Rep. Ron Paul, MD

Police State USA

Tue Aug 10, 2004 22:44
64.140.158.131

Police State USA
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
August 10, 2004

Last week’s announcement that the terrorist threat warning level has been raised in parts of New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. has led to dramatic and unprecedented restrictions on the movements of citizens. Americans wishing to visit the U.S. Capitol must, for example, pass through several checkpoints and submit to police inspection of their cars and persons.

Many Americans support the new security measures because they claim to feel safer when the government issues terror alerts and fills the streets with militarized police forces. As one tourist interviewed this week said, “It makes me feel comfortable to know that everything is being checked.” It is ironic that tourists coming to Washington to celebrate the freedoms embodied in the Declaration of Independence are so eager to give up those freedoms with no questions asked.

Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. This doesn’t stop governments, including our own, from seeking more control over and intrusion into our lives. As one Member of Congress stated to the press last week, “people who don’t want to be searched don’t need to come on Capitol grounds.” What an insult! The Capitol belongs to the American people who pay for it, not to Congress or the police.

It is worth noting that the government rushes first to protect itself, devoting enormous resources to make places like the Capitol grounds safe, while just beyond lies one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation. What makes Congress more worthy of protection from terrorists than ordinary citizens?

To understand the nature of our domestic response to the September 11th, 2001 attacks, we must understand the nature of government. Government naturally expands, and any crises – whether real or manufactured – serve to justify more and more government power over our lives. Bureaucrats have used the tragedy of 9/11 as an excuse to seize police powers sought for decades, such as warrantless searches, Internet monitoring, and access to bank records. It should be no surprise that the recently released report of the 9/11 Commission has but one central recommendation: bigger government and more spending at home and abroad.

Every new security measure represents another failure of the once-courageous American spirit. The more we change our lives, the more we obsess about terrorism, the more the terrorists have won. As commentator Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute explains, terrorists in effect have been elevated by our response to 9/11: “They are running the country. They determine our civic life. They shape our private life. They decide how public resources are spent. They may dictate who gets to be the next president. It should be obvious that the government doesn’t object. Not at all. The government benefits, by getting ever more reason for ever more money and power."

Every generation must resist the temptation to believe that it lives in the most dangerous time in American history. The threat of Islamic terrorism is real, but it is not the greatest danger ever faced by our nation. This is not to dismiss the threat of terrorism, but rather to put it in perspective. Those who seek to whip the nation into a frenzy of fear do a disservice to a country that expelled the British, fought two world wars, and stared down the Soviet empire.

Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul198.html

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U.S.: No Testimony at 9/11 Retrial
CNN

Tuesday 10 August 2004

Hamburg, Germany - The United States has said it will not let key al Qaeda suspects in its custody testify at the retrial of the only September 11 suspect ever to be convicted.

The announcement came as the retrial of Mounir el Motassadeq opened in a Hamburg courtroom on Tuesday.

In a letter to the German Embassy in Washington, U.S. officials said "interactive access" to such prisoners could hamper their interrogation and lead to critical secret information being divulged, The Associated Press reported.

However, the U.S. State Department letter, which was read out in court, said the United States would provide unclassified summaries, apparently of interrogations, according to AP.

Trial Judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt described the offer of summaries as "a bit of progress."

In el Motassadeq's first trial, U.S. authorities refused to allow even transcripts of two key suspects' interrogations to be admitted as evidence.

In February 2003, el Motassadeq became the first person anywhere to be convicted in connection with the 2001 attacks. He was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

But earlier this year, an appeals court ruled the verdict was unfair because the U.S.-held witnesses did not testify, and it ordered a new trial.

El Motassadeq, who denies the charges, was released from prison in April.

In May, German authorities asked the United States to provide access to six key witnesses, including Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who is believed to have been the Hamburg al Qaeda cell's key contact with Osama bin Laden's organization.

However, in its letter, the United States said that even information on whether a given individual was in custody was classified as secret.

Other key witnesses sought by German authorities include suspected September 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is thought to be the mastermind of the attacks.

Opening the retrial Tuesday, Judge Schudt said the Hamburg state court wouldn't be swayed by political pressure.

"For me, this is not about fulfilling the expectations of governments or the public," he said. "The black hole in the chain of evidence will close. We will certainly not sink into it."

El Motassadeq smiled but said nothing as he entered the court. He briefly answered questions about his identity but turned down the judge's offer to respond to the indictment, AP reported.

El Motassadeq's lawyer said he would maintain his client's innocence, then ask the court to drop the proceedings because past experience showed el Motassadeq would not get a fair trial.

Lawyer Josef Graessle-Muenscher told AP he would argue that torture "underlies the interrogation system of the United States," making any evidence from Binalshibh or Mohammed inadmissible even if it is provided.

He cited reports from prisoners released from U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the policy of holding Taliban and al Qaeda suspects without giving them the usual rights of prisoners of war set out in the Geneva Conventions, AP said.

El Motassadeq is accused of helping pay tuition and other bills for members of the Hamburg al Qaeda cell, which included suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, to allow them to live as students as they plotted the attacks.

He admitted training in bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan, and witnesses at his trial testified that he was as radical as the rest of the group, often talking of jihad - holy war - and his hatred of Israel and the United States.

He signed Atta's will and had power of attorney over al-Shehhi's bank account.

El Motassadeq has said he was nothing more than close friends with the others and did only things that a good Muslim would do for any "brother."



Go to Original

AP: U.S. Didn't Warn Las Vegas of Threats
By John Solomon
The Associated Press

Tuesday 10 August 2004

Washington - When the Justice Department obtained two videos suggesting terrorists had cased Las Vegas casinos, the discussions didn't center on public alerts or heightened security. Rather, authorities worried about the effects on tourism and the casinos' legal liabilities, internal memos show.

