Preemptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint."

The raids targeted members of "Food Not Bombs," an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group that provides free vegetarian meals every week in hundreds of cities all over the world. They served meals to rescue workers at the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to nearly 20 communities in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.

Also targeted were members of I-Witness Video, a media watchdog group that monitors the police to protect civil liberties. The group worked with the National Lawyers Guild to gain the dismissal of charges or acquittals of about 400 of the 1,800 who were arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Preemptive policing was used at that time as well. Police infiltrated protest groups in advance of the convention.

Nestor said that no violence or illegality has taken place to justify the arrests. "Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political," he said.

Further evidence the political nature of the police action was the boarding up of the Convergence Center, where protestors had gathered, for unspecified code violations. St. Paul City Council member David Thune said, "Normally we only board up buildings that are vacant and ramshackle." Thune and fellow City Council member Elizabeth Glidden decried "actions that appear excessive and create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation for those who wish to exercise their first amendment rights."

"So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protestors who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do," Greenwald wrote on Salon.

Preventive detention violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires that warrants be supported by probable cause. Protestors were charged with "conspiracy to commit riot," a rarely-used statute that is so vague, it is probably unconstitutional. Nestor said it "basically criminalizes political advocacy."

On Sunday, the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality filed an emergency motion requesting an injunction to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.

During Monday's demonstration, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. At least 284 people were arrested, including Amy Goodman, the prominent host of Democracy Now!, as well as the show's producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. "St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city to be," Greenwald wrote, "with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations."

Bruce Nestor said the timing of the arrests was intended to stop protest activity, "to make people fearful of the protests, but also to discourage people from protesting," he told Amy Goodman. Nevertheless, 10,000 people, many opposed to the Iraq war, turned out to demonstrate on Monday. A legal team from the National Lawyers Guild has been working diligently to protect the constitutional rights of protestors.

Read on >>

Targeting Dissent: FBI Spying on the National Lawyers Guild

In 1937, the American Bar Association refused to allow people of color to join its ranks. With the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the National Lawyers Guild was founded as a multi-racial alternative to the ABA. The Guild's founding members included the attorney general, several judges, some congressmen, and the head of the National Labor Relations Board.

Three years after the creation of the National Lawyers Guild, the FBI began to conduct secret surveillance of the Guild. From 1940 to 1975, the FBI wiretapped Guild phones, burglarized Guild offices, and sent informers into Guild meetings. The June 25, 2007 New York Times report on the FBI's program of spying on the Guild omits FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's primary rationale for undertaking this surveillance: "to blunt the Guild's criticism of the FBI and, if possible, to destroy the organization," in the words of Michael Krinsky, one of the lawyers who filed the 1977 lawsuit against the FBI.

The Guild, which provided legal support for the people, was a thorn in Hoover's side. In 1950, the Guild was about to release a big exposé on the FBI, prepared by Yale law professor and ex-Guild president Thomas Emerson. No other organization was undertaking such a comprehensive criticism of the FBI. Through illegal wiretaps and informants the FBI learned of the Guild's impending report. In advance of the report's release, the FBI launched a pre-emptive strike at the Guild by causing people in the press and the Senate to denounce the report. "So the story became the Lawyers Guild, not the FBI," Krinsky said.

The FBI asked Richard M. Nixon, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), to call for an investigation of the Guild, on the eve of the release of the Guild report. The investigation led to the 1950 HUAC report titled, "National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party." It concluded with a call to the attorney general to designate the National Lawyers Guild a "subversive organization." The AG complied in 1953, but when no evidence to support the designation was forthcoming, he dropped it in 1958.

From the 1950s through the early 1970s, the FBI continued to focus on the National Lawyers Guild. The FBI had a list called The Security Index, which identified people, including Guild leaders, to be rounded up in the event of a national emergency.

Hoover's COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program) engaged in illegal surveillance of other organizations and individuals as well as the Guild. For example, in a program called Racial Matters, the FBI wiretapped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s hotel rooms and tried to drive him to divorce and suicide. Dr. King's voter registration campaign and especially his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War incurred the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover, who went after Dr. King with a vengeance. Groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) were also on Hoover's surveillance list.

The revelation of President Richard Nixon's illegal surveillance of groups opposed to his policies as well as hearings by a select Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church led to the enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other curbs on the power of the FBI and the CIA. Today we are faced with President George W. Bush's secret domestic spying program, which, as I explain in my book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, violates not only FISA, but the Fourth Amendment as well.

Bush's predecessors illegally targeted those who criticized their policies, under the guise of fighting communism. Bush's rationale for bending the Constitution is fighting terrorism, but his attacks are leveled at disssenters.

The HUAC report and the AG's designation of the Guild not only violated the Constitution; they nearly succeeded in destroying the organization. Membership in the Guild fell to about 300 members. But the Guild survived and today it boasts nearly 6,000 members.

Members of the National Lawyers Guild continue to work beside those who struggle for economic, racial and sexual equality, and against imperial wars and occupations. I'm proud to have been a Guild member for more than half of its 70-year life.

Read on >>

Patriot Act Unbound: Political Purging and Spying on Americans

Last year, Republican Senator Arlen Specter slipped a clause into the reauthorized USA Patriot Act that allows Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appoint U.S. Attorneys without Senate confirmation.

Gonzales took advantage of that crafty little provision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys who weren't goose-stepping to the Bush agenda and replace them with Bush loyalists. Denying any impropriety, Gonzales dismissed the significance of the mass ouster (seven federal prosecutors were asked to resign on the same day last December), calling it an "overblown personnel matter."

The Attorney General swore to the Senate Judiciary Committee in January that he "would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons." But the evidence belies Gonzales' protestations.

Why did these prosecutors run afoul of the Bush gang?

David Iglesias from Albuquerque received an evaluation that said he was "respected by the judiciary, agencies and staff." But he didn't file a corruption case involving New Mexico Democrats before the 2006 election which would've embarrassed the Democrats. New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici called Iglesias and asked whether charges were "going to be filed before the election." Iglesias said he felt "sick" after Domenici called him. "I felt leaned on, I felt pressured to get these matters moving." Iglesias also received a call from Republican Representative Heather Wilson, who was running neck-in-neck with a Democrat in a race where the corruption investigation was a campaign issue. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse admitted Domenici's complaint to Gonzales about Iglesias was a factor in the prosecutor's removal.

Carol Lam, "an effective manager and respected leader" from San Diego, conducted an investigation of Republican Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham for taking over $2 million in bribes from defense contractors. It resulted in a guilty plea and an eight-plus year sentence. In February, Lam indicted Kyle Dustin Foggo, formerly the number 3 man at the CIA. If Lam were permitted to continue, she might have uncovered more official wrongdoing in defense-contracting. Lam was replaced by a member of the Federalist Society with almost no criminal law experience.

