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Insight
Terror Threats in the United States
Aired June 09, 2005 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST (voice-over): Small town arrest, big headlines in the U.S. war on terror. Are there really dangerous extremists hiding across the country?
GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. PRESIDENT: The terrorists are on the run. And we'll keep them on the run. Yet they're still active. They're still seeking to do us harm.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANN: Hello and welcome.
The people of the United States woke up Thursday once again to news about terrorism. Authorities announced the arrest of five men in a farming community in Central California. Two of them are charged with lying to investigators about training at a previously unknown al Qaeda camp said to be in Pakistan. Three others have been charged with immigration violations.
On our program today, the Lodi Five. Chris Lawrence has this look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Federal agents say some residents of this small town were making big plans to wage holy war in America.
KEITH SLOTTER, FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Although we believe these individuals are committed to acts of jihad against the United States, we do not possess information concerning exact plans, timing or specific targets of opportunity.
LAWRENCE: Two U.S. citizens are being held in the Sacramento County Jail. Umer Hayat and his son, Hamid, have been accused of lying to FBI investigators. Court documents show that both men denied that Hamid Hayat attended a terrorist training camp. But after hours of interrogation, the affidavit states Hamid admitted he attended the camp in Pakistan. Photos of President Bush were used as targets during weapons training. And he specifically asked to come back to the United States to carry out his mission.
MCGREGOR SCOTT, U.S. ATTNY.: He also confirmed that the camp was run by al Qaeda operatives and that they were being trained on how to kill Americans.
LAWRENCE: The accusations shocked this rural town south of Sacramento where Umer Hayat drove an ice-cream truck.
KARINA MURILLO, NEIGHBOR: He was very friendly with the kids.
LAWRENCE: Some neighbors tell us the Hayats have been in Lodi for years.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He never did anything to lead us to believe he would be planning something like this.
JOHNNY GRIFFIN, UMER HAYAT'S ATTNY.: It's important for everyone to push the pause button.
LAWRENCE: Attorney Johnny Griffin says Umer Hayat is being labeled a terrorist without actually being accused.
GRIFFIN: Is he charged with any of those crimes? The answer is no. He is only charged with making a false statement.
LAWRENCE: Two local Islamic leaders have also been detained, at least one for violating his visa.
But federal agents won't say how they may be connected to the Hayats. Their attorney tells CNN, quote, "They are victims of guilt by association" and, quote, "completely innocent."
Chris Lawrence, CNN, Lodi, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: The FBI says 22-year-old Hamid Hayat said he attended that al Qaeda training camp near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Terror experts find that puzzling. Rawalpindi is actually home to President Pervez Musharraf, the headquarters of the Pakistani army, and just 10 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel asked the Pakistan foreign minister about the arrests.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPT. CORRESPONDENT: You mentioned that Rawalpindi is where the military has bases, but also the ISI has bases there. Would it surprise you if any al Qaeda camps existed in the same area?
KHURSHID KASURI, PAKISTANI FOREIGN MIN.: What Rawalpindi? Where Rawalpindi? A village? A hamlet? City? Town? Where?
KOPPEL: Would it surprise you that al Qaeda camps existed on the outskirts, essentially, of your capital city?
KASURI: No, no. It wouldn't surprise me, but what I'm trying to say is that just because somebody says such and such a camp is an al Qaeda camp, I don't know. I don't know nothing. It won't surprise me and I don't wish to rush to judgment.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: The arrests came at a potentially helpful time for the U.S. administration. One of its chief weapons in the war against domestic terror is a controversial policing law known as the Patriot Act. U.S. President George Bush says the Patriot Act has worked to prevent attacks.
Thursday he urged Congress to renew portions of the law that are set to expire at the end of the year. U.S. lawmakers passed the Patriot Act shortly after the September 11 attacks. The law vastly expanded the surveillance powers of the FBI.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: Since September 11, federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects and more than half of those charged have been convicted. Federal, state and local law enforcement have used the Patriot Act to break up terrorist cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia and Florida. We prosecuted terrorist operative and supporters in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio.
