Mon - March 15, 2004

Dr. Nancy Snow on Propaganda


Here are some definitions and ideas concerning propaganda from Cal State Fullerton and USC professor, Nancy Snow. Snow's recent work, Information War, covers propaganda in the U.S. in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. Her previous book was called Propaganda, Inc.

Truth is not the absence of propaganda; propaganda thrives in presenting different kinds of truth, including half truths, incomplete truths, limited truths, out of context truths. Modern propaganda is most effective when it presents information as accurately as possible. The Big Lie or Tall Tale is the most ineffective propaganda.

Propaganda is not so much designed to change opinions so much as reinforce existing opinions, prejudices, attitudes. The most successful propaganda will lead people to action or inaction through reinforcement of what people already believe to be true.

Education is not necessarily the best protection against propaganda. Intellectuals and "the educated" are the most vulnerable to propaganda campaigns because they (1) tend to absorb the most information (including secondhand information, hearsay, rumors, and unverifiable information); (2) are compelled to have an opinion on matters of the day and thus expose themselves more to others' opinions and propaganda campaigns; and (3) consider themselves above the influence of propaganda, thereby making themselves more susceptible to propaganda.

What makes the study of propaganda so problematic is that it is generally regarded as the study of the darker side of our nature; the study of their evil versus our good. Those whom we consider evil thrive in propaganda, while we spread only the truth. The best way to study propaganda is to separate one's ethical judgments from the phenomenon itself. Propaganda thrives and exists, for ethical and unethical purposes.

Propaganda seeks to modify public opinion, particularly to make people conform to the point of view of the propagandist. In this respect, any propaganda is a form of manipulation, to adapt an individual to a particular activity.

Modern forms of communication, including mass media, are instruments of propaganda. Without the monopoly concentration of mass media, there can be no modern propaganda. For propaganda to thrive, the media must remain concentrated, news agencies and services must be limited, the press must be under central command, and radio, film, and television monopolies must pervade.

One must become aware of propaganda, its limitations, its strengths, its influence, and its persuasive qualities, if one is to master it. To say that one is free of the influence of propaganda is a sure sign of its pervasive existence in society.

Modern propaganda began in the United States in the early 20th Century. During World War I, the mass media were integrated with public relations and advertising methods to advocate and maintain support for war. The Creel Committee established the first American publicity campaign to spread and disseminate the gospel of the American way to all corners of the globe.

In the United States, private commercial propaganda is as important to notions of democracy as governmental propaganda. Commercial appeals to the people through advertising, which plays on irrational fantasies and impulses, are some of the most pervasive forms of propaganda in existence today.

Propaganda in a democracy establishes truth in the sense that it creates "true believers" who are as ideologically committed to the democratic progress as others are ideologically committed to its control. The perpetuation of democratic ideals and beliefs in the face of concentrated power in propaganda institutions (media, political institutions) is a triumph of propaganda in modern American society.

Compiled by Nancy Snow, Ph.D.
Source: Jacques Ellul, Propaganda

Posted at 02:34 PM     Read More  

Second Portion of Midterm and Readings


Here one will find ongoing and upcoming assignments for the remainder of the course. See below...

Midterm Part Two: Two in class essays on media issues. See Study Guide in category column on main page to the right.

Next:
No Nonsense Guide to Terrorism, by Jon Barker-- read the whole work by the end of March.

A 4-6 page argumentative essay will come from the book and be due by the first week of April.

Posted at 02:24 PM     Read More  

Sun - March 14, 2004

Some Questions on 9-11 for Bush Administration


These are some questions for the 9/11 Commission to consider in their interrogation of relevant parties in the inquiry surrounding the myriad problems associated with 9/11 and government responsibility in protecting the citizenry. In a democracy, questioning government is the right and duty of each constituent. It is not illegal nor unpatriotic to demand accountability of our country's leaders, regardless of party affiliation.

     The Family Steering Committee Statement and Questions
     Regarding the 9/11 Commission Interview with President Bush
    t r u t h o u t | Report

    Monday 16 February 2004

     The Family Steering Committee believes that President Bush should provide sworn public testimony to the full ten-member panel of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States . Collectively, the Commissioners are responsible for fulfilling the Congressional mandate. Therefore, each Commissioner must have full access to the testimony of all individuals and the critical information that will enable informed decisions and recommendations.

     Before an audience of the American people, the Commission must ask President Bush in sworn testimony, the following questions:

     1. As Commander-in-Chief on the morning of 9/11, why didn’t you return immediately to Washington, D.C. or the National Military Command Center once you became aware that America was under attack? At specifically what time did you become aware that America was under attack? Who informed you of this fact?

     2. On the morning of 9/11, who was in charge of our country while you were away from the National Military Command Center? Were you informed or consulted about all decisions made in your absence?

     3. What defensive action did you personally order to protect our nation during the crisis on September 11th? What time were these orders given, and to whom? What orders were carried out? What was the result of such orders? Were any such orders not carried out?

     4. In your opinion, why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack on our own soil?

     5. U.S. Navy Captain Deborah Loewer, the Director of the White House Situation Room, informed you of the first airliner hitting Tower One of the World Trade Center before you entered the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. Please explain the reason why you decided to continue with the scheduled classroom visit, fifteen minutes after learning the first hijacked airliner had hit the World Trade Center.

     6. Is it normal procedure for the Director of the White House Situation Room to travel with you? If so, please cite any prior examples of when this occurred. If not normal procedure, please explain the circumstances that led to the Director of the White House Situation Room being asked to accompany you to Florida during the week of September 11th.

     7. What plan of action caused you to remain seated after Andrew Card informed you that a second airliner had hit the second tower of the World Trade Center and America was clearly under attack? Approximately how long did you remain in the classroom after Card’s message?

     8. At what time were you made aware that other planes were hijacked in addition to Flight 11 and Flight 175? Who notified you? What was your course of action as Commander-in-Chief of the United States?

     9. Beginning with the transition period between the Clinton administration and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information (either verbal or written) about terrorists, possible attacks and targets, did you receive from any source?

     This would include briefings or communications from

     • Out-going Clinton officials

     • CIA, FBI, NSA, DoD and other intelligence agencies

     • Foreign intelligence, governments, dignitaries or envoys

     • National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice

     • Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar

     10. Specifically, what did you learn from the August 6, 2001, PDB about the terrorist threat that was facing our nation? Did you request any follow-up action to take place? Did you request any further report be developed and/or prepared?

