In the December 24 edition of its weekly online Intelligence Bulletin containing information on terrorism that goes to 18,000 police organizations nationwide, the FBI warned law-enforcement officers to be on the lookout for suspicious persons carrying almanacs, which could be used “to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.” The Associated Press reported December 29 that the bulletin urged police to watch during searches and traffic stops for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books have been annotated suspiciously.
FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell said in the December 30 Washington Post that the alert was not the result of a specific threat. But the paper noted that during a 2001 search of the Peoria, Illinois, apartment of alleged al-Qaida sleeper agent Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri investigators reported finding an almanac with pages on U.S. dams, rivers, railroads, and reservoirs bookmarked. Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, has been in a military prison since June 2003, when President Bush declared him an enemy combatant.
But the news provoked both concern and derision in the editorial press, which rushed to interview almanac editors. World Almanac Senior Editor Kevin Seabrooke said in the January 2 Baltimore Sun that everything in his publication is public information available online and in public libraries. “In fact,” he added, “the government is our biggest single supplier of information.”
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said the warning “is criminalizing the use of the most basic reference resources, which people have a legitimate reason to have.” American Civil Liberties Union President Nadine Strossen commented, “Founding father Benjamin Franklin probably never imagined that the almanac he created would be the subject of an FBI terrorism bulletin. Franklin certainly foresaw the danger of government overreaching during a time of crisis.”
Nor were librarians silent on the topic of one of their most useful reference resources used as a terrorist tool. University of Richmond Library Director James Rettig said on a recent ALA Council discussion list posting that the news was “simultaneously silly and scary” and suggested creating bumper stickers that read, “Almanacs don’t kill: People do.”
Posted January 2, 2004.