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THE
RECORD OF THE FIRST U.S. NEO-FASCIST REGIME: (2001-2008) Part One
A LITANY OF
NEO-FASCIST CONDUCT
“What
has become of the American people that they permit the despicable
practices of tyrants to be practiced in their name?” “The
Bush administration is in violation of the US Constitution, the rule
of law, the Geneva Convention, the Nuremberg Standard, and basic
humanity. It is a gang of criminals.”
Paul Craig
Roberts, former Reagan Administration official
The 911 Attack-
Cataclysmic Excuse For Tyranny
An
Earlier War on Terrorism:
“You
are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history. This
fire is the beginning—A sign from God, to declare an all out
war on Terrorism and its’ ideological sponsors, a people who
traced their origins to the Middle East, and found motivation for
their evil deeds in their religion.”
Adolph Hitler
(Speaking from the ruins of the burned out Reichstag building)
Within four weeks, Adolph Hitler
had pushed through Legislation which suspended Constitutional
Guarantees, including; Free speech, Privacy, and Habeas Corpus, and
had created the first detention center for “Terrorists.”
“All
means, even if they are not in conformity with existing laws and
precedents, are legal if they subserve the will of the Fuhrer.”
Adolf
Hitler, October 1938
Are
We Now Doomed to Repeat History?
Having
failed to protect and defend the American people, Bush junior and his
regime overreacted, and began to take domestic security actions that
employed the tools of tyrants against their own U.S. citizens, and
immigrant population. Some of these actions were ruled
unconstitutional and an abuse of power by the moderate Republican
majority on the Supreme Court; but these Judicial opinions were
ignored by the arrogant and imperialistic President, who has behaved
like a “Manchurian
Candidate” turning the American ship of state
sharply right toward Totalitarianism..
“If
tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of
fighting a foreign enemy.”
James Madison
Negligence
and Incompetence
As a result of the 911
Commission hearings and Report, all Americans should by now know that
Mr. Bush demonstrated an unprecedented degree of negligence and
incompetence, in his Executive response to the many FBI, CIA, and NSC
warnings received in the nine months leading up to the attack of 911.
By rejecting the repeated recommendations and warnings of the NSC
Counterterrorism nonpartisan career experts; and preferring the
casual bureaucratic approach of developing a Strategic
Plan for dealing with the known and imminent Terrorist
threat from the Al Qaeda Terrorist network; Mr. Bush, his National
Security Advisor, and his NSC Council,
missed six major opportunities to
stop the Terrorist attacks, according to the Commission. No one has
ever been held accountable for the National Security Failures, which
resulted in the 911 Disaster that took so many innocent lives.
The Islamic Jihadist attack on
September 11, 2001 was exploited for political purposes by the
Radical Neo-Fascist-Conservative government. Bush, has failed to
admit any shortcomings on his part, or by the leaders of the U.S.
Intelligence and Police agencies. This reluctance to accept or assign
accountability, is understandable; as the ultimate responsibility for
the failure rests with the President.
Preliminary Report of the 911
Joint Congressional Inquiry (p. 23)
“A
briefing prepared for senior government officials at the beginning of
July 2001 contained the following language;”
“Based
on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we
believe that UBL (Usama bin Laden) will launch a significant
terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming
weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass
casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack
preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no
warning.”
Re:
Inaction by Bush Cabinet:
“I
had not been allowed to brief the President on terrorism in January
(01) or since, not until today, September 11. It had taken since
January to get the Cabinet-level meeting that I had requested
“urgently” within days of the inauguration, to approve an
aggressive plan to go after Al Qaeda. The meeting had finally
happened exactly one week earlier, on September 4.”
“Against
All Enemies,” by Richard A. Clarke, Counterterrorism Czar,
Bush Administration
Re:
Inaction by Condaleeza Rice (National Security Adviser):
“I
assume that my message was clear enough: you obviously do not think
that terrorism is as important as I do, since you are taking months
to do anything; so get somebody else to do it who can be happy
working it at your pace.”
“Against
All Enemies” by Richard A. Clarke, Counterterrorism Czar, Bush
Administration
The Threat is Fundamentalist
Islamic Jihadism:
“The
911 Commission properly identified the threat, not as Terrorism”
(which is a tactic, not an enemy) but as “Islamic
Jihadism”,
which must be defeated in a battle of ideas as well as in armed
conflict. We are less capable of defeating the Jihadists because of
the Iraq war.”