     11. As Commander-in-Chief, from May 1, 2001 until September 11, 2001, did you receive any information from any intelligence agency official or agent that UBL was planning to attack this nation on its own soil using airplanes as weapons, targeting New York City landmarks during the week of September 11, 2001 or on the actual day of September 11, 2001?

     12. What defensive measures did you take in response to pre-9/11 warnings from eleven nations about a terrorist attack, many of which cited an attack in the continental United States? Did you prepare any directives in response to these actions? If so, with what results?

     13. As Commander-in-Chief from May 1, 2001 until September 11, 2001, did you or any agent of the United States government carry out any negotiations or talks with UBL, an agent of UBL, or al-Qaeda? During that same period, did you or any agent of the United States government carry out any negotiations or talks with any foreign government, its agents, or officials regarding UBL? If so, what resulted?

     14. Your schedule for September 11, 2001 was in the public domain since September 7, 2001. The Emma E. Booker School is only five miles from the Bradenton Airport, so you, and therefore the children in the classroom, might have been a target for the terrorists on 9/11. What was the intention of the Secret Service in allowing you to remain in the Emma E. Booker Elementary School, even though they were aware America was under attack?

     15. Please explain why you remained at the Sarasota, Florida, Elementary School for a press conference after you had finished listening to the children read, when as a terrorist target, your presence potentially jeopardized the lives of the children?

     16. What was the purpose of the several stops of Air Force One on September 11th? Was Air Force One at any time during the day of September 11th a target of the terrorists? Was Air Force One’s code ever breached on September 11th?

     17. Was there a reason for Air Force One lifting off without a military escort, even after ample time had elapsed to allow military jets to arrive?

     18. What prompted your refusal to release the information regarding foreign sponsorship of the terrorists, as illustrated in the inaccessible 28 redacted pages in the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry Report? What actions have you personally taken since 9/11 to thwart foreign sponsorship of terrorism?

     19. Who approved the flight of the bin Laden family out of the United States when all commercial flights were grounded, when there was time for only minimal questioning by the FBI, and especially, when two of those same individuals had links to WAMY, a charity suspected of funding terrorism? Why were bin Laden family members granted that special privilege—a privilege not available to American families whose loved ones were killed on 9/11?

     20. Please explain why no one in any level of our government has yet been held accountable for the countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?

     21. Please comment on the fact that UBL’s profile on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives poster does not include the 9/11 attacks. To your knowledge, when was the last time any agent of our government had contact with UBL? If prior to 9/11, specifically what was the date of that contact and what was the context of said meeting.

     22. Do you continue to maintain that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda? What proof do you have of any connection between al-Qaeda and the Hussein regime?

     23. Which individuals, governments, agencies, institutions, or groups may have benefited from the attacks of 9/11? Please state specifically how you think they have benefited.

Posted at 11:21 PM     Read More  

Privacy and PATRIOT


Interesting observation about new US law and foreign policy...

A Better Amendment

Rachel F. Elson,
AlterNet
March 11, 2004
Viewed on March 14, 2004

The new Iraqi constitution, signed Monday, offers the war-torn country's citizens some of the basic rights associated with modern democracy: free and fair elections, freedom of expression, the right to peaceable assembly and fair trials.

It also offers the Iraqi people one basic right not guaranteed by the U.S. constitution: the right to privacy. "Public and private freedoms shall be protected," stipulates the document's Article 13, adding later: "Each Iraqi has the right to privacy."

Here in the United States, 2001's USA Patriot Act has eliminated such protection. Although the 1974 Privacy Act was intended to regulate the treatment of personal information by federal agencies, the Patriot Act has gutted the earlier law's protections. The 2001 law's Section 215 -- the same provision that sent small-town librarians to the shredders last spring -- has already given the government the right to demand records of your medical history, your travel plans and your TiVo habits.

Most recently, a Department of Homeland Security report last month found that the Transportation Security Administration "acted ... outside the spirit of the Privacy Act," but didn't actually break the law, when the agency told JetBlue in 2002 to share more than a million passenger records with a Defense Department subcontractor.

So at a time when the U.S. government seems too distracted by what couples do in the privacy of their own reception halls to be able to improve job prospects for American workers, perhaps it's time for the United States to adopt its own constitutional amendment to guarantee Americans the privacy rights being pledged to Iraqi citizens.

What would be the consequences of such constitutional protection? For one thing, it would safeguard the most intimate details of our lives -- the books we read, the movies we watch, the people we love, the illnesses and physical frailties we prefer to conceal.

It would codify a fundamental American value, and throw a monkey wrench into the workings of the invasive Patriot Act, which President Bush is working to extend beyond its expiration date next year.

It would lend constitutional teeth to a woman's right to choose. And it just might keep the federal government from letting issues like same-sex marriage distract it from issues more fundamental to the structure of our society -- our crumbling education system, for instance, or the steady hemorrhaging of American jobs.

Such a constitutional privacy protection is a natural fit on the Democratic side of the aisle, where it touches some of the social issues most important to the party faithful: racial profiling, disability rights, abortion. But a privacy amendment could also find support from GOP traditionalists, by presenting them with a blueprint for smaller government.

With Saddam Hussein in custody and the interim constitution in place, Iraqis have taken the first steps of what will no doubt be a challenging, often painful journey to peace and democracy. And after their more than two decades of oppression and fear, we begrudge them none of their new freedoms. But while we're exporting democracy to the Middle East, let's consider taking at least this one opportunity to lead by example, and to protect at home the privacy rights so dearly held abroad.

Rachel F. Elson is a writer and editor in New York.

Posted at 10:58 PM     Read More  

Media Complicity in Distortion


Here's the article we discussed in class concerning the failure of media to address fraudulent claims concerning presidential candidate voting records.

FAIR  Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting     112 W. 27th Street   New York, NY 10001

MEDIA ADVISORY:
GOP Rhetoric on Kerry's Voting Record Goes Unchallenged

March 8, 2004

After John Kerry emerged as the likely Democratic nominee for president, the Republican National Committee (RNC) began criticizing his record on military spending. The campaign against Kerry's record escalated on February 22 when the RNC released a list of weapons systems that Kerry allegedly "voted against."

Republican spokespeople used this list to make sweeping claims about Kerry in the media: "I think the more that the president and the Republicans describe accurately-- they don't have to exaggerate at all; they just have to describe accurately and calmly-- what it means...to have voted against every major weapon system," Newt Gingrich declared on Fox's Hannity and Colmes (2/26/04), "I think if they stick to that and stick to the facts, Senator Kerry will react by saying that he's being smeared by his own record."

