Reagan Launches Explicit Policy Using “Terror“ as Pretext for Repression

**December 4, 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed 14 page Executive Order 12333, establishing operating procedures for the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies to restore domestic surveillance. ["This continued the trend toward increasing CIA power and White House support. In particular, it authorized the infiltration, manipulation, and disruption of domestic organizations by the FBI and CIA even in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing," according to Covert Action, Number 22 (Fall 1984)].

**January 29, 1982, National Security Decision Directive 22 (NSSD-22), authorized the CIA to request the FBI to collect information on U.S. citizens for use by the CIA.

**July 22, 1982, NSSD-47, “Emergency Mobilization Preparedness,” authorized “relocation of large numbers of people” [detention] and an “intensified counterintelligence effort” during major domestic or national security emergencies.

**July 28, 1983, NSSD-100, “Enhanced U.S. Military Activity and Assistance For the Central America Region”, ordering U.S. military operations in the area “significantly increased.”

**April 3, 1984, NSDD-138, “Combating Terrorism,” approved both preemptive strikes and retaliatory raids against “terrorists” by FBI, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and CIA paramilitary squads [Veil, pp. 361-362];

**November 13, 1984, a few days after Reagan’s second election he signed an intelligence authorization “Finding” (and a subsequent one on May 12, 1986) to conduct “good faith” aggressive covert actions against “terrorists”, interpreted as a “license to kill” (See Oakland Tribune, October 5, 1988, “Reagan Signed Two Intelligence Directives Regarded As ‘Licenses to Kill’”; San Francisco Examiner, October 5, 1988, “Reagan Loosened CIA Leash, Order Could Have OK’d Assassinations”).

**July 20, 1985, NSDD-179, “Task Force on Combating Terrorism,” established the executive Task Force on Combating Terrorism, chaired by Vice-President Bush which, in turn, created the Operations Subgroup (OSG) under the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG) chaired by Oliver North; “International terrorism poses an increasing threat to U.S. Citizens and our interests.” BW Note: There are those U.S. interests again!!

**January 20, 1986, NSDD 207, “The National Program for Combating Terrorism,” created a National Security Council (NSC) coordinator of counterterrorism, also chaired by Oliver North, to develop more effective measures for apprehending, extraditing, and prosecuting terrorists.

**July 18, 1986, FBI presents “counter intelligence/counter-terrorism operations plan” at a meeting of the OSG-TIWG (see above) to initiate active FBI domestic surveillance.

The following evidence suggest how intensely President Reagan pursued surveillance, especially under the new rationale of investigating and preempting “terrorist” incidents.

1. Reagan Executive Order 12333, signed December 4, 1981. This Order allows the CIA to collect foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence within the U.S., to conduct covert operations in the U.S., and allows physical surveillance by the CIA of a person abroad to obtain foreign intelligence. The Order allows warrantless, unconsented physical searches, mail surveillance, monitoring, and similar techniques if “there is probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” (The 1947 National Security Act that created the CIA prohibits the CIA from “internal security functions.”)

2. National Security Decision Directive #2 was signed by President Reagan on January 12, 1982. This NSDD reorganized the National Security Council (NSC) and set up interagency groups on (1) foreign policy, (2) defense policy, and (3) intelligence to “undertake such other activities as may be assigned to the NSC.” NOTE: In effect, this Directive states that the NSC will set policy, and will participate in operational roles. It shifts NSC from adviser to the actual running of covert campaigns.

3. National Security Decision Directive #22 was signed by President Reagan on January 29, 1982. This NSDD authorized the CIA Director to request the FBI to collect information for the CIA in the United States. (The 1947 National Security Act prohibits the CIA from “internal security functions.”)

4. National Security Decision Directive #47 was signed by President Reagan on July 22, 1982. This NSDD was entitled “Emergency Mobilization Preparedness” and provided for wage and price controls, the “relocation of large numbers of people” and an “intensified counterintelligence effort” during major domestic or national security emergencies.

5. National Security Decision Directive #100 was signed by President Reagan on July 28, 1983. This NSDD was entitled “Enhanced U.S. Military Activity and Assistance for the Central America Region” and it ordered U.S. military operations in the area “significantly increased.”

6. President Reagan signed intelligence authorization Findings for any aggressive covert actions against “terrorists” if conducted in “good faith.” The first was signed Nov. 13, 1984, a few days after his second election; the second was signed August 11, 1985; and the third was signed May 12, 1986. These authorizations were considered a “license to kill,” an astounding blank check “to kill.” A former White House official called the orders the “go anywhere, do anything” authority.

7. There was (and is) a FBI Anti-Terrorist Task Force (Ref. Agents George Kiszynski and Kevin Currier relating to Jack Terrell).

8. A July 28, 1986, memorandum from Poindexter of the NSC (memo prepared by Col. North) addressed to President Reagan identifies the Operations Sub-Group (OSG) of the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG) of the NSC. This Group made available to the FBI all information from other U.S. agencies relating to Terrell in early 1986.

January 7, 1986, the Operations Sub-Group (OSG) was convened for the first time [Covert Action Information Bulletin, Number 33 (Winter 1990), p. 14]; see above, July 17, 1985, NSDD-179, “Task Force on Combating Terrorism,” established the executive Task Force on Combating Terrorism, chaired by Vice-Pres Bush which, in turn, created the Operations Subgroup (OSG) under the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG) chaired by Oliver North; The OSG had apparently already been meeting with North under the auspices of the Restricted Terrorist Incidents Working Group (RTIWG) [Covert Action, Number 33 (Winter 1990), p. 14]

October 31, 1986, a four-page FBI message addressed to the Director and All Offices of the Bureau from the Chicago office, SUBJECT: “Domestic Security/Terrorism Sabotage”, including the launching of an October 30 investigation of the “Plowshare” group, and group called the Veterans Fast For Life, as part of “an organized conspiracy to use force/violence to coerce the United States Government into modifying its direction“.

