Clarity At Last: Border Guards Don't Need A Reason To Seize Your Laptops, Cell Phones, Cameras, iPods, Tapes, Books, Handwritten Notes...

We've heard some scary stories, and we've wondered. We've had murky questions and dark suspicions, but we didn't really know anything.

Now -- lucky us -- we have answers! We have clarity! We finally know what to expect in border inspections.

According to the government, border guards can seize any data storage medium, and copy any data -- from your laptop computers, cell phones, digital cameras, memory cards, iPods, portable disk drives and such, as well as from traditional analog media such as tapes, books, pamphlets and even handwritten notes. And they can do it for no reason, without any grounds for suspicion, without any hint that you might have done anything wrong.

We will all be comforted to have answers to longstanding questions.

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said.

The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.

So reported Ellen Nakashima for the Washington Post in an article published February 7, 2008.

In that article, "Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches", Nakashima continued:

Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San Francisco, plan to file a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.

The lawsuit was inspired by two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian background, many of whom, including Mango and the tech engineer, said they are concerned they were singled out because of racial or religious profiling.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Lynn Hollinger, said officers do not engage in racial profiling "in any way, shape or form." She said that "it is not CBP's intent to subject travelers to unwarranted scrutiny" and that a laptop may be seized if it contains information possibly tied to terrorism, narcotics smuggling, child pornography or other criminal activity.

The reason for a search is not always made clear.

If Ellen Nakashima was asking for clarity about the rules then her request has been granted.

There doesn't have to be any reason for a search or a seizure, according to policies which have apparently been in place for some time but which were formally disclosed last week, as Nakashima reported in Friday's piece, "Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border".

That piece starts like this:

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

More from Nakashima's newest:

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

And there's the inevitable fair-and-balanced cross-section of American opinion, featuring one spokesman for the rule of law and two spokesmen for tyranny.

"They're saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler's laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies "don't establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched."

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts "do not infringe on Americans' privacy." In a statement submitted to Feingold for a June hearing on the issue, he noted that the executive branch has long had "plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border without probable cause or a warrant" to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that "the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices." Searches have uncovered "violent jihadist materials" as well as images of child pornography, he wrote.

Chertoff also claims that

"... legislation locking in a particular standard for searches would have a dangerous, chilling effect as officers' often split-second assessments are second-guessed."

But that's not nearly as dangerous or as chilling as having "law enforcement" working under no rules at all -- not to mention keeping the rules secret! And these rules have been secret forever. As Judith Blakley reported in November of 2006:

Can US Customs Search & Seize Your Laptop Computer Without Cause? YES They Can!

On July 24, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that US Customs and Border Patrol Officers had the right to search and seize a person’s laptop computer, computer discs and other electronic media.

Nowhere has this information been broadcast. Millions of travelers know nothing about this ruling. Yet the word has begun to find its way out into public view. During the last week of October, 2006, an international conference of travel executives issued a warning, informing their members of this ruling and its implications. It was not until The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) warned their members that under a new law, US Customs and Border Patrol Officers may search and seize a person’s laptop computer, computer discs and other electronic media when that person arrives in the US from abroad or departs from the US for a foreign country, that word finally got out.

Business travelers are advised to be cautious when carrying proprietary information in and out of the United States. According to ACTE, 86 percent of those surveyed said that the court’s decision to allow Officers to examine, download and/or seize the contents of their laptops would limit the kind of proprietary information they would normally store in their laptops.

Most ACTE members attending the conference in Spain had no prior knowledge of this new law.

Ryan Singel at Wired Blog Network aptly notes, in "Border Laptop Searches? No Reason Needed",

What is surprising is the clarity of the policy and that it is actually public.

Remember Maria Udy, whose laptop was taken in December of 2006? She's still waiting to get it back.

"I was assured that my laptop would be given back to me in 10 or 15 days," said Udy, who continues to fly into and out of the United States. She said the federal agent copied her log-on and password, and asked her to show him a recent document and how she gains access to Microsoft Word. She was asked to pull up her e-mail but could not because of lack of Internet access. With ACTE's help, she pressed for relief. More than a year later, Udy has received neither her laptop nor an explanation.

And there you have it. Border guards can seize data storage devices of any kind, from laptops to handwritten notes, without any grounds. They are required to give seized items back to their owners in a reasonable time, but they get to decide what's reasonable. They can make copies of your data and share it with other government agencies, but if it turns out that you're not a terrorist they are supposed to destroy their copies of your data.

How would you ever know whether or not they had done so? And what would prevent them from secretly adding your data to the Main Core database?

Even more disturbingly, perhaps, this is the result of policies promulgated in secrecy, implemented without any publicity, and only now coming to light. Michael Chertoff says doing it any other way would be chilling and dangerous. And not a voice is raised in opposition -- at least not in the mainstream press.

You won't find any mention in the big media of how chilling and dangerous it is to be governed by secret laws enabling searches and seizures of private personal information and/or confidential business data -- not only without a warrant, but without any grounds at all; without even a hint of suspicion; just for the sake of "routine" inspection.

The America we sing about -- "the land of the free and the home of the brave" -- is now such a distant memory, it's hard to imagine it ever existed at all.

The America of Lincoln's phrase -- "government of the people, by the people, for the people" -- probably never existed either.

The Declaration of Independence famously declared that "all men are born equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", but it was talking about all property-owning white men, and their unalienable rights included the right to own other people.

It has always been a "government of the chattel, by the owners, for the owners."

We forget this at our peril.

And now, we carry data across international borders at our peril, too.

Big Dog, Little Tail / It's Too Late

Here's Chris Floyd, from his backup site, Empire Burlesque 1.0, in full and with kind permission:

I.
Let's be clear about one thing: Israel will not attack Iran without the full knowledge and approval of the United States government. The trigger of the "warning shot" of Israel's long-range air-strike exercise last week was actually pulled in Washington. The Israelis will not force or deceive the U.S. government into an attack on Iran; that attack – which grows more certain by the hour – will take place because America's bipartisan foreign policy establishment and military-industrial complex (to the extent that there is any real difference between the two) want it to happen, or are willing to let it happen.

It is of course an article of faith for some people that the Israeli tails wags the big American dog. This rather ludicrous assertion is nothing more than the pernicious doctrine of "American exceptionalism" tricked out in "dissident" drag. For its underlying assumption is that good ole true-blue American elites would never commit war crimes or seek empire and geopolitical dominion unless they had somehow been tricked into it by those wily Jews. This is exactly backwards. If Israel was of no use to the American elite's domination agenda, then it would be discarded, or at least downgraded in terms of military, economic and diplomatic support.

When a nation serves the American elite's interests well, it is rewarded, and its various shortcomings are overlooked, however egregious they might be. Saudi Arabia is a prime example. Egypt is another. Iraq is a negative example. When Saddam's regime was thought useful, it was supported, copiously. When Saddam was no longer useful – especially when he threatened the Bush Family's long-time business partners in Kuwait – then he became "a new Hitler." When Iran was governed by a tyrant friendly to Washington, it was lauded – and larded with the usual military support and diplomatic muscle. When unfriendly tyrants took over, Iran became a land of Persian devils. The list of such examples from American history goes on and on.