Partisan TV pundits like Sean Hannity quickly echoed these charges: "He's voting against every major weapons system we now use in our military," Hannity told his Fox News audience (3/1/04). Hannity's participation in the RNC's attack was perhaps to be expected, but he was not the only media figure to simply pass on the Republican allegations without examination. CNN anchor Judy Woodruff (2/25/04) framed the issue this way in an interview with Rep. Norm Dicks (D.-Wash.): "The Republicans list something like 13 different weapons systems that they say the record shows Senator Kerry voted against. The Patriot missile, the B-1 bomber, the Trident missile and on and on and on."

Embarrassingly, Dicks had to explain to Woodruff that most of the weapons "votes" weren't individual votes at all, but a single vote on the Pentagon's 1991 appropriations bill. Woodruff responded with surprise to this information: "Are you saying that all these weapons systems were part of one defense appropriations bill in 1991?"

But Woodruff wasn't alone. Appearing on CNN (2/3/04), Bush-Cheney campaign strategist Ralph Reed explained to anchor Wolf Blitzer that Kerry's record was one of "voting to dismantle 27 weapons systems, including the MX missile, the Pershing missile, the B-1, the B-2 stealth bomber, the F-16 fighter jet, the F-15 fighter jet, cutting another 18 programs, slashing intelligence spend by $2.85 billion, and voting to freeze defense spending for seven years." Blitzer responded by pointing out to guest Ann Lewis of the Democratic National Committee, "I think it's fair to say, Ann, that there's been some opposition research done."

For many reporters, the charges against Kerry's record were recorded as just part of the back-and-forth of a campaign: Fox News Channel 's Carl Cameron (2/27/04) explained: "With the GOP attacking John Kerry's votes to cut defense over the years, the Democratic front-runner, once again, counter-attacked what he calls the president's 'mishandling' of the war on terror."

Associated Press reporter Nedra Pickler (2/27/04) noted that "the Bush campaign has criticized Kerry in recent days for voting against some increases in defense spending and military weapons programs during his 19-year congressional career. Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot said Kerry's policies would weaken the country's ability to win the war on terror."

NBC anchor Tom Brokaw (3/2/04, MSNBC) also seemed to accept the charges at face value, noticing that "the vice president just today was talking about his votes against the CIA budget, for example, intelligence budgets and also weapons systems. Isn't he [Kerry] going to be very vulnerable come the fall when national security is such a big issue in this country?

One of the few reporters to take a serious look at the RNC's list-- on which 10 of the 13 items refer to the single 1991 vote-- was Slate's Fred Kaplan (2/25/04). Kaplan noted that 16 senators, including five Republicans, voted against the bill. Kaplan concluded that the claim against Kerry "reeks of rank dishonesty."

Kaplan also pointed out that at the time of the 1991 vote, deeper cuts in military spending were being advocated by some prominent Republicans-- including then-President George H.W Bush and Dick Cheney, who was secretary of defense at the time. As Kaplan noted, Cheney appealed for more cuts from Congress: "You've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements."

Cheney went to name the M-1 tank and the F-14 and F-16 fighters-- all of which appear on the RNC's list-- as "great systems" that "we have enough of."

Ironically, Cheney made the rounds on the cable channels on March 2, criticizing Kerry's record in terms parallel to the RNC's release. During an interview with Fox News Channel 's Brit Hume, Cheney said: "What we're concerned about, what I'm concerned about, is his record in the United States Senate, where he clearly has over the years adopted a series of positions that indicate a desire to cut the defense budget, to cut the intelligence budget, to eliminate many major weapons programs."

Unfortunately, Hume failed to raise an important follow-up: Why was Cheney now criticizing Kerry for having essentially the same position Cheney advocated back in 1991?

The Bush/Cheney campaign plans to spend $133 million over the next several months in an effort to "redefine" Kerry ( Sydney Morning Herald , 3/4/04). If this charge is an indication of the Republicans' approach, then the media would perform a valuable service if they took a keen interest in evaluating the accuracy of such campaign rhetoric.

Posted at 10:03 PM     Read More  

Manipulating the News for Pro US Slant


Zogby shows how stories that may have a negative interpretation can be supressed.

Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2003 by Arab News
How US Manipulates News to Suit Its Interests
by James Zogby
 
Lest anyone forget the power of incumbency, President George W. Bush delivered a few reminders in the past few weeks. The capture of Saddam Hussein and the announcement that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had agreed to open his country to weapons inspections demonstrated that ability of the occupant of the White House to generate positive and transformative news.

This is a critical fact to note in an election year. Not only can the incumbent administration make news more easily than its challengers, but it can also better manage news as well.

Challengers must fight to get press coverage. And at this point in the Democratic primary process, with the nine candidates sharply attacking each other and the Bush White House, the news coverage that they generate usually has a negative tone.

The president, on the other hand, has been on an upswing. Congress supported his proposal to reform the way that senior citizens pay for expensive prescription drugs. The nation’s economy is continuing to show signs of recovery, and now Bush can bask in the glow of two significant foreign policy successes.

The Democrats’ dilemma is clear. While the president’s victories have produced simple straightforward headlines, their criticisms are more complicated and, to some ears, may sound like mere complaining.

Also of concern has been the ability of the administration to manage bad news and change the subject of coverage when they needed to.

Who remembered the Enron or Halliburton scandals of the summer of 2002? And whatever became of the challenges to the vice president’s dealings with oil company executives in planning the administration’s energy policy?

The war with Iraq, which was itself a “subject change,” provides yet another case in point. The raison d’etre of the war was the danger posed by the Baghdad regime’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the not so subtly implied links between Iraq and international terrorism.

The former is no longer mentioned, while continuing violence in Iraq is now noted as proof of the connection between terror and the former regime.

In the American public’s mind Sept. 11, Afghanistan and Iraq have all been morphed into a vague but clearly threatening reality — a “reality” that has been cultivated by carefully managed news.

In this picture the details have been ignored or deliberately pushed aside. What has been promoted as important to consider is that “we were attacked and we are fighting back — and our power has been decisive.” That Afghanistan is in a state of upheaval, that Pakistan may very well have been destabilized and that Al-Qaeda remains a very real threat - are not subjects for discussion. What matters is that “we are fighting terror” and, in this vague fight, we are told “we are winning”.

The coverage is managed and “spun” and, when needed, shifted to new topics — positive stories of victories. For a while, for example, as daily attacks against US forces were taking their toll, public support for the war was declining. This required management. To a degree, the effort has been successful. Americans and Iraqis continue to die, on a daily basis, but the stories of these deaths no longer generate front-page news coverage. For example, a series of attacks on US forces on Christmas Day resulted in four American deaths. A review of a number of major US daily newspapers found the story on page 39 in one, page 18 in another and not even appearing in another two.

