Oklahoma state Gov. Frank Keating has urged US authorities to take account of ethnicity in trying to spot terror suspects, calling it reckless to ignore the fact that a person might be speaking Arabic or reading the Koran.
"I think it is negligent not to look at everything, including racial factors," Mr Keating said during a panel discussion on homeland security at a meeting of the American Bar Association in Philadelphia.
Mr Keating made his remarks after Michael Chertoff, assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the Department of Justice, said the US government tried very hard not to engage in ethnic profiling in its efforts to stop terrorism.
"It turns out not to be very effective," Mr Chertoff said, saying it made more sense to examine where individuals had traveled.
People who have been in Afghanistan should be looked at more closely, Mr Chertoff said.
But Mr Keating, who was governor during the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, said the government should consider ethnicity when deciding who can enter the United States. "Taking account of all factors is good law enforcement," he said.
He cited Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation Web sites which say it is inappropriate to consider whether an individual is speaking Arabic, reading the Koran - the Muslim holy book - or praying.
"Well, that's reckless in my view," he said.
Mr Keating said he remembered thinking after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, ‘who are these people?’ He said the men convicted of carrying out the bombing were in the United States legally. "That should have been an amber light if not a red light for Immigration to keep people out who mean to do us harm," he said.
Instead, he said, there has been a crush of foreigners let into the United States who have hostility and mischief on their minds and nothing had been done to stop their entry.
He and several others on the panel slammed the US government for not being prepared for the September 11 strikes in which hijackers from countries in the Middle East rammed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The attacks, in which about 3,100 people were killed, have been blamed on the al-Qaeda network of Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden who has urged Muslims to wage war on America.