If Israel had, say, opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it would have found itself shorn of much of its American largess very quickly. Israel is in fact almost entirely dependent on the United States for its military and economic well-being; in return it gives unstinting support to the interests of the American elite. It is in many ways one of the most abject client states in the world today, outside of Iraq or Afghanistan. The fact that there is a convergence of interests and ideology between militarist elites in the United States and Israel is hardly surprising. It would only be surprising if this were not the case. And so we see a cross-pollination of ideas, strategies, techniques, technologies – and even, in some cases, personnel (e.g. the "Clean Break" group) – between these elites.

For the same reasons, we also see a strong "Jewish Lobby" in the United States. For although those lobbying organizations do not actually represent the viewpoint of the majority of American Jews, they do offer unwavering support to the American elite's domination agenda. These organizations – like Israel itself – also serve as useful stalking horses and lightning rods. In the first instance, they can stake out radical positions which would be too impolitic for America's governing elite to espouse too openly. In the second instance, they can always be conveniently blamed for "radicalizing" or "duping" the American elite if one of the latter's schemes for loot and dominion go wrong. And of course they can be used to punish domestic politicians who fail to hew slavishly enough to the elite's imperial line. But if AIPAC came out tomorrow with, say, a demand that America dismantle its worldwide empire of military bases, or condemned the invasion of Iraq as a war crime, we would see its influence decline almost instantly. Again, it is the convergence of interests with the American elite, and their willingness to serve those interests, that give the government of Israel and non-representative organizations like AIPAC such a prominent role.

For example, AIPAC has played the stalking horse in helping push Resolution 362, the "Iran War Resolution," toward its virtually guaranteed passage by the House. The bill – supported by the usual broad spectrum of the "bipartisan foreign policy establishment" – calls for, among other things, a full blockade of Iran. This is of course an outright act of war, and one aimed directly and purposely at the Iranian people, who would be subjected to the same kind of treatment that left at least a million Iraqis dead during the many years of American-led, bipartisan sanctions against Saddam's regime. This fact – an impending act of war that could inflict untold suffering upon millions of innocent people, even before the first shot is fired – does not seem to trouble anyone in the American establishment, nor in the "progressive blogosphere."

Arthur Silber has a few choice words on this situation here, including:

In the fearsome, awful, terrifying wake of an attack on Iran, as the economy crumbles, as violence spreads throughout the Middle East, Asia and possibly elsewhere, as life falls apart in the United States, do you think anyone will give a damn about FISA? Do you think anyone will even remember FISA? Do you doubt that the government will seize and utilize powers that will make FISA look like child's play? Do you doubt that the government will do all this with the active, eager participation of the Democrats?

II.
The stated casus belli in the "Iran War Resolution" – which replicates exactly the bellicose intentions and deceptions of the Bush Administration – is Iran's "nuclear enrichment activities." This is presented as an unmitigated evil worthy of the most severe measures, including an act of war like a blockade. The truth, of course, is that these enrichment activities are entirely legal under international treaties governing nuclear proliferation, and are being carried out under the most extensive and stringent international supervision ever imposed on a nation, as Kaveh Afrasiabi notes in the Asia Times. Afrasiabi also details the rank falsehoods about Iran's nuclear programme, and the international inspection program overseeing it, that permeate the American media:

...in an article in The Wall Street Journal, US Congresswoman Jane Harman, who chairs the powerful Homeland Security Intelligence Committee, cites Iran's steady progress in installing new centrifuges and the dangers posed by "unsupervised, weapons-grade material" in Tehran's hands.

Never mind that IAEA reports clearly confirm that all of Iran's enrichment-related facilities are under the agency's "containment and monitoring", or that IAEA inspectors have had nine "unannounced visits" at the enrichment facility in Natanz since March 2007.

Thus, for instance, in a front-page article in the New York Times, dated June 20, Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt break the sensational news about Israel's extensive maneuvers in preparation for an attack on Iran, indirectly rationalizing Israel's belligerency by omitting any mention of the IAEA's latest report confirming the absence of any evidence of military nuclear diversion and, instead, confining themselves to the following comment: "In late May, the IAEA reported that Iran's suspected work on nuclear matters was a 'matter of serious concern' and that the Iranians owed the agency 'substantial explanation'."

What ought to have been added was that the same IAEA report states unequivocally that it had received "no credible information" regarding the alleged "weaponization studies", nor has the agency detected any nuclear activity connected to those alleged studies. Besides, the same IAEA report more than a dozen times stresses the evidence of peacefulness of Iran's nuclear program...

To turn to another example of flawed coverage of Iran by the US media, a recent editorial in the Dallas News states categorically that the IAEA "has recently accused Iran of developing its program of enriching uranium". The editors appear unaware that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory, does not prohibit Iran's uranium-enrichment program.

The IAEA has never declared Iran in material breach of its obligations and, certainly, has never "accused" Iran of pursuing a program sanctioned under the NPT. Rather, the governing board of the IAEA has simply requested from Iran to suspend its sensitive nuclear program as a "confidence-building measure", that is, as a time-bound and thus temporary "legally non-binding" step.

As Sam Gardiner notes, Bush and his minions are now pounding the "enrichment" theme as their chief drumbeat for war with Iran. And they have obviously succeeded in demonizing the entirely legal and carefully supervised process of enrichment, as demonstrated by the Congressional resolution and the press coverage, both of which also take up "enrichment" as an evil that must be stopped at all costs.

No doubt this is in response to the IAEA reports noted by Afrasiabi, which have found no credible information about "weaponization studies." (And those are just studies, mind you, not actual weaponization programs.) This is of course not the first time that the Bush Administration has moved the goalposts in its fearmongering campaign. As we noted here last December, just after the Administration's own intelligence agencies declared that Iran had no active nuclear weapons program, Bush announced that

Iran will not be "allowed" to acquire even the "scientific knowledge" required to build a nuclear weapon. Previous "red lines" which could trigger an attack had been based on Iran actually building a weapon; now even nibbling at the forbidden fruit of nuclear knowledge could serve as "justification" for a "pre-emptive strike" to quell the "danger." After all, as Bush rather illiterately told reporters, "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?" Better safe than sorry, right?

And at the very least, moving the goalposts in this manner will allow the Bush Regime to portray Iran as a dangerous, defiant menace for merely carrying on with its fully legal nuclear power program, as authorized by international treaty and monitored by the IAEA. Thus no matter what Iran actually does – or doesn't do – the Bushists will continue to use the "Persian menace" as fodder for the imperial war machine.

We see this playing out again today, in the scary talk – and Congressional resolutions – damning Iran's "enrichment activities." What was true then is true now: there is literally nothing that Iran can do – or not do – to divert the American elite's desire to strike at their land and bring it under domination. And apparently there is nothing that anyone in America with any power or a major platform will do to stop it either.

Arthur Silber concludes his damning analysis of our unforced march to new horror with a heartbreaking quote from Martin Luther King Jr. Let it serve as the last word here as well; no one will put it better:

There is such a thing as being too late.... Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity.... Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late."

Indeed. Arthur Silber often screams at the progressive blogosphere: "Why won't you do anything about this?" The big "liberal", "progressive" sites seem determined to avoid the issues on which they could do the most good. It's hard for me to imagine that this is unintentional. And I know this from heartbreaking experience.