In most instances, US deaths are reported buried in much larger press round-ups of Iraq-related news. In the past, they were featured as separate stories.

In a similar vein, Iraqi civilian deaths, resulting from actions by coalition forces, have all but disappeared from the US press. After pre-war polling showed that the US public was highly sensitive to such “collateral damage” deaths, the Pentagon refused to release such data forcing US reporters to hunt for these numbers on their own. Often times they had to go to Iraqi hospitals to learn casualty figures. Now, however, the coalition-administered Iraqi Ministry of Health has joined the Pentagon’s efforts by forbidding hospital staff from issuing any information to the international news media. Still some negative news will, on occasion, leak out, but it is episodic and incomplete.

As a result, the management of “bad news” has been quite effective, leaving the field wide open for coverage of what is termed the “larger” political news coverage of “progress”.

ll of this is to say that the United States public is in the dark about much of what is happening or not happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and the magnitude of the challenges facing both countries. What they know is that the United States is facing an upgraded “Orange Alert”, “Saddam has been caught” and the “United States is still fighting and winning the long war against terror”.

Even with this, the public remains deeply divided. But with accurate news so difficult to come by in this “cloud of war” that has descended on the country, it is increasingly hard to discuss the merits, or even the reality, of this war or the foreign policy that led us into it.

This will continue to be the situation in the next year. Reality may, on occasion, break through and the press may respond with tough stories, asking hard questions. But as the past few weeks have shown the administration has more arrows in its quiver, and, as the situation warrants, they may decide when and how to use them.

James Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, a member of the Democratic National Committee and the visiting Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College in North Carolina.

Posted at 07:13 PM     Read More  

Fox Bias Study


From PIPA at the University of Maryland. They talked to the folks at Retropoll and came up with some interesting findings in their polling months later...

Published on Monday, October 20, 2003 by the United Press International

Misleading America

by Shaun Waterman

 
WASHINGTON -- It's official -- watching Fox News makes you ignorant.

To be precise, researchers from the Program on International Policy at the University of Maryland found that those who relied on Fox for their news were more likely than those who relied on any other news source to have what the study called "significant misperceptions" about the war in Iraq.

Pollsters asked more than 9,000 Americans about three commonly held canards: that the United States had hard evidence Saddam Hussein had been working closely with al-Qaida; that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq; and that world public opinion was in favor of the U.S.-led war.

Overall, a scary 60 percent believed at least one of these fallacies. Eight percent believed all three.

The most commonly held was -- unsurprisingly -- the Iraq/al-Qaida link. Fully 48 percent of respondents believed this. The totals for the other two were in the 20 percent to 25 percent range.

But among those who get their news from Fox, 80 percent had at least one "misperception" and 45 percent -- nearly six times the overall average -- had all three.

Champions of public broadcasting can draw comfort from the fact that those who relied on NPR or PBS had the lowest misperception rate. A mere 23 percent -- less than half the next highest rate -- believed one or more.

Depressingly for broadcasters, those who said they paid close attention to the news were no less likely to be mistaken. Indeed, the more closely respondents said they watched Fox, the more likely they were to harbor these inaccurate beliefs.

Only those who got their news from what the study lumped together as "print sources" benefited from paying closer attention.

The researchers also concluded that these results were not simply the reflection of the original biases of the audience. Among those who relied on NPR or PBS, for instance, those who supported President Bush and the war itself were still much less likely to believe any of the myths.

NPR listeners, of course, tend to be better educated and wealthier than the average American, but the study found the same pattern of erroneous beliefs when they controlled for demographic factors like age, income and race.

Fox News Senior Vice President John Moody retorted that the study only asked people about "their impressions, not what they knew to be true."

I'm not sure what point he thought he was making, but it was lost on me.

Moody also -- employing the kind of linguistic cudgel that so often the marks the on-air verbal perambulations of his employees -- called the study a "tutt-tutting exercise in academic self-arousal."

Resorting to that kind of abuse is an admission of defeat in argument even in the school playground. In the mouth of a senior executive it sounds like an act of desperation.

Of course, Americans aren't the only people who suffer from "significant misperceptions."

Absent opinion polls -- or even the right to hold opinions -- one can only speculate how many Saudis share the views of their Interior Minister Prince Nayef Ibn Abd al-Aziz, who told the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Siyasa last year that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were in all likelihood carried out by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

Over the summer, a small poll by the German weekly Die Zeit, found that almost one out of three Germans respondents under 30 believed the U.S. government itself was behind the attacks. Of the 1,000 questioned overall, about 20 percent shared this view.

That is terrifying, especially in an educated, urbanized modern society.

Germany is, after all, hardly comparable to Saudi Arabia. But the Germans are not alone.

Over the past year, a series of books promoting conspiracy theories about the attacks have topped best-seller lists across continental Europe. Their authors propound a series of obvious fallacies -- that the Pentagon was not struck by a plane; that the attacks were staged as an excuse to seize control of central Asian oil reserves; and on and on.

But there's an important difference between this European misinformation and that apparently promoted so effectively by Fox.

The conspiracy buffs all naturally allege some kind of cover-up, aided, of course, by the mainstream media, who are said to have ignored or suppressed "evidence" for the authors' wild theories. These suggestions strike a chord -- especially among young people -- who, surveys show, trust the mainstream media less and less.

The Die Zeit poll found that more than two-thirds of Germans believed their own news organizations had not reported the full truth about the attacks.

It seems, therefore, that these widely held fallacies are at least in part a result of mistrust of the official accounts of the events of that day.

In and of itself, this is not objectionable. To the contrary, it is always good to have a healthy skepticism about the way governments portray their own history.

Nor is it incomprehensible.

Indeed, many relatives of the victims of the attacks say they still don't know enough about what happened in New York, at the Pentagon, and over rural Pennsylvania. They believe that the U.S. government is slow-walking the commission they fought to establish, which is charged with producing an authoritative account of the attacks and of working out what went wrong and way.

Some have gone so far as to suggest that the Bush administration has something to hide.

But if the European misconceptions are based on a distrust of the official version, here in the United States, the misconceptions are the official version.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the president himself all continue to exaggerate both the findings of David Kay -- the man leading the U.S. hunt for banned weapons in Iraq -- and the degree of international support for the U.S.-led military campaign.

Only a month ago, Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert that Saddam's regime worked closely with al-Qaida: something that almost everyone who knows anything about the issue dismisses as -- at best -- completely unsupported by the currently available evidence.

