Minority Report: close to reality? (Insider Report).

Reviewing Attorney General John Ashcroft's guidelines for terrorism investigations, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff warns that they "could be part of the new Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, which envisions the nabbing of 'pre-criminals."' In Minority Report, an elite FBI "pre-crime". team, acting on prophecies uttered by a team of psychics called "Pre-Cogs," arrests and summarily punishes people who may someday commit violent crime. President Bush has already announced a policy of "pre-emptive" military strikes against foreign regimes, and the Ashcroft "Guidelines" would allow similar "pre-emptive" actions against Americans who have neither committed nor planned criminal offenses.

Writing in the September 2002 issue of The Progressive, Hentoff observes: "On page three of 'The Attorney General's Guidelines on General Crimes, Racketeering Enterprise and Terrorism Enterprise Investigations,' we are told: 'A terrorism enterprise investigation may be initiated when facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the purpose of ... furthering political or social goals wholly or in part through activities that involve force or violence and a federal crime....'"

The tricky parts of this statement, Hentoff notes, are the elastic qualifiers "reasonably" and "wholly or in part." "These insidiously malleable guidelines for terrorism investigations could apply to political action (and the reaction) during demonstrations by environmentalists, anti-globalizationists, animal rights pickets, or union members on strike, as well as pro-lifers trying to talk, and only to talk, to women entering abortion clinics ('obstruction' at clinics can be a federal crime)."

Rather than citing the constitutional requirement of "probable cause" to justify a "terrorism enterprise investigation," the guidelines introduce the "reasonable indication" standard, which -- as the document itself admits -- is "substantially lower than probable cause." What constitutes a "reasonable indication"? The apparent answer, as page four of the guidelines indicates, is just about any excuse that a federal investigator can devise: "The nature of the conduct engaged in by an enterprise will justify an inference that the standard [for beginning an investigation] is satisfied, even if there are no known statements by participants that advocate or indicate planning for violence or other prohibited acts."

Furthermore, the guidelines allow investigations of groups and individuals based on "potential federal law violations suggested by its (or their] statements or ... activities." And individuals who belong to suspect groups may find themselves under suspicion for what others in that group say or write: "A group's activities and the statements of its members may properly be considered in conjunction with each other. A combination of statements and activities may justify ... a terrorism investigation ... even if the statements alone or the activities alone would not warrant such a determination."

Under the Ashcroft Guidelines, nearly any American of any political persuasion could come to be considered a potential terrorist and enemy of the state.