That rythmic noise you hear in the background
is the sound of jackboots crunching on tarmac.
On September 9th - two days before the WTC "event"
- I was talking by phone to someone in the United States who had information on
Collateral Trading Programmes and related matters. Since I was about to
publish THE PROJECT HAMMER FILE that deals with these secretive financial
programmes, I had made the call to seek corroboration of certain
facts.
The individual I spoke with is knowledgeable on
such matters. During the course of what became a quite agitated and random
conversation I was told that "the world needs militarism not capitalism."
It was a startling thing to say and completely out of context to our
discussion. At least that was my thought at the time. I even made a
special mention about it in my interview note pad and underlined it three
times.
I now believe that this individual
was cognisant that something breath-taking was about to happen. Two
days later a breath-taking event did indeed take place.
Even if my gut instincts are incorrect and this
assessment is wrong, it is plain that there is now a strong move
towards militarim, especially in the US. Mike Ruppert made that exact
point in his most recent posting to this list. The below post from a
Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer further bolsters this
viewpoint.
That rythmic sound you hear in the background
really is getting louder.
And unless you do something about it now, you'll
wake up in mourning tomorrow.
THE PROJECT HAMMER FILE
THE SECRET GOLD
TREATY
THE BILDERBERG FILE
***
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Secret Military Tribunals, Mass Arrests and
Disappearances, Wiretapping & Torture
By Michael Ratner
HumanRightsNow.org
I live a few blocks from the World Trade
Center. In New York, we are still mourning the loss of so many after the
attacks on our city. We want to arrest and punish the terrorists,
eliminate the terrorist network and prevent future attacks. But the
government's declared war on terrorism, and many of the anti-terrorism
measures, include a curtailment of freedom and constitutional rights that
have many of us very worried.
I wrote the above paragraph and much
of the article that follows toward the end of October. At that time, the
repressive machinery then being put into effect was already terrifying.
Since that time the situation has gotten unimaginably worse; rights that
we thought embedded in the constitution and protected by international law
are in serious jeopardy or have already been eliminated. It is no
exaggeration to say we are moving toward a police state. In this
atmosphere, we should take nothing for granted. We will not be protected,
nor will the courts, the congress, or the many liberals who are gleefully
jumping on the bandwagon of repression guarantee our rights. We have no
choice but too make our voices be heard; it is time to stand and be
counted on the side of justice and against the antediluvian forces that
have much of our country in a stranglehold.
The domestic
consequences of the war on terrorism include massive arrests and
interrogation of immigrants, the possible use of torture to obtain
information, the creation of a special new cabinet office of Homeland
Security and the passage of legislation granting intelligence and law
enforcement agencies much broader powers to intrude into the private lives
of Americans. Recent new initiatives -- the wiretapping of attorney-client
conversations and military commissions to try suspected terrorists --
undermine core constitutional protections and are reminiscent of
inquisitorial practices.
Although it is not discussed in this
article, the war on terrorism also means pervasive government and media
censorship of information, the silencing of dissent, and widespread ethnic
and religious profiling of Muslims, Arabs and Asian people. It means
creating a climate of fear where one suspects one's neighbors and people
are afraid to speak out.
The claimed necessity for this war at home
is problematic. The legislation and other governmental actions are
premised on the belief that the intelligence agencies failed to stop the
September 11th attack because they lacked the spying capability to find
and arrest the conspirators. Yet, neither the government nor the agencies
have demonstrated that this is the reason.
This war at home gives
Americans a false sense of security, allowing us to believe that tighter
borders, vastly empowered intelligence agencies, and increased
surveillance will stop terrorism. The United States is not yet a police
state. However, even a police state could not stop terrorists intent on
doing us harm. In addition, the fantasy of Fortress America keeps us from
examining the root causes of terrorism, and the consequences of decades of
American foreign policy in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Unless some of the grievances against the United States are studied and
addressed, terrorism will continue.