The bottom line? Maybe Fox isn't to blame for misleading their viewers after all. Perhaps they are simply reporting less critically than other networks the highly misleading statements of the country's leaders.

Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International

Posted at 07:07 PM     Read More  

Think Tank Study Shows Conservative/Centrist Bias


Read the following and go to the link at the end of the piece to see the full chart of think tanks, their ideological leanings, and percentage of appearances.

Extra!, July/August 2003

Spectrum Narrows Further in 2002

Progressive, domestic think tanks see drop

By Michael Dolny

The center-right slant in media citations of think tanks continued in 2002, with conservative groups receiving 47 percent of last year’s citations, centrists 41 percent and progressives 12 percent--the least representation for the left since 1998.

The top 25 think tanks in 2002 received 25,897 citations in major newspapers and broadcast transcripts, according to a search of the Nexis media database. This is an 8 percent decrease from 2001, bucking the trend of increasing think tank citations since the survey began in 1996.

The centrist Brookings Institution maintained the top spot, garnering about one-sixth of the survey’s citations, while another center-oriented group, the Council on Foreign Relations, leapfrogged several think tanks to finish in second place. The Heritage Foundation, in third place, was the highest-ranking conservative think tank, while the ninth-place Economic Policy Institute was the most prominent progressive think tank.

The decline in think tank citations may seem surprising, given that the year was filled with big news stories, including the continuing aftermath of September 11, the war in Afghanistan and the build-up toward the attack on Iraq. However, over half of the decline can be accounted for by the relative drop in citations of one think tank, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), whose declaration of a recession in 2001 was cited extensively.

Besides NBER, the decline in citations was most notable among think tanks with a domestic focus. These came from across the political spectrum, from conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute and Family Research Council, centrist think tanks like NBER and the misleadingly named Progressive Policy Institute, and left-leaning think tanks like the Urban Institute and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (Exceptions to this trend included the conservative Manhattan Institute, the centrist Public Policy Institute of California and the progressive Center for Public Integrity.)

Meanwhile, think tanks with a concentration on international issues gained ground. The centrist Center on Foreign Relations increased citations by 55 percent. Right-leaning foreign policy think tanks, such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also increased in exposure.

While this trend was evident among centrist and conservative think tanks that examine foreign policy issues, it did not extend to similar progressive think tanks. The two progressive think tanks in this survey with the most interest in international issues, the Center for Defense Information (CDI) and the Institute for Policy Studies, declined in media exposure, 39 percent and 10 percent respectively. CDI declined 28 percent in citations from major newspapers in 2002, but dropped a precipitous 59 percent in the electronic media.

This finding should not surprise long-time Extra! readers. FAIR has repeatedly documented the near invisibility of anti-war voices in mainstream broadcast media during times of crisis--including during the 1991 Persian Gulf War (5/91), the bombing of Yugoslavia (Extra! Update, 6/99) and the most recent attack on Iraq (5=6/03). This year’s survey is consistent with our observations of think tank citations after September 11, 2001: a decline in visibility of domestic policy think tanks, an increase in exposure for foreign policy think tanks, and an increasing focus on centrist to conservative voices, leaving progressives out of the debate. Given the events so far in 2003, there is every reason to believe that these trends will continue.

Michael Dolny is a visiting lecturer in sociology at California State University, Stanislaus.

see the following link for the chart

http://www.fair.org/extra/0307/thinktanks2002.html

Posted at 07:01 PM     Read More  

Mon - December 1, 2003

Intro and text link to USA PATRIOT Act


Here is the Electronic Privacy Information Center's USA PATRIOT Act page. Very useful links and interesting analysis.


Posted at 10:12 PM     Read More  

Security vs. Liberty


"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Ben Franklin

The following is just an introduction to Franklin's historical concerns projected on to the current war on terrorism and it's domestic implications. We all need to be safe. We all need to be free. At what costs?

Posted at 10:03 PM     Read More  

Domestic Security Enhancement Act


Go to the Center for Public Integrity for breaking info and the full text regarding Patriot II.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0

Special Report
Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act
Center Publishes Secret Draft of ‘Patriot II’ Legislation

By Charles Lewis and Adam Mayle

(WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2003) -- The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information.

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained a draft, dated January 9, 2003, of this previously undisclosed legislation and is making it available in full text (12 MB). The bill, drafted by the staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, has not been officially released by the Department of Justice, although rumors of its development have circulated around the Capitol for the last few months under the name of “the Patriot Act II” in legislative parlance.

“We haven’t heard anything from the Justice Department on updating the Patriot Act,” House Judiciary Committee spokesman Jeff Lungren told the Center. “They haven’t shared their thoughts on that. Obviously, we'd be interested, but we haven’t heard anything at this point.”

Senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee minority staff have inquired about Patriot II for months and have been told as recently as this week that there is no such legislation being planned.

Mark Corallo, deputy director of Justice’s Office of Public Affairs, told the Center his office was unaware of the draft. “I have heard people talking about revising the Patriot Act, we are looking to work on things the way we would do with any law,” he said. “We may work to make modifications to protect Americans,” he added. When told that the Center had a copy of the draft legislation, he said, “This is all news to me. I have never heard of this.”

After the Center posted this story, Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs for the Justice Dept., released a statement saying that, "Department staff have not presented any final proposals to either the Attorney General or the White House. It would be premature to speculate on any future decisions, particularly ideas or proposals that are still being discussed at staff levels."

An Office of Legislative Affairs “control sheet” that was obtained by the PBS program "Now With Bill Moyers" seems to indicate that a copy of the bill was sent to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Vice President Richard Cheney on Jan. 10, 2003. “Attached for your review and comment is a draft legislative proposal entitled the ‘Domestice Security Enhancement Act of 2003,’” the memo, sent from “OLP” or Office of Legal Policy, says.

Comstock later told the Center that the draft "is an early discussion draft and it has not been sent to either the Vice President or the Speaker of the House."

Dr. David Cole, Georgetown University Law professor and author of Terrorism and the Constitution , reviewed the draft legislation at the request of the Center, and said that the legislation “raises a lot of serious concerns. It’s troubling that they have gotten this far along and they’ve been telling people there is nothing in the works.” This proposed law, he added, “would radically expand law enforcement and intelligence gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests, create a DNA database based on unchecked executive ‘suspicion,’ create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups.”