What's needed, according to Arthur Silber, is "massive civil disobedience, including a sit-in of a minimum of several hundred thousand people shutting down Washington, D.C. completely", presenting a spectacle the media cannot avoid covering, threatening to shut the federal government down entirely, and holding the fort until more arrive. It's a lovely vision, but I'm not fortunate enough to share it.

Last summer there were a half a million people on the ground in Washington and the media barely gave them a peep. The "Active Denial" heat-ray crowd-control weapon is ready now and it provides a formidable long-distance supplement to the water cannons and pepper spray of old. Throw in the synthetic insects, and it's hard to see how even a couple million people could be a serious threat.

As if you could get them there. As if you could get them interested.

After the 2004 presidential election was obviously and blatantly stolen, I sat up all night leaving messages on all the "progressive" "Democratic" websites I could find. "Get yourself to Washington!" I wrote. "General strike -- now or never!" I exhorted.

I got two responses. One said, "I'd love to do it, but I gotta go to work in the morning." And the other one said, "You sound like you're ten years old."

Last year I wrote a whole series of big beautiful posts urging my readers to get involved in a General Strike planned for September 11th.

Nobody linked to a single one of those posts. No other blogger, to my knowledge, even mentioned the idea. I took this as a sign of the level of commitment to positive change among my readership. Namely: None.

As I wrote before the "election" of 2006,

By refusing to work every day, rather than refusing to "vote" once every two years, you could make your voice heard every day. Or at least that's the theory.

But in this case it's only a theory; and there will never be a general strike in the USA, no matter how clear it becomes that our "elections" are a farce.

Why? Because consumers would be required to sacrifice a little bit of material comfort for future of their democracy, and for the future of their children.

And that is the one thing Americans have proven they absolutely will not do.

I'd happily throw my weight behind Arthur Silber's call for massive civil disobedience. But my track record's not so good.

It's not as if you couldn't see this coming.

Here's an excerpt from a song I wrote in 1984.

It's Too Late

There's nothin' you can do about it
nowhere you can take your complaint
Everybody loves to shout but
no one ever listens until it's
too late

Everywhere you look there's life forms
buidin' little walls and fences
Hardly people anymore, just
owners of establishments, it's
too late

It's too bad
They never gave a thought to what they had

It's so sad
There's nothin' left of what they had

There's nothin' you can do about it
even though it makes no sense, there's
something comforting about
running into walls and fences
too late

Aw, it's too late
Aw, it's too bad
Aw, man, it's over.

Big Surprise In Buffalo: The Art Professor Wasn't A Terrorist After All!

After a four-year nightmare, art professor Steve Kurtz has finally shaken free of the Department of Homeland Terror.

The trouble for Kurtz started in May of 2004, when his wife died suddenly in her sleep. Police came out to investigate the unexpected death, and while searching the home, they found harmless scientific and art supplies, which they claimed were evidence of terrorism.

Over the next almost-four years, a bundle of alphabet agencies did their best to misrepresent Kurtz and his art supplies as a threat to our security, but -- amazingly -- the case against him was thrown out of court, with a federal judge calling the government's entire indictment "insufficient on its face."

Kurtz spoke with Amy Goodman the other day; here's an excerpt from their conversation:

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to our next story, almost unfathomable, but true, about art in a time of terror. Even Kafka might have had trouble conjuring up this one.

Steve Kurtz is a professor of visual studies at SUNY, Buffalo — that’s State University of New York, Buffalo — a founding member of the award-winning art and theater group, Critical Art Ensemble. On May 11, 2004, his wife Hope tragically died in her sleep. When he called 911 for help, a nightmare that would last for the next four years began to unfold.

The police became suspicious of his art supplies and harmless bacteria cultures that he was using for an antiwar project about the public health impact of germ warfare programs. Kurtz was detained as a suspected bioterrorist, his home raided by the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security. His belongings, his cat, even his wife’s body, were seized.

After a federal grand jury refused to charge Kurtz with bioterrorism, Kurtz and his colleague Robert Ferrell of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health were charged with federal mail and wire fraud concerning the acquisition of $256 of harmless bacteria. Under the PATRIOT Act, they could have faced up to twenty years in prison.

After four harrowing years, on April 21, a federal judge dismissed the government’s entire indictment against Kurtz as “insufficient on its face.” He’s been cleared of all charges.
...

Why don’t you tell us your story, beginning that day, May 11, 2004?

STEVE KURTZ: Well, that was a very dark day for me. I woke up that morning and found that my wife had died in her sleep. And kind of after a moment of shock that slowly broke into a kind of panic, I made my way to the telephone, called 911. They came quite rapidly. And as they looked around, they did as they had to do when a woman who, quite young at this age, forty-five, dies in their home and called the police. And the police came out and secured my home, and then three detectives showed up. And for the rest of that day, I was pretty much interrogated as a murder suspect.

And one of the things that caught the police attention’s eye was my home lab, which was filled with pretty basic innocuous equipment that I primarily use for molecular biology, for DNA experiments. And they wondered why I had that, and I explained to them that I was a professor at UB, University of Buffalo, and that my specialty was the intersection between art and science, and this was part of the basic equipment I needed to have, that the university didn’t supply us studios, so we had to create our own space for it. And, you know, I showed them work I had done online, showed them my resume, showed them catalogs. But they weren’t particularly convinced by that, and they were more convinced by the idea that if someone has scientific equipment in their home that they’re probably up to something nefarious. And as the detectives left that afternoon, they were of the opinion that the FBI was going to want to talk to me.

So the following day, as I went out to go to the funeral home to make arrangements for my wife’s cremation, about three or four FBI cars came screeching up, and I was put into illegal detention and basically soft-rendered, meaning I didn’t have to get drugged and flown off to Guantanamo. It was much nicer than that. It was the pleasant way to get rendered. They take you to a hotel and hold you there without charge, without being Miranda-ized, and put you through a lighter style of interrogation.

Thus began the incredible -- but true -- saga. Well, maybe it's not so incredible anymore, not in BushLand. If a skyscraper a quarter of a mile tall can disintegrate in 10 seconds -- just because of gravity -- and if that can happen three times in the same day -- but only on that day -- then nothing's incredible anymore, is it?

When the police initially searched the Kurtz home, they found an invitation with Arabic writing on it. They used this bit of Arabic to "prove" that Steve Kurtz was a terrorist, and this "proof" was then used to "justify" a warrant.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, but it doesn't matter anymore, not in BushLand.

STEVE KURTZ: And when the prosecutor was questioned about it in the first hearing, the judge asked, "You mean if he had a Koran in his house, you would have confiscated that and used that in this manner?" And the prosecutor said, "Yes."

Well, there you have it. If you can read or write Arabic, or if you possess the tiniest sample of Arabic writing, even if you doesn't understand what it says, you may not actually be a bioterrorist, but you'd better be very wary of the police, especially if your wife happens to die in the middle of the night.

But don't worry; they're keeping us safe from art teachers.

Scrubbed: Lee Hamilton And The Unbearable Baggage Of Recent History

(UPDATED below)

Guest contributor Jerry Meldon has an interesting new piece at Bob Parry's site, Consortium News dot com. It's called "Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Hyde", and it's interesting in quite a number of ways.