December 14, 1987, FBI Director William Sessions sends 3-page response letter to Congressman Don Edwards’ (D-CA) inquiry of October 6, 1987, admitting that six individuals from two organizations, “Silo Plowshares”, and “Veterans fast For Life”, “were developed as suspects“, and that the FBI conducted a “preliminary inquiry….under the domestic security/terrorism caption“.  From the pattern of conduct “it was reasonable to conclude a political motive, by two or more persons engaged in activities in violation of Federal law…..Such investigations are initiated when the facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the purpose of furthering political or social goals, wholly or in part, through activities that involve force or violence and a violation of the criminal laws of the United State”.  The letter indicated that the preliminary inquiry was closed on April 28, 1987.

Brian Note #1: The FBI response does not indicate whether there have been any other investigations, official or unofficial, for any other reasons, and whether the initial inquiry remains part of the historical record or whether it has been physically eliminated. A wave of break-ins (see Brian Note #3 below) at offices of political opponents to Reagan’s foreign policies suggest government behavior has systematically been involved directly or indirectly in violation of the law and civil liberties, going far beyond surveillance and investigations.

Brian Note #2: Ex-FBI agent Jack Ryan who was fired for refusal to obey orders to investigate members of “Silo Plowshares,” and “Veterans Fast For Life” as “terrorists” has said the origin of the investigation was suspicious for two reasons, believing that one may have already been underway, now needing a formal cover: (1) the investigation triggered by acts of minor vandalism at recruiting offices, an insignificant crime in FBI experiences, normally would not lead a local FBI office to initiate a national “priority” communication to every field office and to the director in Wash., DC; it is so unusual as to hint another FBI motive involved; (2) the October 31, 1986 national FBI communication authored by a local office already possessed a code name, an extraordinarily unusual, also suggesting another reason behind the FBI communication.

Brian Note #3: As of January 1988, the Movement Support Network of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York had recorded 90 burglaries and break-ins with apparent Central American-related political motives since 1983.  From November 1984 through June 1986, the offices sharing space in the basement of the Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, MA were broken into eight times.  The targets included: The New England Central American Network (NECAN), Central American Solidarity Association, Central American Information Office, Educators in Support of ANDES (the Salvadoran teachers union) and New Institute of Central America (NICA), the latter of which sent Brian to their language school in Esteli, Nicaragua on a scholarship as a military veteran, Jan.-Feb. 1986.  The Church itself had become a sanctuary for Central American refugees the week before the first break-in.  On May 15, 1987, the NICA office experienced another break-in.  Burglars poured muriatic acid on computer discs.  NECAN was broken into again on May 3, 1988. (Sklar, pp. 351-52).

Among the other organizations and sanctuary churches that have experienced break-ins are: the Central American Historical Institute located on the campus of Georgetown Univ. in Wash., DC; MADRE, a NY-based association of women in solidarity with women in Central America and the Caribbean; Calvary United Methodist Church in Wash., DC; Veterans Fast For Life, World Peacemakers, and Washington Pledge of Resistance, all housed in the Church of the Savior in Wash., DC (on same block of Massachusetts Avenue where I had lived in Mrs. Christian’s Boarding House with the Cuban exiles in 1961-62, some 25-years earlier), among many other organizations located around the U.S. [Holly Sklar, p. 352; "Testimony of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)", House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights (Don Edwards, Chair), February 20, 1987, pp. 21-26; Movement Support Network, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, "Incidents of Intelligence Gathering and Harassment," Revised monthly; Paul Hirshon, Boston Globe, May 4, 1988].

Observation and monitoring became criminal.  Throughout the 1980s, Central American activists experienced nearly 200 cases of harassment and intimidation, including break-ins of private homes and organizational offices [Ross Gelbspan. (1991). Break-ins, Death Threats, and the FBI. Boston: South End, regarding break-ins; House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, Committee of the Judiciary, Break-Ins at Sanctuary Churches and Organizations Opposed to Administration Policy in Central America: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 100th Congress, 1st Session, February 19-20, 1987].

In addition, the VFFL Christic house was broken into in early October 1986 in Wash., DC.  And Daniel Sheehan, director of Christic was investigated by the FBI as well.

BW Note #1: In former CIA officer John Stockwell’s book, The Praetorian Guard, The U.S. Role in the New World Order. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. (1991), pp. 105-106, he reports that in September 1988, FBI Director William Sessions announced the disciplining of FBI officers who had improperly targeted the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and 160 other civic organizations, many of which were critical of the Reagan administration’s policy in Central America. During the summer of 1989, Congress discovered that a total of 1,600 groups had been improperly targeted by the FBI.

August 31, 1988, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, “Political Break-ins: A Disturbing Whodunit”: Citing a Knight-Ridder story by their Washington, D.C. reporter, Alfonso Chardy, “The CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency have cooperated in a three year operation aimed at monitoring the activities of U.S.-based opponents of Reagan’s Central America policies.”

September 17, 1988, NYT, “F.B.I. Is Willing To Erase Names From Its Records,” by Philip Shenon: “The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, William S. Sessions, indicated today that the bureau was willing to expunge the names of people and organizations identified in files of a bureau surveillance campaign aimed at opponents of the Reagan Administration’s policies in Central America.

Brian Note #1: Brian’s name?

Brian Note #2:  Reagan’s Office of Public Diplomacy had applied techniques from the Public Relations industry as well as utilizing intelligence shenanigans, coordinating its efforts with Western Goals, a private intelligence computerized data gathering agency closely connected to the John Birch Society, to create a data-base cataloguing the names and personal information of activists in the nuclear freeze and Central American solidarity movement.  The information was turned over to the FBI.  The OPD worked hand-in-glove with the State Dept., the Defense Dept., the CIA, the NSC, and a vast private network of right-wing individuals and organizations. Retired General John Singlaub was on the Western Goals board [The New Right Humanitarians, The Resource Center, Albuquerque, NM, 1986, pp. 39-40].

