Posted on 12/10/2001, 1:25:11 PM by summer
Monday, December 10, 2001
Several Universities Decline to Assist Federal Agents in Questioning of Foreign Students
By SARA HEBEL
Several public universities have declined to help federal investigators arrange or conduct interviews with foreign students who may be among those on a list of 5,000 people whom the U.S. Justice Department wants to question as it seeks information about terrorist activities.
In the past two weeks, Eastern Michigan University, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison have said that their campus police officers would not participate in the federal government's interviewing process. Many administrators said they would not allow their police departments to do so because the list of those being sought for questioning was broad and consisted of people who were not criminal suspects.
Some campus officials also said they feared that involving campus police officers could hurt relationships between the university and its students. And most said that university participation in the process didn't seem to be critical to helping federal investigators get their job done anyway.
Justice Department officials have sought to question men between the ages of 18 and 33 who have entered the United States on nonimmigrant visas -- which include student visas -- since January 1, 2000. They want to talk mostly to men from countries where U.S. intelligence officials have found a significant presence of members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network. There are no official estimates of how many students may be on the federal list. But many campus officials assume that a significant number are students, given the ages of the men being sought and the visa categories that officials are focusing on.
In Wisconsin, a total of about 100 people are being sought for interviews, but officials at the university there and the U.S. attorney's office in Madison said on Friday that they did not know how many of those might be students.
Last Thursday, university officials issued a statement saying that they would not participate in any of the interviews, although they would give government officials some attendance records and other information that they are allowed to release under state and federal laws. The day before, federal officials had asked if any members of a Madison-area antiterrorism task force -- which includes the University of Wisconsin's police department -- would volunteer to help federal investigators conduct the interviews.
"Let me emphasize that the university always cooperates fully with local, state, and federal law-enforcement investigations of suspected criminal activity. We will continue to do so in the future," John Wiley, chancellor of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement. "But university officials, including me, believe the criteria to select individuals for interviews ... is broadly based and appears to consist of people who are not suspected of any crimes or suspicious activities."
In an interview, Mr. Wiley added that he worried about how the university's participation in the information-gathering process might alter students' "trust" of campus police officials. "I just didn't think it would be appropriate," he said.
Grant C. Johnson, the U.S. attorney in Madison, said he disagreed with Mr. Wiley's decision but that the lack of university participation was "not a big deal."
"It doesn't make any difference because we didn't really need their help," Mr. Johnson said.
In Michigan, meanwhile, federal officials are seeking interviews with a total of about 800 people. About 70 to 80 of those individuals are in the Ann Arbor area, and University of Michigan officials believe that "many or most" of those are students, said Julie Peterson, associate vice president for media relations and public affairs.
In late November, Ms. Peterson issued a statement saying that the university had received a written request from U.S. officials to help conduct interviews but that the institution would not participate.
"Since none of those identified for questioning are suspected of or associated with criminal activity, we have decided that our public-safety personnel will not participate in the interviews," her statement read. "If criminal activity is suspected at any time, campus police will participate fully in follow-up investigations."
Like their counterparts at Wisconsin, University of Michigan officials also said they would provide some information sought by federal investigators as long as the request did not violate state or federal laws. In addition, Ms. Peterson said university officials were allowing some interviews to be conducted on the campus for students' convenience.
Meanwhile, officials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided late last month that campus police officers would help federal officials conduct interviews of students.
Bill Murphy, associate director for public affairs at the Illinois campus, said the university shares the other institutions' concerns about protecting students' rights during the interviews.
"We just have different solutions to the same question," he said. "After extensive discussion, we decided that it was in the best interest of our students if we did participate because of the sensitivity we believed our police would show to our students."
in loco parentis gone bad.
I wonder if they've given any thought to what might happen to the relationships with their alumni and the community at-large...
Not only that, but also get a list of all students who are at these universities on visas from the Middle East, and revoke them, and deport all of them back to wherever they came from. Gets rid of potential terrorists and hits the universities from the lost tuition.
These terrorist loving centers should have any federal funding that they are receiving cut off immediately.
The universities have a point: if the feds are reduced to fishing expeditions, let the feds handle it.
Are you sure? Even though it appears that way, we haven't seen the follow-up terrorist attacks that everybody expected by now. That suggests that they're doing something effective.
Exactly! Why are there so many idiots who just don't get it? Oh, yeah, 35+/- years of anti-American indoctrination in the universities.
The questioning should be left to the Federal investigators. This seems like the right decision.
It would wither on the vine..let the tenured liberal profs lecture to eachother for nothing, since no funds will be available to pay salaries... ROTFL.. Then move on to the next uncooperative university..Sooner or later, there will be many of these liberal PC tanks looking for a buyer...in which case, we might, just might, have a shot at some conservative universities again..
Keep the Faith for Freedom
MAY GOD BLESS AND PROTECT THIS HONORABLE REPUBLIC
Greg
I agree, where does it end, are we becoming a nation of screw-your-neighbor nanny’s? If this attitude remains then soon we will all be required to spy on each other and would be refused equal status if we don’t comply. Leave the campus police to do their job and the federal investigators peruse national security. Had the Fed’s been doing their job all along by protecting the boarders then this problem would not exist.
Or that there was no follow-up threat. The fact that they haven't filed anything but nuisance charges against those few people they have charged argues that they aren't finding out much.
Well, that's certainly possible, but I wouldn't think that someone would do something like the WTC/Pentagon attack without thinking of it as just an opening volley. They might just be biding their time, of course.
But I think a more likely explanation for the lack of charges is the success of the terrorists' cell structure. The authorities can suspect that these people are involved with al-Qaeda, but each person knows very little. Very few of them will have direct knowledge of attacks already carried out. Unless the FBI actually tapes a specific conversation about a planned future attack [which would permit a conspiracy indictment], it would be hard for them to file any significant charges.
The level of secrecy in al-Qaeda is so high that some of the terrorists in the 9/11 attacks are said not even to have known themselves that they were on a suicide mission.
In addition, even though there may be some evidence, the filing of charges might reveal intelligence sources or suggest the direction of ongoing investigations.
I should add that another possible reason for the lack of a follow-up attack is the presumed disruption of al-Qaeda's command and control structure in Afghanistan.
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