Just A Few Questions

The Attorney General wants 5,000 Arabs here to come in for a chat. Is this the way to fight terrorism?

John Ashcroft isn't the smoothest guy in Washington. A more Reaganesque man might have been able to expand the FBI's Rolodex in the Sept. 11 investigation with greater finesse and quiet. After all, a poll shows that 67% of Americans approve of his ongoing policy of interviewing about 5,000 people, ages 18 to 33, within the Arab-American and Islamic communities who have arrived here on visas since 2000. Unable to conduct all the interviews using the FBI, the Attorney General enlisted local law enforcement to request interviews. But by asking local officials to do some of the work for him, he...

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