The special CISPES investigation rationalized under “international terrorism” guidelines, lasted 5 years, involved all 59 of the FBI’s U.S. field offices, and collected information on over 2,000 individuals and over 1,000 groups.  It generated 178 spin-off inquiries reaching into every aspect of the anti-interventionist movement, including a number of Congressional offices, the SCLC, the Maryknoll Sisters, the United Auto Workers, and the Inter-Religious Task Force on Central America [Grandin, Empire's Workshop, p. 138].

The FBI believed it was in a near war campaign against traitors, and specifically targeted individuals who clearly displayed their contempt for the U.S. government by making speeches and propagandizing their cause [Gary M. Stern, The FBI's Misguided Probe of CISPES, Washington: Center for national Security Studies, 1988, p. 2].

Oliver North had drawn up plans to arrest and detain Central American activists indefinitely if the U.S. were to invade Nicaragua [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, The FBI and CISPES, 101st Congress, 1st Session, 1989, p. 20; in general, Ross Gelbspan. (1991). Break-Ins, Death Threats, and the FBI. Boston: South End Press; Alfonso Chardy, "Reagan Aides and the 'Secret' Government," Miami Herald, July 5, 1987].

Activists who traveled to Central America, especially Nicaragua and El Salvador, often had their personal documents and papers seized, mail tampered with, and employers questioned.  FBI Director William Webster had admitted that these investigations were conducted at the request of the CIA and Oliver North’s NSC [Ross Gelbspan, "More Probes Found of Latin Policy Foes; FBI Surveillance Called Pervasive", Boston Globe, June 18, 1988].

Brian Note #3: President Reagan was obsessed in assuring that the Nicaragua revolution would be destroyed.  On the home front there was significant opposition to his policy of utilizing public funds and taking up government energy to undermine the sovereign government of Nicaragua.  To contend with domestic opposition, Reagan devised a 3-prong attack: (1) creation of a centralized public diplomacy campaign (OPD) to concoct stories in the media, universities, churches, etc., about the evil Sandinistas and the noble “freedom fighter” Contras; (2) a massive campaign to monitor and interrupt (CIA, FBI, NSC, etc.) U.S. citizens who were actively opposed to Reagan’s funding, whether done legally through Congress or illegally through surreptitious sources, and organizing strenuously to have Congress vote No; and (3) building a countervailing grassroots right-wing support network supporting the Contras (part of the “Enterprise”) among the militarist community, vestiges from Viet Nam veterans, and evangelicals, advocating for a hard-line foreign policy supporting murder.

NOTE: In 1988, FBI director William Sessions finally admitted to the Library Awareness Program in which librarians were asked to report on the reading habits of people with foreign accents or funny sounding names (Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 759).  The Washington Monthly published a January 1989 article, “Ma’m, What You Need Is a New, Improved Hoover,” by Mathew Miller, in which he humorously points out that if this standard were applied, “Zbigniew Brzenski could be busted any day in the Columbia stacks.”  Actually the Library Awareness Program predated Sessions by many years, having been established by J. Edgar Hoover in 1962 in efforts to solicit librarians as informants (Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 760).

September 1990, “International Terrorism, FBI Investigates Domestic Activities To Identify Terrorists,” prepared by the U.S. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee On Civil and Constitutional Rights, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives (Rep. Don Edwards), that reveals between January 1982 and June 1988, the FBI opened 18,144 cases because of suspicion that individuals or group were involved in terrorist activities, of whom 6,895 were “U.S. Persons” (U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens). Congressman Don Edwards (D-10th Congr Distr/San Jose) initiated the inquiry. William Webster had been director of the FBI, February 23, 1978 – May 25, 1987.  He was succeeded by William S. Sessions, director from November 2, 1987 – July 19, 1993.  John E. Otto was the Acting Director, May 26, 1987 – November 2, 1987 at the time Brian was struck.

GAO Report: “The FBI redacted the closed files before we reviewed them…We were limited in our ability to develop overall conclusions regarding the FBI’s international terrorism program.  The questionnaire and case file data clearly demonstrated that the FBI did engage in monitoring of First Amendment-type activities during its international terrorist investigations”.

Brian Note #1: There is no way of knowing the veracity of any FBI statements.  Information is blacked out (redacted) preventing any accountability as to who was investigated, and whether their names are still on a watch list.

Brian Note #2: See: Ross Gelbspan. (1991). Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI, The Covert War Against the Central America Movement. Boston: South End Press, p. 150: The “hook” in the FBI Guidelines that permitted investigations of various individual U.S. citizens, including Congress people, was because of their “contacts with representatives of foreign governments”.

SEE Attachment: “The Politics of Fear – Living in a Terrorama Society”

Sam Adams, Mayor/Commissioner, samadams@ci.portland.or.us

Nick Fish, Commissioner, nick@ci.portland.or.us

Amanda Fritz, Commissioner, Amanda@ci.portland.or.us

Randy Leonard, Commissioner, randy@ci.portland.or.us

Dan Saltzman, Commissioner, dan@ci.portland.or.us

Portland City Hall, 1221 SW 4^th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97204

From the first Red Scare during World War I, to the present, our national history is replete in its obsession with national security at the expense of liberties of its citizenry. In the process, lawful political activity and free speech are regularly thwarted. The obsession itself virtually always lacks sufficient oversight, no matter the rhetoric to the contrary, with law enforcement efforts quickly becoming stage managed using informants and concocted propaganda.

The politics of labeling, whether one is called a “communist” or a “terrorist,” have virtually always masked realities of systemic injustices and egregious class inequities. While the Red Scare was prosecuting “radicals” and “Bolsheviks,” the KKK, with as many as 25 percent of the adult male population of the country, was regularly murdering and lynching African Americans with impunity. Terrorists? Not even suggested.

As distance between a democratic base and its law enforcement mechanisms are increased, accountability of police behavior inevitably decreases, no matter the amount of training. The empirical pattern of abuse is so well documented that accountability structures are paramount.

I have been a direct victim of being labeled a “domestic terrorist suspect” on the whims of the FBI simply for expressing my vigorous nonviolent dissent to Reagan’s policies of terror against the impoverished in Central America. And under President Obama, the lack of protections of civil liberties has actually increased. It takes little for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to collect information on lawful political and religious activities using the most spurious grounds.