Bud Cummins, a "very competent and highly regarded" U.S. Attorney from Little Rock, Arkansas, was removed and replaced with J. Timothy Griffin, one of Karl Rove's key researchers. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified that Cummins had done nothing wrong to justify his removal. "I'm not aware of anything negative," he said. Cummins said a senior Justice Department official warned him that the fired U.S. Attorneys should keep quiet about "their" firings.

Daniel Bogden, a "highly regarded" and "capable leader" from Las Vegas, had opened an investigation into allegations that Nevada's Republican governor had accepted inappropriate gifts.

Paul Charlton, from Phoenix was "well respected" for his "integrity, professionalism and competence." He had undertaken an investigation of two Republican Arizona Representatives.

John McKay, "an effective, well-regarded and capable leader" from Seattle was called by a well-placed Republican, who inquired about whether McKay intended to convene a grand jury to examine claims of voter fraud in a close gubernatorial election, which was won by a Democrat. McKay also favored a computerized law enforcement information-sharing system that the Justice Department opposed.

These prosecutors were punished for doing their jobs too well. In the Bush administration, justice has become politicized. Democrats have been investigated by the Department of Justice seven times more frequently than Republicans.

On the defensive as a result of the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, the administration has engaged in damage control. It has agreed not to oppose legislation overriding the Specter Patriot Act loophole.

Another Patriot Act provision that has been misused by the Gonzales Justice Department authorizes the use of "national security letters." These are administrative subpoenas that enable the FBI to obtain our e-mails and telephone records, and travel and financial information without approval from a judge. An audit by the Inspector General concluded last week that the FBI has used this provision to illegally force businesses to turn over customer data, then lied to Congress about it.

The Bush gang has engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct, including a war of aggression, torture and war crimes, and spying on Americans without warrants. Congress has begun to hold hearings and conduct investigations. As increasing evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors emerges, it is high time for the House of Representatives to undertake its constitutional duty to initiate impeachment proceedings.

Read on >>

Rounding Up U.S. Citizens

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism.

Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants.

Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.

Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.

The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under it.

The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and malicious" with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.

Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).

During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting."

One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress.

The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round- up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy- three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

We can expect Bush to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip us of more of our liberties. Our constitutional right to dissent is in serious jeopardy. Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should give us pause: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

Read on >>

One Nation Under Surveillance

We do not believe the Executive has, or should have, the inherent
constitutional authority to violate the law or infringe the legal rights
of Americans, whether it be a warrantless break-in into the home or
office of an American, warrantless electronic surveillance, or a
President's authorization to the FBI to create a massive domestic
security program based upon secret oral directives.
-Final Report of the Church Committee, 1976

The revelation that President George W. Bush authorized the unlawful warrantless surveillance of Americans has resurrected the discussion of the proper balance to be struck between liberty and security.

This discourse is not new in the United States. Benjamin Franklin warned, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." Franklin was prescient. Throughout our history, we have grappled with this apparent tension. Unfortunately, all too often, we have lost our liberties - without becoming more secure. It has been primarily the executive branch that has overreached across the lines that separate the three branches of our government. In this post-9/11 world, under the guise of his "Global War on Terror," George W. Bush has arrogated to himself a level of presidential authority that rivals any such usurpation in the past.

Surveillance in this country has been aimed at slaves, immigrants, political radicals, suspected lawbreakers, the poor, workers, and anyone with a credit card or a computer. It has frequently been used by the government to suppress criticism of its policies.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans. The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under it.

The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and malicious" with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.

Subsequent examples of repressive legislation passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).
During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting."
COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) was designed to "disrupt, misdirect and otherwise neutralize" political and activist groups. In the 1960s, the FBI targeted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a program called "Racial Matters." King's campaign to register African-American voters in the South raised the hackles of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who disingenuously claimed King's organization was being infiltrated by communists. In fact, the FBI was really concerned that King's civil rights and anti-Vietnam War campaigns "represented a clear threat to the established order of the U.S." It went after King with a vengeance, wiretapping his telephones and securing personal information which it used to try to discredit him and drive him to divorce and suicide.

In response to the excesses of COINTELPRO, a congressional committee chaired by Senator Frank Church conducted an investigation of activities of the domestic intelligence agencies. The Church Committee concluded, "[I]ntelligence activities have undermined the constitutional rights of citizens and ... they have done so primarily because checks and balances designed by the framers of the Constitution to assure accountability have not been applied." The committee added, "In an era where the technological capability of Government relentlessly increases, we must be wary about the drift toward 'big brother government' ... Here, there is no sovereign who stands above the law. Each of us, from presidents to the most disadvantaged citizen, must obey the law." The committee stressed that the "advocacy of political ideas is not to be the basis for governmental surveillance."

Congress established guidelines to regulate intelligence-gathering by the FBI. Reacting against President Richard Nixon's assertion of unchecked presidential power, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, to regulate electronic surveillance while protecting national security.

FISA established a secret court to consider applications by the government for wiretap orders. It specifically created only one exception for the President to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant. For that exception to apply, the Attorney General must certify under oath that the communications to be monitored will be exclusively between foreign powers, and that there is no substantial likelihood that a United States person will be overheard.

In 2002, in direct violation of FISA, Bush signed an executive order that authorizes the National Security Agency to wiretap people within the United States with no judicial review. It is estimated that the NSA has eavesdropped on thousands of private conversations in the last four years. Additionally, the NSA has combed through large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States. It has collected vast personal information that has nothing to do with national security.

Electronic surveillance was first used during the Holocaust when IBM worked for the Nazi government organizing and analyzing its census data. Death camp barcodes - linked to computerized records - were tattooed onto prisoners' forearms.

The advent of digital technology raised surveillance to a new level. Social Security numbers, credit cards, gym memberships, library cards, health insurance records, bar codes, GSM chips in cell phones, toll booths, hidden cameras, workplace identification badges, and the Internet all provide the government with effective tools to keep track of our finances, our politics, our personal habits, and our whereabouts through data mining. The Privacy Foundation determined in a 2001 survey that one-third of all American workers who use the Internet or email on the job are under "constant surveillance" by employers.

One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act lowered the standards for government surveillance of telephone and computer communications, and empowered the government to monitor books people read. It created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the Japanese internment in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That day came with the recent decision of a New York federal judge, dismissing a case that challenged the detention of hundreds of Arab and Muslim foreign nationals shortly after 9/11. None has been convicted of any crime involving terrorism. U.S. District Judge John Gleason ruled in Turkmen v. Ashcroft that the round-up and indefinite detention of foreign nationals on immigration charges based only on their race, religion or national origin does not violate equal protection or due process. This is not surprising in light of the anti-immigrant hysteria sweeping our country today.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

Milton Mayer described the escalation of surveillance that accompanied the rise of German fascism: "What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security." We should heed his words.

