Interview By: IRFAN MURTAZA

Islamica: We are approaching the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11. What is the state of civil liberties in the United States?

Cole: I am now at work on a new book called “Less Safe, Less Free: Why We Are Losing the War on Terror.” And I think that title captures where I think we stand. That is, we have less civil liberties than we had on 9/11 in some significant ways. But we are also, I believe, less safe as a result in many instances of the sacrifice in human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law that (the Bush) administration has adopted.

Islamica: Have there been actions taken by the Bush administration that you would characterize as positive developments?

Cole: Wow, that’s a really hard question! (laughing) Well, I think there’s plenty that they have done which is non-controversial which has probably indeed has made us safer — the kind of things the 9/11 Commission recommended — which are largely protective measures that are designed to make it more difficult for a terrorist to hit us and make it more likely that we will be able to identify terrorists before they hit us. So, the increased security at airports, increased checking of luggage, increased security of ports, increased security on others sorts of potential targets like chemical plants and fuel supplies and places like that. Also, increased sharing of information from intelligence people to law enforcement people, greater efforts to protect nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, so that they are not accessible to terrorists. All of those things are positive and I think they make us safer. But they do not involve the infringement of civil liberties, they don’t involve ethnic profiling, they do not involve targeting of foreign nationals or Arabs and Muslims. I think they are to be applauded. But I would point to the 9/11 Commission itself, which issued a report card in December 2005 on how the Bush administration is doing in terms of furthering these matters, and it’s not the kind of report card you would want to see your children come home with. It had something like 8 F’s, maybe 10 D’s, and a dozen C’s, a couple of B-’s and maybe one or two A’s. It was a very critical report card on the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission, which are essential for this kind of relatively low level, broad-based protective measures that I think make it harder for anyone to attack us and are more likely to make us safe.  But they do not make as splashy headlines as say announcing the detention of Jose Padilla or the prosecution of Sami Al-Arian does.