More than six months ago, a tragic thing happened to Aliakbar and Shahla Afshari: they were both fired from their laboratory jobs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The reason, they were told, was because they failed secret background checks that classified them as “threats to the national security of the United States of America.” Mr. and Mrs. Afshari, who came to the U.S. from Iran over 18 years ago, were never offered an explanation why, after having passed background checks upon being hired in 1996 and 1997, they would fail one seven years later. Oddly, their lawyers were never able to gain access to documents justifying their release, nor were they able to obtain the agency’s policies on background checks.

Now, the Afsharis did attend two conventions of a student run Persian organization (a group that has had several members investigated by the F.B.I.) but to consider their employment at the institute a threat to this nation is quite a stretch. Mr. Afshari is 52 years old and has a doctorate in industrial engineering. Mrs. Afshari is 43 and has a mater’s degree in occupational health and safety. They have one child in college, one in dental school, one in middle school, and they live in a quiet residental neighborhood in Morgantown, West Virginia. While they were employed, neither had access of any kind to classified government documents or banned biological or chemical toxins. Their research was purely academic and of public record. Neither had applied for access to higher security clearances, which entails more intensive background investigations but still grants people the right to request internal documents if they fail the checks. Such explanations provide people the means to defend themselves–an opportunity the Afsharis were never given.

I don’t know about you, but I feel safe knowing that the government is spending all our tax money investigating and firing middle-class, middle-aged potential “renegades” while Mr. bin Laden and his murderous comrades are free to plot their next attack. I am strongly in favor of defeating terrorism domestically before we exercise all means to do it globally, but the case against the Afsharis is baseless and unfair.

I am confused that those who cry for “less government” do not get upset with such obvious examples of excessive governmental interference in citizens’ lives. There is a fine line between being careful and being paranoid–and an even finer line between actions that can be considered defensive and actions that cannot be defended at all. The Afshari’s case is one more example of government leaders (particularly through certain questionable Patriot Act provisions) using national fear to rationalize tampering with the rights of citizens. Justifying governmental oppression in the name of “national security” is appalling. And, though I would like to believe otherwise, there is little doubt that the fact that the Afsharis happen to be Muslim is just a coincidence.
Perhaps it was a lawyer representing the couple, Allan N. Karlin, who said it best: “How can we expect the people of the Middle East to emulate our democratic ideals abroad when we fail to apply those ideals to people like the Afsharis here?”