has been and will remain the number one target."
-
- Ridge also said he would be willing to serve as secretary
of the proposed Department of Homeland Security if the president asked
him. There had been speculation that Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania,
did not want the post in the new agency, which will combine some 22 government
agencies and departments and employ 170,000 people.
-
- Legislation creating the department has passed the House
and is expected to be approved shortly in the Senate, where an earlier
version stalled in a dispute over workers' union rights.
-
- Copyright © 2002 United Press International
|