Read on >>

The Hayden Charade

In his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, General Michael Hayden promised to promote autonomy and objectivity in the CIA if confirmed as its new director. Hayden assured the senators he would provide "hard-edged assessments" and be tolerant of dissenting views on intelligence matters. "When it comes to speaking truth to power," Hayden declared, "I will lead CIA analysts by example. I will … always give our nation's leaders the best analytic judgment."

The evidence, however, suggests precisely the opposite. As head of the National Security Agency, this 4-star general walked in lockstep with his commander in chief, George W. Bush. Hayden helped designed the illegal program of spying on our telephone calls and emails and then repeatedly defended it when interrogated by the senators at his hearing, citing "legal" opinions of Bush's hired guns in the Justice Department.

Rather than providing the White House with a neutral assessment of Iran's nuclear capabilities, we can expect Hayden to give Bush the "intelligence" the president seeks to justify his war on Iran. Things did not run as smoothly as Bush would have wished under the last two CIA directors. He had to dispatch Dick Cheney to the CIA several times to furnish the "intelligence" he needed to rationalize his war on Iraq.

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) asked Hayden if he was "comfortable" with under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's personal
intelligence-analysis cell, which hyped a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Hayden said he wasn't comfortable with it and protested that he wasn't aware of a lot of the activity going on leading up to the Iraq war.

But when questioned about Colin Powell's use of false WMD information to support his infamous appearance before the United Nations in the run-up the war, Hayden made a telling admission.

In response to Levin's question about the legal standard for declassifying information in the public interest, Hayden said, "We used that in Powell's speech. George [Tenet] had to call me for three tapes." Hayden was right in the middle of the preparation for Powell's disingenuous presentation.

Hayden, who will be the third director of the CIA in two years, will salute and march to Bush's agenda. The nation's chief spook will shape the "intelligence" to fit Bush's policy of regime change in Iran.

Hayden vowed to "reaffirm CIA's proud culture of risk-taking and excellence." Not one of the senators, from either party, interrogated Hayden about the CIA's checkered past.

There was no mention of the CIA's 1953 coup that ousted Iran's democratically-elected president Mohammed Mosadeq and replaced him with the US-friendly tyrant, the Shah Reza Pahlavi. The 1979 Iranian revolution lead to the overthrow of the Shah's regime and the rise of Islamic fascism under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini, providing a model of theocracy for much of the Muslim world.

Absent was any reference in the hearing to the CIA's support for Osama bin Laden in his fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The defeat of the USSR there, and the rise of the Mujahedin, enabled the Taliban to come to power. Then, Bin Laden used his CIA training to orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

Today we are reaping what the CIA sowed in Iran and Afghanistan.

None of the senators asked Hayden about the CIA's torture manuals, which have been utilized by myriad Latin American dictators to repress their people.

Much of the CIA's risk-taking is nothing to be proud of. There is no indication that Hayden will bring new integrity to the CIA.

Hayden's defense of the NSA's warrantless surveillance program was incredible. When questioned about the Fourth Amendment's standard for searches and seizures, Hayden assured the senators that he had consulted with his relatives who are in law school for legal advice.

The Fourth Amendment says the people shall be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause. For more than a century, the Supreme Court has held that in order to be reasonable, a search or seizure must be supported by a search warrant based on probable cause and issued by a judge. Only when certain narrowly-defined exceptions apply can the government dispense with a warrant.

Hayden and his law student relatives have reversed that presumption. He told the senators that only reasonableness, not a warrant, is necessary to intercept our private communications. Hayden said the NSA uses a probable cause standard. But the Supreme Court has consistently declared that a judge must determine whether probable cause exists.

When confronted with USA Today's report that the NSA is collecting data on tens of millions of Americans, monitoring the calls we make and receive, Hayden refused to confirm or deny it.

Two of the long-distance companies named in that article, Verizon Communications and BellSouth, both facing lawsuits for invasion of privacy, have denied giving the government these records. AT&T has refused comment.

Interestingly, Bush issued an executive order on May 5 that allows Director of Intelligence John Negroponte - Michael Hayden's boss - to authorize a company to conceal activities related to "national security." Thus, we cannot trust the denials by Verizon and BellSouth.

Like Bush's warrantless eavesdropping on calls where one party is abroad, the NSA's massive data collection is illegal.

Both of these programs violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which clearly requires a warrant issued by a FISA court judge.

It is illegal for the NSA to collect phone numbers from phone companies unless the FISA court authorizes it.

Telephone records that show what numbers have called a specific telephone are captured by a "trap and trace" device. A "pen register" shows what number a specific telephone has called.

The law on pen registers and trap and trace devices requires that a court order be obtained either under FISA or Title III, the criminal wiretap law.

In order to intercept communications, the NSA would have to demonstrate to the court that the person whose calls are being targeted is an agent of a foreign power or that the information is relevant to an ongoing terrorism investigation.

The Patriot Act allows the FBI to use a national security letter - a kind of administrative subpoena - to obtain these records. But Congress specifically withheld this subpoena power from the NSA, which must convince the FISA court that the information is relevant.

There is no evidence that NSA has obtained court orders before obtaining the phone records of millions of Americans.

There is evidence, however, that the FBI is using national security letters to go after journalists critical of the administration. Brian Ross from ABC News told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! that the government's methods are changing the way he operates. It makes his work "very, very difficult," he said. "And, you know, you sort of have to start thinking, I guess, like some sort of Mafia capo," Ross noted. "You make your phone calls with bags of quarters at pay phones, if you can find them anymore. It's chilling to say the least." So much for a free press.

Last year, the FBI issued a total of 9,254 national security letters, targeting 3,500 citizens and legal residents.

In October 2002, while serving as NSA director, Hayden misled Congress about the extent of the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told Hayden at the hearing, "I now have a difficult time with your credibility."

Earlier this year, Hayden made more misleading statements in an appearance before the National Press Club. He said, "The intrusion into privacy is also limited: only international calls." In fact, the NSA is collecting data on millions of purely domestic calls.

Hayden ducked several questions, deferring his answers to the closed session that followed the public hearing on Thursday. Senators who hear his secret testimony are forbidden to publicize it. Hayden refused to publicly answer seven questions posed by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) about whether the NSA has sought FISA warrants for pen register and trap and trace devices; whether terror suspects in secret CIA prisons are likely to remain incommunicado until the war on terror ends; whether there is periodic review of what useful intelligence can be gathered by interrogations of terrorists held for years with no contact with Al Qaeda; whether "water boarding," recently classified as torture by the UN, is acceptable; whether the CIA will obey laws and treaties in light of the Detainee Treatment Act; whether Hayden agreed with the CIA inspector general's conclusion that certain interrogation techniques constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment prohibited by the Convention Against Torture; whether Hayden agreed with estimates that Iran is some years away from nuclear weapons capability; and whether the CIA has received new guidance from the Justice Department about acceptable interrogation techniques since the passage of the Detainee Treatment Act.