The "Dr. Hamilton" of the title is Lee Hamilton [photo], whose name is well-known to students of 9/11 -- not all of whom may be familiar with much of his background. Dr. Hamilton's official biography is indeed a well-connected one; here's a sample:

Lee H. Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. Hamilton represented Indiana’s 9th congressional district for 34 years beginning January 1965. He served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress.
...

Hamilton served as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a forward looking, bi-partisan assessment of the situation in Iraq, created at the urging of Congress. He served as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and co-chaired the 9/11 Public Discourse Project established to monitor implementation of the Commission’s recommendations. He is currently a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, the FBI Director’s Advisory Board, the CIA Director’s Economic Intelligence Advisory Panel, the Defense Secretary’s National Security Study Group, and the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force on Preventing the Entry of Weapons of Mass Effect on American Soil.

The Wikipedia page on Dr. Hamilton contains a good deal of overlap but some interesting additional information:

Hamilton was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat as part of the national Democratic landslide of 1964. He chaired many committees during his tenure in office, including the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Joint Committee on Printing, and others. As chair of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, Hamilton chose not to investigate President Ronald Reagan or President George H. W. Bush, stating that he did not think it would be "good for the country" to put the public through another impeachment trial. He was one of the top choices to be running mate of Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton. It was specualated that Hamilton's chances were blocked by feminist organziations like National Organization for Women who didn't find Hamilton sufficantly pro-choice on abortion. He remained in Congress until 1999; at the time he was one of two surviving members of the large Democratic freshman class of 1965 (the other being John Conyers).

On March 15, 2006, Congress announced the formation of the Iraq Study Group, organized by the United States Institute of Peace, of which Hamilton is the Democratic co-chair, along with the former Secretary of State (under President George H.W. Bush) James A. Baker III. Hamilton, like Baker, is considered a master negotiator.

Since leaving Congress, Mr. Hamilton has served as a member of the Hart-Rudman Commission, and was co-chair of the Baker-Hamilton Commission to Investigate Certain Security Issues at Los Alamos. He sits on many advisory boards, including those to the CIA, the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, and the United States Army. Hamilton is an Advisory Board member and Co-Chair for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. He is currently the president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and was appointed to serve as the vice chair of the 9/11 Commission.

Jerry Meldon's piece fills in more of the background on Dr. Hamilton's decision, "as chair of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran", "not to investigate President Ronald Reagan or President George H. W. Bush".

Dr. Hamilton's "justification" for his decision -- that he did not think it would be "good for the country" to put the public through another impeachment trial -- may or may not represent faulty judgment about what's "good for the country", but it undeniably puts one man's opinion -- his -- above the rule of law.

It's a neocon fascist act, thoroughly consistent with the acts of the neocon fascists with whom he cooperates today -- as "an Advisory Board member and Co-Chair for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy".

This means: As an alleged Democrat who supports neocon fascist policies, Lee Hamilton tries to make neocon fascist policies seem reasonable, and this fabricated support for the Republican agenda among the "Democrats" is then used to paint any opposition as "hyperpartisan" -- shrill, radical, and not serious.

In other words, the "Partnership for a Secure America" is one of many front groups set up to provide a veneer of legitimacy for the post-9/11 transformation of America, and Dr. Lee Hamilton, the "bipartisan Democrat", has been selected to give the "not-for-profit" group its Democratic "credibility".

As Jerry Meldon points out, Dr. Hamilton has a long history of enabling criminal abuse of the country by radical Republicans. Extensive excerpts from Meldon:

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

He probably would prefer not to revisit fateful decisions he made while chairing investigations into Republican dirty work, especially those that let George H.W. Bush off the hook and cleared George W. Bush's path to the White House.

As veteran journalist Robert Parry has persuasively argued at Consortiumnews.com, the Bush family name squeaked through the 80’s and early 90’s essentially mud-free, only because:

-- On Christmas Eve 1992, lame-duck President George H.W. Bush pardoned six of his earlier co-conspirators in the Iran-Contra affair (the Reagan-Bush White House’s diversion of profits from illegal arms sales to Iran to bankroll Nicaragua’s contra terrorists in defiance of a congressional ban). Until he was pardoned that day, former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger might have bought clemency by testifying against co-conspirator Bush.

-- After Bush left office on Jan. 20, 1993, President Bill Clinton (along with other senior Democrats, including Hamilton) cut short a congressional inquiry into Bush’s secret billion-dollar loans to Saddam Hussein and did nothing to help Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh penetrate the Iran-Contra cover-up.

-- Hamilton also soft-pedaled two key congressional inquiries. The first investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987 and the second examined allegations that the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign team had struck a treasonous deal with the hostage-holding Iranian government while Jimmy Carter was still president.

Conventional wisdom has attributed the target-friendliness of those latter investigations to Mr. Hamilton's celebrated spirit of bipartisanship.

After all, what else could have persuaded Hamilton to narrow the scope of the Iran-Contra investigation in order to placate Dick Cheney and the rest of the committee's Republicans, if not his desire to appear bipartisan?

And how else to explain Hamilton’s ill-advised decision to join with the panel’s Republicans (in defiance of all but one other Democrat) and immunize the testimony of a man on whom it had the goods, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North (whose operations in the Old Executive Office Building had been exposed by reporter Parry in 1985-86)?

How much more criminal activity can we celebrate in the "spirit of bipartisanship"?

One may note here that much of Jerry Meldon's reporting depends on the excellent work done by Robert Parry in the 1980s and 1990s.

Parry has been very critical of Bill Clinton for not pursuing allegations of treason against his predecessor, George H. W. Bush, arguing that George W. Bush could never have been presented as a "serious" presidential candidate if the full extent of his father's criminal past had been well-known before the 2000 "election".

Jerry Meldon again:

North proceeded to cover up for then-Vice President Bush, and North was spared a felony record because his later criminal conviction was reversed because of his immunized testimony, which Hamilton had helped arrange.

Hamilton’s Iran-Contra performance was troubling. But he went several steps further when he chaired the October Surprise Task Force and handed the Reagan-Bush administration a deck full of get-out-of-jail-free cards.

In the lead-up to the 1980 election, Republicans feared that Jimmy Carter would pull off an "October Surprise" and talk the Iranians into releasing 52 American hostages. Carter's failure to do so led to Reagan’s landslide victory.

However, over the next several years, a parade of individuals alleged that Carter failed only because the Republicans had secretly agreed to arm Iran in exchange for a delay in the hostages’ release.

Heated Republican denials notwithstanding, the fact remained that the Iranians chose to end the hostages’ 444-day ordeal within hours of Reagan’s inauguration. To put the nasty rumors to rest more than a decade later, the House Foreign Affairs Committee formed a task force under the leadership of Henry Hyde, R-Illinois, and … Lee Hamilton.

How much do you know about this task force? How much do you remember?

Jerry Meldon continues:

The task force was charged with examining allegations that in the summer and fall of 1980 Republican heavyweights, notably the vice presidential candidate, former CIA director George H.W. Bush, and the campaign director, future CIA director William J. Casey, had secretly flown to Europe to strike the fateful deal.

The key issue was the veracity of Bush’s and Casey’s alibis.

In the heat of his 1992 re-election campaign, an angry President Bush accused the task force of waging a “witch hunt.” Obligingly, Hamilton and Hyde disclosed that partially redacted Secret Service records backed Bush's alibi, thus clearing him of suspicion.

