Under attack -- by the FBI

That is the effect of the FBI memo to local police that was disclosed in Sunday's New York Times. With this swipe at Americans wishing to exercise their constitutional right to free speech, Ashcroft and the FBI demonstrate an abject failure to understand two vital things: the delicate grandeur of American liberty and the political profile of the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Senator Edward Kennedy was hardly exaggerating when he told ABC's "This Week" that the FBI memo recalled the worst abuses of the Nixon years. "It is absolutely outrageous in terms of what this country is about," Kennedy said. Indeed, some conservatives who do not at all share the political outlook of most of the antiwar protesters have also complained of Ashcroft's use of the so-called Patriot Act to infringe upon Americans' rights.

If Ashcroft does not understand why it is wrong to engage the FBI in spying on Americans who demonstrate peaceably for peace, President Bush ought to call the attorney general into the Oval Office for a civics lesson. If the core value of genuine conservatism is to protect the citizen from the overweening power of the state, then Ashcroft and the FBI have been subverting the conservatives' credo.

That is also what J. Edgar Hoover did for decades as director of the FBI. Not content to investigate crimes or to monitor members of the civil rights movement and people protesting against the Vietnam War, Hoover ran clandestine operations against figures he designated as targets of the FBI's counterintelligence program, Cointelpro. The aim of Cointelpro was not merely to monitor the targeted person but to destroy him. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X were among the dissidents Hoover subjected to domestic clandestine operations.

By these un-American activities, Hoover disfigured the FBI. Ashcroft must not be allowed to repeat that mistake.

Because the antiwar demonstrations are unrelated to Al Qaeda, the use of FBI counterterrorism squads to monitor the protesters suggests that the bureau misconstrues its antiterrorist mission. In its memo to local police, the FBI warned about the protesters' training camps. But these are not like the camps in Afghanistan where Al Qaeda trained suicidal terrorists. These are places where nonviolent tactics -- the methods of Martin Luther King -- are commonly taught. If the FBI cannot comprehend this distinction, it should not have the job of preventing another terrorist attack.