Information in the
9-11 Aftermath

By Steve Sexton
1:00 PM, 2/25/2003

UC Berkeley professors are whining about new policies some research journals are taking to avoid publishing information that could be useful to our enemies. Many journals have adopted policies for vetting information to ensure it can’t be used by terrorists to develop weapons. It seems like a sensible move-the right move-in this post 9-11 world. What’s more, it is consistent with long-existing policies among all media outlets not to publish information that could jeopardize national security.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies approves of the new policies as “imperative to prevent the misapplication of research gains toward weapons use.” But that isn’t good enough for many here in Berkeley who are complaining about how such policies will inhibit their work.

UC Berkeley Professor Lee Riley: “Many researchers might be prevented from publishing good, high-quality work if journals start censoring. It could affect researchers on many levels. It's unfortunate that this sort of concern entered major scientific journals. The important issue is one of censorship. This is very similar, almost, to McCarthyism. Are we going to have scientific McCarthyism here?”

Riley, and others like him who balk at this modest step to prevent terrorists from using our open society and free press against us, have forgotten we live in a new world, awakened to a new kind of danger from a new enemy who lives among us. For him and his ilk, here is a reminder of what we must prevent.

On September 11, 220 stories of office space crumbled into a hulking pile of debris weighing 1.8 million tons. More than three thousand souls were lost, the exact number is still unknown. What is known is that 19,858 human body parts have been recovered from the rubble. Some people died jumping from the smoking top floors of the World Trade Center. Some 350 New York firefighters and police officers died rushing into the building. Twenty-six hundred people were in the immediate area of the Pentagon where one of the hijacked planes crashed. One hundred and twenty-five died there. It took a year to remove all the devastation at Ground Zero.

It was the largest attack on Americans in history. The World Trade Center crushed under its own weight, sending a thick dark smoke into the air. An ominous cloud hovered over the city for more than a week.

That is what we have to stop from happening again. If it means keeping sensitive material out of the press, then so be it. That is a practice that has been in effect for a long time. Newspapers routinely refrain from reporting leaked material that could endanger U.S. troops or national security.

Students and professors on the Berkeley campus have also been balking at steps taken by the federal government to better monitor those who enter this country. The pages of the daily campus paper have been filled with stories of professors and scientists unable to enter the country because they didn’t have the appropriate forms to do so. The student paper has also carried opinions from people opposed to the Patriot Act. They decry it as an infringement on civil liberties.

But the FBI should be able to surf the internet in libraries. Agents should be able to attend church services. These are basic things our government must do to monitor those within our borders who have a mind to strike us again.

Attorney General John Ashcroft put it best last summer while testifying before a congressional committee about the Patriot Act. He said the new defensive efforts are not opposed to our freedoms and liberties. Rather, he said, it is those liberties that are being defended.

Another 9-11 is unacceptable. If the FBI thinks monitoring my internet usage or attending my church will make the country safer, then I invite them to do so. If we are going to be serious about homeland defense, then we must be serious about stopping the spread of sensitive information and we must be serious about investigating terrorist sleeper cells. Stop whining.