Spying on Pacifists, Environmentalists and Nuns

Another authenticated revelation that "Big Brother/Sister" is still spying on innocent and peaceful persons and abusing their authority by mucking up the lives of persons they don't like.

Fred

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Spying on Pacifists, Environmentalists and Nuns
Sunday 07 December 2008
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by: Bob Drogin, The Los Angeles Times


Non-violent activist Max Obuszewski (above) addresses the media at a press conference organized by the ACLU. Maryland law enforcement officials admit to spying on Obuszewski and others and wrongly classifying them as terrorists. (Photo: Karl Merton Ferron / The Baltimore Sun)


An undercover Maryland State Police trooper infiltrated nonviolent groups and labeled dozens of people as terrorists.
Takoma Park, Maryland - To friends in the protest movement, Lucy was an eager 20-something who attended their events and sent encouraging e-mails to support their causes.

Only one thing seemed strange.

"At one demonstration, I remember her showing up with a laptop computer and typing away," said Mike Stark, who helped lead the anti-death-penalty march in Baltimore that day. "We all thought that was odd."

Not really. The woman was an undercover Maryland State Police trooper who between 2005 and 2007 infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups.

Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by "Lucy" and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database - and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency.

Among those labeled as terrorists: two Catholic nuns, a former Democratic congressional candidate, a lifelong pacifist and a registered lobbyist. One suspect's file warned that she was "involved in puppet making and allows anarchists to utilize her property for meetings."

"There wasn't a scintilla of illegal activity" going on, said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit and in July obtained the first surveillance files. State police have released other heavily redacted documents.

Investigators, the files show, targeted groups that advocated against abortion, global warming, nuclear arms, military recruiting in high schools and biodefense research, among other issues.

"It was unconscionable conduct," said Democratic state Sen. Brian Frosh, who is backing legislation to ban similar spying in Maryland unless the police superintendent can document a "reasonable, articulable suspicion" of criminal activity.

The case is the latest to emerge since the Sept. 11 attacks spurred a sharp increase in state and federal surveillance of Americans. Critics say such investigations violate constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly, and serve to inhibit lawful dissent.

In the largest known effort, the Pentagon monitored at least 186 lawful protests and meetings - including church services and silent vigils - in California and other states.

The military also compiled more than 2,800 reports on Americans in a database of supposed terrorist threats. That program, known as TALON, was ordered closed in 2007 after it was exposed in news reports.

The Maryland operation also has ended, but critics still question why police spent hundreds of hours spying on Quakers and other peace groups in a state that reported more than 36,000 violent crimes last year.

Stephen Sachs, a former state attorney general, investigated the scandal for Gov. Martin O'Malley - a Democrat elected in 2006. He concluded that state police had violated federal regulations and "significantly overreached."

According to Sachs' 93-page report and other documents, state police launched the operation in March 2005 out of concern that the planned execution of a convicted murderer might lead to violent protests.

They sent Lucy to join local activists at Takoma Park's Electrik Maid, a funky community center popular with punk rockers and slam poets. Ten people attended the gathering, including a local representative from Amnesty International.

"The meeting was primarily concerned with getting people to put up fliers and getting information out to local businesses and churches about the upcoming events," the undercover officer reported later. "No other pertinent intelligence information was obtained."

That proved true for all 29 meetings, rallies and protests that Lucy ultimately attended. Most drew only a handful of people, and none involved illegal or disruptive actions.

Using the aliases Lucy Shoup and Lucy McDonald, she befriended activists. "I want to get involved in different causes," she wrote in an e-mail, citing her interest in "anti-death penalty, antiwar and pro-animal actions!!!"

Max Obuszewski, a Baltimore pacifist who leads antiwar protests, said Lucy asked about civil disobedience, but didn't instigate any. "She never volunteered to do anything, not even hand out leaflets," he said. "She was not an agent provocateur."

Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman, said that no one in the department had been disciplined in connection with the spying program. Lucy, who has not been publicly identified, would not consent to an interview, he said.

The surveillance, Shipley said, was inappropriate. And the listing of lawful activity as terrorism "shouldn't have happened, and has been corrected."

Most of the files list terrorism as a "primary crime" and a "secondary crime," then add subgroups for designations such as antiwar protester.