Richard
A. Clarke, NYT OP-ED, July 25, 2004
Final report of the 911
Commission
On December 5, 2005 the Bush
regime received what was termed failing and mediocre grades from the
Sept. 11 Commission, whose members said in a final report that the
Bush administration and Congress have resisted enacting numerous
reforms that could save American lives and prevent another terrorist
attack on U.S. soil.
The
10-member bipartisan panel issued a report card that included 5
F's, 12 D's and two "incompletes"
in categories including airline passenger screening and improving
first responders' communication system. The group also said there has
been little progress in forcing federal agencies to share
intelligence and terrorism information and sharply criticized
government efforts to secure weapons of mass destruction or establish
clear standards for the proper treatment of U.S. detainees, which
they believe has made the country more vulnerable to terrorism.
“We
believe that the terrorists will strike again,”
the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of
New Jersey, told reporters in Washington.
According
to the panel, the government deserves only one top grade, an A-minus,
for its "vigorous
effort against terrorist financing." The panel
gave out B's and C's for government performance on issues such as the
creation of a director of national intelligence and an ongoing
presence in Afghanistan. In nearly half the categories, the
government merited a D, an F or an incomplete grade, according to the
report card.
ACTIONS SHREDDING
CONSTITUTION RIGHTS
The
Law of Intended Consequences
In the
last stages of WWII there were reports that Otto Skorzeny, a famous
Nazi Special-Operations expert, planned to lead a “terrorist”
campaign against the new governments of the just liberated Europe.
The goal was to push them toward “Authoritarianism”
to restore order; and pave the way for a Nazi revival. Osama bin
Ladin and the other enemies of the U.S. have expressed a similar
hope; and the NFC
Republican leaders in the Authoritarian Bush regime have
jumped at the chance to roll back all forms of civil Liberties in the
name of the Global War on Terror.
“Those
who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin
Franklin, November 11, 1755
Attacks
on Civil Liberties
The
President has continued to demand that he has the power as
Commander-In-Chief
(CINC), to designate any U.S. Citizen or Foreign National
as an “Enemy
Combatant,” to be held in indefinite military
detention, denied Communication with lawyers, interrogated, tortured,
possibly executed, with
no review by any Judicial authority.
Violated
5th and 6th Amendments.
Americans
Designated Enemy Combatants
In
a strongly worded opinion that rebuked the Bush administration, a
federal appeals court has refused a request from the Bush regime to
authorize the transfer of “enemy
combatant” Jose
Padilla into Justice Department custody to face new criminal charges.
The Washington Post reports that the three-judge panel of the US
Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit wrote that the government's
actions have left;
“…the
impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if
justifiably, by mistake, and that this hurts the government's
‘credibility’ before the courts.”
Legal experts say this shows
that the 4th Circuit Court, previously very friendly towards the Bush
administration's arguments about terrorism, is now casting a more
skeptical eye on the President’s Totalistic authority claims.
The
President has decreed that he has the power as CINC,
to try American Citizens and Foreign suspects in secret military
tribunals, and to deny them access to attorneys.
Violated
5th and 6th Amendments
“Americans
need to watch what they say, what they do…”
Ari
Fleischer, Press Secretary to Pres. Bush
Attorney General Ashcroft
unilaterally authorized the wiretapping of privileged lawyer-client
discussions by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
Violated
4th Amendment
Attorney
General Ashcroft unilaterally rescinded all DOJ Regulations against
COINTELPRO
type Operations by Government Agents. COINTELPRO
was responsible for abuses of the Civil Rights and Anti-War
movements during the 50s to the 70s. This has also permitted the
surveillance of Religious and Political groups without evidence of
wrongdoing. They have not been restored under his replacement.
Violated
the 1st and 4th Amendments
Attorney
General Ashcroft established the “TIPS”
system which was to
employ 2 million
Soviet style informants, to snitch on their neighbors (status
unknown).
Violated
the 4th Amendment
Attorney General Ashcroft
directed that Government Agencies do not have to respond to Freedom
of Information Requests (FOIA). This abuse of Secrecy, to avoid
public scrutiny, is the worst in U.S. history.
Violated
the 1st Amendment
Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld and former Iran-Contra spymaster John Poindexter,
instituted a Nationwide Surveillance of Computer Networks, to monitor
the Emails and Web Surfing of all citizens, without Probable Cause.
