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Jim Lobe | "Decent Respect" Might Help Image Woes Abroad

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    PATRIOTISM AND THE
    FOURTH OF JULY
    (True Patriotism Versus
    False Nationalism)
    By Howard Zinn
    AlterNet.org
    Tuesday, 4 July 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by AlterNet(.org)
    and/or Howard Zinn.
    All rights reserved.]

    The Declaration of Independence gives us the true meaning of a patriot, someone who supports a country's ideals, not necessarily its government.

    In celebration of the Fourth of July there will be many speeches about the young people who "died for their country." But those who gave their lives did not, as they were led to believe, die for their country; they died for their government. The distinction between country and government is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, which will be referred to again and again on July 4, but without attention to its meaning.

    The Declaration of Independence is the fundamental document of democracy. It says governments are artificial creations, established by the people, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Furthermore, as the Declaration says, "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." It is the country that is primary---the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty.

    When a government recklessly expends the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power, while claiming that its motives are pure and moral, ("Operation Just Cause" was the invasion of Panama and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in the present instance), it is violating its promise to the country. War is almost always a breaking of that promise. It does not enable the pursuit of happiness but brings despair and grief.

    Mark Twain, having been called a "traitor" for criticizing the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, derided what he called "monarchical patriotism." He said: "The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: 'The King can do no wrong.' We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: 'Our country, right or wrong!' We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had -- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism."

    If patriotism in the best sense (not in the monarchical sense) is loyalty to the principles of democracy, then who was the true patriot? Theodore Roosevelt, who applauded a massacre by American soldiers of 600 Filipino men, women and children on a remote Philippine island, or Mark Twain, who denounced it? Today, U.S. soldiers who are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying for their country; they are dying for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. They are dying for the greed of the oil cartels, for the expansion of the American empire, for the political ambitions of the president. They are dying to cover up the theft of the nation's wealth to pay for the machines of death. As of July 4, 2006, more than 2,500 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, more than 8,500 maimed or injured. With the war in Iraq long declared a "Mission Accomplished," shall we revel in American military power and insist that the American empire will be beneficent?

    Our own history is enough to make one wary. Empire begins with what was called, in our high school history classes, "westward expansion,"a euphemism for the annihilation or expulsion of the Indian tribes inhabiting the continent, in the name of "progress" and "civilization." It continues with the expansion of American power into the Caribbean at the turn of the 20th century, then into the Philippines, and then repeated Marine invasions of Central America and long military occupations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. After World War II, Henry Luce, owner of Time, LIFE, and Fortune, spoke of "the American Century," in which this country would organize the world "as we see fit." Indeed, the expansion of American power continued, too often supporting military dictatorships in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, because they were friendly to American corporations and the American government. The record does not justify confidence in Bush's boast that the United States will bring democracy to Iraq.

    Should Americans welcome the expansion of the nation's power, with the anger this has generated among so many people in the world? Should we welcome the huge growth of the military budget at the expense of health, education, the needs of children, one fifth of whom grow up in poverty? Instead of being feared for our military prowess, we should want to be respected for our dedication to human rights. I suggest that a patriotic American who cares for her or his country might act on behalf of a different vision. Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism that has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade---some call it "globalization"---should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity? Should we not begin to consider all children, everywhere, as our own? In that case, war, which in our time is always an assault on children, would be unacceptable as a solution to the problems of the world. Human ingenuity would have to search for other ways. [(Subtitle and/or emphasis added by Wolf Britain.)]

    Howard Zinn is a veteran of World War II and author of the bestselling book, A People's History of the United States. The preceding essay is an excerpt from Zinn's forthcoming book, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

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    "DECENT RESPECT" MIGHT
    HELP IMAGE WOES ABROAD
    (International Multilateralism
    Versus National Unilateralism)
    By Jim Lobe
    Inter Press Service
    (IPSNews.net)
    Tuesday, 4 July 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. & Internationally
    by Inter Press Service
    (IPSNews.net),
    and/or Jim Lobe.
    All rights reserved.]