Some of the key provision of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 include:

Section 201, “Prohibition of Disclosure of Terrorism Investigation Detainee Information” : Safeguarding the dissemination of information related to national security has been a hallmark of Ashcroft’s first two years in office, and the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 follows in the footsteps of his October 2001 directive to carefully consider such interest when granting Freedom of Information Act requests. While the October memo simply encouraged FOIA officers to take national security, “protecting sensitive business information and, not least, preserving personal privacy” into account while deciding on requests, the proposed legislation would enhance the department’s ability to deny releasing material on suspected terrorists in government custody through FOIA.

Section 202, “Distribution of ‘Worst Case Scenario’ Information” :This would introduce new FOIA restrictions with regard to the Environmental Protection Agency. As provided for in the Clean Air Act, the EPA requires private companies that use potentially dangerous chemicals must produce a “worst case scenario” report detailing the effect that the release of these controlled substances would have on the surrounding community. Section 202 of this Act would, however, restrict FOIA requests to these reports, which the bill’s drafters refer to as “a roadmap for terrorists.” By reducing public access to “read-only” methods for only those persons “who live and work in the geographical area likely to be affected by a worst-case scenario,” this subtitle would obfuscate an established level of transparency between private industry and the public.

Section 301-306, “Terrorist Identification Database” : These sections would authorize creation of a DNA database on “suspected terrorists,” expansively defined to include association with suspected terrorist groups, and noncitizens suspected of certain crimes or of having supported any group designated as terrorist.

Section 312, “Appropriate Remedies with Respect to Law Enforcement Surveillance Activities” :This section would terminate all state law enforcement consent decrees before Sept. 11, 2001, not related to racial profiling or other civil rights violations, that limit such agencies from gathering information about individuals and organizations. The authors of this statute claim that these consent orders, which were passed as a result of police spying abuses, could impede current terrorism investigations. It would also place substantial restrictions on future court injunctions.

Section 405, “Presumption for Pretrial Detention in Cases Involving Terrorism” : While many people charged with drug offenses punishable by prison terms of 10 years or more are held before their trial without bail, this provision would create a comparable statute for those suspected of terrorist activity. The reasons for presumptively holding suspected terrorists before trial, the Justice Department summary memo states, are clear. “This presumption is warranted because of the unparalleled magnitude of the danger to the United States and its people posed by acts of terrorism, and because terrorism is typically engaged in by groups – many with international connections – that are often in a position to help their members flee or go into hiding.”

Section 501, “Expatriation of Terrorists” :This provision, the drafters say, would establish that an American citizen could be expatriated “if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a ‘terrorist organization’.” But whereas a citizen formerly had to state his intent to relinquish his citizenship, the new law affirms that his intent can be “inferred from conduct.” Thus, engaging in the lawful activities of a group designated as a “terrorist organization” by the Attorney General could be presumptive grounds for expatriation.

The Domestic Security Enhancement Act is the latest development in an 18-month trend in which the Bush Administration has sought expanded powers and responsibilities for law enforcement bodies to help counter the threat of terrorism.

The USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 26, 2001, gave law enforcement officials broader authority to conduct electronic surveillance and wiretaps, and gives the president the authority, when the nation is under attack, to confiscate any property within U.S. jurisdiction of anyone believed to be engaging in such attacks. The measure also tightened oversight of financial activities to prevent money laundering and diminish bank secrecy in an effort to disrupt terrorist finances.

It also changed provisions of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was passed in 1978 during the Cold War. FISA established a different standard of government oversight and judicial review for “foreign intelligence” surveillance than that applied to traditional domestic law enforcement surveillance.

The USA Patriot Act allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share information gathered in terrorism investigations under the “foreign intelligence” standard with local law enforcement agencies, in essence nullifying the higher standard of oversight that applied to domestic investigations. The USA Patriot Act also amended FISA to permit surveillance under the less rigorous standard whenever “foreign intelligence” was a “significant purpose” rather than the “primary purpose” of an investigation.

The draft legislation goes further in that direction. “In the [USA Patriot Act] we have to break down the wall of foreign intelligence and law enforcement,” Cole said. “Now they want to break down the wall between international terrorism and domestic terrorism.”

In an Oct. 9, 2002, hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher testified that Justice had been, “looking at potential proposals on following up on the PATRIOT Act for new tools and we have also been working with different agencies within the government and they are still studying that and hopefully we will continue to work with this committee in the future on new tools that we believe are necessary in the war on terrorism.”

Asked by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) whether she could inform the committee of what specific areas Justice was looking at, Fisher replied, “At this point I can’t, I’m sorry. They're studying a lot of different ideas and a lot of different tools that follow up on information sharing and other aspects.”

Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy Viet Dinh, who was the principal author of the first Patriot Act, told Legal Times last October that there was “an ongoing process to continue evaluating and re-evaluating authorities we have with respect to counterterrorism,” but declined to say whether a new bill was forthcoming.

Former FBI Director William Sessions, who urged caution while Congress considered the USA Patriot Act, did not want to enter the fray concerning a possible successor bill.

"I hate to jump into it, because it's a very delicate thing," Sessions told the Center, without acknowledging whether he knew of any proposed additions or revisions to the additional Patriot bill.

When the first bill was nearing passage in the Congress in late 2001, however, Sessions told Internet site NewsMax.Com that the balance between civil liberties and sufficient intelligence gathering was a difficult one. “First of all, the Attorney General has to justify fully what he’s asking for,” Sessions, who served presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush as FBI Director from 1987 until 1993, said at the time. “We need to be sure that we provide an effective means to deal with criminality.” At the same time, he said, “we need to be sure that we are mindful of the Constitution, mindful of privacy considerations, but also meet the technological needs we have” to gather intelligence.

Cole found it disturbing that there have been no consultations with Congress on the draft legislation. “It raises a lot of serious concerns and is troubling as a generic matter that they have gotten this far along and tell people that there is nothing in the works. What that suggests is that they’re waiting for a propitious time to introduce it, which might well be when a war is begun. At that time there would be less opportunity for discussion an

Posted at 09:57 PM     Read More  

Expanding governement power with Patriot II?



The Assault on Liberty (Continued)
The Bush Administration Pushes to Expand the Patriot Act

By Charles Lewis

(WASHINGTON, September 17, 2003) — President George W. Bush used the second anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks not only to praise the controversial USA Patriot Act but to promote further expanding federal law enforcement powers.

Speaking at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Bush said “Under current federal law, there are unreasonable obstacles to investigating and prosecuting terrorism,” and he recommended allowing authorities in terrorist investigations to issue subpoenas without going to judges or grand juries, to make it easier to hold terrorism suspects without bail, and to add more death penalty statutes.