Joining the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force only complicates accountable law enforcement.

Sincerely,

S. Brian Willson, J.D., LL.D (Hon.)

As a nation we have lived in the grip of induced fear now for most of a century, built largely on what have later been revealed as serious exaggerations of foreign or domestic enemies. The first Red Scare, 1917 to the mid-1920s, with vestigial repression until World War II, brought a reign of terror against those “suspected” of being “radicals” and “Bolsheviks.” The second Red Scare, post-World War II to the early 1960s, with vestigial effects until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, produced more persecution of “radicals” and “communists.” Now the Muslim scare of the 2000s has created a campaign of terror targeting Muslim “extremists.” Fear is an easy emotion to manipulate and exploit, making it convenient to create compliant constituent support for aggressive domestic and foreign policies. All the government has to do is declare a threat to our “national security” and then proceed by virtually any means to eliminate the evil du jour.

Meanwhile, real, live terrorists at home have been generally ignored or overlooked and, if acknowledged, rarely labeled as terrorist. In 1920, there were an estimated six million members of the KKK, nearly 25 percent of the adult male population of the nation with representatives in every state. They were rarely, if ever, prosecuted. In 1917, President Wilson created the Office of Military Intelligence (OMI) in the War Department to conduct wholesale clandestine surveillance of thousands of U.S. citizens suspected of “disloyalty.” And, in 1919, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, precursor to the FBI, headed by young J. Edgar Hoover, collected personal files on 150,000 U.S. Americans labeled seditious radicals, often described as communists or Bolsheviks. Thousands were rounded up and jailed, hundreds deported, virtually none enjoying any due process whatsoever. In the meantime members of the KKK were lynching with impunity African Americans at the rate of six a month, while murdering countless Black leaders and civil rights activists into the late 1960s. [Between 1882-1946, 4,715 African Americans were lynched, with a lesser number 27 lynched between 1947-1968.] The government did not consider this behavior terrorism, as it did those who were critical of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Furthermore, hundreds of massacres were committed by white citizens and riots raged against African Americans in cities throughout the U.S. throughout the twentieth century. The period 1917-1970 saw the appointment of 86 state or federal riot commissions seeking to identify the causes while recommending remedies. Consistently, these commissions found virulent racism and severe class differences as causes. Rarely was terrorism mentioned and few programs were instituted to address these structural causes aside from a brief period in the late 1960s when the 80-year-old Jim Crow laws were finally outlawed. Much of their racist spirit, however, remains alive today.

Throughout the early 1900s and into World War II, the war against labor activists was equally intense, even if the number of murders only counted in the hundreds. These were perpetrated by paramilitary goon squads hired by company barons with assistance of local police. [From the mid-1870s into the latter 1930s, over 700 labor activists were murdered, with thousands injured.] This was not considered terrorism and did not warrant a government war against goon squads or corporate heads. In fact, the police often supported the murder of labor activists, under the rationale of teaching radicals a lesson.

President Truman instituted “loyalty oaths” as part of the second Red Scare and created the National Security Agency and Operation Shamrock to spy on correspondence and electronic communications of thousands of U.S. Americans, which expanded to include antiwar activists, civil rights leaders and drug peddlars. In 1967, the CIA, created in 1947, initiated Operation Chaos, exceeding its statutory authority, indexing 300,000 names of citizens to “discover” ties between dissenters and “foreign interests.” The Department of Defense in the 1960s launched massive domestic surveillance without authority on as many as 100,000 U.S. citizens, utilizing 1,500 army plainclothes operatives. From 1967-1974, both Presidents Johnson and Nixon used the Army Security Agency (ASA) in separate operations working with other military units to illegally survey communications of U.S. citizens opposed to the Viet Nam War in Operation Minaret. President Nixon created the secret “Plumber’s Unit” to conduct “dirty tricks” on his opponents that led to the Watergate Break-in.

From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, the FBI carried out more than 2,200 major secret actions against US citizens considered “suspicious” because of “communist” connections, in what was called COINTELPRO Operations. These were coupled with thousands of warrantless wiretaps, secret bugs, and mail interceptions. Hundreds of Black organizers were murdered, destabilized or imprisoned. A December 1963 FBI memo describes the spirit of the campaign – to “neutralize” Martin Luther King, Jr., with “no holds barred,” with later memos describing the need to “neutralize” Black nationalist groups. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover consistently identified King and other Black groups “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

From the beginning of the founding of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in 1967, the FBI kept files on its members, infiltrated its local groups, made harassing visits to members’ homes, and generally attempted to disrupt their activities. After the large anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C. organized by VVAW in April 1971, at which I was present, the FBI increasingly suggested VVAW was Communist inspired and, therefore, “must be considered a prime target for infiltration.” Martin Luther King, Jr. endorsed VVAW’s anti-war goals two months before his assassination in 1968. The mean-spirited nature of the FBI campaign against VVAW was demonstrated when it was later revealed that the FBI had contaminated VVAW’s national headquarters with an undetectable chemical that caused severe itching.

Five years after the founding of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968, in the post-COINTELPRO period, FBI memos identified AIM as “a relevant danger” to the United States. By 1976, dozens of AIM members and supporters had been murdered and hundreds of others injured, victims of paid Indian goon squads with tacit support of the FBI. More than a thousand were jailed.

In 1975-1976, the U.S. Senate Church Committee hearings revealed for the first time elaborate details of U.S. intelligence operations, both at home against U.S citizens, including COINTELPRO, and abroad, including assassination of foreign leaders. As a result, new laws were passed to curtail some of the worst abuses.

