AMY GOODMAN: Well, I think this segment moves right into the next one, because the House yesterday sent President Clinton a major so-called counterterrorism bill in time for today’s anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing. The bill passed 293 to 133, after clearing the Senate 91 to 8. The bill provides $1 billion for anti-terrorism efforts at the state and federal level over four years and requires chemical tagging of plastic explosives so that they can be traced if they’re used in bombings.

First we’re going to go to one of the people who objected to aspects of the bill, and he’s Democrat Mel Watt of North Carolina.

REP. MELVIN WATT: Mr. Hyde, I’m sure, will admit that there’s a provision in this bill that allows the consideration of secret evidence that the defendant will never even know about and can never refute. That is absolutely counter to everything that our country stands for.

AMY GOODMAN: And again, that was Democrat Mel Watt of North Carolina. We’re joined in the studio by Kit Gage, who’s the Washington director of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, known as NCARL. It’s a Los Angeles-based civil rights group which was under FBI surveillance for 30 years. They sued the government, got an injunction against the FBI for ever monitoring them again.

And you’ve been very active, Kit, fighting this bill. Can you first respond to the part of the bill that Mel Watt was just talking about? What are these secret trials?

KIT GAGE: Sure. Let me just describe this as a part of a larger thing. A lot of people get kept out of this country or kicked out of this country in ways that are new or that hearken back to the anti-communist era. People could get kicked out — people who are here legally, immigrants who are here legally, could be kicked out of the country, not because they’ve committed a crime, but because their politics are unpopular. And they would be kicked out using secret evidence that they would be unable to see, unable to rebut. They wouldn’t be able to confront their accuser. And being that they’re in this country, that process has been upheld by the courts as completely illegal thus far, so this would be a big change. As well, people would be kept out of the country, not allowed to come into the country, because of their membership in an organization and/or because they don’t have documents to let them in, which would affect adversely torture victims.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait. So, this legislation allows for these secret trials, where you’ve got, say, an ex-husband who wants you out of the country, so says you’re part of a terrorist organization. You don’t know who your accuser is. You don’t know what they’re accusing you of. And you can be deported?

KIT GAGE: That’s exactly right. In fact, there have been those kinds of cases where disgruntled family members have tried to kick other people out of the country. And, in fact, the case in Los Angeles called the L.A. 8 case, which is sort of the most direct evidence of this kind of activity by the government, the government spent years trying to get people out of the country simply because of their membership in organizations.

AMY GOODMAN: And they were Palestinian.

KIT GAGE: Primarily Palestinian and one Kenyan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Are there any other provisions of the bill? I’ve been told that, for instance, in habeas corpus and in other areas, that the bill is also a growing repressive direction in government.

KIT GAGE: Absolutely. The whole bill is a mishmosh of anti-crime provisions that the government has been trying to pass for many years. It’s not really an anti-terrorism bill. It’s an anti-dissent bill. You mentioned habeas. That basically affects people — poor and minority people’s right to appeal, once they’re in prison, to appeal to the federal courts.

AMY GOODMAN: And, in fact, of course, a lot of people are simply saying that that is the main point of this bill, is to limit death penalty appeals, in particular. And we’re going to talk about that issue on Monday with the head of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Today, we wanted to focus on these other aspects that might get a little lost with the focus on the death penalty. What are some of those other anti-terrorism, as they’re called, parts of the bill?

KIT GAGE: To expose how bizarre this is, I mean, one of the anti-terrorist provisions is to not allow people to donate money to legal humanitarian activities that are in areas of conflict around the world. If you give that kind of money to orphanages, to schools, if the groups that are working on that are remotely affiliated with what the U.S. government has decided and has labeled are terrorist groups, then you are committing a crime by giving money to those kind of groups, like the African National Congress, like the activity that Central America activists were doing perfectly legally a few years back.

AMY GOODMAN: I don’t understand. What can a bank do?

KIT GAGE: No, this doesn’t have to do with banks, this provision, so much. It’s that the government — you, an individual, are committing a crime by giving money to an orphanage that has some relationship to it to a —

AMY GOODMAN: So the government can arrest you.

KIT GAGE: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: The government can deport you.

KIT GAGE: No, the government — well, right, can deport you. Or if you’re a U.S. citizen, they can throw you in jail and fine you.

AMY GOODMAN: What about —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In other words, if you were selling raffles for NORAID or contributing money to a humanitarian group that might have been linked to Hamas or some Palestinian group, that they could declare that to be a crime.

KIT GAGE: And the remote can be very — that link can be very remote. That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the banks? I was just looking at —

KIT GAGE: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — some memos of the American Civil Liberties Union. They were writing to Congress about this, what seems to be one of the most outrageous aspects of this bill.

KIT GAGE: Right. In a somewhat related provision, banks get to decide — in fact, are basically urged to decide, and because of a threat of a fine if they don’t — that they should freeze the assets of domestic, quote, “agents” of designated terrorist groups. And the banks have to decide what is an agent. So you’ve got people who are not members of a — people in the United States who are not members of a designated terrorist group, who may be involved in some of that fundraising activity for humanitarian aid. The bank has the obligation to freeze the assets of those individuals or organizations, if they decide that there’s a remote link to that group.

AMY GOODMAN: But, now, we have financial institutions deciding if you are a so-called terrorist or linked to one. I mean, you’ve got an official list of terrorist organizations that the U.S. government gives out. That’s pretty clear. If one of these organizations signs up with a bank, they can say, “No, we don’t take your bank account,” or they’ll freeze their assets. But what if you’re not officially with one of these groups? The bank investigates you or decides, and then gets penalized if they end up having a bank account of yours and they don’t freeze it?

KIT GAGE: That’s correct. And in addition, if the bank makes a mistake, makes a clear mistake, there’s no provision for appealing that decision. There is no provision for unfreezing those assets. The provision is very much an example of the sausage-making process that especially happens in a conference. It looks like a clear mistake. I mean, that’s the only way to explain that there would be absolutely no appeal process in this provision.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Kit, given the extensive draconian measures in this bill, why did it pass by 91 to 8 in the Senate and so overwhelmingly in the House?

KIT GAGE: Political pressure. This bill has been very well marketed, despite the efforts of people that I’ve been working with in a very bizarre, broad coalition. It’s been well marketed as a terrorist bill to try to deal with Oklahoma City. And instead of being a band-aid on the wounds of Oklahoma City, it ends up being a tourniquet on the First Amendment.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we’re talking about a coalition from the NRA to the Quakers that oppose this.

KIT GAGE: That’s right. And it’s been wonderful fun in some senses, because we’ve been able to bring a number of right-wing groups nationally, but also activists around the country, from the right as well as the left, organized around the right to dissent, and not organize around gun rights so much, but really around the key rights to dissent, around peaceful dissent and how this bill attacks that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Kit Gage, we want to thank you very much for joining us. And again, on Monday, we’re going to continue this discussion with the head of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, because this so much limits death row appeals of prisoners. Kit Gage is Washington director of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, known as NCARL, based in L.A. And we want to thank you for joining us.

Democracy Now! was produced by Julie Drizin, with help from Pat Greenfield. Our engineer is Kenneth Mason in Washington, Matthew Finch in New York, with help from Errol Maitland. If you’d like a copy of the show, the number to call is 1-800-735-0230. That’s 1-800-735-0230. You can write to us by email at democracy@pacifica.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us for another edition of Democracy Now!