Data mining projects by the Government include; Total Information
Awareness (TIA) and the still secret Able
Danger system.
Violated
the 4th Amendment
The
Homeland Security Department implemented computerized Airline
passenger profiling systems, including; Capps,
Capps II, and Secure Flight. Many innocent citizens have
found themselves on these No-Fly lists; with no legal method of
removing their names.
Violated
4th Amendment.
The DOJ
created Joint
Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) units to fight “Domestic
Terrorism” which actually give local law
enforcement officials access to federal law enforcement files and
have used local police to conduct political surveillance on law
abiding citizens, criminalizing political dissent.
In July
2005, it was revealed that a California National Guard unit which was
created to spy on U.S. citizens had spied on a “Mothers
Day” protest against the war, and that a new
“Domestic
Watch Center” had been activated in the National
guard Bureau. The California spying was documented with
e-mails from Governor
Schwarzenegger’s office. An investigator of the Army Inspector
General’s office piously claimed that the unit “may
have just exceeded its mandate in the realm of Intelligence
Operations”
Violated
the 4th Amendment
Prior to
the passage of the Patriot Act, the Bush government began the
practice of issuing “National
Security Letters” which authorized the FBI to
demand a wide range of personal records, such as the identity of
persons visiting web sites, or who engaged in anonymous speech on the
Internet, or which books a person has loaned from a library. The NSL
letters do not require judicial review.
Violated
the 4th Amendment
“The
public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the
protection of every individual’s private rights.”
Sir
William Blackstine, 1783
In July
2005, U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour made the following
comments during the sentencing hearing for accused terrorist, Ahmed
Ressam. Ressam, an Algerian national, was sentenced to 22 years
for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the
eve of the millennium:
“The
message I would hope to convey in today's sentencing is
twofold:”
“First, that we have the resolve in this
country
to deal with the subject of terrorism and people who engage in
it should be prepared to sacrifice a major
portion of their life in confinement.”
“Secondly, though,
I would like to convey the message that our system works. We
did not need to use a secret military tribunal, or detain
the defendant indefinitely as an enemy
combatant, or deny him the
right to counsel, or
invoke any proceedings beyond those
guaranteed by or contrary
to the United States Constitution.”
“I
would suggest that the message to the world from today’s
sentencing is that our courts have
not abandoned our commitment to
the ideals that set
our nation apart. We can deal with the
threats to our national security without denying the accused
fundamental constitutional protections.”
“Despite the fact
that Mr. Ressam is not an American citizen and despite the
fact
that he entered this country intent upon killing American citizens,
he received an effective, vigorous defense, and the opportunity
to have his guilt or innocence determined by a jury of 12
ordinary citizens.”
“Most importantly, all of this
occurred in the sunlight of a public trial. There
were no secret proceedings, no indefinite detention, no denial of
counsel.”
“The tragedy of September 11th shook our sense
of security and made us realize
that we, too, are vulnerable to
acts of terrorism.”
“Unfortunately, some believe that this
threat renders our Constitution obsolete.
This is a Constitution
for which men and women have died and continue to
die and
which has made us a model among nations. If that view
is allowed
to prevail, the terrorists will have won.”
“It is my
sworn duty, and as long as there is breath in my body I'll perform
it; to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
District
Judge John C. Coughenour
NFC
Judges Rule Against Constitutional Rights
In a startling decision in
September 2005, a U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling
dramatically undermined fundamental rights protected by the U.S.
Constitution.
The ruling
came in the case of Jose
Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was arrested on U.S. soil
and subsequently turned over to the military by the Justice
Department. The President had determined that Padilla was an “enemy
combatant”, and therefore was not to have the
protections afforded by the Constitution, including the right to
counsel, the right to a speedy trial, and the right to challenge his
accusers.
“A
dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier”
Pres.
George W. Bush
In
short, the court ruled that the President can strip any American
citizen of their right to due process, throw them in a military
jail, and hold them forever, with no opportunity for judicial review!
“The
power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating
any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the
judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the
foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”
Winston Churchill
While the
case will almost certainly make its way to the Supreme Court, it will
be a very different court than previous cases. With two
new NFC justices on the bench, it's entirely possible that
the Supreme Court will consent to this crippling of the American
system of checks and balances.
“There
are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is
suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is
responsive to human needs.”
Supreme
Court Justice William O. Douglass, Points of Rebellion, 1970
The
Un-Patriotic Act
H.R.
