Postal Service won’t join TIPS program

? The U.S. Postal Service declined Wednesday to join a Department of Justice program asking workers who are “well-positioned to recognize unusual events” to help stop terrorist attacks.

The new initiative, described in the 90-page homeland security strategy that President Bush introduced Tuesday, also drew resistance from the American Civil Liberties Union and from some Arab-Americans.

Called Operation TIPS, for Terrorism Information and Prevention System, the program hopes to engage “millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places,” according to the program’s Web site.

Postal workers, truck drivers, railroad conductors and utility employees are among the prospects, according to the Justice Department.

But the Postal Service, after being approached by the White House Office of Homeland Security, declined to join.

TIPS is scheduled to get under way in late summer or early fall, but the 750,000-worker Postal Service’s rejection, which the Postal Service disclosed in a statement to reporters, could be a serious blow.