Some contain errors and inconsistencies that are almost comical.

Nancy Kricorian, 48, a novelist on the terrorist list, is coordinator for the New York City chapter of CodePink, an antiwar group. She serves as liaison with local police for group protests, and has never been arrested.

"I have no idea why I made the list," she said. "I've never been to the state of Maryland, except maybe to stop for gas on the way to Washington."

Josh Tulkin, 27, a registered lobbyist with the Virginia state Legislature, is cited under "terrorism - environmental extremists." Tulkin was deputy director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group that claims 15,000 members and regularly meets with governors and members of Congress.

"If asking your elected officials a question about public policy is a crime, then I'm guilty," he said.

Barry Kissin, 57, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2006, heads the Frederick Progressive Action Coalition, a group that works "for social, economic and environmental justice," according to his police file. Their protests "are always peaceful," it added.

He was labeled "Terrorism - Anti-Government."

Nadine Bloch, 47, runs workshops for protest groups that seek corporate responsibility and builds huge papier-mache puppets often used in street marches. Her terrorism file indicates she participated in a Taking Action for Animals conference in Washington on July 16-18, 2005.

Animal rights, Bloch said, is one of the few causes she doesn't actively embrace. Besides, she was attending an educators conference in Hawaii that week as a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This whole thing," she said, "is so absurd."

Today Is Pearl Harbor Day

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, a day to commemorate the day that Japan carried out a pre-emptive attack on the US military installations in and around Pearl Harbor. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States of America called the attack "A day that will live in infamy". Under the George W. Bush doctrine of the legitimacy of "Pre-emptive Attacks" as a legitimate way of carrying our US foreign policy, that attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor was totally legitimate.

Fred

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"Remember Pearl Harbor!"
Sunday 07 December 2008
by: John Lamperti, t r u t h o u t | Perspective


Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. (Photo: National Archive and Records Administration)


"Pre-emptive" war, then and now.

The name Pearl Harbor resonates in American history; it is synonymous with the U.S. entry into World War II. It stands for tragedy - and for treachery. On December 7, 1941, Japanese carrier-based aircraft attacked United States naval and air forces in the Hawaiian Islands, and scored a major victory. Over 2,300 U.S. military personnel lost their lives - almost half of them when the battleship Arizona was blown up and sunk by bombs and torpedoes. The U. S. Pacific fleet was devastated.[1] The next day President Franklin Roosevelt called for a declaration of war, and described December 7, 1941, and the Japanese attack as "a date which will live in infamy."

But why, exactly, was the Pearl Harbor attack "infamous"? The Japanese planes attacked strictly military targets and there were relatively few civilian casualties.[2] The battle was a terrible blow for the American forces, which were taken completely by surprise. But a surprise attack is not infamous in wartime; every military commander would like to attack by surprise if possible. Nor did the bitter facts of U.S. defeat and heavy losses make the raid criminal. President Roosevelt used the word "infamy" because the raid was an act of military aggression. Until that moment Japan and the United States were not at war, although their conflicting interests had been threatening to boil over. The attack turned a dispute into a war; Pearl Harbor was a crime because the Japanese struck first.

Sixty years after Pearl Harbor, the administration of G. W. Bush has made "preemption" an official part of U.S. policy. According to this so-called "Bush Doctrine," the United States claims the right to use military force whenever it determines that its security or economic interests may be threatened by another nation in the future. The Bush National Security Strategy of 2002 states that "The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."[3] In other words, if it is to our advantage, we will strike first - begin a war - when we see a potential threat.

That is exactly what the Japanese did in 1941, when the United States posed a huge threat to their leaders' conception of Japan's national interests. With bases reaching across the Pacific, the U.S. Navy, in particular, was potentially a major obstacle to Japanese expansion in China and Southeast Asia. Moreover, the United States had imposed an embargo on oil and steel shipments to Japan, a nation that depended on imports and had oil reserves sufficient for only about two years. By November 1941, negotiations to resolve or defuse these issues had stalled. Japanese military planners, by then in control of their country's government, saw armed conflict with the United States as inevitable, and disabling U.S. naval power in the Pacific seemed essential for achieving their goals. They judged that a high-risk, high-gain surprise attack would give Japan its best chance for success. That is, they chose preemption.

