Car dealers fight terrorism!

By MIKE ARGENTO

Apr 17, 2006 — As we now enter what seems like the 100th year in the War on Terror, we have now enlisted a new warrior in the fight against the crazy people who believe the road to redemption is best traveled in a car bomb.

This new warrior is intended to assist the powers that be take the war to the enemy, to disarm the bad guys, to prevent them buying 1992 Toyota Corollas, that, one supposes, can be used to create the aforementioned car bombs.

This new warrior in the new war is not a politician or a soldier or a spy or some government bureaucrat listening to you ordering pizza on your cell phone.

The new warrior is among us, probably someone many of us have had to deal with.

The new warrior is your local used car dealer.

Yes, used car dealers.

We're doomed.

OK, perhaps that's not fair as many used car dealers are decent enough people, just trying to make a living while providing the motoring public with used, affordable, decent cars that break down the moment the warranty expires while concurrently protecting us from terrorists, jihadists and other assorted loonies.

OK, perhaps that's not fair, either. Many of those cars don't break down for weeks after the warranty expires.

Anyway, used car dealers have been enlisted into the War on Terror and many of them don't even know it.

"I never heard of that," said Ed Werner of Werner Brothers Auto Sales in Dallastown. "You got me."

It came to my attention via Bob Latchaw, a semi-retired car dealer who read about car dealers' role in the War on Terror and was kind of surprised to learn he and his colleagues had been enlisted.

Yet, there it was, reported in the Dealer News, the house organ of the Pennsylvania Independent Auto Dealers Association. It's under the heading of "OFAC Blocked Persons List" - OFAC being the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. It reported, "For most independents, this list is still a little known element of the USA Patriot Act. Under the regulation, dealers, and their finance companies, are required to verify that all potential buyers do not appear on federally-maintained 'Blocked Persons' list prior to any sale."

So there you have it. Car dealers have to check prospective buyers to see whether they're on a list of potential or suspected terrorists.

The list, maintained at the Treasury Department's Web site at http://www.treas.gov/ofac, is 224 pages long and contains, I don't know, thousands of names.

Now, this is a different list than the one that prevented Cat Stevens from entering the country, the one that caused trouble for a high school Latin teacher in Dallastown and the one that prompted Homeland Security people to detain a Marine reservist while he was returning home from Iraq. The reservist, Staff Sgt. Daniel Brown, was detained in Los Angeles while returning from a tour of duty with his unit from Minnesota because his name was listed alongside suspected terrorists.

The two lists might overlap so it's not known whether Brown - a terrorist name if there ever was one - might be prevented from buying a used Ford F-150 when he gets home to Minneapolis.

We can all rest assured that we're safe from the threat posed by sappy '70s singer-songwriters, Latin teachers from Dallastown and Marine reservists and be certain that our federal government security apparatus is preventing them from acquiring used cars of mass destruction.

I guess.

Perhaps there is a reason for preventing used cars from falling into the hands of terrorists, sappy '70s singer-songwriters, Latin teachers and Marine reservists.

Certainly, there has to be a good reason for it.

The Congress of the United States wouldn't just throw some stuff into the Patriot Act for no good reason.

Really.

They wouldn't do something like that.

It's just that I can't think of anything.

And neither can Ed Werner. He just wants to sell cars.

"We send stuff to the state and the bank now," he said. "We get copies of driver's licenses and send stuff to the banks that the banks require. And now, you're saying we have to check a terrorist list. I don't know how we're supposed to sell a car anymore."

He said he'd look into the new requirement.

But he's suspicious.

"I guess they think we have terrorists all over the place now," he said. "I guess they think everyone in Dallastown is a terrorist now."

Not everyone in Dallastown.

Just the Latin teachers.

Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.