Although Hayden pledged objectivity in his opening statement, he let slip his real intention under questioning by Levin. Hayden said the war on terror "is fundamentally a war of ideas. And we have to skew our intelligence to support the other elements of national power as well." Hayden admitted he will skew the intelligence to fit Bush's agenda.

During the hearing, Wyden nailed it. He asked Hayden, "Where is the independent check, General, the independent check that can be verified on these programs that the newspapers are reporting on?"

James Madison wrote in 1822: "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

General Michael Hayden as CIA director will see to it that we continue to be kept in the dark about how our liberties are swiftly vanishing. The future of our democracy is at stake.

Read on >>

Scapegoats in Terror War

The Moussaoui jury today enters its fifth day of deliberations on whether to execute the self-avowed conspirator in the September 11 attacks. After hours of graphic testimony and videotapes of the horrors on 9/11, as well as Moussaoui's confession, this should have been an open-and-shut case.

Yet the jury cannot ignore the fact that Zacarias Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic. Moussaoui testified that he and would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid were slated to fly a fifth airplane into the White House on September 11. But the FBI admitted there was no evidence that Reid had prior knowledge of 9/11, or that al-Qaeda had told him to work with Moussaoui.

Defense psychologist Xavier Amador testified that Moussaoui has firmly held delusional beliefs that George W. Bush will free him from prison and that his attorneys are conspiring to kill him.

In fact, Bush is surely delighted that it is Moussaoui, and not the real culprits responsible for the 9/11 attacks, who is on trial. If Bush's hired gun Alberto Gonzales were to charge Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Mohammad al-Qahtani, both now in US custody, with crimes for their responsibility for those attacks, their statements would be inadmissible, because they were obtained by torture. Mohammed is the reputed mastermind of 9/11 and al-Qahtani is the alleged "20th hijacker."

So the best the Bush administration can do to seek justice is to prosecute a mentally ill marginal bit player who was in a Minnesota jail on September 11, 2001.

This is not the first time Team Bush has hidden behind a scapegoat.

Even though the prosecution had no direct evidence tying the Lackawanna Six to terrorist crimes, all six defendants pleaded guilty to crimes that brought them 6 1/2 years to 9 years in prison. The attorney general had threatened to charge them with being "enemy combatants" and ship them to Guantánamo, to be held indefinitely, with no trials and no access to lawyers or courts.

Bush & Co. has suffered a string of defeats in the "terror" cases it has attempted to prosecute.

Last year, a Florida jury acquitted a former professor charged with supporting Palestinian groups. The year before, an Idaho jury refused to convict a college student accused of aiding terrorists in Chechnya and Israel.

An Oregon lawyer arrested by the FBI two years ago was released after being held in custody for nearly three weeks. The FBI had linked him to the Madrid train bombings with a faulty fingerprint identification.

And a judge reversed the convictions of two Detroit men arrested the week after September 11, 2001, for planning a terrorist incident. The prosecutor had covered up the fact that its key witness admitted lying to the FBI.

After Jose Padilla had languished in custody with no charges for nearly three years, Bush finally charged him with a conspiracy unrelated to 9/11 or the "dirty bombing" that former Attorney General John Ashcroft had ceremoniously proclaimed shortly after Padilla's arrest. Afraid the Supreme Court would slap down the president for designating US citizens "enemy combatants," the Department of Justice sought to pre-empt an unfavorable ruling by charging Padilla with a crime.

On Friday, a federal judge rejected requests by the Justice Department to further limit the defense's use of the secret evidence the prosecution plans to employ against Padilla.

What about the so-called Bush "victory" in prosecuting Hamid Hayat of Lodi, California? The day after the jury's guilty verdict last week, one of the jurors said she had never believed that Hayat was guilty, and that she was pressured by other jurors into changing her vote. The case against Hayat relied on a paid FBI informant whose credibility was undermined at trial and on statements made by Hayat without his lawyer present. The interrogations were conducted in English, which Hayat does not fully understand. Hayat's lawyers said that detectives used leading questions and his statements were made under duress.

Hayat was prosecuted for providing material support to terrorists by attending a training camp in Pakistan. But the government presented no evidence that Hayat had planned or participated in any terrorist act, or that he had ever been in Pakistan.

Moreover, the material support statute under which Hayat was convicted has twice been declared unconstitutionally vague by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, because it does not require proof of any overt act.

The federal judge who presided over Hayat's case declared a mistrial in the case of Hayat's father, who had been charged with lying to investigators in order to conceal his son's actions. After eight days of deliberations, jurors were unable to agree on his guilt.

Georgetown University law professor David Cole affirmed, "The government in the war on terrorism has generally swept broadly and put a high premium on convictions at any cost. That puts pressure on prosecutors - to overcharge, to coach witnesses, to fail to disclose exculpatory evidence."

The judge in Moussaoui's trial barred the government from seeking the death penalty after prosecutors refused to give the defense access to detained al Qaeda leaders to exonerate Moussaoui. Judge Leonie Brinkema's decision was overturned by the appeals court. Judge Brinkema nearly dropped the death penalty again after prosecutors improperly coached several witnesses.

Bush frequently declares that his administration is bringing the terrorists to justice. Yet his systematic use of torture on prisoners, a series of botched prosecutions, and pathetic scapegoats hardly inspire confidence in our chief executive.

Indeed, on Friday, the Justice Department admitted for the first time that it issued 9,254 subpoenas to banks, telephone companies and Internet providers last year, seeking information on 3,501 US citizens and legal residents. This should give us all pause. You or I could be next.

Read on >>

Bush Mouthpiece Defends Illegal Spying

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was called before the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 06 to explain why George W. Bush's program of warrantless spying on Americans is lawful.

Before Gonzales began his testimony, the committee voted along party lines to dispense with the oath. Thus, if Gonzales were to lie, he could not be convicted or even charged with perjury, which requires the lie be made under oath. Why would the Republican senators insist that Gonzales not be sworn to tell the truth unless they expected him to lie?

Gonzales testified that Bush authorized his "Terrorist Surveillance Program" in late 2001, and has renewed it every 45 days since then. The program allows the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on telephone and computer communications of Americans in the United States if the NSA decides there is probable cause to believe that one party is a member or agent of al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization, provided one party to the conversation is overseas.

The program is so highly classified that Gonzales refused to tell the senators how many US citizens' emails or phone calls had been intercepted, whether there have been abuses, and whether anyone had been disciplined for abuses.

Bush established this program to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress enacted FISA in 1978 in response to the Nixon administration's abuses of national security wiretaps, which it used against its domestic opponents under the guise of conducting counterintelligence investigations. A senate committee chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church documented the NSA's abuses that led to the enactment of FISA.

FISA requires that the government convince a judge that there is probable cause to believe the target of the surveillance is a foreign power or the agent of a foreign power. FISA specifically allows for warrantless wartime domestic electronic surveillance, but only for the first 15 days after Congress declares war.