However, Spencer Oliver, chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, objected, asking why key sections of those records were blacked out; why one crucial entry asserted a trip to a Maryland country club that Bush never took; and why the identity of a person who supposedly met with Bush was withheld from the task force.

Oliver charged that the Bush administration was stonewalling:

“They have sought to block, limit, restrict and discredit the investigation in every possible way … President Bush’s recent outbursts [about] his whereabouts in mid-October of 1980 are disingenuous at best since the administration has refused to make available the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear Mr. Bush.”

Journalist Parry adds: “The Bush administration flatly refused to give any more information to the House task force unless it agreed never to interview [Mr. Bush's] alibi witness and never to release [that person’s] name. Amazingly, the task force accepted the administration’s terms.”

Hamilton’s treatment of Mr. Bush was outrageously deferential...

Do you hear any echoes from the past?

Does Barack Obama hear those echoes? His plea for unity in the face of diversity sounds very much like the "good for the country" story under which the crimes of Bush 41 were buried.

And some of us fear that Obama -- if elected -- would follow in the steps of Bill Clinton and Lee Hamilton and bury the crimes of the preceding administration. Is it unreasonable for us to fear such an outcome?

Bob Parry doesn't appear to be concerned in the least; his support for Obama is on the order of Hollywood PR, even though Obama seems set to do the very same thing Parry rips Bill Clinton for doing. Very strange.

There's more from Jerry Meldon and you should read it all. If you do, you'll learn nothing of what Lee Hamilton has done in the past 15 years. You'll also note a subtle, ironic flavor to Meldon's introduction ...

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

... and his conclusion ...

on March 27 – as Mr. Hamilton participates in the Fares Center’s symposium, “The United States and the Middle East: What Comes Next After Iraq?” – the Tufts community will have the opportunity to ask Mr. Hamilton exactly why he has repeatedly kept Americans in the dark about critical episodes of their nation’s history in dealing with the Middle East.

Such a treatment -- implying that Dr. Hamilton may not want to talk about "yesterday" and hinting about his role in keeping "Americans in the dark about critical episodes of their nation’s history in dealing with the Middle East" -- may well be valid, but when such a treatment is applied to an article that doesn't mention anything that's happened since 1993, it's tough not to think of a word that rhymes with "aristocracy" and starts with the letter "H".

Why would an "independent investigative journalist" whose website does so much good work exposing America's hidden history be so reluctant to discuss America's recent hidden history?

Is there something controversial about the claim that Lee Hamilton was the co-chair of the 9/11 Commission?

Is there something controversial about the claim that the 9/11 Commission's report is unbelievable?

If so, we've got a problem, because one of the people making that claim is Lee Hamilton himself.

Why couldn't Jerry Meldon mention any of this? Why couldn't Robert Parry -- who wrote both an introduction to Meldon's article and a coda -- have mentioned any of this?

Did I miss a memo someplace? Are we not allowed to talk about anything that's happened in the last 15 years?

Or is this what the Consortium News masthead means where it says "Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995"??

