The Rag Blog

WASHINGTON (June 22) – Little-known documents now being made public detail illegal and scandalous activities by the CIA more than 30 years ago: wiretappings of journalists, kidnappings, warrantless searches and more.

The documents provide a glimpse of nearly 700 pages of materials that the agency plans to declassify next week. A six-page summary memo that was declassified in 2000 and released by The National Security Archive at George Washington University on Thursday outlines 18 activities by the CIA that “presented legal questions” and were discussed with President Ford in 1975.

Among them:

-The “two-year physical confinement” in the mid-1960s of a Soviet defector.

-Assassination plots of foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro.

-CIA wiretapping in 1963 of two columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, following a newspaper column in which national security information was disclosed. The wiretapping revealed calls from 12 senators and six representatives but did not indicate the source of the leak.

-The “personal surveillances” in 1972 of muckraking columnist Jack Anderson and staff members, including Les Whitten and Brit Hume. The surveillance involved watching the targets but no wiretapping. The memo said it followed a series of “tilt toward Pakistan” stories by Anderson.

-The personal surveillance of Washington Post reporter Mike Getler over three months beginning in late 1971. No specific stories are mentioned in the memo.

-CIA screening programs, beginning in the early 1950s and lasting until 1973, in which mail coming into the United States was reviewed and “in some cases opened” from the Soviet Union and China.

Much of the decades-old activities have been known for years. But Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, said the 1975 summary memo prepared by Justice Department lawyers had never been publicly released. It sheds light on meetings in the top echelon of government that were little known by the public, he said.

CIA Director Michael Hayden on Thursday called the documents being released next week unflattering, but he added that “it is CIA’s history.”

“The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency,” Hayden told a conference of historians.

Blanton pointed to more recent concerns, such as post-Sept. 11 programs that included government wiretapping without warrants. “The resonance with today’s controversies is just uncanny,” he said.

The long-secret documents being released next week were compiled at the direction of then-CIA Director James Schlesinger in 1973. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, he directed senior CIA officials to report immediately on any current or past agency matters that might fall outside the authority of the agency.

A separate memo, also dated 1975 and made public by the National Security Archive, discusses the briefing given to Ford detailing abuses by the spy agency. Then-CIA director William Colby tells the president that the CIA “has done some things it shouldn’t have.”

Liam Madden is a Marine veteran who spent seven months in Iraq. After returning to the United States, he became a co-founder of the Appeal for Redress. This is a campaign of active service members who are appealing to the US Congress to remove all American military forces and bases from Iraq. He is also a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Recently, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) notified him that they were going to change his honorable discharge to a less than honorable discharge. He finds himself fighting this attempt while also continuing his organizing against the war. As for the Appeal for redress, there are now 2002 service men and women who have signed the statement. What follows is a brief exchange between Liam and myself over this attempt to silence him and other service members for speaking out against the war.

Ron: Liam, What exactly is the military trying to do to you?

Liam:The Marine Corps notified me that I was being recommended for “Other then Honorable Discharge” from the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) for two alleged violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

1. Wearing a partial USMC camouflage uniform at a political protest.
2. Making Disloyal Statements at a speech in New York City. I said that “The War in Iraq is, by Nuremberg standards, a war crime and a war of aggression” and “the president has betrayed U.S. service members by committing them to a war crime.

In essence, they are trying to apply the UCMJ to members of the Individual Ready Reserves (IRR) who aren’t supposed to be subject to it. Further, they are attempting to silence political opposition to the war by intimidating vets and GIs.

Ron: Just to clarify, are you still in the reserves?

Liam: I’m still a member of the IRR.

Ron: Why do you think they chose you? Is this also happening to other service people or vets?

Liam: I believe they chose to target me because they perceive me as a figure head for the veterans who are speaking about the illegality of the war Two other members of IVAW are being targeted. Adam Kokesh and Cloy Richards are both former Marines who have been under investigation by the USMC and Adam has already faced his discharge board.

Ron: Historically, is this that unusual for the military to come down on you?