By its express terms, FISA provides that FISA and specified provisions of the federal criminal code (which governs wiretaps for criminal investigation) are the "exclusive means by which electronic surveillance … may be conducted."

FISA anticipates the need to act quickly by allowing a warrantless wiretap, provided the government applies for a FISA court order within 72 hours. However, Gonzales testified that the FISA procedure was "burdensome." He cited the paperwork as an impediment to the "nimble" gathering of intelligence. Although both the Department of Justice and the NSA have batteries of lawyers, Gonzales said we "can't afford to pose layers of lawyers" in the process.

Gonzales insisted that Bush's program complies with FISA because FISA exempts from criminal liability those who conduct electronic surveillance without following FISA procedures where such surveillance is "authorized by statute." Gonzales maintained that Congress's authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) passed shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks was a statute that authorizes surveillance outside of FISA. He cited the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which said the AUMF allows for the detention of US citizen enemy combatants in spite of another statute governing detentions of US citizens.

However, the Hamdi Court determined that the AUMF permits the use of force only against people captured on the battlefield during the Afghanistan war. When the Bush administration asked former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle to include the words "inside the United States" in the AUMF, he refused, and those words do not appear in the resolution.

Gonzales also said that the president's commander in chief powers allow warrantless wiretaps. But as Justice Jackson wrote in the seminal case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the president's power is "at its lowest ebb" when he acts in defiance of "the expressed or implied will of Congress." Nowhere is Congress's intent expressed more clearly than in FISA, which comprises the exclusive scheme for electronic surveillance to gather intelligence.

Congress's October 2001 amendment of FISA in the USA Patriot Act underscores its intent that FISA remain the exclusive means for authorizing intelligence wiretapping. Gonzales was asked why the administration didn't approach Congress to amend FISA again if it needed more flexibility to fight terrorism. Gonzales said he opposes amending FISA, ironically maintaining it would interfere with the NSA program.

So why is the Bush administration loathe to obtain warrants to authorize wiretaps?

"The most logical reason for not getting a warrant is that the president's intelligence acolytes, who behave as though they graduated from the Laurel and Hardy school of data mining, have not been able to demonstrate that the people being spied upon are connected to Al Qaeda or any other terror organization," Bob Herbert wrote in yesterday's New York Times.

In other words, even the super-secret FISA court may be refusing to give Bush what he wants because he is overreaching.

A rare May 2002 opinion of the FISA court stated that in March of 2001, the government had reported misstatements in a series of FISA applications. The court modified then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's request for expanded intelligence-gathering procedures. In November 2002, the FISA appeals court reversed the lower court and granted Ashcroft's request. Nonetheless, Bush continued his end-run around FISA with the NSA program.

Gonzales, who said the government still uses FISA in some cases, would not respond when Senator Arlen Specter asked him why he didn't take the broad NSA program to the FISA court for approval. Gonzales wouldn't say whether he tells the FISA court that information supporting a warrant request was gathered through the NSA program. And he refused to tell Specter whether the FISA court is declining to issue warrants because it is not satisfied with the NSA program.

In a February 2003 report on FISA implementation failures, the Senate Judiciary Committee uncovered several problems: "a misunderstanding of the rules governing the application procedure, varying interpretations of the law among key participants, and a break-down of communication among all those involved in the FISA application process. Most disturbing," the committee found, "is the lack of accountability that has permeated the entire application procedure."

The committee concluded that "key FBI agents and officials were inadequately trained in important aspects of not only FISA, but also fundamental aspects of criminal law."

Notably, the report determined that "in the time leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the FBI and DoJ had not devoted sufficient resources to implementing the FISA, so that long delays both crippled enforcement efforts and demoralized line agents."

At the end of the hearing, Gonzales let slip the real reason Bush set up a program to evade FISA. Gonzales said that if the government had to apply for a FISA warrant, it "can't begin surveillance based on a whim of someone at NSA."

Gonzales would not tell the senators whether Bush has authorized other secret programs besides the NSA spying. Gonzales refused to say whether the government could wiretap purely domestic calls without a warrant, or whether he has the authority to search the first class mail of American citizens or to examine people's medical records. When Republican Senator John Cornyn asked him whether law enforcement could shoot down a plane with drugs, Gonzales said, "I'd have to think about that."

Gonzales declined to rule out the president's commander in chief power to torture, notwithstanding Congress's passage of the McCain Amendment on December 30. When Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked him whether a Congressional statute that forbids abuse of prisoners could infringe on the president's commander in chief powers, Gonzales said, "It depends."

Graham was concerned that the "inherent authority of the president" theory that Gonzales set forth "could basically neuter the Congress and weaken the courts." Graham said he had "never envisioned that the AUMF would give the president carte blanche to go around FISA." Graham worried that it "would be harder for the next president to get a use of force resolution." He said, "When a nation is at war, you need checks and balances more than ever."

Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, predicted that Bush's theory could be used to authorize internment camps for groups of US citizens the president deems suspicious.

Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said, "Our greatest fear is that this president will go far beyond" the NSA program and "comb through thousands of ordinary Americans' email."

Although Gonzales continually waved the 9/11 flag in his defense of the NSA program, the Washington Post reported Sunday that nearly all of the thousands of Americans' calls that have been intercepted have revealed nothing pertinent to terrorism.

After the non-partisan Congressional Research Service issued a 44-page analysis that concluded the NSA program was unlawful, House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Pete Hoekstra insisted on assurances that CRS "truly provides 'comprehensive and reliable' legislative research that is 'free of partisan or other bias.'"

Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart, a member of the Church Committee in the 1970s, said, "What we're experiencing now, in my judgment, is a repeat of the Nixon years. Then it was justified by civil unrest and the Vietnam war. Now it's terrorism and the Iraq war."

When Senator Charles Grassley asked Gonzales if he thought it was incredible that they were having the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales replied, "I think we have a good story to tell."

Read on >>

Honoring Clinton Jencks, Legendary Labor Organizer

Legendary labor organizer Clinton Jencks, who led mineworkers in New Mexico in a strike depicted in the classic 1953 movie "Salt of the Earth," died Dec. 15, 2005 in San Diego of natural causes. He was 87.

An international representative of the Amalgamated Bayard District Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers in New Mexico, Jencks was convicted of falsely swearing a non-Communist affidavit required of officials under the Taft-Hartley Act during the McCarthy era. His five-year prison sentence was reversed by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1957 case, Jencks v. United States. The government had refused to turn over to the defense statements made by prosecution witnesses, including Harvey Matusow, a former Communist who went to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy. Matusow later recanted his testimony against Jencks in the book "False Witness."

The Supreme Court ordered the government to give Jencks full access to its records. After the FBI refused, the prosecution was forced to dismiss the case against Jencks. Thanks to the Jencks case, the government is now required to provide the defense with prosecution witness statements. This hurdle was cited by the Department of Justice as a reason for abandoning prosecutions under the Smith Act, the centerpiece of federal anti-Communist legislation in the 1940's and 1950's.