One of the tapes, found in Spain in 2002, shows al-Qaida's European operatives casing Las Vegas casinos in 1997, engaging in casual conversation that included an apparent reference to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The other tape found in a Detroit terror cell's apartment had eerily similar footage of the MGM Grand, Excalibur and New York, New York casinos three hotels within a short distance of each other on the Las Vegas strip with a combined total of 11,000 rooms.

Though the FBI offered, most local law enforcement and casino security officers declined an invitation to view the footage after it was obtained in 2002, according to the memos and one of the prosecutors in the Detroit case.

One document obtained by The Associated Press quotes a federal prosecutor in Las Vegas as saying the city's mayor was concerned about the "deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry" if the evidence became public. The mayor said Monday he was never told of the footage.

Another memo states the casinos didn't want to see the footage for fear it would make them more likely to be held liable in civil court if an attack occurred.

"The information, unfortunately, was not taken as seriously as we believed it to have been," Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino told AP in an interview, recounting how only two local police officers accepted the FBI agent's offer to see the tape.

"The reason that he (the FBI agent) was given for the low turnout was because of liability, that if they heard this information they would have to act on it. It was extraordinarily unacceptable and absolutely outrageous," Convertino said.

The prosecutor said he later asked a Las Vegas police officer who had seen the tape and flown to Detroit to help why more wasn't done. "This officer told me that the amount of money that travels through Las Vegas on a daily, weekly and monthly basis if something doesn't go boom, nothing is going to be done," he said.

Convertino led the successful prosecution of the Detroit terror cell but has since been removed from the case amid an investigation into whether the prosecution team withheld certain evidence from defense lawyers. Convertino alleges the probe is retaliation for his recent cooperation with Congress.

Justice Department officials declined comment Monday, citing a gag order imposed by the judge in the Detroit case.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Monday he was never told about the tapes until learning about them from AP this week. "If I were told, I would certainly tell the public," Goodman said.

Clark County Under-sheriff Doug Gillespie said he first learned about the Detroit footage during the Detroit trial in spring 2003 and found out about the Spanish tape afterward, but he confirmed two of his detectives had met with the FBI.

"They're saying we didn't do our job, and it is to the contrary. They had the information. They chose not to give it to us," Gillespie said of federal authorities.

FBI Special Agent Dave Nanz in Las Vegas said he could not speak about the specifics of the Detroit case but that "any credible information that we obtain from any source suggesting any terror threat to Las Vegas, we share with local law enforcement and security chiefs in the casinos."

Homeland Security Department officials said Monday there is no imminent threat known to Las Vegas, although it remains a suspected target. They said the 2002 episode showed the need for the instant local alert system the department created last year.

Las Vegas has been considered a terror target since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks when it was determined that Mohammed Atta and his hijackers made trips there before their suicide attacks on New York City and Washington. But the extent of video surveillance hasn't received attention, even after U.S. authorities announced new terror concerns about Last Vegas last December.

The owner of the Excalibur said Monday he never had been told of the tapes. "You're giving me information I've never heard," said Glenn Schaeffer, president and chief financial officer of Mandalay Resort Group.

Yvette Monet, a spokeswoman for the MGM, declined to say whether casino officials were invited to see the tape, simply stating, "We have always cooperated with state, local and federal authorities in dealing with these matters and we continue to do so today."

Knowledge of the tapes reached the highest levels of Justice. The department's terrorism chief, Barry Sabin, referenced the casino footage in a memo to the FBI.

In late summer 2002, FBI agents discovered the casino footage when they belatedly decoded a European surveillance tape found a year earlier in the Detroit terror cell's apartment. A few weeks later, a Justice expert provided prosecutors similar surveillance that Spanish authorities had recovered from an al-Qaida cell in Madrid.

When FBI supervisory agent Paul George flew to Las Vegas to show the Detroit tape, "the FBI, casino representatives, Clark County Sheriff's Department and the JTTF (joint terrorism task force) declined to attend," Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Corbett wrote.

"No one showed up except for two Metro officers," Corbett added. "Indeed, the casinos informed Agent George that they did not want to show up because of concerns about liability."

In a series of e-mails, Convertino pleaded with Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Lever in Las Vegas to take the video footage seriously, even though local officials were cool to it. He noted two experts had concluded the tape matched other al-Qaida surveillance.

"While I understand your previously stated concerns that the mayor of Las Vegas, the local sheriff and others believe our indictment may temporarily have a deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry, it is unconscionable that any reasonable person would assert that anyone here possessed a cavalier attitude toward the tape," Convertino wrote.

Prosecutors were allowed in spring 2003 to show the Detroit tape to jurors, but were kept by their superiors from introducing the Spanish tape.

Both tapes showed the three same hotels. The Excalibur, in fact, "was both shot inside and out, daytime and nighttime," according to one Justice document.

The Detroit tape had struck Justice's terror experts because it switched back and forth from scenes of Las Vegas to pre-Sept. 11 scenes of New York that included the World Trade Center and a hotel across from the twin towers.

A Justice expert wrote that both tapes followed the al-Qaida training manual because "surveillance is inserted into seemingly innocent tourist videos" to disguise it.

A cooperating prosecution witness in Detroit told authorities that one member of the alleged terror cell described Las Vegas as the "City of Satan" and boasted "the brothers are going to destroy it."

Documents provided to U.S. authorities from Spain say the tape found in Madrid was taken by an al-Qaida operative in August 1997 and later sent via courier to al-Qaida's leaders in Afghanistan.

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/081104A.shtml   

Restore the Bill of Rights via Tenth Amendment — James Dierbeck, Wed Aug 11 00:04
• please say more — llo, Wed Aug 11 01:16
• The unconstitutional mess. — James Dierbeck, Wed Aug 11 01:29