Liam: Normally people aren’t discharged from the IRR. It is simply a list of names the military can call upon in times of national crisis. When they don’t want someone on the list they typically just cross them off. However it is not unusual that the government cracks down on those who are questioning the motives of their actions. For example, COINTELPRO, the imprisonment of Eugene Debs, and harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ron: What is the status of the case? When do you have to go to court or whatever?

Liam: They haven’t scheduled a date yet

Ron: What are the potential punishments if they bust you?

Liam: It is basically a black eye on my record that makes it difficult to obtain future employment, particularly government employment.

Ron: What can people do to help you and whoever else is in a similar situation?

Liam: 1. Encourage GIs/Vets to press on in their opposition to the war. Do not be intimidated, if they were not concerned about our activities they wouldn’t be acting to stifle our views.
2. Join the Defense committee some friends are setting up.
3. Sign the petition.
4. Donate to the legal defense fund.
5. Boycott all gas except Citgo, this will to be my escalation of resistance after I return from the IVAW bus tour.

Ron: Now, on to more general stuff. How is the Appeal for Redress progressing?

Liam: The appeal has just passed the 2,000 mark. We are going strong and will continue to be an avenue for troops to speak out against the war.

Ron: I was recently at a conference where several Iraq Veterans Against the War were present. In your estimation, how is the organization faring? Are numbers growing, etc?

Liam: We are growing rapidly. We are getting alot of attention lately and we are on the leading edge of the anti war movement. Our activity is growing bolder and more independent of other groups.

Ron: From your perspective, do you think the military is feeling the heat from the growing disenchantment with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars–from within the military and otherwise?

Liam: Yes, troops aren’t stupid; they know the government isn’t telling them the whole story. No one is happy about the lengthening deployments and the deteriorating public support for the war. Let me be clear, public opposition doesn’t lower troop morale, being in a war that is clearly based on a lie lowers troop morale.

Ron: Anything you want to add–especially to vets or active duty GIs who might read this?

The displacement of Iraqis from Iraq is now the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world.

The UN estimates that nearly 4 million Iraqis have been displaced by violence in their country, the vast majority of which have fled since 2003. Some 1.9 million have vacated their homes for safer areas within Iraq, 2 million are now living in Syria, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and Turkey. Most Iraqis are determined to be resettled to Europe or North America, and few consider return to Iraq an option. With no legal work options in their current host countries, Iraqis are already exploring the use of false documents to migrate to Western nations.

The violence in Iraq has reached a deadly tipping point: Most Iraqis feel threatened.

“Iraqis who are unable to flee the country are now in a queue, waiting their turn to die,” is how one Iraqi journalist summarizes conditions in Iraq today. While the US debates whether a civil war is raging in Iraq, thousands of Iraqis face the possibility of death every day all over the country. Refugees International has met with dozens of Iraqis who have fled the violence and sought refuge in neighboring countries. All of them, whether Sunni, Shi’a, Christian or Palestinian, had been directly victimized by armed actors. People are targeted because of religious affiliation, economic status, and profession – many, such as doctors, teachers, and even hairdressers, are viewed as being “anti-Islamic.” All of them fled Iraq because they had genuine and credible fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Neighboring countries are being overwhelmed by the massive influx of Iraqi refugees.

Syria and Jordan are rapidly becoming overwhelmed by the numbers of Iraqis seeking refuge in their urban centers. Jordan, Lebanon and Syria consider Iraqis as “guests” rather than refugees fleeing violence. None of these countries allows Iraqis to work. Although Syria is maintaining its “open door policy” in the name of pan-Arabism, it has begun imposing restrictions on Iraqi refugees, such as charges for healthcare that used to be free. In Jordan, Iraqis have to pay for the most basic services, and live in constant fear of deportation. It is also becoming increasingly difficult for Iraqis to enter Jordan or to renew their visas to remain in country.

UNHCR does not have enough resources to assist Iraqi refugees in the Middle East.