3162, called "The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act"
or the acronym USA Patriot Act)
The
Orwellian named PATRIOT
Act is probably the best example of the Bush
regime’s
violation of their sacred duty to defend the Constitution. In fact
the provisions of the act are so similar to the actions of previous
totalitarian regimes throughout history, that more than 400 American
Communities, including seven States, have passed resolutions calling
on Congress to bring the Patriot Act in line with the Constitution,
by including necessary checks and balances to prevent abuse.
“…Freedom
cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. And any who act as if
Freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion
and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.”
President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953
The
initial PATRIOT
Act was passed without proper debate, in the hysteria
following the weeks after the terrible 911 attack. Many
Congressional representatives had little idea what was in the bill
when they voted for it. Americans of all political stripes have been
worried about what could happen to their privacy if the Patriot
Act was made permanent.
Along with expanding the
government's already broad power to secretly search our homes and not
tell us for months, it makes it much easier for the government to
access our records from hotels, libraries, hospitals and other
places, without any facts connecting our records to a
foreign terrorist, let alone probable cause.
The NFC
Republicans and a few conservative Democrats in Congress have
tried to make the PATRIOT
Act permanent, and have voted to expand the law to give the
FBI the ability to access citizens and other residents personal
records without any prior review by a judge at all.
“The
idea of Rights is nothing but the conception of Virtue applied to the
world of Politics.”
“By
means of the idea of Rights, men have defined the nature of license
and of tyranny.”
“No
man can be great without Virtue, nor any nation great without respect
for Rights; one can almost say that without it there can be no
Society.”
“Democracy
in America,” by Alexis de Tocqueville
Some Unconstitutional provisions
of this Un-Patriotic Act include;
- The Act
gave Government Agents unneeded powers, with no accountability.
Violated
Due process
- The Act
created the new Crime called “Domestic
Terrorism” whose
definition is so broad that it can be applied to legal dissent and
political activities.
Violated
the 5th Amendment
- It granted excessive power to
the FBI and turned Federal Judges into rubber stamps.
Violated
the Constitution, Separation of Powers
- It authorized the FBI to make
an end run around the Bill of Rights, by using the Special
Investigative techniques under FISA, even in cases not related to
Terrorism.
Violated
4th Amendment
- Sect.
206, Authorized “Roving
Wiretaps” of the Cellular phones of innocent
people under FISA
Violated
4th Amendment
- Sect.
213, Gave Government Agents the power to make Secret Searches and
Seizures and to delay Notice of the execution of Warrants, aka “Sneak
and Peek.”
Violated
4th Amendment
- Sect 215 Gave Government agents
unlimited access to personal medical, library, financial and other
records without Probable Cause.
Violated
4th Amendment
- Sect. 218 Amended FISA to
eliminate need for FBI to show Probable Cause.
Violated
4th Amendment
- Sect. 411
Permitted the Secretary of State to designate any domestic or foreign
group as a “Terrorist
Organization”, based on one incident of violent
activity by one person.
Violated
the 5th Amendment-Due process
- Sect 412
Permitted Mandatory Detention of “Suspected
Terrorists” without rights of Habeas Corpus and
without Probable cause.
Violated
the 5th and 6th Amendments
- Sect 802, Created the New Crime
of Domestic Terrorism, broad definition of Terrorism or Terrorists,
threatens free speech.
Violated
1st and 5th Amendments
- Sect 805,
Contained vague and excessively broad Definition of what is “Material
Support for Terrorism.”
Violated
1st and 5th Amendment
“Since
the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more
instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people, by gradual
and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent, and
sudden usurpations.”
James
Madison, June 6, 1788
The NFC
Bush government has used a complex web of new and old laws
and policies to increase surveillance, searches, and detentions
without probable cause; to turn the concept of "innocent
until proven guilty" on its head; to expand
executive branch powers, to reduce oversight; to abuse claims of
"state
secrets" and "national
security", and punish whistleblowers in order to
hide its actions and mistakes from the people.
Massive
Surveillance- Few Terrorism Convictions
In June
2005, Dan Eggen and Julie Tate of the Washington Post reported that
an analysis of the Justice Department's list of terrorism
prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39
people - not 200 - have been convicted of crimes
related to terrorism or national security. Most of the others
were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false
statements and violating immigration law - and had nothing to do with
terrorism, the analysis shows. Overall, the median sentence was just
11 months.