    Washington -- It was in 1776 that a group of British colonists living along the Atlantic seaboard of North America felt compelled to offer a public justification for their "Declaration of Independence" from their mother country out of "a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind".

    That justification, a bill of particulars against King George II for a host of offences, including violations of what would come to be called human rights, was designed to rally British and European public opinion behind the colonists' cause.

    As the nation marks that occasion exactly 230 years ago Tuesday, a series of surveys from around the world over the past three years makes clear that contemporary "Mankind" believes that the United States no longer accords its opinions the "decent respect" that those who founded the country believe was its due.

    Those surveys suggest that the image of the U.S. as a benign hegemon that takes account of the interests and opinions of the peoples of other nations -- consciously cultivated by Washington for more than a century -- has been effectively shattered by the unilateralism of the administration of President George W. Bush and particularly its invasion of Iraq.

    "One of the reasons that people around the world are so upset with the U.S. is the perception that in the post-World War II era, the U.S. was the champion and leader of an international order based on international law and mutual constraints, when it could have created a form of great-power domination," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Marylands Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

    "As the leader and promoter of such a system, the U.S. was expected to set the example for all the rest, but Washington is now perceived as violating the same rules it did so much to establish," according to Kull, who cited Bush's decisions to ignore the United Nations in going to war and the Geneva Conventions in treating detainees in its "global war on terror" as key moves that both defied and outraged public opinion abroad.

    Even after 16 months of vigorous efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to reassure U.S. allies and potential rivals, such as Russia and China, that Washington cares about their views and is committed to multilateralism, public opinion abroad has remained stubbornly sceptical, according to former Foreign Affairs editor, Fareed Zakaria.

    Rice, he wrote in a Newsweek column coincidentally entitled "Why We Don't Get No Respect", has "engineered a broad shift in American diplomacy over the last year, moving policy toward greater multilateralism, cooperation, and common sense on Iran, North Korea and Iraq, and several other issues."

    "And yet it hasn't produced a change in attitudes towards the United States," he went on, citing surveys by the Pew Global Attitudes Project and the Financial Times (FT) released just last month.

    The FT poll found that the U.S. under Bush is considered by European public opinion to be more dangerous than either North Korea or Iran.

    The Pew survey of 14 foreign countries found that strong pluralities or majorities in all but two nations said that the Iraq war had made the world "more dangerous" and that the U.S. presence in Iraq was "more dangerous" to world peace than the alleged nuclear-arms ambitions of North Korea and Iran.

    These findings were broadly consistent with previous surveys, including a Globescan-PIPA poll of 35 countries released in February, and a Pew poll released in June 2005 that found a sharp drop in the belief by respondents in Europe and the Islamic world that Washington took into account the interests of their countries in making its foreign policy decisions compared to the period before the Iraq war.

    In yet another poll Globescan-PIPA poll released in January 2005, large pluralities and majorities of respondents in 18 of 21 countries said they believed Bush's re-election to office would have a negative impact on global peace and security.

    What was particularly surprising about the latest Pew poll was the degree to which Washington's image, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, had slipped since the year before, when Rice's campaign to put diplomacy and consultation first had just gotten underway.

    In May 2005, Pew had found a rebound in foreign attitudes toward the U.S. compared to its findings in surveys conducted in the year following the Iraq war when foreign views of Washington, and particularly Bush, plunged to the lowest level ever recorded. Most analysts had expected continued, if modest, improvement between 2005 and 2006.

    In fact, however, U.S. favourability ratings, as well as support for Washington's "global war on terror", resumed their post-Iraq war decline in both Western Europe and the Islamic world, with particularly steep declines found in Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Jordan, and Turkey.

    Zakaria blamed this on a number of factors, including a lag between the general public, particularly in Europe, and governments which, he insisted, have been very appreciative of Rice's -- and Bush's -- efforts.

    Other important factors, he noted, included the continuing presence in the administration of arch-hawks, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who may be able to constrain Rice's flexibility, especially on Iran and North Korea.