Although they have received additional funds for this crisis in 2007, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees can’t provide adequate protection and assistance to Iraqis. The agency lacks the resources to process refugees’ documentation adequately. Without staff to monitor borders, UNHCR depends on national governments for updated information on new arrivals. UNHCR is also unable to provide significant assistance to Iraqis, and receives very little support from other UN agencies that seem slow to acknowledge the extent of the crisis. The fact that Lebanon, Syria and Jordan are not state parties to the 1951 Refugees Convention further reduces UNHCR’s ability to protect refugees.

Conditions for Palestinians from Iraq and other third country nationals are especially desperate and bleak.

Many Iraqis resent the preferential treatment Palestinians received under Saddam Hussein’s regime. As a result, several militia and sectarian groups have singled out Palestinians as recipients of a collective “fatwa” (or death sentence). Three hundred and seventy-two Palestinians from Iraq are living near the Al Tanf border crossing between Iraq and Syria in a makeshift refugee camp located in the no man’s land between both borders. They have been denied entry by the Syrian government and they refuse to return to Iraq. As a result, they have been living in increasingly desperate circumstances. Similarly, in Jordan, dozens of Palestinians remain in a camp where they have been since April 2003, awaiting resettlement.

Another vulnerable group is the Iranian Kurds in Jordan; 192 have been living in between the Iraqi and Jordanian borders since January 2005. Another group of 313 had previously been let into Jordan and allowed in a refugee camp. Both groups are awaiting resettlement.

Policy Recommendations

The United States must begin by acknowledging that violence in Iraq has made civilian life untenable, creating a refugee crisis that is essentially exporting the nation’s instability to neighboring countries. To deal with this crisis, Refugees International proposes the following:

1. Given its central role in Iraq, the US should lead an international initiative to support Middle Eastern countries hosting Iraqi civilians. The US should recognize and support the constructive role Syria is playing in hosting Iraqi refugees and help it keep its borders open.

2. Donors must continue to increase their support to UNHCR and other UN agencies must participate in the relief efforts for Iraqi refugees.

Yesterday, two farmers filed suit in the federal district court of North Dakota. They are seeking a declaratory judgment against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that would allow them to cultivate hemp, a profitable crop with many legal uses.

The DEA, however, is likely to strongly defend the suit. After all, ever since its very inception, the DEA has feared that if it allows “industrial” hemp to be produced, the result will be to seriously undermine its war on drugs, including marijuana. As I will explain, its position has led to a bizarre and, some argue, utterly irrational situation: It makes little sense for the War on Drugs to also include a War on Hemp.

A case decided last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit illustrates some of this irrationality, but doesn’t give the full picture. In this column, I’ll provide a chronology of the DEA’s war on this plant and its champions; discuss a set of legal questions that, in my view, complicates the agency’s war plans; and finally, offer a prediction of hemp’s regulatory future.

The Cannabis Conundrum: A Controlled Substance with Highly Beneficial Applications

The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) prohibits the manufacture, distribution, dispensation, or possession of any listed “controlled substance,” except as authorized by the CSA or the DEA. Marijuana is included, and even its medicinal use remains flatly prohibited. In 2006, the Supreme Court entertained a Commerce Clause challenge to that latter prohibition, in Gonzales v. Raich, but the challengers lost.

This unbending legal regime is a great shame, because the marijuana plant is a botanical superstar. It generates a portfolio of raw materials for products like rope and canvas (which reportedly covered the Conestoga wagons of the Nineteenth Century West), oil, paper, and cellulose.

This is no small matter today: Compared to most tree species, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture has acknowledged, hemp is several times more efficient for producing paper and fiber, is much less dependent upon pesticides and herbicides than crops like cotton, and creates a seed oil high in essential fatty acids. The oil alone has countless applications. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture even ordered cannabis production during World War II in its “Hemp for Victory” program.

So if you’re looking for an “assault on reason,” a flat ban on this plant–given its multitude of beneficial uses, most of which are fossil fuel-reducing and organic in every sense–certainly fits the bill.