Taken as a whole, the data
indicate that identifying terrorists in the United States has been
less successful than the government has often claimed. The statistics
provide little support for the suggestion that authorities have
discovered and prosecuted hundreds of terrorists. Except for a small
number of well-known cases - such as truck driver Iyman Faris, who
sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge - few appear to have been
involved in active plots against the United States.
In
fact, among all the people charged as a result of terrorism
investigations in the three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,
The Post found no
demonstrated connection to terrorism or terrorist groups for 180 of
them.
Many
people appear to have been swept into US counterterrorism
investigations by chance - through anonymous tips, suspicious
circumstances or bad luck - and have remained classified as terrorism
defendants, years after being cleared of connections to extremist
groups.
Patriot
Act Case Crumbles
By December 2005, we began to
understand why the government was not willing to use the regular
court system to try suspects of being enemy combatants and supporting
terrorism.
Tom
Regan of the Christian Science Monitor reported on December 7, 2005
that two years ago, when former Florida professor Sami al-Arian was
charged with being part of a Tampa, Fla., terrorist cell that helped
fund attacks against Israel, John Ashcroft, then-Attorney General,
hailed it as "a milestone in the war on terror." The Tampa
Tribune writes that
when a jury in Tampa acquitted Mr. Arian of eight of 17 charges
against him, including the major charges of conspiring to commit
murder abroad, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, and
deadlocked on the other nine charges, the Justice Department's case
crumbled
right before their eyes.
The
Tribune reports that the verdicts "mark
a stunning defeat for federal prosecutors."
Along with Arian, his codefendants Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan
Ballut were acquitted on all counts. Hatim Fariz was acquitted on the
counts on which jurors could reach a verdict.
“This
ranks as one of the most significant defeats for the US government,
for the Justice Department since 9/11”,
said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University
Law School who has represented other terrorism defendants. “The
Justice Department spent copious amounts of money and time to make
the case against Al-Arian.”
Prosecutors
presented evidence from 20,000
hours of phone conversations and hundreds of faxes obtained through
the government's expanded “search
and surveillance” powers
under the Patriot Act, to try to prove that Arian and his
codefendants were providing money to Islamic Jihad, a group that has
been on the US terrorism list for about 10 years. CNN
reports that the government had taken separate cases against Arian,
including a “years-long
secret foreign intelligence probe
of the professor's activities,” and combined them into one case
against him.
David Cole, a professor at
Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC said;
“They
say the Patriot Act allows them to connect the dots. But they failed
to make the most important connection, which was to tie Mr. Al-Arian
to some violent or criminal act. It should make the government
rethink its reliance on these very broad theories of guilt by
association.”
Positive
ID—Your Identification Papers Please!
“A
few years later this would have been impossible, because the passport
system was to become so perfect that no man, woman, nor child in all
the land was unregistered and unaccounted for in his or her
movements.”
“The Iron Heel”, by Jack
London, 1907
The State Department recently
announced new regulations requiring Radio Frequency ID (RFID) chips
on all new passports. Each chip will include personal information
such as the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth,
and a digitized photo of the passport holder. Many people feel the
RFID chips are a threat to personal privacy and security, leaving
American travelers vulnerable to identity theft and attacks both at
home and abroad. The RFID chips are intended to be read by scanners
from about four inches away, but high tech devices can be used to
read private information from as far as 160 feet.
The
Military is also illegally Spying on Americans
Two years
ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency,
Counterintelligence
Field Activity, or CIFA,
to establish and “maintain
a domestic law
enforcement database that includes information related to potential
terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.”
Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also
established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON
or Threat and Local Observation Notice report.
TALONs now provide “non-validated
domestic threat information” from military units
throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a
CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance
of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war
protests. In the program’s first year, the
agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained
by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.
In
December 2005, a secret 400-page Defense Department document was
obtained by NBC News, which lists more than 1,500
“suspicious incidents” across the country
over a recent 10-month period, but almost
all of them were legal exercise of 1st Amendment rights by
Americans protesting the war in Iraq. It
means that they’re actually collecting information about
who’s
at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles. On the domestic
level, this is unprecedented,” it's the beginning of enormous
problems and enormous mischief for the military.
Bert
Tussing, director of Homeland Defense and Security Issues at the U.S.