His comments affirmed at last the Administration’s quiet, longstanding ambitions, which the White House and Attorney General John Ashcroft and his staff had tried unsuccessfully for months to obscure. Last February, when the Center for Public Integrity obtained secret draft legislation, entitled “The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003,”— an apparent sequel to the USA Patriot Act, known as “Patriot II,”—Justice Department officials told us that they had no knowledge of it. After we posted it on the Web, they tried to publicly portray it as essentially an internal memo, just one of many drafts circulating around. So what if the 100-plus page, legalistic document read as though it could be introduced tomorrow at 10 a.m., and had a routing “control sheet” that suggested dissemination to the Vice President and the Speaker of the House?

The damage control spin was unabashed, breathtaking and deceptive, naturally delivered with a straight face. But that wasn’t the worst part. For at least half a year, the Attorney General and his top aides refused to answer dozens of questions posed by members of Congress overseeing the implementation of the USA Patriot Act, nor did they reveal that a sweeping expansion of Patriot II legislation was being drafted. Indeed, some Justice Department officials had flatly asserted that there was no such legislation being planned. Leading Republican and Democratic members of Congress were completely clueless, in other words, and had never heard of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, much less read it.

So when the legislation was exposed—and the unprecedented, new powers it called for caused great public consternation from both liberal and conservative Americans nationwide—members of Congress felt blindsided and betrayed. To this day there remains residual resentment.

From February through August, perhaps because of the firestorm of criticism, the Bush administration did not drop the shoe of the so-called Patriot II Act. But weeks ago, Attorney General Ashcroft began traveling around the nation in a public campaign to soften public attitudes about the provisions of the Patriot Act and prepare America for more, even tougher legislation, his efforts obviously a carefully-orchestrated accompaniment to the President’s Quantico speech on September 10th.

Bush said, “We will never forget the servants of evil who plotted the attacks, and we will never forget those who rejoiced at our grief.”

He is right: We are indelibly scarred by the attacks. But we are also reminded every 10 minutes by politicians from both parties who try to gain political favor from the horror of 9/11. Beyond the graceless pandering and manipulations of public opinion about that national tragedy in ways that appear to be frequently untethered to truth itself, my sensibilities are also offended by the way the President and his Attorney General arrogantly kept America, including the Congress and the news media, in the dark about their plans for more unbridled power in the name of national security.

As I noted last February, the Bush Administration introduced and got the Patriot Act enacted into law almost unanimously in just a few weeks, warp speed for Congress. The Senate Judiciary Committee literally had an hour and a half hearing in which Attorney General John Ashcroft testified but took no questions. In the House, meanwhile, there was no testimony allowed from opponents of the bill.

Democracy is not supposed to work this way. People are supposed to be informed, and discourse and debate are supposed to ensue. Constitutionally guaranteed liberties and rights on the books for centuries should at least be discussed before they are diminished. Perhaps we as a people are sufficiently terrorized and afraid that we want to grant government greater powers to increase intelligence-gathering, surveillance and other law enforcement prerogatives – and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information. But shouldn’t that be the result of a robust, informed, national conversation, with answers to reasonable questions about how existing, including recently enacted, laws have been implemented?

Even more troubling, though, is the Administration’s predisposition toward secrecy, which I first wrote about in this space in July 2002 ( Freedom of Information under Attack , June 20, 2002). The Bush White House and Attorney General Ashcroft have imposed new secrecy never seen before in the modern, post-Watergate era, and much of it appears to be unrelated to national security or September 11th.

Take, for example, the case of Associated Press investigative reporter John Solomon, whose home phone records were seized secretly by federal Justice Department prosecutors a month before September 11th. They were looking to identify his sources.

That was an invasion of the customary space between government and working journalists trying to do their jobs, and there was and remains no good excuse for the chilling effect such drastic action can cause. Then, earlier this year, the FBI opened his mail—in the name of national security of course.

In the United States of America that I know, we just don’t do that to courageous journalists seeking the truth. Has all judgment and decorum, decency and fairness, been lost? We talked to John Solomon about this sordid matter, and a transcript of our questions and his answers tells us more. But many questions remain unanswered. Perhaps most trenchantly, What are we to make of an Administration that encroached on longstanding procedures that protect our constitutional rights, even prior to September 11th?

Posted at 09:50 PM     Read More  

Bill of Rights Defense Committee


This site has great links to attacks on civil liberties during the war on terror. Additionally, it covers the over 250 cities and 3 states that have passed resolutions against the USA PATRIOT Act. This is historic in it's magnitude and breadth.


Posted at 09:46 PM     Read More  

Patriot's author has concerns



Patriot Act Author Has Concerns
     By Richard B. Schmitt
     Los Angeles Times

     Sunday 30 November 2003
Detaining citizens as 'enemy combatants' -- a policy not spelled out in the act -- is flawed, the legal scholar says.

     The Justice Department's war on terrorism has drawn intense scrutiny from the left and the right. Now, a chief architect of the USA Patriot Act and a former top assistant to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft are joining the fray, voicing concern about aspects of the administration's anti-terrorism policy.

     At issue is the government's power to designate and detain "enemy combatants," in particular in the case of "dirty bomb" plot suspect Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born former gang member who was picked up at a Chicago airport 18 months ago by the FBI and locked in a military brig without access to a lawyer.

     Civil liberties groups and others contend that Padilla — as an American citizen arrested in the U.S. — is being denied due process of law under the Constitution.

     Viet Dinh, who until May headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, said in a series of recent speeches and in an interview with The Times that he thought the government's detention of Padilla was flawed and unlikely to survive court review.

     The principal intellectual force behind the Patriot Act, the terror-fighting law enacted by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Dinh has steadfastly defended the Justice Department's anti-terrorism efforts against charges that they have led to civil-rights abuses of immigrants and others. While the Patriot Act does not speak to the issue of enemy combatants, his remarks still caught some observers by surprise.

     In an interview, Dinh, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the Padilla case was not within his line of authority when he was in the department, but that he began to think about the issue later, and came to the conclusion that the administration's case was "unsustainable."

     Another top former Justice Department official, Michael Chertoff, who headed the department's criminal division, has said he believed the government should reconsider how it designates enemy combatants.

     "Two years into the war on terror, it is time to move beyond case-by-case development," Chertoff said, according to an excerpt from a speech he gave last month at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law school.

     "We need to debate a long-term and sustainable architecture for the process of determining when, why and for how long someone may be detained as an enemy combatant, and what judicial review should be available," he said.

     Chertoff, a federal appeals court judge, also mentioned at a judicial conference in Philadelphia this month the need to reexamine procedures for combatants. "Inevitably, decisions of war are made with imperfect information," he said. "Perhaps the time has come to take a more universal approach."