Cannabis’s Early History: The 1937 Act

Of course, the issue with cannabis sativa is that some of its varieties are grown to maximize the creation of tetrahydrocannabinols (THC). THC is a psychoactive compound, and, unfortunately, the THC producer is the same genus and species as the botanical wunderkind. They are just different parts of the same plant or, in some instances, different varietals. Unfortunately, throughout American history, the U.S. government has too often acted as if these two features of the plant are inseparable – and that has led to some absurd results.

The cannabis plant was among the first drugs the U.S. Government tried to eradicate in this country, beginning in 1937 with the Marihuana Tax Act. The 1937 law was preceded only by the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, which taxed opiates and cocaine, and, of course, the Eighteenth Amendment, imposing Prohibition.

While the 1937 law was formally a tax, it might as well have been a ban, for it made the cost of the plant prohibitively high, and thus effectively prohibited the growing of varieties and foliage to maximize THC (“pot”). Nevertheless, the growing of “hemp”–which has THC concentrations too low to move the needle–was taxed hardly at all.

A Senate Report on the bill made this point quite clear:

“The testimony before the committee showed definitely that neither the mature stalk of the hemp plant nor the fiber produced therefrom contains any drug, narcotic, or harmful property whatsoever and because of that fact the fiber and mature stalk have been exempted from the operation of the law.”

The role of Iraq’s central government as a guiding hand over the country’s vast oil reserves has been so altered in the current version of the controversial draft oil law that two of the document’s authors now oppose it.

“The judgment of many is if the oil and gas is the property of the whole nation, it should be managed by whom? The custodian of the whole nation, and that’s the federal government,” said Tariq Shafiq, a London- and Amman, Jordan-based consultant and director of Petrolog & Associates. Shafiq, who just last summer was crafting the legislation, told UPI during a recent Washington visit that subsequent revisions have watered down the central government’s role with political bartering that will lead to mismanagement of the world’s third-largest oil reserves.

Shafiq also warned of overdevelopment of the country’s oil and gas resources, especially if the undiscovered reserves are developed or Kurdistan or other regions develop their fields outside of a central oil strategy.

The law, which was approved by the council of ministers in February, is now stalled in a power struggle between the central government and Kurdistan Regional government over how much of the 115 billion barrels in proven oil reserves each side will control. Various factions, including the powerful oil unions and Sunni political parties, have warned against allowing international oil companies too much access.

And the Iraqi Parliament likely won’t be able to overcome political friction, let alone the deteriorating security situation in the country, to move forward soon on the oil law.

“The pledge by some Iraqi politicians to pass the new oil law by the end of June is not likely to be fulfilled, and Iraqi lawmakers are not expected to tackle this issue until after the parliamentary recess scheduled for the end of July,” Greg Priddy, global energy analyst at the business risk consultant Eurasia Group, wrote Tuesday in the firm ‘ s Energy Trendwatch. “By then, all branches of the Iraqi government will come under tremendous pressure from the U.S. administration, which has listed the new hydrocarbon law as a major priority to be addressed by mid September, when it is expected to submit a full report to the U.S. Congress.” The roots of the Baghdad row — which highlights the future of Iraq: how strong the central government will be and how much power the regions and provinces will wield — are seeded in the 2005 constitution. Key issues of federalism and control over oil were left vague to shore up enough support for passage. Nearly two years later, there is no political consensus.

Shafiq said he and his co-authors took this into account when drafting the law.

They created a Federal Petroleum Commission as a decision-making body to set policy and approve plans and contracts for developing the oil sector. It would incorporate two bodies: “A think tank” of technocrats “made up of nine members, at least three from (oil) producing provinces, but all Iraqis,” and “a negotiating unit for grants of rights to third parties,” taking contract negotiations out of the Oil Ministry ‘ s hands (though the ministry would prequalify companies). The governorate or region the contract applies to would be a part of the negotiating body, another way the drafters interlay federal/local authority, Shafiq said. This was also embedded in the reconstituted Iraq National Oil Company, which was “independent from the state,” Shafiq said, a holding company to develop the oil. (Here again the constitutional squabble takes hold, with the KRG and central government at odds over how much of Iraq ‘ s reserves should be centrally controlled.) INOC would be owned by the state, but with an independent board of directors. Affiliate local companies, owned up to 50 percent by the respective regions or governorates, would carry out INOC’s day-to-day, on-site operations. The directors of the local companies would sit on INOC’s board, ensuring combined local control over the central government’s oil arm.