    Moreoever, according to Zakaria, U.N. Amb. John Bolton's confrontational style has been particularly destructive and has contributed to the perception that the administration remains deeply divided and that its new emphasis on diplomacy and multilateralism has been dictated more by necessity than conviction. "In five minutes of posturing in front of a microphone, Bolton undoes five months of careful work by his boss, the secretary of State," he wrote.

    In fact, however, the problem lies much deeper---in the belief that the U.S., especially under Bush, still does not accord a decent respect to the views and opinions of other nations, whether it involves the invasion of Iraq and the refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions in the "war on terror" -- for which Bush remains unapologetic -- or global warming, the International Criminal Court, or the administration's doctrine of pre-emption.

    "An America that does not understand -- and makes little effort to understand -- why it has become so unpopular abroad is almost certain to find itself both disliked and ineffective in many parts of the world," noted political commentator David Rieff in a reflection on the latest Pew poll and U.S. "exceptionalism" that appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this weekend. [(Subtitle and/or emphasis added by Wolf Britain.)]

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

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    ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, READ "THE
    DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
    FOR IMPEACHMENT" OF BUSH & CO.
    By David Swanson
    AfterDowningStreet.org
    Sunday, 02 July 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by AfterDowningStreet(.org)
    and/or David Swanson.
    All rights reserved.]

    Veterans for Peace has drafted a Declaration of Impeachment using nothing but excerpts from the Declaration of Independence (plus a few words in parentheses). It reads as follows, and should be read at picnics and protests on the Fourth of July:

    "... (W)henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends ['... that all (people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these (Rights) are Life, LIBERTY and the pursuit of Happiness..., (and that) Governments are instituted among (the People), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...'], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their [Liberty,] Safety and Happiness ...

    "... (A)ll experience hath shewn, that (hu)mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... design(s) to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their DUTY, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security ...

    "The history of the present King (George)... is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States [and the world]. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• ["He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for public good (and Liberty). He has forbidden his (more independent Lawmakers) to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to (obey) them (or to give his Assent that he must obey them) ...]

• "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance ...

• "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

• ["He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of (false and fraudulent) Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops (and domestic mercenaries) among us: For protecting them... from punishment for any Murders which they... commit on the Inhabitants of these States ...]

• "(He has) ... deprive(ed) us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury ... transport(ed) us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences ... [taking away (recognition and observance of) our Charters (Treaties and International Laws), abolishing (or refusing to obey countless numbers of) our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Form(s) of our Government(s) ...]

• "He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us ...

• "He is at this time transporting large Armies ... to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

• "He has constrained our fellow Citizens ... to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren [abroad], or to fall themselves by their Hands ... [and excited (and provoked) domestic insurrections amongst us ...]

   

    "[In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress (of Grievances under the First Amendment of the Constitution, and Article Three of the Bill of Rights, of these United States) in the most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury(ies).] A (President), whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. [Nor have We been wanting in attention to (the Bush administration). We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their ("Republican"/"Conservative") legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our (Freedom and Liberty) here (in this country). We have appealed to ... justice ... and we have (sought to influence) them by the ties of (Liberty and Freedom) to disavow these usurpations (of Freedom and Liberty), which would inevitably (destroy) our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguin(u)ity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of (hu)mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.]

    "WE, THEREFORE, [the (People) of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA] ... do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People [of these United States], solemnly publish and declare, That these ... FREE AND INDEPENDENT (PEOPLE) ... are Absolved from all Allegiance to the (Bush administration), and that all political connection between them and (this administration), is and ought to be totally dissolved ... AND for the support of this Declaration, [with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,] we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." [Emphasis, words in brackets ("[ ]"), mostly from the Declaration of Independence itself, which David Swanson left out (incorrectly in my opinion), and/or editing of the title, added by Wolf Britain.]

    David Swanson is creator of MeetWithCindy(Sheehan).org, co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997. His website is DavidSwanson.org.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

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                    BIG BROTHER'S HISTORY
                    (It Appears that the U.S. Constitution
                    Supposedly Doesn't Matter Anymore)
                    By John Prados
                    TomPaine.com

                    Thursday, 25 May 2006

                    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
                    U.S.A. and Internationally
                    by TomPaine (.com)
                    and/or John Prados.
                    All rights reserved.]