I think I'd better stay away from "independent investigative journalism", and just keep blogging!

~~~

UPDATE: Larisa Alexandrovna praises the Consortium News piece, and adds some important details (and lots of interesting links):

Hamilton is a long time friend of both former SecDef Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
...

Remember that some of the Iran Contra folks graduated to the Bush II administration. Among them and perhaps the most notorious, Elliott Abrams (the current number two National Security Adviser). It is also widely believed that those old Iran Contra channels resurfaced to help with the delivery of the Niger Forgeries and even the same arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, had back-channel meetings with his Washington Iran Contra contacts. See my articles on this:

Cheney has tapped Iranian expatriate, arms dealer to surveil discussions with Iran

Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels

Cheney and Rumsfeld Outsourcing Special Ops in Iraq to Terror Group (MEK)

American Who Advised Pentagon Says he Worked for Magazine that Found Niger Documents

Chalabi Involved in Key US-Iran Policy Making Discussions

Pentagon Confirms Iranian Directorate

Intelligence Laundry: To Paris Again

Conversations with Machiavelli's Ghost: Demystifying Intrigue (Second installment of Michael Ledeen interviews)

Not "If" But "When": Business Will Become Enforcement Under Martial Law

When the meltdown passes the crucial stage and Bush has "no choice" but to declare martial law, a select group of businessmen will know about it first, thanks to inside information from the FBI.

And if you don't like it, they'll be ready to shoot you, without danger of legal consequences, as Matthew Rothschild reports for The Progressive:

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

As the name implies, InfraGard values property rights above all else. So they're the perfect tools of a fascist government, and they're being readied for more action than one might suspect:

One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation—and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, “Partnership for Protection.” On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

“The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,” he says. “From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.” These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out.

But that’s not all.

“Then they said when -- not if -- martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.

I was able to confirm that the meeting took place where he said it had, and that the FBI and Homeland Security did make presentations there. One InfraGard member who attended that meeting denies that the subject of lethal force came up. But the whistleblower is 100 percent certain of it. “I have nothing to gain by telling you this, and everything to lose,” he adds. “I’m so nervous about this, and I’m not someone who gets nervous.”

I'm not someone who gets nervous either.

It's a win/win situation. The businessmen get inside information, and the feds get a few more details -- armed thugs.

On second thought, make that situation "win/win/lose".

And read Matthew Rothschild: Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business

Bogus Terror: Feds Wage War Against The Rule Of Law

The Other Osama

Shahawar Matin Siraj [photo] was a young man when his family moved from Pakistan to the United States. The family had been persecuted in Pakistan because they were "too secular", and they came to the US looking for religious freedom. But they found something else again.

Matin Siraj was working in his father's store when Osama Eldawoody walked in. Eldawoody talked up Siraj, a doe-eyed dolt who was barely competent to sell Islamic books. Eldawoody found out that Siraj lived across the city, and that he rode the subway a lot. Eldawoody started offering Siraj rides home from work. The two would talk in the car.

The much older Eldawoody established a surrogate-father relationship with the innocent and gullible youngster, taught him about violent jihad, told him that to be "true" to Allah he had to attack the Americans, and got him to draw a map of the Herald Square subway station. This crude drawing would be used against Siraj at trial, after Eldawoody "blew the whistle" on Siraj and his plans.

Unknown to Siraj -- or to an alleged accomplice, James Elshafay -- Eldawoody was working for the NYPD counter-terrorism unit.

He had been assigned to visit mosques and write down the plate numbers of the cars in the parking lots, to visit the Islamic bookstores looking for a likely mark. He couldn't have found a better one than Siraj, who had never had a violent thought in his life -- until Eldawoody took the young man "under his wing", so to speak.

Eldawoody [photo] led Siraj along by the nose, or at least he tried to. At one point Eldawoody asked Siraj if he was ready to attack and Siraj replied that he had to ask his mother.

Hi Mom, it's me. I was wondering, well, actually one of my friends was wondering, would it be OK if me and some friends blew up the subway station? Puh-leeze!

Siraj was arrested in August of 2004 and charged with plotting to bomb the Herald Square station. He was convicted in 2005, even though he had no bombs, no bomb-making materials, no knowledge of bomb-making, and even more importantly, no desire to hurt anyone. In January of 2006 he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and at that point his family, who had been quiet thus far, started talking about entrapment.

The next day -- early the very next morning -- his entire family was arrested and taken into custody, charged with immigration violations. After a lengthy publicity battle, the government allowed Matin's mother and sister out on bond, and now they work in the store, while Matin serves his time ... and the father is still in prison, more than a year later.

It's not about immigration. It's about entrapment. The word must not be uttered.

Heavy Pieces

In the Terror War against the Rule of Law, the heavy pieces are beginning to move into place, and quite visibly, too: even the so-called alternative media are starting to get a vague idea about some of it. Their coverage comes way too late, and it's too fragmented to do any of us much good, in my opinion. But then again, I've been wrong before. I would love to be wrong about this.

As I was saying: a couple of long and relevant pieces have appeared recently in the quasi-dissident media, both with good points, both with gaping holes. At least they complement each other.

Mother Jones has a heavily annotated piece by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella called "Don't Even Think About It" which describes the crackdown on your civil rights that's sure to come as more and more resources are devoted to striking at "the roots of terrorism". Unfortunately for you, the striking is being done by people who have no idea where the roots of terrorism lie, and/or no intention of finding out, and they certainly wouldn't share that information with you even if they did have it. Oh well.

At Rolling Stone, Guy Lawson's "The Fear Factory" delves into the world of fabricated terror, shining a spotlight on William "Jameel" Chrisman [photo right], the former FBI asset who entrapped Derrick Shareef [sketch below].

Lawson also points out that the FBI counter-terrorists have no intention of sharing any information with you, either.

Neither piece does a very good job at showing the "big picture", but they both show parts of that picture fairly well.

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces

Lawson's piece focuses on the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces, about which he observes:

Since 9/11, the number of such outfits across the country has tripled. With more than 2,000 FBI agents now assigned to 102 task forces, the JTTFs have effectively become a vast, quasi-secret arm of the federal government, granted sweeping new powers that outstrip those of any other law-enforcement agency. The JTTFs consist not only of local police, FBI special agents and federal investigators from Immigration and the IRS, but covert operatives from the CIA. The task forces have thus effectively destroyed the "wall" that historically existed between law enforcement and intelligence-gathering. Under the Bush administration, the JTTFs have been turned into a domestic spy agency, like Britain's MI5 -- one with the powers of arrest.

Lawson questions the practice of instigating terror plots, and points out it tends to produce the "victories" in the war on terror that are so essential to the continuation of the war.

He mentions a series of famously "foiled" "terror plots", all of which were set up by law-enforcement agents who had "infiltrated" groups of wannabe terrorists, or recruited such groups themselves, after which they served as agents-provocateur, organizing the alleged wannabes to work on an impossible plot for which they could then be busted.

Lawson provides a host of frightening insights into the mentality of the people who are supposed to be protecting us. One of my favorites: a telling exchange with Sgt. Paul DeRosa of the Chicago Police Department:

Chicago has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country -- some 400,000, DeRosa estimates. "Experts say that between five and ten percent of Muslims are extremists. So you take it down to one percent. What's one percent of 400,000? Forty thousand? Technically there could be 40,000 —"

"You mean 4,000," I say.

DeRosa pauses. "Right," he says. "Four thousand." He forges on. "Most people who come to America who are Middle Eastern come for a good reason. But there's still a percentage that may be here that don't like us. They are with the extremists."

Aside from the obvious difficulty with easy math -- if that's what it was -- the question begs to be raised: If there are 4,000 extremists in Chicago alone, why aren't any of them attacking?

The Circular Dance

Ask a question such as this in a JTTF context, and you can go around in circles forever, as illustrated by the following conversation between Lawton and Special Agent Robert Holley, a JTTF Counterterrorism Squad supervisor

When I ask what kinds of cases his CT squad has made, Holley cites the example of a local cab driver who came up on the JTTF's radar some time back —he won't say how or why. The man was East African, Holley says, a suspected Islamic extremist "connected to known bad guys overseas." After being interviewed by the JTTF, the cabbie decided to leave the country. Nothing criminal had occurred, and no charges were laid. The cab driver had simply come to the attention of the JTTF, and that in itself was enough to dispose of the matter.

"Can we consider that a success because we didn't put him in jail?" Holley asks. "Absolutely. This guy is no longer here. He is not a threat to one person in the United States."

"Was he ever a threat?" I ask.

"We opened up an investigation."

"But isn't that a circular argument?"

"Was he a bomb-thrower?" Holley concedes. "Probably not. Did he want to go into a mall and attack? No."

And that's just the beginning of the circular dance.

The next morning, I meet with three members of the Field Intelligence Group. [...] None of the three analysts in the FIG have Arabic-language skills or extensive experience in the countries they are supposed to monitor. To keep informed, they read newspapers and intelligence reports. They then issue bulletins to police departments about perceived threats.

"What is the biggest threat?" I ask.

There is a long pause.

"I think it's very dangerous if we start to identify that," an analyst named Julie Irvine says.

"The enemy is listening," Assistant Special Agent in Charge Gregory Fowler adds later. "I drill that into my people's heads every day. Foreign-intelligence agencies and terrorists are listening. The FBI is on a war footing."