Army War College and a former Marine, says;
“…there
is very little that could justify the collection of domestic
intelligence by the Unites States military. If we start going down
this slippery slope it would be too easy to go back to a place we
never want to see again…”
The
Democratic Party Leadership produced a revision to the Patriot Act
called the SAFE act, but not all Democrats resisted the NFC
efforts to permanently increase Federal Police powers. Experience
shows that once these Police powers have been surrendered they will
never be returned again.
“PARIAH”-The
Un-Patriotic Act II
On July
21st, 2005, the NFC
Republican controlled House voted to extend for
another ten years, virtually all of the major anti-terrorism
provisions of the over 170 page USA
PATRIOT Act , over the objections of many Democrats
and a few Moderate Republicans, such as Representative Ron Paul of
Texas. [Actually, Mr. Paul is known by Congress Watch advocates from
his District as "Dr. No because he consistently voted against more
piece of legislation in the House than any other elected official in
Congress".]
A
proposed provision of Patriot Act II would subject anyone who
protests in cordoned-off areas at presidential appearances to prison
sentences up to 10 years. Also proposed are new death penalties in
the reauthorization.
“Government
is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a
troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should
it be left to irresponsible action.”
George Washington
In June
2005, the NFC
Republican dominated Intelligence Committee, approved
expanded powers for the FBI under Sect. 215, allowing any agent of
the FBI to subpoena and obtain records of all types, without a Court
Order.
The
"National
Security Letters" that the FBI is using to
acquire these records are not subject to judicial review and, because
of changes made by the USA
PATRIOT Act (Section 505), the use of NSLs is not
limited to suspected terrorists.
The
government began issuing National Security Letters (NSLs) in the
1970s as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI
to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents.
The Patriot Act
transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S.
residents and visitors who are not alleged to be
terrorists or spies. The extended NSL authority will not sunset like
other controversial sections of the Patriot
Act and investigators can still force courts to accept
the government's argument that NSL gag orders should not be lifted.
Issued by FBI field supervisors,
national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor,
grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the
Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only
statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports.
The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require
a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a
national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
In
November 2005, a Washington Post article exposed that, since the
PATRIOT Act
changes, the FBI has issued “more than 30,000
national security letters a year...
a hundredfold increase over historic norms."
Because each letter can request many records, the amount of
information the government is accumulating is staggering. The article
also reported that the FBI no longer destroys data collected through
such sweeps, even if it is irrelevant to the investigation at hand.
Instead, the article states, the FBI has been ordered to keep the
data, even when it is clear it is on innocent Americans, and "to
develop 'data mining' technology to probe for hidden links among the
people in its growing cache of electronic files.”
This was
one more sign of contempt for Representative Government and the
people of the U.S.; that have rejected the PATRIOT
Act in overwhelming numbers in recent polls. Over 400 communities all
over the U.S. have issued proclamations against the Patriot Act, but
their complaints have been ignored by the NFC National Security State
advocates in the Republican Party. Some of the more sinister
provisions of the Reauthorization bill include;
- Section
507 of the current PATRIOT
Act Reauthorization bill, which gives the Attorney
General the power to determine whether a state is adequately
supplying counsel to indigents in post-conviction proceedings. This
power was previously held by federal courts.
Transferring the power to the
Attorney General puts an advocate in charge of the process, rather
than a neutral party—disrupting the balance of power, and
threatening the fundamental right of prisoners to ask that an
impartial judge examine the legality of their imprisonment.
- Section
215 of the act affects the privacy of medical and mental health
records. Among
the many troubling aspects of the House-Senate PATRIOT
Act compromise bill is the likelihood that section 215
will not be amended to require a connection between records sought
and a suspected terrorist or spy. This leaves the door open for
fishing expeditions. Section 215 gives federal agents sweeping powers
to access personal and confidential information, including medical
and mental health records, without
probable cause. The FBI
merely must establish that the information is relevant to an
ongoing investigation. Furthermore, a permanent gag order prevents
physicians and therapists from telling anyone, including their
patients, that their records have been taken.
“Experience
should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the
Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are
naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious
encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”
Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
dissenting, Olmstead v. U. S.
Fearing
public outcry, the hearings on the PAREA
(Patriot Re-authorization Act) were held in secret, and the
resulting Act was passed by the committee, without allowing the
opposition to have any meaningful testimony. This secrecy is a sure
sign of the continued creation of a program of “State
Terrorism.”
As President Bush and Republican
leaders in Congress scrambled to renew the USA Patriot Act before it
expired on Dec. 31, they met surprising resistance from a group they
usually consider an ally: big business.