These efforts have not always made the headlines, but they've made communities safer. The Patriot Act has accomplished exactly what it was designed to do. It has protected American liberty and saved American lives. The problem is, at the end of this year 16 critical provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to expire. Some people call these sunset provisions. That's a good name because letting those provisions expire would leave law enforcement in the dark.
All 16 provisions are practical, important and they're constitutional.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANN: Civil libertarians argue that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, violating Americans' legal protection from unreasonable search and seizure. As the U.S. war on al Qaeda continues, so does that debate.
We take a break now. When we come back, the legal angle. How successful has the United States been in prosecuting the people it suspects.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANN (voice-over): The first major U.S. terror trial after the 9/11 attacks centered on four men said to form a Detroit sleeper cell.
JOHN ASHCROFT, FMR. U.S. ATTORNEY: There are always going to be circumstances that will result in inquiry and discussion.
MANN: Last year, the Bush administration asked the judge to overturn the convictions and apologize because of misconduct by the prosecutors. Last month, the lead prosecutor resigned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Welcome back.
The Detroit Four, the Lodi Five. Some Yemeni Americans who were dubbed the Lackawanna Six. A Kuwait professor in Florida. A radical lawyer in New York. Most recently, a jazz musician. The Bush administration has been finding and prosecuting terror suspects across the country. Is the threat here that extensive?
Joining us now to talk about that is CNN legal analyst and former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Are there really people all around this country who are preparing to do terrible things? Or is the U.S. government overreaching?
KENDALL COFFEY, FMR. U.S. ATTNY.: Well, I think the answer and the truth is somewhere in between.
There are clearly throughout this country a number of people who have provable ties to al Qaeda. For example, we talked about the six individuals in Buffalo. They had gone to a training camp that was put on by al Qaeda. Other suspects have become defendants pleading guilty in a number of parts of the country, also confirming ties to al Qaeda.
The more difficult question is, were these serious threats, because in the cases we're talking about, there wasn't a demonstrable plan to go forward and perpetrate some act of sabotage or harm to the country. So it's very unclear whether these were sympathizers who were somehow, whether it was for bravado or otherwise, getting involved with a very evil system, or whether these were folks that were serious about inflicting damage and death and destruction on this country.
MANN: Does the government talk more about these cases at the outset than they end up doing at the conclusion? To take once again the Lackawanna Six, the men outside of Buffalo, they were arrested because they went to Afghanistan. They went to Afghanistan months before the September 11 attacks. Some people would suggest that they had no reason to believe that there would be any attacks of that kind. They were faced with very serious charges. They pleaded innocent, and then they plea bargained to lesser charges because they faced the prospect of going to Guantanamo Bay potentially for an undetermined amount of time.
That was trumpeted at the time that they were arrested as a success. And then the plea bargain was never really explained in public. We've hears about this in the grandest terms, and the public was really never told much about the fine print.
COFFEY: I don't think it's unusual in the sense that prosecutions at the first instance often get the most attention, and plea bargains are rarely as exciting.
But I think it is significant that in other parts of the country as well we have seen guilty pleas upon facts that confirm ties to al Qaeda. What is so difficult here is that nobody wants to wait until what may just be somebody who is got an interest in what's going on in Pakistan, somebody who's getting some kind of training. When do you intervene between the time that they, for example, go to the training camp and the time that maybe they try to blow up a shopping center, which is what was alleged in Ohio.
So hopefully we're getting arrests, prosecutions and even convictions at such an early stage that we may never know the true gravity of this threat, but from a standpoint of protecting the public safety, that's the best news possible.
MANN: Is there any way to judge simply by looking at the numbers how successful this has been, comparing the number of arrests to the actual number of convictions?
COFFEY: Well, you identified a very important point. We're getting a lot of plea bargains, and part of that can certainly be the enormity of the consequences for those who go to trial and risk getting convicted.
You mentioned the prospect of somebody going before a military tribunal in Guantanamo. There is every possibility that someone arrested in this country for conspiring with al Qaeda could be subject to a military tribunal within the ambit of our constitution and our U.S. Supreme Court decisions and, boy, when you're facing something as terrifying as that, you darn well might consider pleading guilty.