When I express skepticism at the nature of the cases being brought by the JTTF, and the wild-goose chases that seem to occupy its time, Fowler says people don't understand the "threat stream" facing the nation. [...]

"The public is never going to see the evidence we have," Fowler says. "We don't want to reveal our hand or tip our sources. You cannot judge the nature of the terrorist threat to the United States based on the public record."

"But with such strictures," I ask, "how does a citizen become informed about the threat?"

"I have access to the information," Fowler says. "I have a lot of faith in the judgment of the common citizen. A lot of people understand the nature of the threat."

Are you dizzy yet? People don't understand the "threat stream" facing the nation but they do understand the nature of the threat. Yeah, right!

And that's good enough for you because DON'T ASK QUESTIONS!

In one of the more chilling passages, Lawton portrays the coming crackdown as a planned reaction to the next terrorist attack:

Despite the rapid and widespread proliferation of JTTFs, very little has been reported about what goes on inside the War on Terror's domestic front. The FBI building that houses the JTTF for the Northern District of Illinois has been moved from the middle of the city to a more spacious, fortresslike building on the industrial west side of Chicago, a place out of the city's Loop, literally and figuratively. The glass tower is surrounded by a tall metal fence, and layers upon layers of security inside and out add to the sense of siege. When Special Agent Robert Holley, who supervises the JTTF's Squad Counterterrorism 1, offers to escort me to his office on the eighth floor, we are stopped by his superior before we even reach the hallway. The entire floor, the supervisor declares, is considered secure -- there are classified documents on desks -- and therefore off-limits to outsiders.

Holley, an ex-military type who is built like a bullet, rolls his eyes but complies. There is no problem finding another room for a meeting. There are acres of empty offices and cubicles in the eerily futuristic building, the premises far larger than current requirements dictate but ready for expansion should the need arise with another terrorist attack.

And so on. It's fairly good work given the circumstances, and well worth checking out, despite its many deficiencies.

Deficiencies? For starters, it provides no annotations, it neglects some easily available relevant material, and it gives no sense of the shoe that's about to drop on us next.

Lawson even manages a somewhat hopeful -- and, to my mind, thoroughly pointless -- conclusion:

There are signs, however, that judges and jurors are getting fed up with such concocted "threats." In December, the prosecution of the "Liberty City Seven" ended in one acquittal and a hung jury for the rest of the accused. The supposed cell was accused of preparing a "full ground war" against America by bringing down the Sears Tower and other buildings. At trial, however, it emerged that the men had no operational abilities, that the plots were dreamed up at the exhortation of two paid FBI informants while smoking dope and that the group had been provided its camera, military boots and warehouse by the JTTF.

Despite 15,000 surveillance recordings of the men, including one in which they swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the jury refused to convict. "This was all written, produced, directed, choreographed and stage-designed by the United States government," Albert Levin, an attorney for one of the accused, said in his closing argument.

Undeterred, the government is taking six of the men back to court. The retrial was scheduled to begin on January 22nd.

This is my main criticism of Lawson's piece: The conviction or otherwise of the knuckleheads recruited by the counter-terrorists in this particular bogus foiled "terror plot" is not the point! The point is that the publicity generated by the arrest (forget the hearings if any, the trial if any, and the sentencing if any) is enough to "justify" the crackdown on radicalization.

The Crackdown Is Coming

For more on the coming crackdown, Mother Jones provides a resource although its piece also has serious limitations.

To wit: even though it gives a good picture of how The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act is going to take away a lot of your freedom (and that of your children, and theirs...), and even though it provides many important links, it gives no hint that the bulk of the "terror" being invoked to "justify" the new legislation was bogus.

Nonetheless, it does report:

After a couple of hearings—described by OMB Watch as "primarily one-sided, with the bulk of the witnesses representing law enforcement or federal agencies"—the bill went to the House floor, where it was it passed with only six members voting against it—three Democrats and three Republicans. (Twenty-two others were absent.) Currently, a nearly identical version of the bill awaits a vote in the Senate's Committee on Homeland Security, where it has a supporter in chair Joseph Lieberman. Committee member Barack Obama has gone on record as being undecided on the bill (after an earlier email to constituents that seemed to indicate support)—but no presidential candidate is likely to cast a vote that could be seen as soft on terrorism.

The legislation would create a National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism composed of 10 members whose vaguely defined job would be to "examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence," and to "build upon and bring together the work of other entities" including various federal, state, and local agencies, academics, and foreign governments. The commission is charged with issuing a report after 18 months. It also directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to set up a center to study "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism" at a U.S. university, and to "conduct a survey" of what other countries are doing to prevent homegrown terrorism.
...

The bill raises the potential for government encroachments on civil rights in part through the way it defines some basic terms. The text of the bill says that "the term 'violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change." It gives no clue as to what would qualify, under this law, as an "extremist belief system," leaving this open to broad interpretation according to the prevailing political winds.

In addition, simply by designating the "process of adopting or promoting" belief systems as a target for government concern or control, the bill moves into dangerous territory. The director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, Caroline Fredrickson, said in a statement on the bill, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme."

We also need to worry about any bill that raises the potential for government encroachments on civil rights.

Worrying About The Wrong Stuff, On Purpose

And there's the rub. We've got bogus terror on one hand, instigated by agents of the rapidly coalescing law-enforcement military complex ("lawfare", as Lawson points out). On the other we have a drastic new law that will enable all sorts of unwarranted surveillance, not to stop terrorism per se, but to "study" the process of "radicalization".

But this study will never work, can never work -- not for the purpose for which it was ostensibly designed -- because it's based on bogus analyses of bogus terror plots, by which I mean the analyses are stripped of any indication that the plots were bogus. As a rookie computer programmer I was taught the inviolable GIGO rule (Garbage In, Garbage Out). It applies to more than computers, of course. But clearly the designers of this process don't care whether garbage comes out. All they want is output!

Mother Jones again:

In his book on terrorism, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, [Brian Michael Jenkins, of the Rand Corporation] wrote, "In their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common grounds with leftist, anti-American, and anti-globalization forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a mutual foe." Once a terrorist is defined by thought and word rather than deed, there will be room for all of us in the big tent.

In other words, we're all losing our rights -- rights to privacy and security, among others; rights that our ancestors fought and died for -- as a pre-planned "reaction" to the arrests of bogus "terrorist cells" which were actually recruited, inspired, funded and supported in numerous other ways by agents of the lawfare state. How quaint!.

All this power-grabbing is clearly based on false pretexts, and that's becoming increasingly obvious, which is another problem (for another day, perhaps).

Much of the so-called "justification" for the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act comes from a report compiled by the New York Police Department. One of the "featured terrorists" in this report is Shahawar Matin Siraj, the so-called Subway Bomber.

The NYPD entrapped him, the feds jailed his family, and a bogus tale regarding his "violent radicalization" is being used to drive acceptance of a draconian new law.

Even the world's best marketers couldn't sell this "lawfare" nonsense unless they had a pile of stories to hang it on -- so who cares whether the stories are true or false as long as they sell?

Rolling Stone again:

There is considerable skepticism in local police departments in northern Illinois about the nature and extent of the threat posed by terrorism. There are 415 local law-enforcement agencies in the district, many of which remain unconvinced that the threat is as dire as the JTTF maintains. Many departments refuse to allocate even one or two officers to spend four hours on basic terror training. Rather than consider the idea that the cops closest to the ground might have a better perspective on their communities, the JTTF addressed the problem by forming a TLOC —Terrorism Liaison Officer's Committee. The point is to merchandise the menace of terrorism to the police.

"It's a matter of marketing strategy," says Mark Lundgren, a special agent who oversees the TLOC. "These terrorism acts are trending toward the homegrown, self-activated, self-radicalized — the sort of thing that could literally pop up in your back yard. The typical things we would use to detect terrorism don't work, because these people are off the charts, so to speak. Nine times out of ten, for the next decade, it's going to be the local cop who stops the terror attacks."

Lundgren, who resembles a young Gary Busey, fairly glistens with certainty about the value of his work. "What are you trying to sell to the local police departments?" I ask.

"Awareness. Motivation," he says. "It's a very hard sell. You walk into a chief of police in a crime-ridden district. The first thing he's going to tell you is, 'The guys in this area are killing people. The guys you're telling me about —it's not make-believe, I understand that — but they haven't killed anyone lately in my district.' "

"Or ever," I say.

"Exactly."

They do an aggressive sales job. It's a tough sell. But it's necessary if we're going to be safe!

Except it's all hogwash!

Well, there you go. That's my story, at least for the moment.

Sadly, no major American media type is interested in putting the pieces together. The best they can do is throw out a few pieces at a time. Oh well. Thanks for the pieces. But that's not the most amazing thing.

The most amazing thing to me is that the American public doesn't seem to care very much. And that's a shame, because in the long run, the destruction of the Rule of Law is going to hurt us and our descendants much more than the destruction of our national "honor", not to mention our military, in Iraq.