However, President Ronald Reagan quickly revived de facto COINTELPRO tactics with a virulent campaign against the Soviet Union (the “evil empire”), seeing Reds everywhere once again. In a series of executive orders, intelligence findings, and National Security Decision Directives (NSDD), he authorized widespread domestic covert surveillance by the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, among others, that included directives “to go anywhere, do anything” to destroy “terrorists.” Thus, the modern war on “terrorism” really began with Reagan, not George W. Bush. By 1986 the FBI had created a government-wide formal Counter-Terrorism Operations Plan. Between 1982-1988, thousands of individuals had been harassed and intimidated, 1,600 groups had been improperly targeted, and over 18,000 individuals and groups had been identified as suspects in “terrorist” activities. I myself got swept up as a “suspect” in this paranoid madness which used concocted propaganda, stage managing with thousands of informants/infiltrators, the creation of enemies all over the place at home. It cost me dearly physically. It was ridiculous. Reagan claimed impoverished Nicaragua was creating a “Soviet beachhead” and that its revolutionary aspirations for social justice posed “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States, even suggesting that it might invade the U.S. at the small border town of Harlingen, Texas. This, despite the fact that Harlingen was 1,250 miles and four countries distant from Managua which was preoccupied defending itself from Reagan’s 20,000 Contra terrorists.

Unfortunately, President George W. Bush’s Department of Justice in 2002 formally eliminated most of the remaining legal restrictions on domestic intelligence that had been implemented as a result of the 1976 Church Committee Hearings, limitations that had already been virtually wiped out by Reagan in the 1980s, and ignored by Bush I and Clinton. The war on terror has accelerated since 9/11 with a vengeance and the Obama administration has only continued to expand elimination of restrictions. Using the same methods of stage managing a war on terror using informants and concocting propaganda to the extreme, we are now declaring Muslims, at home and abroad, as the new “terrorists.”

Ex-career FBI agent, Jack Ryan, has testified that virtually all FBI agents are expected to have informants, also known as source, asset, snitch, stool-pigeon, or a 137 (informant file number). The pressure to distort, exaggerate, misrepresent, falsify or otherwise manipulate information is common despite rules and procedures intended to prevent abuse.

Although Middle East terrorists have largely replaced the earlier target of the official fear campaign, “radicals” suspected of being supportive of the Red menace, there are many within our country who continue to disparage “socialism” as a great and terrible threat. Being able to declare evils du jour enables the politics of fear to continue, ad infinitum, perpetuating uncritical thinking and the ballooning of military and intelligence budgets. Thus, the military-intelligence industrial complex and all that it represents, including immense profits at the expense of domestic health, is entrenched further at the expense of freedoms at home, which in my opinion is nothing good.

S. Brian Willson, Portland, Oregon

*USAF Installation Security and Law Enforcement Officer, 1966-1970; Commander, combat security unit protecting U.S. airbases in Viet Nam, 1969; Member, International Association of Chiefs of Police, 1967-1970; Honorably Discharged as Captain; Inactive member, Washington, DC Bar; Member, Veterans For Peace

U.S.: "Empire of Liberty," Built Upon Three Holocausts

In the 1780s, Thomas Jefferson bragged of a new "empire of liberty," i.e., a nation created essentially for the benefit of White male property and slave owners/speculators, who were to thrive in freedom, prosperity, and tranquility through expansion. Even before formal creation of the Republic, acquisition of Florida, Cuba, the West Indies, Mexico, the western frontier, and Canada were discussed so frequently there was an assumption that Providence intended it. George Washington talked in 1783 of "a rising empire." James Madison believed in "imperial republicanism" as he led the 1787 Constitutional convention behind locked doors to create a new and far more powerful national government. Note that a people’s democracy was not intended by our "Founding Fathers" [See Tucker, Robert W. and David C. Hendrickson. (1990). Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. Oxford: Oxford University Press; William Appleman Williams. (1980). Empire As A Way Of Life. Oxford, especially chapters 2-4, and pp. 31, 43, 51, 59].

The ugliest truth is that our civilization is built on three unspeakable holocausts, each justified by a White racist ideology, causing the murder of millions, each committed with impunity: (1) acquiring free land at gunpoint while systematically brutalizing hundreds of Indigenous cultures; (2) acquiring free labor by force from ancient Indigenous cultures in Africa by violent removal of those who survived capture; and (3) acquiring cheap resources, labor and markets through thousands of overt and covert interventions at gunpoint into more than 100 countries.

Four Blips in Modern Human History

In addition to our three unspoken holocausts mentioned above, we have been deeply influenced by at least four major blips in history. First, the 5,500-year (nearly 300-generation) period of acceptance and deference to large vertical authority structures (whether monarchial, military, or elected) has led to a chronic pattern of mindless obedience (De La Boetie). Second, 500 years of Eurocentric colonialism materially benefited 20 percent of the world’s population as it impoverished and plundered the non-Eurocentric 80 percent. Third, in a much briefer blip, we have become conditioned to the conveniences of the industrial revolution/oil age (soon to be over). And fourth, an even briefer blip of the post-WW II middle class (now virtually depleted).

Consequently, those of us living today among the rich 20 percent, even if personally not so rich, have profited from the wonders of "Western civilization." We have been conditioned to live by its materialist values. But we have become addicted to a grotesque way of life, spending nearly $50 billion a year alone on cosmetics and toiletries (and nearly $80 billion each on tobacco and soft drinks, $15 billion on pet food). [SEE euromonitor.com/factfile].

Materialism’s Pathologies

Addictions

It is instructive to examine the psychic dynamics of the U.S. "More is not enough!" [See psychiatrist Peter C. Whybrow's, America Mania (2005), in which he discovers that the biochemical processes in the brain related to highs induced from shopping are similar with that of alcohol and drug use]. Our addictions suggest that substantial human archetypal needs are unmet in materialist, class-oriented societies. Psychologist Carl Jung concluded that Western materialist cultures lose connection with deeper meanings of life. Social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson recently documented that individuals and whole societies have become severely stressed from social and economic inequality [The Impact of Inequality (2005)]. Class positioning, he concludes, is the most common cause of sickness and social malaise, and that inequality seriously obstructs sustainable economic activity and social health.

The majority of European Americans grew up in the brief post-WWII middle class. All of us grew up in the 200-year blip of the oil age and the industrial revolution that facilitated the speed, complex technologies, and population explosions that accompany the religion of consumption. For the most part, if we were living in the middle or upper class, life seemed like a good deal. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that it has all been a delusion.