So there is going to be a lot more questions than answers with some of it, but since the focus now, not just of the prosecution philosophy but of the Patriot Act and other measures that we've taken, is not after the fact prosecution and punishment but before the tragedy prevention, I think we have to accept that we are not going to really have great barometers for measuring the effectiveness of prosecution in a traditional sense, and we have to accept that we may put in a huge investment of resources and never generate the kind of traditional statistics that you do in a war on drugs as we continue the war on terrorism, because the whole focus is to make sure that we do everything possible before atrocities happen again on American soil.
MANN: Well, fair enough. But you're an insider, so let me ask you then if all you can go by is your instinct, what is your instinct here? Is it that the United States government is locking up innocent people who are afraid to really fight in court to prove their innocence, or that the authorities are doing a reasonable job of a very difficult task of preventing terror?
COFFEY: Well, I'm going to give you both a yes and no. I think initially in the wake of 9/11, there was a very broad reach of locking up and interring and holding people without significant reasons to do so as a very quick, immediate, perhaps necessary but in some respects over reaction, that went too far, and there were successive waves of very aggressive actions, many of which were directed at young men of Middle Eastern ancestry, and I think that understandable was something that there was a lot of public concern about.
I think we're getting better at it now, and so at this point I think we're relatively well focused in what we're doing and while it may or may not be that there are serious threats that we can diagnose or can't diagnose, what is clear with all the cases we've seen is that criminal laws are being broken, and when people are being prosecuted, best as I can tell, they're being prosecuted not because of fanciful speculations but because they have done something within the meaning of the laws passed by the United States Congress that is a crime.
MANN: When they are immigration violations though, which is a phrase that keeps popping up, are they essentially being caught on technicalities? Are they being thrown out of the country because they've broken a law, and however serious that is, but a law that has nothing to do with terrorism?
COFFEY: No question about it. That happened to a vast extent after 9/11. It continues to happen. There are so many people that could be charged with some form of --
(INTERRUPTED FOR BREAKING NEWS)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANN (voice-over): Could extremists attack the U.S. milk supply?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Milk goes through many steps.
MANN: A CNN reporter looked into the possibility.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tank trucks take the milk to a processing plant where it's put in huge silos, mixing with milk from other farms. If one farm or one truck had been intentionally contaminated, it would spread right here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's obviously vulnerable. If somebody wants to do something, you know, they could probably get away with it, but I don't think anymore than a strawberry patch or a potato field.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANN: Welcome back.
An attack on the milk of U.S. children may sound like some kind of strange joke about our paranoia, but it started with a serious study about the threat of a biological terror attack, a study that the U.S. government has asked its authors to withhold from publication because it contains so much information that a terrorist could actually use.
In important ways, the United States is still traumatized by September 11, 2001. The government and many of its people believe the country is still very much at risk. Do the news media respond to those fears or feed them?
Joining us now to talk about that is Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Let me ask you your sense. How do you feel the terror threat is conveyed in the news media, in the popular culture?
MATTHEW FELLING, CTR. FOR MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS: You know what, Jonathan, I think that accidentally the American media is covering this story 100 percent well.
Because the media is so fixated on the things that are threatening us that day, Michael Jackson, some missing girl from Alabama who's been lost in Aruba, because it is so fixated on the here and now, the news media picks its spots to convey the threat, like we saw with the story with the terrorists in Lodi, California, where one member was reputedly trained in Pakistan.
That hasn't really been given a whole lot of play, and I don't think it's on purpose. I think it's just because the news media have other things, like the Michael Jackson story, to cover. So the stories that they are covering are actually reported in proportion and in context of the threat, as your former guest was talking about. It lies somewhere in between.
Is the threat out there as really big as we might be led to believe or is it gone? The threat is there, and I think that the media are not even reeling themselves in with regards to the threat. I think that there is a lot of investigative work being done behind the scenes, and the most important facet of this story is more of a Sherlock Holmes "Hounds of the Baskervilles" sort of aspect.
You noted, we have not seen a terrorist attack. Why haven't we seen - - the absence of the attack is the story. But to divulge that information at the same time reveals sources and reveals classified information that the media just can't give out.
MANN: Do the media just end up reinforcing, though, cumulatively reinforcing even after Michael Jackson's trial is over and that young teenagers fate is understood, terror will not go away as a story. Are the media reinforcing this fear rather than questioning it or reporting on it more broadmindedly?