As the Senate considers reforming national labor law, the percentage of American workers in unions continues its long and severe decline. What is causing the downturn, and what is prompting the legislation, is not a decreased need for unions — according to polls, about half of non-supervisory workers want to join one — but that employers are increasingly breaking the law to prevent their workplaces from being unionized.

Fifty years ago, more than 30 percent of private-sector workers were in a union. That share today is 8 percent. Globalization and the new, technology-driven economy have contributed to this decline, but advanced economies in Europe survive these same developments with union coverage rates as high as 80 percent. Much of the falloff is actually the result of illegal, anti-union actions by employers. Our recent analysis of cases brought before the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union-management relations in most of the private sector, shows that employers illegally fire as many as one in five union organizers.

Actions by the world’s largest employer are a case in point. When butchers at Wal-Mart’s Jacksonville, Texas store joined the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Wal-Mart permanently closed its meat-cutting departments, switched to pre-packaged meat, and fired four of the union supporters.

Picking on Wal-Mart is unfair, as much of the business community despises unions. Unions fight for increased wages and benefits, redistributing earnings from employers to workers. Corporate managers, on the other hand, maximize profits for shareholders and hefty compensation packages for those at the top. Compelled by the threat of lower profits, many employers will do whatever it takes to avoid a union workplace.

Not infrequently, this means breaking the law. The National Labor Relations Act makes it illegal to intimidate or fire workers for union activity. Yet, according to our study of data from the National Labor Relations Board, there has been a steep rise in illegal firings of pro-union workers in the last few years. Currently, one in 53 pro-union workers are fired illegally during an election campaign. And employers generally fire the workers who are leading the union organizing activities. If 10 percent of union supporters are actually organizers in their workplace, NLRB data show that about one in five union organizers are illegally fired for their activism.

Interestingly, union membership has actually increased in the public sector. Whereas the private sector — the bulk of the U.S. economy — has seen unionization fall by three-quarters over the last 50 years, public-sector union membership has tripled over the same period, to about 36 percent. Persistent, illegal activity by employers in the private sector explains the disparity. Illegal firings exist in the public sector, of course, but they are less prevalent. Additional civil service protections ensure that firings are more onerous to the government than they are to a private employer. Besides, we should expect less union-busting in the public-sector: there is no profit motive.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower once lambasted union busters, proclaiming that “only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.” The fools today are actually quite rational, practicing the cool calculus of costs and benefits.

In a worst-case scenario, the cost of firing a union supporter includes legal proceedings and remuneration to the discharged employee. At a maximum, discharged employees will receive missed earnings minus any income they have earned in the meantime. The total award usually amounts to less than $4,000, a small price to pay to avoid sharing profits with employees through a union-negotiated contract.

Unions are pressing for increased fines and other changes in labor law that reduce the incentives for employer aggression. Without those reforms, it will remain the case that crime really does pay.

For Americans, it should be startling to see the word “detainee” suddenly appear in a different country, on a different continent, and referring not to alleged jihadi terrorists but to a group of Americans. After all, “detainee” is the word the Bush administration coined to deal with suspected terrorist captives who, they argued, should be subjected to extra-legal treatment as part of the Global War on Terrorism. Now, that terminology is, as critics long predicted might happen, being turned against American citizens. I am referring to the current detention of Americans in Iran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government currently holds in custody Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali Shakeri, Iranian-American scholars and activists accused of being spies and/or employees of the U.S. government intent on fomenting dissent and disruption within Iran. (A fifth American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent engaged in business of an unknown nature in Iran, disappeared on March 8th.) The four are apparently behind bars at Tehran’s Evin prison, notorious for its special wing for political prisoners and, among human rights activists, for being the location of the lethal beating of a Canadian-Iranian journalist in 2003. Evin and other Iranian prisons are cited by Human Rights Watch for frequent torture and mistreatment of arrested Iranian dissidents.

