Posted on: Monday, September 24, 2001

Editorial
Take care with new anti-terror measures

The Justice Department's anti-terrorism legislation, which once seemed likely to sail through Congress on the storm of anger rising from the terrorist attacks, has been slowed as legislators and public interest groups begin to read the fine print.

That's as it should be in a democracy jealously protecting its hard-won freedoms.

So, too, must Americans look closely at President Bush's creation of a Cabinet-level office to coordinate a national civil defense strategy.

To be sure, there is much that is commendable in these measures. The Office of Homeland Security appears to be an idea that is badly overdue. Without a national strategy, and an office in the White House to coordinate it, the 45 federal agencies that hold pieces of counterterrorism responsibility are not fully integrated and cannot sufficiently interact with state and local entities in a national security emergency, a recent congressional commission found.

But the point of this new agency and these new laws must be to protect and preserve "the land of the free" as it is. Fear is no excuse to allow any vestiges of a police state to take root.