One year later.
Are Americans any safer?

April 19, 1996
Web posted at: 11:20 a.m. EDT

From Senior Washington Correspondent Charles Bierbauer

WASHINGTON (CNN)--It's taken Congress exactly a year to respond to the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City with anti-terrorist legislation.

Are Americans any safer now?

The law got lucky after Oklahoma City. Two suspects were quickly jailed. One--Timothy McVeigh--was in custody before his arresting officer knew there had been a bombing.

But it took 17 years to track down a man who might be the Unabomber.

One struck again and again with deadly accuracy. The other just once, devastatingly and indiscriminately.

A year later, are Americans safer from terrorism -- broad or narrow, domestic or imported?

"There is nothing that can stop people who are crazy or fanatical from doing some of these terrorist acts," says Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee shepherded anti-terrorism legislation to passage this week just in time for the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City attack.

It's a billion-dollar bill to crack down on terrorism in and against the United States, or at least try.

The bill appears strongest in provisions designed to head off international terrorism.

• It gives the government authority to designate terrorist organizations.
• It prohibits fund-raising for such organizations.
• It denies visas to members of terrorist organizations seeking U.S. entry.
• It expedites deportation of terrorists already in the U.S.

But carrying out those measures is no easy task.

"There are at least 1,500 terrorists and terrorist organizations known in this country. There are others that are unknown," Senator Hatch says, citing Hamas, Abu Nidal and Hezbollah. While most terrorism historically has come from what would be considered the radical left, Hatch also notes the growing problem of terrorism from the politically far-right.

The Oklahoma City bombing jolted Americans out of the notion that terrorism was an import. After the knee-jerk assertions that it must have been Arab extremists or Muslim fundamentalists, reality set in. Terrorism can be home grown.

Domestic terrorism has nothing to do with the Middle East, Bosnia or Latin America. It requires no visas, nor seeks funds for overseas sources. It just erupts where least expected.

The FBI is already developing a domestic terrorism center to coordinate information sharing among federal, state and local authorities.

The government is spending $100 million to enhance security at federal buildings to prevent a recurrence of what happened when a bomber was able to park an explosive-loaded truck in front of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

And Congress passed its bill. Does it make us safer?

It takes some steps:

• Plastic explosives will be "marked"--scent added--to make them detectable.
• Other explosives could be "tagged" with minute tracers that leave fingerprint-like clues to their origin. The taggants would survive a blast, but that's after the fact.
• Death row appeals--writs of "habeas corpus"--would be curtailed in number and duration.

Republicans in Congress say "habeas corpus" is the centerpiece of the legislation. That is a flash of candor on Capitol Hill. Republicans have long wanted to shorten and tighten the appeal process. And the Oklahoma City bombing has given them the impetus they needed.

At the start of the week in which Congress would debate the bill--not that its passage was in doubt--Republicans brought a score of Oklahoma City survivors and family members of those who did not survive to an emotional Capitol Hill news conference.

"Our compassion must be for the victims," a tearful Diane Leonard, widow of secret service agent Don Leonard, pleaded. "Once his constitutional rights have been exhausted, a convicted murderer's rights end, and so should his life."

Her appeal, echoed by others who lost family in the blast, took a death sentence as a given for the accused in the Oklahoma City case now coming to trial in Denver. It was a call for vengeance, understandable in their loss, but untenable, perhaps, as a matter of justice.

And if "habeas corpus" reform--applicable not only to terrorist acts-- is the centerpiece of the legislation, has it taken precedence over the measures to effectively curtail terrorism.

Critics say it has.

The vote in both houses of Congress was overwhelmingly for this bill. But the concerns raised were over what is not in it. Most debate centered on expanded wiretap authority for law enforcement. Democrats wanted "roving" wiretaps that would allow officials to "tap the person, not the number." Criminals reportedly switch throwaway cell phones regularly to evade detection.

Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) fancied one situation:

"You're the Unabomber and you are sitting there in your old cabin, and you got yourself a portable TV, battery driven, and you see the Senate goes out and says: 'Don't worry, we ain't gonna wire tap.' First of all, you say, I don't have a phone so it doesn't matter. But when I go use the pay phone, they can't get me now.'"

Democrats want further legislation to include wiretaps, which they charge Republicans dropped under lobbying pressure from such groups as the National Rifle Association. Senator Hatch says he was not lobbied by the NRA.

President Clinton wanted the enhanced wiretaps and greater ability to obtain documentation--travel, hotel, phone records. But the President nevertheless will sign this bill. It may be more demonstrative than decisive, but White House officials indicate that none of the objections to it are "poisoned pills."

Legislation, of course, will not solve the terrorism problem.

"We have learned to address terrorism more realistically as an enduring task rather than a problem that can be solved," says terrorism expert Brian Jenkins.

The unending deadly struggle between Israel and the seething factions that live in and around it underscores the difficulty and, when things go awry, the devastating toll that both terrorism and counterterrorism can take.

Jenkins sees the most dramatic development in recent years to be the "increasing incidents of large scale indiscriminate violence."

Car bombs, truck bombs, bombs on airplanes, bombs in subways, bombs in department stores. Bombs in the U.S., Israel, Japan, England.

Since terrorism springs from ideology or anger, experts say neither legislation nor law enforcement is likely to end it.

One year after the Oklahoma City bombing, specific security measures may make many Americans safer. Increased vigilance may make the public and law officials more alert. Nothing will make them immune.

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