FELLING: I do think that the reporters mindset of questioning every authority figure possible is a valuable asset in terms of covering the terrorist threat, because left unchecked a lot of government authorities might push too far in terms of restricting access to milk or maybe trying to go too far with restrictive policies. So that quality of the journalists will be very, very valuable in the future.
But I guess I just have to say, again, that what we are seeing today in terms of the reporting of the terrorist threat and where we are most vulnerable is being done fairly responsibly. We saw a story a couple of weeks ago about the very dangerous ports in New York City and North New Jersey, and that story was reported and then it went away.
I'm sorry, maybe I'm just too jaded, but I think that there are so many ways that the media could be over-hyping this even further, as in "That milk on your table could kill you." Maybe I'm just used to that "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality bleeding into everything so that when I don't see it, I think that it actually smells responsible.
MANN: The short attention span actually being helpful.
Let me ask you about something else, though, and that's not so much the substance of what the media are reporting when they turn to terror but the style in which they do it. Now, you suggest they're not really using fear, but they're using a lot of imagery. CNN, for example, billboards its coverage of terrorism related matters as a security watch, and news organizations, especially broadcast news organizations, use the imagery of American flags and strangers with guns. Does the content really fall secondarily when you look at the context that so much of American television news now looks like it's being prepared in war time?
FELLING: Yes, you're actually dead on with regard to that story.
When the news media is covering terrorism and when the news media is covering the threat, the vernacular and the verbiage is always very imminent. "Be careful," "Security watch," because that is what is most seductive to viewers.
At the same time, when we are covering a story about nothing happening yet or about a potential threat, of course we are going to try to draw in the viewers with the most compelling video of men in training camps with guns shooting at mannequins, because that is the video we have on file and it's also the video that will draw in the viewers at the same time.
So that is one instance in which we might be overstating it, but at the same time, if you're just going to have a correspondent's face on camera, that is not really compelling television as we see here in America, so often times they will go for the more pressing and imminent footage rather than giving you the actual content that you need.
MANN: Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, thank you so much for this.
That's INSIGHT for today. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.
END
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Aired June 9, 2005 - 23:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST (voice-over): Small town arrest, big headlines in the U.S. war on terror. Are there really dangerous extremists hiding across the country?
GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. PRESIDENT: The terrorists are on the run. And we'll keep them on the run. Yet they're still active. They're still seeking to do us harm.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANN: Hello and welcome.
The people of the United States woke up Thursday once again to news about terrorism. Authorities announced the arrest of five men in a farming community in Central California. Two of them are charged with lying to investigators about training at a previously unknown al Qaeda camp said to be in Pakistan. Three others have been charged with immigration violations.
On our program today, the Lodi Five. Chris Lawrence has this look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Federal agents say some residents of this small town were making big plans to wage holy war in America.
KEITH SLOTTER, FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Although we believe these individuals are committed to acts of jihad against the United States, we do not possess information concerning exact plans, timing or specific targets of opportunity.
LAWRENCE: Two U.S. citizens are being held in the Sacramento County Jail. Umer Hayat and his son, Hamid, have been accused of lying to FBI investigators. Court documents show that both men denied that Hamid Hayat attended a terrorist training camp. But after hours of interrogation, the affidavit states Hamid admitted he attended the camp in Pakistan. Photos of President Bush were used as targets during weapons training. And he specifically asked to come back to the United States to carry out his mission.
MCGREGOR SCOTT, U.S. ATTNY.: He also confirmed that the camp was run by al Qaeda operatives and that they were being trained on how to kill Americans.
LAWRENCE: The accusations shocked this rural town south of Sacramento where Umer Hayat drove an ice-cream truck.
KARINA MURILLO, NEIGHBOR: He was very friendly with the kids.
LAWRENCE: Some neighbors tell us the Hayats have been in Lodi for years.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He never did anything to lead us to believe he would be planning something like this.
JOHNNY GRIFFIN, UMER HAYAT'S ATTNY.: It's important for everyone to push the pause button.
LAWRENCE: Attorney Johnny Griffin says Umer Hayat is being labeled a terrorist without actually being accused.