MILITARY COMMISSIONS: THE
PERUVIAN OPTION
On November 13, President Bush signed an executive
order establishing military commissions or tribunals to try suspected
terrorists. Under this order non-citizens, whether from the United States
or elsewhere, accused of aiding international terrorism, at the discretion
of the President, can be tried before one of these commissions. These are
not court-martials, which provide far more protections. The divergence
from constitutional protections the executive order allows are
breathtaking. Attorney General Ashcroft has explicitly stated that
terrorists do not deserve constitutional protections. These are "courts"
of conviction and not of justice.
The Secretary of Defense will
appoint the judges, most likely military officers, who will decide both
questions of law and fact. Unlike federal judges who are appointed for
life, these officers will have little independence and every reason to
decide in favor of the prosecution. Normal rules of evidence, which
provide some assurance of reliability, will not apply. Hearsay and even
evidence obtained from torture will apparently be admissible. This is
particularly frightening in light of the intimations from U.S. officials
that torture of suspects may be an option. Rules of evidence help insure
the innocent are spared, but also that law enforcement authorities adhere
to what we thought were evolving standards of a civilized
society.
Unanimity among the judges is not required even to impose
the death penalty. Suspects will not have free choice of attorneys. The
only appeal from a conviction will be to the President or the Secretary of
Defense. Incredibly, the entire process, including execution, can be
conducted in secret and the trials can be held anywhere the Secretary of
Defense decides. A trial might occur on an aircraft carrier and the body
of the executed "buried" at sea. The President is literally getting away
with murder.
Surprisingly, a number of prestigious law professors
(e.g. Lawrence Tribe and Ruth Wedgwood) have accepted and even argued in
favor of these tribunals. The primary claim is that it might be necessary
to disclose classified information in order to obtain convictions. This is
a pretext. There are procedures for handling classified information in
federal courts as was done in the trial of those convicted in the 1993
bombing of the World Trade Center. It certainly does not provide a reason
for sending suspects into a "justice" system akin to that which the US
condemned in Peru. The 1993 trials also demonstrate that these trials can
be held in federal courts.
Trials before military commissions will
not be trusted in either the Muslim world or elsewhere. Nor should they.
They will be viewed as what they are -- "kangaroo courts." How much better
to demonstrate to the world that the guilty have been apprehended and
fairly convicted. A better solution would be for the US to go to the U.N.
and have the UN establish a special court for the trials. Judges from
different legal systems including that of the US, Muslim and civil law
countries could constitute such a court.
WIRETAPPING
ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS
At the heart of the effective
assistance of counsel is the right of a criminal defendant to a lawyer
with whom he or she can communicate candidly and freely without fear that
the government is overhearing confidential communications. This right is
fundamental to the adversary system of justice in the Untied States. When
the government overhears these conversations, a defendant's right to a
defense is compromised.
Now, with the stroke of pen, Attorney
General Ashcroft, has eliminated the attorney-client privilege and will
wiretap privileged communications when he thinks there is "reasonable
suspicion to believe" that an "inmate may use communications with
attorneys or their agents to further facilitate act of violence or
terrorism." He says that approximately one hundred such suspects and their
attorneys may be subject to the order. He claims the legal authority to do
so without court order; in other words without the approval and finding by
a neutral magistrate that attorney-client communications are facilitating
criminal conduct. This is utter lawlessness by our country's top law
enforcement officer and is flatly unconstitutional. This wiretapping of
attorney-client communications has already begun.
THE NEW LEGAL
REGIME
The government has established a tripartite plan in its
efforts to eradicate terrorism in the United States. President Bush has
created a new cabinet-level Homeland Security Office; the Federal Bureau
of Investigation is investigating thousands of individuals and groups and
making hundreds of arrests; and Congress is enacting new laws that will
grant the FBI and other intelligence agencies vast new powers to wiretap
and spy on people in the United States.
THE OFFICE OF HOMELAND
SECURITY
On September 20th President Bush announced the creation of
the Homeland Security Office, charged with gathering intelligence,
coordinating anti-terrorism efforts and taking precautions to prevent and
respond to terrorism. It is not yet known how this office will function,
but it will most likely try to centralize the powers of the intelligence
and law enforcement agencies -- a difficult, if not impossible, job --
among some 40 bickering agencies. Those concerned with its establishment
are worried that it will become a super spy agency and, as its very name
implies, that the military will play a role in domestic law
enforcement.