After the war, the United States and its allies did not accept Japanese or German claims that their preemptive acts had been legitimate. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief allied prosecutor of major Axis war criminals. In August 1945 Jackson wrote: "We must make it clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it... Our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."[4] During the next few years, officials and military officers of both Germany and Japan were tried and convicted for planning and carrying out aggression by their countries' armed forces. There was no exception for "preemptive war," although some of the accused tried to use that concept in their defense.[5] The Bush administration's doctrine thus represents a reversal of long-standing principles of international law, principles that the United States has championed in the past.

In the years since 2002, far from reconsidering its doctrine of preemption, the Bush administration has reaffirmed and extended it. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, was supposed to preempt the use by that nation of "weapons of mass destruction,"[6] weapons which did not exist and could not in any case have threatened U.S. security. Moreover, the administration's policy now specifically includes the possible use of nuclear weapons. The new (2005) nuclear doctrine identifies four conditions in which preemptive use of nuclear weapons could occur, including "An adversary intending to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S., multinational, or allies' forces or civilian populations."[7] The preamble states: "The US does not make positive statements defining the circumstances under which it would use nuclear weapons." This "calculated ambiguity" is said to "reinforce deterrence"; it is a sort of "mad dog" strategy meant to induce fear of our dangerous unpredictability. Such threats are both dangerous and immoral. Instead, there should be absolute clarity that this country will never attack another with nuclear weapons; starting a nuclear war would be an act that would truly "live in infamy." A declared U.S. "no first use" policy is long overdue, as part of a genuine campaign for world-wide abolition.

The Bush administration has also broadened the scope of non-nuclear preemption, calling its policy an "expansive new definition of self-defense." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other officials recently cited this doctrine to justify attacks such as the October 26 raid inside Syria and others inside Pakistan. The policy, they said, permits strikes on "militant targets" in a sovereign nation without its consent when that nation does not act on its own as the U.S. wishes.[8]

If these standards are applied to the Japan of 1941, the Pearl Harbor attack can no longer be seen as criminal; certainly George W. Bush and his associates are in no position to condemn it. For the rest of us, December 7, 1941 will remain a "day of infamy" as the war crimes tribunals concluded and as virtually all Americans have believed ever since. And if Japan's attack on that day was infamous, the policy of preemption must be condemned as well. Preemptive war was not legitimate for the Japanese in 1941, and it is not legitimate for the United States today.

Any policy that plans for "preemptive" or "preventive" war to promote national interests must be considered criminal, for the same reasons as was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It is an urgent challenge for incoming U.S. President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush Doctrine and correct this dangerous situation. The United States must once again "renounce and condemn" any policy of preemptive war.

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Notes:

[1] In addition to the Arizona, the battleship Oklahoma was lost, three others were sunk or beached but later salvaged, and three more were damaged. In all, 18 ships were sunk or seriously damaged, 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed, and 158 other planes were damaged. The Japanese lost 29 planes in the raid. (From Walter Lord, Day of Infamy, first edition 1957.)

[2] 68 civilians were killed and 35 others wounded. There were some 40 explosions in the city of Honolulu, but all except one were caused by U.S. antiaircraft fire. (Lord, page 212.)

[3] The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, White House document, September 17, 2002, page. 19. Available on the web.

[4] Department of State Bulletin, June 10, 1945.

[5] Nazi leaders claimed, for example, that the 1940 German invasion of neutral Denmark and Norway was preemption, needed to "protect" them from an imminent British attack and occupation.

[6] The introduction of this terminology may have been intended to blur the distinction between chemical and biological weapons, which Iraq could conceivably have possessed in 2003 (although it in fact did not), and true weapons of mass destruction, i.e. nuclear weapons, which it could not have possessed.

[7] JP 3-12: Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations. Cited by Hans M. Kristensen in Arms Control Today, September 2005.

[8] Thom Shanker, "Gates Gives Rationale for Expanded Deterrence," New York Times, October 28, 2008.

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John Lamperti is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of several books on the theory of probability and on random processes. Since 1985 one of his main interests has been Central America and what the United States has been doing there. He is the author of "Enrique Alvarez Cordova: Life of a Salvadoran Revolutionary and Gentleman"(MacFarland, 2006).

fredscholl@yahoo.com http://californiadreamer-fred.blogspot.com/