The Iranian government has said that the detained are threats to “national security,” despite protests that they were visiting their families and/or engaged in purely peaceful work. The U.S. Government has been denied information on their treatment and the possible accusations against them.

The Bush administration is naturally incensed over the incarceration of these Americans. As well its officials should be. “It is absolutely incredible to us,” said State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey, “to think that there could be any possible doubt in the Iranians’ minds that these individuals are there simply to conduct normal, basic human interactions, including family visits.” President Bush himself has insisted that “their presence in Iran poses no threat.” The Associated Press reported that Bush was also “‘disturbed’ by the fact that Iran has still not provided any information about the welfare and whereabouts” of the missing Levinson and has condemned Iran for being “defiant as to the demands of the free world.”

President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly without respect for international rights.

But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a trap for the government — and for Americans generally. More than five years after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now seek to claim in relation to Iran.

The new American prisoners in Iran belong, in part, to a broader diplomatic game of chicken now raging between the two governments that began with the U.S. capture in January of five Iranian officials in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, prisoners the U.S. continues to hold somewhere in Iraq without charges. The more telling context, however, is that of Bush administration detention policy from the moment in 2002 when it set up its prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, offshore from American justice, to this day.

At the inception of the war on terror, the Bush administration broke the very rules it now accuses the Iranians of breaking. As part of a high-stakes stand-off with countries associated with Islamic fundamentalism, it was the Bush administration that first collected individuals, some guilty of crimes, some simply swept up in the chaos — initially off the Afghan battlefield and then off the global one. Often, they did so with very little knowledge of, or care about, whom they were rounding up. They incarcerated these prisoners for long periods without releasing their names or, often, their whereabouts; they refused to give them the established rights of prisoners of war; they defied the united protests of allies around the world; and they sought to justify this whole policy with the term “detainee.”

In fact, uncomfortable parallels between notorious Guantanamo and grim Evin abound. At Gitmo, as at Evin, information about “detainees” has often been difficult to obtain. At Gitmo, as at Evin, the government has been a champion of denying prisoners access to lawyers. At Gitmo, as at Evin, “national security” concerns invariably trump the need to produce evidence or to indict prisoners. At Gitmo, as at Evin, there have been repeated reports of coercive interrogations and the mistreatment, as well as torture, of prisoners.

At Gitmo, as at Evin, authorities deny such accusations despite obvious evidence to the contrary. One year ago, journalists were invited to assess conditions at Evin for themselves. Allowed to see only the women’s section of the prison, they were shown the medical facilities and told about the excellent food the prison serves — self-evident proof of the fair treatment of prisoners. So, too, media tours of Guantanamo stress the quality of the food and the superior medical treatment available in the prison complex. At Gitmo, suicide is an ever-present threat. At Evin, according to a BBC journalist on the tour, authorities boasted of only one suicide in six months — as if that were a record to be proud of. Iranian authorities refused to discuss “political prisoners” because “Iran does not recognize this as a category.” So, too, the most suitable term for those held at Gitmo, “prisoner of war,” has been forbidden on the premises.

In all these ways, but especially by wielding their chosen term “detainee,” and by defining “detainees” as essentially without rights as Americans would understand them, the Bush administration has stripped the United States of its traditional standing as the foremost champion of human rights. It has relinquished its bona fides to express the kind of moral outrage that could indeed buttress international support and legal due process for Americans who have been illegally imprisoned. Even more surprising, when administration officials, including the President, denounce the Iranians, they are tin-eared. The hypocrisy in their own words just doesn’t register. When George W. Bush shows his outrage at the imprisonment of Americans without cause, evidence, or due process, it’s as if he has no sense that, in much of the rest of the world, these are exactly the charges that ring out against his own administration.

