Terrorism

"To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft - working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director 'J. Edgar' Mueller III - has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government," writes conservative pundit William Safire.

"In the eight months since the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, the Bush administration has moved more quickly than any administration since World War II to make government activities, documents and other information secret," reports USA Today. "Hundreds of thousands of public documents have been removed from government Web sites. Other public information has been edited, and access to some materials has been made more difficult.

Johnnie Thomas, a seventy-year-old African-American woman, can't board an airplane these days without a lengthy hassle. Her name appears on a "master terrorist list" because it happens to resemble one of the aliases used by a blond, blue-eyed man accused of murdering his wife who has already been captured and is sitting in jail. She has spoken with the FBI, FAA and other government acronyms, and no one knows how to take her name off the terrorist list.

U.S. Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs chief Charlotte Beers told a House subcommittee she needs $595 million to "improve and magnify the ways in which we are addressing people of the world--not necessarily other world governments--but people," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. Her request represents a five percent increase for the public diplomacy budget. "That outreach is especially targeted at 'disaffected populations' in the Middle East and South Asia, where a poor perception of the U.S.