Three months after the Jencks case was decided, Congress enacted the Jencks Act, in order to blunt the effects of the high court's decision. The statute provides that no statement of a government witness shall be turned over to the defense until after the witness has first testified on direct examination.

Jencks raised the ire of the government with his successful organizing efforts. He was beaten up, thrown into jail, and his car was shot full of holes. "Why was I singled out?", Jencks asked. "I was a very good organizer. I was dangerous in that sense." Jencks said his work "concentrated at an intersection of several important struggles" - the proliferation of union organization after the Great Depression and World War II, and the new struggles of Mexican-American workers and of women.

Unusually democratic in his sensibility to all people, Jencks respected everyone, cultivating leadership within the rank and file. Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union, said, "His life was one of extraordinary bravery. He was a pioneer, such a leader in an organization of mostly Spanish-speaking people. He earned everyone's respect."

Jencks, whom the Latino workers affectionately dubbed "El Palomino," said, "If you believe in freedom, it's freedom for everybody. And the only way you can test another's devotion to freedom is in the crucible of struggle."

Jencks led the primarily Latino union in a 15-month strike against Empire Zinc Co. beginning in 1950. They demanded equal pay with white workers, better safety conditions and healthcare. When the men were enjoined from walking the picket line, the women took over, and the men tended house, a radical notion in the 1950's. The strike was ultimately successful.

"Salt of the Earth" chronicled that strike. Made by blacklisted filmmakers, it was produced on a shoestring with few professional actors. The strikers, including Jencks, portrayed themselves in the film. Theaters nationwide succumbed to pressure from the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), the Screen Actors Guild and the International Alliance of Theater and Stage Employees, and refused to show the film.

One of only 100 films selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry, "Salt of the Earth" is one of the most widely viewed films in the world.

Lorenzo Torres was a fellow striker; his wife, Anita, walked the picket line. The couple, who also worked with Jencks on the film, said, "Clinton's contribution has not been matched since then. The coalition work which resulted from his leadership was a phenomenal improvement from the past and still is present. It will resonate among the miners."

Jencks, a highly decorated war veteran, was blacklisted, unable to find work for many years. He moved to San Francisco, a union town, and finally got a job. But, he said, "The FBI is very powerful and far-reaching." Once again, he was out of work, leading a California State Employment counselor to tell him, "We need a new unemployment classification for you. I think you may be politically unemployable."

In 1959, Jencks was awarded the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for training university professors. He was then ordered to appear before HUAC. In spite of intense pressure from the FBI, the foundation affirmed his fellowship and Jencks received a Ph.D. in economics from U.C. Berkeley and later taught for 22 years at San Diego State University. When Jencks began teaching, the university withstood intense pressure to fire him; it had succumbed to red baiting of prior faculty members and was determined to stand firm behind Jencks.

Frank Wilkinson was another target of the government's red-baiting during this period. In the heyday of McCarthyism, Wilkinson formed the The National Committee to Abolish HUAC which ultimately succeeded in its goal. Wilkinson, who went to jail for a year for refusing to testify before HUAC, said of Jencks, "Clint's heartfelt contributions to building a better world are forever enshrined in the history of people fighting for peace and justice."

Jencks loved the National Lawyers Guild. His lawyer, John McTernan, a prominent Guild member, uncovered the actual frame-up of Jencks by the FBI. At a 1999 Guild meeting at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Jencks said, "I thank the Guild members very much for their courage in times of stress. The Guild was attacked for being a Communist front, when what the Guild was trying to do was to be something more than the ABA; it had a little bigger vision, a little bigger challenge for you and me."

Clinton Jencks remained committed to the fight for economic and social justice. Three days before he died, Clint told me he saw parallels between the repression he and others endured during the McCarthy period and the Bush administration's current policies. "It gives me pause to think what would happen if I were going to court today," he said. "The government, right up to the Supreme Court, refused to come clean."

A true egalitarian, Clint maintained, "We can have individual dignity only if all have dignity. Life is a choice, and we have to choose to make a difference - a better life for everyone without exception."

Read on >>

Big Brother Bush Is Listening

Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order.
-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004, Buffalo, New York.

In an assertion of executive power that rivals the excesses of the McCarthy era of the late 1940's and 1950's, and the dreaded COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) of the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, George W. Bush's National Security Agency has been secretly spying on United States citizens without warrants for the last three years.

George Orwell's book "1984" was first published during the heyday of McCarthyism in 1949. In the society Orwell described, everyone was under surveillance by the authorities. The people were constantly reminded of this by the phrase, "Big Brother is watching you."

During the McCarthy period, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting."

Although Orwell's allegory was aimed at communism, it was the United States government that initiated COINTELPRO, designed by its own terms to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize" political and activist groups. In the 1960s, for example, the FBI targeted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a program called "Racial Matters." King's campaign to register African-American voters in the South raised the hackles of the FBI, which disingenuously claimed King's organization was being infiltrated by communists. In fact, the FBI was really concerned that King's civil rights campaign, and particularly his opposition to the Vietnam War, "represented a clear threat to the established order of the US." The FBI went after King with a vengeance, wiretapping his telephones and securing very personal information which it used to try to drive him to divorce and suicide, and to discredit him.

In response to the excesses of COINTELPRO, a congressional committee chaired by Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, conducted an investigation of activities of the domestic intelligence agencies in the 1950's, 1960's and early 1970's. Congress established guidelines to regulate FBI activity in foreign and domestic intelligence-gathering. Reacting against President Richard Nixon's assertion of unchecked presidential power, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, to regulate electronic surveillance, while at the same time protecting national security.

FISA established a secret court to consider applications by the government for wiretap orders. It specifically created only one exception for the president to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant. For that exception to apply, the Attorney General must certify under oath that the communications to be monitored will be exclusively between foreign powers, and that there is no substantial likelihood that a United States person will be overheard.

FISA allows the Attorney General to engage in wiretapping in emergency situations without a prior judicial order provided he or she applies for one within 72 hours after initiating the surveillance. And FISA specifically covers warrantless wiretaps during wartime; it limits them to the first 15 days after war is declared. Since 1978, the court has granted about 19,000 warrants and only turned down five.

Nevertheless, in spite of FISA's streamlined procedure for allowing lawful surveillance, Bush has sidelined the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2002, he signed an executive order that authorizes the National Security Agency to wiretap people within the United States with no judicial review. It is estimated that the NSA has eavesdropped on thousands of private conversations in the last three years. Additionally, the NSA has combed through large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States. It has thus collected vast personal information that has nothing to do with national security.

In the wake of the outcry after the New York Times broke the story of Bush's secret surveillance, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cited Congress's authorization of the use of force the day after the September 11 terrorist attacks as justification for the program. But the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) only permits the president to use "necessary and appropriate force" against "nations, organizations, or persons" that "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the 9/11 attacks, or that "harbored such persons."

