[NY Times - 3/20/02] WASHINGTON - The Justice Department announced today that it was expanding its program to interview young, mostly Muslim foreign men visiting the United States for possible information about terrorism and that it would try to track down and interview an additional 3,000 of the foreigners.
The announcement came as the department disclosed that it had been unable to locate almost half of the nearly 5,000 young men it had wanted to speak with in the first round of interviews, which began last November.
In announcing the expansion of the program, Attorney General John Ashcroft acknowledged that the government's inability to track down so many of the men demonstrated "serious flaws" in the government's ability to keep track of visitors to the United States.
The original pool of 5,000 men was drawn up from lists of visitors to the United States who - the Sept. 11 hijackers - were 18 to 33 years old, had entered the United States after January 2000 on non-immigrant visas and who held passports from countries in which the Al Qaeda terrorism network has a presence.
Mr. Ashcroft praised the interview program, however, for having generated "a significant number of leads for investigators looking into the Sept. 11 attacks and other potential terrorist activities." Department officials refused to discuss the leads in detail, saying it would compromise their investigations, although they acknowledged that the interviews had not resulted in any new terrorism arrests.
The interview program has been harshly criticized by some civil liberties and Arab-American groups as tantamount to racial profiling since it focuses exclusively on young Arab and Muslim men, and the groups stepped up their criticism with the announcement today of additional interviews.
"While they are more than willing to contribute to the war and terrorism, the national leadership of Arab and Muslim organizations have expressed to me their outrage over this illegal form of racial profiling," said Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
The Justice Department said the second round of interviews would focus on 3,000 young foreign men who had entered the United States more recently than the 5,000 men on the original list.
"As in the first round of interviews, these visitors to our country have been selected for interviews because they fit the criteria of persons who might have knowledge of foreign-based terrorists," Mr. Ashcroft said in an address to the United States Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Va., outside Washington. "The individuals to be interviewed are not suspected of any criminal activity. We are merely seeking to solicit their assistance to obtain information they may have regarding possible terrorists."
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[posted 3/21/02]
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