~~~

The problem of fabricated bogus terror is not restricted to the United States.

See also: Inadequate Deception: The Impossible Plots Of The Terror War.

Wanna Get This Picture On The Cover! The Photo Rolling Stone Should Have Published With "The Fear Factory"

(UPDATED twice, below and belower)

Rolling Stone has just published a long and fairly good article called "The Fear Factory", which focuses on the FBI's so-called Joint Terrorism Task Forces and their apparent history of fomenting bogus terror -- creating false "terror cells" which they can then bust.

The author, Guy Lawson, shines a spotlight on the shady dealings of FBI entrapment specialist William "Jameel" Chrisman, whose story graced these pages some time ago.

Unfortunately, Rolling Stone didn't publish Chrisman's photo, even though it is readily available. Nor did Lawson link to any corroborating evidence, even though plenty of that is available, too.

I have been working on a review of Lawson's piece and I hope to have it ready shortly. But in the meantime, since Lawson has sparked some interest in the case, it makes sense to post a photo of the rat and links to more information.

For a closer (and annotated) look at William "Jameel" Chrisman, how he entrapped Derrick Shareef, and how he tried to entrap Hassan Abujihaad:

Burned! Meet William Chrisman, FBI Entrapment Specialist

And for another glimpse behind the scenes of bogus terror:

Inadequate Deception: The Impossible Plots Of The Terror War

I'll be back with more on Lawson's piece and some related matters as soon as possible. In the meantime, and especially if you're new to all this, please click some links and learn about the terrorist threat we face, where it comes from, and how serious it really is!

UPDATE 1:

The Register-Star, hometown paper of Rockford, Illinois, was none too thrilled with the coverage Rolling Stone provided their fair city, and had this to say about it:

Rolling Stone takes aim at Rockford: Says city not worthy of terrorist attack

Jan 30, 2008 @ 07:22 PM | RRSTAR.COM

ROCKFORD - Rolling Stone, the venerable anti-establishment pop-culture magazine, took notice of Rockford in its latest issue.

In "The Fear Factory," a piece that suggests the federal government is "manufacturing" terror threats, author Guy Lawson examines the strange case of would-be mall bomber Derrick Shareef.

In the process, he takes a few swipes at Rockford, "a Midwestern city of 150,000, with a minuscule Muslim population and the lone claim to fame of being the hometown of Cheap Trick."

Later, Lawson opines, "Finding a meaningful target to blow up in Rockford isn't easy. A hardscrabble town in the middle of America, the place is not much more than an intersection of interstates and railway lines, with little of note that might attract the attention of terrorists."

What are your thoughts on this? Send us an e-mail at local@rrstar.com.

So I sent them my thoughts:

In "Rolling Stone takes aim at Rockford", I see the following:

"The Fear Factory," ... suggests the federal government is "manufacturing" terror threats

I hate to break it to you, but you can go without the quotes.

The article describes some of the bogus terror threats that the federal government has been manufacturing! Period.

It is very clear and all the author's assertions are very well-documented elsewhere. But you won't report on that, will you?

Why not? Doesn't the truth matter to the newspapers anymore?

I think you're not only upset that Rolling Stone took a swipe at your thriving metropolis.

I think you're also ticked because they showed up your shitty little paper.

You should have been reporting on this more than a year ago.

I wrote to Mike Wiser -- the "Star" reporter who covered this story extensively at the time -- and pointed out that the evidence of entrapment was enormous.

Indeed, the scent of entrapment was all over this case from the beginning.

But apparently he wasn't interested. And apparently you still aren't.

Are your revenues declining, just like all the other shitty newspapers in this country?

Maybe you should start printing the truth for a change and see whether that makes a difference in your sales.

Because right now the bloggers have your ass beat from here to hell and back, chump.

UPDATE 2:

I've been looking and looking for a good piece on this story and I've finally found one.

William N. Grigg: Federal Provocateurs: The "One Percent Solution"

Draped across the throat of our nation like a lank noose about to be pulled taut is a system of 102 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs). These entities, which could properly be called homeland security soviets, combine state and local police with FBI Special Agents, covert operatives from the CIA, personnel from various directorates of the Department of Homeland Security, and investigators from the IRS.
...

FBI Special Agent Lundgren told Rolling Stone that the JTTFs are governed by “the Dick Cheney one percent solution”: If there is just a one percent chance that a terrorist incident can occur, “then we have to treat our response as if there were a 100 percent chance.”


Of course, where no evidence of a plot exists, the Feds stack the odds by employing provocateurs who supply the missing “one percent chance.”

Right on, William!

Phantoms Of The Terror War: Daan de Wit on the Liquid Bombers

The stories we know about the most famous terrorists and the best known terrorist plots do not match up with the facts.

Thus begins an excellent article called "The phantom terrorists of the War on Terror: Part 1 - The Liquid Bombers", written in Dutch by Daan de Wit, translated into English by Ben Kearney, and published at Atlantic Free Press.

Excerpts :

August of 2006. A group of about 25 terrorists, later to become known as the Liquid Bombers, takes the West by the throat with their plan to crash approximately ten airplanes simultaneously. President Bush addresses the nation: 'If these terrorists had succeeded, they could have caused death on a massive scale. The plot appears to have been carefully planned and well-advanced. They planned to bring the components of their explosives on board in their carry-on luggage, disguised as bottled drinks and electronic devices'. According to Michael Chertoff, head of America's Homeland Security Department, the attack could potentially have resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. The near-attack by the alleged terrorists gets a lot of publicity because of a huge operation by the police in which a number of airplanes are grounded. This is noteworthy because the suspects had already been under the radar for about one year and hadn't made any reservations, much less purchased tickets.
...

The Liquid Bombers wanted to make the explosive TATP (triacetone triperoxide) on board the aircraft. Gerry Murray of the Forensic Science Agency in Northern Ireland and Peter Fielden of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at the University of Manchester say that it would be extremely difficult to produce TATP by combining liquids in the restrooms of airplanes. A journalist from The Register consulted experts and describes the problems with the terrorist plan. [..] In order to arrive at TATP, sulphuric acid has to be added to acetone and peroxide drop by drop for several hours at just the right cold temperature while stirring continuously. When the axphyxiating fumes are released, they form white crystals at a temperature of below 10 degrees C (50 degrees F) after a minimum of six hours - though probably much longer - which then have to be harvested by way of filtration and dried for several hours. The thermometer has to be closely monitored as well, as TATP is very unstable, as witnessed by its nickname, 'Mother of Satan'. 250 grams of the white crystalline powder resembling sugar is needed for a substantial explosion, which means that per airplane you need sixteen times the content of an airplanes bathroom sink in order for the plan to succeed.
...

One year later [...] it became clear that a number of the Liquid Bombers had been trained by Jundullah (Army of Allah), a terrorist organization which, as ABCNews suggests, is being sponsored by the U.S. in their clandestine battle against Iran. The London Telegraph is even more specific and writes: '[...] the CIA is giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan'. Prior to the training by Jundullah, the alleged terrorists - in connection with an earthquake relief operation - were present in camps run by the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), the parent organization of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). LET gets (financial) support form the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, which again is directly connected to the American intelligence agency - the CIA.
...

Even though it is for modern man easier to fall victim to a peanut or to lightning than to a terrorist, the notion of terror is still a reality of daily life. Terrorism is at the top of the agenda. The interests are huge. Large sums of money have been invested, whole careers are at stake and ad agencies - the same people who market everyday products such as deserts and insurance - make a lot of money off of expensive anti-terrorism campaigns...

All of which lends extra emphasis to the following very pertinent question:

What if it had been proven in court that the plan to explode ten or more airplanes with bombs manufactured on the spot was impossible, and all of the anxiety and security measures that followed were actually unnecessary?

The article is the first of a seven-part series that promises much.

I'd read the whole thing if I were you.