FBI INVESTIGATIONS AND ARRESTS
The FBI has
always done more than chase criminals; like the Central Intelligence
Agency it has long considered itself the protector of US ideology. Those
who have opposed government policies -- whether civil rights workers,
anti-Vietnam war protesters, opponents of the covert Reagan-era wars or
cultural dissidents -- have repeatedly been surveyed and had their
activities disrupted by the FBI.
In the immediate aftermath of the
September 11 attack, Attorney General John Ashcroft focused on
non-citizens, whether permanent residents, students, temporary workers or
tourists. Normally, an alien can only be held for 48 hours prior to the
filing of charges. Ashcroft's new regulation allowed arrested aliens to be
held without any charges for a "reasonable time," presumably months or
longer. (See below for new legislation regarding detention of
immigrants.)
The FBI began massive detentions and investigations of
individuals suspected of terrorist connections, almost all of them
non-citizens of Middle Eastern descent; over 1,100 have been arrested.
Many were held for days without access to lawyers or knowledge of the
charges against them; many are still in detention. Few, if any, have been
proven to have a connection with the September 11 attacks and remain in
jail despite having been cleared. In some cases, people were arrested
merely for being from a country like Pakistan and having expired student
visas. Stories of mistreatment of such detainees are not
uncommon.
Apparently, some of those arrested are not willing to
talk to the FBI, although they have been offered shorter jail sentences,
jobs, money and new identities. Astonishingly, the FBI and the Department
of Justice are discussing methods to force them to talk, which include
"using drugs or pressure tactics such as those employed by the Israeli
interrogators." The accurate term to describe these tactics is torture.
Our government wants to torture people to make them talk. There is
resistance to this even from law enforcement officials. One former FBI
Chief of Counter-Terrorism, said in an October New York Newsday article,
"Torture goes against every grain in my body. Chances are you are going to
get the wrong person and risk damage or killing them."
As torture
is illegal in the United States and under international law, US officials
risk lawsuits by such practices. For this reason, they have suggested
having another country do their dirty work; they want to extradite the
suspects to allied countries where security services threaten family
members and use torture. It would be difficult to imagine a more ominous
signal of the repressive period we are facing. The FBI is also currently
investigating groups it claims are linked to terrorism -- among them
pacifist groups such as the US chapter of Women in Black, which holds
vigils to protest violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The
FBI has threatened to force members of Women in Black to either talk about
their group or go to jail. As one of the group's members said, "If the FBI
cannot or will not distinguish between groups who collude in hatred and
terrorism, and peace activists who struggle in the full light of day
against all forms of terrorism we are in serious
trouble."
Unfortunately, the FBI does not make that distinction. We
are facing not only the roundup of thousands on flimsy suspicions, but
also an all-out investigation of dissent in the United States.
THE
NEW ANTI-TERRORIST LEGISLATION
Congress has passed and President
Bush has signed sweeping new anti-terrorist legislation, the USA Patriot
Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools
Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism), aimed at both aliens and
citizens. The legislation met more opposition than one might expect in
these difficult times. A National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom
of over 120 groups ranging from the right to the left opposed the worst
aspects of the proposed new law. They succeeded in making minor
modifications, but the most troubling provisions remain, and are described
below:
Rights of Aliens
Prior to the legislation,
anti-terrorist laws passed in the wake of the 1996 bombing of the federal
building in Oklahoma had already given the government wide powers to
arrest, detain and deport aliens based upon secret evidence -- evidence
that neither the alien nor his attorney could view or refute. The current
proposed legislation makes it even worse for aliens.
First, the law
would permit "mandatory detention" of aliens certified by the attorney
general as "suspected terrorists." These could include aliens involved in
barroom brawls or those who have provided only humanitarian assistance to
organizations disfavored by the United States. Once certified in this way,
an alien could be imprisoned indefinitely with no real opportunity for
court challenge. Until now, such "preventive detention" was believed to be
flatly unconstitutional.
Second, current law permits deportation of
aliens who support terrorist activity; the proposed law would make aliens
deportable for almost any association with a "terrorist organization."
