PHILADELPHIA — Racial profiling could help the U.S. prevent terrorism and not using it is irresponsible, Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating told an American Bar Association audience on Saturday.
"I think it is negligent not to look at everything, including racial factors," when assessing potential terrorists, Keating said.
Keating spoke as part of a panel on domestic security and civil liberties that included Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, who had just finished telling the audience that the U.S. has not engaged in racial or ethnic profiling before Keating spoke.
Chertoff said the U.S. has taken a one-step-at-a-time approach to homeland security that has protected civil liberties. He noted, however, that police and immigration officials could consider whether a suspect shares "common characteristics" with known individual terrorists.
Keating criticized the Transportation Department for telling airport screeners not to consider certain racial and ethnic characteristics when screening passengers.
The department has directed that "if someone is speaking Arabic or reading the Koran or praying, that is not to be a factor at all," Keating said. "Well, that's reckless in my view."
Chertoff took a different tone, saying that the U.S. needs to better understand "who poses a threat to American security." He also said that terrorists overseas should be killed by the military, while domestically, traditional investigative tools should be used to track them.
"I don't think that means we have to seriously erode core civil liberties, but I do think it requires us to separate what is a real civil liberty and what is a habit of thinking that ... may not necessarily touch on what our core constitutional rights are," Chertoff said.
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing should have given America warning to identify and deport "people ... who mean us harm," Keating said
"Here we have this crush of people coming into our country, many of whom have hostility and mischief on their minds, and we've made no effort to background them," Keating said. "Once they're here, we have absolutely no system to track them."
Keating, a Republican, had been in office for less than a year when Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. McVeigh was a U.S. citizen and army veteran.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! http://auctions.yahoo.com