That license to use appropriate force does not authorize the government to spy on people in the United States without a warrant. Indeed, several congresspersons who voted for the AUMF say they only intended to grant the president authority to invade Afghanistan, not to conduct unbridled electronic surveillance of people in the United States.

Tom Daschle, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader when Congress passed AUMF. He helped negotiate the law with the White House counsel's office. "I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up," Dashcle said. "I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance."

In fact, Daschle revealed that Congress turned down White House proposals both to authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States," and to authorize the use of appropriate force "in the United States."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., described Bush's spying program as an "arrogant usurpation of power." He said, "The president is not above the law; he is not King George." Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wis., agreed: "He is the president, not a king," Feingold noted.

Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said such behavior by the executive branch "can't be condoned." He declared on the Senate floor, "That's wrong, clearly and categorically wrong. This will be a matter for oversight by the Judiciary committee as soon as we can get to it in the new year - a very, very high priority item."

The spying revelation also influenced the Senate vote on the renewal of the USA Patriot Act. It swayed New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer's decision. "Today's revelation that the government listened in on thousands of phone conversations without getting a warrant is shocking and has greatly influenced my vote," Schumer said. "Today's revelation makes it very clear that we have to be very careful - very careful."

In a stunning blow against Bush, who had hoped several provisions of the Patriot Act would be made permanent, Congress extended the Patriot Act for only five weeks just before it recessed for the holidays.

It is not just congresspersons who are outraged at Bush's secret surveillance. US District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the FISA court, has resigned. Robertson, selected by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist to serve on the FISA court, reportedly expressed deep concern that Bush's program is legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work, according to the Washington Post.

Besides the NSA program, the American Civil Liberties Union has discovered through a Freedom of Information request that counter-terrorism agents at the FBI have conducted extensive surveillance of such groups as the Vegan Community Project, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and a Catholic Workers group the FBI accuses of having a "semi-communist ideology." Red-baiting is once again alive and well in America.

In 1975, Senator Frank Church said of the NSA, "That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide." Church worried about the capacity of "this agency and all agencies that possess this technology" to "make tyranny total in America."

George W. Bush has fulfilled the prophesies of both George Orwell and Frank Church - with a vengeance. But neither Orwell nor Church could have foreseen the technological developments that enable Bush's large ears to penetrate our most intimate conversations.

The real motivation underlying Bush's unprecedented assertion of executive power was revealed by Dick Cheney: "Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the 1970's, served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area. The President of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired."

Bush has gone far beyond what the Constitution authorizes, however. Only Congress has the power to make laws. Congress has not authorized the president to suspend the law. And FISA makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in jail, for the executive to conduct a wiretap without statutory authorization.

Read on >>

The President and His Vice: Torturer's Puppetmasters

The dots have finally been connected and the picture is not a pretty one. It is the face of the president of vice, Dick Cheney. The policies on the treatment of prisoners emanating from Cheney's office triggered the abuse and torture, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff.

"It was clear to me that there was a visible audit trail from the Vice President's office through the Secretary of Defense down to the commanders in the field," Wilkerson, a former colonel, said on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." The interrogation techniques sanctioned by Cheney "were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war," Wilkerson declared.

Not coincidentally, Cheney has been lobbying Congress to prevent it from outlawing torture (which is already against the law, by the way). After Republican Senator John McCain secured 90 votes in the Senate to codify the prohibition against cruel, unusual, or degrading treatment or punishment, Cheney began to sweat. With CIA Director Porter Goss in tow, Cheney paid a visit to McCain and tried to convince the senator to allow an exemption for the CIA. McCain refused to legalize the CIA's ongoing illegal torture of prisoners.

Last week, Dana Priest wrote in the Washington Post that the CIA has been surreptitiously interrogating prisoners in a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe. Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland, two supporters of Bush's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, as locations for these secret prisons.

Only Bush and a few of his top officials, undoubtedly including Cheney, have known about the existence and situs of these "black sites," as they are called in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and Congressional documents, according to Priest.

The secret prisons were established pursuant to a presidential "finding" signed by Bush six days after the September 11 attacks. That finding gives the CIA permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world. Assassination, or summary execution, violates US and international law.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been taken to these "black sites." Many are held underground and subjected to torture out of view of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

CIA interrogators use "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," which violate US law. They include "waterboarding" (mock drowning) and mock suffocation. Another enhancement is a "stress position," in which a prisoner in suspended from the ceiling or wall by his wrists, which are handcuffed behind his back. Iraqi Manadel Jamadi was subjected to this treatment before he died in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib in November 2003. Tony Diaz, an MP who witnessed his torture, said that blood gushed from Jamadi's mouth like "a faucet had turned on" after he was lowered to the ground.

Several current and former intelligence officials are nervous about these "black sites," which were set up in a knee-jerk response to 9/11, Priest reported.

About the same time the "black sites" were established, Cheney undertook a campaign to introduce torture as a standard interrogation technique, according to the Washington Monthly. One of his test cases was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda prisoner captured shortly after 9/11. An ex-FBI official reported that "they duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for some torturous Egyptian interrogations, in violation of US law prohibiting extraordinary renditions.

A newly declassified memo reveals that al-Libi provided us with false information that suggested Iraq had trained al-Qaeda to use weapons of mass destruction. Even though US intelligence thought the information was false as early as 2002 because it was obtained under torture, al-Libi's information provided the centerpiece of Colin Powell's now thoroughly discredited February 2003 claim before the United Nations that Iraq had developed WMD programs.

Dick Cheney not only ordered the torture; he was willing to use false information obtained through torture to support Bush's pre-determined decision to make war on Iraq.

Now that Cheney has been fingered as complicit in the torture, it is just a matter of time before the official torture dots connect to the President himself. In December 2004, the American Civil Liberties Union released an internal FBI email that the ALCU received pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. The email, dated May 22, 2004, describes an Executive Order that authorized sleep deprivation, placing hoods over prisoners' heads, the use of loud music for sensory overload, stripping detainees naked, the use of "stress positions," and the use of dogs. The White House, Pentagon and FBI officials denied that Bush had issued such an Executive Order, saying that it was really a Defense Department directive instead.

It is undisputed that Bush determined in a February 7, 2002, order that he had the authority to suspend the Geneva Conventions, a position never before taken by an American president and a clear violation of US law.

Bush wrote in that order, "As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva." (Emphasis added.)

In essence, Bush declared, incorrectly, that as commander in chief, he had the power to override the law with his policy. Where did he get that idea? From a January 25, 2002, memo sent by Alberto Gonzales to the President, which described the Geneva Conventions as "obsolete" and "quaint." That memo was inspired by David Addington, just named by Cheney to replace the indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby as the Vice President's chief of staff.