Our "wonderful way of life" has always been dependent upon a massive system of both domestic and global exploitation beyond comprehension. This has been facilitated ad nauseum by our political/economic/military "democratic" system directed by one oligarchic party with two right wings, one of soft imperialism, the other hard. Believing ourselves to be exceptional, it has been nearly impossible to understand the consequences of our lifestyle on billions of other people and the Earth herself.

Individual and Collective Complicity

Nonetheless, most of us routinely legitimize the entire scam by voting for one of the usually White male oligarchs/plutarchs while dutifully paying the taxes demanded by their laws (which we foolishly call our laws). To add insult to injury, we allow ourselves or our sons and daughters, often with enthusiastic patriotism, to become loyal military troopers implementing the forceful global policies that allow us, who comprise but 4.6 percent of the world’s population, to continue consuming anywhere from 25 percent to nearly half the Earth’s resources.

The social myth lingers that we live in a democratic society committed to "justice for all." However, this mythology has pre-empted our capacity to SEE the ugly social secret that our system is in fact an oligarchy committed to exploitation of the many for the benefit of a few.

In these early years of the third millennium, we are finally experiencing the convergence of several ominous political, economic and ecological realities serving as epochal wake-up calls – for example, global warming, peak oil, the 9/11 event, and Bush’s brazen, terrifying responses to 9/11. Perhaps these harsh realities are cosmic offerings sent to wake us from our "holiday from history," as Slovenian psychoanalyst/philosopher Slavoj Zizek describes our severe amnesia. Zizek concludes that September 11, 2001 revealed to U.S. Americans the "desert of the real," the distilled version of the essence of five centuries of behavior of the "civilized West." The U.S. culture and our European predecessors have committed the equivalent of thousands of 9/11s over more than 400 years, directed primarily against non-Europeans, murdering and maiming millions to protect "national security" (read AWOL, the American Way Of Life). We have virtually no clue about the extent of our demonic behavior.

Arrogance

I myself did not have a clue to this tangle of lies, illusions, and delusions until I found myself in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta villages shortly after air strikes where I witnessed the napalmed and burned bodies of as many as 900 unarmed fishing villagers and their children over the course of just one week. This bombing was committed with malice aforethought, intended to systematically eliminate (murder by genocide) all Vietnamese who did not openly support the South Vietnamese Government, a corrupt bunch in turn created by our own corrupt, Mafioso-like government.

Subsequently, I delved into details of "American" history. What we did in Southeast Asia from 1950-1975 turns out to be no aberration, just as Iraq and Afghanistan are not aberrations. From the moment our ancestors became "settlers" on this continent, the die was cast. Our savagery has known no limits. Whatever is perceived as being in our way is removed as w
e seek expansion, profits, and convenience via free land, cheap resources, slave labor, hegemonic power, and hateful vengeance.

Assimilation or elimination

Invariably we describe people who would obstruct our imperial goals with derogatory names like "savages", "gooks", "communists", "evil people", "terrorists", etc. Read the history of how one’s hometown came to be settled. For example, the quaint little university town of Arcata, California, once known as Union(town), where in 1860 "little children and old women were mercilessly stabbed and their skulls crushed by axes," their bodies being stacked in town. Or Geneva, New York where in 1779, George Washington’s orders were ruthlessly carried out to complete "its total destruction and devastation." Consider today’s settlers in Israel/Palestine. Note how easily they justify inflicting barbaric behavior on others (projections outward) by describing their inferiority while believing in themselves as superior (disowned shadows). The spectacularly frightening nature of the 9/11 crimes is familiar to a majority of the world’s people. From 1965 to 1973, for example, a period of nearly 3,300 days, the United States waged an unspeakable war of atrocity, a de facto policy of genocide, against the peoples of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, such that more than 1,500 human beings were murdered every day! Read about the thousands of skirmishes the White militia and/or the U.S. Army engaged in against the Indigenous of this country over several hundred years. Over 10 million Indigenous in North America alone succumbed to removal, imprisonment, or death due to strange diseases, bullets and axes. Our ancestors often recorded vivid accounts that included gory details such as bashing the brains of "merciless Indian savages" (a phrase from the U.S. Declaration of Independence).

From the 1790s to the early 2000s, the U.S. military overtly intervened more than 500 times in over 100 nations to pursue its hegemonic designs (and thousands of covert interventions). One military study revealed that between 1869 and 1897, the U.S. Navy made 5,980 port calls to further U.S. commercial and political advantages. Virtually all U.S. wars and interventions have been masked under elaborate rhetorical pretexts, such that we learned an extraordinarily censored version of history. The U.S. military and various police agencies have also intervened hundreds of thousands of times domestically.

The pattern has been consistent: either people will assimilate into the White culture, or be eliminated by it. White supremacy is the cult and we have all been subjected to it – either in complicity with it, or to be crushed by it. Our origins intrinsically are possessed by shame of genocide through terror.

Our Shadow

Living with painful shame I believe has driven us to do nearly anything to avoid facing the disowned part of our collective and individual psyche. Disowned shadows possess explosive emotional energy, often manifesting in pathological distractions like avoidance, denial, invasions, addictions, etc., which push us to further regress, as if reverting from adolescence to early childhood.

Facing the fraud of our mythological "exceptionalism" terrifies us. We project onto others the very "terrorism" that has built our civilization. Ironically, we have to project our own shadow, "terrorism," onto others, such that we actually come to believe those "evil" others are terrorizing us at every moment. I believe that the political leaders we "choose" or accept, ironically represent our own unmet needs for security. Disowned shadows possess intense subconscious power over us, such that we tend to look to authority figures to rescue us. The capitalist predators and their oligarchic political protectors thrive on inducing fear to maintain an obedient, consuming populace.

