From: Bob Witanek <bwitanek@igc.apc.org>
Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 22:39:33 +0800
To: Recipients of pol-abuse <pol-abuse@igc.apc.org>
Subject: ACLU: Secret Intelligence Budget
Message-ID: <APC&1'0'a9f987ac'670@igc.apc.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Posted: sspnj@exit109.com
ACLU News 05-23-96:
*House Votes to Keep Intelligence Budget Secret*

In a blow to open government, the House of Representatives has
rejected a move by the Clinton Administration to -- for the first
time -- make public the overall national intelligence budget, The
Washington Post reported today.

The rejection came on a vote of 248 to 176 on an amendment to a
bill that would fund the CIA and 11 other, mostly Pentagon-based,
intelligence agencies.

The ACLU had supported the amendment, saying that "taxpayers have
a right to know what their tax dollars support."

But the Post said that House Intelligence Chairman Larry Combest,
R-TX, opposed disclosure in committee and led the opposition on the
floor yesterday. He said making the overall figure public
inevitably would lead to disclosure of individual intelligence
accounts, which, he said, could harm clandestine sources and
methods.

ACLU Legislative Counsel Gregory T. Nojeim disagreed. "Disclosure
of the bottom-line figure is the absolute minimum that Congress
should do to make the intelligence agencies accountable to the
American public," he said. "All of these intelligence agencies have
acknowledged that any Cold War justification for keeping the total
budget secret has passed." --------------------------------------
--------------------------                 *State Police Search
Blacks More Than Whites*

PERRYVILLE, Md. -- Black drivers are being stopped and searched for
drugs at least four times more often than whites by a special
Maryland state police squad that patrols stretches of Interstate
95, the East Coast's main north-south artery, the Associated Press
reports today.

This finding from an Associated Press computer analysis of car
searches raises questions of whether troopers are following their
own written training procedures and complying with a court ruling
that specifically bars them from using racial profiles to determine
likely drug couriers.

More than 75 percent of all drivers whose cars were searched by the
special drug squad through the first nine months of last year were
black, the AP said.

State police steadfastly denied using racial profiles, which in the
past typically targeted young minority men driving late-model cars
and carrying pagers or wearing gold jewelry. The Maryland police
maintained that black motorists were searched for reasons other
than race and that the preponderance of blacks searched amounted
to coincidence.

Maryland state police are forbidden to use racial profiles in
traffic stops under terms of a legal settlement reached in 1994
with Robert Wilkins, a black Washington lawyer searched for drugs
as he drove home from a funeral in 1992.

The settlement also requires troopers to provide records on all
1995-97 highway searches to the American Civil Liberties Union of
Maryland. The AP examined the records for January through September
1995.

The AP said that it asked the ACLU for the early reports after a
Philadelphia couple filed a discrimination suit in January against
three troopers.

Charles Carter, now 66, and his wife, Etta, 65, were driving north
on I-95 in a rented minivan on July 12, 1994, their 40th wedding
anniversary, when troopers pulled them over and searched the van
for drugs. The couple claim they were searched because they are
black.

``This entire incident was and continues to be deeply humiliating
for my wife and myself,'' Carter said in an affidavit. ``It is
inconceivable to us that, as American citizens of the late
twentieth century, we would be treated in this manner by officers
of the law.''

The ACLU said the data may eventually prove a pattern of
discrimination. If the organization can show in court that blacks
are being searched in inappropriately high numbers, it may consider
a class-action lawsuit, said Debbie Jeon, an ACLU attorney.

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