ELAINE CASSEL
Ashcroft is Coming! Ashcroft is Coming!
Fri Jun 13 15:41:45 2003
208.152.73.101

Ashcroft is Coming! Ashcroft is Coming!
One Way or Another He's Gonna Getcha

By ELAINE CASSEL
http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel06092003.html

FBI Director Robert Mueller recently agreed with President Bush's assessment that "we" had Al Qaeda on the run." Of course Osama and Saddam are out there somewhere, but whatever Al Qaeda is (see Steve Perry's post that queries whether there really is an Al Qaeda), we have routed them.

So Michael Chertoff, chief of the criminal division and head of the antiterrorism prosecutions to date, is out of Justice and off to be a federal judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals (read my warning about him). And Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, who wrote the Patriot Act (and no doubt had a lot to do with Patriot II), is leaving boss John to teach constitutional law at Georgetown University Law School (the Dean must have a sense of humor, irony, or both).

And John is getting plea bargains left and right--though not to the charges prosecuted--and claiming, along with Bush, victory in the war on terror. Though he does, mind you, need a few more "tool" in his little black bag to finish up the task (and there is a stray right or two left in the Bill of Rights that he has not fully dispatched).

Nonetheless, things are getting a little boring around the Justice Department, what with the nude statues draped and all, and some of John's best buddies gone.

So, this week, John brought together some of his favorite prosecutors from around the country and hauled out boxes of files. Old files. Old surveillance files. Maybe on you and me.

And John said to his disciples, charge these people. I don't care with what. They must have done something or we wouldn't have a file on them. Charge them with inhaling marijuana, or jaywalking, or copying a VHS tape, or writing an article, or attending a mosque, or voting Democratic (or Green, or Libertarian). Charge them. Indict them. Tell the judge they are terrorist threats (remember, terror is what I say it is) and don't let them out on bail. Set their trials for 18 months away, like we did with that professor in Florida, who won't see the sun shine until at least January 2005. Maybe when they have been locked up for a few months, without lawyers, mind you. I forgot to tell you that. No lawyers. They are a threat to national security. Terrorists will not have the benefit of my Constitution. And mark those you think have done something really bad--like speak out in favor of Palestinian rights, or human rights. I will get George to name them unlawful combatants. Then they can get shipped out of the country. Call Putin up. See if he will get some of those gulags out of mothballs for us.

This is not just a funny story from a blogger who has had too much caffeine. This week, Ashcroft told his prosecutors to start reviewing 25 years of telephone and e-mail wiretaps and results from secret searches--in files on 4.500 people-- and decide whether they can file criminal charges under anti-terrorist laws.

The wiretaps and searches were performed on "suspected" spies and terrorists-suspected, as in no probable cause, but mere suspicion-- under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. With permission from a super-secret U.S. spy court, the FBI has used such warrants to break into homes, offices and hotel rooms to install hidden cameras, copy computer files and eavesdrop on telephones. Agents also have intercepted e-mails and pried into safe deposit boxes.

Criminal prosecutors previously were not entitled to the contents of intelligence files, which were limited under Justice Department policies to government espionage and counterterrorism experts. But a court ruling this year by the appellate branch of the secret court lowered that wall, allowing the review of old surveillance. The efforts of a trial FISA judge to curtail Ashcroft's runaway snooping was met not only with resistance by the appeals court, but the court gave Ashcroft more than a win. Yo, John, they said. Didn't you know that you could go back and use past searches to prosecute those new laws you wrote into the PATRIOT ACT?

So, Ashcroft reported this week that all U.S. attorney offices around the country are looking at the closed and open intelligence investigations to review for criminal purposes nationwide. There is no telling when charges will be brought, but the boots could some looking for you any day now.

And the evidence used against you may be too secret for even you to know! You may be charged with smoking weed, but they may actually be telling the judge that you are sending money to Osama.

U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty of Virginia, whose office is responsible for the terrorism case against Zacarias Moussaoui, said the review of the files allows federal prosecutors to "make sure we are aware of who is out there in the community and that we know what they're doing and be able to make some enforcement decisions as a result." (On a personal note, I live a couple of miles from McNulty's home court in the Eastern District of Virginia, so they won't have far to come for me).

As he left the meeting, Ashcroft promised that he would be asking for new terrorism tools, saying that the Patriot Act did not go far enough. He dismissed criticisms of the long and secret detentions of aliens, as reported by his own Inspector General. He would do it again, he said.

And you may be next.
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The Ten Planks of the “Freedom” Manifesto
by Jacob G. Hornberger, June 13, 2003
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0306j.asp

Now, tell me if I have this right:
It doesn’t really matter whether President Bush and his associates lied about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” or exaggerated the danger — even though the reason that most Americans supported the war was the threat of imminent attack from such weapons — because the war on Iraq has brought “freedom” to the Iraqi people. Three months after the invasion, which killed or maimed thousands of innocent people, including more than 100 American GIs, here’s the “freedom” that Iraqis are now celebrating: 1
1. The Iraqi people are now living under direct military rule, with foreign military commanders ruling by decree. 1
2. Democratic elections are prohibited, and political rulers are being selected by military commanders. 1
3. Iraqi citizens are being required to turn in their weapons to the military authorities. 1
4. There is a mandatory 11 p.m. curfew, enforced by soldiers. 1
5. There are warrantless searches of homes and warrantless seizures of criminal suspects; these are conducted not by the police but by army troops. 1
6. Occupation troops are killing demonstrators and suspected criminals without a trial or due process of law. 1
7. The military authorities are continuing Saddam Hussein’s system of government-run schools for the nation’s children, albeit with new forms of official indoctrination. 1
8. The military authorities are continuing Saddam Hussein’s system of monetary central planning, even to the extent of inflating the currency by printing quantities of Iraqi money with Saddam’s photo on it. 1
9. There is military censorship and regulation of the media and a ban on anti-military speech and activity.
10. The military commanders are continuing Saddam Hussein’s and his Ba’ath Party’s socialist policies of public ownership of the means of production, central planning of economic activity, and welfare. (Did I also mention that widespread looting continues across the country, which, according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, is also a part of Iraq’s new “freedom,” albeit an “untidy” part?) Wow! So all this is “freedom”? Please, remind me again — what exactly is tyranny? And would someone mind telling me how “freedom” in Iraq is different, in principle, from political conditions, say, in Burma? Of course, it’s not surprising that Washington officials would consider omnipotent power over people’s lives and fortunes, albeit in a more benign form than other military dictatorships, to constitute “freedom.” But what’s disquieting about all this is that so many Americans, after having been frightened into supporting the president’s invasion of Iraq on the basis of his deceptive claims about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” are now blindly believing his claim that the Iraqi people are free. Even more disquieting, however, is the possibility that, under the right circumstances (such as a big terrorist attack in the United States arising out of the war on Iraq), our “freedom”-loving fellow citizens might eagerly embrace efforts by the president and Pentagon to “free” us.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

• The Media’s Response to 9/11 — Brit Hume, Fri Jun 13 16:02
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