Addington was assistant general counsel to the CIA when Reagan was funding the death squads in El Salvador and the illegal Nicaraguan contras. Cheney's new chief of staff helped draft the infamous August 2002 memo that illegally narrowed the definition of torture, and justified torture in some cases. Now, Addington is trying to prevent the Pentagon from adopting the language of Geneva in its revised rules for handling prisoners. The circle of torture remains unbroken.

Libby is charged with obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI about the outing of a CIA agent. As in the Watergate scandal, a White House official is being prosecuted for the cover-up. There is plenty of evidence that officials in the Bush administration have been trying to cover up their torture since the inception of Bush's "war on terror."

The earliest example of the official cover-up was when John Walker Lindh, captured in Afghanistan shortly after September 11, 2001, was given a plea bargain that required him to keep mum about the mistreatment he suffered while in US custody. Col. Janis Karpinski told me in an August 3, 2005, interview for t r u t h o u t (Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush Administration) that after she first learned of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez took systematic steps to hush it up. Soldiers reported to Human Rights Watch that US soldiers, called "Murderous Maniacs," broke prisoners' bones every other week at FOB Mercury; then, "those responsible would state that the detainee was injured during the process of capture and the physician assistant would sign off on this."

Most recently, in an effort to smooth over the torture of the hunger strikers by US officials at Guantánamo prison, Donald Rumsfeld said, "There are a number of people who go on a diet where they don't eat for a period and then go off of it at some point. And then they rotate and other people do that." Rumsfeld refuses to allow UN human rights investigators to meet with the prisoners there.

What is Rumsfeld trying to hide at Guantánamo? About 200 prisoners, many of whom have been there nearly four years without criminal charges, have been on a hunger strike for several weeks. Several of them are being force-fed through large tubes inserted into their noses and down into their stomachs, with no sedatives or anesthesia. One prisoner explained to his lawyer, "Now, after four years in captivity, life and death are the same."

The Washington Post reported today that Cheney has waged an intense, largely unpublicized campaign over the past year to prevent Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from restricting interrogations of terrorist suspects.

Dick Cheney is right in the center of the Bush administration's government of dirty tricks. By replacing Libby with Addington, Cheney has signaled his determination to continue Bush's torturous policies. In a recent editorial, the Washington Post called Dick Cheney "Vice President for Torture." The President and his Vice continue to pull the torturers' puppet strings. Will Bush be deemed complicit in the torture? Or will his deputies cover up for him the way Ronald Reagan's men insulated him from liability in the Iran-Contra scandal?

Read on >>

Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush Administration

I had been hesitant to speak out before because this Administration is so vindictive. But now I will ... Anybody who confronts this Administration or Rumsfeld or the Pentagon with a true assessment, they find themselves either out of a job, out of their positions, fired, relieved or chastised. Their career comes to an end.
-- Janis Karpinski, interview with Marjorie Cohn, August 3, 2005

Army Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was in charge of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq when the now famous torture photographs were taken in fall of 2003. She was reprimanded and demoted to Colonel for her failure to properly supervise the prison guards. Karpinski is the highest ranking officer to be sanctioned for the mistreatment of prisoners. On August 3, 2005, I interviewed Janis Karpinski. In the most comprehensive public statement she has made to date, Karpinski deconstructs the entire United States military operation in Iraq with some astonishing revelations.

When Karpinski got to Abu Ghraib, "there was a completely different story than what we were being told in the United States. It was out of control. There weren't enough soldiers. Nobody had the right equipment. They were driving around in unarmored vehicles, some of them without doors ... So, knowing that they were ill-equipped and ill-prepared, they pushed them out anyway, because those two three-stars wanted their fifteen minutes of fame, I suppose."

Karpinski said that General Shinseki briefed Rumsfeld that "he can't win this war, if they insist on invading Iraq, he can't win this war with less than 300,000 soldiers." Rumsfeld reportedly ordered Shinseki to go back and find a way to do this with 125,000 to 130,000, but Shinseki came back and said they couldn't do the job with that number. "What did Rumsfeld do?" Karpinski asked rhetorically. "If you can't agree with me, I'm going to find somebody who can. He made Shinseki a lame duck, for all practical purposes, and brought in Schoomaker. And Schoomaker got it. He said, 'Oh yes sir, we can do this with 125,000.'"

Karpinski says she did not know about the torture occurring in Cellblocks 1-A and 1-B at Abu Ghraib because it took place at night. She didn't live at Abu Ghraib, and nobody was permitted to travel at night due to the dangerous road conditions. The first she heard about the torture was on January 12, 2004. She was never allowed to speak to the people who had worked on the night shift. She "was told by Colonel Warren, the JAG officer for General Sanchez, that they weren't assigned to me, that they were not under my control, and I really had no right to see them."

When Karpinski inquired, "What's this about photographs?" the sergeant replied, "Ma'am, we've heard something about photographs, but I have no idea. Nobody has any details, and Ma'am, if anybody knows, nobody is talking." When Karpinski asked to see the log books, the sergeant told her that the Criminal Investigation Division had taken everything except for something on a pole outside the little office they were using.

"It was a memorandum signed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, authorizing a short list, maybe 6 or 8 techniques: use of dogs; stress positions; loud music; deprivation of food; keeping the lights on, those kinds of things," Karpinski said. "And then a handwritten message over to the side that appeared to be the same handwriting as the signature, and that signature was Secretary Rumsfeld's. And it said, 'Make sure this happens' with two exclamation points. And that was the only thing they had. Everything else had been confiscated."

Karpinski tried to get information, but "nobody knew anything, nobody - at least, that's what they were claiming. The Company Commander, Captain Reese, was tearful in my office and repeatedly told me he knew nothing about it, knew nothing about it," Karpinski said. But in a later plea bargain he entered into after the Taguba Report came out, "Captain Reese said that not only did he know about it, but he was told not to report it to his chain of command, and he was told that by Colonel Pappas. And he claimed that he saw General Sanchez out there on several occasions witnessing the torture of some of the security detainees."

The first time Karpinski got any clarification about the photographs was January 23, 2004. The criminal investigator, Colonel Marcelo, came into Karpinski's office and showed her the pictures. "When I saw the pictures I was floored," Karpinski said. "Really, the world was spinning out of control when I saw those pictures, because it was so far beyond and outside of what I imagined. I thought that maybe some soldiers had taken some pictures of prisoners behind barbed wire or in their cell or something like that. I couldn't imagine anything like what I saw in those photographs."

Marcelo told her, "Ma'am, I'm supposed to tell you after you see the photographs that General Sanchez wants to see you in his office." So Karpinski went over to see Sanchez. She said that "before I even saw the photographs, I was preparing words to say in a press conference - to be up front, to be honest about this, that an investigation is ongoing and there are some allegations of detainee abuse."

But Sanchez told Karpinski, "'No, absolutely not. You are not to discuss this with anyone.'