While Americans slept, COINTELPRO returned

But some are trying to tell the story and some are suing a lawless State
Excerpting, editing, re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett

 Early this year Naomi Wolf wrote, “NDAA, a clear and present danger to American liberty” ─ U.S. sleepwalking into police state where a pre-Magna Carta monarch (the president of the United States) locks up anyone. 

“The worst things you may have heard about the National Defense Authorization Act, which formally ended 254 years of democracy in the United States of America and drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, are all true,” she wrote. 

“The NDAA grants the president the power to kidnap any American anywhere in the United States and hold the person in prison forever without trial.  

“The president’s own signing statement, incredibly, confirmed that he had that power.”  

No country on the planet has ever set in place a system of torture, and of detention without trial, for an ‘other,’ supposedly external threat, she said, that did not very quickly start using that same system on its own citizens.

Guantánamo has come home. 

“Guantánamo is in our front yards [and] in our workplaces.” In barely more than half a decade, it has come home. 

In the spring of 2012, the NDAA was scheduled to enter force – pending the outcome of a judicial hearing – this would mean no one in the United States, no citizen of the United States, would be safe from indefinite detention  – “in effect, ‘disappeared.’”

Judicial Branch injunction 

Balance, check on powers 

In a May hearing, Judge Katherine Forrest of the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a ruling: a temporary injunction against an unconstitutional provision in the NDAA. Government attorneys had refused to provide assurances to the court that plaintiffs and others would not be indefinitely detained for engaging in First Amendment activities.  

“At that time, the government had more than once refused to define what it means to be an ‘associated force’ and it claimed the right to refrain from offering any clear definition of this term, or clear boundaries of power under the NDAA.”  

Some reference to “associated force” was made in an April 2011, piece by Jason Ditz. He wrote: 

Leaked U.S. Doc Terms Pakistani Government Agency an ‘Associated Force’ of al-Qaeda and focuses mostly on the dubious reasons for the more-or-less permanent detention of various captives, but perhaps the most serious release of the bunch is the ‘Matrix of Threat Indicators,’ a list of various excuses for the detentions. That is because among those reasons is ‘association with Pakistan ISID,’ the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which is the Pakistani government’s top spy agency. In addition to the agency’s significant influence, the current army Chief of Staff Gen. Parvez Kayani also was the former ISI chief.”

Executive Branch breach 

The week of August 6, 2012, in a final hearing in New York City, U.S. government lawyers asserted even more extreme powers, Jennifer Bolen wrote on August 9:  

[t]he right to disregard, entirely, the judge and the law.  

This hearing “was even more terrifying,” Bolen wrote, in that U.S. government attorneys, again, “presented no evidence to support their position and brought forth no witnesses.  

“Most incredibly, the president’s attorneys, when questioned, refused to assure the court that the NDAA’s section 1021(the provision that permits reporters and others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial) has not been applied by the U.S. government anywhere in the world after Judge Forrest’s injunction.”  

The Executive Branch in essence is refusing to tell the Judicial Branch whether it is complying with the legal injunction of the court.

Judge Forrest responded that if the actions of the Executive had breached the injunction of the court then “the United States government would be in contempt of court.”

Deliberate distraction

Careless sleep of incessant, vacuous distraction 

In her earlier Guardian article, Naomi Wolf writes, “If we had cared more about what was being done to brown people with Muslim names on a Cuban coastline, raised our voices louder against their having been held for years without charge or raised our voices against their being tried in kangaroo courts called military tribunals ─ if we had cared, we might now be safer from a new law mandating for us the same threat of abduction, fear of perpetual incarceration. 

“We didn’t care or we didn’t care enough – and here we are.  

“We acclimated. We got distracted. The fake ‘battlefield’ brought home [is] now real.  

“It is not ‘we’ versus Muslims in this conflict. It is our very own government versus ‘us.’”

Quoting Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Wolf concludes, “The NDAA is ‘the worst threat to civil liberties since COINTELPRO.’” 

COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) tactics have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.

The FBI’s stated motivation was ‘protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.’

Lawsuit 

The founder and Executive Director of Revolution Truth, Jennifer ‘Tangerine’ Bolen, wrote early this month, “My government seems to have lost the ability to tell and perhaps even to know the truth about the Constitution [but] I and many others have not.  

“We are fighting for due process and for the First Amendment, for a country we still believe in and for a government that is still legally bound by the Constitution of the United States. 

“If that makes us [the ‘enemies’ of government], then so be it. As long as they cannot call us ‘belligerents,’ lock us up and throw away the key – a power U.S. government lawyers have asserted as their right.  

“Against such abuses, we will keep fighting” and are now bringing a lawsuit against “an out-of-control government, for the sake of people everywhere.”  

Sources and notes 

Judge Katherine B. Forrest 

Katherine Bolan Forrest (b. February 13, 1964) is an American lawyer and judge serving on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 13, 2011, and received her judicial commission on October 17, 2011. 

Significant decisions 

On May 16, 2012, Forrest issued a ruling preliminarily enjoining enforcement of the highly controversial provisions for indefinite detention of suspects in the National Defense Authorization Act. 

Forrest’s ruling was issued as part of a lawsuit brought by seven plaintiffs which challenges the NDAA as a violation of ‘their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as well as due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.’ 

Before coming to the court, Judge Forrest was a partner in the New York law firm Cravath, Swaine and Moore and was recognized as one of the United States’ “leading practitioners in the antitrust and intellectual property arenas.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_B._Forrest

“The NDAA: a clear and present danger to American liberty ─ The US is sleepwalking into becoming a police state, where, like a pre-Magna Carta monarch, the president can lock up anyone,” Naomi Wolf, guardian.co.uk, February 29, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/29/ndaa-danger-american-liberty

“What makes our NDAA lawsuit a struggle to save the U.S. constitution─ Time after time, Obama’s lawyers defending the NDAA’s section 1021 affirm our worst fears about its threat to our liberty,”  Tangerine Bolen, guardian.co.uk, August 10, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/10/ndaa-lawsuit-struggle-us-constitution

The leaked U.S. “Guantanamo Files” focus mostly on the dubious reasons for the more-or-less permanent detention of various captives, but perhaps the most serious release of the bunch is the “Matrix of Threat Indicators,” a list of various excuses for the detentions.

 That is because among those reasons is “association with Pakistan ISID,” the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which is the Pakistani government’s top spy agency. In addition to the agency’s significant influence, the current army Chief of Staff Gen. Parvez Kayani also was the former ISI chief.

“Leaked U.S. Doc Terms Pakistani Govt Agency an ‘Associated Force’ of al-Qaeda ─ U.S.-Pakistan Tensions Likely to Worsen Even More Over Claim,” Jason Ditz, April 25, 2011, http://news.antiwar.com/2011/04/25/leaked-us-doc-terms-pakistani-govt-agency-an-associated-force-of-al-qaeda/

COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, often illegal projects (surveillance, infiltration, discrediting, and disruption of domestic political organizations) conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. 

COINTELPRO tactics have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.  

The FBI’s stated motivation was ‘protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

“U.S. Attorneys Refuse to Assure Judge That They Are Not Already Detaining Citizens Under NDAA ─ The U.S. government seems determined to have the power to do away with due process and Americans’ right to a trial,” Tangerine Bolen, August 9, 2012, http://dailycloudt.com/voice/358/us-attorneys-refuse-to-assure-judge-that-they-are-not-already-detaining-citizens-under-ndaa

Jennifer ‘Tangerine’ Bolen is founder and Executive Director of Revolution Truth, an organization dedicated to restoring legitimate democracies in part through increasing access to accurate information. She has background in integrative medicine and holds a Master’s degree in Public Health and Policy and has done coursework for a doctorate in public affairs and governance.

More details at http://stopNDAA.org

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