    The National Security Agency's [illegal] warrantless domestic wiretaps and its logs of Americans' phone calls are the most controversial, but by no means the only, surveillance initiative underway that has chilling implications for all Americans. American history is littered with examples of similar instances of security programs gone awry. It is three decades now since the Church Committee concluded, "The tendency of intelligence activities expanding beyond their initial scope is a theme which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings."

    In the 20th century, this history of misuse of security programs begins with World War I. A government-sponsored volunteer (read: vigilante) group, the American Protective League, was created to assist the Justice Department and military intelligence, resulting in nearly 2,000 prosecutions for allegedly "disloyal" utterances by Americans.

    Immediately after the war, the "Palmer Raids," named for then-Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, rounded up 10,000 persons for supposed anarchist or revolutionary views. These became a milestone in the creation of the FBI and the career of its first director (and Palmer's chief assistant) J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover went on to keep books on all manner of Americans; he used the information collected to exert political pressure at various times.

    Domestic intelligence programs were revived in 1936 and steadily increased in intrusiveness, impelled first by World War II, then by the Cold War. These began with the intention of monitoring foreign influence on American politics and ended up investigating "loyalty." We hardly need mention the internment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans on hysterical suspicions of contact with the enemy in World War II.

    Though the two statutes are far different in detail, both the Internal Security Act of 1950 and today's Patriot Act represent encroachments on constitutionally guaranteed rights.Title II of the Internal Security Act actually permitted the detention of any person suspected of sabotage or espionage during invasion or insurrection and half a dozen holding camps were prepared. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations initiated "loyalty oaths" with boards to review the records of several million government employees-estimates of those fired or forced to resign range from about 2,500 to roughly 7,000. Although it never came to pass, the list of Americans to be rounded up under the Internal Security Act in the event of a national emergency numbered 26,000 persons in 1954.The inquiries carried out under the loyalty program were FBI-controlled. By 1960 it had opened approximately 432,000 files on groups or individual Americans, under guidelines that permitted investigation based on suspicion of "anarchistic or revolutionary beliefs" even if membership in any group had "not been proven" and in the absence of evidence of any current "activity of a subversive nature."

    The depredations of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the effects of Senator Joe McCarthy's charges of communist infiltration had disastrous impacts on Americans' lives, but they served merely as backdrop for more intrusive programs. In 1952 the U.S. Post Office began to record mail sent from the U.S. to Russia, a project taken over by the CIA counterintelligence staff in 1955 and called HT/Lingual. Aimed at identifying Russian spies, in the 1960s Lingual was diverted to spying on Vietnam war protesters. The mail program ended in 1973 when the post office stopped cooperating, but in its last year alone the CIA handled 4.3 million pieces of mail, photographed the envelopes of about 33,000, and opened and copied 8,700 letters-some 60 percent of them on the basis of FBI watch lists.

(Continued below.)

    The FBI, meanwhile, began an effort to infiltrate and destabilize the American communist party in 1956. Called COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Project), the effort soon expanded. In the guise of preventing communist influence on community groups, in 1960 the FBI was authorized to include "legitimate mass organizations, such as Parent-Teacher Associations, civil organizations, and racial and religious groups." Only a year later was COINTELPRO applied to the Socialist Workers Party. Before long it extended to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP, the Ku Klux Klan, the women's liberation movement and a host of Vietnam antiwar groups.

    The campaign included planted news items, derogatory rumors spread inside groups, bogus hate mail, entrapment, wiretaps, deliberately aimed leaks and more. The FBI campaign against Martin Luther King, Jr. is a well-known example but only a tiny fraction of the overall effort. In creating its target lists the FBI developed a "Rabble Rouser/Agitator Index" it applied to individuals-"key agitators" and "key black extremists." There were a half million FBI files on citizens.