GRIFFIN: Is he charged with any of those crimes? The answer is no. He is only charged with making a false statement.
LAWRENCE: Two local Islamic leaders have also been detained, at least one for violating his visa.
But federal agents won't say how they may be connected to the Hayats. Their attorney tells CNN, quote, "They are victims of guilt by association" and, quote, "completely innocent."
Chris Lawrence, CNN, Lodi, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: The FBI says 22-year-old Hamid Hayat said he attended that al Qaeda training camp near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Terror experts find that puzzling. Rawalpindi is actually home to President Pervez Musharraf, the headquarters of the Pakistani army, and just 10 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel asked the Pakistan foreign minister about the arrests.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPT. CORRESPONDENT: You mentioned that Rawalpindi is where the military has bases, but also the ISI has bases there. Would it surprise you if any al Qaeda camps existed in the same area?
KHURSHID KASURI, PAKISTANI FOREIGN MIN.: What Rawalpindi? Where Rawalpindi? A village? A hamlet? City? Town? Where?
KOPPEL: Would it surprise you that al Qaeda camps existed on the outskirts, essentially, of your capital city?
KASURI: No, no. It wouldn't surprise me, but what I'm trying to say is that just because somebody says such and such a camp is an al Qaeda camp, I don't know. I don't know nothing. It won't surprise me and I don't wish to rush to judgment.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: The arrests came at a potentially helpful time for the U.S. administration. One of its chief weapons in the war against domestic terror is a controversial policing law known as the Patriot Act. U.S. President George Bush says the Patriot Act has worked to prevent attacks.
Thursday he urged Congress to renew portions of the law that are set to expire at the end of the year. U.S. lawmakers passed the Patriot Act shortly after the September 11 attacks. The law vastly expanded the surveillance powers of the FBI.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: Since September 11, federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects and more than half of those charged have been convicted. Federal, state and local law enforcement have used the Patriot Act to break up terrorist cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia and Florida. We prosecuted terrorist operative and supporters in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio.
These efforts have not always made the headlines, but they've made communities safer. The Patriot Act has accomplished exactly what it was designed to do. It has protected American liberty and saved American lives. The problem is, at the end of this year 16 critical provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to expire. Some people call these sunset provisions. That's a good name because letting those provisions expire would leave law enforcement in the dark.
All 16 provisions are practical, important and they're constitutional.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANN: Civil libertarians argue that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, violating Americans' legal protection from unreasonable search and seizure. As the U.S. war on al Qaeda continues, so does that debate.
We take a break now. When we come back, the legal angle. How successful has the United States been in prosecuting the people it suspects.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANN (voice-over): The first major U.S. terror trial after the 9/11 attacks centered on four men said to form a Detroit sleeper cell.
JOHN ASHCROFT, FMR. U.S. ATTORNEY: There are always going to be circumstances that will result in inquiry and discussion.
MANN: Last year, the Bush administration asked the judge to overturn the convictions and apologize because of misconduct by the prosecutors. Last month, the lead prosecutor resigned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Welcome back.
The Detroit Four, the Lodi Five. Some Yemeni Americans who were dubbed the Lackawanna Six. A Kuwait professor in Florida. A radical lawyer in New York. Most recently, a jazz musician. The Bush administration has been finding and prosecuting terror suspects across the country. Is the threat here that extensive?
Joining us now to talk about that is CNN legal analyst and former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Are there really people all around this country who are preparing to do terrible things? Or is the U.S. government overreaching?
KENDALL COFFEY, FMR. U.S. ATTNY.: Well, I think the answer and the truth is somewhere in between.
There are clearly throughout this country a number of people who have provable ties to al Qaeda. For example, we talked about the six individuals in Buffalo. They had gone to a training camp that was put on by al Qaeda. Other suspects have become defendants pleading guilty in a number of parts of the country, also confirming ties to al Qaeda.
The more difficult question is, were these serious threats, because in the cases we're talking about, there wasn't a demonstrable plan to go forward and perpetrate some act of sabotage or harm to the country. So it's very unclear whether these were sympathizers who were somehow, whether it was for bravado or otherwise, getting involved with a very evil system, or whether these were folks that were serious about inflicting damage and death and destruction on this country.