Our most imperative healing need is to reckon with our imperial history, our lifestyle addictions, and the consequences of both, and prepare for a leap in consciousness that will take us on a path of responsibility for the consequences of our choices. Focusing on the whos and hows of 9/11, and the evils of Bush, easily can become obsessions. However, I believe they serve as huge distractions from facing our collective shadow, the denial of which overwhelms us with its emotional charge. Our government’s deranged and extraordinarily dangerous response to 9/11 can be explained partially because the spectacular 9/11 act, like the shocking, humiliating slaughter of Col. George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at Little Bighorn one hundred twenty-five years earlier, pierced our self-delusion of omnipotence, requiring us to resort to historic acts of vengeance (distraction) to preserve the delusion. Note that after Custer’s fiasco, the nation was obsessed with completing the genocide of the Indigenous people (eliminating the "Indian problem"), which it accomplished with brute force in 15 years. The emotional energy of disowned shadows is enormous, and extremely lethal when not owned up to.

As a people we are totally capable of busting out of our fear and insecurity and seeking solace in our community as we refuse to comply with the demands of the market. That means we stop shopping other than from local economies, reduce driving and flying to radically minimal levels, and instead, begin cycling, rebuilding local neighborhoods, striving for regional (100-mile?) food diets and zero net energy housing. It means understanding that the mechanical process of voting is the least significant act of participation in a vibrant decentralized democracy. It means recognizing that our system is broken, broken beyond repair. Our way of conducting political business and choosing "leaders" has failed. Political survival goes to the richest. This stalemate offers us humble human beings an incredible opportunity for a renewal from below. Now we have permission to consciously consider not voting in national political selection shams, and more certainly means not paying money (taxes) to our multi-headed Hydra "democracy" that insists on doing whatever it wants despite the expressed sentiments of the people. Thus, creative downsizing and simplifying (contraction) is indispensable to our liberation.

Healing: Contraction, not Distraction

I dream that those responsible for the 9/11 crimes will someday be held to account, and that Bush and company (and all the elected politicians who support a war OF terror, preventive wars, warrantless wiretapping, elimination of Habeas Corpus, torture, etc.) will face Nuremberg trials. Impeachment is an insufficient response, and assumes that the political system itself is authentically accountable. But the distractions, even obsessions, about 9/11 and ridding ourselves of Bush conveniently allow us to avoid addressing directly our disowned, dark cultural shadow: historical complicity with empire through obedience, silence, and consumerism. Our one-party centralized system, disguised as a "Constitutional democracy," thrives on continued plunder which is legitimized by and with our votes and tax dollars!

Facing our addicton to AWOL is a precondition to healing. Taking responsibility suggests radically altering our lifestyles toward right livelihood and sustainability. This requires dramatic contraction. "Slow, simple, small, quiet, and local" (the motto of the 2006 Veterans (Human-Powered) Ride For Peace and Sustainability from Eugene, Oregon to the national Veterans For Peace convention in Seattle, Washington) offers a bold antidote to the impending austerity, likely die-offs, and almost inevitable collapse of every system we are dependent upon. Breaking addictions to mindless consumption and rapid travel are revolutionary ac
ts. Aligning our actual day-to-day choices with our values and rhetoric enables survival with dignity. Once we know deeply within ourselves that every choice has a consequence (the Iroquois Seventh Generation discernment principle), our choices will change dramatically, a leap in consciousness begging to happen.

Our body-minds already know at very deep levels that everything is interconnected in a sacred weave, everywhere at every moment. We just need to access that wisdom. Quantum physics confirms Martin Luther King Jr.’s wisdom, "an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Right here, right now, where I am standing – very local! The only sustainable social model in evolutionary history has been the local, steady state economy, what visionaries now call bioregionalism, comprised of hundreds if not thousands of sustainable local communities. This is the modern synthesis of the Neolithic, Stone Age village with appropriate technology, utilizing iron, bicycles, solar energy and a partnership model.

Historic and contemporary behaviors of U.S. civilization reveal classic examples of psychologist Carl Jung’s archetypal defense mechanism of projecting one’s shadow onto others. One’s own darkness is so terrifying that it is easier not to muster the courage to face it. In 1928 Jung described how the psychology of war brings the shadow to the fore: "Everything which our nation does is good, everything which the other nations do is wicked. The center of all that is mean and vile is always to be found several miles behind the enemy’s lines." Many veterans of war have painfully experienced the projections stripped from our eyes and minds. We saw the enemy — it was first myself, then ourselves as a collective culture. Holy royal shit! How the fuck could that be? Wow!

As a nation it is imperative that we muster the courage to discover our own shadows. They exist in the images we project — evil axis, Hitler-like leaders, weapons of mass destruction, ruthless dictators, deceitful nations, mushroom clouds, etc. Each image is a huge clue about our own nation — they are our images, the shadow of the darkness within us as a culture, and as individuals who have collectively participated in and legitimized the projections.

The Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek has said that 9/11 was merely a distilled version of our own essence.

"For the last five centuries, the relative prosperity of the ‘civilized’ West was brought by the export of ruthless violence and destruction into the ‘barbarian’ OUTSIDE: the long history from the conquest of America to the slaughter in the Congo. Cruel and indifferent as it may sound, we should also, now more than ever, bear in mind that the actual effect of these bombings is much more symbolic than real. The U.S. just got the taste of what goes on around the world on a daily basis, from Sarajevo to Grozny, from Rwanda and Congo to Sierra Leone . . . America’s ‘holiday from history’ was a fake: America’s peace was brought by the catastrophes going on elsewhere. Therein resides the true lesson of the bombings: the only way to ensure that it will not happen HERE again is to prevent it going on ANYWHERE ELSE."

As I have described over and over, the United States as a civilization was founded on systematic application of terror so grotesque that we hardly ever talk about it, or acknowledge it. Equally troubling, we have consistently maintained our American Way Of Life by acts of terror for 385 years, pre- and post-Republic, first in the Western Hemisphere, then moving like a cancer to the entire globe in our insatiable search for cheap or free resources, markets, and labor. Since 1997 the U.S. military establishment has explicitly identified its policy as "full spectrum dominance." There it is! William Blum offers a concise list of the last 60 years worth of our various crimes against humanity in his Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Common Courage, 2000).

