ANTI-TERROR PLAN BACKED.

Byline: David Hess Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Members of a bipartisan congressional task force on terrorism tentatively agreed Tuesday night to give federal authorities wider power to wiretap suspected saboteurs.

Task force members said they also expected to provide money for a study to determine whether to add chemical identification markers, called taggants, to black and smokeless gunpowder.

President Clinton had asked for both expanded wiretap authority and the taggant study in a list of requests to Congress to beef up the ability of the FBI and other investigative agencies to deter, detect and apprehend terrorists.

The decision to swiftly deliver some short-term help to investigators came at an evening meeting of the newly formed, 16-member task force composed of eight Republicans and eight Democrats, as well as representatives from the White House, Justice Department and federal law enforcement agencies.

Earlier Tuesday, congressional Republicans had insisted they would not be ``stampeded'' into hasty action on counterterrorism legislation, despite Clinton's urgent call for new powers.

Among the president's requests was legislation to expand the FBI's authority to use ``roving'' wiretaps to eavesdrop on fast-moving terrorists who avoid detection by using cellular phones and scramblers. He also called for taggants in black and smokeless gunpowder, which has been used in some homemade bombs.

Both of those items were stripped from an anti-terrorism bill that passed Congress earlier this year, after the National Rifle Association and civil liberties groups opposed them. But Clinton has resurrected the proposals in the wake of the weekend bombing at the Olympics and the July 17 crash of TWA Flight 800.

After a second task-force meeting Tuesday evening, several members emerged and told reporters that they hoped to clear a bill this week - before Congress recesses for a month - to provide more money and authority for federal agencies to combat terrorism.

Rep. C. Christopher Cox, R-Newport Beach, said the task force probably will recommend a ``short-term strategy'' that would broaden the government's power to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists' communications, while at the same time strengthening privacy laws to deter abuse of that power.

``As we expand wiretapping,'' he said, ``we'd also broaden protections under the Privacy Act to make it a felony for a law enforcement agent to willfully and knowingly intrude improperly on a person's private communications.'' Under existing law, such a violation - rarely if ever enforced - is a misdemeanor.