MANN: Does the government talk more about these cases at the outset than they end up doing at the conclusion? To take once again the Lackawanna Six, the men outside of Buffalo, they were arrested because they went to Afghanistan. They went to Afghanistan months before the September 11 attacks. Some people would suggest that they had no reason to believe that there would be any attacks of that kind. They were faced with very serious charges. They pleaded innocent, and then they plea bargained to lesser charges because they faced the prospect of going to Guantanamo Bay potentially for an undetermined amount of time.
That was trumpeted at the time that they were arrested as a success. And then the plea bargain was never really explained in public. We've hears about this in the grandest terms, and the public was really never told much about the fine print.
COFFEY: I don't think it's unusual in the sense that prosecutions at the first instance often get the most attention, and plea bargains are rarely as exciting.
But I think it is significant that in other parts of the country as well we have seen guilty pleas upon facts that confirm ties to al Qaeda. What is so difficult here is that nobody wants to wait until what may just be somebody who is got an interest in what's going on in Pakistan, somebody who's getting some kind of training. When do you intervene between the time that they, for example, go to the training camp and the time that maybe they try to blow up a shopping center, which is what was alleged in Ohio.
So hopefully we're getting arrests, prosecutions and even convictions at such an early stage that we may never know the true gravity of this threat, but from a standpoint of protecting the public safety, that's the best news possible.
MANN: Is there any way to judge simply by looking at the numbers how successful this has been, comparing the number of arrests to the actual number of convictions?
COFFEY: Well, you identified a very important point. We're getting a lot of plea bargains, and part of that can certainly be the enormity of the consequences for those who go to trial and risk getting convicted.
You mentioned the prospect of somebody going before a military tribunal in Guantanamo. There is every possibility that someone arrested in this country for conspiring with al Qaeda could be subject to a military tribunal within the ambit of our constitution and our U.S. Supreme Court decisions and, boy, when you're facing something as terrifying as that, you darn well might consider pleading guilty.
So there is going to be a lot more questions than answers with some of it, but since the focus now, not just of the prosecution philosophy but of the Patriot Act and other measures that we've taken, is not after the fact prosecution and punishment but before the tragedy prevention, I think we have to accept that we are not going to really have great barometers for measuring the effectiveness of prosecution in a traditional sense, and we have to accept that we may put in a huge investment of resources and never generate the kind of traditional statistics that you do in a war on drugs as we continue the war on terrorism, because the whole focus is to make sure that we do everything possible before atrocities happen again on American soil.
MANN: Well, fair enough. But you're an insider, so let me ask you then if all you can go by is your instinct, what is your instinct here? Is it that the United States government is locking up innocent people who are afraid to really fight in court to prove their innocence, or that the authorities are doing a reasonable job of a very difficult task of preventing terror?
COFFEY: Well, I'm going to give you both a yes and no. I think initially in the wake of 9/11, there was a very broad reach of locking up and interring and holding people without significant reasons to do so as a very quick, immediate, perhaps necessary but in some respects over reaction, that went too far, and there were successive waves of very aggressive actions, many of which were directed at young men of Middle Eastern ancestry, and I think that understandable was something that there was a lot of public concern about.
I think we're getting better at it now, and so at this point I think we're relatively well focused in what we're doing and while it may or may not be that there are serious threats that we can diagnose or can't diagnose, what is clear with all the cases we've seen is that criminal laws are being broken, and when people are being prosecuted, best as I can tell, they're being prosecuted not because of fanciful speculations but because they have done something within the meaning of the laws passed by the United States Congress that is a crime.
MANN: When they are immigration violations though, which is a phrase that keeps popping up, are they essentially being caught on technicalities? Are they being thrown out of the country because they've broken a law, and however serious that is, but a law that has nothing to do with terrorism?
COFFEY: No question about it. That happened to a vast extent after 9/11. It continues to happen. There are so many people that could be charged with some form of --
(INTERRUPTED FOR BREAKING NEWS)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANN (voice-over): Could extremists attack the U.S. milk supply?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Milk goes through many steps.