British Playwright Harold Pinter has described U.S. foreign policy as "kiss my ass or I’ll kick your head in." His recent speech on the occasion of accepting the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature is one of the clearest, most stinging indictments of U.S. imperialism I have ever read. Are you ready? Here goes:

But my contention here is that the U.S. crimes in the [postwar] period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized, as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict.’ Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued — or beaten to death — the same thing — and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in U.S. foreign policy in the years to which I refer. The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to U.S. foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’

It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the U.S.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

The U.S. is the world’s wholesale terrorist, provoking retail terrorist re-actions among the ignored, the invaded, the desperate, the disempowered, and the victims of double standards. Our job as human beings is to participate in a revolt from below, from within the belly of the beast. The practice of living justly is the foun
dation for peace. Folks, this system does not deserve our support and legitimacy — just the opposite. It does not deserve our votes, our dollars, or the bodies of our sons and daughters. This is a leap in thinking but the historical empirical evidence is overwhelmingly clear. We have grown up in a monster, disguised as a "representative democracy." It can only continue if we choose to remain complicit and obedient to it. Please imagine the numerous creative and courageous ways to say NO, while constructing the revolutionary alternatives in each of our thousands of local communities.

TO: Brian Willson

SENT: Tuesday, March 18, 2003, 11:08 AM

In passing the USA PATRIOT Act (PATRIOT Act I), Congress expanded the powers of the government to spy on individuals, reduce the oversight of such activities, and ultimately increase the secrecy with which the Justice Department operates. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (PATRIOT Act II) threatens to fundamentally alter the constitutional protections that allow us as Americans to be both safe and free. This is totally different from S. 22.

There are many egregious provisions in the bill that will affect every one of us. Among them are:

The destruction of the Fourth Amendment: Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances are conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch and without judicial review. Patriot II is an unprecedented assault that would roll back years of protections gained after the FBI and CIA had, in the past, conducted massive surveillance of individual and groups engaged in lawful protest and speech.

Increased power of a secret court: Under PATRIOT Act I, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was expanded to allow secret searches where foreign intelligence gathering was merely a "significant purpose. PATRIOT Act II would remove any distinction between "foreign" and "domestic" surveillance to include "unaffiliated individuals" and all persons, regardless of whether they are affiliated with an international terrorist group. (Section 101).

Library surveillance: Section 215 of PATRIOT Act I authorizes the FBI to order the production of "any tangible things" (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items). The FBI can now require a library to produce records showing who has borrowed a particular book; require a bookstore to produce purchasing records; require an internet service provider to reveal who has visited a particular web site; require a magazine to disclose its list of subscribers; or require the ACLU to disclose its list of members. Section 215 might also be used to obtain material that implicates privacy interests, such as medical records, other than those protected by the First Amendment. Under PATRIOT Act II these same loose standards would be expanded and apply to investigations of wholly domestic crimes. For example, time allowed for electronic surveillance would be extended; it will be easier to initiate surveillance and wiretapping of U.S. citizens; American citizens can be wiretapped of for up to 15 days without court order and at the sole discretion of the Attorney General under certain circumstances; law enforcement officers who initiate surveillance without judicial approval, a power that would be greatly expanded under Patriot II, would never be accountable should they violate anyone’s constitutional rights.

Loss of citizenship: The bill would allow the government to strip citizenship from any American who provides support for a group designated by the federal government as a "terrorist organization" (section 501). It would not be required that the person knew or intended his/her actions were to support a terrorist group. Under this provision an innocent donation to an overseas orphanage that the Attorney General believes is affiliated with a "terrorist" organization could result in loss of citizenship.

Secret detentions: The bill would give statutory authority to allow secret arrests in immigration and other cases where the detained person is not criminally charged. There is no time limit as to how long a person could be secretly detained. It would also include a provision that would prohibit federal litigation challenging any detention and even disclosure of basic information about such detainees. (Section 201 and 405).

This provision is in direct response to the successful ACLU litigation that sought to acquire the names of those being held in New Jersey jails in November 2001.

Expanded use of the death penalty: The bill dramatically expands the death penalty, creating fifteen separate new death penalty crimes including a conviction as a "domestic terrorist." Under the law, if an anti-war protestor broke the law during a demonstration and someone died as a result, the protestor could be subject to the death penalty and the protest organizers with domestic terrorism. (Section 411).

Lawful residents deported without a hearing: The bill would allow the INS to conduct summary deportations, even of lawful permanent residents, whom the Attorney General says are a threat to national security. (Section 503).

Government spying on lawful political demonstrations: Federal and state court orders that had placed limits on police spying on community activists would be immediately cancelled. (Section 312).

Secret access to credit reports without consent: The law would expand access to credit reports by authorized the government to obtain there reports without consent, notice to the person to whom the credit report pertains, and without a court order. The consequences of an erroneous credit report are far more serious than when credit reports are used for business purposes since there is no opportunity for the person to contest an erroneous report.

Creation of a DNA database of "suspected terrorists": The bill would create a DNA database of individuals who are suspected of association with terrorism or terrorist groups. The Attorney General could designate persons who have neither been charged nor convicted of any crime as "suspected terrorists" and require the "voluntary" taking of a DNA sample. Failure to comply with the "voluntary" request is a crime.

The public will be denied access to environmental reports – Communities and environmental organizations seeking to protect public health and safety and the environment will not have access to critical information concerning risks to the community. The Clean Air Act, for example, requires corporations that use potentially dangerous chemicals to prepare a "worst case scenarios" analysis to surrounding communities. Such information helps ensure compliance by private corporations with environmental and health standards and alerts local residents to potential hazards. Access will be restricted to reading rooms only; –copies could not be made and notes could not be taken, and the reports would be excised of the very information required. Significantly, a government official who reveals any information restricted under this section commits a criminal offense, even if their motivation was to protect the public from an inherently dangerous environmental hazard, corporate wrongdoing or government neglect.

The larger implications of the bill include a severe diminishment of basic checks and balances on the power of the executive branch, as well as untested and likely ineffective security measures that infringe on basic liberties — especially personal privacy and the freedoms of speech, association and religion.

For more information, go to www.aclumich.org. and, if you aren’t already a member, join the ACLU.