A REMEDY FOR TERRORIST BLACKMAIL by Andrew Bard Schmookler

The economists tell us, the more choices the better. But it isn't always so. Sometimes one would be better off if one had fewer choices. Like when one is being blackmailed. The blackmailer threatens to hurt you if you don't do what he wants. If he didn't think you could meet his demands, he wouldn't issue his threat. (That's why the kids of poor people are not kidnapped for ransom.) Those who are potential objects of extortionists would benefit, therefore, if they were visibly incapable of complying with the demands of a blackmailer. Instinctively, we already know that, sometimes, having choices is a terrible thing. The majority of newspaper editors told a pollster that they would hate to confront the choice faced recently by the Washington Post and the New York Times of whether to publish the Unambomber's manifesto so maybe he'd keep his promise not to kill again. If we know that there are choices we'd rather no face, why don't we act to take such options away from ourselves? Here's what I propose: that we pass a law making it illegal for any government or private organization to accede to terrorist blackmail. It could be legislated that any public or corporate official who issues an order to comply with a terrorist demand is automatically deprived of the authority of his or her office, and the order rendered void. Those who command our public institutions would be known to be unable to give a would-be extortionist what he wants. The benefits of such legal disabling of ourselves could prove enormous. It's not so long since the Reagan administration damaged itself by swapping arms-for-hostages, and made kidnapped Americans a manifestly valuable asset. And nowadays, with an ominous question mark surrounding the security of a large quantity of weapons-grade plutonium, we can envisage far more terrifying blackmail threats against the world's richest and most influential nation. If killing a few people over a decade and a half gave the Unabomber the power to place his tract in the Post, how far might some terrorist with an A-bomb in a suitcase be able to bend our national policy to his will? So long as blackmail can work, we will be threatened not only by those who want to hurt us --as in Oklahoma City-- but also by the many more who would like to dictate our course. Paradoxically, by eliminating the choice of obeying the blackmailer, we will strengthen our ability to choose our own destiny. ??