MANN: A CNN reporter looked into the possibility.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tank trucks take the milk to a processing plant where it's put in huge silos, mixing with milk from other farms. If one farm or one truck had been intentionally contaminated, it would spread right here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's obviously vulnerable. If somebody wants to do something, you know, they could probably get away with it, but I don't think anymore than a strawberry patch or a potato field.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANN: Welcome back.
An attack on the milk of U.S. children may sound like some kind of strange joke about our paranoia, but it started with a serious study about the threat of a biological terror attack, a study that the U.S. government has asked its authors to withhold from publication because it contains so much information that a terrorist could actually use.
In important ways, the United States is still traumatized by September 11, 2001. The government and many of its people believe the country is still very much at risk. Do the news media respond to those fears or feed them?
Joining us now to talk about that is Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Let me ask you your sense. How do you feel the terror threat is conveyed in the news media, in the popular culture?
MATTHEW FELLING, CTR. FOR MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS: You know what, Jonathan, I think that accidentally the American media is covering this story 100 percent well.
Because the media is so fixated on the things that are threatening us that day, Michael Jackson, some missing girl from Alabama who's been lost in Aruba, because it is so fixated on the here and now, the news media picks its spots to convey the threat, like we saw with the story with the terrorists in Lodi, California, where one member was reputedly trained in Pakistan.
That hasn't really been given a whole lot of play, and I don't think it's on purpose. I think it's just because the news media have other things, like the Michael Jackson story, to cover. So the stories that they are covering are actually reported in proportion and in context of the threat, as your former guest was talking about. It lies somewhere in between.
Is the threat out there as really big as we might be led to believe or is it gone? The threat is there, and I think that the media are not even reeling themselves in with regards to the threat. I think that there is a lot of investigative work being done behind the scenes, and the most important facet of this story is more of a Sherlock Holmes "Hounds of the Baskervilles" sort of aspect.
You noted, we have not seen a terrorist attack. Why haven't we seen - - the absence of the attack is the story. But to divulge that information at the same time reveals sources and reveals classified information that the media just can't give out.
MANN: Do the media just end up reinforcing, though, cumulatively reinforcing even after Michael Jackson's trial is over and that young teenagers fate is understood, terror will not go away as a story. Are the media reinforcing this fear rather than questioning it or reporting on it more broadmindedly?
FELLING: I do think that the reporters mindset of questioning every authority figure possible is a valuable asset in terms of covering the terrorist threat, because left unchecked a lot of government authorities might push too far in terms of restricting access to milk or maybe trying to go too far with restrictive policies. So that quality of the journalists will be very, very valuable in the future.
But I guess I just have to say, again, that what we are seeing today in terms of the reporting of the terrorist threat and where we are most vulnerable is being done fairly responsibly. We saw a story a couple of weeks ago about the very dangerous ports in New York City and North New Jersey, and that story was reported and then it went away.
I'm sorry, maybe I'm just too jaded, but I think that there are so many ways that the media could be over-hyping this even further, as in "That milk on your table could kill you." Maybe I'm just used to that "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality bleeding into everything so that when I don't see it, I think that it actually smells responsible.
MANN: The short attention span actually being helpful.
Let me ask you about something else, though, and that's not so much the substance of what the media are reporting when they turn to terror but the style in which they do it. Now, you suggest they're not really using fear, but they're using a lot of imagery. CNN, for example, billboards its coverage of terrorism related matters as a security watch, and news organizations, especially broadcast news organizations, use the imagery of American flags and strangers with guns. Does the content really fall secondarily when you look at the context that so much of American television news now looks like it's being prepared in war time?
FELLING: Yes, you're actually dead on with regard to that story.
When the news media is covering terrorism and when the news media is covering the threat, the vernacular and the verbiage is always very imminent. "Be careful," "Security watch," because that is what is most seductive to viewers.
At the same time, when we are covering a story about nothing happening yet or about a potential threat, of course we are going to try to draw in the viewers with the most compelling video of men in training camps with guns shooting at mannequins, because that is the video we have on file and it's also the video that will draw in the viewers at the same time.
So that is one instance in which we might be overstating it, but at the same time, if you're just going to have a correspondent's face on camera, that is not really compelling television as we see here in America, so often times they will go for the more pressing and imminent footage rather than giving you the actual content that you need.
MANN: Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, thank you so much for this.
That's INSIGHT for today. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.
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