Operation TIPS Inquiry Routed to "America's Most Wanted"

By Kéllia Ramares
Online Journal Contributing Editor

If House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) gets his way, Operation TIPS, a Justice Department program to get as many as 24 million Americans to spy on their neighbors, will never get off the ground. The conservative Republican placed an amendment in the Homeland Security bill recently passed by the House specifically prohibiting the government from implementing the plan. But the bill isn't law yet And the Bush Administration, which touts the virtues of public-private partnerships, has apparently been caught trying to marry its so-called war on terrorism to TV entertainment in a way that goes well beyond re-running old war movies. 

The discovery was made by freelance journalist David Lindorff, who decided to write an article for Salon.com on Operation TIPS, the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. He enrolled as a volunteer tipster via a simple form on the www.citizencorps.gov website. Soon Lindorff got an email welcoming him to the program, and asking if he knew of anyone else who wanted to sign up. After hearing nothing more for several weeks, he called the main switchboard at Attorney General John Ashcroft's office and said,

 “Hi, I’m an Operation TIPS volunteer, and I’d like to know where do I report my tips about suspicious activity? And the woman said, ‘Oh, we’ve set up a number with the FBI for you to call; it’s an 800 number.’ And so she gave it to me and I dutifully dialed it, thinking I would get somebody working at the FBI who was trained to take down relevant information from people who are reporting crimes or suspicious activity. But instead, a young woman answered the phone with ‘America’s Most Wanted.’”
  
American's Most Wanted is a Fox Network TV show that re-enacts unsolved crimes.  As of August 10, 2002, its website, www.amw.com claimed that 716 criminal suspects have been apprehended via tips from viewers. The website has links to military and crime-related sites including specialoperations.com, brutal.com, which is a compilation of daily headlines related to criminal activity and punishment, and dogvest.com, a site that solicits donations to provide bullet proof vests for police dogs. The website also has a prominently placed terrorism section with links to the FBI homepage, photographs of the 19 alleged September 11th hijackers, and photographs of the anthrax letters sent to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, the New York Post, and US Senator Tom Daschle. 

But when this writer placed a call to America’s Most Wanted, Avery Mann, spokesperson for spokesperson for the show said, “We are an operation that takes tips—small t-i-p-s. Not the Operation TIPS, capital.”

(David Lindorff, who checked back with the “America’s Most Wanted” hotline number several times, says the show is no longer taking information for Operation TIPS. People with bona fide tips on possible terrorist activity should  call their local FBI office). 

Mann also said that, at this point, the FBI has not contacted America's Most Wanted for possible involvement in Operation TIPS, which has yet to be launched. “However, “ Mann added, “We have been taking tips in the anthrax question and crime since the Postal Service and the FBI asked us to take to take tips back in October of 2001.” 

Skirting the Constitution?

The government has collaborated with the popular “reality” show before the Operation TIPS matter. The White House and the FBI requested a special episode of “America's Most Wanted” shortly after the September 11th attacks. It aired in October, featured an interview with Attorney General John Ashcroft, and drew 7.6 million viewers with little promotion. In November, host John Walsh took the show to INTERPOL headquarters in France, telling a reporter for the TV show “Entertainment Tonight” that he was doing so “to take the search for the terrorists worldwide.”

(The Justice Department did not return my phone call, despite the assurances a cheerful receptionist gave me, as she typed my contact information into a computer, that there would be no problem calling me back by the deadline I specified.  Well, there’s another page for my FBI file). 

There’s no doubt that tips from the public sometimes help law enforcement agencies capture criminal suspects. But normally, the public contacts law enforcement directly.  Rachel King, a Washington D.C.-based legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, sees legal problems in having a TV show handle tips on terrorist activity in an already controversial plan to, in effect, make ordinary citizens an arm of domestic intelligence. 

“Strictly from a constitutional perspective, “King said, “ When you’ve got citizen-informants, and then you’ve got a commercial television station, they don’t need to comply with the constitution. They don’t need to comply with privacy laws. They don’t need to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. And whereas maybe that’s not the government’s intention to avoid all of those laws that are designed to protect people’s rights. It certainly is a bit suspicious when that’s the result. “

Overreaching Again? 

Perhaps the idea of the government getting Americans to voluntarily spy on their neighbors and report suspicious and possibly terrorist-related activity to a television show sounds like something from Twilight Zone, or Saturday Night Live. But Dorothy Ehrlich, Executive Director of the ACLU of Northern California, says it's just one of many real life episodes of Bush Administration power-grabbing that her organization has been chronicling. Ehrlich cited a recent ALCU report called Insatiable Appetite: The Government’s Demand for New and Unnecessary Powers After September 11.  “It’s a whole report that documents just the volume of proposals and actions that this Administration has taken to really take power away from people, and to violate the rights of people. And it really does seem to be an insatiable appetite. But time and time again,” Ehrlich continued,  “and especially with the recent reaction to the TIPS program, we are finding, on the other side, people pushing back and protesting. And I think those voices are starting to be heard. And I think that’s a very encouraging sign.” 
The report is available at www.aclu.org/congress/InsatiableAppetite.pdf (Warning: the print on this 24-page report is small).