    The rest of the government was not far behind. Military intelligence agencies opened over 100,000 files on Americans from 1965 to 1971. The IRS compiled 11,000 "intelligence" files between 1969 and 1973 and opened tax investigations for political reasons. The CIA had another 10,000 files on Americans, and a computerized index of 300,000. Its Projects Chaos, Merrimack and Resistance were all aimed at American antiwar activists. Under Project Mudhen, the CIA, which is prohibited by law from actions inside the United States, followed journalist Jack Anderson and four colleagues in an effort to discover their sources.

    Today's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act-the very law at issue in Bush's domestic wiretapping scandal-is the direct result of National Security Agency actions of that time. Then, too, there was an Air Force general, Lew Allen, Jr., who was obliged to admit the NSA had monitored international conversations of Americans without warrant, prohibited by the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968. Upwards of 1,600 Americans were on the NSA watch list, with an average of about 800 at any given time. Operation Shamrock, it was revealed, had begun in 1947 as an effort to intercept Soviet messages by examining the texts of telegrams handed over by the cable companies (illegal under the Communications Act of 1934). In October 1967, by Allen's account, the anti-Soviet program spilled over into domestic politics when the NSA began monitoring people on its watch list, averaging about two reports a day.

    There is an eerie convergence between then and now. The government made the same claims of how its efforts were tightly controlled. General Allen also asserted that the interception program was protecting against terrorism and drug running. The Ford administration made strenuous efforts to minimize the application of existing statutes and case law, that held that "a warrant must be obtained before a wiretap is installed on a domestic organization [in this case the Jewish Defense League] that is neither the agent of nor acting in collaboration with a foreign power, even if the surveillance is installed under Presidential directive in the name of foreign intelligence gathering for the protection of the national security." In February 1975, when a House committee headed by Bella Abzug issued subpoenas to further examine Operation Shamrock, the Ford administration claimed executive privilege. The author of the Justice Department memo recommending that course was Antonin Scalia.

    Ford was unable to shield the executives of the cable companies, who were eventually forced to divulge the extent of their cooperation with the NSA, which was shown to be massive. Various proposals for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act followed, eventually resulting in the passage of the existing law. It is highly significant that while the administration considered this a "problem," the Ford Justice Department agreed to a provision in the 1976 version of the act that specified: "Nothing in this [law] shall be deemed to limit the authority of this Select Committee of Intelligence of the U.S. Senate to obtain such information as it may need to carry out its duties."

    Like these older cases, today's government surveillance issue features apparatus created for national security reaching beyond original purposes. Besides the NSA issue there is the Pentagon's "Talon" program, intended for base security, that has collected data on antiwar individuals and groups, and then failed to purge the information from its files. The FBI has monitored mosques, supposedly to watch for nuclear material. The Justice Department has engaged in runaway prosecutions of trumped-up terrorism charges in Detroit and other places. Local police forces-and the FBI, again-have infiltrated meetings, taken pictures of protests, and asked employers about individuals expressing political views protected by the First Amendment. They gained resources to execute these programs from federal grants intended to counter terrorism.

    What needs to happen before Americans understand that government surveillance is about more than protection against terrorism?

[Remember freedom and the Constitution, and that we have a duty to stand up against all of the modern-day versions of these incursions against, and violations of, liberty and the Constitution, even if they are supposedly legalized, as with the so-called "U.S.A. Patriot Act", and to stand up for freedom and the Constitution no matter what the cost(s). (Subtitle, words in brackets ("[ ]") and/or emphasis added by Wolf Britain.)]

    John Prados is a senior fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., and author of Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (The New Press).

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.

    THE HAYDEN CHARADE
    ("Big Brother" is Watching All of Us to
    See Who is a "Good Citizen" or "Not")
    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Monday, 22 May 2006

    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or Marjorie Cohn.
    All rights reserved.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Continued below.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    General Michael Hayden as CIA director will see to it that we continue to be kept in the dark about how our liberties are swiftly vanishing. The future of our democracy is at stake. [(Subtitle and/or emphasis added by Wolf Britain.)]

    Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for the great and powerful t r u t h o u t website.

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