What can be done. (The Last Word).

The September 11th attacks showed how vulnerable America has become to terrorism and how urgent it is to revamp our national security. Over the past three decades, our nation's multi-layered system of internal security has been dangerously eroded by subversives bent on destroying our critical defenses. One after another, America's investigative bodies and internal security assets were weakened, shackled, or terminated altogether.

The following list of terminated security entities gives some idea of how greatly the subversives campaign has succeeded: the Subversive Activities Control Board; the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department; the House Internal Security Committee; the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee; the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations; the investigative committees of most state legislatures; the intelligence units of most state police agencies.

The intelligence units of most metropolitan police departments have also been terminated, or redirected away from keeping information on the subversive groups and individuals who support terrorist groups. In addition, other key components of our national security have been emasculated or diverted from what should be their primary objectives. The Immigration and Naturalization Service and Border Patrol, for instance, despite recent augmentation, remain overwhelmed and undermanned. They are also severely restricted in ways that prevent them from enforcing our borders and immigration laws. The FBI has been for many years largely restricted from investigating left-wing subversion and terrorism, and reoriented toward investigating "white collar" crime and a huge new federal criminal code that usurps many of the police functions of state and local governments.

We have been left naked, without needed protection. As a result, our police and intelligence forces failed to detect and deter the terrorist acts of September 11th. This has led to the pendulum swinging back to the opposite extreme. In the wake of the attacks, the calls for giving Gestapo-like powers to the federal government have been deafening. Such measures, though, are neither constitutional nor necessary. What America must do instead is rebuild the constitutional, multilayered internal security structures at federal, state, and local levels. It is also essential that we end our self-defeating policy of foreign intervention, which engenders hatred toward the United States and guarantees a steady recruitment of terrorists to the ranks of those who want to destroy us.

We must abandon immediately and completely our suicidal "partnership" ...