     Chertoff emphasized in an interview that he wasn't venturing an opinion on the Padilla case, which is being litigated in the federal courts, or criticizing the decisions that the government has made to date in the case.

     The comments by Dinh and Chertoff offer some of the first public utterances by Justice Department officials who stood watch in the weeks and months after Sept. 11 on how they felt about the work done by them and their colleagues. The comments also illustrate the uncharted legal terrain they and others were operating under.

     Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment on the remarks by the former officials, citing the fact that the Padilla case is pending in court. The department has staunchly defended its anti-terrorism record and its use of the tools in the Patriot Act, portions of which have been attacked as an abuse of government power by groups as diverse as the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Conservative Union.

     Dinh first flagged his concerns in a speech he gave in September at a human rights conference in The Hague sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He reiterated them this month during a panel discussion with Chertoff and others on national security and civil liberties at the conference in Philadelphia.

     "The person next to me said, 'My God. He is saying that the Padilla case is wrong!' " said Philip Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor who also sat on the panel in Philadelphia and who agrees that the administration view in the case is wrongheaded.

     "There has to be some form of judicial review and access to a lawyer," said Heymann, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. "That is what habeas corpus was all about. That is what the Magna Carta was all about. You are talking about overthrowing 800 years of democratic tradition."

     In the interview, Dinh said he believed the president had the unquestioned authority to detain persons during wartime, even those captured on "untraditional battlefields," including on American soil. He also said the president should be given flexibility in selecting the forum and circumstances — such as a military tribunal or an administrative hearing — in which the person designated an enemy combatant can confront the charges against him.

     The trouble with the Padilla case, Dinh said, is that the government hasn't established any framework for permitting Padilla to respond, and that it seems to think it has no legal duty to do so.

     "The president is owed significant deference as to when and how and what kind of process the person designated an enemy combatant is entitled to," Dinh said. "But I do not think the Supreme Court would defer to the president when there is nothing to defer to. There must be an actual process or discernible set of procedures to determine how they will be treated."

     Padilla was arrested at O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, after arriving on a flight from Pakistan. Initially, he was taken to New York and held as a "material witness," presumably to testify against others.

     The following month, he was transferred to a military prison in South Carolina after Ashcroft announced that the government had determined that he was part of an unfolding terrorist plot to explode a radioactive dispersion device, or so-called dirty bomb.

     Padilla's lawyers subsequently filed a writ of habeas corpus saying that he was being illegally held. The Justice Department responded by saying that the detention was a proper exercise of the president's wartime powers. A decision is pending before a federal appeals court in New York.

Posted at 09:43 PM     Read More  

Patriot offshoots: Bills foes make unlikely allies



New Patriot Act Creates Uproar, Brings Together Uncommon Allies
By Michelle Mittelstadt
Dallas Morning News

Tuesday 15 April 2003

WASHINGTON -- Fearful that the Bush administration is poised to ask Congress for greater anti-terrorism powers, including the right to strip Americans of their citizenship, liberals and conservatives are joining forces to block what they view as dangerous encroachments on civil liberties.

The loose-knit coalition was on display last week when conservative activists who otherwise are close administration allies joined the American Civil Liberties Union to decry the Justice Department's impending push for powers that could reach well beyond the USA Patriot Act, which Congress raced to adopt in the dark, chaotic weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Possible outlines of what the Justice Department is seeking in a bill dubbed "Son of Patriot" or "Patriot 2" have had privacy and civil-libertarian groups across the political spectrum in an uproar since a draft was leaked in February.

Although Justice Department officials insist the 86-page bill is a preliminary draft that bears little resemblance to what ultimately will be requested, some fear it's a sign of things to come.

"Based on past history of various administrations, when draft legislation such as the 'Son of Patriot' that we've been now seeing are first denied and then they surface -- where there's smoke there's fire," said former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, a conservative Republican who is now an ACLU consultant. "We are very worried that it will surface in some way relatively quickly."

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats have argued that the Justice Department should work with Congress to draft new anti-terrorism legislation rather than write it in secret.

The draft bill would grant federal law enforcement sweeping new power to wiretap, detain and punish suspected terrorists while limiting court review and cloaking certain information from the public. Among the most criticized proposals: the right to strip the citizenship of Americans who provide "material support" to organizations designated terrorist groups.

"Everyone is concerned with protecting our people and our society and our homeland," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "But everyone should be equally concerned at the potential costs to our society and its very nature if we adopt measures that in retrospect would be viewed as unwise."

Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo declined to discuss which parts of the leaked draft have been discarded and which remain viable.

"We're not going to discuss things that are being deliberated right now," he said.

He dismissed criticism that lawmakers are being cut out of the loop, saying Congress ultimately will decide whether to accept, reject or amend the package that will be sent to Capitol Hill later this year.

The Patriot Act has been "an invaluable tool" for terrorism prevention, Corallo said, adding that he thinks critics have misunderstood the law, which expanded wiretapping and spying authority, lowered prohibitions on the sharing of intelligence with criminal investigators, and imposed restraints on the public release of information.

"The Patriot Act actually strengthened constitutional protections," he said.

That view is far from universally shared.

Librarians in some cities are hastening their routine shredding of patrons' records because of Patriot Act provisions that allow the FBI to review records at libraries, bookstores and other businesses.

A California dive shop owner objected when the FBI sought lists of clients at his and other dive shops around the country, citing the possibility that a terrorist diver could launch an attack by slipping unseen into a U.S. port.

And now, groups such as the Eagle Forum and American Conservative Union are setting aside historic policy differences with liberal-leaning organizations such as the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to tackle a range of post-Sept. 11 actions they view as threats to freedoms.

Conservative groups historically have left the defense of civil liberties to the ACLU, conservative activist Grover Norquist said. But, he added, "I'm not sure given the Republican control of the House and the Senate and the government that we can count on our left-of-center friends to look out for some of these issues."

The Patriot Act and its possible successor aren't the liberal and conservative groups' only concerns. They fret about a data-mining program known as Total Information Awareness being developed within the Pentagon; an airline passenger profiling system that could roll out later this year; and other proposals.

Waters and others are voicing particular dismay at reports that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, with administration backing, wants to make permanent Patriot Act provisions that expire in 2005.

"I am very concerned at the idea of getting rid of the (sunset provisions)," Norquist said.

Barr, the former congressman, said: "This is particularly troubling because we have not yet had nearly the full opportunity that we ought to have to see how the Patriot Act is working. This is a very, very complex piece of legislation."

(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.)

Posted at 09:42 PM     Read More  
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