Essentially, a frantic, fear-filled, information-impoverished, but stubbornly defended policy has finally blown back on America’s own citizens. This was something former Secretary of State Colin Powell — who last weekend called for the closing of Guantanamo — predicted in January 2002 might well happen to captive U.S. troops, if not citizens, if the United States refused to classify its detainees in the Global War on Terror as prisoners of war.

Whether or not President Bush hears the hypocrisy in his own pleas, the fact remains that his detainee policy has deprived the government of a means of defending its own citizens on the international stage. It has, in effect, amputated the very legs it would need to stand on to protest against the Iranian detentions.

Try as they might, Bush administration officials can only cry foul by calling attention to their own systematic violations of justice and the law. In their mouths, the appeal to fundamental rights rings hollow indeed, depriving Americans of the protections afforded by once-accepted standards of decency and justice. Here, as on so many other fronts, the President’s fierce “national security” policy has created an ever more insecure future for this country.

Abstract

Problems facing the intelligentsia of Iraq have been neglected in the scale of that country’s ongoing tragedy. Since 2003, the new phenomenon of targeted and systematic assassinations, kidnappings and threats to professionals and academics has surfaced. These are escalating.

Over 830 assassinations have been documented, victims killed along with their families. Numbers includes: 380 university academics and doctors, 210 lawyers and judges, and 243 journalists/media workers but not other experts, school teachers or students; neither professionals displaced internally and externally. All aspects of life are affected.

The victims are often highly qualified, PhD or equivalent. Assassinations are not specific to sect or gender but victims are predominantly Arab.

Hundreds of legal workers have left Iraq in addition to those already killed and injured, thereby denying thousands of Iraqis their legal rights. Working lawyers numbers have decreased by at least 40% in the past year alone and hundreds of cases shelved.

Neither has sports escaped; the President and 36 member National Iraqi Olympic Committee were kidnapped in July 2006; the majority are thought to be dead. These were the only democratically elected Olympic representatives in the region.

The reported incidents are only the tip of an iceberg; many cases go unreported. This is in addition to the huge exodus to neighbouring countries and, for the lucky few, to Europe.

MEMORANDUM
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Countering Terrorism; How Not To Do It

On June 6, 2002, former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and how the FBI could do a better job detecting and disrupting terrorism. Time magazine had acquired (not from Rowley) a long letter she wrote to FBI Director Mueller listing a string of lapses in the month before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. As painful and embarrassing as it was after such tragedy to unravel the mistakes, Rowley insisted that the unraveling was necessary in order to address effectively the threat of further terrorist attacks. Her VIPS colleagues asked Rowley to review what has happened in the five years since her testimony, and we have contributed to this memorandum. In what follows, Rowley outlines how the primacy given to PR and other political factors has encumbered still further the FBI’s ability to deal in reasonable and effective ways with the challenge of terrorism.

Given the effort that many of us have put into suggestions for reform, how satisfying it would be, were we able to report that appropriate correctives have been introduced to make us safer. But the bottom line is that the PR bromide to the effect that we are “safer” is incorrect. We are not safer. What follows will help explain why.

Wrong-headed actions and ideas had already taken root before that Senate hearing on June 6, 2002. Post 9/11 dragnet-detentions of innocents, official tolerance of torture (including abuse of U.S. citizens like John Walker Lindh), and panic-boosting color codes, had already been spawned from the mother of all slogans-“The Global War on Terror”-rhetorically useful, substantively inane. GWOT was about to spawn much worse.

Within a few hours of the Senate hearing five years ago, President George W. Bush reversed himself and made a surprise public announcement saying he would, after all, create a new Department of Homeland Security. The announcement seemed timed to relegate to the “in-other-news” category the disturbing things reported to the Senate earlier that day about the mistakes made during the weeks prior to 9/11. More important, the president’s decision itself was one of the most egregious examples of the doing-something-for-the-sake-of-appearing to-be-doing-something-against-terrorism syndrome.