Although this change seems to have a certain surface plausibility, it
represents a dangerous erosion of Americans' constitutionally protected
rights of association. "Terrorist organization" is a broad and open-ended
term that could include liberation groups such as the Irish Republican
Army, the African National Congress, or civic groups that have ever
engaged in any violent activity, such as Greenpeace. An alien who gives
only medical or humanitarian aid to similar groups, or simply supports
their political message in a material way could be jailed
indefinitely.
More Powers to the FBI and CIA
A key element
in the new law is the wide expansion of wiretapping. In the United States
wiretapping is permitted, but generally only when there is probable cause
to believe a crime has been committed and a judge signs a special
wiretapping order that contains limited time periods, the numbers of the
telephones wiretapped and the type of conversations that can be
overheard.
In 1978, an exception was made to these strict
requirements, permitting wiretapping to be carried out to gather
intelligence information about foreign governments and foreign terrorist
organizations. A secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, was established that could approve such wiretaps without requiring
the government to show evidence of criminal conduct. In doing so the
constitutional protections necessary when investigating crimes could be
bypassed. The secret court is little more than a rubber stamp for
wiretapping requests by the spy agencies. It has authorized over 13,000
wiretaps in its 22-year existence, approximately a thousand last year, and
has apparently never denied a request.
Under the new law, the same
secret court will have the power to authorize wiretaps and secret searches
of homes in criminal cases -- not just to gather foreign intelligence. The
FBI will be able to wiretap individuals and organizations without meeting
the stringent requirements of the Constitution. The law will authorize the
secret court to permit roving wiretaps of any phones, computers or cell
phones that might possibly be used by a suspect. Widespread reading of
e-mail will be allowed, even before the recipient opens it. Thousands of
conversations will be listened to or read that have nothing to do with the
suspect or any crime.
The new legislation is filled with many other
expansions of investigative and prosecutorial power, including wider use
of undercover agents to infiltrate organizations, longer jail sentences
and lifetime supervision for some who have served their sentences, more
crimes that can receive the death penalty and longer statutes of
limitations for prosecuting crimes. Another provision of the new bill
makes it a crime for a person to fail to notify the FBI if he or she has
"reasonable grounds to believe" that someone is about to commit a
terrorist offense. The language of this provision is so vague that anyone,
however innocent, with any connection to anyone suspected of being a
terrorist can be prosecuted. We will all need to become spies to protect
ourselves and the subjects of our spying, at least for now, will be those
from the Mid East.
The New Crime of Domestic Terrorism
The
act creates a number of new crimes. One of the most threatening to dissent
and those who oppose government policies is the crime of "domestic
terrorism." It is loosely defined as acts that are dangerous to human
life, violate criminal law and "appear to be intended" to intimidate or
coerce a civilian population" or "influence the policy of a government by
intimidation of coercion." Under this definition, a protest demonstration
that blocked a street and prevented an ambulance from getting by could be
deemed domestic terrorism. Likewise, the demonstrations in Seattle against
the WTO could fit within the definition. This was an unnecessary addition
to the criminal code; there are already plenty of laws making such civil
disobedience criminal without labeling such time honored protest as
terrorist and imposing severe prison sentences.
Overall, the new
legislation represents one of the most sweeping assaults on liberties in
the last 50 years. It is unlikely to make us more secure; it is certain to
make us less free.
It is common for governments to reach for
draconian law enforcement solutions in times of war or national crisis. It
has happened often in the United States and elsewhere. We should learn
from historical example: times of hysteria, of war, and of instability are
not the times to rush to enact new laws that curtail our freedoms and
grant more authority to the government and its intelligence and law
enforcement agencies.
The US government has conceptualized the war
against terrorism as a permanent war, a war without boundaries. Terrorism
is frightening to all of us, but it's equally chilling to think that in
the name of antiterrorism our government is willing to suspend
constitutional freedoms permanently as well.
Michael Ratner is an
international human rights lawyer and vice-president of the Center for
Constitutional Rights. He has brought numerous suits against the illegal
use of military force by the United States Government and specializes in
opposing government spying. Mr. Ratner teaches International Human Rights
Litigation at Columbia Law School, and is the author of The Pinochet
Papers, International Human Rights Litigation in US Courts, and Che
Guevara and the FBI. |
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