Free Speech for Terrorists?

By Michael Kinsley

On Sept. 15 of last year the people in the Palestine Information Office in Washington received a letter from the State Department announcing that "the Department has designated the Palestine Information Office as a 'foreign mission.' " Their lucky day? Not exactly. The letter continued, as if daring Joseph Heller (Catch-22) to top this one: "Pursuant to the Designation of the Palestine Information Office as a Foreign Mission, the Department of State has determined that the Palestine Information Office shall be required to cease operation as a foreign mission." Then the Government ordered the office's electricity cut off, its phone disconnected and its landlord to bar staff members entry except to remove personal effects.

The P.I.O. had been engaged since 1978 in the hopeless task of trying to improve the image of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It made no bones about being an arm of the P.L.O., which makes few bones about engaging in terrorism. Just last spring the P.L.O. decided to retain Abul Abbas on its executive committee, even though he masterminded the 1985 hijack of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, in which elderly American Leon Klinghoffer was murdered.

But the P.I.O. is accused of engaging in nothing worse than propaganda. Far from even endorsing terrorism, its chief function has been to attempt to change the subject. Its staff was entirely made up of U.S. citizens and legal residents. It was registered as a foreign agent, like other lobbying offices in Washington, but the honor of being designated as a foreign mission came unsolicited.

As recently as last May, the State Department's official view was that the P.I.O. was protected by the constitutional right of free speech and association. What changed State's mind was a congressional campaign -- spurred about equally by Jewish groups and presidential candidates -- to shut both the P.I.O. Washington office and the P.L.O.'s observer mission at the United Nations in New York.

Hoping to save the U.N. mission, which State believes the U.S. is required to tolerate as the U.N.'s host country, the State Department threw the Washington office to the wolves. But in December Congress cut through all the legal technicalities about what is and is not a foreign mission and simply banned both offices outright. They went down in a spray of self-congratulatory press releases: KEMP DECLARES A VICTORY IN WAR ON TERRORISM, GRASSLEY WINS IN FIGHT AGAINST P.L.O., and so on. A federal district court has upheld the Washington office closing, and the Justice Department seems determined to shut the New York office on schedule next month.

Those inveterate party poopers at the American Civil Liberties Union have stepped forward to complain that this famous victory over terrorism violates ^ the First Amendment. The Government replies that no one has been denied the right to advocate anything he or she might wish -- including terrorism -- either alone or in a group. The only restriction, it says, is on a foreign terrorist organization's ability to maintain an official presence here, against our Government's will, by the simple expedient of hiring American residents.

The trouble with this sanitized view is that the Government refuses, despite repeated requests, to tell the members of the closed P.I.O. what they must do to reopen yet avoid being declared a foreign mission and stripped of their epaulets all over again. Their strong advocacy of the P.L.O.'s position is what the federal district judge cited as proof that they were, in fact, a mission and therefore closable. This is also, of course, precisely what all those crusading Congressmen object to.

It may seem absurd to demand "State Department Guidelines for Those Who Wish to Promote Terrorism." But unless the Government is prepared to issue such guidelines, it is even more absurd to claim that no one's free speech is being suppressed when the Government shuts down an office that exists solely to purvey information and argument. How any such guidelines could not be a suppression of free speech, I can't imagine.

No doubt it is as boring to hear once again as it is to point out that the First Amendment exists to protect unpopular views -- even rightly unpopular views. Unpopular views are, in fact, the only kind that need its protection. No one is trying to shut down Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It is when Congressmen are lining up to denounce you that you need the Constitution.

It is often said that those who don't accept the premises of civil libertarian democracy are not entitled to claim its benefits. Why should terrorist groups enjoy the very freedoms they deny to others? No matter how often this is said, however, our Constitution is not based on social-contract theory. The Golden Rule, however admirable, is not part of the Bill of Rights.

The free-speech position is often parodied. First Amendment zealots don't believe that all viewpoints are equally worthy. They certainly don't believe that ideas are never dangerous. What they do believe is that in a culture of free expression and thought, good ideas have a natural advantage over bad ones. There is no such natural advantage when the censors take over. Therefore the expression of bad ideas is less dangerous than giving the Government the ( power to sort out the good from the bad.

Can anyone keep this principle in mind consistently? It's hard. In 1977 the Carter Administration (at the behest, ironically, of the United Nations) attempted to close down the Rhodesian Information Office, a Washington propaganda outlet for the sinking white regime in what is now Zimbabwe. Senator Jesse Helms, who today is a leader of the crusade to shut down the P.I.O., was in high dudgeon back then at the thought that even foreigners should be denied free speech within our shores. Meanwhile, however, the left- wing groups and the black Congressmen who today are protesting on behalf of the P.I.O. were silent about the suppression of the Rhodesians.

It ought to be obvious, but apparently it isn't: free speech is worthless if it depends on whose ox is gored.