As anyone who has worked in the federal bureaucracy could immediately recognize, the creation of DHS was clearly a gross misstep on a purely pragmatic level. It created chaos by throwing together 22 agencies with 180,000 workers-many of them in jobs vital to our nation’s security, both at home and abroad. It also enabled functionaries like the two Michaels-Brown and Chertoff-to immobilize key agencies like the previously well-run Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), leading to its feckless response to Hurricane Katrina.

Radical, Reckless Departures From the Law

There were so many other missteps, so much playing fast and loose with the law, that it is hard to know where to begin in critiquing the results. One transcendent error was the eagerness of senior political appointees to exploit the “9/11-Changed-Everything” chestnut to prime people into believing that effective detection and disruption of terrorism required radical departures from rules governing our criminal justice and intelligence collection systems. Departures from established law and policies were introduced quickly. Many of the worst of these came to light only later-extraordinary rendition, “black-site” imprisonment, torture, and eavesdropping without a warrant. (We now know that senior Justice Department officials strongly objected to the eavesdropping program.)

The first protests came from those most concerned with human rights and constitutional law. But, by and large, the fear-laden populace “didn’t get it.” The prevailing attitude seemed to be, “Who cares? I want to be safe.” Everyone wants security. But all too few recognize that security and liberty are basically flip sides of the same coin. Just as there can be no meaningful liberty in a situation devoid of security, there can be no real security in a situation devoid of liberty. It took a bit longer for pragmatists to observe and explain how the draconian steps departing from established law and policy-not to mention the knee-jerk collection and storing of virtually all available information on everyone- are not, for the most part, helping to improve the country’s security.

The parallel with the introduction of officially sanctioned torture is instructive. TV programs aside, many if not most Americans instinctively know there is something basically wrong with torture-that it is immoral as well as illegal and a violation of human rights. Pragmatists (experienced intelligence and law enforcement professionals, in particular) oppose torture because it does not work and often is counterproductive. Nevertheless, the president grabbed the headlines when he argued on Sept. 6, 2006 that “an alternative set of procedures” (already outlawed by the U.S. Army) for interrogation is required to extract information from terrorists. He then went on to intimidate a supine Congress into approving such procedures.

Virtually omitted from media coverage were the same-day remarks of the pragmatist chief of Army intelligence, Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, who conceded past “transgressions and mistakes” and made the Army’s view quite clear: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.”

Who should enjoy more credibility in this area, Bush or Kimmons?

The War on [fill in the blank]

“War! Huh… What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” This 1969 song lyric turns out to be even more applicable to Bush’s “global war on terror” than to the Vietnam War. As for “The War on Drugs,” that one was readily recognized as little more than a catchy metaphor helpful in arguing for budget increases. But the use of our armed forces for war in Iraq was guaranteed to be self-defeating and to increase the terrorist threat.

— Military weapons are inherently rough, crude tools. Our rhetoric makes bombs and missiles out to be capable of “surgical strikes,” but such weapons also injure and kill innocent men, women, and children, taking us down to the same low level inhabited by terrorists who rationalize the killing or injuring of civilians for their cause. Civilian casualties also serve to radicalize people and swell the terrorist ranks to the point where it becomes impossible for us to kill more terrorists than U.S. policy and actions create. (In one of his leaked memos, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked about that; he should have paused long enough to listen to the answer.) This inherent “squaring of the error” problem in applying military force in this context has been a boon to terrorist recruitment, and has spurred activity to the point of having actually quadrupled significant terrorist incidents worldwide.

— Declaring “war” on the tactic of terrorism elevates to statehood what actually may be scattered, disorganized individuals, sympathizers, and small groups. It empowers the terrorists as they add to their numbers and provides the status of statehood to what often should be regarded and treated as a rag-tag group of criminals.

— There is, of course, political advantage for a “war president” to rally Americans around the flag, but the negatives of the axioms “truth is the first casualty of war” and “all’s fair in love and war” far outweigh any positives. Ultimately, the recklessness and cover-up mid-wived by the “fog of war” (everything from the friendly fire that killed Pat Tillman to the torture at Abu Ghraib and other atrocities) just magnify the “squaring the error” effect. Judiciousness-and just plain smarts-tend to be sacrificed for quick action.