Joining the American
Civil Liberties Union, organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National
Association of Realtors and the Financial Services Roundtable are
demanding changes in the antiterrorism laws on government access to
confidential business records; that are beginning to affect them.
They
say that their members each year are getting tens of thousands of
National Security Letters, or NSLs -- to demand basic
information contained in credit reports, Internet-service-provider
records and financial records. Corporate lobbyists want to prevent
the renewed Patriot Act from toughening the law in ways they dislike.
One proposed change would make it a felony for a company to disclose
a secret subpoena. They are likely to get anything they want.
America
was not founded on a promise of security; it was founded on a promise
of personal Liberty
to pursue happiness, without government interference.
This
was a clear signal that the NFC
Republicans are ready to take other more extreme
Extra-Constitutional measures under the guise of protecting our
security, if they are allowed to continue in power.
“Eternal
vigilance is the Price of Liberty.”
Attributed to
President Thomas Jefferson
PRESIDENTIAL
ABUSES OF POWER
“Power
tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Lord
Acton, 1857
President Bush and the NFC
Republicans have put forward a Fascist-like theory
called the “Unitary
Executive” where “all
federal executive power is vested
by the Constitution in the President.”
Reviving
the Nixon President as King Assertion:
“It's
quite obvious that there are certain inherently government
activities, which, if undertaken by the sovereign
in protection of the interests of the nation's security are lawful,
but which if undertaken by private persons, are not.”
Richard
Nixon, David Frost interview, May 19, 1977
In 2004,
Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas used this Bizarre theory of the “Unitary
Executive” to justify the president's
unilateral power to indefinitely
imprison U.S. Citizens without a hearing. (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld)
In a 2000
speech, Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel Alito also endorsed the
theory of the “Unitary
Executive,” which enshrines the
concept of an all powerful dictator!
Mr. Bush
has seriously exceeded his Constitutional Powers as
President, arguing
that as a Commander-In-Chief, in wartime, he can employ these
and other Extra-Constitutional methods, with no restraint or
oversight, by the people’s representatives or the courts.
He
thus demands the power of a tyrant!
“The
man no longer refuses to be called a tyrant, in fact he practically
demands it - and that is exactly what he is.”
Cicero, 49 BC,
writing about Julius Caesar
These
are impeachable offenses!
An
earlier Commander-In-Chief:
“The
masses love a Commander more than a petitioner, and feel inwardly
more satisfied by a Doctrine, tolerating no other beside itself, than
by granting of Liberalistic Freedom.”
Adolph
Hitler, Mein Kampf
On June
29, 2004, the Republican majority on the Conservative Supreme Court
dealt a serious blow to Pres. Bush, ruling that “enemy
combatants held at Guantanamo Bay Cuba should have access to U.S.
Courts:”
“A
state of War is not a blank check for the President.”
“History
and Common Sense teach us that an unchecked system of detention
carries the potential to become a means for oppression and abuse of
others.”
Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor
Writing
for the majority, Judge Stevens wrote;
“No
free man should be imprisoned…save by the judgment of his
peers or by the law of the land.”
Justice
John Paul Stevens, quoting King John and the Magna Carta of 1215
“What
is at stake is only whether the Federal Courts have jurisdiction to
determine the legality of the Executives’ potentially
indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent
of wrongdoing.”
“The
Executive detention of subversives may not be justified “by the
naked interest in using unlawful procedures to extract
information…For if this nation is to remain true to
the ideals symbolized by it’s flag, it must not wield the tools
of tyrants, even to resist an assault by the forces of
tyranny.”
Justice
John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, that Guantanamo
detainees are under U.S. Jurisdiction, and will have the right to
appeal their detention to the U.S. Courts.
However,
the NFC Bush regime
showed its contempt for the rule of law, and took no Corrective
action as a result of these court judgments!
“John
Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it!
President
Andrew Jackson, re. Indian Removal Policy
Martial
Law and Dictatorship
“In
all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both
of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same
man, or one and the same body of men; and whenever these two powers
are united together, there can be no public liberty.”
Sir
William Blackstone, 1783
The Cold
War National Security Act of 1950, contained an emergency Martial
Law and civilian detention plan that remained in effect
for more than 20 years, until it was revoked by a more assertive and
Liberty loving Congress. During periods of Martial Law, the
Constitution is suspended, and the U.S. Army will execute all civil,
judiciary and government functions. Congress no longer has a role and
is dismissed.
PUBLIUS
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